Can you believe in God and science?

Many people assume that you have to choose between belief in God and belief in science. This idea became especially popular in the early 2000s through atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins who argued that religion and science are fundamentally in conflict.

But that’s not the only view. In recent years, many scientists—including Christians working in fields like physics, biology, and medicine—have argued that science and belief in God are not enemies. Many Christians today, including pastors like myself, accept mainstream scientific explanations such as the Big Bang and evolution while still believing in God.

So how does that work? To answer that question, we must explore what science is (and what it isn’t). We also must explore what the Bible is (and what it isn’t).

What is science?

Science is the study of the natural world through observation, experimentation, and reasoning. It helps us find out how the universe behaves so we can make reliable predictions about how physical systems will act under certain conditions.

Science works best when it is dealing with things that can be observed, measured, and tested.

But science also has limits. It is designed to study the natural, physical world—not questions about what is outside of nature and physics. For example, science can describe what happens in a brain when someone thinks or feels, but it cannot answer whether there is moral truth behind those experiences.

Science often operates with the assumption that the natural world is a closed system—meaning that events have natural causes. That assumption works well for scientific investigation. But it also means that science, by itself, cannot rule out the possibility of God or miracles, because those are not repeatable physical processes.

In other words, science is powerful, but it is not designed to answer every question about reality.

This is why many Christians would say that science is not wrong; it is simply not designed to answer every kind of question. Christians do not believe in God because of scientific experiments, but because they come to find Jesus trustworthy. This happens as people encounter the the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as recounted in the Bible.

The claim that Jesus rose from the dead is not something that can be repeated in a laboratory. But it is still a claim about history that can be investigated, weighed, and discussed using historical evidence.

What about Genesis?

People sometimes reject the Bible because they find what they read to be historically and scientifically unlikely. One of the most commonly discussed examples is the opening chapters of the Bible—Genesis 1 and 2—which tell the story of the creation of the world and the first humans, Adam and Eve.

Some people assume these chapters are meant to function as a modern scientific account of the origins of the universe. When read that way, they can seem to conflict with scientific explanations of cosmology and biology.

However, the opening chapters of Genesis are not written as a scientific textbook or a historical recount. Instead, it is ancient theological literature, written to communicate deep truths about God, creation, humanity, and purpose using richly symbolic and structured language.

Genesis emphasises that the universe is created, ordered, and purposeful; that human beings have dignity and value; and that God is the source of all life. These are theological claims rather than scientific descriptions of mechanism.

Reading the Bible well means asking what the text is trying to communicate, rather than expecting it to answer questions it was never designed to address. The real issue is often not a conflict between science and faith, but a misunderstanding of why a book of the Bible was written. Of course, there are plenty of books of the Bible which do claim to tell real history, such as the Gospels which claim to tell the (historically accurate) story of Jesus.

Science, Christianity, and The Path Forward

Science explores how the natural world works. Christianity, at its core, asks deeper questions about why anything exists, what it means to be human, and who God is.

Many Christians therefore see science and faith as operating in different but overlapping domains, both contributing to a fuller understanding of reality.

If you have assumed that belief in God and science cannot go together, it may be worth reconsidering that assumption.

A helpful next step is to distinguish between: a) what science can answer well, b) what science was never designed to answer, and c) whether there are other kinds of evidence worth considering.

Christians would encourage exploring those questions openly, especially by looking at Jesus in the Gospels and considering the historical claims at the centre of Christianity.