Science and Faith

A Perspective by John Hopkins

Copyright ©2008-2010 by John Hopkins. All rights reserved.

1
 Preface

One of the people whose company I enjoy most is a physicist named Dr. Gerald
De Boné. He is a Ph.D. with something over fifty years of experience. He read the 2004
version of this work and asked me why I was angry at science. I wanted to address that
question in the first page.
The answer to that is that I am not angry at science. I thoroughly enjoy science.
The book I quote most often in this piece is Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Professor
Timothy Ferris. I am on my second copy of the book because I physically wore out the
first copy from referring to it so often. I read all the books that I cite long before writing
this piece and read them and many more like them for pleasure.
What I do not like are bullies. Because Christians far too often do not have the
background in science that they can, and should, they sometimes fall victim to
intellectual bullies who use some bits of science as weapons.
My purpose in this piece is to encourage Christians to venture into science more
often, and to be comfortable doing it. They will not be alone. Some of the most important
scientists in history have been Christians.
Science, and especially the history of science, can be very enjoyable. I have found
majesty in the process that allowed light to propagate in the universe. When I came to
understand it I immediately thought of Genesis 1:3 “And God said “Let there be light.
And there was light.”” I love seeing how He did it.
Scientists are typical humans in every sense. In the following pages you will see
that. I believe that if you will get to know some of them that you will be glad you did.
I hope you will read this piece with pleasure and begin to take pleasure in science.
Remember that God is not threatened by science. You are not because He is not.

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 A Perspective
The world is full of hoaxes. A Google search on the subject will turn up enough
material to keep you busy for quite a while. There is the one about the Stone Age tribe
found in the Philippines in the early 1970s by a government cultural minister named
Elizalde. On Jan. 12, 1972 CBS news ran a documentary on them called "The Last Tribes
of Mindanao". They were all over the media until marshal law was declared in the
Philippines in 1974.
In 1986 Ferdinand Marcos had been overthrown and marshal law lifted. A Swiss
journalist named Oswald Iten went looking for them to follow up. He found them living
near caves, but not in them. The villagers told him the story of how Elizalde had
convinced them that if they moved into the caves and looked poor that they could get
money from the government and protection from tribal fighting.1
There are still a few that claim that the tribe was real, but it seems clear that it was
a hoax.
“On April 1, 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today
announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially
designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans.”
“According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the
original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.). However, the left-handed whopper had
"all condiments rotated 180 degrees, thereby redistributing the weight of the sandwich so that the
bulk of the condiments will skew to the left, thereby reducing the amount of lettuce and other
toppings from spilling out the right side of the burger."2
By the time the hoax was explained the next day many of the “Left Handed
Whoppers” had already been ordered and many demands had been received for right
handed ones.
The above hoaxes are relatively benign. There is another hoax, which is not at all
benign, but very dangerous. That hoax is that there was a martyr to science who was

1
From http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/tasadays.html based on Nance, John. The Gentle Tasaday. New
York. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1975 and Headland, Thomas N. The Tasaday Controversy: Assessing
the Evidence. American Anthropological Association Scholarly Series. 1992.
2
From http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/whopper.html based on "What's Left? Not These Whoppers.
April Fool!" Los Angeles Times, April 2, 1998, D5.

3
sacrificed by, and for, Christianity. The hoax also maintains that science would have been
far, far ahead of where it is but for the interference of the Catholic Church.
This person is, of course, Galileo. His claim that the Earth was not the center of
the universe with everything revolving around it was a threat to the Roman Catholic
Church. The claim is made that Christianity has repeatedly done this through the
centuries. This claim is used to demand apology and accommodation from Christians
even today. We are told that since we have much for to be held responsible our contrition
should be expressed by surrender.
It is here that we transition from hoaxes to myths. Several myths are involved.
Some of them are:
• That Christianity is based on, and requires, ignorance.
o That anyone who believes that God created the universe, and
therefore mankind, is useless at best, and more likely dangerous.
• That an objective consideration of the scientific evidence denies the
existence and therefore any role for God.
• That science understands these things because it is an objective pursuit
o That scientists are objective as a group
• That humanity would be better off if theists (like Christians and Jews, but
especially Christians) get out of their way.
• The trials and tribulations of Galileo are an example of this

I will deal with some of these myths and other issues here. I will not deal
extensively with arguments against evolution even though it is relatively easy and
enjoyable to do. I will do a little of that here, but only incidentally to other issues. The
flaws in the random evolution argument are outside the scope of this piece.
Let us begin with the notion that we who believe that God created the universe,
and us, do so because we just are not very bright.
Sir Isaac Newton said in a letter to Robert Hooke “If I have seen further it is by
standing on the shoulders of giants.”3 Arthur Koestler writes “One of the giants was

3
Quoted in Encarta Reference Library, © 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation, All rights reserved

4
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) whose laws of planetary motion provided the foundation
on which the Newtonian universe was built.”4 I will discuss Kepler more later.
Professor, astronomer, and author Timothy Ferris says of those laws “Kepler’s
laws today are utilized in studying everything from binary star systems to the orbits of
galaxies across clusters of galaxies.”5
Ferris goes on to describe the phonograph record placed aboard Voyager to
introduce Humanity to anyone who might find Voyager in deep space. It includes
computer-generated tones representing the relative velocities of the planets based on
Kepler’s laws. When humanity is to be represented to strangers for the first time, Kepler
is an example of our accomplishment. He believed in God as creator and Lord.
Kepler wrote “The sun in the middle of the moving stars, himself at rest and yet
the source of motion, carries the image of God the Father and Creator. He distributes his
motive force through a medium which contains the moving bodies, even as the Father
creates through the Holy Ghost.”6
Ferris says of Newton “His career had been one long quest for God; his research
had spun out of this quest, as if by centrifugal force, but he had no doubt that his science
like his theology would redound to the greater glory of the creator.”7
“At the conclusion of the Principia Newton asserted that “this most beautiful
system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and
dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.””8
Dr. Gerald Schroeder, a Ph.D. in physics and an Orthodox Jew, addresses the
issue slightly differently. It is generally understood in cosmology that in the first few
trillionths of trillionths of trillionths of a second after the beginning of time the universe
was so small and so compact that it was in serious danger of collapsing in on itself. Dr.
Alan Guth of MIT proposed a solution. In his theory there was a special, one time, event
which caused the universe to expand at a rate that it has never seen again. This reduced
the cosmic density to the point that collapse was no longer a risk. Dr. Schroeder says of
this: “The biblical allusion to this one-time inflation is found in Genesis 1:2. “And

4
Koestler, Aurthur, The Act of Creation, Macmillan, New York, 1964, p.124
5
Ferris, Timothy, Coming Of Age in the Milky Way, Morrow, New York, 1988, p.81
6
Opera Omnia, Vol. XIII pp. 33 ff, quoted in Koestler p. 126
7
Ferris p.121
8
Quoted by Ferris p.121

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darkness was on the face of the deep [the primeval space created at the beginning], and a
wind of God [a one-time force mentioned only here in all of Genesis] moved on the face
of the water [the common stuff from which the heavens, the earth and all they contain
will be produced].””9 Dr. Schroeder goes on to describe how this leads into God’s next
step – Light! He is a full time professional scientist with decades of experience and
believes in the literal process described in Genesis. We will return to him later on.
Kepler and Newton were both Christians and Schroeder a Jew. Is it possible that
they saw what they expected to see? Of course it is. Of particular interest are quotes from
scientists whose conclusions are from a secular position.
Ferris describes himself in his writing as an agnostic. He confirmed to me in an
email that that is still the case. Writing in Coming of Age in the Milky Way, he describes a
very early universe, the first few billionths of a billionth of a second, where conditions
were just right for the universe to exist in any recognizable way at all. His full quote is in
a footnote below. He concludes, “If this happened by pure chance, it was very lucky
indeed; the odds against it are vanishingly small.”10 He does not attribute it to God, but he
discounts chance.
Professor Stephen Hawking has Sir Isaac Newton’s old job at Cambridge
University. He is also a very interesting person in his own right. He is one of the greatest
physicists of all time. On page 127 of his excellent book A Brief History of Time, he
writes “This means that the initial state of the universe must have been very carefully
chosen indeed if the hot big bang model was correct right back to the beginning of time.

9
Schroeder, Gerald L. Ph.D. Genesis and the Big Bang ©1990 Gerald Shcroeder, Bantam Paperback
Edition, January 1992, p.93
10
“Cosmic space, in other words, is neither dramatically open nor dramatically closed, but is
perfectly—or almost perfectly flat. That it should be so is nothing short of astonishing. The gross features
of the present day universe are highly dependent upon tiny variations in the early universe—just as say a
variation of millimeters in the angle at which a bat strikes a baseball can produce variations of hundreds of
feet in where the ball lands in the outfield. In the standard big bang model , for the universe to be flat today
it must have been incredibly flat at the beginning: at one second ABT (after the beginning of time), the
cosmic matter density would have to have fallen to within one trillionth of 1 percent of the critical value. At
10-35 second the permitted deviation would have been even smaller—less than one part in 1049. If this
happened by pure chance, it was very lucky indeed; the odds against it are vanishingly small.”
“One could of course make the equations come out right by inserting the required matter density as an
“initial condition,” but this amounted to invoking the guiding hand of God, which in science is rather like
playing tennis without a net.” Ferris p.355

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It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun this way, except
as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.”11
In the pages before and after this quote he discusses the data which leads to this
conclusion. He is driven to it by facts that are not in serious dispute. In fairness to
Professor Hawking I should tell you that on page 141 of the same book he takes a
different tack. He theorizes that perhaps the universe goes through an infinite series of
“big bangs” whose expansions eventually slow, stop, and then reverse ending in a
recollapse and a new “big bang”. His conclusion here is “What place then for a creator?”
In the first instance, his statement is driven by data as known when he wrote. In the
second he counted on information not yet available when he wrote in 1988.
I am not qualified to judge Hawking’s physics. It is debatable whether anyone in
the world is. He is that advanced. I am qualified, however, to judge a logical argument.
An argument based on hard data is stronger than one based on potential data.
In 1998 two studies conducted by two different teams at different institutions at
the same time came to the conclusion that there is another force, usually dubbed “Dark
Energy” that is not only causing the universe to continue to expand, but expand faster and
faster over time. There is not enough matter in the universe to stop it, even if you include
dark matter.12 Fear not! Dark energy is not dark in a moral sense. It is simply not well
understood and came to be discussed about the same time as dark matter.
Dark matter does appear to exist. The stars at the outer edges of galaxies orbit the
cores of the galaxies far too fast for normal matter to be all there is. In effect the galaxies
are much larger than the visible galaxies we can see. We can detect and measure the
bending of light where we cannot see anything to do it. Ironically the evidence for dark
matter is there even though we cannot see it directly we can see what it does. I have often
seen the existence of God denied because we cannot see or measure Him.
Hawking’s conclusion which is based on hard data is consistent with the Genesis
account of creation. His contrary conclusion “What place then for a creator?” was based
on data that was unknown at the time he wrote, but has since been proven not to be the
case. Science drives his argument toward God. Philosophy drives it away.
11
Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time, ©1988 by Stephen Hawking, Bantam, New York, 1988
p.127
12
CERN (Center for European Nuclear Research) Courier, On the Trail of Dark Energy, September 4,
2003 http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/28917

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 It is time now to tie up a couple of loose ends. The term ‘big bang” is often
maligned in Christian circles. The term, as I (and my sources here) use it is consistent
with a literal reading of the Genesis 1 account of creation. It simply asserts that time and
space began and developed into the universe that we see around us today. We know that
it began because “In the beginning God created…”13 Cosmologists simply say that the
“big bang” happened.
C.S. Lewis describes the, sometimes uncomfortable, relationship between science
and faith in his classic work Mere Christianity. “Every scientific statement, in the long
run, no matter how complicated it looks, really looks something like, “I pointed the
telescope to such and such a part of the sky on 2:20 AM on January 15 and I saw so-and-
so.” or “I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to such-and-such a temperature and
it did so-and-so.” Do not think I saying anything against science: I am not. I am only
saying what its job is.”14
The divergence from the Genesis 1 account comes when people get into the
question of why the universe happened. That answer is beyond the reach of scientists
because it is outside of time and space.
Astronomer Alan Sandage said “If there was a creation event, it had to have had a
cause. This was Aquinas’s whole question, one of the five ways he established the
existence of God. If you can find the first effect, you have at least come close to the first
cause, and if you find your first cause, that to him was God. What do astronomers say?
As astronomers you can’t say anything except that here is a miracle, what seems almost
supernatural, and event which has come across the horizon into science, through the big
bang. Can you go the other way, back outside the barrier and finally find the answer to
the question of why is there something rather than nothing? No, you cannot, not within
science. Bit it still remains an incredible mystery: Why is there something instead of
nothing?”15
In the end, we must admit that any inquiry directed backward in time stops with
the big bang in scientific terms and with creation in biblical terms. The laws of physics
break down on this side of that barrier. Once you reach that point, you can go no further.

13
Genesis 1:1
14
Lewis, C.S., Mere Christianity, Collier Books/MacMillan, New York, Rev. Edition, 1952, 32
15
quoted in Ferris, p.351 from an interview with Sandage

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In biblical terms before the beginning, there is nothing material to study. Time itself was
part of what the Word created. There is no “before” before that.
The point is that any statement about why the universe exists is not a scientific
one whether it is a scientist making the statement or not. Scientists are human beings with
opinions on all sorts of things.
As we have seen, some of the greatest minds in the history have believed that God
created the universe. Others who do not necessarily believe that recognize that, whether
the case or not, it is not contrary to observable facts.
For the most part those who would attack you as a simpleton because you believe
in God as creator also believe that life on Earth began by random chance. Such a person
is likely to tell you that evolution is a scientifically settled issue. They will also tell you
that anyone who denies that is some sort of fundamentalist nut.
One of the more interesting commentators on this question is Dr. Fred Hoyle.
Professor Ferris describes him this way: “A born outsider who had by sheer intellectual
energy made his way from the gray textile valleys of the north of England to the high
table at Cambridge, Hoyle was individualistic to the point of iconoclastism, and
combative as if he had earned his knighthood on horseback.”16
Professor Hoyle was a major and influential figure in cosmology for decades. It is
he who coined the term “big bang”.17 He considered the notion of random evolution as
the origin of life on Earth to be scientific foolishness. He maintained that rejection of
random evolution for the remainder of his life.
A generation ago someone came up with the notion that enough monkeys
pounding away on enough typewriters would, eventually, by chance, turn out the sonnets
of Shakespeare. Dr. Hoyle made the point that “the whole Universe observed by
astronomers, would not be remotely large enough to hold the horde of monkeys needed to
write even one scene from one Shakespeare play, or to hold their typewriters, and
certainly not the wastepaper baskets needed for throwing out the volumes of rubbish
which the monkeys would type.”18
16
Ferris, p.274
17
Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights
reserved.
18
Hoyle, Fred, The Intelligent Universe, Text copyright © 1983 Fred Hoyle, Holt Rinehart and Winston,
New York, 1983

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 Professor Hawking used the example of the typing monkeys. He wrote “It is a bit
like the well known horde of monkeys hammering away on typewriters—most of what
they write will be garbage, but very occasionally by pure chance they will type out one of
Shakespeare’s sonnets.”19
Dr. Schroeder commented on the example and Hawking’s use of it in Genesis and
the Big Bang. He wrote “To write by random chance one of Shakespeare’s sonnets would
take all the monkeys plus every other animal on Earth typing away on typewriters made
from all the iron in the universe over a period of time that exceeds all the time since the
Big Bang and still the probability of a sonnet appearing would be vanishingly small. At
one random try per second, with even a simple sentence having only 16 letters, it would
take 2 million billion years (the universe has existed for about 15 billion years20) to
exhaust all possible combinations.”21
On a less whimsical note Dr. Schroeder points out: “To reach the probable
condition that a single protein might have developed by chance, we would need 10110
trials to have been completed each second since the start of time! To carry out those
concurrent trials, the feed stock of the reactions would require 1090 grams of carbon. But
the entire mass of the Earth (all elements combined) is only 6 x 1027 grams! In fact the
1090 exceeds by many billion times the estimated mass of the entire universe.”22
Dr. Hoyle includes similar statistical numbers. I have not quoted them because I
do not want to leave you, gentle reader, comatose (If I have not already).The interesting
thing about Professor Hoyle’s dismissal is that he rejects God as creator as vehemently as
he does evolution. You find it sprinkled through The Intelligent Universe (see footnote
17). Keep his attitude in mind. I will return to it later.

Myth: Science as an Objective Pursuit

We are led to believe that science is an objective pursuit and that individual
19
Hawking, p.123
20
In Relativity Theory the rate of the passage of time is different for observers in different frames of
reference. For instance, time passes at a different rate for astronauts in orbit as compared to those of us on
Earth. The difference is almost immeasurably small, but is real. They are in a different frame of reference.
Dr. Schroeder believes that the six days of creation are literal days, measured in God’s frame of reference.
God is after all the only one who saw the whole process and the one who says that the period of time was
six days.
21
Schroeder, pp.185-186
22
Schroeder, p.113

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scientists are objective (as opposed to people like us). As such, they base beliefs on facts
and reason.
Subramanyan Chandrasekhar was a brilliant young man from India and a
promising astrophysicist having earned his Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1934. As the annual
meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in London in February of 1935 approached,
Chandrasekhar had developed a theory that dying stars over a certain mass limit would
continue to collapse into black holes. The great British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington
not only lent him an adding machine to finish his proof, but often stopped by to see how
the young man was doing. Eddington even arranged for the younger man to be given 30
minutes to speak rather than the usual 15.
When meeting time came, Chandrasekhar gave an impeccable presentation. He
laid out a carefully calculated case dealing with not only the theory, but all known
examples of stars which might argue against his theory.
Eddington began his own presentation in a gentle, almost fatherly way. He then
turned to Chandraeskhar’s theory. He based his rebuttal not on errors he had found in
Chandraeskhar’s presentation, but on the practical effect on stars. He said “Various
accidents may intervene to save the star, but I want more protection than that. I think
there should be a law of Nature to prevent a star from behaving in this absurd way.”23 He
had attacked hard data, not with hard data of his own, but with the way he thought it
should be. Leon Rosenfeld and Niels Bohr (one of the fathers of quantum mechanics and
one of the most respected physicists of the 1930s24) in Denmark, responded ““So I think
you had better cheer up and not let you [sic] so much by high priests.” In a follow up
letter later the same day, Rosenfeld wrote “Bohr and I are absolutely unable to see any
meaning to Eddington’s statements.””25
When the meeting ended attendee after attendee offered condolences to
Chandraeskhar on the result, but after all it was Sir Arthur Eddington. How could he be
wrong?
“By the late 1930’s, astronomers, having talked to their physicist colleagues,
23
Thorne, Kip, Black Holes and Time Warps, Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy, Norton, New York, 1994
p.160
24
Bohr won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. © 1993-
2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
25
Thorne, p.162

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understood Eddington’s error, but their respect for his enormous earlier achievements
prevented them from saying so in public.”26 Eddington attacked Chandraeskhar’s theory
again in an astronomy conference in Paris in 1939, and Chandraeskhar was not even
permitted to reply. He was left so burned by the battles that he left astrophysics for 25
years.
Eddington, for his part, was not evil. He truly believed that he was correct right
down to his death in 1944. “He was so blinded by his opposition to black holes that his
judgment was totally clouded.”27
Isaac Azimov was best known as a science fiction writer, but had earned a Ph.D.
from Columbia University in 1948. In one of his books he made a fairly conventional
statement about the contentious process of testing new theories. He made a fascinating
comment in a footnote. He wrote: “Such disputation can be quite nasty and polemical at
times, for scientists are quite human, and any given individual among them can be, at
times, petty, mean, vindictive—or simply stupid.”28
Note that Azimov’s point that scientists are quite human. They have mortgages,
car payments and kids in braces and college just like other people. One cannot buck the
system and still get research funding. Even beyond such practical considerations they
have feelings and prejudices just like you and I and the rest of humanity.
With reference to a dispute between Kepler and Galileo Galilei, Albert Einstein
wrote “It has always hurt me to think that Galilei did not acknowledge the work of
Kepler…That alas, is vanity,” Einstein added, “You find it in so many scientists.”29
Science is, and has always been, a very competitive business. Scientists compete
not only for funding, but credit for discovery. Perhaps Galileo was concerned that Kepler
would eclipse him.
The following quote is not so much to make some deep point, but just for fun. It is
from Ferris p. 94. “The differences between the two men were pronounced. Galileo was
an urbane gentleman who loved wine, (which he described as “light held together by
moisture”), women, (he had three children by his mistress Marina Gamba), and song (he
was an accomplished musician. Kepler sneezed when he drank wine, had little luck with
26
Thorne, pp.146-163, quote from p.162
27
Thorne, p.162
28
Azimov, Isaac, ExtraTerrestrial Civilizations, Crown Publishers, New York 1979, p.7
29
quoted in Ferris, p.95

12
women and heard his music in the stars.”
Science is a business. Albert Einstein was a great responder to letters. He
responded to a letter from a university student about whether she should pursue
astronomy as a career. To which Einstein replied: “Science is a wonderful thing if one
does not have to earn one’s living at it. One should earn one’s living by work of which
one is sure one is capable. Only when we do not have to be accountable to anybody can
we find joy in scientific endeavor.”30
Kepler repeatedly asked Galileo for a telescope, or at least a decent lens. One of
these times was in 1610. Galileo told him that he had none to spare. Yet he did have one
to give to the Elector of Cologne who summered in Prague that same year. Kepler was, at
least, able to borrow that one for that summer. When the elector left, he took it with
him.31 Additionally Galileo had enough to give away an excellent one to Cosimo de
Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.32

Myth: Christians Are a Threat to Science

Our young people are constantly told that Christians have done the progress of
science great harm over the centuries. Galileo is so often cited as an example. There are a
couple of facts to keep in mind regarding Galileo.
Galileo put himself at risk of the censure of the Church. He was relatively safe
from Church interference at Padua in the Venetian Republic. He wanted to move to the
court of the Medici’s in Tuscany. He stated his reason in a letter “I deem it my greatest
glory to be able to teach princes,…” “I prefer not to teach others.”33 Galileo was his own
worst enemy.
Galileo had gone about as far as he could with the telescopes and timepieces of
his time. The refracting telescopes of Galileo’s day tended to introduce distortion. It
would not be until Sir Isaac Newton and the reflecting telescope that that would be
corrected. It is ironic to note that Newton was born in the same year that Galileo died
30
Dukas, Helen and Hoffman, Banesh, editors, Albert Einstein, The Human Side, Princeton University
Press, 1979 p.57
31
Ferris, p. 95-96
32
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Galileo.html (School of Mathematics and
Statistics, University of Saint Andrews, Scotland) an Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
33
Galileo, Letters on Sunspots, in Ferris p.96

13
(1642). It was not until 1668 that Newton built the first reflecting telescope.
Even if Galileo had had a reflecting telescope, he did not have a timepiece
accurate enough. Clocks existed in Galileo’s day. There were even pocket watches.
Kepler was shown one by the Duke of Wurttemburg who described it as: “A pretty toy;
but my craftsman have a devil of a time keeping it accurate.”34 Galileo had discovered the
satellites of Jupiter, but needed accurate clocks to study them further.35
Galileo had referred, in his notes to a pendulum time keeper, but he was never
able to build one. That would have to wait for the Dutch physicist Christian Huygens in
1657, some 15 years after Galileo died. Only then could time be kept sufficiently to take
the next steps in astronomy.
Further study of celestial objects, such as Mars required a consideration called
parallax. This requires two observations from places as far apart as possible. Even with
two observers making simultaneous observations on opposite sides of the Earth, the
tolerances would be extremely small. No two places on Earth are far enough apart to
make useful measurements of the distance to stars. Because of the orbit of the Earth, two
observations from the same spot on Earth exactly six months apart give an effective
separation of 186 million miles.36 Sufficient precision in timekeeping was not possible
during Galileo’s lifetime.
We hear much of how the Church shut up the news about how the Earth is not the
center of the universe. We are led to believe that only Galileo, in the entire world, spoke
for the truth. The fact is that Kepler had published conclusions similar to Galileo’s in his
Mysterium Cosmographicum in 1597, fifteen years before Galileo’s work even came to
the attention of the Church. His A New Astronomy Based on Causation or Physics of the
Sky was published in 160937. Mysterium Cosmographicum contained two of Kepler’s
three groundbreaking laws of planetary motion.
In summary: The first European astronomer/physicist to take up the cause of
Copernicus was Kepler, not Galileo. Kepler’s work was not impacted by the church. It
was Galileo’s ambition which brought him into the church’s line of sight (and line of
fire). Most of his best work was done before that. The most serious limitations of
34
Rosen, Sidney, The Harmonious World of Johann Kepler, Little Brown, Boston, 1962 p.74
35
Burke, James, Connections, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1978, p.136
36
Ferris p.127
37
Koestler p.124

14
Galileo’s work were technological not theological. Without being able to measure time,
and therefore astronomical distances, better Galileo was effectively finished.
Much of Kepler’s work was done because of his faith. He wrote “My ceaseless
search concerned primarily three problems, namely, the number, size, and motion of the
planets—why they are just as they are and not otherwise arranged. I was encouraged in
my daring inquiry by that beautiful analogy between the stationary objects, namely,
the sun, the fixed stars, and the space between them, with God the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost. I shall pursue this analogy in my future cosmological work.”38
(Emphasis mine)
Remember what Professor Ferris said earlier regarding Newton: “His career had
been one long quest for God; his research had spun out of this quest, as if by centrifugal
force, but he had no doubt that his science like his theology would redound to the greater
glory of the creator.”39
Scientists who are Christians are not unknown since the seventeenth century. The
London Daily Telegraph published a story titled Do Our Genes Reveal the Hand of God?
What one finds inside is a good deal of lashing out at religion by Watson and Crick. It
also talks about the current situation. “The American effort to read the genetic recipe of a
human being — the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health in
Bethesda — is led by a devout Christian, Francis Collins, who succeeded Mr. Watson in
that post in 1993.”40
Highfield quotes Dr. Collins: Religion and science "are nicely complementary and
mutually supporting," he said. As one example, his research to find a faulty gene
responsible for cystic fibrosis provided scientific exhilaration and "a sense of awe at
uncovering something that God knew before, that we humans didn't."
Dr. Collins outlined his own belief: "God decided to create a species with whom
he could have fellowship.”
Dr Collins left that post after 15 years on August 2, 2008.41
The notion that belief in God as Creator and Lord is incompatible with good

38
Opera Omnia, Vol. XIII pp. 33 ff, quoted in Koestler p.125
39
Ferris, p 121
40
Highfield, Roger, Article Do Our Genes Reveal the Hand of God?, London Daily Telegraph, March 24,
2003
41
http://www.genome.gov/About/

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science is clearly not tenable. Why then is it held by so many scientists and/or teachers of
science? The reason scientists who reject God do so is the same as the reason as for
plumbers who do so, or for lawyers who do so, or for bricklayers or artists, or any other
profession.
If God created the universe and humankind, then each individual is morally
responsible to Him. For a human being who is not holy (and none of us is) to be
responsible to a God who is Holy is just too scary. We, as a species, are driven, by
desperation, to deny our responsibility to God. We can only do that by denying that God
is creator.
We can argue the facts of science about whether the notion of God as creator is
reasonable. It is both easy and enjoyable to do. It is also useless for the purpose of
bringing people to Christ as Lord.
We can never convince anyone who denies God as creator that He is real and is
creator because they already know that. Everyone on Earth knows that God created them
and the consequences of that.
Those who deny God do not do so based on facts. If you knock the facts out from
under them they will grab something else. I have seen this happen over and over.
The point of this project is to give the reader a sense of the solid position upon
which they have always stood with respect to God as creator, both of the universe and
humankind. It is also to give the reader some facts with which to defend him or herself or
others if necessary. The point of that is to still be standing in order to witness.

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 The best witness to an astrophysicist is the same as to a shoe salesman.
1. God loves you. He loved you enough that He sacrificed His Son to pay for
your sin on the cross.
2. We are all sinners and are lost and separated from God
3. Jesus Christ and His blood are the only solution
4. Your sins are already forgiven, but the consequences are still there. Invite
Christ into your life as Lord, and let Him bring life, His Life, into yours.

If the person is ready to make a commitment to God it is because God is drawing

him/her42 and then you lead the person in prayer to make the commitment.
As I said before, the purpose of this piece, in general, is to let you know that
science is an appropriate place for Christians. It is something that you can enjoy studying
and benefit from. I hope you will do so.

42
John 6:44

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