Religion

Questions from Christian Students, Part 12

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Sarah was recently invited, along with two other scientists, to take part in a panel discussion for a group of mostly Christian students. After the main discussion, students were invited to submit questions via text message; there was very little time to address them, so only a few were answered. The questions were quite good, so over the next few weeks, Surak and Sarah will answer most of them here. All of the questions are listed in the Intro to this series. See also: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7; Part 8; Part 9; Part 10; Part 11. 

What would you say to someone who can’t believe in Christianity because of its exclusive claims, that no one enters the gates of Heaven without first meeting Jesus?

All of the questions up until now have been related to science—a subject in which I have a lot of training and experience as well as some status and ability—or to my own personal experiences. This last question is not one I can answer as a scientist—my expertise in astrophysics does not translate to any degree of authority in matters of theology. I can only attempt to answer this as a Christian layperson who struggles with such questions as much as anyone else. So, as one person to another, I offer the following thoughts.

One thing I am certain of is that Christianity can only be believed in because of its exclusive claims. Irrespective of whether the claims of Christianity are true, it is not possible for Christianity to be true and at the same time for other religions to be true. Christianity makes exclusive claims similar to the way that any theory in science makes exclusive claims; if a particular scientific theory is true, then other theories that seek to explain the same phenomenon in a different way cannot also be true. It is therefore unreasonable to reject Christianity solely because of its exclusive claims.

There is another way in which non-believers often get caught up in Christianity’s exclusiveness—they think it’s unfair that only Christians go to heaven. Unless you take the extreme Calvinist position of predestination, Christianity is certainly not exclusive in the sense that only an elect few are chosen and if you’re not among them, you’re out of luck no matter how good you are. I believe something far different; I think that anyone can choose to accept the gift of salvation that God has offered through Jesus Christ for the following reasons.

  1. In John 14:6, Jesus tells us that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him.
  2. In the Gospels we are told that Jesus opened a door that had previously been shut because of our sinful nature. (That’s why the Gospels are called the “Good News.”)
  3. We also know that God gave us free will—we are not pets or playthings—and because God loves us as spiritual beings and has truly endowed us with the freedom to choose, he does not force anyone to go through the door who does not want to.

This still sounds terribly unfair to people who have failed, despite their best efforts, to believe in Christianity, to those who have been turned off by negative experiences with organized religion, and even more so to people who have never heard of Christ. I was for some time rather troubled by this, because I don’t like the idea of anyone going to hell. I have no profound understanding in this matter, so all I can do is share with you my personal resolution of this problem.

There are passages in the New Testament that have given comfort to me and at least one person I know who does what I can only describe as the Lord’s work, but is experiencing great difficulty in accepting Jesus. In Mark 9:38-41, we are told the following story:

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.”

So, the disciple John tells Jesus that a man is performing miracles in Jesus’ name (i.e. with the authority of Jesus), though he is not part of their group. The disciples tried to stop him, because he was not a follower of Jesus as they were. But Jesus told them to leave the man alone, because he was still doing the work of the Lord. Moreover, Jesus claimed that any person who furthers the cause of believers, though he may not be Christian himself, will not lose his reward. Matthew Henry’s commentary on this passage explains, “If sinners are brought to repent, to believe in the Saviour, and to live sober, righteous, and godly lives, we then see that the Lord works by the preacher.”

Consider also 1 Timothy 4:10: “For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” [emphasis added]

C. S. Lewis explored the meaning and helped develop our understanding of this passage in his Narnia book, The Last Battle. In this story, there is a soldier named Emeth (Hebrew for “faithful” or “truth”) who is a good man that has been deceived since boyhood into worshipping a pagan god (Tash) and hating the name of the true God of Narnia (Aslan). However, upon meeting Aslan, the goodness within Emeth causes him to immediately realize that Tash is false and Aslan is God. Aslan assures Emeth that every good thing he did in the name of Tash was actually done in service to Aslan. As Lewis explained,

I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god, or to a very imperfectly conceived true God, is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know him. For He is (dimly) present in the good side of the inferior teachers they follow. In the parable of the Sheep and Goats [Matthew 25:34-40] those who are saved do not seem to know that they have served Christ.

Even though I know this is not the view of all Christians, I agree with Lewis. I believe that it was Jesus—and only Jesus—who opened a door for all mankind; I also believe that a knowledge of and faith in Jesus makes it easier to find and get through the door. But, in my humble opinion, the door is open to all people who yearn for goodness, truth, spiritual love, meaning, purpose, and salvation—in other words, to all people who yearn for God whether or not they recognize it as such.

Questions from Christian Students, Part 5

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Sarah was recently invited, along with two other scientists, to take part in a panel discussion for a group of mostly Christian students. After the main discussion, students were invited to submit questions via text message; there was very little time to address them, so only a few were answered. The questions were quite good, so over the next few weeks, Surak and Sarah will answer most of them here. All of the questions are listed in the Intro to this series. See also: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4. 

What was it about Christianity that made you feel hostile towards it before you read the Bible?

There were three childhood experiences that I think set the stage for the hostility that would manifest later. The first was an experience with some overtly Christian children in my elementary school. They belonged to a denomination that didn’t allow participation in any of the holiday celebrations at my school or celebration of birthdays at home. As a kid whose entire kid-existence revolved around holidays and birthdays, this got me thinking that Christianity must be pretty dismal.

The second was one of the TV shows my brother and I were allowed to watch. (Even though my parents weren’t religious, they carefully scrutinized everything we watched on TV.) The show was called Little House on the Prairie, and most of the characters were good, moral, church-going people. But I remember thinking these people were fairly wimpy when it came to dealing with the jerks and evil-doers who would appear in their community from time to time. Because of this, in my mind, Christianity came to be associated with weakness.

The third experience was with a friend of mine, who would occasionally lecture me that hers was the only true church and everyone who didn’t belong to her denomination would not go to heaven. I remember thinking, if God is that picky about his believers, he must be rather petty.

If those had been the only influences, I doubt I would have felt as hostile towards Christianity as I did later on. I strongly believe my hostile feelings were further influenced by popular culture and public schooling, both of which were already becoming aggressively humanist and propagandizing by the time I was a teenager. When I was about 16 or 17, I had also developed an interest in Objectivism, a philosophy that has some good principles, but is extremely hostile towards religion. This hostility is based on a very flawed and myopic view of religion, particularly Christianity. Foolishly, I believed some of the claims of Objectivists without investigating them for myself.

What is your colleagues’ biggest reason for thinking the Gospel is not worth believing?

There are lots of reasons many educated people reject the Gospel, but in my estimation the two biggest reasons are that they: (1) find Christianity philosophically weak or trivial; and (2) they don’t want any restrictions imposed on them.

With regard to (1), the problem is that many of them have not studied scripture in depth, and instead rely on myths and Christian stereotypes to form their opinions. Unfortunately, some Christians have fed the stereotype of Christianity as un-scientific and anti-intellectual, and this has tainted scripture by association. As Nobel laureate George P. Thomson once said, just about every physicist would’ve accepted the idea of God by now if the Bible hadn’t unfortunately mentioned it a long time ago and made the idea seem old-fashioned.

As for (2), I think even the most intelligent and educated people don’t object to the Gospel on purely logical grounds. Believing the Gospel means taking a narrow path in life, and few people enjoy having restrictions placed on them, particularly if those restrictions seem arbitrary. I think (2) is actually the root of most people’s objection to the Christian faith (or just about any religion)—it certainly was the root of mine. And, in my case, the ‘logical’ reasons for rejecting Christianity were mostly after-the-fact rationalizations.

Questions from Christian Students, Part 3

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Sarah was recently invited, along with two other scientists, to take part in a panel discussion for a group of mostly Christian students. After the main discussion, students were invited to submit questions via text message; there was very little time to address them, so only a few were answered. The questions were quite good, so over the next few weeks, Surak and Sarah will answer most of them here. All of the questions are listed in the Intro to this series; Part 1 is here; Part 2 is here. 

Has an effort by students to share their faith with you ever made an impact on you in any way?

Yes.

I had a student approach me after a lecture to ask if it was okay to be Christian and a scientist. She was a devoted Christian, and was interested in science, but had been told by one of her professors that she could not be religious and believe in science. She was distressed by this professor’s proclamation, and it struck me then that most students do not have the training or resources available to them to counter such attacks. It was after talking to this student that I decided to start a ministry to help people like this young woman maintain their faith.

Have you ever had a student challenge an idea during class?

I never had a student challenge an idea with respect to religion. I did have students very occasionally challenge a scientific/philosophical idea, but it didn’t happen very often in the intro classes I taught, which is not good. A lot of what is taught in science—particularly in physics and astronomy—should seem weird to students who are introduced to it for the first time, and they should be asking serious questions about it; but it was rare for students to challenge ideas. I did have one student who was annoyed when I explained that no scientific theory is watertight, and that all ideas are subject to refinement and replacement with new ideas. He (not unreasonably) responded to this by asking why he had to bother learning science at all, when its ideas were subject to change at any time. This started a fruitful discussion, and hopefully got other students in the class to think about the nature of human knowledge.

Do you wish you could talk about your faith in the classroom / office hours? If so, what keeps you from doing it?

When I was teaching, I had no desire to bring up my faith in the classroom, aside from a brief statement on the first day of class that I am a believing professor. My approach is not to push—I prefer students to initiate the discussion. If any student had wanted to start a discussion about science and religion in class, and it pertained to the subject of the lecture, I would have obliged; but it never happened. I did, however, have students approach me outside of class time to discuss how science relates to the Christian faith, and I was always happy to do so.

Questions from Christian Students, Part 1

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Sarah was recently invited, along with two other scientists, to take part in a panel discussion for a group of mostly Christian students. After the main discussion, students were invited to submit questions via text message; there was very little time to address them, so only a few were answered. The questions were quite good, so over the next few weeks, Surak and Sarah will answer most of them here. All of the questions are listed in the Intro to this series. 

How do you account for the Higgs boson particle?

The Higgs boson, which has been in the media quite a bit lately, is popularly referred to as the “God Particle.” Nobel laureate Leon Lederman explains the origin of the nickname in his book, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?

This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle. Why God Particle? Two reasons. One, the publisher wouldn’t let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, give its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. And two, there is a connection, of sorts, to another book, a much older one …

Lederman goes on to quote from the Bible, specifically Genesis 11:1-9, which describes the building of the Tower of Babel and what happens to man because of it. He draws a fascinating parallel between the unified language of man prior to the building of the tower and the unified ‘language’ of nature during a much earlier time in the universe. He expresses hope that, unlike the Babylonians, particle physicists will succeed in building up their tower so that they can know the mind of God.

The Higgs boson is predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics—the prevailing theory governing the organization of subatomic particles—and it explains why most subatomic particles have mass. Physicist Peter Higgs, after whom the particle is named, described its properties in a scientific paper in 1966. The idea seemed so strange and complicated to the public that UK science minister, William Waldegrave, challenged physicists to explain, in a simplified way and in only one page, what the Higgs boson is and why physicists want to find it. The winning entries can be read here. There are also numerous short videos attempting to explain the Higgs boson in (somewhat) simplified terms (e.g. Minute Physics Part I, Part II, and Part III, and PHD Comics).

Now, almost half a century after Higgs’ initial publication, physicists are pretty sure they’ve found evidence for the elusive particle. As with any discovery in science, it will need to be verified several times by independent groups of scientists before it’s really accepted. 

Within your field of study what has been the most remarkable observation that you have made that reinforces your faith?

That the universe is knowable, that it makes sense. As Einstein said, the most incomprehensible thing about the [universe] is that it is comprehensible. Over and over again in my work I see that the universe has an underlying order and logic to it. The only two explanations are: 1) against unimaginable odds, this orderly and logical universe arose purely by chance; or 2) the universe is a deliberate product of a vast Intellect. Explanation 2 strikes me as much more plausible than Explanation 1.

What’s the most remarkable, undeniable discovery you have used to prove or disprove the faiths of different persons?

The big bang. It shows that the first three words of the Bible are true and that the humanist belief in an eternal universe is false.

Questions from Christian Students

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Sarah was recently invited, along with two other scientists, to take part in a panel discussion for a group of mostly Christian students. After the main discussion, students were invited to submit questions via text message; there was very little time to address them, so only a few were answered. The questions were quite good, so over the next few weeks, Surak and Sarah will answer most of them here. They are listed below, in no particular order. (Despite the title of this post, at least two of the questions appear to be from students who are currently struggling with belief.) 

Since becoming a Christian and living in an environment where your faith is tested every day, have you experienced doubt? If so, what has brought you through those doubts? (Part 9)

Was Adam the first man created or was he chosen from an already existing population? (Part 2)

Has an effort by students to share their faith with you ever made an impact on you in any way? (Part 3)

Have you ever had a student challenge an idea during class? (Part 3)

How does evolution relate to belief in a creator? And please address the time frame. / Please address the timing of evolution and the Bible. / How do you reconcile biologists teaching evolution and coming from apes with the creation story in Genesis? (Part 11)

What was it about Christianity that made you feel hostile towards it before you read the Bible? (Part 5)

Do you wish you could talk about your faith in the classroom / office hours? If so, what keeps you from doing it? (Part 3)

How do you account for the Higgs boson particle? (Part 1)

How hard is it to work in the field of academia in an anti-Christian environment from a faith perspective? (Part 9)

How do you recommend Christian students react to professors who are intolerant of their Christian faith? (Part 9)

You mentioned the big bang. In your interpretation, does the big bang coincide with the moment of creation? / How does scientific proof of the big bang line up with the biblical teaching of creationism? (Part 4)

Within your field of study what has been the most remarkable observation that you have made that reinforces your faith? (Part 1)

What was the most difficult specific objection to faith (particularly Christianity) that you had to get past? / What was the biggest stumbling block to faith that you had to overcome? / For new believers, how do you get past the line of ‘the Bible is just a story’ into faith? I’ve accepted that there is a God, but I’m struggling with accepting Jesus. (Part 7)

Outside of the creation story, have you found other parts of the Bible that support what you have observed scientifically? (Part 10)

What’s the most remarkable, undeniable discovery you have used to prove or disprove the faiths of different persons? (Part 1)

What’s the most common scientific argument you encounter against Christianity? How have you responded? (Part 6)

What is the most important piece of knowledge you have come to learn about evolution since becoming a believer? (Part 8)

What is your colleagues’ biggest reason for thinking the Gospel is not worth believing? (Part 5)

Would the discovery of intelligent life on another planet disprove the existence of God? (Part 8)

What would you say to someone who can’t believe in Christianity because of its exclusive claims, that no one enters the gates of Heaven without first meeting Jesus? (Part 12)

Six Days of Creation presentation

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Was the universe created and developed in just six days? Is it possible to reconcile a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 with a billions-year-old universe? We address these questions in the following presentation. The material presented is inspired by The Science of God by Dr. Gerald Schroeder, a book we highly recommend.

Cross-posted here. We discuss the 26 testable statements made in Genesis 1 here.

Surviving the scientific age

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** Written by “Surak” **

Humankind has one chance to survive the scientific age. The use of scientific knowledge must be restrained and guided in positive directions by the values of the same religion that gave birth to modern science, Christianity. It is not by accident that the great founders of modern science (from Copernicus to Lemaître) were Christians or at the very least the product of Christian values and beliefs (Darwin). Only by reuniting science and Christianity can humankind survive. I say this as a non-Christian and ask you to consider the differences between Christian and non-Christian societies in the age of science.

The Communist regimes in the USSR, Red China, and Cambodia demonstrated how militantly atheist societies would make use of any kind of power, including scientific knowledge. Their destruction of human life was unprecedented in the history of the human species. The argument that this will not be the case as soon as the right kind of secular belief system and enlightened leaders are found has no evidence to support it and, without further convincing evidence, it must be dismissed as nothing more than wishful thinking by the intellectual left. Power always corrupts.

We can learn a great deal about the interplay of religion and science from the Nazi experience. Nazis were scientific-minded materialists determined to create a new civic religion capable of instilling a fascist moral system in all the generations to come. To accomplish this they worked vigorously toward the gradual divorce of German religion from its Christian roots. Christian beliefs and values were already waning in Europe from the late 1800s and first decades of the 1900s, largely as the result of the assault on Christianity by secular humanists. The Nazis took the opportunity to fill the spiritual void in German society. There can be no doubt about what the Nazis would have done with their rockets, the atomic weapons they hoped to create, the results of their truly evil medical experiments, and their belief in social Darwinism. It is a nightmare too horrible to think about.

Compare the Communist and Nazi regimes to the American experience. The United States is the last bastion of Christianity in the developed world. It has possessed enough destructive power for the last 60 years to destroy our world many times over. So what has it done with this power? We can’t argue that American hands are clean — the million or more Vietnamese killed in the 1960s and 1970s are testimony that Americans are potentially as imperfect as anyone else. But it is telling that the American people finally put an end to the war they were tricked into fighting, and they accepted defeat rather than continue the slaughter. In other words, there was some meaningful degree of restraint on the use of destructive power by a people who were guided by their predominately Christian values.

There is more evidence that Christianity has been an effective restraint on and positive guide for humankind’s violent tendencies during the scientific age. Christian America possessed all the destructive power modern science provides from the time it took effective control of much of Europe, Japan, and Korea. It did not exploit and repress these nations as the Soviet Union did to Eastern Europe; instead, America helped these nations become free, prosperous, and independent.

The values and beliefs that restrained American behavior during the last half of the 20th Century were the same as those that motivated an earlier generation of Americans to march into battle and die by the hundreds of thousands to end the abomination of slavery. We can wish with all our hearts that war would never occur, but if it has to happen, there could be no more noble reason for it. The American Civil War is arguably the greatest moral event in the history of the human species. American has not been perfect, but it has been significantly different, and that difference is the result of its Christian foundation.

America has produced the most science, which has helped it possess the greatest destructive power ever, but so far it has abused that power to a degree far less than what human history would have led us to expect of any group of humans. Think about it, would you trust France with the same power? I hope not. But the United States is changing for the worse, and Leo Tolstoy can help us understand why.

In his book, The Kingdom of God Is within You, he explains how humanity has experienced three stages. The savage stage is a person’s self-love expressed in the mere striving for immediate gratification with little or no concern for others. The next highest stage is the social stage where self-love has been expanded to include all of those who are important to a person’s well-being and survival. Tolstoy argued that self-love can be expanded to many levels, including the family, the clan, the tribe, the village, the nationality, the party, and even the state. But it can never encompass all of humanity — an abstraction with which human understanding and emotions can never cope.

Only the final stage, the spiritual, can accomplish universal love and the end of violence. But, according to Tolstoy this can only be achieved in a roundabout manner. First, people must love God. Then, because God is perfect love, our love of God results in our love for all humanity since we recognize each other as sons and daughters of one Father. I do not know if this is true, but I hope it is. There is no other alternative for humankind’s survival. The only force on Earth that has effectively restrained the potentially destructive results of science is the same force that gave birth to science — a Christian belief in a rational world created by a loving God combined with Christian values based on love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, and the sacredness of all human life.

America came closest to love of all humanity, but the level of love even in the United States is slipping back from the spiritual to the social and even the savage (look at the American inner cities). The cultural war between Christians and humanists, along with the trauma of 9/11, has caused the contraction of love back to the level of the nation or the party. In places in the United States, it has even become tribal in nature. I don’t know if Jesus was the Son of God. What I do know is that Christianity has been the greatest force for good the world has ever seen.