No wonder the church isn't effective

I heard Michael Zimmerman on a radio program last night talking about the compatibility of Christianity and science. Zimmerman is a scientist who founded the
Clergy Letter Project, a statement that basically reduces the Bible to a book of "moral truths" in an effort to reconcile Christianity and science. Now I think that Christianity and science are 100% compatible, but I don't think you need to throw out the Bible to get there. I think it's a mistake for the Christian community to deny that species change over time -- it just makes us look stupid. But I think it's also a mistake to think that current scientific theory trumps God's word. Zimmerman did have one excellent point: science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. I would add to that that science will never be able to prove or disprove the Genesis creation story because you cannot evaluate the supernatural with natural methods.

Anyway, back to the title point: it's no wonder the church isn't as effective as it should be when you have thousands of Christian leaders willing to throw the idea of the Bible as the authoritative word of God out the window.

supernatural

xkcd is often pretty entertaining, but I found this one amusing in a different sense:


The obvious logical fallacy here is that you can prove supernatural powers through natural methods. If you could, the powers wouldn't be supernatural. I don't know what inspired that comic, but I think it's interesting when people make science their religion and refuse to think outside the bounds of the physical world. Physics, geology and biology cannot answer a huge class of life's questions. They don't adequately address such philosophical and spiritual issues as love, greed, morals or purpose. It's almost as if you can't prove it with math or observe it with a microscope it isn't important or isn't even real. That seems like a pretty narrow view of the world to me.