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Thursday, April 13, 2006
Do science and religion reconcile?
By Henrylito D. Tacio
Lenten Reflections
THE Christian religion, named after Jesus Christ, is based on the principle called faith (read John 3:16 and Ephesians 2:8-9).
Hebrews 1:1 defines faith as something that "gives substance to our hopes, and makes us certain of realities we do not see." This simply means a scientist or philosopher cannot sit in a study or laboratory and, through sheer human logic, arrive at the correct spiritual facts about God and the universe.
However, it should be quickly pointed out that while this faith is on many occasions and in many areas above human reasoning, it is never reasonable to say the least.
More importantly, it can be stated that God has left strong hints and signs throughout His great creation, which indicate to the honest seeker both the reality of His existence and the reliability of His word!
Someone asked me whether "science and religion are reconcilable." My answer is yes, they reconcile.
Sir Isaac Newton himself admitted: "We account the Scriptures of God (referring to the Bible) to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatsoever."
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," says Genesis 1:1. Between the years 1848-1876, the tablets with the first extrabiblical account of creation were discovered from the library of Assyrian emperor Ashurbanipal (669-626 B.C.), doubtless dating before 2000 B.C. This Babylonian-Sumerian epic of creation is called the "Enuma elish" and consisted of seven cantos, written on seven tablets. Although grossly "perverted" in some areas, they do bear striking resemblances to the true Genesis creation account.
For example, both accounts speak of an original chaos and darkness. Both accounts also have a similar order of events: light, firmament, dry land, luminaries, man, and God (or gods) resting.
What about the universal flood that was chronicled in Genesis 6 to 9? Was there a historical record to show that such event really took place? George Smith, of the British Museum, found in 1872 in tablets from the Library of Assur-banipal at Nineveh, accounts of the Flood curiously parallel to the Bible account, which had been copied from tablets dating back to the First Dynasty of Ur, a period about midway between the Flood and Abraham.
Later, many of these ancient tablets were found. In these tablets, these expressions repeatedly appear: "The Flood," "the age before the Flood," "inscriptions of the time before the Flood."
In Joshua 3:16, we read that the waters of Jordan River parted. Actually, the waters were blocked from Adam (the modern Damieh), about 16 miles north of Jericho. Three times in relatively modern history (1266, 1906, and 1927) a landslide has blocked the Jordan's flow. In 1927, the river was stopped for over 21 hours. On occasion, the miracles of the Bible are miracles of synchronization or timing.
To end this piece, allow me to quote the words of Sir W. Dawson, a laureate of the Academy of Science at Paris: "We may thus find in the end that the portrayal of nature and of man as set before us in the Scriptures, is not only corroborated by all that is reliable in science, but that by accepting what the Bible states, we will invariably be pointed to the right road, and kept from the paths of error, which would lead us astray in our advance in knowledge."
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (April 13, 2006 issue)
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