FASTLY - Faith & Science Teaching

Why Not Both?

In Brief

This activity introduces students to the concept of multiple causality. In biblical theology, multiple causality can be used to describe how the Bible presents the causes of events. It is also relevant when thinking about faith and science because of its connection to the question of whether an event can have both divine and natural causes. This activity engages students in investigating biblical texts with a focus on the students’ implicit view of causation, and then transferring that learning to a consideration of an online discussion of brain science.

Goals

Students will understand the concept of dual causality as it relates to interpreting the Bible.

Students will understand how the Bible’s approach to dual causality can inform how we think about faith and science.

Students will understand that neuroscientific accounts of brain functioning are not necessarily at odds with faith.

Thinking Ahead

This activity helps students see that in many biblical texts, there is more than one account of what caused things to happen. It also helps students make the complex and sometimes unexpected connections between faith and science.

The Absalom story may not seem to have much to do with brain science, but in the biblical texts studied, divine, human, and natural causes are all present and are not viewed as providing competing explanations, but are viewed, rather, as all being involved at once. God is not just involved when there is a mystery; God is involved within all of the natural processes that are presented. Identifying a political or social cause does not mean that God’s involvement has been explained away. Similarly, in discussions of brain science, scientific explanations of what happens in the brain when we pray, for example, do not in themselves imply that God might not be involved when we pray. We may not have to choose, or fight over, one explanation or the other.

As you prepare to teach this activity, be sure to read through the passages to gain a clear sense of the different strands of causal explanation in them. You might also consider whether there are any aspects of your existing verbal practices in the classroom that might challenge students’ grasp of this issue. For example:

• Do you contrast things that have a natural, scientific explanation with things that must be caused by God because they do not have such explanations, implying that we can only see God at work where there is no other explanation available?
• Do you tend to associate God with the mysterious and miraculous, but not with the normal and everyday?

Take some time to consider how you might align your own speaking habits with what students are to learn in this activity.

Related Book Review: God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens by John F. Haught

Preparing the Activity

Needed:

• Bibles

• Copies of the first page of Why Not Both for half the class, and copies of the second page for the other half of the class

Teaching the Activity

Do not announce the larger theme of the activity yet, but inform students that they are going to investigate the causes of the temporary success and later failure of Absalom’s rebellion.

Divide the class into groups of four, and then ask each group to divide into two pairs. Tell students that each pair is going to work on a task and compare their results. Each pair should receive one of the two versions of the handout in Why Not Both, so that each group of four has one pair working on one version and one pair on the other. Both versions cover the same large textual unit, but each focuses student attention on different sections of the text. Ask students to investigate the causes of success and failure for individuals in the story. The main points that students will find are listed below:

Version A, unlabeled first page of the handout (focuses on human causation):

1. 2 Samuel 14:25-27 – Absalom is widely admired as the most handsome man in Israel.
2. 2 Samuel 15:1-13 – Absalom has worked to build popularity among the people, and they are on his side.
3. 2 Samuel 16:20-23 – Absalom has a wise counselor to give him instructions.
4. 2 Samuel 17:15-16 – Hushai leaks information from Absalom’s inner circle to David.
5. 2 Samuel 18:6-9, 14 – Absalom’s army is defeated, and Absalom accidentally gets caught by his hair in a tree.
6. 2 Samuel 19:9-15 – The king delivered the land from Absalom.

Version B, unlabeled second page of the handout (focuses on divine causation):

1. 2 Samuel 15:21-30 – Everything will happen as the LORD decides, and the king submits to God’s will.
2. 2 Samuel 16:5-13 – David is under a curse from the LORD because of his involvement in past bloodshed.
3. 2 Samuel 17:14 – The LORD has decided to confound Ahithophel’s advice.
4. 2 Samuel 18:9, 14, 19-20 – The LORD has vindicated the king before his enemies.
5. Psalm 3:1-8 – The LORD is a shield that protects David, and the LORD strikes the wicked.

Once pairs have had enough time to work through the texts, ask them to return to their groups of four and compare their findings.

At this point, at the latest, students will discover that they have been studying different texts and have arrived at a different list of causes.

After some time for groups to compare notes, draw the class together, and ask what students have learned about the way this story talks about the causes of events. Elicit that the text does not seem embarrassed by offering both divine and natural causes for the same event.

Draw students’ attention to 2 Samuel 16:18:

Hushai replied to Absalom, “No, I will be loyal to the one whom the Lord, these people, and all the men of Israel have chosen.” (NET)

Hushai is not speaking honestly here, but his utterance implies a way of thinking about Absalom’s success in which it is not strange to think of both divine and human causes simultaneously. This way of speaking seems to be intended to make natural sense to his hearers. His insincerity with regard to the Lord really being with Absalom does not change this.

Now introduce the notion of dual causality, and explain to students that theologians have used this idea to explain the Bible’s way of speaking of events as having both divine and natural causation, without one cancelling out the other. Point out that this is different from a common assumption that causes have to cancel each other out. For example, when someone says that something that happened must have been caused by God because there was no apparent human cause, or conversely, that something did not involve God because its human cause has become known or understood.

(If students are interested in taking this theological discussion further, you could invite them to think about how the Bible’s view of the coexistence of divine and natural causes is related to the logic of creation—if God is the creator of all, and not a thing like other things within the universe, then God does not compete for space with natural things and processes; rather God creates and sustains them.)

Next, ask students how this view of causation in the Bible might be relevant to conversations about faith and science. It may be helpful to allow a few minutes to let students discuss this in pairs, to seed the class discussion. Take suggestions from students. It does not matter if students’ ideas are unclear at this point.

After a few minutes for discussion, read and/or display Exodus 14:21:

Moses stretched out his hand toward the sea, and the LORD drove the sea apart by a strong east wind all that night, and he made the sea into dry land, and the water was divided. (NET)

Ask students to identify the story and then to name the cause of the waters falling back. The text says it is the Lord and a strong east wind.

• Do the two explanations contradict one another?
• If an observer had been able to describe scientifically how the wind caused the waters to recede, would that mean that we could not also say that the Lord was involved in this event? Is this still a “miracle” if both explanations are true?

Similar questions can be asked a few verses later, in verse 25:

He jammed the wheels of their chariots so that they had difficulty driving, and the Egyptians said, “Let’s flee from Israel, for the LORD fights for them against Egypt!” (NET)

• Why was it hard to drive?
• What if an observer had noticed this involved very high wind and mud and panic on the part of the Egyptians?

Finally, move to a current topic in debates about faith and science: the relationship of prayer to brain science. Since students have been reading intensively for the earlier parts of this activity, it will be a good change of pace and mode of engagement if you switch now to a different approach.

Write the word “God” at one end of your blackboard or white board, and the word “Brain” at the other end. Tell students that you are going to present an actual example of an online discussion about brain science and faith. (Source: Abovetopsecret, retrieved Wednesday, October 12, 2016)

Explain that an agnostic person who was experiencing a stressful time reported on a discussion board that he/she had been turning to prayer and meditation as a stress reliever. After a while, this person suddenly experienced the conviction that he/she was not just engaging in an exercise to make himself/herself feel calmer, but was communicating with God. This person experienced a sense of God’s presence as he/she prayed, and his/her question to the discussion board was: Does this mean that God (whatever God might be) is real, or does it just mean that my brain is tricking me?

Act out the two kinds of responses that arose in the online discussion that followed. As you give voice to one set of arguments, stand at the “Brain” end of the board; for the other set, move to the “God” end of the board. You may also wish to use different voices (without making either voice ridiculous), or wear different hats for the two sides—the goal is simply to make the two positions clear and visually distinct.

Present both sides as measured, intelligent views, despite their flaws, to avoid implying that one or the other should simply be dismissed.

Share the following arguments in your own words (they are loosely paraphrased from several posters’ comments).

Brain

• What you experienced has nothing to do with God. It’s just your brain being trained by the repetition of your praying. What is causing your feeling that God is real, and that you are talking to God, is just chemicals being released in your brain. It’s scientific. Neuroscience is telling us that the practices in which we engage can rewire our brains, and that having a belief can give us a feeling of euphoria. Our brain generates beliefs that make us feel good. You’d have to be a sadly misinformed and ignorant person, or just plain crazy, to think this means God is there, especially in a scientific age, because we know now that the brain causes those feelings. Talk to yourself long enough and you go crazy.

God

• Brain science doesn’t disprove God. You are experiencing God’s presence. People who invoke science as if it disproved God are just appealing to vague authority, and not respecting people’s faith. Blind belief in science is ignorant. Prayer is spiritual and you need to humble yourself and open yourself up so God can speak to you. When I have prayed, I have seen God do miracles, and that makes me believe prayer is really connecting to God. Once you stop praying, you might as well be a robot; there’s no hope. Believing as a result of prayer is not a trick of the brain; it’s how we find the truth.

Move back to the middle of the board and discuss the following questions with students:

• How would you respond to these views in light of what you have learned about the view of causality that is implicit in the Bible?
• How might the idea of dual causality help clarify this discussion?
• Does acceptance of the findings of science force us towards one answer or the other?

The key question here is: Could a spiritual experience be caused both by brain functions and by a real encounter with God? Considering this possibility suggests that there may be flaws in both of the positions just enacted. Draw out the following:

• If prayer connects us to spiritual realities, to hope, and to God, would we expect it to do us good? Would we expect it to be connected to brain mechanisms that help generate good feelings?
• If neuroscience tells us that various kinds of experiences reshape the brain, does this mean we should start doubting that other things we experience are real, once we start seeing how they affect the brain? Are changes in the brain the cause of making things up, or are they responses to something real?
• If God made us with brains that support the practice of praying, wouldn’t we expect processes in the brain to play a role in prayer?

As you debrief this activity with students, be sure to clarify what might and might not follow—this kind of account does not prove that God is involved in any particular process. It simply means:

• That it is not the Bible’s view that investigating natural causes and claiming God’s involvement are alternatives to be fought over so that science or faith can win. A biblical perspective suggests that often both may be true at once.
• That when a natural explanation is provided for a phenomenon, this need not count as a reason for quickly concluding that God could not have been involved.
• That investigating scientific causes for things is not necessarily in tension with belief in God, and belief in God need not mean discounting scientific findings.

Optional Extra

You may wish to extend the discussion by introducing the idea of the “God of the gaps,” and letting students explore its weaknesses. This is the common way of speaking about God’s agency, as if God is only involved when we cannot find any natural cause for some event, so we therefore view it as a miracle.

One problem with this view is that God’s role tends to get smaller as more things are studied. Another is that it is not how the Bible portrays God’s involvement in the world; God is involved in sustaining normal, everyday processes. You can find further resources connected to this idea in the Activity Map on Newton’s Laws, which explores in more detail the relationship between miracles and natural laws. Consider collaborating with a science colleague to explore this idea in parallel in science and Bible classes in order to extend and reinforce learning.

Another way of extending this theme might be to explore other biblical episodes where the question of different kinds of causes and processes might arise. For instance, you could explore with students the New Testament’s account of who was responsible for Jesus’s death (various passages point to roles for Judas, Pilate, the crowds, the soldiers, God, and Jesus himself). Another kind of example (and also a briefer one) is a passage such as Acts 13:1-3—what kinds of processes might we consider to have been part of the Holy Spirit speaking to the church at Antioch? If the church members, for instance, noticed gifts in Barnabas and Saul as they served together, would that be at odds with the claim that the Holy Spirit spoke?

He Sends the Snow

In Brief

This activity helps students see that “Word of God” refers to a range of things in Scripture, including God’s sustaining the processes of the natural world. It engages students in reflecting upon how this might help us think about the relationship of the “Word of God” to natural science. Students will read passages from the Bible that refer to the “Word of God” and will explore the range of possible meanings for this phrase.

Goals

Students will understand that “Word of God,” or “Word of the Lord,” is used in the Bible to convey a number of different things.

Students will understand that the Bible affirms God’s “word” as sustaining the regular natural processes studied by science.

Thinking Ahead

Popular accounts of debates about origins, online, with schoolmates, in classes, or in churches, sometimes talk in terms of the Word of God versus science, where the phrase “Word of God” refers to the Bible. The activities in this Activity Map aim to make students aware that the relationship between the Bible and science is a complex one.

This activity engages students in exploring some of the different things the Bible means when it refers to the “Word of God,” before asking them to focus on the Bible’s picture of the Word of God as related to the regularities of the natural world, regularities studied by science.

As you prepare, consider whether your verbal practices in class when referring to the Word of God suggest the breadth of the concept in Scripture. Are there ways you could collaborate with science colleagues by relating this activity to discussions in their classrooms?

The themes in this activity connect with those in the activity Where is Wisdom? in the Activity Map Wonder and Wisdom, the activity In the Beginning in the Activity Map on The Drama of Creation and Evolution, as well as several activities in the Activity Map on Newton’s Laws.

Related Book Review: Song of a Scientist: The Harmony of a God-Soaked Creation by Calvin B. DeWitt

Preparing the Activity

Needed:

• For students, Bibles or access to an online Bible

• Presentation slides from He Sends the Snow

• Optional: student copies of He Sends the Snow Handout

Teaching the Activity

Ask students to write down what the phrase “Word of the Lord” or “Word of God” means to them, allowing a minute or two for them to reflect and write their answers.

Once they have completed this task, you have two options to explore with this activity, depending on how much time you would like to devote to it. For a longer investigation, you could assign students in pairs to use an online tool such as BibleGateway to search for instances of “Word of the Lord” in Scripture. For a shorter activity, you can have students work in pairs to look at the following passages (use Slide 2 of He Sends the Snow and/or the handout He Sends the Snow) and record what “Word of the Lord” seems to be in each case:

• 1 Samuel 3:1; 2 Samuel 24:11-12; 1 Kings 17:7-9 (In these passages, “Word of the Lord” refers to God’s direct revelation to a person or group delivered directly or through a prophet, perhaps as a result of a vision.)
• Deuteronomy 31:12 (This passage does not directly use the phrase “Word of the Lord” or “Word of God,” but is one of many that presents the law as carrying divine authority as an extension of God’s word to Moses.)
• Acts 13:44-49 (In this passage, “Word of God” and “Word of the Lord” refer to the gospel of Christ that is being proclaimed by Paul and Barnabas as part of the early church’s mission.)
• 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (While “Word of the Lord” or “Word of God” most often refers in Scripture to a spoken word, this is a key passage used to extend the idea to the written form of God’s Word in the Scriptures.)
• Psalm 33:6-9 (In this passage, “Word of the Lord” refers to God’s creation and God’s upholding of an ordered universe, as seen in the stability of the world—creation is not just a one-time, past event.)
• John 1:1-3 (In this passage, the “Word of God” is Jesus and also the source of order on the basis of which the world was made.)

After students have done one of the two exercises to investigate the range of meanings given to “Word of the Lord” or “Word of God” in the Bible, discuss student’s findings (using Slides 3-8 of He Sends the Snow to review the findings) and ask them which ones surprised them. Did it surprise them that “Word of God” refers to many ways in which God speaks, most of them not found in the first example from Scripture? In particular, ask students what they make of the “Word of God” in creating and sustaining the world.

Display Slide 9, which repeats the Psalm 33 and John 1 passages and adds two more:

He sends his command through the earth;
swiftly his order reaches its destination.
He sends the snow that is white like wool;
he spreads the frost that is white like ashes.
He throws his hailstones like crumbs.
Who can withstand the cold wind he sends?
He then orders it all to melt;
he breathes on it, and the water flows.
He proclaims his word to Jacob,
his statutes and regulations to Israel.

Psalm 147:15-19 (NET)

For to the snow he says, ‘Fall to earth,’
and to the torrential rains, ‘Pour down.’ …
The breath of God produces ice,
and the breadth of the waters freeze solid.
He loads the clouds with moisture;
he scatters his lightning through the clouds.

Job 37:6-11 (NET)

Ask students to notice how in the Psalm 147 passage God’s commands to creation and to Israel run together, both as words from God. Help students explicitly think through which versions of the “Word of God” might be relevant to the claim that the “Word of God” causes water to become solid at the freezing point and then flow again when it melts:

• Does this imply that there has to be a special prophesy for this to happen?
• Or that somehow it is the Bible that makes ice cubes melt in summer?
• Or that the best way to find out the freezing point of water is to consult the Bible?
• Or that somehow evangelism affects the molecular state of water?
• Or that water only freezes for Christians?

Elicit the understanding that God is involved not only in special acts, such as visions and miracles, but in the everyday regularities of the natural world, such as rain and snow, heat and cold, water and ice (as seen in the Job 37 passage). In other words, the biblical claim is that we live in an ordered world with dependable regularities, because of God’s creation and sustenance of the universe. The dependability of the universe is rooted in the dependability of God’s character.

Finally, ask students what these passages imply for the relationship between the “Word of God” and science.

• Should we expect this to be mostly a question of challenging the findings of science?
• How might the “Word of God” actually support the everyday practice of scientific study of the way the world works?
• Could we do science in a world that was not predictable?

Ask students to write a reflective journal entry in response to the prompt:

• What does the “Word of God” have to do with science?