Science Versus Religion or Pantheism Versus Christianity?

In an interview with Diane Sawyer of ABC News in 2010, famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking stated, “There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win, because it works.”

Similarly claiming to be nonreligious, secularists imply that they are objective, scientific, unbiased pursuers of truth, relying on reason rather than on myth or arbitrary religious authority. For example, Harvard humanist chaplain Greg Epstein argues this way in his book Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe.

On Whose Authority?

Hawking is correct that religion is based on authority. For example, at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, we read that people were astonished at Jesus’ teaching, “for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:29). After his resurrection, he told his disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). If we are willing to do God’s will, then we will know if Jesus was speaking from God (John 7:17).

Any evidence left over from the past must be interpreted.

Hawking is also correct in the sense that experimental science is based on observation. That is, scientists make conclusions from observations of repeatable events in the physical world. However, events in the past cannot be observed or repeated. Any evidence left over from the past must be interpreted. The kind of science that tries to reconstruct the past is historical science. There is a significant difference between experimental science (most of biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and medical research, which by repeatable, observable events—usually lab experiments—find cures for disease or produce new technology) and historical science (such as historical geology, paleontology, and archeology, which deal with the evidence from the unobservable, unrepeatable events of the past).1 Worldview assumptions are critical in historical science. In particular, mainstream conclusions about the past rest on unproven naturalistic philosophical/religious assumptions (presuppositions).

These naturalistic presuppositions are not based on reason but on a bias against any theistic explanations, especially against the inerrant eyewitness testimony of the Creator in Genesis 1–11. For example, similarity in the features of living beings is supposed to be due to common descent; common design is arbitrarily ruled out, because it implies a Designer. The fossils and rock strata are supposed to be the result of slow processes over millions of years; explanations consistent with a global flood at Noah’s time are arbitrarily ruled out because they imply judgment on sin by a Creator. Modern cosmology (including the big bang) assumes that we live in a universe that is unbounded and has no center. Stephen Hawking and Edwin Hubble before him arbitrarily ruled out a universe with a center because that could mean there is a special place with God’s attention—like the earth.

When people like Hawking proceed to speak as if they are the authority, we should wonder if they are not expressing a religion of their own.

When people like Hawking proceed to speak as if they are the authority, we should wonder if they are not expressing a religion of their own. After all, Hawking said that religion is based on authority. What could be his religion?

Pantheism

The various religious options are laid out succinctly in a little book called Religion: Origins and Ideas, by Robert Brow. Not only was he a theologian, but Brow also lived in India for 20 years as an army officer, student, and teacher, giving him opportunities to study Hinduism and other Eastern religions firsthand. He discovered that some “modern theologies are 2500 years old.” For example, any philosophy that denies a God outside of nature is a kind of monism, an anti-theistic religion which asserts that god is the cosmos. One form of monism is modified pantheism, which holds that god is the principle behind nature. “In this case, the way of salvation is . . . to discover the principle behind nature, and to ally oneself with that.” Most intellectuals in the Western world have consciously or unconsciously bought into this religion. They live out their pantheism by denying a God outside of nature and by identifying evolutionary progress as the principle behind nature. And they do so with a religious fervor.

Similar pantheism was introduced into Western intellectual thought by the apostate Jew, Baruch Spinoza, in the 17th century.2 Spinoza also was the first to argue that truth is determined by philosophy (and science) apart from the Bible.3 His ideas became the main source of Enlightenment thinking opposed to ecclesiastical authority.4 Beyond that, they inspired the rejection of biblical authority that became rampant among nineteenth century scientists and theologians. Today’s pantheism is just the culmination of those trends.

Many Christians have observed the religious fervor involved in current efforts to remove biblical Christianity from the public square. Some have mistakenly labeled atheism as the religion opposing Christianity in this way. Atheism by itself is allegedly not religious; it is a denial that cannot provide any meaning. But atheists cannot live without meaning. To the extent that they also believe in evolutionary progress, their atheism is really just pantheism in disguise.

Secularists claim not to be religious, but actually they are just not theists. They do have their own religion.

Zealous Secularism

What about secularism? Secularists claim not to be religious, but actually they are just not theists. They do have their own religion. In a speech at Notre Dame, former Attorney General William Barr observed that “Secularists, and their allies among the ‘progressives,’ have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.” He went on to note, “the secular project has itself become a religion, pursued with religious fervor.” True enough, but again the underlying religion is pantheism, and the religion it opposes is biblical Christianity founded on the literal historical truth revealed by God in Genesis 1–11. Not only do secularists deny the supernatural, and more specifically the truth of Genesis, they tenaciously hold to a belief in evolutionary progress.

Barr’s main solution to secularism was “a resurgence of Catholic education—and more generally religiously-affiliated schools.” However, Catholic schools in the United States teach evolution as fact as part of their science curriculum. All liberal Protestant churches, schools, colleges, and seminaries do the same. And sadly, a growing number of professing evangelicals are following the same path. How are we going to combat pantheism if we ourselves teach this sacred myth of pantheism?

As long as we allow our opposition to frame the conflict as “science versus religion,” we will always be on the defensive. We need to understand that this conflict in our culture is basically the religion of pantheism versus biblical Christianity.

The church needs to return to that truth in Genesis—believe it, boldly proclaim it, and confidently defend it through creation apologetics.

Hawking had no way to be sure that his presuppositions were correct. We Christians can be sure of our salvation because it does not rest in our works but in the grace of God and the finished work of his Son, which God revealed to his prophets beforehand. And that gospel is based on the foundational, literal, inerrant truths of Genesis 1–11. Those Christians who compromise with evolution and/or millions of years are undermining the very gospel they believe. The descent into pagan spiritual darkness and moral insanity by America and the once-Christian West is a direct result of the pantheistic assault on Genesis. The church needs to return to that truth in Genesis—believe it, boldly proclaim it, and confidently defend it through creation apologetics.