The Miracles of Science

It strikes me as ironic that, at a time when science and faith are apparently in conflict in our culture, science has or is on the verge of duplicating many of Jesus' miracles. About the conflict between faith and science: for example, the battle that's been going on in the courts lately between those who view "Intelligent Design" as an alternative scientific theory to be taught alongside evolution and those who view it as nothing more than pseudoscience or thinly-veiled creationism that might be taught in church but not in school. I really don't think there is actually an inherent conflict there, as I discussed here. However, if faith and modern science aren't inherently in conflict, they're orthogonal to each other. Science relies on observation. "faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Heb. 11:1). I've been thinking about a different kind of conflict. Or maybe it is a way that they are complementary. When questioned about his identity by the followers of John the Baptist, Jesus pointed to his acts of healing as proof of his identity: "Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor." (Matt. 11, Luke 7) Recently, I listened to a very interesting segment of NPR's Science Friday. The summary:

Doctors announced this week that they have created a bladder using living cells, the closest they've come yet to making a fully functioning organ. The bladder was tailor-made using the cells of a woman suffering from spina bifida. The researchers say that the replacement organ seems to be well tolerated by the human body, and it did work as a functioning bladder. In this hour, we'll take a look at tissue engineering. How close are scientists to making organs to order, or getting limbs to regrow? Plus, a look at bionics. We'll talk with the inventor of a computer controlled hand for amputees, and hear about the latest in bionic eyes.

William Craelius, a biomedical engineer from Rutgers University, was on the show. From a press release from a few years back:

Bionic limb replacements that look and work exactly like the real thing will likely remain a Hollywood fantasy, but fast advances in human-to-machine communication and miniaturization could bring the technology close within a decade. That is the outlook of Rutgers biomedical engineer and inventor William Craelius, whose Dextra artificial hand is the first to let a person use existing nerve pathways to control individual computer-driven mechanical fingers. Craelius published an overview of bionics entitled "The Bionic Man - Restoring Mobility," in the international journal "Science," ...

Advances in prosthetics have allowed people who have lost one or even both of their legs to walk around freely on their own. In addition to bionic limbs, scientists are also developing the bionic eye...attempting to treat blindness via chips to be implanted in the retina. According to wikipedia, "leprosy is easily curable by multidrug antibiotic therapy." Cochlear implants have restored a form of hearing to people who are profoundly deaf or severely hard of hearing. From wikipedia:

A cochlear implant is a surgically implanted hearing aid that can help provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard of hearing. The cochlear implant is often referred to as a bionic ear. Unlike other kinds of hearing aids, the cochlear implant doesn't amplify sound, but works by directly stimulating any functioning auditory nerves inside the cochlea with electrical impulses. External components of the cochlear implant include a microphone, speech processor and transmitter. An implant does not restore or create normal hearing. Instead, under the appropriate conditions, it can give a deaf person a useful auditory understanding of the environment and help them to understand speech when coupled with post-implantation therapy. According to researchers at the University of Michigan, approximately 100,000 people worldwide have received cochlear implants; roughly half are children and half adults. The vast majority are in developed countries due to the prohibitive cost of the device, surgery and post-implantation therapy...

Of course, scientists can't bring people back from the dead on demand, but it's not exactly uncommon for cardiac resuscitation techniques to revive people who are clinically dead. It's interesting how, in a sense, science has been able or is on the verge of being able imitate most of the miracles that Jesus used to confirm his message. It makes me wonder what sort of miracles he would have used if he had been here today. The guests on the Science Friday show emphasized that the main obstacle preventing further advancement is funding as the governemnt funding agencies are having to divert funds elsewhere. I'd much prefer my tax dollars go to research like this than to some of the other ways they've been used lately.