1. “The heavens declare …” but is anyone listening?

2. In an increasingly global and secular scientific culture, the science–faith conversation is at the cutting edge of Christian engagement.
Science is the gateway to awe, wonder, transcendence.
But the ‘conflict thesis’ is prevalent and debilitating.

3. Why do science and religion in Anglican schools?
For educational and apologetic reasons: Anglican schools chart the via media between the two fundamentalisms of a Christian fundamentalism, and a secularised, disenchanted, scientistic worldview that is ultimately bereft of meaning.
But, the conflict thesis is prevalent … and debilitating:
Intellectually debilitating: it obscures the historical truth about the complex and mostly supportive relationship between the two most powerful cultural forces in shaping the Western world.
Apologetically debilitating: it blocks people from taking the possibility of faith seriously.
However, the conflict thesis is bunkum: There is no fundamental or irreconcilable conflict between science and faith.
Why do science and religion in Anglican schools?

4. affirm the wonders and benefits of science
Recognising that science is the gateway to awe, wonder and the possibility of transcendent reality …
affirm the wonders and benefits of science
Defuse the conflict thesis …
by showing the history of science–faith harmony
by telling the stories of harmony
And in the philosophy classroom, highlight the fallacy of equivocation involved in assuming that because science is successful and based on methodological naturalism, therefore the ideology or worldview of Naturalism is probably true and the God thesis is wrong.
So what should we do about it?

5. A case study …

7. While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42). A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view personally with a small telescope, the above gorgeously detailed image was taken in 2013 in infrared light by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in honor of the 23rd anniversary of Hubble's launch. The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is catalogued as Barnard 33 and is seen above primarily because it is backlit by the nearby massive star Sigma Orionis. The Horsehead Nebula will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years and will eventually be destroyed by the high energy starlight.
The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion.[b] It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of 1,344 ± 20 light years[3][6] and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light years across. It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula.[7]

9. Artist’s impression of the Milky Way galaxy

11. Artist’s impression of the Milky Way galaxy

12. Francis Bacon, Jean Buridan, Faraday, Kepler
Newton, Carl Linneaus, Roger Bacon, Descartes
Maxwell, Ockham, Copernicus, Hildegard of Bingen, Galileo
Roger and Francis Bacon (linked across three centuries by their names and by laying the foundations for the scientific method),
William of Ockham (Ockham’s razor) English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher and theologian, d
René Descartes, French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Dubbed the father of modern western philosophy, much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. d
Jean Buridan (glimpses of inertia),
Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal (triangle?),
Boyle (of gas law fame),
Linnaeus (natural taxonomy),
Bernoulli (his law keeps planes in the air),
Lavoisier (we owe chemistry to him)
Faraday (who invented the electric motor),
Maxwell (electromagnetic fields)
Not there: Daniel Bernoulli, Antoine Lavoisier, Robert Boyle, Georges Lemaitre (RC priest, astronomer, proposed big bang 1927), William Bragg (X-ray diffraction, time in Aus), Max Planck (energy quanta, father of QT), Werner Heisenberg (Nobel: "creator of quantum mechanics")—the last three also being Nobel laureates.
Who haven’t I mentioned? Darwin! [END]
Carl Linnaeus (/lɪˈniːəs, lɪˈneɪəs/;[1][2] 23 May[note 1] 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné[3] (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈkɑːɭ ˈfɔnː lɪˈneː] ( listen)), was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who formalised the modern system of naming organisms called binomial nomenclature. He is known by the epithet "father of modern taxonomy".[4] Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus (after 1761 Carolus a Linné).
Hildegard of Bingen, O.S.B. (German: Hildegard von Bingen; Latin: Hildegardis Bingensis; 1098 – 17 September 1179), also known as Saint Hildegard and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath.[1][2] She is considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.[3]
Roger Bacon OFM, AKA Doctor Mirabilis (amazing), English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empirical methods.

14. A gender-neutral edited version:
Let no one think that a person can search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God’s word, or in the book of God’s works; rather let people endeavour an endless progress or proficiency in both.

15. Questions science can’t answer
Moral questions
Should we use weapons of mass destruction?
Should we legalise euthanasia?
Is torture wrong?
Philosophical questions
What are the limits of science?
How do we know science leads to truth?
Existential questions
What is the first cause of the universe?
What is the purpose of human life?
Is there a God?

16. Meanings vs. mechanisms
‘Why is the water boiling?’
Meanings vs. mechanisms
A question about mechanics: ‘What causes the water to boil?’
A question about meanings: ‘What is the purpose of the water boiling?’
‘Why are we here?’
‘Why is she crying?’

17. Christianity is not science
Science searches for the mechanisms and laws of the universe
answers the ‘how’ questions
doesn’t answer the ‘big’ questions
Christianity is different
offers answers to the ’big’ questions
not interested in ‘how’ questions
The Bible teaches how to go to heaven not how the heavens go.
Christianity is not science

18. Can a scientist believe in God?
Absolutely!