Is Christianity Good for the Scientific University? | Veritas Weekend 2022

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Is Christianity Good for the Scientific University? | Veritas Weekend 2022

April 7, 2022

This program was recorded at the annual Veritas Weekend 2022 event in Boston. The original title was, "Is Christianity Good for the Scientific University?" and featured Cullen Buie, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, Karin Öberg, Professor of Astronomy at Harvard, and Tyler VanderWeele, John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe. And, if you’re interested in more content from Veritas, check out our Beyond the Forum podcast. Visit veritas.org to learn more about the mission of the Veritas Forum and find more resources to explore the ideas that shape our lives.

Transcript

This is the Veritas Forum Podcast, a place for generous dialogue about the ideas that shape our lives. Scientists tend to think that worldviews don't matter. They think that what you think about the world, it doesn't matter.

All that matters is science. They basically have elevated science to God. This is your host, Carly Riegel.

Today, I'm sharing with you a recent conversation from our annual student conference, Veritas Weekend. This event took place in February of 2022 and served to train and inspire our student leaders from across the world. This is the first time we've ever seen a series of videos of the country.

The speakers you will hear from are Karin Öberg of Harvard, Cullen Bui of MIT, and Tyler VanderWeele of Harvard. This conversation was moderated by Bethany Jenkins of the Veritas Forum. She's the host of our other podcast, Beyond the Forum.

Be sure to check it out. Bethany invites these speakers to comment on how they see their scientific research intersecting with their Christian faith, and how this intersection might benefit the academy. This is the first time we've ever seen a series of videos of the world.

We're going to talk about the next series of videos of the world. We're going to talk about the next series of videos of the world. We're going to talk about the next series of videos of the world.

We're going to talk about the next series of videos of the world. We're going to talk about the next series of videos of the world. This is my new friend Karin.

She's at Harvard, and she studies things about planets. I'm not going to ask it on the panel today, but you can talk to her about the Pluto debate afterwards. This is my friend Tyler.

He has a degree in almost every, just check off the degree he has. It's in finance. He can go on about it.

His bio is in there. Very well educated, extremely interesting research. A lot of empirical research, especially on how attending church might actually impact your happiness.

It was season one of the podcasts, not season two. Sorry about that. I wanted to get straight in and just introduce them a little bit.

You guys can read more about them in the program. I wanted to go ahead and ask the question that the panel was prepared to ask was, "Is Christianity good for the scientific university?" I asked them to think about if they were giving an elevator pitch to a colleague who wasn't a Christian necessarily. What would they say to that question? Is Christianity good for the scientific university? We'll start with you, Colin.

Oh, man. It made me go first. Great being here.

I would say yes, and my answer is pretty simple. I think Christianity is good. I think that's really the question.

The only reason people even think that this question is provocative is because some might question whether Christianity is good at all. If Christianity is good, given that it is about our entire universe, then it would be good for everything in the universe. If you can't take some part of the world and say, "Well, Christianity, if it's taken out of there, it's going to be better." Christianity makes everything better.

It's like Chick-fil-A sauce. It makes all the stuff better. [applause] What about you, Karl? Since you took the good, I would say yes, because it's true.

The university is all about finding truths and finding the truth in an integrated way that allows you to explore the universe. What are the little things or the very large things? I think one of the things that we're talking about the crisis of tying in through previous sessions is how do we stay focused on finding the truth when there are so many other things that's going on and so many other goods as well. I think being grounded in the truth really helps you to stay focused on finding and staying true to the mission of the university.

Yeah, Tyler. I'm afraid I'm going to be a little bit more verbose, but try to explain how I think the Chick-fil-A sauce actually works as well. I would also likewise answer the question, yes, I think it's good for science within the university, both from an academic perspective and from an interpersonal perspective.

Academically, I think Christianity allows for an enrichment of interpretation, my own discipline, epidemiology, public health. We've known for a long time that social connectedness affects physical health. When this first came out, it was surprising, but I think Christianity has an explanation for it.

We were created in the image of God. We were created to be with one another. We were created to give ourselves to one another in love, so can enrich interpretation of scientific results.

I think secondly, it can direct research. It can direct us to the most important questions. In treatment of mental health, we often focus on cognitive behavioral therapy and pharmaceutical treatments, and those are important.

Christianity provides other ideas, talks about forgiveness, for example, which the empirical evidence suggests, likewise, is important for promoting and preserving and restoring mental health. It points us to pathways towards flourishing, which we can then examine scientifically. We've got a randomized trial right now and a forgiveness intervention that we're carrying out, but Christianity can help us decide on what questions to ask.

Third, I think theology, along with philosophy, can bring in important conceptual distinctions, essential in the pursuit of truth that Karen was talking about. There's a lot of confusion in the psychology literature about the differences between hope and optimism, but if we turn to theology, we can see that, no, hope is different. Hope doesn't necessarily assume that what desires is going to happen.

It focuses on that possibility, but it doesn't presume it. It also does so in the context of difficulties. And those conceptual distinctions drawing upon the rich theological traditions that we have can provide clarity, can improve our social science.

So I think Christianity enriches our academic pursuits. I think it's also important, interpersonally. I think it's important, as Karen had indicated, to the pursuit of truth, to the commitment to truth.

There's been increasing rates of fabrication, of data, of papers that have to be retracted. I think Christians committed to truth, too honest, are essential for science to operate well. I think Christianity also promotes love within relationships.

I think it promotes students and faculty to try to form relationships, to treat one another with respect, to support one another rather than just always trying to get ahead. And I think that's critical for a scientific community and any academic community to function well. And then lastly, I think having Christians in the university points to the ultimate truth in Jesus Christ points to the end of all truth, the origin of all truth.

And I think we need Christians in the university to witness to that ultimate truth. So in summary, I think Christianity is important for the practice of science in the university and for academic pursuits more generally, once again, both academically and interpersonally, to guide us to the end of our academic and scientific pursuits. Can I build on something he said? Yes.

It's very provocative, he said. Absolutely. So I was struck by what you said about how we can direct our work.

I'll say, you know, just personally, earlier in my career, so I'm a mechanical engineer, earlier in my career, I didn't think about how my faith could direct the path. I'll just be frank. I didn't think about it.

And it's something that I've come to maybe within the last five to ten years is really just kind of trying to take a gospel framework and apply it to my work and think about how can my work promote flourishing. It's actually led to a change in discipline in the sense of like I changed the actual work that I'm doing to try to apply my skills towards things that promote flourishing, because if I have two problems that I can look at, and one of them is going to, in my opinion, you know, contribute to bring in the restoration and the renewal of the world that Jesus started, I'm going to pick that one. And I'm curious, Tyler, are there any ways if, like, for your specific work that, like, how your faith has directed it, where it's like, you know, you chose a problem because of the kind of faith impact of it? Yeah, no, there's certainly been the case for me.

Much of public health is oriented towards physical health, to a certain extent, mental health as well. And I think these are important pursuits, that, you know, as Christians and as people generally, we realize that we care about more than that. We care also about being happy, about having a sense of meaning, about trying to be a good person, about our relationships, and ultimately about our relationship with God as well.

So it's really led me to question the range of outcomes that we're examining in public health and to try to broaden those, to look at these other well-being or flourishing outcomes. And a lot of that work was likewise motivated by my faith. And I think it has helped and continues to help direct my own research pursuits.

Oh, so I was telling them, I have a friend at one of the big banks in New York who's a traitor. And he told me years ago, I mean, well, let me back up one second, you brought Jesus Christ into it so we can talk about him. He's a man who we all claim, who if you claim you're Christian, who rose from the dead.

This is not necessarily a scientific reality that people would claim, but this seems to be crazy people believe this. People don't rise from the dead. One person has to, well, he also rose other people from the dead.

But he rose from the dead and didn't die again. Lazarus eventually died again. Jesus didn't, he rose from the dead.

A bunch of Jewish people at the time changed their worship day from Saturday to Sunday as Andy Crouch calls it was a cultural earthquake. A big thing happened 2,000 years ago. My friend is at this big bank who's a traitor, has said, you know, my job performance is based on objective realities of, do I make the bank money? I could believe in the flying spaghetti monster.

As long as I make the bank money, I will keep a job. I'm curious in the scientific university versus last night we talked about the university in general. This morning we talked about a university in crisis.

In the scientific community, do you guys feel a little freer to believe in the crazy weird parts and miracles of Christianity? War, because your work in some ways is more objectifiable. You can be sick, so it's very hard to disagree with what you're doing. People can't write you off as completely illogical and crazy, even though you might have this crazy belief that's from your dead.

I mean, I am crazy, but yeah. So I'm curious in what ways does believing in Christianity itself, especially the really audacious claims it makes, how does that work with the realities of working in the scientific university? I went first last night. Do you want me to start the car? Sure.

So for me, it's just not been a lack of negatives. I think there's often the expectation that you're going to meet opposition and that people are going to think you're crazy and maybe not want to hire you. I've had none of that, which I think may be being in the hard sciences.

I'm in astrophysics. Again, there is that idea that you can't really question my rationality. I think that is just not going to happen.

But it's actually gone way beyond that. My colleagues have been extremely supportive of that I want to spend my time doing things like this. No one has questioned that I have visible Christian symbols in my office.

That's the first thing you see typically when you walk into my office. I teach a course on science and religion, which is very Christian focused and do a lot of things with students. And I would say all my colleagues either see this as something they don't really care about, I guess, or the indifference, or something.

But most of them, something that's really positive and that they want to help to support. I'm trying to think why is this. I think part of it actually ties back to what Tyler was saying about Christianity is good for interpersonal things and for building up sort of a loving relationship.

I think I'm a convert and I think the way that I changed how, one of the big things that changed for me becoming a Christian is how I saw the research enterprise. And especially how I see the students and the colleagues that are involved with it. I'm obsessive about finding the truth, but even that obsession, not letting that get in the way of treating every person that's part of it as an eternal soul, I think it's really important.

And it turns out that when you go do what's good and true, you get actually truth and goodness coming out of it. And I think it has a really flourishing research group as a result, which people can see. So people do see the fruits of that and I think that makes them less suspicious as well.

So for me it's been just a very, very good thing to be open to Christian within a scientific context. Tyler? Yeah, I mean I do think there's a certain truth to the view that in some ways one's belief system is less likely to be challenged in the hard sciences. There are well established scientific methods and procedures and so long as one sticks with them, there's generally consensus.

And I think in many cases it's viewed as one's own personal beliefs about religion or values are sort of secondary and so less likely to come up in the process of research itself. I mean I certainly think that's the case more in the sciences than in the humanities. But I would also say that some of my hope at least within kind of the biomedical and social sciences as pertaining to public health is to try to change that, to sort of be in a situation where there might be, in fact, more pushback.

Because I think many of these disciplines have developed in such a way that essentially have a secular set of precept positions. And Christians are welcome to participate in that. But the disciplines themselves sort of sidestep the distinctively Christian contribution.

So again with my own discipline, public health, I wonder what are we to make of the fact that when Jesus is healing miracles in the gospel, when the gospel writers say your faith has healed you, the little Greek is your faith has saved you. What is the relationship between healing and health and salvation? I mean likewise from a public health perspective, I think as a Christian I fundamentally believe that the cause of ill health ultimately is sin. The cause of fallenness in this world is sin.

But why doesn't sin come up in our discussions of public health? What role does that have in our thinking about public health? I mean likewise Christianity emphasizes so strongly love. Why don't we talk about love in public health? So some of my hope for the years ahead is to bring more distinctively Christian content into public health. And to try to study these things empirically.

I think doing so will result in more pushback. And I think across disciplines there are probably greater opportunities for intersection of one's Christian faith in beliefs with regard to the actual understanding of the future. In regards to the actual academic content of the discipline, I think we as a Christian community need to work towards more of that.

So yes I think it's less of an issue within the sciences, but I think we should work towards making it more so. And again bringing distinctive Christian content to our academic pursuits. Yeah I totally agree and I think part of the problem is the scientific and engineering community I think has naively thought that these questions of your worldview and your beliefs don't matter.

They think it doesn't matter to your work and that is a very surface level kind of perspective on science and on engineering. I mean there have been many Christians throughout history who were motivated by the fact that the world is useful and the world is beautiful. So they're exploring the world so like in astronomy you're exploring the universe because it's beautiful.

And as an engineer there are things there's utility. I feel myself I'm like a gardener, I'm a gardener of the physical properties of the universe in order to produce useful fruit for the world. And like I think all engineers, so to your point Tyler I think we need to inject these questions because these things do matter.

And you see in fields all over the place where people are pursuing things because they can. And there's never this question of why I'm always you know this is before some of your times but I'm always impacted by the scene in Jurassic Park. I literally wrote Jurassic Park quote right here continue.

Like have you all seen Jurassic Park? Just say what I was going to say. There's a scene in Jurassic Park where one of the people that's visiting the park and everything's about to go haywire and he says your scientists were so effectively he says your scientists were so you know. They were so busy asking if they could they didn't stop to think about if they should.

Exactly and yeah. So we need to. And then death ensues.

Exactly and then people start dying and getting eaten. Kind of actually making the point that maybe they should have asked that question. Yeah.

So like that's maybe an underline. They were totally driven by money. They wanted to build a Jurassic Park that was driven by money and it was Jeff Goldblum's character who's the scientist.

It was the wisdom. He's the Yoda of Jurassic Park one. And so like to that point and to something to something you mentioned earlier Tyler you talked about academic misconduct in at the institution.

If the point of your job is to make money and to build prestige then academic misconduct actually makes sense. Right. But if the point is human flourishing or uncovering the beauty of the universe academic misconduct makes no sense.

Right. So your worldview and what you view is most ultimately important has a profound effect on what you do daily. So I agree basically that's me saying I agree.

Well I'm going to I'm going to give you guys a chance to kind of talk about that because that's going to be my next question. And before I ask it with about 26 minutes I have one question left. I have more in case you guys don't ask questions.

But I really would love to get you all's questions out here. So be thinking about what you want to ask you can even start lining up now because I'm going to have one more question. And my question is very much similar to that.

I did for season three of three of the podcasts. Two of the two of the podcasts. I interviewed Ros Picard who's just across the river at MIT.

She coined the term effective computing and thinks about emotional decision making with robots. She's a fantastic TED talk over a million views. And one of the things I asked her I asked her a very basic question.

I said what is the goal of AI? Is it to make us more efficient? Is it to make like what are the things? And she said that is such a great question because people don't ask the why very often. They are rewarded for being innovative and nuanced and at the edge and that's how research is often rewarded. And so we had a really interesting discussion.

We talked about Sophia the robot who has citizenship in Saudi Arabia. She's just a very complicated nature. The work she's doing is incredible.

But it causes to have interesting conversations about this should. And so my question to you guys is has Christianity kind of want to give you the option of two or even take both directions? One option would be has Christianity kind of brought in a moral framework that said I don't know that I want to go there. Maybe we shouldn't.

Or and or even answer the question has Christianity propelled you in a new way towards something. I know you're a story. I know there's more there.

I want to give you guys the option of one of those two or both of them. So either it quelled it or it actually just put you in a new direction altogether. Tyler, why don't you start? Because you started.

Yeah. I think the discipline of public health sees itself as contributing knowledge, learning the distribution and determinants of health and as preserving, advancing and restoring health at the population level. And I think that's a good and noble undertaking.

I think one that Christians and the church can fully embrace. There is a question still as to what constitutes health. And I don't think we think about this as often as we should in public health.

There's there's a definition that was put forward by the World Health Organization in 1948 still in place today. Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. And there's a lot of dispute over this definition.

A lot of people are unhappy with it. I think in actual practice we tend to think of and focus our research efforts with regard to health on disease and infirmity. Rather than on the positive side.

I think a Christian perspective can enrich the World Health Organization perspective yet further. That health is a state, the health of a person, not just the body, but the health of a person is a state of complete physical, mental, social and spiritual well-being. And how to advance that at a population level is challenging in a pluralistic context.

I think we need to acknowledge that there are others coming to these topics from different perspectives. But I think we can do better than we have. I think we can focus on those things that we do hold in common across religious and cultural and philosophical traditions and try to advance not just physical health, but also purpose and meaning and happiness and relationships and character.

And I think to the extent we can come to a greater consensus we could expand the purview of work in public health. And so I think the Christian faith has a lot to contribute. I could go on and on.

Yeah, we'll love it. I mean I could talk to you about your core and the research you're doing. But maybe it'll be in the Q&A.

Do you want to go next and we'll end with you, Karen? Sure, sure. I remember during my postdoc talking to a colleague. So this is around the time I was kind of thinking about switching some of my research focus.

Prior to this I had been working in an alternative energy. Nothing wrong with that field, but I was thinking about a switch. And I was talking to a colleague who was in the area that's kind of more closely related to what I'm doing now, which is biomedical engineering.

And I remember asking him, "Why do you do this?" And he had the answer right on the tip of his tongue. He was like, "Oh, I pursue biomedical engineering because it's about eternal life. We want to live forever." I was like, "Interesting.

I want eternal life too. Let's have a discussion about this eternal life." Which is the way we actually talked about Christianity and faith. So I used that as an end.

But I do think that's something that was an interesting perspective. Like if you look at bioengineering, like the things that people are trying to do, regrow organs. And I mean, I am a co-founder of a startup that is engineering human cells, where we'll take cells from your body, re-engineered them, put them back into your body to fight your disease.

Like this is like, seems like space age stuff, but this stuff exists now. Like these are the things that people are trying to do. And so there's this, but there's also this tension of like, I believe, like part of my purpose is trying to relieve human suffering.

But I also believe like we can't achieve eternal life without Christ. Like so like I hold those two tensions like at the same time. I don't think we can actually do it.

But at the same time we are trying to make the world better for those who are suffering. And so that's one way my work has been directed. Well, Anne, we talked about even in our conversation about you're also not God himself working with the bodies.

So you're receiving actually wisdom to work in this mysterious thing. Like we can read the body the best we can, but we're not the creator of it. Exactly.

So the limitations there as well, just the humility before. Yeah, and what was interesting about this colleague when we had this conversation is he actually believed that humans could get there on our own. Which that's where he and I differ.

Yeah. It's thinking that humanity is actually going to get there cryogenic freezing. Well, and Ross told me that some of our colleagues in MIT, some of your colleagues in MIT have created bots to continue tweeting after they die because they're also in search of immortality.

So I don't know that Twitter will last that long, but. Yeah, let's hope not. All right.

Did you have something else to say? No, no, that's funny. All right. Yeah.

So when I think about the purpose of astrophysics, when it is to reveal the beauty and glory of the universe and I think replacing universe with God's creation is the only way that's left. And it's the only way that statement actually really makes sense. Now, I don't have one of these nice sort of turns in my career.

Because it was actually the other way around for me. I think somehow God first led me to some of these truths about what the universe is really like, what the human person is really like. And once I'd accepted those truths, it was all became obvious that Christianity was the only way that allowed for sort of integrated understanding.

Of that. So I took the other path and first realized that this is what is the purpose. This is what humans are like.

And then realized that somebody else had come up with that a long time ago and became Christian. But I do want to do this very brief, I guess, historical anecdote. I think so going back to one of your questions, does Christianity.

Yes, it puts in some really good questions, should we go there, should we not go there, but also what it can actually expand what you are looking into. So if we go back to the early 20th century, and already by then academia was dominated by sort of secular materialistic philosophy. That really wanted the universe to be infinite and eternal, to remove that pesky question, where did it all come from.

And there was this really strong philosophical commitment to it. Even us, there was some observations, astrophysical observations that started to challenge that theory. Hubble is very well known in the US.

He was the one who started seeing that it seemed like galaxies were moving away. Hubble did not think that the universe expanded or that the Big Bang theory was real. He died thinking that we lived in eternal, infinite universe.

Instead it took a Catholic physicist, priest, a Belgian one, to put these pieces together and actually accept this, what the scientific evidence would be pointing out. And so take that to, then it's natural conclusion that if everything now is expanding away, that means at some point it was all much closer together, perhaps infinitely close together, and we have the theory of the Big Bang. So this, the biggest revolution in astrophysics of the past 100 years happened because someone was not committed to the wrong philosophy.

And I think this goes back to that you should feel confident about that Christianity is true, and therefore you will actually have this advantage to be really anchored in the truth to start with and therefore the ability to see things that perhaps other people cannot. So this is a bit out of my depth, but I've been in an amateur way fascinated by this. When I became a Christian, it was one of the first challenges I had.

I became a Christian in college and I did not understand Genesis. It did not make logical sense to me. Everything else made, I stepped out in faith anyway.

I basically said I'm a child of God. I don't need to understand it all. I understand enough, but Genesis was one of the challenges.

Recently I read this book, I think it's called Genesis and the Big Bang by this guy Schrader, and in any way he has some quotes from Jewish theologians from like 1000 years ago that actually postulate the Big Bang. And they actually postulate the Big Bang based on how Genesis 1 is written. It's a fascinating text.

So there was this wisdom there in understanding how the universe worked. Now, clearly the Bible is not a science book. It's not a science book.

As a lawyer I often say there was no court stenographer writing down what Adam said. Exactly. So it's an oral history, but continue.

But it does have, there is wisdom in there, and to your point it's interesting how the scientific community sometimes will vehemently try to keep arms linked from that wisdom just out of principle, even when the scientific facts are against it. I'd like to pick up on something else Karen said as well, which I think is a really important point. I think Christianity does in some sense.

If we believe it's true, give us a certain epistemic advantage. I think one of the extraordinary things about truth is all truths must be consistent with all other truths. And that principle I think really can guide our work and our thinking.

A falsehood can be contradict all sorts of other falsehoods and all sorts of other truths. But that principle that all truths must cohere with one another I think really is very helpful in our academic pursuits. And we do believe that the Christian faith is true.

And having that as a foundation I think is really helpful in trying to evaluate evidence and claims and trying to form that coherent view. But I think coming back to that again and again, and sometimes we do have to suspend judgment. Sometimes we aren't sure how things connect with one another.

But returning once again to the principle that all truths must be consistent with one another I think is a really important guiding principle. And one that I think we can take great comfort in as Christians. We're open for questions.

Oh we got to. Come on down. Come on down.

Yeah, line up. Yeah, bring it on. Test.

Professor Builla was really interested in your statement about how in your work you think of yourself as a gardener. I think that's really consistent with the Genesis narrative and how we see ourselves as humans. And obviously in science we can understand the beauty of the universe and find utility in that.

I'm curious what types of principles you would postulate specifically in biotechnology for we Christians to introduce those should questions to the equation. How should we go about doing that? I'm personally interested in exploring this in man publication. And yeah, I think the questions of just how far humanity's dominion goes as we see in Genesis and how we can guide that are really interesting.

And I'm wondering if you have a mechanism by which we can answer that and then maybe even specific on genetic biotech like what types of questions we should be asking in order to find those solutions. Yeah, so I'm not maybe stay there. I'm not sure I got all the questions.

Yes. Maybe, maybe restate it. I just want to make sure I understand.

I make sure I understand. I think I got the second point of like how Christianity might influence the questions we look at. Yeah.

Biotech. What would remind me to say the first part again. How should we go about asking those questions? Yeah, what principles can we look to within the Christian tradition scripture to answer how our dominion should manifest itself in the world with our tools.

Yeah. Like what informs your framework. I always think about answering some of the questions.

Gotcha. Gotcha. I think I get it.

So I'll try my best. So I think it's there's a bit of humility that I think Christians can bring to the table that perhaps not all scientists bring to the table. There's something about being a professor at a university that can breed a really large ego.

And hopefully being a Christian, you can recognize like you can you can decouple yourself from your work in a way and really look at truth as Tyler's been mentioning like objectively and just see the data for what it is. You don't have to be so dogmatic about your theories and your hypotheses and about, you know, you see all kinds of places in science where there are these factions. There's like one group invent something.

One group has a theory and another group has a theory and and it can be almost, you know, it can be there can be a lot of vitriol between those groups. But as a Christian, it's like, well, this doesn't define me anyways. Like I'm just searching for truth and you might be right.

You might be right. I'm the center. You might be right.

Like you can take that kind of humility into your science, which I think would help advance the science faster. I'll give a give a quick example of this. Feynman has this talk that he gave, I think at Caltech for graduation.

We talked about this concept of pathological science. And one of the examples he gives is that Milliken who discovered the elementary electronic electronic charge got the world like 95, 96% of the way to the charge. And then we weren't all the way there.

So these are really hard experiments early 1900s. It took 70 years to get the rest of the way. And if you examine the data, people, if they got a number that was too far from Milliken who was a Nobel Prize winner, they threw it out.

It's like they didn't believe the data. It's like, well, I'm not a Nobel Prize winner. And so the number like crept up for 70 years.

And I think Christianity would implore you to just look at the data and say, what is this information telling me? I don't have to worry about what my colleagues are going to say or what the world is going to say because Jesus has already said, well done to me. So I don't have to worry about that stuff. So I think that can have a big influence on how you approach any science, including biotech.

Oh, can I have some follow up very quickly? With some of the technologies you're working on, you can go into someone's body and change things for healing in some cases. I've also read about people going in and I want to blue eyed child. I can change the DNA there.

How would you think about those two? They're both biomedical engineering questions. One is cosmetic. The other one is healing.

How would you decide on your framework, can we go that far? Can we go to, I want a blue eyed child with blonde hair and change the DNA? Is that okay? How would you think about that question with the framework that you bring to your work? Yeah, I think that's a very tough question. That's why I'm the moderator. Yeah, that's a very tough question.

There are people that want to do that type of engineering in utero. That's right. That's what I've read about.

And so I will admit I am not smart enough. I think we need more people around the table. Just asking the question, is this a place we want to go? You could imagine there's one scenario where you do a test and you find out, well, this baby is going to be born with a disease and it's only going to live a couple of weeks.

And maybe we can do some kind of gene editing to help. But then there's the other thing. Well, what if we identify a gene that would make the child six foot six? Right? Should we go in and do that? Like, who are we to decide what is good? Right.

I think it would be, I shudder to think in what the world looked like if we had that kind of power. We'd all look probably pretty similar and then there'd probably be some virus that kills us all because we don't have enough genetic variation. I know, it's true.

But I think we need more people around the table thinking about these things. I'm not going to answer it. I do want to put forward that I think Christianity has resources to help address at least aspects of what is a very difficult moral question.

And I think some of it, again, it doesn't address it directly, but some of it also pertains to resource allocation. And what are we investing in? There are people suffering and dying across the globe. Is this the right pursuit right now in terms of investment and resources? There's a principle in Catholic social teaching of the preferential option for the poor that we should focus our efforts to improve well-being on the poor, on the marginalized, on those who are struggling to live.

And I think Jesus' life manifests that as well. I mean, I do think that's an important consideration, I think, as Colin already touched upon. Another important one is what sort of society do we want to live in? It's not just about me and my preferences.

But what would something like this do to our world, to interactions? I mean, there are beautiful moving accounts of parents with a Down syndrome child and how it's transformed their own lives. What does a world look like when we reject any difficulty or destroy anyone with some sort of challenge? So again, it doesn't immediately get us to the answer of is this morally permissible or not, but it does provide a set, I think, of broader considerations. And again, I think the Christian tradition really has an extraordinary set of resources to try to begin to think through at a societal level some of these.

And to question cultural narratives that are assumed, Christianity doesn't make a lot of those assumptions. There is a perfect body or it's beautiful. And just what the human person is for.

I mean, even going back to that personal, what it is that gives a human person value and what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God, that does not mean that you are six, six and blonde and blue eyed, but the child with Down syndrome is as well. And I think again, going back to just the thousands of years of resources and thinking through what it means to be human and what our ultimate goal is, I think it's really important to bring into those conversations. So, okay, next question.

There's been a recent uptick, I think, in anti-science narratives, especially from circles that claim Christianity as a part of their core identity. So as Christians and scientists, how do you guys react to Christians clinging to anti-science notions as a core part of their Christian beliefs? My view would be that the fault does lie on both sides. I mean, I think there have been Christian communities that have been dismissive of science, of good science.

And I think that's a dismissal of truth. I think it's problematic. The church is not perfect, Christians are not perfect, we are sinners, but it's something that we need collectively church universal need to repent of.

God has given us a mind, nationality, the tools of science, we should pursue those as best as possible. I do think some of the blame and the present set of circumstances with COVID also lies with the scientific community. And so far as I think they've slid too quickly from the science, which is often very good to immediate policy implications.

And that always requires a value judgment. And I think simply acknowledging it and say, this is what we think we should do, it's fine to propose policy, but that this does not follow immediately from science. I think that's really important for the scientific community and the public health community to keep straight.

And I think if they did that, there would be less of this problematic dynamic. But I think it is problematic. And I think to the extent that the church rejects science, it will be harmed.

Yeah. Maybe just to follow up on that. I mean, I think you need to have the passion of the truth for the truth and have that in front of you, but also to enter into those conversations with humility.

People are rational and have goods that they are pursuing. And I think when you start compromising the truth through other goods, you are ultimately going to veer in the wrong direction. But I think realizing that there are goods that are at stake, things like feelings of community, things that haven't been told that you have to choose.

And this goes back before COVID, but you have to choose between Genesis and the Big Bang theory. I mean, it's not irrational if you think those are the only choices to choose Genesis and to choose to be created in the image and likeness of God versus some scientific theory. So I think just going and acknowledging what are the goods that are at stake and take that into the conversation with humility, I think it is actually easier going into this conversation as a Christian.

Just like to put that up front, that these are all the beliefs that I share with you. And I think to start with the things you agree with, that just makes, I mean, this is more sort of tactics rather than sort of the, but that just makes those conversations so much more fruitful. And that's how you love the other person.

You start where they are and you try to lead them to where the truth is. And at the same time, try to stay open that there still might be things that they are bringing up that you had forgotten about that are real, real goods. So that's just what I would add to it.

Great, let's go to the next. Thank you. Hello.

Oh, wow, that was loud. Hello, y'all. So I guess my question is, I guess it could be gravitated more toward philosophy.

Like, I'm going to be asking about epistemology, but I'm sure you guys can put in your two sense. So a lot of the times, like those, especially like my peers, those who claim to be more academic and scientifically oriented reject Christianity or reject all religion as a basis of like, well, there's no empirical data. You can't, like the reason why I'm a Christian, I became a Christian when I was 12 years old.

I wasn't like scouring through a bunch of academic journals, trying to figure out what the truth was. I just felt God one day at a church service and gave my life to him. And that was a very personal experience.

So I guess my question for you guys is, where do you guys draw the line between like, I would say like your own personal experiences and then like what the data and like what the facts might say or do you consider them like on the same wavelength, things of that sort, like that's basically my question. Thanks. Hi.

Yeah, I'll try. I'll try. Definitely fill in my gaps.

I think one of the challenges scientists sometimes have, it goes back to something from the last talk and then also something I said earlier, just that scientists tend to like think that world views don't matter. Like they think that what you think about the world, like it doesn't matter. All that matters is science.

They basically have elevated science to God. And I think that's a big part of this problem is that you kind of have taken, you've taken science, the scientific method and scientific inquiry and put that above all other types of thought of thinking. So like things like history is neglected.

So like for me, I believe in the resurrection because I believe it's a historical fact. I don't need a scientific proof of the of the resurrection if it's historical fact. If it's historical fact and it happened, then I just have to deal with it before even before I can explain it.

And I think the challenge that science has sometimes is it's elevated science above all other types of thought, which actually weaves into the last question of like this tension between science and Christianity because science in our society has tried to become the ultimate arbiter of all knowledge. And science clearly, there's all kinds of things that doesn't explain. Like science can't tell you who you should marry.

Science can't tell you why you have the feelings you have for your parents. So a lot of things science can't do, but it's been elevated and that I think causes a lot of this tension. Yeah, it's also-- >> Well, and it's not just that they're two different contrast explanations.

When I interviewed John Lennox, he very much said you can have two explanations true at the same time. So he said, why is the water boiling? Well, you could answer that scientifically and say, oh, well, it's because the heat has been applied and the molecules-- I'm not a scientist. I don't really know the answer to that.

And he said it's also maybe because I want a cup of tea. So those two things are true at the same time. One is a scientific explanation.

One is a personal explanation. But to have to choose between the two is a false choice. >> Yeah.

>> So it's not just that science can't answer certain questions. Even the ones that can answer, there might be another-- >> It may not be the full truth. >> That's right.

That's right. >> It often doesn't answer why. >> Yeah.

>> Yeah. >> So go ahead. >> Yeah, and I would just-- I mean, I agree with everything you said.

And I would just add sort of looking at it through the lens of truths that their scientific truths exist. But so does historical. So does ones that come from art, like a book can be a work of fiction can be true.

I mean, everyone who has read a good book and, you know, an not so good book can tell the difference between a book of fiction that's telling the truth. They're also subjective truths. And I mean, one of them that I think is very important is that we all have the very strong sensation, the internal truth, that we make choices.

That free will is a real thing. I would never accept sort of some sort of worldview that says that that is not true. That's just not going to happen because that is a real truth, even though you use an internal sense to sense it rather than something that you can measure.

So I think it's more just recognition that there are many other truths than those that you get through science. And they're all really important, even though, as you said, we currently live in a society where sort of the-- as seen as the highest standard is whether you can scientifically measure it. But then you really make your cosmos into very little cosmos.

And we can do better than that. Just building on what Helen and Karen were saying, I mean, I do think we should employ all modes of reasoning, all forms of knowledge, the scientific, yes, but also the historical, also philosophical reasoning. And also a new touch done, this even experiential.

Now sort of the degree of consensus, we can attain as a community vary across those different types of knowledge and pursuits. But I think all are important. How do you integrate them? I think is a challenging question.

And I think often sort of an argument along the lines of inference to the best explanation. What makes best sense of everything, of all the knowledge we have from these different sources? I think once you go down that route, something like experiential knowledge, in my view is important, but it is going to vary by person. I mean, I have a friend who says he's a Christian today because when he was 12, he was told he was going to die.

And there was nothing further that the doctors could do. He was prayed for at church and the next month the disease was gone. And he has no further explanation for what happened.

And he said, for him, that's why he's a Christian today. He's a scientist. He said he wouldn't be if it hadn't been for that.

Now that's very compelling for him. It might not be for someone who just hears his story. And I think that's reasonable.

So I think experiential knowledge testimony is important as well and are thinking in that reasoning to the best explanation. But the weight that that carries, I do think, will vary by individual and by experience. Okay.

We have three people left in about one minute and 15 seconds. So what we're going to do, y'all are going to hate me. All three of you guys are going to be able to ask your questions.

Only one person can answer and you have about 30 seconds, 20 seconds each. Okay. My question is just building up on the previous points made before.

Just because we can doesn't mean we should. So coming back to like playing God, it's like a common question and morality dilemma that's brought up in science recently. So for you guys, when should we stop? Should we trust the limits and the human limitations of intelligence? Or should we like Christians stop and draw a line between playing God and making us our lives better? Like you get to choose.

Who do you want to answer it? I don't want to choose. I'll choose. Karen.

I'm really good at this thing. So you're giving me the... You're working with planets. There's got to be a God question there.

No, I think it's a really important question. But I don't think there is a simple answer because I mean we talked, the reason I think that neither of the experts wanted to give you a straight answer is that I think this is something that we're going to have to work out whenever there is a new technology or a new science. We are going to have to sit down and think what this is for.

How does this integrate with the truth we already know about the human persons, the purpose of society, the purpose of a good human life. And we're going to have to bring those tools to every single problem. But at the same time realizing there's not just going to be a question about putting limits but also about setting out sort of the most fruitful directions.

And I'm definitely about 30 seconds. So that was perfect. Okay.

Next. Hi. So thank you guys so much for articulating all the ways in which Christianity is good both for science and for the wider world.

I wonder, could you speak to why rather science is good for the church specifically? Oh, good question. Yeah. So you're choosing Tyler.

We're deciding that. So I mean I would likewise say that science can contribute a great deal. I think science can help confirm certain claims such as the importance of marriage and family relationships for example.

So it can confirm or sometimes refute if we have false beliefs. I think it can help establish effective ways forward. Yes, we know as Christians that forgiveness is important.

But how do we enable people to forgive who are really struggling? We can draw on clinical psychology. We can develop interventions. We can test them in randomized trials.

We can use the scientific method to try to advance the ends of the church. So I would say we can use science to supplement our knowledge, to challenge or confirm our claims and to develop practical ways to advance human flourishing, to advance the work of the church. Can I take a dead end? Ten seconds for you.

Also how to help interpret the word of God. I mean we talked about Genesis and what kind of text is Genesis? What does it really mean? I think the scientific advancement has helped us understand what it is God is trying to communicate with that. Okay, do you want ten seconds too? No, no, I'm good.

Last question. Hi, thank you for being here. So my question is, given the fact that we live in a very sinful world where the vast majority of people don't know Christ, how do you deal with the fact that scientific progress, which isn't inherently evil and could help a lot of people, is most likely going to be used against the church, against truth and to, you know, for bad purposes? Yeah, so I think what I would say, that's where I have to be salt and light, right? I think the Bible calls us to be salt and light.

What does salt do? Salt gets into places where there is no salt is most useful where there isn't much salt. Right, so if you think about the biblical metaphor, light is most useful in dark places. So actually as a Christian, I'm drawn into science because of the reasons that you mentioned.

Science needs me there more to be distinctly Christian because of the conflict, because it's so dark. And so for me, I see it as just fulfilling what Jesus told us to do. You are salt, you are light, you are city on a hill.

Like as the church, we shouldn't be huddling up together to have our own meetings. And like this meeting is great, but if you come out of this meeting and you only have discussions about this stuff with other Christians, that's just a pile of salt, which isn't like that useful. Like you're supposed to get out and to get into places where the world is spoiling, where the world is dying and be useful there.