@Matthew No. What Christians can do is to propose a philosophy of science that is theologically compatible (thus, not presupposing random evolution, etc.) but also doesn't include YEC-style Bible interpretation as though Bible teaches science. Catholic scientists do this.

Being a minority position, these Christians need to promote philosophy of science in the academia by being respectable mainstream scientists themselves (by participating in their projects, their journals, getting grants from usual sources). So that means engagement not carping at them from the peanut gallery or isolating themselves by publishing a journal with readership that is very limited to their religious adherents.

@Matthew In this one, I agree with you. Censorship is not the right way, and it's much too burdensome for parents to erect a "safe zone" for their kids. Yes, apologetics early BUT the right kind of apologetics, not the YEC kind. Teach them how to do science properly, where science got its method from, i.e. start teaching them elementary philosophy of science. You can use Wikipedia for this, and Catholic resources.

@Matthew About sci-fi, prime their imagination with good Christian sci-fi like LoTR, Lewis's trilogy, etc. That way that start looking for the good ones that open up their imagination in a certain way just how C.S. Lewis credited George MacDonald to open his.

BTW, you're the second person I know that mentions Heinlein; haven't read him myself. Eleonore Stump uses one of his stories for illustration in this video at minute 10:20 (see transcript). Do you know which book Eleonore referred to?

I think mine was primed by Isaac Asimov Robot stories, which probably explained why I like STNG so much.

So to put it in another way, Re: Culture and science, I see the key as the openness of the human heart to God. While of course scientism with all its variations (don't just focus on Materialism. Idealism is deadly too, which doesn't have to be materialistic!) influences the priming of one's mind to see the world one way "by default" (thus scientism influenced the culture of this age).

So if Christian scientists can provide an opening, i.e. a good reason to use their philosophy of science rather than the scientism one, then I believe the soul will grasp that lifeline to use that small opening to start entertaining possibility of communing with God. From there the Christian culture will start making sense and become attractive, which then restrict the domain of science to a smaller realm rather than the whole thing.

So my approach is to start cultivating Christian culture to compete with other cultures, just like MAGA culture has proven able to defeat the woke culture of the left. (BTW, MAGA does NOT have to use Trump as its spokesman, Trump is dispensable. And MAGA does NOT have to become a Christian nationalism syncretistic religion either.)

@GratefulDisciple You might as well ask the Democratic party to contribute to Trump's election campaign and run Trump's ads on the media they control. At least one instance took a lawsuit to be allowed to do research, period, never mind getting a grant for it.

@GratefulDisciple You're trying to keep the flood away from your house with a bucket. "Science" says "there is no God and no God is needed". You don't have a plausible answer to that. Those claims are everywhere, and if you can't effectively counter them, your foundation is just going to keep eroding.

@GratefulDisciple This is exactly what (properly taught) YEC does. Teach people to recognize the anti-theistic assumptions in "science" and where those biases originated.

@GratefulDisciple As I use it, I think I'd consider "materialism" and "scientism" to be synonymous, or at least so overlapping as makes little difference. By "materialism" I mean "the material is all that exists or can exist". I would understand "scientism" to be "'science' has all the answers"... where "science" really means "materialistic 'science'".

When you talk about "priming of one's mind to see the world one way 'by default'", that's exactly what I assert is the reason for believing in billions of years in the first place. Not because the evidence is "overwhelming", but because one is looking at the evidence expecting to find that Scripture is nothing but fairy tales.

@GratefulDisciple I'll agree MAGA can exist without Trump. I remain... concerned whether anyone else has the required fortitude to obtain any meaningful political power. 🙂