Bryon Anderson believes science and Christianity go hand-in-hand.

“I’m not trying to say Christianity is ‘it,’ or that the Bible is ‘it.’ I want you to think that science and Christianity in particular are not completely incompatible,” the Kent State University professor said to a crowd Monday night in Faraday Hall.

In a lecture sponsored by Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers, Anderson said basic science started with religion.

Anderson gave examples of Greek scientists who based their explanations of the world with a combination of science and religion. Aristotle believed in a “soul,” or “prime mover,” and a rational explanation of the world.

Anderson said that Aristotle, along with others like St. Basil the Great, St. Augustine and John Philoponus, gave the idea that “we can study the universe, and that it is reasonable; it tells us how to live our lives,” Anderson said.

He said Galileo is commonly accepted as being the first modern scientist. Galileo was a devout Christian and was the first to impose science on the Bible.

“I believe the Bible is in many places allegory; the purpose of it is to tell us something,” Anderson said.

He then spoke of 18th and 19th century science, performed almost completely by Christians who were “just trying to figure out what God had done, the laws that govern all this,” Anderson said.

“Something created this. Whatever it was that created this, whether you want to call it God or ‘The Force,’ something created it,” Anderson said.

Twentieth century science was where the trend to separate science and religion began, he said. Anderson gave examples of two scientists: Albert Einstein, who believed God created a “good” rational universe, and Stephen Hawking, who believes the universe itself is God because it created itself.

Anderson shared the similarities between the Big Bang Theory and the Bible. Both are specific moments in which time, space and matter are made at the order in which things are made, beginning with earth and ending with humans, Anderson said.

He ended the lecture with what he called the Christian attitude toward science, which is that science is good but will never fully explain everything.

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