But is science simply a revealing of the wonders of god's creation?
Well, if one believes in a god or gods that created everything, then by definition those gods should get credit for all the good and bad things we see in the world, so in a circular sort of way, one's faith could be reinforced by the wonders of science as they are now revealed in our secular age.
But the problem with this is that it assumes a partnership between religion and science which certainly was not there for much of European Christianity. From the burning of scrolls and later books on the writings of antiquity (which were seen as pre-Christian and therefore pagan) to the persecution of Galileo and the insistence on teaching creationism and abstinence-only education in the place of science today, Christianity has mainly come kicking and screaming into the scientific age. It is a sad indictment that Christian Europe for about a thousand years knew less about the planet - its shape and size and relationship to the sun - than did pre-Christian Greeks. The real flourishing of science did not occur until the Enlightenment, which was a secular (or at least deist) movement hostile to religious mumpsimus.
One of the founding myths of Judaism and Christianity - the original sin for which women have to suffer labor pangs and men must work, and for which some Christians began to believe Jesus had died in atonement - involves a hostility to knowledge and curiosity. Adam and Eve were not punished for mass murder, gang rape, or torture, but for an illicit fruit-picking expedition (helped by a talking snake). Was it any coincidence that they were happier when they were ignorant, and what does this tell us about the Jewish and Christian relationship to empiricism and exploration of the world as we find it (as opposed to obedient, unquestioning acceptance of religious authority)?
Finally, the sacred texts of Judaism then Christianity had the opportunity to educate the world to the wonders of science and math but either chose not to or were simply incapable of it (the biblical authors were far less educated about scientific and mathematical matters than many of their colleagues in antiquity). This of course badly undercuts the argument that an omniscient god was either literally writing or at least being channeled by these authors, since such a god surely would have known about the shape of our planet, the wonders of light transmission, and genetics (which makes a mockery of the exclusively male family inheritance chains given in the bible (where Abraham begot Isaac, etc.) since a child inherits 50% of genes from each parent, who are therefore equally important, however Jewish and Christian societies demeaned women). Why would such a god hold back on stories that could have amazed, instead telling much smaller ones that he must have known (being omniscient) we would discover were nonsensically false with time?
As Carl Sagan put it best, "How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths."
