Chris Mulherin

Controversies about science and faith - especially debates about creation and evolution - continue to engage Christian teachers and pastors. How do they deal with such questions and respond with answers that are both informed and intelligent? This book acknowledges that science can be an uncomfortable topic in Christian schools and churches. The authors recognise that teachers and pastors need a framework for thinking through the hype surrounding these topics so that they can identify the genuine core concerns of people of faith.

This thesis argues that a hermeneutic, universal, fiduciary and provisional approach to truth is the necessary condition and actual practice of all knowing, ranging through theology, history, art, and the natural sciences. This approach affirms robust truth, while avoiding both naive optimism about human knowing and a relativism that cannot make universal truth claims.

Like all lasting marriages, faith and the natural sciences have had to work at their relationship over many years. But despite their disagreements, reports of irreconcilable differences are simply untrue. Science and Christian faith are not only compatible but can look forward to a long and happy marriage as they work together in the pursuit of truth.

The so-called conflict thesis arguing that there is a fundamental conflict between science and faith is an old one that has been debunked by philosophers and historians. But recently the 'New Atheism' has brought the thesis back to life. This chapter is written to help pastors and teachers understand the basic issues so they can help congregations and students to think clearly about the issues.

The conversation of humankind and the future of the planet depend on an objective realist understanding of truth in science and morality. While Richard Rorty's pragmatist break with post-Cartesian philosophy is sound in part, his utopian agenda for "the conversation of mankind" is weakened by his "epistemological behaviourism," which offers no purchase on extra-human reality for universal truth claims. This leaves Rorty committed to an ethnocentric, liberal view promoting "the best we can be" through persuasion but without an appeal to truth. Michael Polanyi and Hans-Georg Gadamer also turn away from the quest for guaranteed knowledge, but offer a realist alternative.