The popular narrative is "science vs. religion." The historical record is closer to "science from religion."
The founders of modern science
- Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) — heliocentric model. Catholic canon.
- Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) — laws of planetary motion. Devout Lutheran. "I am merely thinking God's thoughts after him."
- Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) — physics, astronomy. Catholic. Argued in his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina that Scripture and nature cannot conflict because both have the same Author.
- Francis Bacon (1561–1626) — the father of the scientific method. Anglican.
- Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) — probability theory, fluid dynamics. Catholic; one of the most profound Christian thinkers in history.
- Isaac Newton (1643–1727) — physics, calculus. Wrote more on theology than on physics. "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."
- Robert Boyle (1627–1691) — modern chemistry. Devout Anglican who funded Bible translations.
- Michael Faraday (1791–1867) — electromagnetism. Devout Sandemanian Christian.
- James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) — electromagnetic field theory (basis of modern physics). Devout Presbyterian.
- Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) — the founder of genetics. Augustinian friar.
- Lord Kelvin (1824–1907) — thermodynamics. Anglican.
- Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) — germ theory, vaccines. Catholic.
- Georges Lemaître (1894–1966) — the Big Bang theory. Catholic priest.
- Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) — quantum mechanics. Lutheran. "The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you."
Living Christian scientists
- Francis Collins — led the Human Genome Project; founder of BioLogos.
- John Lennox — Oxford mathematician, prolific apologist.
- John Polkinghorne — Cambridge particle physicist and Anglican priest.
- Don Page — physicist, longtime collaborator with Stephen Hawking, evangelical Christian.
- William D. Phillips — Nobel Prize in Physics (1997), evangelical Christian.
- Stephen Meyer — Cambridge-trained philosopher of science, intelligent design.
- James Tour — Rice University synthetic chemist, evangelical Christian.
A common rebuttal
"They were Christians because they had to be in those times." Partly true for some — but many wrote extensively and freely about their faith motivating their science. Newton, Boyle, Kepler, Mendel, Faraday all left abundant evidence that Christian conviction drove their scientific work, not merely accompanied it.
The deeper point: why science arose in Christian Europe
Christianity provides the metaphysical preconditions for science:
- A rational Creator means the universe is intelligible (you can know it through reason).
- A free Creator means the universe is contingent (you cannot deduce it from first principles; you have to look).
- Creation is good but not divine — so studying it is permitted (no fear of offending the gods, no dismissal of matter as illusion).
- Humans are in God's image — so we have the capacity to understand what we observe.
Other worldviews struggle to provide these together. Polytheism makes the universe capricious. Pantheism makes it divine and untouchable. Atheism gives no reason to expect it to be intelligible.
What the sociologists say
Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: science emerged within Christianity, not in spite of it. Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science: the Reformation's "literal" reading of nature as God's other book directly fueled empirical observation. Historian James Hannam, God's Philosophers: medieval Christians invented the university and laid much of the foundation modern science built on.
The Orthodox lens
The Fathers were not anti-science. St. Basil's Hexaemeron is full of natural history. St. Maximus the Confessor saw the natural world as a "second Bible" in which God's Logos is written. The Eastern tradition has always seen science as a form of contemplating God's handiwork.
A pastoral word
If someone tells you Christianity is anti-science, they have not read the history. The deepest minds of the scientific revolution were profoundly Christian, and many top scientists today still are. Your faith and your respect for science are not in conflict. They have been allies for centuries.