Speaker 0 00:00:00 <silence>
Speaker 1 00:00:05 Id The Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
Speaker 2 00:00:12 Does science rule out faith as an impossibility? And just how complicated is that question? Anyway. Greetings. I'm Tom Gilson. Today's id The Future episode comes courtesy of the Know Why Podcast hosted by Liberty McCarter. She's interviewing the Discovery Institute's Jonathan Witt, and in various ways, that's the question they pursue here.
Speaker 3 00:00:38 The Christian worldview actually gave birth to science. Uh, this is, you know, kind of a best kept secret. Uh, if you talk some atheist, you would get the idea that Christianity, uh, somehow stymied science.
Speaker 0 00:00:56 Welcome
Speaker 4 00:00:57 To the Know Why Podcast. I'm your host, Liberty McCarter. For many of us, it's not enough to know what people say about life's most important questions. We also want to know why each week know why tackles tough questions on topics ranging from spirituality to current events. While we approach these issues from a Christian perspective, we discuss diverse opinions and ultimately dive into what the research says. Are you ready to know why? Let's get started. Our faith in Science at War. Welcome to the Know Why Podcast. I'm your host, Liberty McCarter research shows that Gen Z, the generation born after 1995, identifies as atheist at double the rate of the general population. 46% of teens and millennials say, I need factual evidence to support my beliefs. According to Barner Research Group, and only 28% of teens and 25% of young adults believe science and the Bible are complimentary.
Speaker 4 00:01:53 In short, many people today are under the impression that if you are an intellectual and believe in science, so to speak, you just can't believe in God. At least not as the Bible presents him here to challenge that notion. Today is my guest, Jonathan Witt. He's the Executive editor of Discovery Institute Press, and a senior fellow and a senior project manager with Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. His latest book is Heretic, one Scientist Journey from Darwin to Design, uh, that he co-wrote with Ma Lala. He was a lead writer and associate producer of the award-winning documentary Poverty Incorporated, and has also written other documentaries. Um, and his academic articles and editorials have been widely published in a variety of periodicals and newspapers, respectively. He previously served as a tenured professor of literature and writing at Lubbock Christian University and has a PhD with honors in English and Literary Theory from the University of Kansas. And that is actually just a small portion of his impressive biography. So thank you so much for joining us today, Jonathan.
Speaker 3 00:02:54 You bet, Liberty. Good to be on.
Speaker 4 00:02:56 Well, obviously, as we've seen from your bio, you have experience and expertise in an array of fields, but can you tell us just a little bit more about your background in science and what draws you to the study of science?
Speaker 3 00:03:07 Yeah, it'd probably be best to think of me as a, a journalist. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> in terms of my science background, uh, because I'm trained in literature and, uh, reasoning, uh, taught English for many years. Composition taught, uh, spotting logical fallacies, how to reason well. Uh, and then I got into the think tank world and had the privilege of working alongside and working with, uh, scientists from a variety of backgrounds. I worked with Astrobiologists, I worked with, um, biochemist, geologists, uh, philosophers of science. So it's been a real privilege working at the discovery industry alongside, uh, these scientists. You know, people like, uh, Michael B at Lehigh University, uh, uh, other, other guys trained at Cambridge. Uh, and so, uh, it's so was, I'm not a scientist myself. Uh, I've worked alongside scientists. I've studied the debate, um, as a, you know, kind of as a, a third party, an objective third party, and become, uh, just persuaded by it's how powerful the evidence, scientific evidence there is for God and for design. Uh, it's, it's been a, been a fascinating ride.
Speaker 4 00:04:15 Well, on that note, um, you are obviously a Christian believer, and so what is your response, um, when somebody questions whether you can believe in science and also believe in God?
Speaker 3 00:04:26 Yeah, I mean, there's the, the most basic response I would give is that the Christian worldview actually gave birth to science. Uh, this is, you know, kind of a best kept secret. Uh, if you talk some atheist, you would get the idea that Christianity, uh, somehow stymied science when in fact, of all the different cultures, all the different civilizations in the world down through history, we have to ask ourselves, why is it that Christian Europe, uh, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, that's the place that gave birth to science. It wasn't, uh, the ancient Greeks. So they had some brilliant philosophers and thinkers. It wasn't India. It wasn't China. Um, it, it wasn't the Egyptian, uh, thinkers. It was medieval and Renaissance Europe. Uh, now a racist would say, oh, that's 'cause Europeans are somehow superior. Uh, but that's been disproven by science. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 3 00:05:20 We're not, uh, racist. We know, we know the evidence is against that. So what oil is it that the Europeans had that, well, they had the Judeo-Christian worldview, and that, uh, fired the imaginations and it ordered the reasoning of those that gave birth to the scientific revolution. We can go through and talk about some of the ways, uh, that, that Christian worldview helped, uh, birth to scientific revolution, or we can, we can jump ahead today. And so, you know what, there are, there are scientists in our age, uh, who see, uh, nature, see the, the even recent discoveries pointing to intelligent design, pointing to evidence of God. We have Nobel laureates like Arno Pinus, Charles Towns. These are brilliant, uh, physicist astronomers who said very pointedly, when they look at the, the evidence of fine tuning in the laws and consciences of physics and chemistry, they're fine tuned to allow, uh, for beings like ourselves for, for life and even advanced life, let's say, the fine tuning, the, the fact that the universe, uh, appeared out of nothing in the Big Bang. All these things come together and are best explained by reference to a cosmic designer. So I think, uh, when you look past a lot of the smoke and mirrors and a lot of the bluffing from the atheist, uh, science, science should, should be, uh, seen as and is, is a friend to theistic faith.
Speaker 4 00:06:45 Well, I'm, I'm glad you brought that up because something else I was gonna mention is that, um, you know, obviously public perception is that scientists or science as a field, um, are hostile to religion. But there are some research sewing, and I read this a couple years ago, I think it was re reported on in Christianity today, that the majority of people who work in science related fields are religious. And you actually were mentioning, you know, um, very prestigious actual scientists. But even in the scientist related fields, science related fields, um, are are populated by religious people. And then again, throughout history, as you were mentioning, uh, some of the most prominent scientists and, and people who developed so much of what we know today, um, or discovered they were, they also had strong religious faith. And that's, um, uh, maybe something you touch on in your latest book, um, that we mentioned in your bio. Uh, you, you co-wrote a book on intelligent design and the story specifically of how one scientist set out to defend evolution, and he ended up questioning it. But I'm guessing that his story probably isn't unique today.
Speaker 3 00:07:46 That's right. Yeah. The person, uh, I think you mentioned his name earlier, Mahe Sala, uh, and he was a highly, highly successful bioengineer, uh, finished bioengineer also so lived, lived and worked in Sweden. Um, he, uh, grew up, went through college, graduate school being taught, uh, the standard Darwinian paradigm. Uh, but then when he finally started studying it in his area where he had most expertise, enzymes, uh, enzymes are a type of protein that are absolutely essential for life processes. He, the Darwinian story started to break down. Uh, he, he, he realized there was no credible way that, uh, enzymes, uh, these very sophisticated, uh, molecular protein machines could have evolved through any blind process. Uh, and he, you know, of course, continued to research that. And so that book is, is a, uh, it tells a story of him moving into an intelligent design position.
Speaker 3 00:08:42 Now, I, I do wanna a caveat here. There are Christians, um, faithful, thoughtful Christians who, um, who look for ways to integrate, or how shall I say, harmonize, uh, their theistic Christian worldview with some form of Darwinian evolution. Uh, they might be going to the theistic, uh, evolutionist, uh, theistic darwinists. Um, I'm not saying those people are, are bad at, I disagree with them, uh, personally about trying to kind of salvage, uh, Darwinian evolution. But there are out there, uh, guys like Francis Collins who, who see powerful evidence of design in a, as I I mentioned the example of the fine tuning of the laws and constants of physics and chemistry. He's also pointed to, uh, the, the kind of moral nature of humans. At one time at least, he, he didn't see how evolution could properly explain how we are moral beings, um, the, the origin of life. Uh, that was, I think, another thing he pointed to as something that may have required intelligent design. So, so the, the evidence for design and nature is so abundant that even those scientists that try to somehow accommodate Darwinism to their Christian worldview, they still see abundant evidence of design in other areas.
Speaker 4 00:09:57 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. That's interesting. But even so, I think that goes to show, you know, with the example of people like Francis Collins, that, again, science and faith are not incompatible. And there may even be some disagreement within the faith community about exactly, you know, what things mean or, or, you know, kind of the things you mentioned. But, um, there's still, you know, room for robust belief in intelligent design and in a higher power, um, and even the God of the Bible, um, while still being able to, uh, pursue science. Um, and so there are probably,
Speaker 3 00:10:34 Yeah, absolutely. You know, we think of, uh, the Bible and we come to the Bible, and those of us that have a high view of scripture, you know, see it and understand it as the word of God, it's inspired by God and infallible. Uh, we have to be careful though, that we don't forget that. Whereas God is infallible and his word is infallible, our understanding of scripture is not necessarily infallible. So we can, uh, we can think of God as, uh, and we see this in, in Psalm 19, this idea of God's two books is, is Book of special Revelation, the Bible, uh, but also his book of general revelation. You know, Psalm 19 talks about the, the heavens declares the glory of God. Uh, it pours forth speech, pours forth evidence of the creator. So that's his book of general revelations, that that's a concept, uh, that, uh, Christians, uh, took, uh, into the Middle Ages, into the Renaissance.
Speaker 3 00:11:30 And, and Christian thinkers and students of nature, uh, took that idea, this idea that nature is a book, and it's the, it's book written by the Author of Nature. It's rational because our, our creator's rational, they went looking for a hidden underlying rational order of nature, because they believed in a rational creator, and they found it, it mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and that's kind of in a nutshell, the birth of birth of science. But it's one thing to believe all that. It's another thing is you come to the Bible to think, my first reading of a passage is infallible. That would be a mistake. So, for instance, uh, there are are passages in the Bible that talk about the sun rising and the sun's setting. Somebody could take that and say, look, that's proof that the sun revolves around the earth. Um, you know, back for centuries, and everybody, every culture everywhere believed that mm-hmm.
Speaker 3 00:12:22 <affirmative>, uh, the sun revolved around the earth regardless of, of religious view. Uh, but then as you know, as Christian scientists, like, uh, Copernicus, uh, and Galileo studied and, and they developed telescopes and started to realize that, hey, maybe, maybe actually the earth revolves around the sun, and it only looks as if, uh, the sun revolves around the earth because the Earth is rotating. Uh, there were some that protested. Well, you know, wait a minute. The Bible says that the, the sunrise and the sun sets, but, uh, wiser minds prevail and said, well, you know, these, these passages in the Bible are describing what, what things look like from, you know, the surface of the earth. As you know, we wake up, we see the sunrise. Even today, you and I, we go outside the most brilliant astronomers, we'll talk about, oh, that was a beautiful sunrise.
Speaker 3 00:13:08 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, they're not arguing that, uh, the earth, uh, is the center of the, so system from the sun goes around it. So that, that's just one example of how you can kind of, if you're not careful, you can assume certain things that, that the Bible's teaching, when, when it's not, it's using a, a phenomenal way of describing something that's going on. Now, as far as Genesis one and two, there's a lot of debates about, uh, does that describe a, a young earth of just a few thousand years? Uh, are the days, uh, of Genesis, uh, long periods of time, are there gaps in the genealogies? There's a lot of thoughtful people on different sides of that, but I think if we come at it with humility and we, we kinda look step back and take the take in the larger picture, uh, which gives us abundant evidence that nature is the work of design, we can work out, uh, some of those kinda lower level issues, uh, even as we are, you know, kind of blown, should be blown away by the, by the powerful evidence that, that nature is the work of a, of a, an amazing, powerful designer.
Speaker 3 00:14:11 Mm.
Speaker 4 00:14:12 Um, and I'm really glad you brought up, you know, that perspective on reading the Bible, because I know there are a lot of people who say, you know, well, there's no scientific evidence for, or even historical evidence for things mentioned, particularly in the Old Testament. Um, and so you talked about, obviously our, our first reading, you know, is not always perfect. We don't always understand. Um, but can you expound on that a little bit more, maybe for somebody who it's assembling block that they just think, well, I can't, you know, be intellectually honest and believe what the Bible's saying here, 'cause it, it clear so clearly doesn't make scientific sense or something. Or maybe they're not approaching scripture in the correct way.
Speaker 3 00:14:54 Right. Yeah. So, I mean, there's lots of threads, and if you, if, um, uh, one is some people say, well, there's the Bible can't be true because there's these miracles. Well, how can they're, well, why do you say they can't be miracles? Sometimes they'll say that, not even realize that they're, they're actually just propagating a question begging assumption, uh, called, uh, that goes, that technically goes by the name of, of materialism or philosophical materialism, or naturalism, which says, uh, basically that the only things in the universe are, you know, matter and energy and the laws of nature. And you can't have anything that breaks that well, that, that's a philosophical outlook and assumption. It's not a, a scientific, um, conclusion. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> based on evidence. Now, we can all agree that that nature is orderly. That, that, that assumption, uh, was part of the scientific revolution.
Speaker 3 00:15:45 It was based on, um, the belief of, of Christians, um, Galileo, Copernicus, you know, Newton, all these great scientists boil on and on. We could go that God was an orderly creator, he was a rational creator, and he created an orderly universe. But to go beyond that, say, there could never be any miracle by the creator of the entire universe of being powerful enough to bring the whole universe into being, uh, that that's an as an assumption without, without evidence. So, so that's my, my first thing. I would say, be careful that somebody's not pushing on you. This question, ba assumption that miracles are somehow illogical. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, now it would be illogical and jumping the gun if every time somebody said, oh, there was a miracle yesterday. Uh, you know, such and such happened, and trust me, it was a miracle. Well, you know, you need to look into the evidence.
Speaker 3 00:16:36 Uh, there's powerful evidence, I would argue, for, for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Um, and that that would be a whole topic for another day. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, strong historical evidence that, um, the grave was empty and that, uh, this movement just exploded, uh, from the empty tomb. Uh, but to move back to kind of more traditional scientific, uh, type matters. It was conventional wisdom among a lot of, uh, physicists, physicists and astronomers in the late 19th century, that the universe was eternal. Uh, the Bible teaches us that the universe came into being, um, you know, when God called it into existence. Well, in the 20th century, evidence started to mount and mount and mount, and now it's conventional wisdom that the universe did come into being in the Big Bang. Uh, the, uh, Einstein, uh, uncovered some evidence in his theory of general relativity.
Speaker 3 00:17:30 He didn't like where that evidence went. He came up with a fudge factor to try to avoid the implications of a cosmic beginning. Uh, but the, the evidence just kept growing. Uh, Hubble, you know, you've heard of the Hubble telescope mm-hmm. <affirmative> named after Edmond Hubble. He discovered that the galaxies that were not just in one galaxy, but there are millions of galaxies, and that the further those galaxies are away from us, the faster they're moving away from us. Hmm. Uh, and then there was also a, there was also a Catholic astronomer, uh, George Lara, uh, who actually developed the Big Bang Theory. And basically it boils down to the idea that the universe came into being from a tiny point and expanded out from that point. And it's still expanding. Atheists hated the idea 'cause they wanted to clinging to their eternal universe model. 'cause if you have an eternal universe in their mind, well then you don't have to to explain the origin of the universe. Uh, it's always been, but turns out the universe did come into being, came into being, uh, ex nelo that that's a, uh, an ancient term, uh, out of nothing. And that's exactly what the Bible teaches, that the universe came into being out of nothing. God called it into being out of nothing. So, uh, there's an example of where conventional wisdom was overturned and it, you know, pointed and strengthened the case for Christian theism.
Speaker 4 00:18:53 Wow. That's also interesting. And I think it's a good reminder, um, for anyone listening, regardless of where they stand on religious belief, that, you know, there is still so much happening in the world of discovery. There's so much that we don't know, and we're constantly learning. So just because there might be something, you know, in the Bible, for instance, if you're reading that that doesn't make sense, uh, right away, or that you can't, you feel like you can't prove scientifically, doesn't mean that we may not discover the answer at some point, or maybe we never will, um, discover every answer to every question. Um, but that doesn't necessarily have to be a hindrance because there's so much knowledge in the world. Do we really expect that we're going to understand everything about it? Um, and so on that point, I wanted to come back to intelligent design.
Speaker 4 00:19:37 Um, and I just think that for some people who may be listening, you know, they may be unaware because they were always taught that, um, you know, evolution, uh, uh, per Darwin, so to speak, was, is fact and just how the world came into being. And anybody who thinks anything else is, you know, fringe or something like that. But there's actually a robust body of academic work and science being done by people who believe in intelligent design. Um, and so I don't know a whole lot about the details of that other than that it exists. So, in layman's terms, can you kind of, I, I think you've already mentioned a lot of it, but give us a glimpse of just kind of the work that is going on, um, by people who are studying the intelligent design theory.
Speaker 3 00:20:22 Yeah, that's a great question. And if, for us, if you want to go and learn more about this, before I dive into that, that answer, go to discovery.org, uh, and, and go to the intelligent design section of that website. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, and you'll find a lot of resources. There are hundreds, I would say thousands of, of scientists that are skeptical of modern Darwinian theory. And I'm not talking about the original version of it that Charles, Charles Darwin. There's been a lot of changes, a lot of additions, a lot of add-ons, Neo Darwinism, uh, the extended evolutionary synthesis. But even that, even those, those, those more, you know, developed, uh, complicated versions of it that take into account, you know, developments in D n a genetic genetics, uh, there are, there are well trained, highly trained, uh, biologists, paleontologists that just reject it because they just do not see it as capable of building the information, rich structures, uh, the molecular machinery, the amazing molecular machinery that, that, uh, scientists have been uncovering mm-hmm.
Speaker 3 00:21:26 <affirmative> in the last few decades. Uh, so, so I think that's a, that's a growing field. And then you have, uh, what's what I find interesting is you have, you have those that are committed to materialism who are rejecting contemporary Darwinism. Uh, and you, you have, at the Rural Society of London, uh, three or four years ago, they had, they had a meeting and they came together to, you know, they basically said, Neo Darwinism is in huge trouble. Uh, it can't explain, uh, some things that are, that are, you know, getting harder and harder to explain. Uh, we need to find, uh, an extended evolutionary synthesis. We need to develop an extended census that looks somehow, uh, you know, address these, these growing problems. And so you had these different scientists come together and someone said, oh, well, we can, we should use this explanation over here, or why don't, why don't we use this patch over here?
Speaker 3 00:22:15 And so there were lots of, uh, well, lots of attempts to, to patch the problem, but none of them agreed because, you know, one guy over here with his favorite pet, uh, explanation mm-hmm. <affirmative> or, you know, solution would get critiqued by this other guy over here and say, well, that doesn't solve this, and this doesn't solve this. So there's actually behind the scenes, if you go to like a, a textbook, uh, like a high school biology textbook, all is all is right with the world of, of evolutionary theory. And everything's ever been explained except for a few little details. They're trying to, to patch up. But if you actually get behind the scenes and, and actually look at the, some of the academic journals and look at some of the, these high level conferences, uh, there's a great deal of concern. Uh, there are growing problems, and you're just not gonna get that if you, you jump in and look at a high school biology textbook, because it's gonna, those are, those are usually 10, 20, 30 years behind what's going on at the cutting edge.
Speaker 3 00:23:11 Uh, wow. Oh, and by the way, a lot of textbooks, uh, if I had to recommend one book to kind of puncture your one's, uh, kind of naive faith in biology textbooks mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it would be, uh, well, two books. One called The Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells, and then his follow-up book called Zombie Science. And he goes through and talks about how biology textbook books will use what he calls icons of evolution. These, these, these punchy, uh, evidences for evolution, but these, the punchy evidences that have been disproven. Mm-hmm. Like hackles embryo drawings, you'll find these cropping up in biology textbooks, hackle embryo drawings say, look how humans at early stages of their embryonic development look like a fish, or, you know, mm-hmm. This other animal. See, that's, that's a biology replicating the evolutionary process in the stages of the embryo, uh, as it develops.
Speaker 3 00:24:06 Well, he fudged those drawings, even leading, uh, evolutionists have admitted that those are completely fudged, uh, should not be used. You know, like a Harvard paleontologist, Stephen J. Gould, he said, this is, this is a, you know, this is a, this is shameful. Mm-hmm. We need to stop using this. And yet the biology textbooks will keep using these and other discredited icons. Why would they do that? Why wouldn't they go uses incredibly powerful, um, evidence that hasn't been discredited, uh, Jonathan Well's argument. Well, ultimately, they don't have that much powerful evidence. So they have to make recourse to these discredited icons and just hope that people don't, uh, do more research into the matter.
Speaker 4 00:24:47 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Wow. Well, I would guess, uh, just from the young people that I know, that if you said, Hey, guess what? Your, uh, school textbook may not be up to date or may have some misinformation, and it, they probably wouldn't find that too hard to believe <laugh>. Um, so
Speaker 3 00:25:06 Yeah. So yeah. And then I have to take it on faith go, like I said, go find, uh, just pull up, uh, icons, evolution. You can find a book, and there's also a website that'll give, give a lot, lot of the evidence just right there. Um, now you may say, well, then how come smart scientists can still believe in it? I mean, 'cause surely some of these guys, you know, know that these things are false and that they still believe in it. Well, I think it goes back to this commitment. Uh, even some theistic uh, Christian scientists will say, well, God created the universe, but at the beginning, but then after that, we really have to, to stick with, you know, unbroken laws of nature. 'cause we, we don't wanna be invoking God at every turn, just 'cause we don't understand something. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So they actually, they, they hold to this idea called methodological materialism.
Speaker 3 00:25:51 You know, okay, no matter isn't all there is, there's a God, uh, there's a supernatural realm. But when I'm a scientist, I'm only gonna entertain, uh, explanations, uh, that invoke purely material causes. And so, so they, they, they can, they have a stray jacket on their mind, if you will. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, and so they live in these kind of two, two worlds. Well, there's a god, there's a creator who's powerful. But when I'm doing science, I can only consider materialistic explanations and evolutionary theory. Uh, some version of Darwinism is really the only game in town for explaining the origin of, of biological structure. So I have to somehow make it work. Uh, and, and so, so they, uh, and so then for instance, they'll point to things like, well, you look at the different, the genes, the genetic code, uh, of different animals and plants, and there's a lot of similarities there.
Speaker 3 00:26:42 See that, that points to common descent. Well, maybe, uh, but then if you turn, you come back at them and say, couldn't it also be explained by common design? Uh, just like, you know, an airplane, a car bike, they use wheels, but that doesn't mean they're, you know, descended, you know, willy-nilly from some evolutionary process. It, it's a product of common design. The wheel was a useful feature, uh, in each of those different types of machines. And so designers reuse them. God could be reusing useful, you know, forms of, of d n a genetic information to accomplish similar things in various types of plants and animals. Uh, can we investigate and see which way the evidence goes one way or the other? The, some evolutionists, not all of them, but many of them will say, well, you know, we, we can't consider common design because that violates mythological materialism. We just need to go with, with common descent. Well, fine if you, you wanna think that way, but, uh, most of us would like to follow the evidence and consider both options, uh, and, and not be straightjacketed, uh, by a mythological rule that's basically amounts to question begging.
Speaker 4 00:27:50 Right. Wow. Well, uh, there's so much interesting information here and, and we are going to have a blog post up with this podcast episode, um, with the books that Jonathan is mentioning, um, as well as other resources you may be interested in looking into. Um, and before we log off, Jonathan, I just wanted to give you, um, an opportunity to speak to somebody who's listening. Maybe they're a young person who's interested in studying science, or maybe they are studying science and they're interested in, um, they're interested in God and, and thinking about religion. Um, and I think sometimes you kind of touched on it a minute ago, people may feel that if they're doing science, um, as a, a believer that they might have to compromise their spiritual beliefs to acknowledge the science or vice versa. And so, um, I know you said you, you come at this more from a journalistic perspective, but what advice would you have for somebody about, you know, maybe they don't have to compromise their spiritual beliefs or, or what they're seeing? Um, whenever they're studying the scientific data?
Speaker 3 00:28:51 Yeah. Uh, absolutely. That they, they don't have to, they shouldn't. They, uh, now depending on the particular scientific field they go into, it's gonna be easier or more challenging. Uh, and I don't mean the evidence. I think in every major scientific field, the evidence ultimately points to God if you, if you dig deep enough, uh, but there's gonna be, peer pressure is gonna be greater in certain fields. You know, if you, if you go into evolutionary biology, you're gonna get a lot of pressure just to conform to a materialistic, evolutionary, uh, paradigm. Uh, if you go into, uh, physics, it's gonna, you're gonna have less pressure. You know, you're gonna have some people that say, oh, we, we've gotta come out, explain it, what somehow explain away fine tuning. Um, but you're gonna have others like, you know, the Nobel Arts I mentioned that are saying No great points to God.
Speaker 3 00:29:36 So it depends on the field you go into. If you, you go into biology, I would not recommend picking fights with your, you know, if you have a atheistic, you know, pro Darwin biology professor picking fights with them in class, that's, you know, that's not, not prudent. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, learn what you can learn, learn the arguments for the theory, but also go out and learn the, the best evidence, the, the weaknesses in the theory, and then you'll actually be much better situated to reason through the evidence than somebody that either hears all the pro evidence or just all the con evidence you wanna wanna filter here both sides. And I think if you do that, you'll see, uh, that there's powerful evidence. And eventually when you get in a better position in terms of your career, you can pr prudently start to, um, kind of open up other people's minds. To, to the contrary evidence, the evidence that is pointing to intelligent design is suggesting that mindless processes alone cannot build, you know, wondrous things like the eye or, or the bacterial gellan motor, um, you know, all the amazing organisms we find around us.
Speaker 4 00:30:40 Well, great advice. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jonathan. Um, again, we'll have those resources posted for anybody who wants to dive deeper. And that's all we have for today. But thanks so much for listening to the Know Why podcast.
Speaker 2 00:30:56 That was Liberty McCarter, host of the Know Why Podcast Talking Faith and Science with Discovery Institute, senior fellow Jonathan Witt. We have much to share with you here, so we look forward to your being back with us. Please bring a friend or a colleague or a social media connection along with you. You'll find us as
[email protected]. We appreciate it and we appreciate your being here with us today. For ID the Future, I'm Tom Gilson.
Speaker 1 00:31:27 Visit
[email protected] and intelligent design.org. This program is Copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its Center for Science and Culture.
