Showing posts with label BioLogos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BioLogos. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

SARS-CoV-2 and Elite Responders


I have limited time to blog this week and so I will only write a few words about the latest developments in SARS-CoV-2 research. This week's NIH Director’s Blog offers hope for COVID-19 treatments using monoclonal antibodies. A team led by Michel Nussenzweig, Paul Bieniasz, and Charles Rice at The Rockefeller University, New York, and Pamela Bjorkman at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, has identified a subset of antibodies produced by “elite responders” that effectively neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus by binding to “three distinct sites on the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the coronavirus spike protein.”

 

When the human body is challenged by a novel virus in the system, a cascade of biochemical reactions occurs which leads to the production of many different antibody particles. The responsive immune system must generate a large number of possible antibodies because all will have some effect on the virus that has set the system in motion, but only some will be highly effective at binding up the virus particle so that it does not infect cells. What Nuzzenzweig and collaborators have done is identify which of the many antibodies generated are the most effective. This has the potential to inform scientists working on vaccines regarding which vaccines may be most effective in fighting the virus and the potentially deadly disease it causes. It also means that these elite antibodies could be reproduced in the lab and used as a form of treatment for those who have been infected and have a severe case of COVID-19.

 

There is much more to be said about how this research could also be leveraged to create better serological testing that would indicate who has been and who has not been infected with this novel coronavirus. In future blogs we will explore the ramifications further. For now, let’s pause for a moment and consider the hope this research brings as we pray for further developments.

 

 

Friday, June 12, 2020

Of Science and Theology


J.B. Stump recently published an article in the Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation: Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. The article is entitled “Did God Guide Our Evolution?”[1] Since many readers will not have ready access to this journal, allow me to give a summary. As he says, at one point in the paper, it might have been a very short paper if he simply answered ‘yes.’ Of course, the answer is much more nuanced than that because if one says yes, that person would open themselves to the criticism that neo-Darwinism is not the kind of process that could be guided. The person who says no, sounds like a deist who believes that God simply got the ball rolling at the Big Bang and left everything to chance and survival of the fittest.

 

Stump speaks of those of us who believe in both God and science and speaks of the tension many of us feel regarding the question of God’s guidance of the natural process.

 

“There is an often-unresolved tension for many of us who have these twin intuitions:

·       As science-minded people, the more we examine the development of life, the more we are persuaded of the efficacy and integrity of natural mechanisms.

·       As Christians, the more we learn of God and his ways, the more we are persuaded that God loves us and has partnered with us to achieve God’s purposes for the world.

The first of these intuitions leads us to think that science, while not infallible, has shown itself to be a reliable, truth-discovering enterprise, and that, therefore, the science describing our evolution is at least largely correct. The second leads us to believe that God had (and has) a plan for us as image bearers, and therefore God did all that was necessary to provide for our appearance on Earth.”[2]

He says that these two intuitions can be formalised into the following two claims:

“C1. Evolution is the best scientific explanation for the origin of Homo sapiens.

C2. God intentionally created human beings in God’s image.”[3]

 

For the rest of the paper Stump goes on to speak of the various ways in which scholars have created strategies to hold these two claims together in such a way that they can both be true. He summarises three views and the criticisms of those views before giving us his own conclusion on how this can be done. He speaks of the Semantic Strategy, the Nomological Strategy, and the Causal Joint Strategy, before giving us his Epistemological Strategy. I won’t go into all the details, those who wish to can find and read the full article. Let me skip to the final strategy and conclusion.

 

The basic idea of the Epistemological Strategy is that science and theology are different ways of knowing. Both are true and both make truth claims about the world around us. The two truth claims, C1 and C2 tell the same story in different ways and “neither tells the whole story.”[4] Stump then makes an important point when he says that,

“It has been the tendency to treat the scientific discourse as the real description of things and to treat whatever does not fit within that discourse (e.g., free will, morality, meaning) as folk psychology and fictions. But that is to succumb to scientism.”

Although Stump does not say it specifically, we might also say that treating whatever does not fit the theological discourse as ‘not real’ is to succumb to ‘theologicism.’ We cannot think that the Bible has the answer to every question (e.g., how long it took to make the universe, or does a hare chew a cud?[5]) for God has also communicated to us through his creation and encourages us to use our minds.

 

Stump distinguishes his Epistemological Strategy from Stephen Jay Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria approach (NOMA) and its inherent flaws. He notes that in the NOMA explanation, science deals with fact and theory while religion deals with feelings and values; in his own epistemological explanation, both science and theology are “making factual truth claims.”[6]

 

Stump reminds the reader that we need a both/and approach to understanding our universe (as in previous blogs, I again refer my reader to the Two-book Theory of God’s revelation[7]) and that without both ways of knowing “we are going to get an incomplete answer.”[8] Furthermore, he points to two examples of how we must get used to both/and thinking when observing our universe. One of these comes from scientific discourse and one from theological discourse. In science, when we describe light, we must keep in mind that it is both a wave and a particle (not easy to conceptualise but we must think in both/and) and in theology, when we describe God, we must keep in mind that he is both three and one (again, not easy to conceptualise). So, both the scientific and theological means of knowing have their place. J.B. Stump has done a great service in helping to explain why both are necessary.

 

 



[1] “Did God Guide Our Evolution?”, J.B. Stump, Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation: Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, Vol. 72, No. 1; March 2020. 

[2] Stump, p. 16.

[3] Stump, p. 16.

[4] Stump, p. 20.

[5] There is a whole theological conversation around the words of Lev. 11:3-6 and Deut. 14:7 about whether or not it is accurate to describe a hare as chewing a cud. The conversation can get rather pointed and borders on irrational when people expect the whole answer to be found in the Bible.

[6] Stump, p. 22.

[7] “Two Books Theology means understanding how Christian theologians from the very beginnings of the Church have understood God’s self-revelation, as well as the relationship between Scripture and Creation.” “The Church Fathers and Two Books Theology” Biologos, Mark H. Mann, 2012.

[8] Stump, p. 22.

Friday, June 5, 2020

Of Romans and Adam


John R. W. Stott (1921-2011) was a theologian, writer, Anglican Priest, and preacher. His thoughtful commentary on the book of Romans, The Message of Romans (The Bible Speaks Today series; IVP Academic, 1994), has been an important resource for my understanding of the theology of the Apostle Paul. Today, I would like to focus on Stott’s brilliant words regarding Paul’s theological understanding of Adam: the first man of creation.

Stott peers back through the primordial mist to the time of Adam and seeks to understand the nature Stott observes, in the ancient fossils of the day, and the words of the Bible in Genesis, Romans, and other parts of sacred scripture. He is well-aware that aspects of Genesis 1-3 can only be interpreted symbolically (p. 163) and explains how Paul uses his knowledge of creation and The Fall to build a theological argument for the righteousness bestowed by Jesus.

Stott then states that he believes “Scripture clearly intends us to accept their [Adam and Eve’s] historicity as the original human pair” (p. 163), and that Adam and Eve were Neolithic farmers in the New Stone Age which ran from 10,000 to 6,000 BC (p. 163). He is aware of, and comfortable with, the human fossil and skeletal records which show that modern homo sapiens can be traced back to 100,000 years ago and homo sapiens (archaic) to about 500,000 years ago. He also knows that the record shows that there are other species of hominids who lived before homo sapiensHomo erectus dates back to 1.8 million years ago and homo habilis from 2.3 to 1.65 million years ago. Some of these species and sub-species (Neanderthal man is an example of a subspecies which could interbreed with homo sapiens) showed signs of the beginnings of culture such as painting, carving, care for the sick, and burial of the dead (p.164). Even as Stott knows all of this, he also emphasises that this does not contradict with the scriptural understanding of Adam and Eve (p. 163). 

Then Stott makes this interesting statement: “Adam, then, was a special creation of God, whether God formed him literally ‘from the dust of the ground’ and then ‘breathed into his nostrils the breath of life’, or whether this is the biblical way of saying that he was created out of an already existing hominid. The vital truth we cannot surrender is that, though our bodies are related to the primates, we ourselves in our fundamental identity are related to God” (p. 164). The first half of this interesting statement has to do with how, in Stott’s opinion, God may have gone about forming Adam. Stott is suggesting that God has been creating galaxies, planets, plants, animals, and pre-Adamic hominids, but now God pauses to stoop down in a special creative process to create Adam (and Eve). He envisions a time when many creatures have been walking about on a newly created earth and then God starts fresh with some dust of the ground to create his most precious creation. This is Stott’s first vision of the creation of Adam. But then he says, it might have been that God created Adam “out of an already existing hominid.” John Stott is being gracious toward the varying opinions of “how” Adam came to be (since we cannot see back through time to know precisely what God was doing then we must, to some degree, speculate on the process) but is resolute in the “vital truth we cannot surrender.” That truth, says Stott, is that “though our bodies are related to the primates, we ourselves in our fundamental identity are related to God” (p. 164).

Stott goes so far as to invent his own name for Adam’s species and calls him homo divinus (p. 164) before going on to quote Derek Kidner who suggests "that once it became clear that there was ‘no natural bridge from animal to man, God may have now conferred his image on Adam’s collaterals, to bring them into the same realm of being. Adam’s “federal” headship of humanity extended, if that was the case, outwards to his contemporaries as well as onwards to his offspring, and his disobedience disinherited both alike’"(p. 165). “Federal,” in this context refers to God’s act of entering into a covenant (or federation) with humanity through the first human, Adam. Kidner and Stott are saying that God entered into a covenant with humanity and then when the federal head of humanity disobeyed, the disobedience, consequences, and the curse of breaking the covenant, extended to Adam’s contemporaries and his offspring.

Having discussed Adam’s creation, “federal” headship, and disobedience, Stott next speaks of Adam’s death. Stott knows that death existed before Adam’s fall. He can see that there was death in both God’s plant and animal life-cycles. Stott sees plant death in the cycle of blossom, fruit, seed, and death as described in Genesis 1:11. He sees animal death in the fossil record of predators with prey in their stomach (p.165). It is interesting to note Stott’s logic and see that he comprehends that God speaks to him as a theologian through both scripture and nature (the two-book theory of God’s revelation[1]).

When it comes to Adam, Stott wants to suggest that it is possible that when God created homo divinus, he created beings with the potential for eternal life without earthly death. In Genesis 3:19, Stott sees God’s word as pointing to a physical death as part of the curse of The Fall. Many see spiritual death as a curse of The Fall, but Stott holds on to the idea of Adam being made of dust and returning to dust as part of the curse as well. This leads him to propose that perhaps God’s original intention was to make the image-bearers of God immortal, a rather shocking statement for a theologian of his stature. We must consider his theory. Stott states that “Perhaps he would have ‘translated’ them [here he means Adam, Eve, and the rest of unfallen humanity] like Enoch and Elijah, without the necessity of death. Perhaps he would have ‘changed’ them ‘in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye’, like those believers who will be alive when Jesus comes.”

It is an interesting proposal. Was God’s original plan one in which plants and animals lived and died but homo divinus lived on for a set time before being taken into the presence of God? The elves of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: Return of the King who live for thousands of years and then sail West to the immortal land of Valinor, readily come to my mind. It is speculative, but who can say that this might not have been God’s original plan? After all, God has made angels as his immortal messengers? It is conceivable that God could have made humans immortal like the elves of Valinor. However, personally, I don’t think we need to create this myth-like possibility to understand the distinctiveness of humanity. Stott has already recognized a good deal of symbolism in Genesis. Could not the words, “Dust you are, and to the dust you will return” be inclusive of both a physical and a spiritual death where the spiritual death is the new consequence of The Fall?

John R.W. Stott passed away in 2011, so I will not have an opportunity to ask him if he would still hold to all of these views. I suspect that he would recognise the speculative nature of some of his ideas and tell us that he was working through various scenarios to seek to understand creation better. A commentary on Romans is not primarily about the methodologies used by the creator, even though they do have a bearing on the discussion. I have not found all of the places Stott may have written about such theories of creation, but I am relatively confident that he never put them down in a succinct book or paper regarding creation. In this context, let us simply honour a great preacher and theologian who spoke and wrote with grace, leaving room for speculation about methods, and giving us definitive statements on God’s purposes. Let us continue to meditate upon and seek to practise the implications of the important fact that “though our bodies are related to the primates, we ourselves in our fundamental identity are related to God.”


[1] “Two Books Theology means understanding how Christian theologians from the very beginnings of the Church have understood God’s self-revelation, as well as the relationship between Scripture and Creation.” “The Church Fathers and Two Books Theology” Biologos, Mark H. Mann, 2012.

Thursday, May 21, 2020

How Does One Say Welcome Through a Mask?


Most of us are getting used to smiling really hard to enhance the mirth or joy in our eyes. Without this, will anyone out in the public know that we are smiling behind our mask? You know the feeling: you have just stepped into the wrong aisle, from the wrong lane, heading in the wrong direction, down a supermarket throughway and you want to give that sheepish smile that says, “Oops, I will do better next time but right now I just need to reach that jar of bread yeast. Heh, heh, heh, smiley, smiley, smile.” We wish an emoji would pop up over our head to express our emotion. Alas, that only happens in cartoons and virtual reality. But here in the real world, we are not so fortunate. 

I thought about this as I read the news today and saw pictures of restaurants and retailers with signs that read, “Welcome Back – We Are Open” with owners standing at their doors smiling over masks. Yes, we know we are welcome, but we would be much more at ease if there was now no need for that black “bandit” mask that we have all been wearing for the last while (or should I wear the camo mask today?). Which brings me to a point about the re-opening of church buildings. Larry Osborne at North Coast Training Centre has some great insights into what will be necessary for the successful re-opening of our worship services. Most leaders, to this point, have focussed on the physical necessities of masks, hand sanitizers, touchless services, no consumables, and the challenge of children’s ministries. Osborne emphasises what it will take to have a quality worship service that meets or exceeds the quality of online services without totally exhausting pastors, tech-teams, and volunteers. In my mind, it created some questions worth considering. What does it mean to have a quality worship service? Is singing through a mask, while socially distanced necessarily a better worship experience than an online worship service? How many people will we be able to invite into our auditoriums? What about families with small children? Who will be comfortable returning to an enclosed space with central heating and many touch-points? Will my welcoming smile be noticed at the door or will I need to wear a t-shirt that says, “I am smiling under this mask”?

I think Larry Osborne is asking the right questions and perhaps foreseeing the appropriate responses. He suggests churches consider returning to large indoor spaces at a time similar to when people start to return to large outdoor sports arenas. The science of infection relies upon the concept of “Exposure to virus” X “Time” = “Infection”[1] So, indoor facilities pose greater risk than outdoor (because in the outdoors, wind will disperse viral particles in biological droplets faster and make them more dilute than in indoor spaces - even this may not hold up to some of the most recent research). But, time together in a church service may be shorter and less active than time spent cheering for your favourite sports team with a much larger crowd. These are the considerations which must go into decisions about when to open zoos, sports facilities, gyms, and places of worship. Do we really want to get ourselves into a situation where we book a time when we are allowed to go to a worship service in a building, after donning mask and gloves, and carrying around a bottle of spray disinfectant? It may be suitable to limit attendance and booking times at the Zoo, but what would such limitations say to the general public wishing to attend a church service? Would we create member only services? Visitor only services? Services with singing and services without singing? Services where seniors can attend and non-seniors services? Children-welcome and children-not-welcome services? Larry Osborne has reminded us that there are some big questions yet to ask. Most of them have no credible answer in the present context. 

Francis Collins (Head of the NIH in the USA) has said that we might possibly have a vaccine by the end of the year. He and Timothy Keller have also commented on the disparities that are present in our medical systems that create have and have-not cultures.[2] Any re-openings and access to vital medications and vaccines must take into consideration Jesus’ words about “the least of these.” All will need equal access.

So, “to [open] or not to [open]. That is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to” remain closed or to re-open. That is one of the questions of the Kingdom of God in which we live and to which we look forward. Until we answer this question, keep smiling. The smile lines increasing with age will only serve to emphasise your smiling eyes.


[1] Erin Bromage, “The Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them,” Dr. Bromage joined the Faculty of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 2007 where he teaches courses in Immunology and Infectious disease, including a course this semester on the Ecology of Infectious Disease which focused on the emerging SARS-CoV2 outbreak in China, https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them.
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h3VEoL0d8

Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Collins and Keller: Where is God in a Pandemic?


I am happy to have this blog where I can direct our attention to some of the valuable resources available to us at this time. One such resource is a recent conversation between Dr. Timothy Keller and Dr. Francis Collins moderated by Jim Stump from the BioLogos organization. I can give you a couple of hints regarding the way to watch this video. First, the main content begins at approximately 9:00 minutes into the YouTube recording and secondly, I have listed a few topics within the video. That way, as a question is asked, you will have an opportunity to take greater notice of the wisdom shared by these two phenomenal leaders. Some of the topics covered include:

·       Disparity in online learning
·       Spiritual depletion in busy times and the need to take time for spiritual refreshment
·       Adventures in rapid scientific development
·       The Church’s response to the pandemic
·       Innovation in the church – the replanting of local churches
·       Vaccines – when will we have one and who will accept it?
·       Medicine as God working rationally in his creation
·       Jesus recommending and using medicine
·       Theology of suffering
·       Disparity in healthcare resources
·       Affluent churches helping immigrant communities
·       Image of God and compassion toward all who are made in the image of God – the value of every human life
·       Hard utilitarianism does not hold sway in the Kingdom of God – the calculus of saving lives
·       Prayer and the work of God through those who are made in the image of God
·       How to use our time on earth to the greatest benefit
·       Asking for wisdom from God

That is a long list of relevant topics for each of us. I pray that you might find the time to be spiritually refreshed by these two leaders in God’s Kingdom. Jim Stump is great at asking the right questions and drawing out the best from each of his guests. May we be praying for the work of all who serve God in pandemic times. May God refresh his spiritual leaders in the work of the Kingdom of God.

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Science and Faith in Pandemic Times



Dr. Francis Collins has been a hero of mine since my days in the Molecular Diagnostic Lab at the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary. In those days he was the lead investigator on the Human Genome Project as everyone raced to be the first to map the approximately three billion base-pairs of the human genome. Since July of 2008 Dr. Collins has served as the director of the National Institutes of Health, a position to which he was appointed by President Barack Obama and selected again by President Donald Trump. It is a position he holds to this day. The NIH is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for biomedical and public health research in the United States and Dr. Collins’ role is to oversee all projects and funding from the US government.

On April 6, 2020, Biologos interviewed Francis Collins regarding the latest research into the novel corona virus that is causing the disease known as COVID-19. Christianity Today reporters were sitting in on the interview and will likely write about this conversation in the days and weeks to come. Dr. Francis Collins is a gracious and humble follower of Jesus who is overseeing all of the research into the virus, vaccines, antibodies against the virus, and many other projects in the US. The interview reveals that many Christians do indeed integrate faith and science. To quote Mark Noll, "There is hope for the evangelical mind" (The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, 1994). Don't miss the end of the interview where Dr. Collins reveals the things for which he is praying right now. Here is the link to the recorded conversation. 



Thursday, October 10, 2019

BioLogos




For many years I have been a proponent of the BioLogos organization. They do a remarkable job of theological and scientific education. I encourage readers to take a tour of their site and read some of the many articles available. BioLogos represents an Evolutionary Creationism perspective on the origins of life. Here, in their own words is an explanation of what that means.

At BioLogos, we present the Evolutionary Creationism (EC) viewpoint on origins. Like all Christians, we fully affirm that God is the creator of all life—including human beings in his image. We fully affirm that the Bible is the inspired and authoritative word of God. We also accept the science of evolution as the best description for how God brought about the diversity of life on earth.

But while we accept the scientific evidence for evolution, BioLogos emphatically rejects Evolutionism, the atheistic worldview that so often accompanies the acceptance of biological evolution in public discussion. Evolutionism is a kind of scientism, which holds that all of reality can in principle be explained by science. In contrast, BioLogos believes that science is limited to explaining the natural world, and that supernatural events like miracles are part of reality too.

BioLogos offers an explanation of our universe that does justice to a theological understanding of a creator God, while also giving credence to the science of our day that explains much of how our world works. I know that this is a difficult area for many Christians to grasp and BioLogos has done an excellent job of walking people through the many arguments. I encourage my readers to spend time on their website and consider a viewpoint that may not be one that you hold today. There are many opinions among Christians about the nature of the origins of our universe. Let us not be afraid to consider each other’s perspective on these issues.

Beyond the BioLogos website, I would also recommend the following books:

Friday, May 31, 2019

Modern Technology and the Human Future



I recently finished reading Craig Gay’s book, Modern Technology and the Human Future and found it to be a very balanced approach to many of the questions we find ourselves asking about the good and bad of contemporary technology. We all know how valuable our hand-held devices can be and Gay speaks highly of the gains in productivity and efficiencies afforded by such devices before citing some telling statistics. “‘On average,’ one recent study found, ‘people in the United States across all age groups check their phones 46 times per day’, roughly once every fifteen minutes. For people between the ages of eighteen to twenty four, that number goes up to seventy four times per day, or once every twelve minutes.”[1] Many might say that we are enslaved to our phones, but if that word seems a little harsh, let’s just say we are obsessed with our phones. What are we checking for on our phones? Well it could be all kinds of good information in the virtual libraries of information available to us. We could be exploring art galleries in distant cities, getting the latest facts on nutritional information, or following NASA’s ever curious explorations of the galaxy. More likely than not, we are checking our social media accounts to see how many people have liked our recent post or seeing what posts others have made that we can like, hate, find funny, or thumb-up.

Gay is not a technophobe or luddite, his confessions in the chapter entitled “A Personal Conclusion” make this clear, but what he is saying is that we must consider every advancement in light of the good it will do and what we will give away as we embrace the technology. He points out that one of humans’ early advances was going from an oral culture to a written culture and to a culture of the printing press. Socrates expressed concerns that increasing literacy rates would have a debilitating impact on memory.[2] Of course he was right! Oral societies must commit all important information to memory, but as soon as one adapts to a written culture, much can be stored in lists, recipes, personal journals, and text-books. However, without literacy, one could well argue that we would never have the kind of understanding of who we are and what we can do.

Gay does lament that contemporary technology tends towards seeing all of nature as a machine.[3] Photosynthesis in the hands of a scientist can become nothing more than physics and chemistry. Similarly, the human body and mind can also be viewed as a complex machine that could, given enough time, be converted into a mechanical device to house our consciousness. He also calls us back to remembering who we are. “The church has long recognized that if the eternal Word of God ‘became flesh and made his dwelling among us,” as the apostle John declares (Jn 1:14), this confers staggering value upon ordinary fleshly existence.”[4] “While the Christian church always stands in need of remembering its theology, the need today is particularly acute, given how rapidly automatic machine technology is trending away from ordinary embodied human life.”[5]

In this book, Gay calls us to “repent of our hubris” and recognize that the “principle precept of Christian discipleship is that we are not our own” and that our “task, therefore, is primarily one of stewardship.”[6] He speaks of a proper place for technology where it “starts great conversation” and an improper place when it “prevents us from talking with and listening to one another.”[7] Proper uses of technology will lead to greater harmony of people, animals, plants, and rocks rather than dis-harmonies. Gay calls us back to our theology of being, incarnation, and eucharistic embodiment and prompts us that the eucharist or communion meal is to be a place where we reorient ourselves around what is important: God and his people embodied in flesh.

There is much more that could be said, but I leave it to the reader to take the time to purchase and read this book for yourself. It is readily available wherever books are sold.

Works Cited

Gay, C. M. (2018). Modern Technology and the Human Future: A Christian Appraisal. Downers Grove: IVP Academic.




[1] 2015 data; (Gay, 2018, pp. 31, 32)
[2] (Gay, 2018, p. 25)
[3] (Gay, 2018, p. 101)
[4] (Gay, 2018, p. 133)
[5] (Gay, 2018, p. 165)
[6] (Gay, 2018, p. 169)
[7] (Gay, 2018, p. 177)

Saturday, January 17, 2015

The Power and Limits of Science

Two quotes caught my attention this week. One was by a prominent atheist; the other by a prominent Christian. In The Limits of Science, Nobel Prize winner (and atheist) Sir Peter Medawar, writes:
Science is a great and glorious enterprise - the most successful, I argue, that human beings have ever engaged in. To reproach it for its inability to answer all the questions we should like to put to it is no more sensible than to reproach a railway locomotive for not flying or, in general, not performing any other operation for which it was not designed.
I am impressed with these words of Medawar. They show an uncommon humility that recognizes that his favourite discipline, the one he has pursued most of his life, will not be sufficient to answer all questions.

Sir John Polkinghorne, a former professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge and an Anglican priest, has said something similar.
I submit that no-one lives as if science were enough. Our account of the world must be rich enough – have a thick enough texture and a sufficiently generous rationality – to contain the total spectrum of human meeting with reality.1
Science has great power; and part of what makes it so powerful is its absolute reliance upon data. In its truest form, science does not speak beyond the data. Extrapolations and deductions lead the scientist to further experiments that will, in turn, result in more data. The quest in science is to collect more and more data to support a theory and thus increase the probability that the theory can be proven (in a technical sense of the word "proof"). Science seeks to never speak beyond the data. Science’s great power results from this self-imposed limit.

Scientists such as Medawar recognize that it is wrong to ask science to pronounce on issues outside its jurisdiction. Polkinghorne recognizes that people do not typically live solely by the scientific method. Science is powerful; but it is not enough.

1 Quotes found at "From the Archives: Miracles and Science, Part 2; Biologos Forum"; http://biologos.org/blog/from-the-archives-miracles-and-science-part-2