BETHLEHEM COLLEGE & SEMINARY

RE-DISCOVERING THE UNDEAD PARADIGM: A STUDY ON SCIENCE

SUBMITTED TO DR. LYNNE SHENK

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF

GENS 1617: NATURAL SCIENCE: FOUNDATIONS, METHODS, AND APPLICATION

BY
LUKAS OTTERMAN
10.6.24

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 Re-Discovering the Undead Paradigm: A Study on Science

Is science the ultimate truth? Today, we often see “scientifically proven” or “according

to scientists” as the end all of division between conflicting moral or ethical ideas. After all,

science is a study of the absolute, the tangible, the irrevocably real. Or is it? In his book God’s

Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? author John Lennox attempts to clarify the bounds of

science as a practice, and warn us that its conclusions are not unaffected by those who utter

them. “Statements by scientists are not necessarily statements of science.”1 Much of the reason

for this is due to the wide range of worldviews (or paradigms) through which these scientists

view their research. It is important to note that the definition of science which I will be inferring

throughout this essay is a study of the natural world “that entails unbiased observations and

systematic experimentation.”2 It would seem as though personal opinion has no place in our

scientific studies. I will argue, however, that the pervasiveness of conflicting paradigms around

us requires that we treat them as a part of the scientific process by which we draw our

conclusions, though they should be understood as fundamentally unscientific in their origins.

It may indeed be easy to view the word “paradigm” as fundamentally against the

principle of science, after all, what place does unfounded speculation and stubborn faith play in

rightly interpreting the solid mathematical facts which fill our world? Phillip Johnson explains

the matter in his book Darwin On Trial, “When a paradigm becomes established, it serves as the

grand organizing principle for scientific research. This means that it defines the questions that

need to be answered and the facts that need to be assembled.”3 Even those who would disregard
1
John C. Lennox, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Oxford: Lion Hudson plc, 2009), 19.
2
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "science." Encyclopedia Britannica, September 30, 2024.
https://www.britannica.com/science/science.
3
Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin On Trial. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2nd Edition, 1993), 120.

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paradigms entirely, deceive themselves. The very same belief that observable and testable

science is self-sufficient to explain the many facets of our world, is itself a paradigm founded on

the idea of the infallibility of our senses and understanding. Johnson continues, “A paradigm

rules until it is replaced with another paradigm, because (quoting Thomas Kuhn) ‘to reject one

paradigm without substituting another is to reject science itself.’”4 Unfortunately, this emphasis

on a single dominant thought has led to a tension between opposing paradigms, most notable of

which are the views of ontological naturalism and theism.

Ontological naturalism could be compared to materialism; it is the idea that there is no

outside force acting upon our world, or, as Johnson puts it, “Naturalism assumes the entire realm

of nature to be a closed system of material causes and effects, which cannot be influenced by

anything from outside.”5 Theism on the other hand supposes not only the existence, but also the

designing involvement of a supernatural force. Holding on to either of these two views does not

cheapen the observable scientific truths which either party may discover, it does however affect

the conclusions derived from those facts and the route of inquiry by which more may be

discovered. Importantly, either route may lead to general scientific discovery—an outcome

universally beneficial. Nevertheless, in 1982, Arkansas Judge William Overton made the

controversial decision to ban the teaching of theism from public schools, believing himself to be

contributing to the effort of ridding the scientific community of the stain of paradigm as a whole.

His claim was that theism was unscientific on the grounds that it accepted the involvement of a

god which could never be tested to exist. Yet even within his arguments, there remains the fact

that God is of necessity outside the realm of material science, and therefore may or may not exist

whether or not He can be proven to do so.6 The fact that Overton and the secular scientific
4
Johnson, Darwin On Trial, 122.
5
Johnson, Darwin On Trial, 117.
6
Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 63.

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community would believe that an unfalsifiable God cannot exist due to His un-falsifiability, is a

testament to the thriving paradigm in their own minds. As Lennox puts it, “Thus we have an

interesting situation in which, on the one hand, naturalist thinkers tell us that science has

eliminated God, and, on the other hand, theists tell us that science confirms their faith in God.” 7

Clearly we are not dealing with science in its conventional, testable, and provable sense. We are

dealing with a war between the paradigm of ontological naturalism and the paradigm of theism.

Science just happens to be the battlefield upon which the war is being fought.

Naturally, following the decision by Judge Overton, the presence of paradigm in schools

was not removed, rather replaced; and in a dangerous fashion. It’s very paradigm-ness was

camouflaged. Orthodox science began to methodically and effectively take over the schools and

teachings, introducing the theory of evolution on a wide-scale basis, and with it the hidden

paradigm of an un-supernatural world. To many, it did not seem like a paradigm at all, but the

intensity with which secular scientists search for “missing links” in the evolutionary chain, the

constant examination of micro-biology, and the continuous search for evidence in support of

their evolutionary claim says otherwise. As established earlier, paradigms define the facts which

need to be discovered, and the proofs for evolution are still being assembled. The presence of a

paradigm is not the issue, rather it is the constant denial of its presence and an assumption of fact

which can mislead countless people, into treating a faith-based belief as fact.

To better understand the issue of evolutionary paradigms let us study a brief synopsis of

evolution itself. First, we should distinguish between those aspects of evolution which are in fact

provable and testable. Micro-evolution is a gradual change of a population over time,8 usually

related to the process of natural selection (in other words, a population’s gradual genetic change
7
Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 20.
8
Samantha Fowler, Rebecca Roush, and James Wise, Concepts of Biology. Section 11: Houston: OpenStax, 2013.

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to better suit survival in a given environment). It was during an observation of this effect that

Charles Darwin began to seriously consider the mechanism of macro-evolution (that all living

organisms have a common ancestor) eliminating the need for a creator. However, while the

processes of microevolution can be studied today, macroevolution is of necessity untestable as

the developed branches of the proposed tree can no longer interbreed, and therefore the process

cannot be reversed. Thus, we are left with the first of several evolutionary paradigms, one which

claims that there was no divine guidance to our existence.9 To further demonstrate how this

conclusion is truly based on worldview rather than factual science, historian Mark Noll writes

regarding the Christian evolutionary, “Darwin, who had been reared on Paley’s idea of a creation

whose order was transparent to human inspection, thought of his own theory as random

purposelessness. By contrast, many theologians and most Christian scientists of the day came to

accept some variety of evolution (though not always natural selection), while affirming that it too

reflected order and design consistent with a divine creator.”10 I find that the proofs for evolution

are far too intangible to convince me of even a divinely guided evolutionary process. The sheer

complexity of the human genome would require 2.5 billion years (under the most favorable

conditions imaginable) to develop—5% of it.11 In reality, the number of years required would be

several orders of magnitude larger. By contrast, such evidences as the decaying nature of earth’s

magnetic field, or the measurements of salt in our oceans,12 point towards a world which is

changing and deconstructing, one that would have vanished altogether long before we had

evolved. Whether or not you believe in the slow mechanisms of mutation and migration, the

gradual adaptation or sudden catastrophes which shape the physical attributes of organisms over

9
Johnson, Darwin On Trial, 115.
10
Mark A. Noll, When God and Science Meet: Surprising Discoveries of Agreement. (National Association of
Evangelicals, 2015), 13.
11
Bruce Potter, “Problems With the Macroevolution Theory.” Now That I Think About It…, 2016.
12
Answers in Genesis, “Six Evidences of a Young Earth.”

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eons into new life forms; the theological conclusions inferred from evolution are nothing more

than the paradigms which scientists project upon the evidence. The 1982 court decision did not

remove the presence of paradigm from our educational system, rather it gave free reign to one

paradigm in particular, and stifled any other chance for the free interchange of thought.

The discrepancy of opinion in the scientific community may lead some to reject the

authority of science altogether, however, science itself is not the criminal, rather it is the

expectation of an unbiased scientist which has led to confusion. Noll writes, “Today the

Christian world contains a diversity of opinion on questions related to evolution and considerable

controversy over proposed responses to climate change. Ethical questions about the application

of science conclusions to genetics and stem cell research can also be controversial. These hot

spots also co-exist with a nearly universal acceptance of scientific conclusions and empirical

methods in all other areas of life.”13 Our ability to properly interpret scientific evidence relies

strongly on our ability to recognize the paradigms which surround the scientific field. For

example, in 2023 cave drawings were discovered in France which, according to one “scientific

article,” proves the existence of Neanderthal life over 100,000 years earlier than evolutionists

first thought.14 However, the article clearly operates on a paradigm basis as it says in the

introduction that, “because there are so many species and eras involved, it’s hard to discern the

common threads linking them – at least, beyond “we found out some more stuff.”15 It says all this

before going on to claim dramatic proofs for how our species must have developed. These

paradigm-governed statements do not, however, disqualify the significance of discovering art

from ancient days, though it may have been a search for evolutionary evidence which

13
Noll, When God and Science Meet, 13.
14
Mitchael Marshall, “The 2023 discoveries that made us rethink the story of human evolution.” NewScientist,
2023.
15
Marshall, Human Evolution.

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encouraged archeologists to examine the location in which it was found. Do not reject science

and its methods, but be aware that the very mechanisms—the paradigms—which drive it

forward, are nothing more than adopted faiths.

Bibliography:

Samantha Fowler, Rebecca Roush, and James Wise, Concepts of Biology. Houston:

OpenStax, 2013.

Answers in Genesis, “Six Evidences of a Young Earth.”

https://answersingenesis.org/evidence-for-creation/six-evidences-of-young-earth/

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "science." Encyclopedia Britannica, 2024.

https://www.britannica.com/science/science.

7
 Bruce Potter, “Problems with the Macroevolution Theory.” Now That I Think About

It…, 2016. https://brucemp.com/2016/10/22/macroevolution/#:~:text=Macroevolution %20is

%20generally%20defined%20as%20the%20process%20of

Mitchael Marshall, “The 2023 discoveries that made us rethink the story of human

evolution.” NewScientist, 2023. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2406410-the-2023-

discoveries-that-made-us-rethink-the-story-of-human evolution/#:~:text=Humans.%20The

%202023%20discoveries%20that%20made % 20us%20rethink

John C. Lennox, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? Oxford: Lion Hudson plc,

2009.

Mark A. Noll, When God and Science Meet: Surprising Discoveries of Agreement.

National Association of Evangelicals, 2015.

Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin On Trial. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2nd Edition,

1993.