Where in your story did you first absorb the rumor that science and faith are at war? Notice it; name it.

A new Christian probably absorbs, very early on, the cultural rumor that science and faith got divorced. The rumor goes like this: thoughtful, scientifically literate adults moved on from the Bible somewhere around the Renaissance, and now anyone still reading Genesis 1 has either not looked at the evidence or has chosen to look away. The problem with the rumor is that it isn't true. The men who built modern science — Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, Faraday — were the very people who took Genesis 1 at face value. The conviction that the universe was *intelligible at all* was a specifically Christian conviction. A rational God had made a rational universe, and his image-bearers could be expected to discover it. That conviction launched the scientific revolution. If you've been quietly ca

What do you usually start your day on? What would change if you started on Genesis 1:1?

Notice what the Bible doesn't do. Genesis 1:1-2 doesn't open with an argument for God's existence. It doesn't try to convince you. It simply states: *In the beginning, God created.* The God of the Bible doesn't lobby for a seat at the table of reality — He is the One who made the table. That matters for you on a Tuesday morning, because the question of where you start your day determines almost everything about the day. If you start with what's wrong, the day will read as a series of broken things. If you start with your to-do list, the day will read as a list of demands. If you start with the news, the day will read as crisis management. If you start with *In the beginning, God* — the day reads differently. There is a Maker. He is not absent. He is not anxious about the day. He has not

When was the last time you stopped to look at the sky and let it preach to you? What would it cost to do that tonight?

David wrote those words three thousand years before anyone discovered the rate at which the universe is expanding. He did not know that, if that expansion rate had been slower by one part in a hundred thousand million million one second after the Big Bang, the entire cosmos would have collapsed before reaching its current size. He did not know that the chemistry of our atmosphere, the angle of the earth, and the distance of the moon are all calibrated within almost impossibly narrow margins for life. He did not know any of that. And he reached the right conclusion anyway. The heavens *declare.* The sky *proclaims.* Day to day *pours out speech.* The cosmos is not silent about its Maker. Modern science only sharpens what David already saw — that the universe behaves as if it were spoken i

What is one *who* or *why* question you've been quietly carrying that no scientific answer could ever resolve?

Imagine your aunt bakes you a cake. You take that cake to a laboratory and hand it to a panel of biologists, chemists, and physicists. Given enough equipment and enough time, they could tell you everything about the cake. The flour. The eggs. The temperature it baked at. The chemistry of how the molecules changed under heat. They could give you a complete physical and chemical description of what you handed them. What they could *never* tell you — not with a microscope, not with a centrifuge, not with the entire history of modern chemistry behind them — is who baked it, or why. That answer is not in the cake. It is in the baker. Science is like that. Science is the careful, disciplined investigation of what can be measured, repeated, and observed. It deals brilliantly with the *what* and

Where in your work this week did you do the kind of careful thinking that Genesis says you were made for? Did you notice it as worship?

Here is the part of the story most often missed. The reason modern science could be born among Bible-believing Christians — and only there — was a specific theological claim: that God made the universe rational, and that human beings, made in God's image, were given the capacity to think his thoughts after him. A rational God. A rational universe. Image-bearers given the dignity of *discovering* what He had made. Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, Faraday — they all worked from this conviction. They were not doing science *despite* their faith. They were doing science *because* of it. Their study of the cosmos was an act of worship, not an alternative to it. That has not changed. You, this Friday, sitting at whatever desk or lab bench or kitchen table you sit at, are an image-bearer of th

Kent opened by naming the cultural rumor: that somewhere around the Renaissance, science and faith went through a divorce, and now you have to pick one. Where in your own life have you felt the weight of that rumor? At work? With a family member? In your own head late at night?

The rumor that science and faith got divorced was always a lie.

Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, Faraday — these men weren't doing science in spite of their faith. They were doing science as an act of worship. Kepler called himself a priest of the highest God in regard to the book of nature. How does it change the way you think about your own work — your job, your study, your daily problem-solving — to call it worship?

The rumor that science and faith got divorced was always a lie.

Kent said the entire scientific revolution rested on one assumption: a rational God made a rational universe, and his image-bearers could discover it. Read Genesis 1:1-2 again slowly. What does it do to your day to start with 'In the beginning, God' instead of 'In the beginning, me'?

The rumor that science and faith got divorced was always a lie.

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Sermons in English

Did Faith and Reason Really Get a Divorce? · Resources

Genesis 1:1-2

Kent Keller Sunday, May 10, 2026

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Summary

Somebody started a rumor that science and the Christian faith went through a nasty divorce a few centuries ago. Kent Keller takes it apart — the people who built modern science believed a rational God made a lawful universe, the fine-tuning of that universe reads like a panel of dials all set exactly so, and science can tell you what and how but never who and why. Preached on Mother's Day, it ends where the data runs out.

Sermon Outline

1

The Rumor of a Divorce ▶ 0:00

The claim is that you can follow science or you can lean on faith, but not both. That is the question on the table this morning.
2

"Fool, Idiot, Even Stupid" ▶ 1:12

Crick, Dawkins, Maher and Hitchens in their own words on what they think of religious belief — and of the people who hold it.
3

To the Women in the Room ▶ 4:41

A Mother's Day pause: Kent on his mother, on his wife raising four children with him in a wheelchair, and a standing ovation from the men.
4

Science Is a Tracking Dog ▶ 9:01

It uncovers all kinds of useful things, and it needs somebody holding the leash to tell it where to look and what to do with what it finds.
5

Genesis 1, and Two Kinds of Revelation ▶ 9:36

The most loaded words ever written down, and the difference between what nature tells us about God and what Scripture tells us about his salvation.
6

Why Modern Science Was Born Where It Was ▶ 11:36

Older civilizations never produced it. It arose in northern and western Europe after the Reformation, among people who expected a lawful universe because a lawgiving God made it.
7

Galileo, Kepler, Pascal, Newton, Faraday, Einstein ▶ 13:04

Six of the most consequential scientists in history, quoted on what their work told them about God.
8

A Panel of Dials Set Exactly So ▶ 17:08

The earth's tilt, its distance from the sun, how far off the moon sits, and the rate of expansion one second in — move any of them slightly and no one is here to notice.
9

From the Cosmic to the Molecular ▶ 22:29

A single DNA strand carries about as much information as an average library, and every cell in you says exactly the same thing. Information does not assemble itself.
10

What Science Can and Cannot Prove ▶ 24:13

Science works on what it can measure and reproduce. God is outside time, space, matter and energy — so science can neither prove nor disprove him.
11

Aunt Gertrude's Chocolate Cake ▶ 25:26

A lab could tell you every ingredient, the interaction of the particles, the temperature and the baking time. It could not tell you who baked it, or why.
12

The Greatest Miracle, and Mother's Day ▶ 27:27

Everything science can tell us about a developing child is true and verified — and none of it explains a mother's love, or the love of God it most resembles.

Key Points

The supposed divorce between science and Christian faith is a modern conceit held by a few skeptics, not a fact of history.
Modern science arose after the Reformation among God-fearing people who reasoned that a Creator who set the universe up by law made image-bearers able to discover that law.
Science tells us a great deal about what we can do and nothing at all about what we should do. For that you need morality, ethics, and God.
The universe looks fine-tuned for human life at every scale — the earth's angle and orbit, the moon's distance, and a rate of expansion that could not have been off by one part in a number with seventeen zeros.
You cannot get meaningful information without intelligence, and every strand of your DNA holds as much information as an average library.
Science can neither prove nor disprove God, because God by definition lies outside time, space, matter and energy — the only things science can measure.
Science answers what and how. It has nothing to say about who and why.

Quotable Moments

“Science is like a tracking dog. It uncovers all kinds of interesting and sometimes useful things. It's a very useful thing to have around, but it needs somebody to hold its leash.” ▶ 9:01

“Science tells us a lot about what we can do. Science has nothing to say about what we should do.” ▶ 9:36

“Somebody was doing some really impressive fine-tuning with the universe from the very get-go.” ▶ 20:29

“Science can tell you a lot about what and how. Science can tell you nothing about who and why.” ▶ 26:32

“Science is wonderful. It can point to a lot of facts, but it can never explain something as miraculous as the love of a mother for her child.” ▶ 29:01

Scripture

Genesis 1:1-2 (ESV)

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Psalm 19:1-2 (ESV)

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.

Take It With You

You are not a fool for believing God made this. Some of the greatest scientists who ever lived believed it too.
Faith and reason are not rivals. They answer different questions, and they point at the same Creator.
General revelation can bring you to a Creator. Only special revelation brings you to a Savior.
Science can describe everything about a mother carrying a child except the one thing that matters most — and that love is the closest thing we see to God's.

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Did Faith and Reason Really Get a Divorce? · Resources

Genesis 1:1-2

Watch & Listen

Summary

Sermon Outline

Key Points

Quotable Moments

Scripture

Take It With You

Related Resources

Downloads

Related Reading

It All Begins with God: Genesis 1 and the Creator Who Sustains You

Greater Than All: What Colossians 1:15–20 Says About Who Jesus Really Is

Are Science and Christianity Compatible

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