Two Different Realms?

This month I’ve been taking a summer class at a local university that I’m considering transferring to for the next step of my college education.   As a creationist geology student, knowing how strongly the evolution agenda is pushed in the science classes at my university is essential to college decisions.  I can work with professors who push evolution (mostly) as long as they don’t try to fail me just for my beliefs.  Another equally important thing to consider is the general attitude of the other students in my departments.

One morning as I was waiting in the hall for lab to start, I met another young lady.  She said she’s a   biology major student.  I mentally cringed, knowing of the infamous biology professor who requires students to subscribe to evolution if they want to go any further.  I cautiously asked her what she thought of the whole evolution thing being taught, in the context of how it lines up with Christianity.  She said, “Well, I just think that those are two different realms that weren’t meant to be crossed”.

But, are science and faith really “two different realms” that should not inhabit the same territory in our brains?  Is the Genesis account of creation in the Bible merely an allegory, not meant to be taken literally?  Was it written to reach the Jewish people right where they were with their ancient understanding of science, more than to modern Americans with our advanced technology?  When this young lady said what she did about science and Christianity, I was strongly reminded of a Bible verse.  In John 3:12, Jesus says, “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of Heavenly things?”  If we cannot trust the Bible about science and other temporary issues of this life that we can see and touch, how can we expect people to trust what God says about salvation and the second coming?

You may be wondering how I responded to what my new hall friend said.  I told her that in college, it’s nice how things are all nicely split up into their own little domains – biology pretty much stays in biology class, math in math class, philosophy in philosophy class, etc.  However, in real life, things do not work that way.  Life is messy – your home life will play into your work life and vice versa whether or not you realize it.  Our brains don’t function like computers, just completely closing one mental file and opening up a different one that suits our tasks for the moment.  Knowledge from different areas unifies together in harmony to show us the bigger picture of life.  Since this is such an important issue, I would like to go a little bit deeper into this topic next week, so be on the lookout for part two.