Overview

My desire is for this site to be both a source of information for the theist and also for any atheist that may be seeking along a new path of truth for themselves. One atheist and mentor to the “new” atheists, Antony Flew, finally gave up and wrote a book, There is a God. He could find no other answer for the complex information packaged in every living cell.

Romans 1:20-21 helps us understand that God, the creator of the universe, has revealed Himself to us by two methods. First, he has given us His inerrant Word in both the Old and New Testaments. He has also pointed us to the revelation of His creation. He tells us that we can clearly perceive Him by either revelation. The synergy of both revelations provides us a lot of information.

When examining the interface of faith and science there are two sets of facts, those coming from the Bible and those revealed to us through science, the study of God’s creation. There is no conflict between these two sets of facts.

The debate is not about the facts of the Bible versus the facts of science, it concerns our interpretation of both sets of facts. Our fundamental beliefs within Christianity are without debate: a supernatural creator, Christ’s incarnate life via a virgin birth, death, burial, resurrection, etc. Our discussions of beginnings however are debated because of our interpretation of Scripture and science as they both describe, in their unique way, the distant past to the present.

Much of the debate related to interpretation within the Church pertains to our understanding of the age of the universe and earth. We can find a lot of agreement on how the fine tuning of the cosmological constants of the universe and the complexity of genetic information within the cell point to a mind behind creation. Our best apologetic falls within the facts of science supporting theism, an intelligent designer, versus atheism; not debating age.

As Christians, we need to be very careful about the scientific claims we make for an intelligent designer. When those claims cannot be affirmed, they bring discredit to our valid apologetic and give our detractors rabbit trails to chase. We also need to be very careful not to try and turn the Bible, God's record for His plan of redemption, into a science textbook.

The research of the last 40 years in physics and in just the last decade in molecular biology have convinced me of two things. The universe and earth are several billion years old and there is an intelligent mind, transcendent to the universe, who brought it all into existence. I understand that mind to be the God of the Bible. Science describes a universe that is approximately 13.8 billion years old and an earth that is about 4.6 billion years old and I do not believe that there is anything in the Bible that would be in conflict of those assumptions. The same data that supports those ages also tells us that the universe had a beginning just like the first verse of the Bible states. It is not an eternal, steady-state universe as I was first taught in physics 50 years ago. Many, Christian theologians and scientists, are open to this same understanding concerning the age of the universe.

The Discovery Institute provides a lot of great material and resources supporting the argument of intelligent design. It's Evolution News and Science Today is a great source of recent information on faith and science. Another great website for reference is Reasons to Believe. There are other resource websites at the Links tab.

The discoveries of modern science concerning the fossil record and molecular biology are not supporting the claims of Darwinian evolution. In fact, many scientists have developed opposing theories. For example, the late Harvard professor of paleontology, Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, along with Steven Stanley and Niles Eldredge provided critiques on how Darwinian evolution is not supported by the fossil record. One data point is that the fossil record does not support Darwin's prediction of phyletic gradualism. We do not see a pattern of slow, smooth continuous change in the fossil record. More recently, the journal Nature published an article titled, "Does Evolutionary Theory Need a Rethink?", and eight evolutionary biologists answered in the affirmative (see Papers on this website). Many new competing hypotheses are now being offered. It is not necessary to jump on the Darwinian bandwagon. I find Darwinism unconvincing. It appears to be more focused on defending the metaphysical religion of atheism than discerning the scientific facts associated with a theory of evolution. We need a better theory of evolution that can encompass much of the recent data from science that is not supporting Neo-Darwinian theory and the "modern synthesis."

This site is used in my teaching on faith and science to provide follow-up. I am a scientist (PhD in biology with a focus on Microbiology) and a Bible teacher with almost 50 years of experience in both areas. My interpretation of the Biblical and scientific facts has evolved over the years, impacted by new evidences in science and a better understanding, on my part, of the original languages of the Bible (thanks to Francis Schaeffer, John Sailhamer, C. John Collins, Michael Heiser and others). My awakening to the apologetic of faith and science was by reading two books while in graduate school by Francis A. Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time followed by No Final Conflict. I recommend them both.

Are we the product of purposeless chance working on energy and matter over time or a supernatural designer?

Is matter and the universe eternal or is God eternal?

You can find answers to those questions in the other resources located on this website.

Frank L. Lyon, PhD