EN: The following is an adaptation of a lecture Daniel O’Malley delivered at our recent conference.
There’s a line in Jurassic Park that has always stuck with me. In the movie, scientists bring back all sorts of dinosaurs, and not just nice ones like triceratops or ankylosaurus, but also the apparently really violent ones like the T. Rex and velociraptor. When one of the characters finds this out, he says, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Now why do I bring this up? Well first because I have been asked by certain unnamed people to try to clone dinosaurs just like Jurassic Park, which really makes me wonder if they saw the end of the movie. But I also bring it up because this highlights an important area where the Christian faith is needed to be a check on science in deciding what should be done, not just what can be done. Let’s start by briefly discussing what science is.
Point 1: Science researches problems seeking understanding, knowledge, and possibilities
The word “science” means “knowledge” and that’s exactly what the scientific process strives for. Science is a method of investigation that looks at the questions it is given and tries to find the answers. It looks at creation and asks: Why does this work the way it does? Why does the sun always rise in the east and set in the west? Why do hydrogen (a flammable gas) and oxygen (the gas that makes fire possible) when combined make water (a substance that is used to put fires out)? In this way, the natural sciences are an outflow of curiosity.
In seeking to apply this knowledge, scientists ask “Can we?” questions, essentially “What is it possible for us to do?” Several years ago, I participated in a research project through the Army to try to figure out if we could find a measurable biological marker for PTSD. Currently it is diagnosed using fairly subjective criteria, so finding an objective blood test would make the diagnosis much more reliable. Interestingly, when I tell people about this research, I’ve never had someone simply respond something like, “Well that certainly is an intriguing question. The answer would be quite intellectually stimulating, a nice piece of information to add to the encyclopedia.” No, rather, people enthusiastically respond by telling me how great that research is, how important it is to help our veterans, some even sharing stories of how PTSD has a affected those close to them. Curiously, I never get the same strong feedback when I tell people about my experiments on the rate law of the reaction of THMs with nicotinamide at varying hydrogen ion concentrations. Partly, because no one has any idea what the heck I just said, but also because we all understand that some information is more impactful than others (in case you were wondering, these experiments were about how changing the acidity of water affects the speed at which a particular class of contaminants—called trihalomethanes or THMs for short—reacts with a form of vitamin B3 called nicotinamide). Which leads me to my 2nd point:
Point 2: Faith is needed to prioritize some research and prohibit other research
While science asks the question, “Can we?”, faith comes in and asks the question, “Should we?” Values are needed to know what questions are valuable to ask. People say there’s no such thing as a dumb question, but there are certainly some questions that are less important. For instance, I think most of us would agree that figuring out if Japanese quail are more promiscuous on cocaine is relatively low priority, right? Wrong! At least, according to the National Science Foundation, that question is worth spending $875,000 of US taxpayer money to answer. This project did increase our knowledge and therefore technically was “science,” but clearly some worldview outside of science is needed to determine true worth. (The answer, by the way, in case you were wondering, is yes, cocaine does make the quail more promiscuous. That’ll be $875,000. You can Venmo me later.)
A worldview is not only needed to tell us scientists what to research, but how to research it. Is any technique that gets us the answer fair game? Would it make any difference if I told you that in the PTSD research, we intentionally gave people PTSD by blowing up stuff to injure them? A lot of you would suddenly have a more negative view of the project. Even though we all agreed that researching PTSD is worthwhile, the way we research it matters. (Don’t worry, we did not blow up anyone or anything.) Or consider the question: “Ought we to use fetal embryo tissue for STEM cell treatments?” The National Institutes of Health decided this year that it would no longer fund research that uses aborted human parts for STEM cells. This is a value question, one way or the other. Either it is ok or it isn’t. But science only tells you whether fetal cells can be used in research, not whether they should be.
So science is completely lost without any way of making value decisions. When I first started studying chemistry, imagine if my professors had said, “All right, Daniel, now go do some chemistry!” and then set me loose in the lab. I would have had no idea what to do. I can’t possibly research everything related to chemistry, certainly not all at once. I have to start somewhere. Thankfully, my professors put me on a specific project to produce cleaner drinking water. Why research this? Because we think people should have safe water. But you see, that’s a moral statement, not a scientific statement! We are saying that it’s for people to get sick and die from polluted water, that human life has value. Where did we find that out? Not from science! Nothing in the structure of the carbon atom or the process of photosynthesis or even (believe it or not) the fact that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell tells us inherently that human beings are worth protecting. Only a worldview can tell us this, which brings us to my last point:
Point 3: Since science cannot research everything, it will be directed by some value system
Every scientist will have to choose some method of weighing what is more or less valuable. And right now, in the modern natural sciences, the main alternative to Christianity is the Green, anti-human-impact, social-justice, climate-alarmist movement. So why not choose Christianity? Christianity is the worldview that birthed modern science. All the early scientists, like Newton, Kepler, and Boyle, were staunch professing Christians. Let’s have scientists with strong Christian values direct research towards godly ends like alleviating suffering, extending dominion and stewardship over creation, and increasing people’s productivity.
Many scientific processes can be used for both productive and destructive ends, depending on who is guiding it. For instance, the Haber-Bosch process which makes fertilizer, enabling farmers to feed the world’s rapidly growing population in the 20th century, is the same process that can be used to manufacture bombs, as when it supplied Germany with munitions in both World Wars I and II. An anti-Christian environmentalist scientist concerned merely about human impact on nature wants to make neither the fertilizer nor the bombs. An aimless scientist without any guidance says, “Why not make both?” Only the scientist who is guided by Christianity can distinguish between the good and the evil uses. Certain governments are right now rejecting the lifegiving invention of fertilizer, which feeds their own citizens, but, accepting the life-destroying invention of euthanasia drugs to kill their own citizens by the thousands. From a strictly naturalist perspective, what’s the difference? Without Christian values directing it, science degrades into a merely technical question of “can it be done?” whether that ‘it’ is dinosaurs or dino-nuggets, a microwave or Mifepristone, designer jeans that make your pants long lasting or designer genes that make your baby long lasting. There’s no moral difference between any of these questions without God’s law directing us.
And try as we might, we cannot stay on the sidelines. As we learned during COVID-19, you may not care about “The Science,” but, oh boy, does “The Science” care about what you do.
Conclusion: So what do we do? How should we respond to this?
For those who are currently working or studying in scientific fields, don’t let people convince you to leave your Christianity at the door because science and religion “don’t mix.” Actually, science and religion must mix. There’s no way around it. Let the Bible guide you in prioritizing what research should be done. Refuse to go against Christian morals. Scientific endeavors do not create some alterative system of ethics, so rather than feigning some supposedly neutral moral system, talk about issues in an explicitly Christian frame.
For those who are not from a science background, you are needed to direct the research that is done through your tax dollars and public policy. You absolutely have a say in how that money is used and in laws regulating scientific research. When in conversation, don’t let someone silence you by saying, “The science says ….” Science doesn’t say anything on ethical matters. It is completely paralyzed without Christians like you to guide it.
Above all, we must remember that if Christians abdicate science, it doesn’t stay neutral, as if there were some middle ground between pleasing God and not pleasing God. Rather, the scientific endeavor will fall into the anti-human abyss of the modern secularist, environmentalist religion and be guided by its pagan priests into the discarding of vast amounts of “undesirable” human life, young, old, and everyone in-between. In other words, we have to choose whom Science will serve, whether the God of our Fathers, or the gods of Mother Earth and environmentalism in whose land it dwells. So choose you this day! As for me and my lab, we will serve the Lord.
[Daniel O’Malley is a PhD candidate in analytical chemistry. He earned a B.S. in chemistry in 2021 and an M.S. in chemistry in 2023, both from the University of Memphis. Currently, he is researching using machine learning algorithms in the development of methods for detecting various contaminants in drinking water. In his spare time, he volunteers at his church as a youth leader and Sunday School teacher.]
