Science is God's Masterpiece

The science vs God debate is derailed by the fact that most of history's famous scientists believed in the Christian God.

Science and God, Dave Carr, Pinterest.

A common misconception is that science opposes the existence of God. The best people to ask about this are the scientists themselves. As you will see, most of the great scientists in history were theists. I didn’t expect to find this, so I hope that it encourages you as much as it encouraged me.

• Louis Pasteur discovered the principles of vaccination, fermentation, and pasteurization. His work laid the foundations of disease prevention and much of modern medicine.¹ He said, “A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to him.”

• James Maxwell was a mathematician responsible for the theory of electromagnetic radiation. He invented colour photography.² Maxwell was a Protestant who memorized the Bible at the age of 14.*

• Robert Boyle defined elements, compounds, and mixtures. He discovered the first gas law, Boyle’s Law. He said, “A deeper understanding of science is a higher glorification of God.”

• Antoine Lavoisier recognized and named oxygen and hydrogen, helped construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, reformed chemical nomenclature, and predicted the existence of silicon.³ He was a Catholic who believed in the authenticity of the Bible.

• Leonhard Euler is regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians in history. He has published more mathematics than anyone ever. He was a physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician, and engineer.⁴ Euler was a devout Christian who believed the Bible to be divinely inspired.

• Michael Faraday contributed hugely to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry, and he is regarded as one of the most influential scientists in history. Faraday remained loyal to the church throughout his life.⁵

• Gregor Mendel is the founder of genetics, and he discovered many of the mathematical rules of hereditary. He was an Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas’ Abbey.⁶

• Isaac Newton is widely recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists of all time. He showed that sunlight is made of the colour spectrum, invented calculus, and established classical mechanics. He was a passionate Protestant who spent more time on Bible study than maths and physics.*

• Carl Gauss is the “the greatest mathematician since antiquity.”⁷ He made profound contributions to science with Gauss’s Law & Gauss’s Law for Magnetism.⁸ He was “A Lutheran Protestant who believed science reveals the immortal human soul and that there is complete unity between science and God.”*

• Florence Nightingale is the founder of modern nursing training and theory. She was an Anglican who believed God called her to her work. Her sanitary reforms are credited with adding 20 years to life expectancy between 1872 and 1935.*

• Carl Linnaeus is the father of modern taxonomy, and he was a “fervently religious man.”⁹

• John Eccles won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. He was a Christian Roman Catholic.

• Charles Barkla discovered that atoms have the same number of electrons as their atomic number. He believed science was a part of his quest for God.*

• Ernest Walton won the Nobel Prize in physics after he split the atom and proved that E = mc^2. He said, “Science is a way of knowing more about God.”*

• Johannes Kepler was an astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, and is best known for his laws of planetary motion. He said, “I am merely thinking God's thoughts after Him.”*

• Galileo was considered a polymath. He has been called the father of astronomy, modern physics, the scientific method, and modern science. He was a devout Christian.*

• Francis Bacon established and popularized the scientific method. He viewed science as a way to learn deeper truths about God, arguing that “a little philosophy inclines man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy brings men’s minds about to religion.”*

• Stanley Jaki is “a priest and physicist who spent his life orchestrating a friendly relationship between science and religion… he’s famous for putting forth the theory that modern scientific inquiry can not only exist alongside religion, but that modern science only could have arisen within a Christian society.”*

[Other famous theistic scientists were Samuel Morse (Morse Code), John Fleming (electric motors and generators), Arthur Eddington (nuclear fusion), Humphry Davy (chemical bonding), Nicolas Steno (geology and stratigraphy), Albrecht von Haller (physiology), Werner Heisenberg (quantum mechanics), Charles Babbage (first general purpose computer), William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Blaise Pascal (hydraulic press and calculator), Alessandro Volta (electric battery), JJ Thomson (electron, mass spectrometer, and isotopes), Francis Collins (positional cloning, National Human Genome Research, and book “A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief”), George Carver (agriculture), Willard Gibbs (vector analysis, thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics), Mary Anning (archaeology), Charles Townes (laser, maser, and astronomy), Georges Lemaitre (expanding universe and Hubble’s Law), Bernhard Riemann (Riemann hypothesis and geometry), Ronald Fisher (experimental design, statistics, and evolution by natural selection), Arthur Compton (nature of light and coined word “photo”), Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (microbiologists), James Joule (thermophysicist), Joseph Lister (surgeon and medical scientist), Lise Meitner (nuclear fission), Andrew Pinsent (Theologian and physicist), and Mike Hulme (climatologist)].

One scientific theist in the debate between scientific atheism and theism would warrant consideration on the side of the scientific atheist. But plenty of God-believing scientists blows the atheist’s argument out of the water.

And by no means is this list exhaustive. I have shown that a great proportion of the best scientists have been and do have relationships with the Christian God. This is many scientists over many years over a wide range of fields each attesting to His existence. Based on the people who invented science, science and God go together.

In doing my honours in biology this year, I have also found that God and science complement each other.

John Lennox is a professor of mathematics at Oxford University. He noted that the above phenomenon leads to the conclusion that the real debate is not between science and God, but rather between atheism and theism.

* - 34 Great Scientists Who Were Committed Christians (famousscientists.org) &

9 Groundbreaking Scientists Who Happened to Be Christians - RELEVANT (relevantmagazine.com)

1. Ligon, B. Lee (2002). "Biography: Louis Pasteur: A controversial figure in a debate on scientific ethics". Seminars in Pediatric Infectious Diseases. 13 (2): 134–141. doi:10.1053/spid.2002.125138. PMID 12122952.

2. Tolstoy, Ivan (1981). James Clerk Maxwell : a biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 2. ISBN 0-226-80785-1. OCLC 8688302.

3. from p. 218 of: Lavoisier with Robert Kerr, trans., Elements of Chemistry, ..., 4th ed. (Edinburgh, Scotland: William Creech, 1799). 

4. Dunham 1999, p. xiii "Lisez Euler, lisez Euler, c'est notre maître à tous."

5. Michael Faraday (csueastbay.edu)

6. Klein, Jan; Klein, Norman (2013). Solitude of a Humble Genius – Gregor Johann Mendel. Volume 1, Formative years. Berlin: Springer. pp. 91–103. ISBN 978-3-642-35254-6. OCLC 857364787.

7. Dunnington, Waldo (1927). "The Sesquicentennial of the Birth of Gauss". Scientific Monthly. 24 (5): 402–414. Bibcode:1927SciMo..24..402D. JSTOR 7912. Archived from the original on 26 February 2008. Also available at "The Sesquicentennial of the Birth of Gauss". Retrieved 23 February 2014. Comprehensive biographical article.

8. "Gauss, Carl Friedrich". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 17 September 2018.

9. Linné on line – Faith in the Bible and Creation (uu.se)