Science and Faith: Objective vs. Subjective Truth

In the many ongoing discussions about the relationship between science and faith, often the central issue for believers is how accepting what scientific investigation has discovered and proposed about the physical world (including the age of the earth, common descent of living creatures, etc.) affects our understanding of the trustworthiness of Scripture. More specifically, though, the debate touches on our understanding of humanity’s identity as God’s image-bearers in the world; at issue is the question “What does it mean to be human?” and the way science and faith seem to give two very different explanations for how we came to have the physical forms in which we live our lives. On one side we find atheistic materialists who see no value in revealed truth or non-empirical evidence, and on the other we have Christians who find any naturalistic account of origins to be logically inconsistent with a direct reading of Scripture.