It remains to consider whether science could render those parts of Christian doctrine which are not about Jesus and the Godhead improbable or impossible. For this purpose we may confine our attention to the ethical teachings of Jesus. Some people would hold that science makes complete determinism certain or extremely probable; and that, if men's actions be completely determined, the notions of moral good and evil and moral obligation can have no application. Some people would hold that anthropological and psychological investigations show that sentences in which ethical words and phrases occur merely express non-moral desires and emotions, repressed in the infancy of the individual or inherited from the pre-history of the race. We might describe either of these views as a form of "ethical nihilism" based on science. Now the question whether science proves or strongly supports ethical nihilism is absolutely fundamental, and goes far beyond the relation of science to Christianity. We will therefore defer it for the present and content ourselves with the following conditional statement. If we have any moral obligations, then natural science can throw no light whatever on those of them which are fundamental. At most it might support or refute certain derivative and secondary moral rules which profess to tell us how to carry out our fundamental obligations in certain specified kinds of situation. No conceivable development of any of the natural sciences could be relevant to the question whether a person ought or ought not to love his neighbour as himself. At most it might show that some secondary rule, such as "You ought to pour oil and wine into the wounds of persons whom you find lying injured by the wayside," should be rejected because it is not an efficient means of doing good to your neighbour in the circumstances supposed. Now most of the ethical teachings of Jesus express primary or fundamental obligations. Either science shows that all talk of moral obligation is meaningless or inapplicable to men; or, if not, it is completely irrevelant to this part of Christian doctrine.
(C. D. Broad, "The Present Relations of Science and Religion," Philosophy 14 [April 1939]: 131-54, at 137 [italics in original])
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 