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On the Evangelist Podcast today, that's time to Leave Room for God.

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The Evangelist Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.

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I'm Andy Brinkley, and for the third episode running, we're going to be joined by Glenn Scrivener to hear his talk, Does Science Leave Room for God? Glenn's actually in Sheffield as I speak. But he sent his talk from Reading University last week. Incidentally, this talk was also videoed. And it should be available now on this podcast page. It's been actually recorded at uh at lunch by Nathan as Glenn is talking. It's quite an informality. And after his talk, he takes some questions from the students and we've edited out the questions because uh most of the time Glenn repeats the questions. Anyway, to see that the web address for this episode is speaklife.org.uk slash tep126 at speaklife.org.uk slash tep126. So here's Glenn then. Does science leave room for God?

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Brilliant. Does everybody have one of these somewhere near them? It's uh a biography of Jesus. Do we have enough so that people can at least look on for one each or one between two? Has anyone everybody got Yeah? You can all see one. Brilliant. Well, uh my name's Glenn, as I said, and uh I um I'm not a scientist. I my first degree was in philosophy, my second degree was in theology. Uh so I'm I'm a bit more interested in the philosophy of science and the theology of science, uh, more metaphysics than physics, if you like. Um so there'll be lots of people here uh and you'll know uh the scientific side of things a bit more. But I think actually where this question sits is far more a question of the philosophy of science. Where does science fit in terms of our account of all of reality? So that's what I'm gonna be kind of thinking about uh to begin with. Uh let me begin by uh telling you the story of uh Rachel, the botanist. Uh she is working there in the laboratory, and uh one of her lab partners brings in a botanical specimen for her and gives it to her. And uh Rachel says, Oh, thank you very much, and then goes off and does a whole heap of great scientific analysis on the botanical specimen that she receives, and and uh she discovers that there's this whole sort of micro ecosystem that's just living there on the leaves of this particular plant, and uh she manages to get lots of friends on board and mathematically models how this ecosystem is going to progress in the future. She even gets more people on board and starts to map the genome of this particular uh botanical specimen, and two weeks later she comes back to her lab partner and says, Phil, I I uh I ran the tests on that botanical specimen, and I've got so much data, you'll be thrilled. And Phil says, What do you mean, botanical specimen? She says, Well, you you gave me that long stem rose. And he says, Don't you realize it was February the 14th? It was Valentine's Day. Don't you get it, Rachel? And on one level, has Rachel got it? Yeah, Rachel's got more than any of us could have possibly gotten out of that long stem rose. Rachel has been able to tell you things about that rose that nobody else in the history of humanity has ever been able to tell you. But did she get it? On one level, the answer is no. She didn't get it. Because there was a meaning to that rose, there was a meaning to that act of giving that Rachel was completely ignorant of. So on one level, she knows a lot about the rose. On another level, she is ignorant of the true meaning of the rose. And I guess the big thing I want to get across to you this lunchtime is what if the world is like that rose? What if it's a love gift from somebody telling you I love you? What if it's like that? Because if it is, there's all sorts of things you can do with the world. There's all sorts of uh mechanisms in the world that will explain all sorts of procedures that go on in the world. You can study this world and look at all those mechanisms. But it's one thing to have a look at mechanisms, it's another thing to uh think about the meaning behind those mechanisms. And actually, studying the mechanisms is not going to give you the meaning any more than mapping the genome of a rose is going to tell you that it's a love gift. Science is fantastic at uncovering mechanisms. And let's pile into the laboratories and let's try and discover as many mechanisms as we possibly can. Let's try and answer all the how questions that we've got about how this world works. But actually, science is not designed to answer the meaning questions, to answer the why questions. So mechanism and meaning are two quite different things. And that leaves aside a third M that science doesn't tell you about, and that is about a maker. You can study all you like about a mechanism, but understanding the mechanism in exhausting detail does not tell you about the maker. You know, if I if I showed you my uh Mitsubishi Lancer, I've got a Mitsubishi Lancer, 1.5 liters, and you're you're all thinking, this this guy is incredible. How did how did the CU manage to get such a speaker as this guy? And you'd have a look at my internal combustion engine, and you could take it apart and you could tell me everything about that engine. But having told me all that you've told me about that engine, that doesn't leave uh that that that doesn't leave no room for the question of an engineer, for the question of a designer, does it? We're talking at different levels when we're talking about the level of mechanism, we're talking at another level when we're talking about the level of meaning, we're talking at another level when we're talking about the question of a maker. Christians don't think science and God are these competing agents, as though there's some turf war about how to explain the world. We think science is fantastic and tells us a lot about the mechanisms, but it doesn't tell us about the meaning or the maker. And so, in the history of science, there have been all sorts of uh Christians who, when they have studied and understood more about the world and how it operates, they've not thought to themselves, ah, I've discovered uh you know the the planetary motion in the in the solar system, I've mathematically mapped it, I know how the solar system works. They don't then say, oh dear, there's now no room for God. Um, in the history of science, there have been many wonderful Christians like Johannes Kepler saying that we are thinking God's thoughts after him, not competing with God. Not as though the more you know about the world, the less room there is for God to exist. But that rather we're dealing at different levels. And so people like Kepler or like Galileo or like Newton or like Faraday or or in today there's there's uh uh Francis Watson, uh the uh head of the human genome project. So a great Christian man who at the same time is a wonderful scientist and is not thinking about his science shrinking the realm of God or God shrinking the realm of science. They're just not enemies in that way. Science and uh God are friends, not foes. Let's think a little bit about how science works. If you're gonna have a scientific method that actually gets at the mechanisms of this world, you'll need three things. You'll need to have laws up above that are regular, that are consistent, laws of nature that you can depend on, and that you can depend on at the subatomic level as well as at the macro level, that you can depend on both near at hand and in the farest flung galaxies in the universe. So you need laws that are up above that you can depend on. You also need a world out there that you really believe is out there and that you can really trust to be out there. And maybe you think that sounds weird. Why would you not trust that there's a world out there that can be investigated scientifically? Well, many cultures have thought that actually the world out there and our sensory perception of the world does not give us accurate information about the world, and we cannot trust it. Um so you you need laws up above, you need a world out there that you that you can investigate, and you need minds in here. And the thing about the minds in here is that these minds in here have to be sort of calibrated or able to at least understand the laws up above and to relate them to the world out there. There's got to be this triangulation that goes on between laws up above, a world out there, and minds in here. Now, what's astonishing really is that all these three things happen. That there is a regular universe that operates according to regular laws, that there is a world that we can access and that is dependable, and that when I leave the laboratory and come back the next Monday, um things haven't sort of, you know, flung apart and disobeyed laws of nature, but the things have been going along regularly, that the world is accessible, and that our minds are able to grasp such things. It's astonishing that those three things should triangulate, but they do. Einstein uh said this: the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle. Einstein's looking out at the at the way in which the laws and the world and the minds triangulate, and he's saying, why should it be so? Why should Homo sapiens with their, you know, two pounds of gray matter between their two ears, why should this particular species on this particular planet of the cosmos be able to understand the inner workings of the cosmos? That's really weird. So the very fact that we can do science speaks of a kind of a regularity in the laws of nature, uh, and it speaks a k of a kind of nature to begin with that is very, very interesting. And it makes people think, well, maybe it's not just about these naturalistic processes, maybe there is something that is superintending the laws and the world and the minds and making sure that they all match up. So uh there are a lot of people who study things like the fine-tuning of the universe, and they think to themselves, you know, there is an incredibly intricate interdependence going on in our universe. Interdependence between all these cosmic constants. Uh, the physical constants in our universe, like the gravitational constant or the cosmological constant of the strong or weak nuclear force, and all these all these different constants that physicists describe. Um people have looked at at 15 different physical constants, and they say that these 15 have to be in certain ratios, they have to have certain values in order for us to have a life-sustaining universe. And all 15 of them have to be just so. And if you get them just a little bit out, you don't really have a cosmos, you have a chaos instead. Um so I mean, one one that I always uh talk about is um the cosmological constant. It describes the rate of expansion of the universe. And uh here's the thing: if the big bang expanded out too fast, the universe would just fling out into heat death, right? If the big bang expanded not enough, we'd all crunch back down again pretty quickly, okay? So we're kind of in between those two things. Is it not too little or not too much? We need this Goldilocks little kind of just right parameters, okay? So, what how how narrow is that Goldilocks parameter? How how how narrow is that field between the universe flinging out into heat death or crunching back down? And you crunch the numbers, and uh you've got to have it right in one part to ten to the power 120. Okay? If it's one part in 10 to the power 120 too much, no universe. One part in 10 to the power 120 too little, no universe, or no life-sustaining universe anyway. To give you some idea of how insanely huge that number is, that's that's 10 with 120 zeros after it, um, uh, they reckon there's uh there's only been 10 to the power 20 seconds uh in cosmic time, okay? Um in terms of the number of atoms in the universe, there's about 10 to the power 80 atoms in the universe. This number is just vast beyond all imagining, and it makes a lot of people think um, is there something more to this universe going on? Is there fine-tuning, is there design? The very fact that science works and the very fact that we live in a universe that can be explored scientifically has made a lot of people think maybe there's a God. Science has not led people away from God, quite to the contrary, science for a lot of people has led them uh straight to God. Now, uh let me think about let's think about why it is that that science might work. Do you want to pick up uh one of these John's Gospels? So um have a look at one nearby. You make sure everyone's uh turn to the first page, it's actually page four here. And I want to show you why it is that we might live in a universe in which science is even possible. Um I think this part of the Bible, it's a biography of Jesus, one of the four biographies of Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This is John. And uh the very first sentence gives a fantastic foundation for science. John chapter 1, verse 1. Do you see the heading? It says, The word became flesh. It says, In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. If you want to know more about this verse, come again tonight and I'll explain more about this verse. But just for now, we've got this idea of a word that God's got an explanation, a communication. In Greek, the language that this is written in, it's the word logos. We get the word logic from it. Logos, logic. In the beginning, there was a rationality. In the beginning, there was purpose. In the beginning, there was meaning, there was a word. So no wonder there's a universe that operates according to logic, according to rationality. Okay? So here we've got this foundation for a world that obeys logical laws and things like that. But then if you let your eye go down to verse 14, sentence number 14, do you see the little number 14, about two-thirds of the way down the page? It says, This word, this logic, this logos, 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 not only do you have a logic to the universe, this logic has shown up on planet Earth. So there's sort of an anchoring of the laws of nature and the world out there. And also, this word became flesh, became a human being. And John, who's writing this, says, we've seen him and we've seen his glory. Because according to the Bible, we are able to understand and comprehend this person who is the logic of the cosmos. We are able to actually grasp the deepest mysteries of the cosmos. We are intended to grasp them. And so our minds in here and the world out there and the laws of logic out there, well, of ta of course they triangulate. I think the fact that science works makes a lot of sense if Christianity is true. If there is no logic prior to the universe, then why should science work? And if there's nothing special about humanity, we're just one speck on one rock hurtling through a chaotic space, why should we be able to understand the mysteries of the universe? I think if Christianity is true, you get a really great foundation for science. You've got this one who is logic who shows up on planet Earth. Now, you won't be surprised to learn that person is Jesus. And that's what the rest of this gospel is all about. So that you can get to understand this logos, this rationality, this one who was there in the beginning. That's who we think Jesus Christ is. It's quite an introduction to a biography, isn't it? Here is the one who is the rationality of all uh reality. Come come get to know him. That's what John's gospel is. And I'd love you to keep on reading this and uh and discover for yourself who he is. Because I think it's great to understand the mechanisms of the world. Really great. But don't you also want to understand the meaning? And wouldn't it be fantastic to understand the maker who's behind it all? That's what is on offer here with John's Gospel. And I'll just finish with this Dreamboat, Brian Cox. My wife loves Brian Cox. Um, grrr. Anyway, she he he uh he did this uh uh documentary on the large hadron collider a couple of years ago, and he says, here is why, here is why you want to smash together particles at huge velocities. He says, 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 stare at the face of creation. Now I find that really interesting. What does he want to do? He wants to smash together particles. What does he want at the end of it all? He wants a face. A face to creation. Now I I think he's putting words to what we all want of reality. Yes, we want the mechanisms, but we also want the meaning and we also want the maker. The trouble is, if you only smash particles together, you're just gonna find out more about particles and about energy and about laws of nature. You're only gonna discover more about mechanisms. If you want a face, what are you gonna have to do? Well, I recommend what you do is pick up what this John's gospel and see what happens when the logos, the law of all things, showed up with a human face, not just to say, I am a grand architect of all things, bow to me, but I am a God of love who's come to you and you can get to know me face to face. So I actually think a great scientific investigation you could do would be to maybe shoot up a prayer and say, God, show me your face in Jesus Christ and read. And then you'll discover not just the mechanism, but also the meaning and the maker. Cool, that's it for me. Uh in terms of generating questions, do we want to first do you do you want to lead this bit, Karis? Yeah. Okay, great. So how are we gonna Is there a place or need for evolution of religion in the light of changing science? I think you s you see things like that happening all the time. I mean, ever since 1950, the the Roman Catholic Church uh have officially said that that they believe in macroevolution. Um and I can't think of a pope who who hasn't himself, so the largest denomination uh of Christianity worldwide. Um does that mean that religion itself needs to change some of its dogma because of the assured findings of science? Um I think um the assured findings of science are never that assured, are they? There's always tentative, um, in fact, it's it's got to be held tentatively, hasn't it? Um the whole of the scientific enterprise is all about, well, can you falsify this thing? And let's try our hardest to falsify it. And you know, the certain uh paradigms that uh people have held dear, have toppled one after the other after the other. And so absolutely the the way that people have read the Bible has changed in different ways. Not um not hugely, I don't think, um, because I again I don't think the Bible is a book largely about the mechanism of how the world works, but it's far more about the meaning of the world and the maker behind it. So actually, I I don't think the evolution of Christian dogma um has happened uh or does has has had to happen um hugely because of the findings of science. A, because scientific findings are themselves tentative and we need to um figure out what's going on there, and then b because I think the Bible is is a book largely about meaning and maker more than mechanism. Um but absolutely um Christians have thought of things in different ways. You know, does the does the earth revolve around the sun, or does the sun revolve around the earth? Um, you know, actually the church had been held captive to a certain uh Ptolemaic kind of astronomy that that saw astronomy in a certain way. Not not particularly a biblical view of astronomy, but the church uh had this kind of scientific paradigm, and then you have people like Copernicus and Galileo saying, No, well, what about this paradigm? And it it was a Horrible kind of shift of gears as those two kind of understandings of the world interacted with one another, but you did see change on those things. So hope that gives some kind of beginning to an answer about that. And if you want to talk more, uh, be really up for chatting afterwards. Does anyone have any questions to go off of that? So macroevolution in terms of from microbes to man. Um, as opposed to, you know, Darwin's finches, you know, everybody looks at the the finches on the Galapagos Islands, and yes, they get bigger and and they they change. Um and so that that might be an example of microevolution of within a species. There's all sorts of changes that go on. Macroevolution, I'm reserving, as a as a as a title for um species turning into other species. Yeah?

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Yeah.

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So the question is, um does that mean that Christians in general believe in macro but not micro? Um for those, okay, so so for instance, the Pope would believe in both. Um and those who don't um go all the way with um evolution, what they don't go all the way with is macroevolution, so from man to microbe, from microbes to man uh kind of stuff. But there's no, there's no I've never met a Christian who denies that Darwin's finches, they change in beak size and that there's all sorts of adaptation and change that happens within species. Um I guess it's it's difficult because Christians do take a number of different views on the question of evolution. And I'm trying to I'm trying to represent Christians rather than give it a view of my own. But if I can if I can try and embrace all Christians, I think there's no there's no creationist who denies that microevolution happens. There's no creationist that denies that things, species change within themselves. Um but for those Christians and many of them who embrace macroevolution, um, there's none of them who think that natural selection is the entirety of the picture about how we've got to where we are. So all of us believe in natural selection. Um, none of us think that natural selection is the whole story in terms of how we've got to where we are. It's a really good question. Very good question. Um, we might be using truth in a different sense. So um when when we say something is true, a scientist means it correlates to reality as we have discovered it experimentally and we've tested it thoroughly. When a Christian says something is true, do they mean it in the same sense? Is that getting at the heart? Yeah, that's getting at the heart of the question. Okay. Um yes. Um, but I I think I think what everyone believes is that scientific truth is not the only truth, really. So um, Rachel, the botanist, at the beginning of my talk, we all agree. Rachel, well done. You have mapped the genome of the rose. Fantastic. That and that's all true, but there might be another kind of truth that you are blind to. The other kind of truth is about the meaning behind things. There's a communication going on. You know, in the same way I kissed my wife goodbye this morning, I describe it as I kissed my wife goodbye. I don't describe it as we had a juxtaposition of two aurus muscles in the state of contraction. Okay? Both statements are true. Um and it's it's difficult to say which one is more true, isn't it? Like, what's more true? Did we have a juxtaposition of two orus muscles in the state of contraction, or did we kiss each other? Which is more true? It's a it's a it's a difficult question to answer, isn't it? Um so Christianity is more interested in claims like we kissed than claims like there was two aurus muscles in the state of contraction, right? That's that's that's more what Christianity is is is interested in. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great question, great question. So, how do I know that it's Christianity that is oh, is this um previous. Yeah, how do I know that it's Christianity, um, the the Christian God that is the God behind the fine-tuned universe and this sort of thing? Um, I've got a quote here that I didn't actually read out. It's from Paul Davies, who's not a Christian. Um he doesn't he does he's a believer in God, and he says this the really amazing thing is not that life on earth is balanced on a knife edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife edge and would be total chaos if any of the natural constants were off even slightly. Now, he's not a Christian per se. Um he's a theist, a believer in God, and and and a Muslim, for instance, could totally um subscribe to that. So when I talk about the fine-tuning, I'm not making a particularly Christian argument, I'm making a more theistic argument.

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Are they all who the engineer?

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Yeah, that's one aspect of it. Um, and so and so I would say, yeah, the particularly Christian answer to how you know who the engineer is, is look at Jesus. Um, he is the one who shows up on planet Earth to say, ta-da, here I am, check me out. So that's that's stage one to my answer, why I think it's a Christian God. Stage two to my answer is I actually think, because of the verses that we've looked at, um, it is Christianity in particular that grounds science better than Islam, better than theism in general, and that is because the word became flesh. That is because in Christianity we've got the logos, the logic of everything, has come and earthed himself into our humanity and wants humanity to understand him on those sorts of terms. I think Christianity gives unique tools that enable you to do science that Islam and theism in general don't. So those would be the two things that I think differentiate Christianity. Yeah. I'll take them in reverse order. The church casts out loads of science people, they have done. Isn't that horrible? Yep. Yeah, that's not good. Although there is a kind of a mythology around sort of the Galileo story that really needs investigating. Um it's not as it is popularly imagined. Galileo was a bit of a um, yeah, uh loner. Um and so you need to, yeah, you need to press beyond just the the caricature of the God versus science kind of mythology. Um but yes, yes, sometimes the church has treated scientists badly. On the other hand, um modern science has grown up precisely in Christian cultures and Christian contexts, and I think one of the immense gifts of Christianity to the world is modern science the way that we do it. Um so you gotta you've got to balance those two things. Working backwards, what was the penultimate thing he said? Um why do we have to make meanings and get God involved? Why do we have to make meanings and get God involved? We're already living as though life is meaningful. In fact, in order to do science, you've got to believe that there's some kind of meaning. Why would you, at the Large Hadron Collider, just keep on smashing particles together and keep on trying to get these equations to work? Why do you want to do that? Because you think there is order to the universe. Because you think that the next layer is going to be meaningful. You don't think that the next layer is going to be, oh, it's just a crapshoot and nobody knows, right? You think that there is even in the laboratory, you think there is meaning to the universe. And if you don't think there's meaning, then you're suddenly disincentivized for actually going into the laboratory and doing the science. But that's even just at the scientific level. When you leave the laboratory, we all work, we all operate as though there's meaning to our lives that goes beyond the scientific, goes beyond the naturalistic. We all will hit that our heads will hit the pillow tonight, and what will be greatest about today will be human relationships, will be back and forth, give and take, face to face, love, truth, beauty, goodness. That's what will be most important to us today, no matter whether you're doing a physical science here at Reading or not. Um, so it's not that that religion is trying to get meaning involved in stuff. It's that life just is meaningful and everyone in this room lives as though there is meaning. And I'm just saying, why not get curious about that? Why not get curious about the fact that the universe is full not only of mechanisms, but it is full of meaning, and maybe that does point to a maker. Why not do more investigation? Why not, you know, probe further into this universe and see whether there's there's truth beyond what you can discover in the laboratory? That's all I'm saying.

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That was Glenn Scrivener talking to students at Reading University last week. Before we go, do you like devotional content? And by that I mean sort of material you pray through or Bible readings you do each day. If so, you'll love Glenn's series, Reading Between the Lines. Each day he takes a phrase from the Bible and reflects on it for a few minutes. You can get it via YouTube or as a podcast. And there'll be a link on the website. Just go to speaklife.org.uk slash tep, and you'll find a link there to reading between the lines. Also, if you'd like to get more of these episodes of the Evangelist Podcast, don't forget to subscribe. Again, just go to speaklife.org.uk slash tep. And it's a mobile friendly page. There are links to leave a rating and review as well as subscribe, etc. Anyway, that's it for now. Thanks very much for listening and speak to you next time.