When an evangelism opportunity arises, Christians should be prepared to use science as a tool to answer questions. There are people who have “standard issues” with Christianity such as mistrust of the church, an unwillingness to live by the biblical standard or a dislike of Christians.
The Barna Group completed a study that discussed this issue—a significant number of Christians do not attend church. This study gives a unique look into the issues that people across many generations have with church, but not necessarily with Christianity. There are also those who have tremendous trust in the scientific community. Pew Research Center conducted a survey in 2020 and found that scientists are the most trusted groups in society. They rely on the scholarship of evolutionary biologists—a community comprised largely of non-believers.
Mixing evangelism and science needs to be more than just poking holes in evolution. The non-believer in the conversation should not feel attacked. Questions are a great way to peel back their reasoning about evolution or just science in general.
COME PREPARED
When someone is ready to tackle subjects like evangelism and science, he must be knowledgeable and well-researched on both topics. The Bible is the most important tool for the evangelist, but if the person he is talking to does not find authority in the Bible, it might not be the best tool to begin with.
The best place to start is evolution. There are several issues with evolution such as time, complexity and randomness. Evolution is a random chance that led to today’s world, Creationists would argue that relying on randomness alone is not sufficient to explain the complexity of life. Also, for the changes that would need to happen it would take much longer than the age of the earth regardless of a young earth or old earth stance.
The evangelist almost needs to go into the conversation with an apologist point of view. These types of non-believers are usually not on the fence and are quite passionate about what they believe. The good news is that a lot of science works in the evangelist’s favor, especially if the evangelist is well versed in intelligent design.
INTELLIGENT DESIGN
The Discovery Institute is the leading organization that is promoting intelligent design to be a main contender against evolution. With authors such as Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe and William Dembski the institute has great minds behind intelligent design.
Dembski wrote a great book that outlines everything about intelligent design. Creatively enough it is called “Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology.” Dembski covers the historical background, the theory itself, and why it is a bridge between evolution and creation.
Meyer’s book “Return of the God Hypothesis” focuses more on the science behind a mind from an astronomical perspective as opposed to biological ones like Dembski and Behe. Speaking of Behe, his most famous book Darwin’s Black Box takes a different approach but still utilizes intelligent design. His book questions the entirety of evolution and the science of Charles Darwin.
If the evangelist goes into the conversation prepared, they make the evangee challenge their own previous thoughts and beliefs. This is a great way to leave the first conversation. Recommending books such as these gives them a scientific but easy to read explanation of why evolution has its shortcomings. Once this gap is filled, conversations about faith and salvation in Jesus Christ are open to be addressed and fostered.
