Since the fall, the whole of humankind is sinful and guilty, so that everyone is subject to God's wrath and condemnation.
What's wrong with the world?
Most of our peers in the sciences would likely agree with us that there's something wrong with our world. Inequality, oppression, and suffering, most would agree, ought not to exist. But why is the world in the state it is?
If you look at the world from a purely scientific perspective, one has to conclude that the world today is exactly as it is meant to be. This is what historian Yuval Noah Harari argues in his book 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.' He writes:
'From a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural.'
That is, whatever living thing exists on our planet today exists because it has been evolutionarily successful. Greed, oppression, abuse - these things persist because natural selection has determined that they are beneficial for the survival of our species. What we call 'evil' is totally natural, part of the normal order of the biological world.
This view stands in stark contrast to a Christian understanding of what's wrong with our world. The doctrine of sin tells us that at the heart of the problem with the world is human rebellion against God. The evil we see in our world is not the natural state of affairs. Rather, it flows down from a decisive moment in history when humans turned against their Creator. Ever since, there has been something profoundly wrong with the world.
This is evident enough in our science faculties: putting work over family, fudging data, and trying to undermine and discredit competitors are all commonplace in lab culture. We instinctively put ourselves first at the expense of others, and to the offense of God.
Science in a fallen world
The fourth article in the Doctrinal Basis focuses on the fall's impact on humanity: the sin and guilt that put all of us under God's wrath and condemnation. But various clues in Scripture suggest that the fall has significant consequences for nature too. Creation is spoken about as cursed in Genesis 3, and 'groaning' in Romans 8. Isaiah speaks about how human sin has defiled the land. As we study the natural world, we see good creation mingled with curse.
The Bible's teaching of a historical fall into sin raises all kinds of intriguing questions at the border of theology and science. What was nature like before sin came into the world? Are predation, earthquakes, and the law of increasing entropy natural and good parts of creation, or an expression of God's curse? Who were Adam and Eve anyway? Was there a literal snake and fruit involved, or are these intended as symbolic?
Bible-believing Christians may find themselves disagreeing on the answers to these questions. They are worth pondering carefully, in dialogue with both science and theology. But the existence of challenging questions is not a reason to give up on a historical fall - because to do so is disastrous.
An example of what happens when we remove the doctrine of sin and the fall from our science is what's known as 'social Darwinism'. Social Darwinism suggests that the laws of natural selection do - and should - govern human cultures. The strong are destined to survive, and the weak to die off. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and this is a natural, good law of society. The Nazis took social Darwinism seriously - the Holocaust was, in part, an attempt to 'evolve' humanity faster by eliminating the weak and preventing them from reproducing.
If we have a solid doctrine of the fall, we stand on stable ground to refute social Darwinism. The world is not 'all as it should be'. Just because we see something happening in nature does not mean we ought to celebrate or replicate it in our societies. There is such a thing as evil, which ought to be fought rather than allowed to proliferate.
Sin and the scientific method
This understanding of sin and the fall was in fact central to the development of the modern scientific method. In his book 'The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science', historian Peter Harrison argues that the scientific method came about as a way of making up for the damage to our cognitive faculties inflicted by the fall. Humans, in our sinful nature, are inherently biased. The scientific method was all about removing as much human error as possible from the process of experimentation, to produce more reliable information about the world.
As Christian scientists, the doctrine of sin should lead us to both humility and realism in our approach to science.
As sinners, every part of us, our intellect included, has been touched by the fall. We must not be too quick to conclude that our scientific deductions are right, and others' wrong. We must acknowledge that the sins of pride and self-promotion that abound in science faculties are present in us too.
The doctrine of sin also protects us from a blind optimism about science. While science has potential to do much good in the world, in the hands of sinful humans it will inevitably be used for evil as well as good. Every new discovery has the potential to be used for harm, often with consequences entirely unintended by its discoverer. Christians in science will be realistic about these possibilities; alert to possible negative consequences of scientific advances; and working to limit them.
Aware of their own weakness, and wise to the fallen nature of humanity, Christian scientists are well placed to make a meaningful difference in a groaning world without requiring science to be our ultimate saviour.
