Science and the Bible According to Andy Stanley

Much has been said recently about Andy Stanley's sermon series "Who Needs God?", particularly his comments about the Bible in the third installment; "The Bible Tells Me So". His statements about the foundation of faith in Jesus Christ are very confused and take a classical apologetic approach much to far. Classical apologetics will take a presupposition like the inspiration, inerrancy, and infallibility of the Bible and, for the sake of argument, lay that aside. But, Andy Stanley seems to be encouraging the jettisoning of that view in everything but name only. There has been some very good analysis of the problems with his position already. I won't comment on them anymore. See the links below, including one that supports Pastor Stanley.

http://michaeljkruger.com/is-the-bible-foundational-to-christianity-engaging-with-andy-stanley/

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/09/is-christianity-bookish-faith.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-big-bad-wolf.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/09/inerrancy-and-general-historical.html

http://crossexamined.org/andy-stanley-right-foundation-christianity-defend/  (defends Andy Stanley)

What I would like to address are his comments in the second part; "Gods of the No Testament". The part I will discuss below starts at about 25 minutes in on the message only version.

http://northpointonline.tv/messages/who-needs-god/gods-of-the-no-testament

In the sermon, Andy rightly attacks people's misconceived notions about who God is. The aptly named "somebody-told-me-so god". In other words, someone along the line told a Christian this is who God is, but in reality that's not correct, such as; "bodyguard god". This god stops at nothing to protect you and supply all your needs according to your whim at the moment. Andy gives other examples of gods that are not real and does a fair job of deconstructing them. Where he falls apart, however, is in "anti-science god". His overarching message is that the details of creation do not constitute the foundation of our faith and we shouldn't abandon God over them. For instance, and this is my example, not his; a hyper-literal reading of the Bible would suggest that the Earth is flat. When someone finds out, after being told that the Earth is flat, that we have scientific and photographic evidence that the Earth is round, they shouldn't abandon God. They should rethink their interpretation of scripture by paying attention to poetic or metaphoric language based on the literary genre of the passage they are reading. So, here, I think Pastor Stanley is correct. However, he quickly ventures into dangerous territory.
His opening remarks about "anti-science god" pit "undeniable science vs. unreliable religion". He also says: "When religion and science conflict, at the end of the day, if you are an honest person, science must win. But the message that we get sometimes, the message you grew up with, and perhaps the reason you just walked away from God, is you grew up with a message that said; "Quit thinking and start believing!". This is very confused. Of course, if you were told to quit thinking, then that is wrong. But, does that mean that you just believe science in every instance where it supposedly conflicts with the Bible? Hardly. I'm not suggesting we ignore the advances of science, but Andy is talking about science as if it is an authoritative and infallible body of knowledge that should never be challenged. Really!? If scientific knowledge is monolithic and infallible, why are there so many competing theories on various topics? Let's take cosmology for instance. Which theory of the universes' origin is undeniable? The standard model, oscillating model, chaotic inflationary model, vacuum fluctuation model, quantum gravity model, or the cyclic ekpyrotic model? The standard model is the generally accepted model of universe origins due to its broad defensibility based on observable evidence, although opinion is somewhat splintered. Guess what? This model fits with a plain reading of Genesis 1 on either a young earth or an old earth view.
Andy continues by saying that "God or science is a false alternative". Three cheers for him! I totally agree. But then he puts his foot in his mouth with a terrible example. Christians are hypocrites for using medicinal science to heal our kids and ignoring science in other areas. We take them to the doctor while we pray in the background. This is some major equivocation concerning "science". Medicinal science is not the same as say, theoretical astrophysics. First of all, the use of antibiotics for instance, does not conflict with anything in the Bible. Praying and taking your kid to the doctor is perfectly OK. There is no command in scripture that says we should only pray to God when someone gets sick. This also ignores the fact that ultimately, God's sovereignty and providence rule that situation anyway, no matter what the doctors do. Secondly, as I said before, Andy is equivocating on the term science. He is putting all things considered science into one big lump and clearly they are not the same. He is using an obviously wrongheaded example, the use of doctors and medicine for sick kids, to say that we, as Christians, should accept all science, even when it conflicts with the Bible. That is a false transference that doesn't logically follow.
Just to make sure we're not confused, Andy says: "The moment your theology conflicts with the discoveries of science, you have a theological problem, not a science problem." And a little later: "We're hypocrites. If we lean into science for our health, why would we reject science in any other capacity?" It is no wonder why Andy views the Bible the way he does. He has an "undeniable" body of science that informs his worldview, including how he reads and interprets the Bible. In my understanding of what his sermon means: he isn't suggesting that we see where our reading of scripture might be wrong in light of science (or vice versa) and then see how we can attempt to make them compatible, like the flat Earth example above (if compatibility, broadly speaking, is possible and I'm not saying that it is in all cases); he is suggesting that we always believe in the science and simply abandon scripture that doesn't fit or reinterpret it to make it fit. This is a very misinformed and confused view of the interplay of science and religion. Look here for a short, but informative article about this topic. As believers in Jesus, I think we are called to read two books. The Bible and the book of nature or what theologians have traditionally called natural revelation. We should always be asking the question: are we, as fallen humanity, reading both correctly?
Andy also seems to be missing the fact that the preaching of the Gospel, combined with the drawing of the Father to Christ and the conviction of the Holy Spirit on an unbeliever, are how God has ordained salvation to be effected. As I have taught in my classes at church, apologetic methods are a secondary tool to the Gospel. In the end, I think Andy Stanley wants to knock down as many barriers as possible to faith in Jesus Christ. I think he is muddying the waters by taking his apologetic method too far. These are noble intentions, but noble intentions don't always produce noble results.