The Speak Life Podcast, sharing Jesus in everyday life.
SPEAKER_00Thank you very much. The first thing to say about this title is that there is a question mark at the end of it, and that's very important. Because the title of this talk is not Science the Enemy of Faith, it's Science the Enemy of Faith. To which the answer is no. But that's that would be a short talk. So let me give you the more extended version. And as I begin talking about science, I talk as a total layman when it comes to scientific endeavor. My training was more in philosophy. But I think that that's actually helpful in this discussion because I think really it is a discussion that's less about physics and more about metaphysics as we talk about this issue. It is a kind of a philosophy of science type question. And one way of answering the question, is science the enemy of faith? is just to ask the Christians that you know whether they study science or not. So just like by by way of show of hands, if you're in the Christian Union and you study maybe science, technology, engineering, maths, can you put your hand up? Okay, so look around the room. I assume that you're all flunking your classes. I assume that you're all bottom of the class, and you can all blame it on Jesus because people of faith can't be people of science, right? Um, take it up with these guys. Uh, because they they don't seem to see a conflict between faith and science. And actually, I wonder if we talked to each one of these Christians, they would probably say something along the lines of, My faith in a God of order makes me want to explore a world of order. And my faith in God is not diminished by my studies, but perhaps enhanced by my studies. You'd have to ask them yourself, but maybe you could start that conversation on your table. You can uh you can ferret out the Christians who are scientists on your table and ask them uh whether they see a conflict. Uh but as we begin this question of uh what about faith and science? I want to introduce you to uh Betty the botanist. Okay? Uh yesterday, if you were here, uh we met Sally the scientist. Uh now let's get more specific. Uh Sally has a sister, Betty, uh, who is a botanist and a very, very good botanist. And I want you to imagine that there she is in her lab. And uh Gareth, her lab assistant, who's got quite a crush on Betty, uh, comes in this morning and uh says, How are you, Betty? And Betty says, I'm actually over the moon. It's wonderful, and I can't thank you enough, Gareth. Uh, do you remember last year that you gave me that botanical specimen? I've been at work on this botanical specimen for the best part of a year, and I've made some incredible discoveries. She said, you know, we did this spectral analysis of this specimen, and we discovered all kinds of pharmacological properties to this specimen that will help us in the fight against Alzheimer's disease. We discovered that there are there are ecosystems on the leaves of this specimen that have never been before discovered, and for the last year I've been mapping the genome for this species, an absolute thirst for this species. I'm ready to publish in the most prestigious botanical journal in the world, and it's very fitting. The journal's gonna come out tomorrow, which is exactly one year from the time that you gave me that botanical specimen. Have you guessed it yet? Gareth says, Betty, I love you, but you're you're an idiot. One year ago it was Valentine's Day, it was a long-stemmed rose, Betty. Do you understand what I gave to you? And that's the question that I want us to consider. Does Betty understand the rose? On one hand, she understands it really, really well. On one hand, she understands that rose better than anyone else on planet Earth. She knows, she's mapped its genome for goodness' sake. She knows it in exhaustive detail. She knows everything about that rose, doesn't she? No, she's a moron, right? She doesn't really get the meaning of the rose at all, does she? On one level, we understand that on one level she understands the rose very well. We all also understand that on another level she is completely ignorant of the meaning of the rose. And my big question for you today is what if this world is like that rose? Have you ever considered that? We spend a lot of time investigating this world, exploring this world, studying this world, bringing to light the patterns that are inherent in this world, and that is a wonderful and laudable enterprise. But have you ever considered that this world might be a love gift given by someone who wants to communicate to you and communicate his love to you? Have you ever considered that about the world? And it's not an either-or. You can study this world in all its complexity, and you can receive it as a love gift from somebody who is communicating their affection for you. You can understand the world on both those levels, and they are not competing levels, are they? Is science and faith in conflict? Of course, science and faith are not in conflict. Unless Betty's of the world want to say that the only level of meaning for that rose is the biological level. But of course, nobody wants to be Betty, do they? Everyone recognizes that there are other ways of studying the rose, and there are other layers of meaning to that rose. Aren't there? I hope there are. And those other levels of meaning, they are not in the realm of magic and pixie dust. Okay? They are in the realm of interpersonal relationships and psychology and cultural analysis and romance, and there are all sorts of other layers of meaning that are not strictly scientific. But that does not make them less meaningful endeavors, does it? I hope it doesn't. I hope none of us are bettties. I hope none of us are so reductionist that all we can see to the rose is its genome. Science and faith are not in conflict. You can understand the rose botanically and romantically, and those two things are not in conflict. But there is a conflict, isn't there? We understand when we talk about science and faith, we've got in mind some kind of conflict. So what is the actual conflict that's going on? I would suggest to you that it is not the conflict between faith and science. It's the conflict between faith and philosophical materialism. Philosophical materialism, the doctrine that the cosmos is all there is, was, and ever shall be, that basically psychology boils down to biology, boils down to physics, boils down to, you know, quarks and leptons fizzing, that all there is really is matter in motion. Matter and energy is all that there is. That philosophy is in conflict with Christian faith, right? But then science sits in the middle of that conflict. And we shouldn't be so presumptuous as to assume that the philosophical materialist should claim all of science for themselves, or that the person of faith should claim science all for themselves. It's a clash of philosophies, right? And I want to suggest to you that actually Christian faith and science are the best of friends, and they are not foes at all. And I'll just do that by just bringing up two points, and then you can shoot some questions at me. I think faith supports science and science supports faith. Okay? Faith supports science and science supports faith. First to say faith supports science. And it is interesting that the modern scientific enterprise has kind of erupted in a very Christian and Christianized world. It is interesting that people like Francis Bacon have understood the scientific enterprise coming out of a very Christian worldview. C.S. Lewis once said that people became scientific because they expected laws in nature, and they expected laws in nature because they believed in a lawgiver. So you've got these John's Gospels on your table. Do you want to pick one up, or if you're sitting at the back, you'll have one uh under your seat probably. And uh this will open up by giving you the rationale for the modern scientific enterprise. Okay? You perhaps weren't expecting that. You weren't expecting that on page one of this biography of Jesus, that actually the foundations of science are being laid, but they absolutely are. If you have a look on page four, um you'll see the very first chapter of John's Gospel, this biography of Jesus, written by a follower of Jesus. And it begins in a way that absolutely grounds the scientific enterprise. It begins, chapter one, verse one. In the beginning was the word. You see capital W word. In Greek, it's the word logos, where we get biology from, right? Logos is the meaning of the bios, life, right? The study of the bios. Logos is a word from which we get logic, it's about meaning, it's about an underlying rationale and intelligibility. And so in the very first sentence of this book, it says, in the beginning, before there were people or planets or protons, there was order, cosmic order, there was rationality, there was logic, there was the word. And the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning, through him all things were made, without him nothing was made that has been made. And we start to get the idea that this word with a capital W is a person. And we know that he's a person through whom God is said to have uh created the universe, because by the time you get down to sentence number 14, verse 14, it says, The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father full of grace and truth. So here we have a personal reality who is the logical order to the cosmos, and he shows up among us, and his name is Jesus. So that for the Christian, ultimate reality is not just an equation or an explosion or an existential truth. Ultimate reality is a person, but a person of rationality, of order, the great logos. And actually, that helps the scientific enterprise incredibly. In fact, without a belief in logos, in a kind of a super cosmic order, it becomes impossible to do science. In order to do science, you need three things, don't you? You need laws up above, you need minds in here, and you need a world out there. Three things, right? You need laws up above, you need minds in here that can understand the laws up above, and then you need a world out there that is open to the senses, that can be investigated and can be trusted. And those three things need to be correlated. That this world out there needs to be rationally ordered and rationally comprehensible. Those are the three things that need to all be true and they all need to match up. They all need to triangulate somehow. And without those three things triangulating, no science. Can't happen. Which is what made Einstein say. He said the uh the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. Have you ever thought of that? Why is it a cosmos and not a chaos? Why is it that it there are these rationally ordered, rationally comprehensible laws of nature that can be depended upon, whether you're describing life on earth or life beyond the horsehead nebula? What is it about the world that it operates according to laws up above that are comprehensible by minds in here and that map onto the world out there? The scientific enterprise has grown up among people who have a world view that says, of course there are laws up above. There is a logos. And of course, that logos is comprehensible by us, because as verse 14 says, that logos wants to know us, wants to be in face-to-face relationship with us. Little old human beings. We are meant to grasp the logos of the universe. Which is an extraordinary thing. If you didn't believe this book, what an extraordinary thing to believe that this two or three pounds of gray matter can actually have a purchase on the cosmic order, right? Isn't that an incredible thing to think that this two, three pounds of gray matter actually has anything to do with the rationality of the cosmos? Well, the Bible gives you a rationale for believing that, that actually we are intended to know the logos, the logic behind all things. Because he became flesh and we've seen his glory, and we're meant to have that face to face. And isn't it interesting that he takes flesh, this logos? He's not just to be encountered in our minds, but he has a love for the world as it is. And so in Christian cultures, there has been this belief that we can go out into the world and we can make hypotheses about how the laws operate in this world, and we can test our ideas about the world against nature and see how it goes. And the scientific enterprise has gotten going in a world that believes these sorts of things. If you're a person of science, you probably think, I'm a person of science, and therefore I'm not a person of faith. Wrong, we're all people of faith. We all believe that there are rationally ordered, rationally comprehensible laws that we depend upon in order to do whatever scientific enterprise we have. And I'm just saying that Christianity gives you excellent reasons for that faith. Don't just believe blindly, right? As a scientist, don't just believe blindly in the rational ordering of the cosmos. Have reasons for your faith. And I think this book gives you reasons for that faith. I think faith supports science. I also think science supports faith. And uh let me just mention four things. I can mention some more, but let me just mention four things that we know from science that I think will point you towards the Christian view of things rather than towards the philosophical materialist side of things. Okay? Here are these four elements, and and we can all agree to these four elements, but I'm just asking you, in which worldview do they make their home most naturally? Okay, here are the four things. Okay, everything's come from nothing. Okay? The universe has a beginning. We've been saying that for more than a century now, and that seems to be a pretty settled conclusion of the scientific community. The universe has a beginning. Um is that possible? Did everything come from nothing?
unknownAlright?
SPEAKER_00King Lear said nothing will come of nothing. Did everything come from nothing? Seriously, everything coming from nothing? I, as a Christian, I believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, but this would be the virgin birth of the cosmos, but without a virgin. It's the ultimate magic trick, it's you know, nothing up the sleeve, no sleeve, pure magic, out of nowhere. In which worldview does it fit better that everything has come from nothing? I would say, in a worldview in which there is a father loving his son, the word, in the joy of the spirit, in the Christian worldview, before and behind and beneath and beyond the universe, there is a love that has wanted creation. And therefore I think everything from nothing makes sense in the Christian worldview, in a way that it doesn't make sense in the materialist worldview. Okay? Item number two, order from chaos. Okay? As I've been saying, all of science depends on the fact that there are rationally ordered, rationally comprehensible laws that the universe dependably operates according to. Isn't it extraordinary that we live in such a world? Um you might have heard of the fine-tuning of the universe. Um quite often I find people dismissing the fine-tuning of the universe without actually understanding what people are saying when they raise the fine-tuning of the universe. Um, there are about 30 physical constants that describe life in our world. Things like the cosmological constant that describes the speed of expansion after the Big Bang. And uh it's very important that that number is exactly the number that it is. Because if our universe was expanding faster than it currently is, we'd all just fling out into heat death. And if it was expanding slower than it currently is, then we'd all come back on ourselves in a big crunch. Okay, so it's really important that that number is not too much and not too little. It's just right. Okay, there's a Goldilocks range. Okay? And then you crunch the numbers and you ask yourself, well, what is that Goldilocks range? And it turns out it's you've got to get this number to within one in ten to the power 120. That's for all philosophers like me and non-scientists, that's a one with 120 zeros after it. One over one with 120 zeros after it. If our universe is expanding by faster than that infinitesimal amount, then we are frozen. If it's less than that, by that infinitesimal amount, then we're all toast, okay? And yet it seems to be just right. And I'm not making the argument that planet Earth is on a knife edge. I'm saying the entire cosmos is on a knife edge. That's quite that's quite well ordered, isn't it? And if we're saying it's just come from a chaotic explosion and order has formed itself out of chaos, again, I think a belief in this book makes more sense of that. That there is a God before and beneath and beyond and behind this universe who has intended us and wants us and has ordered this world. But if you don't have a cosmic orderer like that, I I find that that scientific fact is much less difficult to account for. Okay? So that's point number two. Point number one, everything from nothing. Point number two, order from chaos. Point number three, life from non-life. Um so how do we go from inorganic chemicals to biological life without a God of life who wants life around? Um you can come up with scientific theories about that, but I would say to you that my belief as a Christian that the non-living Jesus came back to life on Easter Sunday, I would say, yep, that's one kind of miracle. But I think that one kind of miracle, that there is a God of life, gives you a rationale for believing why there might be biology coming from chemistry, why there might be life on planet Earth when you might only expect chemicals, right? Life from non-life, again, I think fits better with this Bible's story. And then consciousness from mindless matter is the fourth thing. Consciousness from mindless matter, how do you get from chemistry to biology to psychology? How do you how do you get this sense of self? It's a perplexing problem and it's it's taxed. A lot of philosophers, including Thomas Nagel very recently, uh, who is finding it increasingly difficult to be a materialist, knowing all that we know about consciousness or being mystified by all that we're mystified by in consciousness. And again, wouldn't it make sense on this account of things that there is a God of minds who has created us in order to have personal fellowship, personal relationship? Uh wouldn't the existence of consciousness make much more sense on this account of things? So those are the those are the four things where I think science might point you to thinking, uh, maybe the faith story actually gives me the rationale for all that I'm learning in science. Everything from nothing, order from chaos, uh, life from non-life, and consciousness from mindless matter. Let me just finish with uh this story from Brian Cox. Brian Cox once did a uh uh uh documentary about the large hadron collider, and he wanted to explain why it was that physicists were smashing together these particles. And uh and he said this at one point. He said, Physics is stuck, and the only thing left to do is to recreate the universe as it was a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. That's what the Large Hadron Collider is designed to do, to smash bits of matter together at energies never before achieved, so that we can, get this, stare at the face of creation. I find that interesting. That's interesting language that he's reaching for. At the bottom of all things, he doesn't just want to discover uh a lovely symmetrical, eloquent equation. At the bottom of all things, he's reaching for the language of personhood, isn't he? He's reaching for the language of face. He wants to see before and behind and beneath this universe a face, a personality. But let me suggest that you're not going to find a personality by smashing particles together. You'll discover a lot about particles, and praise God for that. Go to the Large Hadron Collider, do all the experiments uh experiments you can, discover all the equations that you can, but it cannot get you to a person. It cannot get you to a personal explanation of this world any more than Betty the botanist doing good biology is gonna get her to the meaning of the love gift. Do you want to know the true meaning of the love gift? Uh I suggest. Pick up this book and discover what happened when the logic of all things, when the face of the cosmos, actually showed up with a face to be known personally. And keep on reading John's gospel. It's not written as a scientific textbook, it was never intended to be a scientific textbook. But science is not the only kind of reality that we can grasp, right? There are other levels of meaning. Meaning. Your maker, not just mechanics. You can discover these things if you pick up this book. And why don't you shoot up a prayer and say, God, show me your face, and get reading. Because I think there's something deeper than mapping the genome of the rose. You might actually discover there's someone who loves you. That's all from me. On your table groups, uh, there are all sorts of things that you can have a look at now. Uh, one thing that you could do would be to um perhaps on your table groups discuss what the thorniest question is that you'd love to shoot my way. Uh, that would be something good to do. And if you don't have a question, there are also these feedback forms that let you know about some other uh things that the uh Christian Union is up to, other ways that you can keep on exploring Christian faith. You can leave a detail, tick a box, and figure out how you can take these things further. But why don't we spend just one minute generating questions and picking up the feedback form, and I'll be back after the minute. Thanks.
SPEAKER_01Glenn, we had a lot of questions relating to order and this idea of an ordered universe. So, for example, we have this one. Um, can we really say that the universe is a universe of any sort of order? Surely problems of chaos, turbulent motion, or quantum mechanics cannot claim to have any sort of order.
SPEAKER_00The very fact that you're studying these sorts of things here says that there is a degree of order, right? There is some degree of order, and you've had to have gotten over those four hurdles that I just outlined in order to be even to be even able to discover disorder, right? You need the most extraordinary levels of order in order to be able to discover the disorder in this universe. Okay? So, yep, those are some good questions. And the Christian uh answer is that there has been a fall. Yeah, there is, there has been a disordering from something that has been very well ordered for life, and that's true, and that's part of the Christian story. But you have to have an original and ultimate order from which there has been disorder in order to uh study those sorts of things, and that is precisely the Bible's picture. The Bible's picture is precisely there is an original and ultimate good from which we have fallen, and there has become this thing called a fall called disorder, called perishing in this book. Um, so absolutely there is disorder, but even the disorder testifies to the fact of the original and ultimate order.
SPEAKER_02Okay, thank you. Um another question has come in. Um people are and some scientists believe that people evolve from other creatures. Um then, assuming this is true, how are we created by God and in his image?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, great question. I think within the room of Christians, there are people who take different views on this. I think I've never encountered a Christian who disbelieves in evolution on some level. I've never encountered a Christian who disbelieves in natural selection, that Darwin's finches, their beaks get bigger and smaller, and that uh bacteria have certain levels of uh immunity to things, and that develops over time. So I would say that of Christians in this room, everyone believes that there is some level of evolution going on. Um and at the same time, um every Christian in this room would say that simply natural selection is not the only dynamic going on in explaining life in this world. Um so between those two things, um, Christians are within that range. Okay, we all believe natural selection happens, we all think it has limits, um, and therefore what different people do about Adam and Eve and where the image of God comes in is different for different questions, different Christians. Um but we all believe that natural selection happens, and we all believe there are limits to it, and that if your only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, if the only thing in which you're going to explain life on planet Earth is going to be natural selection, you're gonna treat everything in a in a perhaps a more narrow way than you perhaps should. So you can ask me more questions about that afterwards.
SPEAKER_01So this one is about just sort of broadly um arguments about consciousness of humanity, and it says, how are these points not just God of the gaps arguments? So if science finds a reason for life or non-life or consciousness from unconsciousness, but won't this argument fail? Because we'll have explained what we've been using God to explain.
SPEAKER_00Uh no, but uh uh that that seems to be founded on a scientism of the gaps, if you don't mind me saying so. Um if if the faith is we're going to find a material explanation for consciousness, how is that not a scientism of the gaps? How is that not a materialistic philosophy of the gaps? Um But the the good news is we're not in a turf war, okay? Um the realm in which we're talking about meaning and maker and minds is not exactly the same realm in which we're talking about mechanics and matter, okay? Um so I don't think there has to be a turf war, and therefore I don't I don't think that God only exists in the gaps of our material knowledge any more than I think you know the the romantic meaning of Betty's rose exists somewhere within the genome and needs to be squeezed out, right? Um so I I I kind of I refuse the dilemma, if you if you see what I mean. Um there doesn't have to be that turf war, and I'm certainly not saying it's a God of the gaps explanation at all. Um I'm saying that beyond the material universe, there is a realm of meaning and maker that is simply not open to a material analysis. And if you think that those things will be explained away by material analysis, that is a scientism of the gaps.
SPEAKER_02Um excellent. Another question. If nothing came from nothing, where did God come from? Or is he different?
SPEAKER_00So God is a, to use technical philosophical terms, uh, a necessary being as as opposed to the contingent nature of the universe. So uh like I say, scientific uh uh consensus for the last century is that the universe is not eternal, that the universe has had uh a beginning, that it is contingent that way and not necessary. Uh the biblical understanding from Old and New Testaments is that God is from everlasting to everlasting a necessary being, not a contingent being. Um so when did an eternal being start to exist is like saying, you know, show me a square circle, right? Um by the nature of the case, the God of the Bible is an eternal being.
SPEAKER_01Um why do so many Christians refuse to listen to scientific proof of the earth forming over millions of years? Is there no conflict between this and what the Bible presents?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there there has been conflict on that issue, but like I say, there are there are many Christians in this room who uh uh are perfectly happy with a 14 billion-year-old story, and there are other Christians who take issue with that. Um I think Karl Popper, you know, in terms of how scientific paradigms kind of operate, um, can explain this just in terms of a cultural analysis and some psychological analysis about how different paradigms approach people. Um so, yeah, you you might struggle with a certain Christian who is trenchant in their certain beliefs, but be careful, you might be trenchant in your own beliefs on some things. You know, there was there was the Chinese geneticist who was presenting a paper in California and just questioning one little aspect of neo- of the Neo-Dawinian synthesis, and he was absolutely howled down. And he said to his host, What's going on? And they said, Well, you can't touch Darwin here. And he said, Well, this is fascinating. In China, you cannot speak against the government, but you can speak against Darwin. And he says, I come to America, and you can speak against the government, but you cannot speak against Darwin. Um so just just just beware, there are there are in there are entrenched positions on both sides, and let's let's be more open in our discussions.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I'm gonna just read this one out because I don't understand all the words in it. Um probably issues a little bit for it. Um so does it make sense to say that the universe has a beginning, which apparently isn't settled? There is quite some debate. Um, given that time itself began at the Big Bang. Um, causality and law breaks down at that singularity. Um, what about an oscillating universe? Big bang, then big crunch, forever and ever, um, which cannot really say to have a beginning.
SPEAKER_00Okay, you could say big gang, big crunch, and here we go, just just forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. What's interesting about that is my my belief in the existence of anything beyond that singularity. Um, I mean that's to call that a faith commitment is to do the word faith a grand injustice. Um, because not only is there no evidence for that, in a sense that it that is not that is not in any way directly accessible to the scientific method. Whatever is beyond this cosmos of space and time, and whether you want to go back to that singularity or you want to go out to a multiverse or something like that, um, you are by the nature of the case going beyond your ability as a scientist to directly observe and and and assess it against the rational order of this cosmos. Because all your science depends on the rational order of this cosmos. Um if you if you want to kind of explain the contingency of this universe by via those means, um I'd say you're going for by far the more improbable option, and you're going for a less scientifically testable option. I would say that there's a there's a certain kind of scientific testing you can do with this option, and this option is that the world from beyond has broken into time and space and can be investigated, not by putting Jesus under a test tube, under a microscope, but actually by doing good historical analysis and encountering the person of Christ. So I would say you have you have much more ability to grasp what is beyond this space-time universe by opening up this book than by speculating speculating about multiverse, etc. That's my contention. You can talk to me afterwards.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so probably be our last question for now. So, does it make sense to think of scientific laws as somehow governing the universe? Or is it better to say that as far as we've observed, these rules seem to describe things? And given how many approximations and exceptions science makes, can we say that these laws are in any sense correct or useful for your argument?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think there is debate about that. And, you know, should we even be trying to get a grand unified theory of everything? Have you ever thought about how theological that sounds? That somehow there is a grand unified theory to everything. And I think increasingly people are actually saying, well, perhaps we shouldn't be looking for a grand unified theory of everything. Why should the universe operate like that? But I wonder if we keep on having those thoughts, whether we'll become ever less scientific. Because actually, the whole scientific enterprise is a venture of faith. It's a venture that if I keep on drilling down, there will be some eloquent kind of equation at the end of this process. And to the degree that your faith is shaken that the universe actually operates like this at bedrock, I think we will become less and less scientific the less we believe this kind of story about the world. So that's it, that's again me saying I think faith supports science. Uh yeah, that's me done.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much, Dan. Let's give it up for good.