God, Creation, Science

Nearly all who claim the name "Christian", believes in God, God the Creator of all of reality.  In the last 400 years, science has studied our world, the universe, reality.  The discoveries of science have been very disconcerting to many Christians because the discoveries conflict with the worldview held by the biblical writers.  Can Christians take scriptures seriously without taking scriptures literally?

Yes, Christians can!  Christianity and science need not be in conflict with each other.  However, rejecting confrontation requires that theology reject a fundamentalist premodern origin of the heavens and the earth that ignores or suppresses the results of science or a historical-critical exegisis of the scriptures.  On the other hand, science must reject a rationalistic, modern model that evades fundamental philosophical and theological questions.  Science cannot a priori declare religion as irrelevant.

Instead, christianity and science must embrace a critical and constructive interaction between science and religion.

Just as christianity must deal a with reality that started with a big cosmic explosion 13.7 billion years ago, science must also deal with ultimate questions.  What is the ultimate origin of the universal constants of nature?  Why is there something and not nothing?  This is a primal human question.  Can the scientist within the realm of human expereience answer these questions?

For a christianity which seeks to understand and explain reality, it must face the fact that mankind has discovered that 13.7 billiions years ago our universe began with a giganitc cosmic explosion.  Our planet has existed for 4.5 billion years and complex life for 3.5 billions years.  It was only 1.5 billion years ago that the first early human walked upright and humans such as present day man appeared only 200,000 years ago .

Paraphrased and quotes from Hans Kung.

What do you think?