Lewis & Science

After Lewis spoke of the doctrine of the fall, he went on to say that, “science, then, has nothing to say for or against the doctrine of the fall,” (69).

As a Christian, I believe the doctrine of the fall to be true but what if someone were to ask me, “What exactly is the doctrine of the fall?” If it is a fact that you believe to be true even though science has not yet offered supporting evidence for this idea, who is to say that science will never have anything to support this doctrinal idea?” At first, my answer wants to be, “there are some things that just cannot be explained,” but is a sufficient answer for the idea of the fall? Could science really not find support for the fall?

Just as Lewis suggested, it is true that science is flawed because the ideas and facts of science are created and gathered by humans, who are imperfect and make mistakes. Moreover, I feel that science can only address observable phenomena with the help of technological aids and historical data such as archeological findings, carbon dating, etc. Therefore, a lot of inference is the only that really offers “facts” about what occurred in the past, but how humans “do” science is continually changing is it not? And, just as Lewis mentioned, the human race keeps evolving and the initial trials of doing something can be crude but we continually work to make a process or research better. So, at present, we may be able to say that science has nothing to support the doctrine of the fall but who’s to say that this will not change in the future?

Another idea that someone could argue is that science pertains only to facts and cannot make moral judgments, meaning science cannot say if something is good, bad, ugly, etc. Therefore, science will never be able to find evidence supporting the doctrine of the fall because the idea of the fall is a moral issue. However, someone might say that scientific facts offer support or insight about an object and, in turn, could effect how we judge if something is good, bad, ugly, etc. For example, the scientific data about parasites say that parasites eat away at the organism in which or on which they live. This causes sever harm or even death to the host organism. Because of these facts, people perceive the parasite as a bad little organism but what if those facts did not exist? Would we have judged the parasite differently? Therefore, someone could say that science indirectly says something about moral judgment.

Overall, this is just a little of the battle that is going on in my head after I tried to look at the doctrine of the fall from a non-believer’s point of view. I’m unsure if it makes sense and I’m positive that it may be unclear and raise more questions but I just thought I’d release my ideas to the class to see if anyone else has the same or different feelings about the uses of science and Lewis’ claim.