On this episode of the Evangelist Podcast, we're looking at some of the big questions of life. And this week we're going to look at what about science?
SPEAKER_01The Evangelist Podcast from Revival. Find out what's new in telling people the good news about God, the world, and you. With Andy Brinkley and Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to the Evangelist Podcast. I hope you like listening each week. If so, why not leave us a review on iTunes? We've set up a simple forwarding link for you to go straight to the podcast on iTunes. Just go to revivalmedia.org slash iTunes, and you can leave us a rating and a review. We'd be very happy if you could do that for us. So today, Glenn, we're going to be looking at what about science?
SPEAKER_00Yay.
SPEAKER_02Science has disproved the Bible, hasn't it, Glenn?
SPEAKER_00Alright. Certainly some of the great scientists of the past not only did would they have disagreed with that, they would have seen uh the Bible to have given them a framework in which to do science, and I and I I would say science assumes a whole view of the world, a whole view of our minds, a whole view of um the discoverability of laws, the rational uh th the ability to analyze those laws and apply them consistently over time and across the cosmos and the ability o of the human mind to uh refine theories and all those sorts of things. All of that kind of d depends on a very uh well a a view of human nature and a view of the cosmos that sounds very biblical to me, actually. So interestingly, uh there was uh Brian Cox, he's sort of the the the darling of uh sort of BBC science documentaries at the moment. And uh I remember he did uh a fascinating uh documentary on the Large Hadron Collider. This was a couple of years ago. And he he he he basically said, Look, um physics is stuck. We don't know how to go forwards, we don't know how to find verification for some of our theories, but we need this verification in in in order to keep going. So we've built the large hadron collider, and uh in doing so we want to smash together particles at hugely high velocities, and then he said this phrase, in order to stare at the face of the cosmos. Which is an interesting way of putting it. He he wants to find a face at the bottom of all things. He wants to find personality at the bottom of all things. And I guess what a what a Christian says with the Bible in hand is go for your life and smash particles together as much as you like, and you'll find out a heck of a lot about particles. But you won't discover a face by smashing together particles. Um you'll discover m about more particles. And hallelujah, praise God, you're discovering more about, you know, the physical universe. But if you really want to understand about the face of the cosmos, well you you're going to have to study a person who's entered into the cosmos and said, Here I am. That's what the Bible's about.
SPEAKER_02And you know, the Bible was written two thousand plus years ago, and it wasn't meant to be written in the science language of our day today. Sure. Um some of its poetry and some of its history and you know um. So when we look at it through scientific glasses, we often come up pick it up the wrong end of the stick because of how we look at it, in authority over it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02As it were.
SPEAKER_00I mean, you know, so how how is God going to author a book that is going to be relevant to uh you know a fifth century BC Shepherd as well as a twenty-first century astrophysicist, as well as, you know, if if Jesus tarries a twenty-fifth century brain surgeon. Like to expect to expect the Bible to uh speak in the language of a twenty-first century scientist is obviously ridiculous. But perhaps even more ridiculous than that, to imagine that the twenty-first century scientist is the pinnacle of all things, by which all else must be judged, that's the real hubris. That's the really proud position. Um because I I imagine in two hundred years' time the things that we think of as absolutely common sense scientific fact right now will seem as ridiculous and deluded as phrenology seems to us now when we look back at Victorian times, you know.
SPEAKER_02There's a quote, and I can't remember who who said it, but um they said, Thus we climb up to the top of hill of discovery, and that we reach the very pinnacle, and we find that there are theologians sitting there for centuries, you know. Well, yeah, I mean Some things come full circle like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean I mean the Big Bang is sort of a uh an obvious example of that. You know, only within the last hundred years have scientists said we think that there was a beginning of time and space. Uh and of course people kind of resisted that at the time because it sounded incredibly religious. It sounded like Genesis, for goodness sakes.
SPEAKER_02And again with the with the Big Bang, uh John Gribbin in his book The Matter Myth, he says many people misunderstand the Big Bang. Uh it wasn't an explosion in space, it was the explosive appearance of space.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02But what was creation of yeah. Except the explosive appearance of space.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yeah, and I mean that that sounds very much like let there be light to me. Which is not to say I mean, I again there's lots of people questioning the Big Bang Theory and and in fifty years' time it that might be completely out the window. Might be completely. And and therefore I think we should, you know, we should sit loose to these scientific theories either way. W you know, whether we think they prove the Bible or disprove the Bible, you know, if if we're wedded to the scientific you know w what's what's what's the saying? If uh that the church that's wedded to the theories of of this generation will be widowed in the next generation. And I think that that goes uh just as much for science as for any other kind of worldview.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Okay, so if someone came to you and and sort of said, Oh well, you know, I don't believe any of that, I'm a scientist, or I think that all this spirituality is just mumbo jumbo.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Um what would your response be to that? I would kind of encourage them to be a good scientist. I think y the way you do good science is determined by what you're studying. So if you want to study microbiology, get yourself a microscope. If you want to do astronomy, get yourself a telescope. If you want to study God, then get yourself a Bible. Get yourself a Bible. Exactly. Exactly. Um Yeah, especially if you want to study um the word of God. See, you know, so biology is the logos, the loggy, the l the logos of bios, you know, the word of life. Theology is, you know, the word of God. So absolutely get a get a Bible and and have a look at the historic figure of Jesus of Nazareth, because you know, he claims to be God walking the earth. And uh John in his first epistle makes these incredible claims for um who Jesus is and and uh and how we should uh take these claims. 1 John 1 says, uh that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, says John, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at, and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the word of life, which is word of life biology. Word of life. The life appeared, says John, we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life. That is Jesus, the Son of God, who was with the Father and has appeared to us. So John says that God has appeared on planet Earth, the word of life has appeared on planet Earth, and he proclaims him to us, and therefore the way to study this truth is uh is historically, really, uh to be a good historian, to have a look at this eyewitness testimony that John says he's uh he's offering and to weigh it up in in those sorts of terms. Um And at that stage the scientist sort of says, Oh, but that's history, that's not science. And I think at that stage you you sort of say, Well, there are loads of things that I know that I believe in, that I trust, and have good reasons for trusting in that I cannot put into a test tube. I know that my wife loves me. I can't put that into a test tube and and you know, but I know uh I know my my wife is faithful to me, but that doesn't mean I I scientifically, you know, get a private investigator and follow her everywhere, because that actually might do the opposite. Yeah, that might actually intrude into the trust relationship. And and there's all sorts of relationships like that. There's all sorts of things that we know, we don't know them scientifically. Even maths, we don't know maths scientifically, and yet you can't do science without maths. Even logic, you can't test logic scientifically and yet you can't do science without it. So any fool who says that you have to test all things by science sort of cuts their own, you know, cuts the branch on which they're sitting on, you know, because there are all sorts of things that you're already assuming by doing science that science cannot itself prove. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So what if uh you know uh perhaps a new Christian comes and s says, Oh, I'm I'm a bit w wary because I don't know what to say how to answer these scientific questions. Um I guess it's taking taking your own personal experience and sharing from that point of view.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and you know, and and praising God for science and and being very pro-science as far as it goes, with with you know, your friend who's asking those questions. I I rejoice in discovering more and more about the world in which we live, the world that I believe was made by Jesus and loved by Jesus. And so of course I love this world, and of course I love studying it, of course I love being very inquisitive about it, of course I love following in the footsteps of the wisdom of Solomon, who was this incredible botanist and biologist and philosopher and you know, a a scientist of his day, and you know, he he could, you know, tell you all about the uh all about the plant life, all about the animal life in i in Israel, and you know, a zoologist as well, you know. Um so I'm I'm all for studying this world. But if if, as Brian Cox says, the way you discover the face of the cosmos is by smashing particles together, at that point I go, no no no no, don't be silly. You know. If you want a face, then look to the word of life who appeared, you know, study him. The one behind it. And then you then you'll get a face. And when you get a face, when you when you study when you understand the one behind it all, then you have every reason in the world to go back into the world and and to and to join the large Hadron Collider and all the scientists there and to and to explore Jesus' world. And then you've got really good reasons for doing it. I think I think atheism itself undercuts the practice of science in a major way. Because I think you need all sorts of beliefs about the comprehensibility of the universe, about the about the fact that our minds don't just process things according to our survival value, but process things according to truth and according to reality. You have to have that belief about our minds that that our minds deal in truth, that the universe deals in reliable laws that sort of correspond to one another. You have to have these very developed beliefs that atheism itself won't give you. But a belief in Jesus, who is the word of life, who comes into the world, and and who wants to be known by us, as soon as you believe in him, then you believe in a comprehensible universe, you believe in truth, you believe in an ordered world, and suddenly you have you have the tools in which science makes sense. And you go, hooray, let's all go off to the large hadron collider and smash particles together. But let's not think that smashing particles together is going to answer the deepest issues of life.
SPEAKER_02Glenn, I've heard you do the uh the cake analogy before.
SPEAKER_00Can you I forget who I ripped it off, and I'm sure they ripped it off somebody else as well. But um a very helpful, very simple sort of uh analogy about sort of the limits of science um is um you know, imagine imagine I'm holding a cake before you and it's a beautiful cake and it's you know lovely made and succulent and all those things. Uh but imagine I I take it into um laboratories and on the first floor I take it to the nutritionist. The nutritionist is able to sort of reverse engineer the recipe and come up with every single ingredient and exactly how I cooked it, and then I take it to the the the biologist, and the biologist is able to tell me, you know, how many calories are in it and all that sort of thing, and I'll stick my fingers in my ears. Who cares? I'll still eat the cake, but uh and then I'll give it to the chemist, and the chemist will talk about the chemical compounds in the in the thing, and I'll take it to the physicist, and the physicist can talk about the I don't know, the mass or who knows who knows what the physicist might be able to tell me about about the cake. And at the end of the at the end of that day of of of you know analysis on the cake, I will learn things that I didn't know, things that will be very helpful for me in order to, you know, make better cakes in the future. All of that, fantastic, praise God for all of that. But none of them can tell me why the cake was baked. You know, and and if I told you that the cake was baked for my wife's birthday, you go, oh, okay, fantastic, right? And we're talking about a different order of truth, a different a different order of meaning at that point. Why is the cake baked? For whom? And science is very good at the what and the how. Very good at the what and the how. And praise God for that. But to imagine that all the questions in the world boil down to the what and the how is to live in a very narrow world that no scientist even lives in. Scientists act as though the what and the how are only part of life and and the who and the for whom and the why. Um those those questions are questions that we live for and and that we cannot do without, but science can't provide us with those answers. So I think it's yeah, uh it's very important to know uh to praise God for science and to be glad for science, but also to see the limits of science. Um it can't answer the deepest questions that we have.
SPEAKER_02Well, we'll uh leave it there for next week, Glenn. Thanks very much. Again, thanks for listening to the Evangelist Podcast, the web address for this episode, where you can comment on this specific show, along with a relevant talk that uh Glenn did regarding uh the issue of science. Just go simply to revivalmedia.org slash T E P nine.