When the Bible and Science Disagree

“The mistaken zeal, of saving a theological truth at the expense of a philosophical one, may end in involving both in a common doubt or destruction. In logical as in mechanical work we must be careful how we use sharp tools. In spiritual as in carnal warfare there must be caution in wielding a two-edged sword.” (From William Patton’s Prayer and Its Remarkable Answers, pg. 443)

When the Bible and the natural world seem to contradict one another, what should a Christian do? Some dismiss science as an unreliable practice. Others toss out the Bible as an inaccurate artifact of human history. But these are not the only options available to serious-minded people. Tossing out science or tossing out Scripture at the first sign of tension is premature. God has written the book of divine revelation and the book of nature, and we should diligently study each on their own terms with a healthy dose of intellectual humility.

You might be thinking, “That sounds nice. It would look great stitched on a pillow. But when the Bible and the book of nature seem to pull in different directions, which do we give priority?” After all, it seems impious to let our understanding of nature shape our beliefs about Scripture, and it seems irrational to give priority to Scripture when objective facts about nature plainly contradict what the Bible says. Which should shape our understanding of the other?

The answer requires us to take a step back and heed the advice of William Patton who anticipated this issue in the late 19th century. He states:

"If science and theology are seemingly at variance, it is to be remembered that neither is infallible, though each represents an infallible teacher." (Patton, 447)

Patton calls us to intellectual humility which is a healthy awareness of the fact that we can go wrong in our investigations about things. The issue is not that Scripture and Nature contradict one another. The issue is that our understanding of either can go astray and lead us to see contradictions where there really are none.

This immediately raises two questions:

1. How do we avoid falling into skepticism about our knowledge of the natural world?

2. How do we interpret Scripture without bending it in unreasonable ways to fit our current scientific theories?

How Do We Avoid Being Too Skeptical About Scientific Theories?

The first question is a philosophical one. Different philosophical schools will have different opinions, but the most straightforward answer has to do with evidence and explanations for that evidence. When we find ourselves trying to decide what to believe about the natural world, we have to look at the relevant body of evidence, decide which explanation best suits the evidence, and how much confidence the body of evidence gives us.

Sometimes we might be very confident because there is a lot of evidence which decisively supports one explanation over another. Other times there might be a slight preponderance of the evidence in favor of an explanation, but not enough to make us very confident in it.

Being honest with ourselves about how strongly the evidence supports some explanation or another is an essential part of intellectual humility. It is easy to get carried away with our opinions or judgments, but the mature approach is to keep ourselves grounded by realistically assessing how well the available evidence warrants our opinion.

When it comes time to assess the strength of scientific explanations, it is okay for Christians to be honest about which way the evidence really points even if they think it points away from what Scripture teaches. Christians might still wait for further evidence and reserve judgment in the meantime. They might bite the bullet and knowingly settle for a less well-supported scientific explanation (obviously a sub-optimal choice). But, whatever we do, Christians must be honest about the strength of scientific positions on their own terms.

Equally important to intellectual humility is that we must be cautious about our own level of expertise in weighing the strength of the relevant evidence. Christians without expertise in a specific field should be very slow to reject the opinions of people who are experts in that field. That’s not to say dissent is never allowed. It is to say that it should take a lot to be confident when dissenting against experts.

How and When Should We Double Check Our Interpretation of Scripture?

So what happens when the natural world seems to contradict Scripture in our own opinion, or when it is the opinion of experts with whom we have no good reason to disagree? Before Christians commit to the idea that there really is a contradiction, they should first ask themselves if they have interpreted Scripture correctly. Just like fallible humans can misinterpret nature, we can also misinterpret Scripture.

All Christians believe at least some other people misinterpret Scripture, but intellectual humility calls us to be mindful of the fact that we are just as prone as anyone else to misunderstanding what Scripture really says. The danger, of course, is that we will then make our interpretations of the Bible entirely subservient to scientific fads. To avoid this pitfall, Christians need to remember a couple of things. The first is that Scripture was never intended to be read as a scientific textbook. People can get nervous when they read a claim like that, but it is very intuitive when we stop to think about it.

Nobody frets about Isaiah 11:12 which references “the four corners of the earth.” Perhaps someone in Isaiah’s time really thought the earth had four corners, and they would have taken this passage literally in a “scientific” way. If they somehow got transported to today where we know the earth does not have four corners, we would think it silly of them to reject all of the scientific evidence that contradicts their understanding of what Scripture says. We would tell them they are missing what the Author of Scripture was actually communicating.

To have a fair shot at accurately interpreting Scripture, we need to keep in mind what Scripture sets out to accomplish. Patton reminds us:

A physical fact, such as science notes or discusses, is nowhere set forth in the Bible as if propounded to faith; but, at most, is only incidentally mentioned on the way to a religious truth. That God is the original Creator of the universe; that man, made in his spiritual image, is now in a fallen condition; that sin is the source of the world's present wretchedness, and threatens woe in a future state of being; that man is impotent to deliver himself from this condition of ruin ; and that a divine redemption has been provided through Jesus Christ, and is freely offered to all men, —this is the burden of Bible history, law, psalm, prophecy, and epistle. (Patton, 445)

Conclusion and Further Reading

So what do we do when science and the Bible contradict? The first step is to ask ourselves how confident we are that there really is a contradiction. How confident are we that our understanding of nature is correct? How confident are we that we have accurately interpreted the relevant portion of Scripture? Can we catch a previously unnoticed error in our understanding of either that resolves the issue? If so, the problem is solved, and we have done it by remembering that we humans are prone to error.

But what if the issue persists? What if we cannot find any errors in our scientific reasoning according to scientific standards and we cannot find any good interpretations of Scripture according to the standards of good Biblical interpretation? If this is the case, it is okay to simply reserve judgment and accept that our knowledge of one or the other might be incomplete.

We do not suddenly lose all of the historical and archaeological support for Christianity and Scripture just because of one passage that is giving us grief. Similarly, the advancements of science do not evaporate just because our understanding of the natural world is at odds with our understanding of Scripture.

Sometimes, intellectual humility calls us to be okay with tension. Part of our human fallibility is the reality that the world will not always seem to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Our knowledge of the shape of the puzzle piece or the surrounding pieces (or both) may be mistaken or incomplete, and we have to sit tight with our most confident beliefs about the rest of the puzzle in the meantime.

For more on this, see “Supplementary Chapter No. II. The Relations of Science and Revealed Religion” in William Patton’s Prayer and Its Remarkable Answers.