10 Top Christians in Science on Science and Faith

we are here to talk about big questions maybe the biggest question of all does God exist I won't give you a proof tonight but I hope I will give you some things to think about things that have led me from being an atheist to becoming a believer and a follower of Jesus perhaps the most widespread fundamental assumption in the intellectual West today is that there is no reality beyond what natural science discovers and that there is no authority or good higher than the freedom of the individual now both science and individual freedom are good but followers of Jesus like me have a different view we believe that both the deepest reality and the highest moral meaning or good authority are to be found in loving relationship why is nature regular why does it follow regular laws that even why can we understand them and we're so used to these ideas today that we don't realize that they're worth actually that obvious to most people through most time and the reason for that is if you just live in the natural world doesn't seem to be always that regular it seems to be capricious it changes itself all the time and so what you can show I think quite quite um decisively historically is that these ideas these metaphysical underpinnings of science uniformity regularity intelligibility have deep theological roots the roots go back to a long history of theological reflection on a God who is faithful and sustains the world therefore in a regular way but just simply the idea that the universe could be expanding not not sort of expanding into something but just that the space-time metric changes and that it could be a beginning of time it's just incredible I mean if you go back to before Einsteins where can you go to Newtonian world you know there's basically a coordinate system there's X Y Z and T right and these are just fixed and things happen in this grid and you describe physical processes and events by putting them in the screen and the idea that the universe was changing which is completely ludicrous to many people and then along comes Einstein and now we realize that space-time not only can expand and contract but through the work of Hubble it actually is the universe is expanding and so if you play it back there was a time when the universe was incredibly small and tiny that to me is just mind-boggling and it actually adds to yet again as to my sort of confidence that the creation story has somewhere I certainly have colleagues who speak very much the way I used to speak you know like how can you believe in something that you can't you know prove mathematically or show in this way in fact for mine who's a mathematician used to say that to me how can you believe in something that you know you can't prove I only believe in things I can prove and then one day he was reading a history book and his his friend who happen to be a Christian said you know why are you reading that history book you can't prove any of that and he realized there there's a lot of truth that has happened in the past that we can't prove today like you can a mathematical and furthermore of course all of our science and our math rest upon axioms and things that we take at face so people who think that they can't deal with faith are really just deceiving themselves so what I'm fond of saying I'll say it again tonight is I don't have the faith to be an atheist to me the universe does require an explanation the philosophers very ancient question of why is there something rather than nothing it's still a valid question and as many people including physicist Paul Davies have pointed out the laws of physics themselves demand an explanation that stands somehow out of science whether that is a physical explanation or spiritual explanation nature is not self explanatory and ultimately if I had to tell someone why I am a theist it is because precisely I think that nature as we see it Nick requires an explanation and the more we know of the world from science the more it begs that explanation I start by saying there is a God who created the universe and he's not an impersonal God he has declared himself as a loving God who seeks a relationship with us and also gives us free will to choose him or not and our purpose then is found in being in relationship with him the ordering structure of the master all natural laws to me suggests a God who ordained and conceived those laws the astonishing complexity of living things to me suggests an architect who cares about those things the fact that there is something rather than nothing suggests the existence of a creator of that something and the fend indeed one of the joys I have been studying the natural sciences is that I learn a little bit about what God has done and in the process I think I come to understand a little bit of what he is like he is much bigger much grander much more awesome much more majestic than I would have previously imagined see science it provides a set of tools that are useful for investigating phenomena in the natural world as powerful as it may be for dissecting planetary motion in battling cancer it's not really intended for questions like why did life-forms originate in the first place we were free to speculate opine and have our beliefs but science is not equipped to answer questions like this this doesn't itself mean let me be clear here that there is an answer somewhere else it just means that we have to be faithful to what science is and that we can't extend the purview of science beyond what it is capable of addressing the Lord led me to genetics and I don't have time to get in that story but it's a fascinating story how he made me into genetics it was not what I had planned to do but my I'm so happy I did I can't imagine myself doing anything else but I see it all as part of his plan to leave me to that and to help me to see identity in a whole different way and when I think about my own identity I think of Christ and how he created us he created us in His image so we had identity with him and then we sinned and His grace talked about brings His grace through his grace he wanted to bring us back in relationship with him and to bring us back in identity with him

Channel: The Veritas Forum

Views: 132,002

Keywords: francis collins, rosalind picard, ard louis, jonathan feng, charmaine royal, ian hutchinson, troy van voorhis, daniel hastings, praveen sethuapthy

Id: W8XmXSMxXHQ

Length: 6min 28sec (388 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 26 2017