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 2

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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. 

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

The answers to this two-part question are ‘yes’ and ‘yes.’

There is indisputable archeological evidence for the existence of what are popularly known as Cro-Magnon people (scientists prefer the label ‘European early modern humans’) dating back at least 43,000 years. Christians cannot ignore or deny the evidence for these biological ancestors of humankind without appearing hopelessly un- or even anti-scientific. If Christians take this unscientific route in defense of the Bible, they will lose the hearts and minds of more and more young people. Fortunately there is no need to do that.

There is a false conflict between scripture and science implied in the wording of the question. It occurs because people often read the Bible hastily and fail to notice important clues. Israeli physicist and theologian, Gerald Schroeder, points out something that is almost always missed even by serious students of scripture. Genesis informs us that man was first ‘made’ (Gen. 1:26). After that, man was ‘created’ (Gen. 1:27). The difference between the two words is crucial to understanding what the Bible is telling us (unless you think God would be clumsy or haphazard with words).

A thing is made by taking something else that already exists and fashioning it into a different form. That is what happened in the making of the biological life form we think of as the human species. Genesis lists the major categories of life forms as they emerged; vegetation, animal life in the oceans, flying creatures (winged insects), great sea creatures, life forms that crawl on land, every species of winged creature, land animals which became livestock (mammals), and finally man. There is absolutely no conflict here between scripture and the basic notion of evolution. As a result, as Darwin pointed out, a person can believe in evolution and be a devout Christian.

But, the Bible does not repeat the word ‘make’ in Gen 1:27, because something very different and non-biological happened after the human body was formed. Man was then ‘created’ in the image of God. Since God is not of this world, the human soul is not ‘made’ of anything material, it is not made of anything that already existed in this world, it was brought into this world out of ‘nothing.’ This was as much an act of creation as the beginning of the universe out of nothing (a singularity, in science-speak) with the big bang.

The New Testament agrees with this view of the origins of humankind. In Corinthians 1 we learn:

15:46   The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual.

15:47   The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven.

15:48   As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.

15:49   And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

On the scientific side of the hypothesis of a two-stage development of human beings, psychologist Julian Jaynes provided some important evidence of an amazing transformation in the human species that he believed took place relatively recently. In his remarkable book, The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Jaynes argued that for most of their existence, humans were not conscious and functioned not as we do but as very smart animals. This change from smart animals to fully human evidently occurred only a few thousand years ago.

According to Jaynes, the sudden and mysterious emergence of the Hebrews and Greeks—two people remarkably different from all the other peoples who existed before them—marks the point when full-blown consciousness first flourishes enough to come to the attention of history. That consciousness, expressed in the human pursuit of philosophy, mathematics, science, the arts, spirituality, and human rights, quickly spread across the world and became dominant in the human domain. It is reasonable to conclude that consciousness may be just the most obvious result of people being endowed with a soul. There can be no doubt that conscious people have done what God told descendants of Adam to do:

Genesis 1:28: God said to them, ‘Be fertile and become many. Fill the land and conquer it. Dominate the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every beast that walks the land.’

In any case, it is telling that ancient and medieval Jewish scholars of the Old Testament decoded the clues in Genesis and had no problem with the existence of other biological human beings at the time of Adam and Eve. The great Jewish scholar and authority, Maimonides, called these beings “mere animal(s) in human shape and form” [The Guide for the Perplexed, Part I: Chapter VII]. If true, this would solve many mysteries, such as questions about who the children of Adam and Eve mated with. Once the two-stage development of Man described in Genesis 1 is understood, the original question posed above can be answered. Yes, Adam was the first man created, and yes, his biological life form was chosen from an already existing population.

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)

Looking for easy answers

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warning

According to the site stats, more than a few students looking for homework answers are being directed by search engines to this blog (probably because this site hosts an online astronomy textbook). WordPress’ site stats show me the exact search terms used, which can be rather amusing. Here is a small sample of the search terms (verbatim) that brought students here:

5. using kepler’s third law of planetary motion, determine the distance in astronomical units the planet jupiter is from the sun, knowing that jupiter takes approximately 11.86 years to orbit the sun one time

Here’s a wild idea: try using Kepler’s third law of planetary motion to determine the distance. The equation is p2 = a3, and you’ve been given p. If you don’t know how to determine a, I suggest you ask your middle school math teachers for a refund.

given that the moon has an angular diameter of about 0.5 and an average distance of about 380,000 km from earth, calculate its actual diameter. (hint: recall the angular separation formula)

When I was teaching university classes, it amazed me how often students would overlook the hints I gave them, as though they contained superfluous information (“hint: breathe in and out”). On the contrary, the hints are always meant to be helpful, and often they practically give the answer away, as is the case with the question above. The angular separation formula is basic trigonometry, which you should have mastered in high school; it contains three variables, two of which have been given to you. If this is really beyond your ability to figure out, you should rethink university; it’s only going to get tougher.

how does retrograde motion play a crucial role in defining the differences between the geocentric and heliocentric model?

It’s almost certain you’ve been given this information in a lecture and in the textbook. If you’re going to skip the lectures, at the very least you should scan the book for this information.

knowing that the surface gravity of jupiter is approximately 2.5 that of the earth what would be the approximate weight of a 125 pound person on jupiter

Three variables, two of which have been given. Yes, it’s rocket science (sort of), but the junior version. My 11 year-old homeschooled nephew could do this in his sleep.

the radius of the earth’s orbit around the sun is 1.5 *10^ 11m.if the sun suddenly enlarged

… ?? We’ll never know for sure, but this sounds like a common homework question, which asks how the Earth’s orbit would change if the Sun suddenly enlarged to X size. This is slightly more advanced than the above questions, because it involves thinking about a concept rather than just plugging numbers into a formula or rewording a passage from the textbook. Again, it’s almost certain your textbook covers this concept — time to exercise that grey lump between your ears.

What strikes me as odd about these searches is that the questions are entered word-for-word, which indicates the person searching doesn’t even know what s/he’s being asked. As many years of university-level teaching have shown me, a great many students are not only deficient in the basics (reading, writing, math, and factual information), they aren’t taught how to think, to the point that they cannot parse a very simple problem. These are people who are going to struggle in life.

If you are a student who is too lazy to expend the necessary effort or who struggles with the basics, consider whether you should be spending your time and money on university. It is a serious endeavor that requires your full devotion. If you feel like you’re in over your head, talk to your advisor and be 100% forthright about your struggles. It may be that you should spend a couple of years mastering the basics in community college and/or developing a work ethic before you return to university. There is no shame in acknowledging your deficiencies; on the contrary, it’s a sign of strength.

Runaway black hole?

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Galaxy NGC 1275. [Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration]

Galaxy NGC 1275. [Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration]

Sometimes theoretical science is stranger than science fiction

The most massive black hole ever measured may be an intergalactic hitchhiker that escaped from one galaxy before getting captured by another. If this scenario, laid out in a paper posted February 18 at arXiv.org, is proven correct, it would be the first time astronomers have definitively spotted a black hole that was expelled from its original galactic home.

A supermassive black hole lives in the center of just about every galaxy, including our own Milky Way. Most of the time, these black holes aren’t doing much, but when two galaxies collide — a rather common event — their black holes find each other and merge. Simulations involving relativity predict that under certain circumstances these merging black holes can be flung around and even kicked out of the merging galaxies. To understand how this can happen, we have to consider one of the fundamental properties of a black hole — its spin. Most (perhaps all) black holes are spinning, and this spin has a direction — you can think of black holes as kind of like spinning tops. If you bring two spinning black holes together, and their spins are going in the same direction, the pair coalesces into a single black hole inside of the merged galaxy as this simulation demonstrates:

The disks surrounding each of the black holes in the simulation are probably accretion disks — gaseous material rapidly spiraling down onto the black holes — that, in any case, show the direction of the black hole spin.

But what happens if you bring two spinning black holes together, and their spins are not going in the same direction? Turns out, this will cause the merging pair to flail around, sometimes with enough energy to kick the merged black hole out of the merged galaxy. The kicked black hole could carry gaseous material with it, if the material is gravitationally bound to the black hole, but the black hole would essentially wander the universe homeless.

The study above (authored by two of my long-time collaborators) proposes that the overly massive black hole residing in the relatively modest galaxy NGC 1277 was flung out of the neighboring galaxy, NGC 1275, long ago as it underwent a merger. Instead of wandering the universe homeless, however, the merged black hole pair found a new home in NGC 1277. What makes this scenario appealing is the close correlation between the masses of black holes and the masses of their host galaxies. Black holes are typically about 0.1% of the mass of their hosts, but NGC 1277 is a significant outlier from this relationship: this ho-hum galaxy hosts the most massive black hole ever observed, which weighs in at a stunning 14% of the galaxy’s mass. Adding to the appeal is the fact that NGC 1277 has a close galactic neighbor with a much greater mass, NGC 1275, a more likely original home for the excessively massive black hole.

Now that astrophysicists have a plausible theoretical explanation for NGC 1277’s outsized black hole, the search will be on for observational data supporting this idea.

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.

Physics-inspired sci-fi movie in the works

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Good news for hard sci-fi fans: Christopher Nolan, the critically-acclaimed director of the Dark Knight movies, is looking to direct and produce a science fiction movie based on the theoretical work of renowned CalTech physicist, Kip Thorne. The script for the movie, titled Interstellar, was co-authored by Nolan’s brother, Jonathan, and features “time travel and alternate dimensions and sees a group of explorers travel through a wormhole.” The movie is tentatively slated for a 2014 release.

Thorne, one of the world’s foremost experts on general relativity, has been a mainstay of gravitational physics for decades. He co-authored the seminal textbook on the subject, Gravitation, with two other giants in the field, Charles Misner and John Wheeler, and also wrote the outstanding popular-level science book, Black Holes and Time Warps. For nearly two decades Thorne held the position of Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at CalTech, named after the legendary physicist Richard Feynman, who, like Thorne, had a particular interest in making physics concepts accessible to a wider audience. Thorne retired from the position in 2009 to focus on other projects, including penning a classical physics textbook and co-authoring the script for Interstellar.

This is not Thorne’s first foray into science fiction, however. When another well-known popularizer of science, Carl Sagan, approached him for help with Sagan’s novel, Contact, it was Thorne who suggested the use of wormholes to transport people over vast distances through space. Thorne subsequently developed the idea theoretically, which has since seen even more popularization in science fiction, most notably three of the later Star Trek television series.

Our year from heaven

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What follows is a reflection on personal events of 2012. It also serves to explain why not much blogging has taken place in the last several months. After a little more time to rest and recuperate, I plan to resume regular posting in the new year.

My husband and I have lived through what most people would think of as a year from hell. First, I found out in late 2011 that I had early-stage breast cancer. I’m part of the roughly 2% of women every year who are diagnosed with breast cancer under the age of 40. I had to have surgery to remove the nascent tumor, and starting in January of this year I had to endure weeks of daily radiation treatments. When I finished the treatments in the spring, and all signs of cancer were gone, my husband and I rejoiced, thinking the worst was behind us. Even better, we found out three months later we were expecting our first child. We felt utterly blessed. 

With everything seemingly okay, my husband decided to take a summer trip to his native Finland to visit his father and do some fishing. I made the decision to stay home, since I was experiencing morning sickness and significant fatigue. About halfway through his vacation, my husband began to manifest flu symptoms. He didn’t think much of it, but when, a few days after coming home, he became incoherent and developed a life-threatening 106-degree fever I took him to the hospital.

There we discovered he had what is referred to in Finland as Kumlinge disease, a rare tick-borne virus that results in meningo-encephalitis in 20-30% of those who are exposed to the virus. For days, my husband was in and out of consciousness (mostly out) as his physicians monitored him. All they could do was mitigate the symptoms and try to prevent the fever from rising to the point of causing permanent damage or death. Once my husband emerged from the fog of encephalitis, it was not clear whether he would have partial paralysis from the nerve damage and/or permanent problems with his memory and thinking. Fortunately, and owing a great deal to his strong constitution, he made a good recovery in about two months and was able to return to work and playing hockey. Again, we thought the worst was behind us.

By November we were starting to prepare for the arrival of our baby. We discovered we were having a girl, and chose a Swedish name for her — Ellinor Kjerstin — to honor our mutual Swedish heritage. It was a perfect name: Ellinor means “shining light,” which she certainly was for us, and Kjerstin means “follower of Christ,” which we hoped she would be. During all this time, I had been reflecting on how lucky we were in conceiving a child so quickly; it was obviously ‘meant to be.’ The pregnancy had gone very well until we found out at five months, during a routine screen, that our baby was no longer growing. 

We were referred to a perinatologist, who told us that our little girl had a fatal chromosomal abnormality and was not expected to live. We were devastated. A week later she passed away. I gave birth to our precious daughter the morning following her passing, and we held her all day. We finally had the little family we wanted, brief as it was. My husband, who has seen firsthand the agony written on the faces of those who suffer terrible deaths, had found his peace in the serene countenance of our girl; she had gone to her heavenly Father without suffering. However, I found no peace at all. I had bonded with the little body I had held for those precious hours, and now she was gone. For a while, tormented by the loss, I wondered how I could go on.

What saved me was the peace I found in the idea that Ellinor was in the arms of God. We know she was sent to us for a reason, and while I will not reveal here what that reason was, those who are closest to us know it has been lovingly fulfilled.

These were horrible experiences to live through, but they have turned out to be tremendous gifts that I am thankful for. First, because they have taught me and my husband how precious life and love are. Holding our baby daughter for the few hours we had her has taught me more about unselfish love than all the previous experiences of my entire life. Second, because, as my husband has observed, each of these trials has actually strengthened our marriage. I feared that these experiences, particularly the loss of our child, would tear us apart. We had heard of people who suffered similar tragedies and lost their marriages as well. Our faith has sustained us, and I have never felt closer to my husband, and he to me. Third, it has shown us the unbelievable love of our family and friends. We are truly humbled by the outpouring of kindness and sympathy we have received in the wake of our trials. But, most of all, I am grateful because these experiences have brought us both closer to our Creator. I finally understand what it means to experience God’s protection and provision.

People often wonder why bad things happen to those who seemingly don’t deserve them. While I cannot claim to have any knowledge of who does or does not deserve such trials, I do know that those who truly understand the principal tenets of the Christian faith don’t wonder why these things happen. Ours is a fallen world, and we will all suffer because of it; but one of the blessings of our faith is to know that it is not for nothing. The great Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis, observed that a loving, compassionate God would not prevent his earthly children from experiencing pain, but would allow them to suffer in order to prepare them for the perfection of spiritual life. Through our earthly suffering we are all allowed to share in the experience of Christ, who suffered to ultimately save us all from the imperfection of this world.

This year has been a time of anguish for my husband and me. But we have passed through the fire and I know we are better people for it.  For that reason, I will not think of 2012 as the year from hell, but as a year in which we drew closer to heaven.