There is no modern science without Christianity

A bold claim, but one that's backed by evidence

Scientist looking for God / Grok 2 mini (beta)

I was told growing up that Christianity is not compatible with science. I still hear that claim, incredibly not just from atheists but from Christians, too. These are usually from people who can't understand how I reconcile my Christian beliefs with my profession. When they hear that science is the main reason I started believing in God, they’re usually at a loss for words.

I came to believe in God when I realized that the universe was far too organized and intelligible to be an accident. For a while, I didn’t know what to do with that belief, because I was still mostly a product of the atheist worldview with which I’d been raised. Joining a religion just seemed out of the question. But that changed when I began investigating the roots of many of the things I held dear, including modern science.

If it were really true that science and Christianity were at odds, I asked myself, what did I expect to see in terms of the historical evidence?

I predicted:

1. There would not be very many Christian scientists, especially as key figures of scientific progress.

2. That modern science would’ve originated and flourished only in places that weren’t predominantly Christian.

But when I investigated this claim, I found something quite different.

Just looking at this list of Christians in science and technology on Wikipedia was enough to destroy the first prediction:

John Philoponus
Bede the Venerable
Rabanus Maurus
Leo the Mathematician
Hunayn ibn Ishaq
Pope Sylvester II
Hermann of Reichenau
Hugh of Saint Victor
William of Conches
Hildegard of Bingen
Robert Grosseteste
Pope John XXI
Albertus Magnus
Roger Bacon
Theodoric of Freiberg
Thomas Bradwardine
William of Ockham
Jean Buridan
Nicephorus Gregoras
Nicole Oresme
Nicholas of Cusa
Otto Brunfels
Nicolaus Copernicus
Michael Servetus
Michael Stifel
William Turner
Ignazio Danti
Giordano Bruno
Bartholomaeus Pitiscus
John Napier
Johannes Kepler
Galileo Galilei
Laurentius Gothus
Marin Mersenne
René Descartes
Pierre Gassendi
Anton Maria of Rheita
Blaise Pascal
Isaac Barrow
Juan Lobkowitz
Seth Ward
Robert Boyle
John Wallis
John Ray
Gottfried Leibniz
Isaac Newton
Colin Maclaurin
Stephen Hales
Thomas Bayes
Firmin Abauzit
Emanuel Swedenborg
Carolus Linnaeus
Leonhard Euler
Maria Gaetana Agnesi
Joseph Priestley
Isaac Milner
Samuel Vince
Linthus Gregory
Bernhard Bolzano
William Buckland
Agustin-Louis Cauchy
Lars Levi Læstadius
George Boole
Edward Hitchcock
William Whewell
Michael Faraday
Charles Babbage
Adam Sedgwick
Temple Chevallier
John Bachman
Robert Main
James Clerk Maxwell
Andrew Pritchard
Arnold Henry Guyot
Gregor Mendel
Philip Henry Gosse
Asa Gray
Francesco Faà di Bruno
Julian Tenison Woods
James Prescott Joule
Heinrich Hertz
James Dwight Dana
Louis Pasteur
George Jackson Mivart
Armand David
George Stokes
George Salmon
Henry Baker Tristram
Lord Kelvin
Pierre Duhem
Georg Cantor
Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Dmitri Egorov
Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin
Pavel Florensky
Agnes Giberne
J. J. Thomson
John Ambrose Fleming
Max Planck
Edward Arthur Milne
Robert Millikan
Charles Stine
E. T. Whittaker
Arthur Compton
Ronald Fisher
Georges Lemaître
Otto Hahn
David Lack
Charles Coulson
George R. Price
Theodosius Dobzhansky
Werner Heisenberg
Michael Polanyi
Henry Eyring
Sewall Wright
William G. Pollard
Aldert van der Ziel
Mary Celine Fasenmyer
John Eccles
Carlos Chagas Filho
Sir Robert Boyd
Richard Smalley
Mariano Artigas
Arthur Peacocke
C. F. von Weizsäcker
Stanley Jaki
Allan Sandage
Charles Hard Townes
Ian Barbour
Freeman Dyson
Richard H. Bube
Antonino Zichichi
John Polkinghorne
Owen Gingerich
John T. Houghton
Russell Stannard
R. J. Berry
Gerhard Ertl
Michał Heller
Robert Griffiths
Ghilean Prance
Donald Knuth
George Frances Rayner Ellis
Colin Humphreys
John Suppe
Eric Priest
Christopher Isham
Henry F. Schaefer, III
Joel Primack
Robert T. Bakker
Joan Roughgarden
William D. Philips
Kenneth R. Miller
Francis Collins
Noella Marcillino
Simon Conway Morris
John D. Barrow
Denis Alexander
Don Page
Stephen Barr
Brian Kobilka
Karl W. Giberson
Martin Nowak
John Lennox
Jennifer Wiseman
Ard Louis
Larry Wall
Justin L. Barrett

All of these people made notable contributions to science, and many are Nobel laureates.¹

When I looked further into the history of science, I discovered that the originator of the scientific method itself was a Franciscan monk named Roger Bacon.

None of this supported the claim that Christianity is at odds with science.

I wanted to talk about these discoveries with atheists who made this claim, but they waved their hands and said that it was in spite of their professed Christian faith that these scientists made their contributions. This turns out to be untrue.

In his book, For the Glory of God, sociologist Rodney Stark provides a useful historical tidbit. He took an unbiased list of the 52 most important figures of the Scientific Revolution and researched their religious beliefs. He discovered that 50 of these scientists were Christian, and most of them devoutly so. It’s very difficult to imagine so many people advancing modern science in spite of their devout beliefs.

What about prediction #2?

The problem here is that it is a historical fact that modern science originated in 17th century Europe and nowhere else. There is simply no good argument for how this could occur if Christianity is incompatible with science when you consider that Europe at that time was predominantly Christian and nearly every aspect of European life at that time was steeped in the Christian religion.

But the truth is even more bold than a simple lack of incompatibility. Modern science didn’t arise in the mere presence of Christianity, but grew out of its ideals and assumptions.

These ideals and assumptions weren’t the sole factors contributing to the rise of modern science—there were thousands of years of philosophical and mathematical progress from other parts of the world that contributed as well—but the Christian contributions were absolutely necessary. If you’re interested in this topic, I highly recommend a book called The Soul of Science by Pearcey and Thaxton. You can also look at my lecture notes on this topic here.

Most atheists have no idea about any of this. Some Christians are aware of these historical facts, but the dismaying truth is that most are not. The first time I showed the list of Christians in science and technology to a Christian audience, there was an audible gasp. When I went into detail about how Christianity was the necessary final ingredient for the rise of modern science, they were astonished.

The truth is, not only is science fully compatible with Christianity, it is extremely doubtful that we would have modern science without Christianity.

Entire volumes have been written on this topic, but the claim rests on two essentially Christian beliefs:

1. That the universe operates according to the counterintuitive notion of linear time (first inferred from the Bible by St. Augustine in the 4th century).

2. That the universe is a deliberately ordered and knowable creation by a rational being (Genesis 1; Psalm 19; Proverbs 8:22-24; Romans 1:20; many more).

On point #2, C. S. Lewis explained it this way:

Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. … Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought…

In contemporary terms, this is the Boltzmann brain idea. The idea more or less says that in the absence of a conscious creative force, it’s statistically much more likely that you’re a “brain in a vat” hallucinating your experiences than it is that you actually inhabit a highly-ordered universe. In other words, you have to have faith that even your perceptions and thoughts are accurately reflecting an orderly, dependable, and knowable reality. That’s a given in Christianity, but there’s no reason to believe otherwise if you don’t believe in a rational conscious creative force behind the universe.

I think there’s one more belief that played a significant role in the development of science:

3. That we are required to test everything (1 Thessalonians 5:21) and that we must study the natural world to better understand the character and purpose of God (Psalm 19; Romans 1:20).

Regarding this, Mitch Stokes, in his biography of the great scientist Isaac Newton, observed the following about Newton and his contemporaries:

For Newton, “To be constantly engaged in studying and probing into God’s actions was true worship.” This idea defined the seventeenth-century scientist, and in many cases, the scientists doubled as theologians.

Personally, I think it’s extremely doubtful that modern science could have emerged without this third principle, but that can be the subject of another post.

Unfortunately, one of the great successes of the anti-theist movement has been to divorce Christians from one of the crowning achievements of Western civilization. Modern science was built upon the foundation of Christian faith, belief, and purpose. But not many Christians are aware of this.

Instead of questioning the source, many Christians over the last one hundred years in particular have willingly accepted the lie that Christianity and science are mutually incompatible. Which is particularly startling when you consider that nearly all of the significant scientific discoveries of the last century are actually highly supportive of Christianity.

Let’s get the word out about the truth.

1. It’s recently been claimed that an estimated 60-65% of Physics Nobel Prize winners between the years 1901 and 1990 come from a Christian background.