By Emma Spencer, Science & Technology Reporter

If your view of science comes from social media and popular culture, you might assume it leaves little room for belief in anything beyond the physical world. Many young people today pick up the idea—often without realizing it—that the more scientific knowledge you gain, the further you move from faith.

But the actual history of science tells a different story.

The founders of modern science—Newton, Kepler, Faraday, Pasteur—didn’t see their discoveries as undermining belief in God. They saw their work as a way to understand creation more deeply. For them, the study of nature wasn’t separate from belief—it was rooted in it. They searched for patterns, structure, and design because they believed those things had been placed there by a Creator.

That legacy continues.

Dr. Francis Collins, who led the international team that mapped the human genome, is one of the most accomplished scientists of the modern era. He also served as Director of the National Institutes of Health under three U.S. presidents. And like many before him, Collins has spoken publicly about his belief in God—not as a side note, but as something that became clearer through his work in science.

Raised in a secular household, Collins didn’t come to faith through tradition. He came to it while decoding DNA—the language that programs human life. The deeper he went into that code, the less accidental it looked. The more he learned, the more convinced he became that it was written.

In his 2006 book The Language of God, he wrote: “Science is the way to understand how God did it.”

That statement reflects a long-standing pattern: again and again, scientific discovery confirms what earlier generations believed. The Bible described the Earth as a sphere, emphasized the importance of blood in sustaining life, and laid out sanitation and quarantine practices thousands of years before medical science caught up. It referenced ocean currents, predicted the conservation of matter, described lightning’s paths, and warned of things like emotional health affecting physical well-being—all long before science had the tools to verify them.

And that pattern hasn’t stopped.

Today, in fields like AI, neuroscience, and biotechnology, the questions may be new—but the structure remains. The more we uncover, the harder it becomes to explain any of it without design.

The science hasn’t changed. The story being told about it has.