Thinking Christianly about Science

1. Thinking Christianly about Science Dr. Ard Louis Department of Physics University of Oxford www.cis.org.uk www.faraday-institute.org www.cpgrad.org.uk

2. Cross-cultural, broad-brush talk • Christian sub-culture(s) • Scientific sub-cultures • culture is often “caught” not “taught” Words Customs Traditions Behaviour Beliefs Values Assumptions

3. Biological self-assembly http://www.npn.jst.go.jp/Keiichi Namba, Osaka • Biological systems self-assemble (they make themselves) • Can we understand? • Can we emulate? (Nanotechnology)

4. Virus self-assembly Self-assembled from identical subunits (capsomers). Characteristic number T. Capsid T: 12 pentamers, 10(T - 1) hexamers. viruses 9/9/2014

5. Self-assembly of “computer viruses” Computer viruses? Monte-Carlo simulations: stochastic optimisation http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/user/IainJohnson/

6. Self-assembly with legos?

7. Science has proven: There is no God Christian reaction: Fear?

8. Science and faith? Big, fun! questions: Is there a God? Is there more to life than this? How do I obtain reliable knowledge about the world? Some Christian and Islamic writers seem unwilling to examine deeply held beliefs, presumably because they are afraid that this kind of thing is bad news for faith. Well, maybe it is -- for intellectually deficient and half-baked ideas. But it doesn’t need to be like this. There are intellectually robust forms of faith -- the kind of thing we find in writers such as Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, and C.S. Lewis. They weren’t afraid to think about their faith, and ask hard questions about its evidential basis, its internal consistency, or the adequacy of its theories Alister McGrath in Finding Dawkins’ God, Blackwell (2004)

9. OUTLINE • What does the Bible say about the natural world? • Thinking about science and certainty • The Origins debate ...

10. The Bible • B] The Bible, as originally given, is the inspired, inerrant and infallible word of God. Christians must therefore submit to its supreme authority and sufficiency, both individually and corporately, in every matter of belief and conduct. • South East Gospel Partnership DB

11. Biblical or cultural?

12. Interpreting the Bible • What kind of language? • What kind of literature? • What kind of audience? • What kind of context? • The antidote to bad interpretation is not no interpretation, but good interpretation, based on common sense guidelines • G. Fee and D. Stuart, “How to Read the Bible for All It Is Worth”, Zondervan (1993), p17

13. God reveals himself through nature • Romans 1:18 18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

14. God reveals himself through nature • Psalm 19: 1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.

15. God reveals himself through nature • Psalm 8: 3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? Milky way: 100 Billion stars Universe: 100 Billion galaxies "he also made the stars" .. Gen 1:16

16. God reveals himself through nature

17. “The work of a scientist in this project, particularly a scientist who has the joy of also being a Christian, is a work of discovery which can also be a form of worship. As a scientist, one of the most exhilarating experiences is to learn something….that no human has understood before. To have a chance to see the glory of creation, the intricacy of it, the beauty of it, is really an experience not to be matched. Scientists who do not have a personal faith in God also undoubtedly experience the exhilaration of discovery. But to have that joy of discovery, mixed together with the joy of worship, is truly a powerful moment for a Christian who is also a scientist” Francis Collins Director, National Human Genome Research Institute, USA See also his book “The Language of God” (2006) Thinking Christianly about the natural world.... • Wonder and Worship • Fearfully and wonderfully made ...

18. God reveals himself through nature • Austrian Alps “It was a beautiful afternoon and suddenly the remarkable beauty of creation around me was so overwhelming, I felt, ‘I cannot resist this another moment’.” -- Francis Collins on his conversion.

19. God created and sustains the world • “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” Gen 1:1 • “All things were made by him, and without him ws not anything made that was made” John 1:3 • “For by him [Christ] all things were created … and in him all things hold together” Col 1:16,17 • “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory … sustaining all things by his powerful word” Heb 1:3 • “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things and by your will they existed and were created”, Rev 4:11

20. Biblical language of creation • He makes springs pour water into ravines;it flows between the mountains; the wild donkeys quench their thirstPsalm 104: 10,11 (praising God’s creation) • "Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food? Job 38:39-41 • For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates (bara’)the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth—the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name! Amos 4:13 • “Natural” processes are described both as divine and non-divine actions • 2 perspectives on the same natural world

21. ‘Science’ studies the “Customs of the Creator” • If God were to stop “sustaining all things” the world would stop existing • Donald MacKay, The Clockwork Image, IVP • “An act of God is so marvelous that only the daily doing takes off the admiration” • John Donne (Eighty Sermons, #22 published in 1640) • “Miracles” are not God “intervening in the laws of nature”: they are God working in less customary ways

22. Interpreting the Bible • What kind of language? • What kind of literature? • What kind of audience? • What kind of context? • All truth is God’s truth, so, properly interpreted, science and the Bible cannot contradict

23. Bible is not a science textbook • The whole point of scripture is to bring us to a knowledge of Christ --- and having come to know him (and all that this implies), we should come to a halt and not expect to learn more. Scripture provides us with spectacles through which we may view the world as God’s creation and self-expression; it does not, and was never intended, to provide us with an infallible repository of astronomical and medical information. John Calvin 1509-1564

24. The Bible... • The Bible: • God created the world • Nature attests to God’s qualities (Rom 1, Psalms) • God sustains the universe • Biblical language of Divine action (God sent the rain) • Bible is not a science textbook, but ... • world has a beginning • stars, sun, and moon are not Gods etc...

25. OUTLINE • What does the Bible say about the natural world? • Thinking about science and certainty • The Origins debate ...

26. Science/Religion and the conflict metaphor? “Science and religion cannot be reconciled ... Religion has failed, and its failures should be exposed. Science, with its currently successful pursuit of universal competence … should be acknowledged the king” --Prof Peter Atkins, Oxford U, in 1995

27. Science/Religion and the conflict metaphor? “I don’t know any historian of science, of any religious persuasion or none, who would hold to the theory that conflict is the name of the game between science and religion, it simply isn’t true.” --Prof Colin Russell, Open University, UK

28. Science/Religion and the conflict metaphor? • Pervasive myth (Emperor has no clothes?) • Scientists are about as religious as the general population (e.g. Oxford Physics) • e.g. Galileo example far more complex • Really about Aristotle/Greek cosmology • “Galilieo Connection”, Prof Charles Hummel, IVP (1986)

29. Christian origins of science • Science has deeply Christian roots. • Uniformity • Rationality • Intelligibility • See e.g. books by Stanley Jaki; R. Hooykaas; e.g. China • Royal Society, the word’s first scientific society. Founded in London July 15, 1662, many were Puritans

30. Founders of Royal Society • “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent being.” • Sir Isaac Newton

31. Founders of Royal Society • Wrote “The Wisdom of God Manifested in Works of Creation”, governor of the “Corporation for the Spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England • Sir Robert Boyle(1627-1691)

32. Mechanism v.s. Meaning • Conflating mechanism and meaning is origin of most confusion why is the water boiling?

33. Nothing Buttery enough Fe for 1 nail enough P for 2000 matches enough fat to make 10 bars of soap enough Cl to disinfect a swimming pool humans are collections of chemicals:

34. Nothing Buttery enough Fe for 1 nail enough P for 2000 matches enough fat to make 10 bars of soap enough Cl to disinfect a swimming pool humans are collections of chemicals:

35. Nothing Buttery enough Fe for 1 nail enough P for 2000 matches enough fat to make 0.1 bars of soap enough Cl to disinfect a swimming pool humans are collections of chemicals:

36. Scientism “The cosmos is all there is or ever was or ever will be” Carl Sagan, Cornell U “The most important questions in life are not susceptible to solution by the scientific method” Bill Newsome, Stanford U.

37. Limits of Science? Science is a great and glorious enterprise - the most successful, I argue, that human beings have ever engaged in. To reproach it for its inability to answer all the questions we should like to put to it is no more sensible than to reproach a railway locomotive for not flying or, in general, not performing any other operation for which it was not designed. -- Sir Peter Medawar, The Limits of Science, (Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987))

38. God of the gaps? that couldn’t have happened by “natural means” --> God into the gap “When we come to the scientifically unknown, our correct policy is not to rejoice because we have found God; it is to become better scientists” Prof. Charles Coulson, Oxford U

39. Newton and the planets • “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent being.” • Sir Isaac Newton

40. Newton and the planets 18th century Orrery from a London coffee house, used to show the perfection of the orbits, which reflect God’s perfection

41. Leibnitz objects “For, as Leibniz objected, if God had to remedy the defects of his creation, this was surely to demean his craftmanship” • John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion, CUP 1991, p147

42. Immediatism: Leibniz objects • “And I hold, that when God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God”

43. Laplace and Napoleon • Mécanique Céleste (1799-1825) • Napoleon: Why have you not mentioned the creator? • "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.”

44. Chaos and the planets • Our understanding of the Solar System has been revolutionized over the past decade by the finding that the orbits of the planets are inherently chaotic. In extreme cases, chaotic motions can change the relative positions of the planets around stars, and even eject a planet from a system. • The role of chaotic resonances in the Solar System, N. Murray and M. Holman, Nature 410, 773-779 (12 April 2001)

45. Populism and Paley • God only present through interventions? • God present in the whole thing? - (providence - sustains all things ... Col 1:15) Natural laws -- customs of the creator Miracles -- God working in un-customary ways • always for a theological purpose

46. Arguments from science: • Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics • Fine-tuning in cosmology

47. Schrödinger equation (Quantum Mechanics) Energy-Momentum (Special Relativity) = Dirac Equation (1928) Electrons Positrons (antimatter) discovered 1932 Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics Quantum Mechanics + Relativity = Antimatter + See also: “The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem”, Mark Steiner HUP (1998); E. Wigner "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960)

48. Science and Beauty A Scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. Henri Poincaré 1854 – 1912

49. Fine Tuning and the Anthropic Principle • “The universe is the way it is, because we are here” – Prof. Stephen Hawking, Cambridge U • If the [fine structure constant] were changed by 1%, the sun would immediately explode -- Prof. Max Tegmark, U. Penn • “Just Six Numbers” by Sir Martin Rees

50. We are made of StardustHe C via a resonance • Sir Fred Hoyle, Cambridge U • “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics .. and biology” • His atheism was “deeply shaken”