The Christian Presuppositions of SCIENCE: 1-Minute Case

Street Theologian

4 min readSep 25, 2024

By Jan Verhas- Roger Bacon — Britannica upload from a 1867 original, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44315585

Are the assumptions behind science more compatible with theism than atheism?

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The presuppositions of science are more consistent with theism than atheism or agnosticism:

Rational intelligibility of the universe

To practise science it needs to be assumed the universe can be understood and discovered. Would you expect this more if the universe stemmed from an Intelligent Mind or from an accident?

Applicability of logic and mathematics

Logic and mathematics are not proven by science but presupposed. Laws of logic and mathematics are immaterial, universal, transcendent and unchanging. Does it make more sense for logic and mathematics to stem from a transcendent immaterial mind or a localised, material, and unintentional process? As Professor J Warner Wallace explains, “The transcendent Laws of Logic are best accounted for by the existence of a transcendent, logical, perfect and unchanging God.”

Uniformity principle

The present is the key to the past. This makes more sense if the universe stems from an orderly and intentional Source.

Relying on cognitive faculties

If you evolve for survival not truth, why think you can discern truth? If your ultimate source had no intentions or purpose, why think you can have any purpose or intentions in practising science? You’re ultimately a bag of meat fizzing to chemical reactions under a materialist worldview.

History of the scientific method

Perhaps this is why in her book, Confronting Christianity, McLaughlin outlines how the empirical and methodological foundations of the scientific method were laid by two Franciscan friars, Roger Bacon and William of Ockham. Christianity is not anti-science.