[00:00:05] Speaker A: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
Did religion help give rise to science? Hello and welcome to ID the Future. I'm Casey Luskin, and today I'm speaking with Dr. John Bloom, a fellow of Discovery Institute with a PhD in physics from Cornell University and another PhD in ancient and Near Eastern Studies from the Annenberg Research Institute, which is now part of the University of Pennsylvania. He's a professor of physics at Biola University in La Mirada, California, where he also serves as the academic director for Biola's Master of Arts in Science and Religion Program. Dr. Bloom, it's great to have you on the show with us today.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Oh, it's great to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Absolutely. We're here today to discuss your contribution to a book that's been released titled the Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, exploring the ultimate questions about life and the Cosmos. Your chapter in that book is titled Did Christianity Give Rise to Science? The book is being published by Harvest House. I'm a co editor along with Bill Dempsey and Joseph Holden, and you can check out the book on Amazon. And Dr. Blum, we really appreciated your excellent contribution to the book.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: It was kind of fun to do. And when you look at all the scope that's covered, it really is comprehensive. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of it and probably start using it in classes or something, because it really does cover all the bases.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate you saying that. Our goal was to create a really, as the title says, comprehensive book on various topics related to science and faith. And I think it could make a good textbook because it covers so many topics. I mean, obviously the focus is the science and intelligent design, but as your chapter discusses the history of science, there are chapters that cover topics related to religion and science. Is faith or Christianity compatible with the evidence? So there's a lot to receive from this book.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Yeah, no, there really is.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: It's really cool from talking to a few other contributors, by the way, writing this chapter in the book actually gave them something to do during the first couple months of the COVID lockdown. I don't know if that was your experience, but we all were writing these chapters in March of 2020.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: No, I was. I was teaching classes and with Zoom online, so. So I was pretty busy. But it was. It was a nice break from teaching physics and such to reflect on this, so.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Okay, great. Well, glad to give you a little diversion from your day job there. So before we get started, could you tell us just a little bit about who you Are and what your background is. You have a very unique background with a PhD in the hard sciences and also a PhD in ancient and Near Eastern studies. What led you to go in those two diverse directions and how do you put all that together?
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Oh, man.
I guess to me it was an interest in basically, can Christianity and science fit together? You know, it's sort of this interest in apologetics. I became a Christian when I was kind of my junior year in college and was a science nerd or geek or something like that. I double majored in physics and chemistry. I was that crazy. And so my friends just looked at me like, well, what are you talking about Jesus for? You know, because after all, didn't you get the memo that science has said God doesn't exist? So that kind of put me on this pursuit of, well, how, how, what? What is there from science that actually points towards God?
And thus sort of my physics career was sort of the natural direction for the science geek, or nerd, whatever the term is for that. But then just this interest on the side of, wow, how can I bring Christianity into that? So I went to seminary after I finished at Cornell. And then since so many of the science and religion questions focus on Old Testament issues, I started out in Old Testament studies, but then shifted over to ancient Near Eastern studies for various reasons. That was more where the hard evidence was, if you would say it that way. So, yeah, you know, people ask me that, gee, physics and ancient Near Eastern studies, it's like. But the common thread in there is creation and evolution type of questions. You know, the Bible speaks to it, science speaks to it. So I wanted to have a good background in both.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: So that's great. Dr. Bloom, with your diverse background in both history and theology as well as science, I think you're well suited to talk about our topic today. Can you tell us, talking about the history of science, did science exist among the Greeks and the Romans? And if the answer is no, why would you say no?
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Well, some historians of science would see it getting started back with the Babylonians where they're doing these systematic observations of the sky for the purpose of figuring out what the gods are up to and what we should do. So. And that level of science, basically astrology, if you will, continued in the Greek and Roman times because the study of nature, the way we do it today in the sciences, just was not valued. You know, what can you get out of it, other than maybe knowing the will of the gods in a polytheistic world where the gods are stuff and the stuff is gods, and the gods have. Their personalities are a little capricious. Nobody's expecting regularities that are going to be helpful for us to know, other than maybe some patterns in the sky or something like that. So it just wasn't valued. It's so weird for us to think about that mindset today.
And if, you know, the few people that had the time and the money to think about things went into philosophy or politics or something like that. If you look historically, where were the major intellectual endeavors in ancient Greece and Rome? It was in the world of philosophy with some really smart people and really great questions. But in terms of how does the world work or is there anything that are useful, it just wasn't on people's radar screens.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: So in that case, Dr. Bloom, where would you say that science did first arise?
[00:06:24] Speaker B: Well, that's a deep question. It kind of depends on who you ask. If Galileo were here, he'd be raising his hand and say, it all started with me, dudes, come on. You know, other people might point to Newton, you know, for getting physics started and math started with his Principia. You know, some people would say, no. It actually goes back to things like the condemnation of 1277 done by the Bishop of Paris to the university faculty there saying, look, you just cannot quote Aristotle as the absolute authority, especially when it disagrees with the Bible on something. So it was a team, a culture that was developing this way of thinking about nature, that it's a valuable thing to study nature. Me, as sort of an experimentalist, if I had to nail one person, I would probably say Francis Bacon, around 1600 or so, got a lot of the basics right in terms of, look, we cannot just be theoretical. We actually have to go out and observe the world and do experiments to actually see what's out there.
And then we don't just write textbooks.
We should use what we're learning to help people.
Those two aspects trace back pretty strongly to Bacon. But again, it was a team and a culture that had this interest in nature and just glorifying God by discovering the world that he's made.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Well, I do see a commonality among all of those early scientists you just mentioned, and. And that is that they were all part of Judeo Christian Europe. And so if that is the case, that the Judeo Christian worldview was part of bringing scientific to existence, why was that the case? Why was the Judeo Christian worldview important for the rise of science?
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Oh, a number of factors there. And again, there's secular historians who would give a nod to this Part of the major things was that Judeo Christianity is monotheistic. You know, there's one God who established and created the world, who set it up to work via regular laws. And, and it got this polytheism and this capricious nature out of people's thinking about the world around them that wow, gee, it's, you know, this is created by God and, and we can glorify him by studying it and just maybe we can figure out the patterns that he put in there. So there's sort of an expectation of patterns and laws that one can glean from various passages in the Bible where it talks about how God created the world. You know, the sun and the moon to rule the day and the night and that sort of a thing. So there was this expectation in the Judeo Christian worldview of regularities. And then wait, we're created in God's image, so maybe he gave us an ability to see those things. You know, why would we expect to be able to understand the world out there if God made it? Good grief, you know. But, but no, wait, wait, wait. We're made in his image, so maybe we can. And let's try it. So you just see Copernicus, you know, for example, just making those comments about man. It's incredible that we can understand and see patterns out there in the world around us. And Kepler paraphrasing him, you can, I can think God's thoughts after him. And even Galileo got some famous comments of like, guys, I've discovered the language of God. It's mathematics, you know, and it's just like no, no, no, no mathematics. That's what, that's what business people do, okay? And in the day that, that's math was not valued. It's, it's so interesting outside of sort of the business world. And here's Galileo saying that God's this great mathematician and you know, he's flipping the world upside down. So again that the world's established, created by one God, it works in a regular pattern and just maybe we can figure out what those patterns are. That's the Judeo Christian insight to nature that got the ball rolling.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: I think for those of us who live in a Western context, we're so immersed in a culture that believes that the world is regular and predictable and non capricious. And we live in a culture that generally speaking believes in a single all powerful God who is loving and good and isn't trying to mess with us all the time or changing the laws of physics on this guy so his car will blow up all of a sudden. I mean, we believe and we live in a culture and an atmosphere that is just saturated with belief in the regularity and predictability and trustworthiness of nature. So it's hard for us sometimes to maybe appreciate that people in other cultures or at other times had totally different way of looking at the world that would not lead them ultimately to adopt a scientific worldview. And I think that maybe it's helpful to have that historical perspective, Dr. Bloom, because in the west, in the 21st century, it's just like, duh, of course the world is regular and predictable. Of course science works well, maybe people didn't always think like that. And it's really nice to have those points brought out that you're making right now.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: There's another one, too. In a lot of cultures, a lot of religions, and this is why I keep saying Judeo Christianity, rather than just religion in general, nature was viewed. The physical world was viewed as evil and bad. And the truly spiritual person tried to shun the world and avoid the world and live and seek spiritual experiences and avoid the physical world or thinking about the physical world as much as possible. So that's another spin that again, in the west, we're like, what? People actually try to avoid the material world and just totally go off. And as you know, this sort of aesthetic, this Gnosticism was an early Christian heresy that did this as well. That just doesn't fit our common mindset today either. Yet that was one reason why science never got started in a lot of other cultures, because in that culture, you were evil if you studied the world because the world was evil.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Now, that makes a lot of sense. Now, today, obviously, we know that science has brought many positive and beneficial advances for humankind. I mean, we have forced air heating, we have radios, we have the Internet. There's lots of wonderful things that science has helped bring to us. But was the motive of some of the early scientists who were helping to create this thing called science, were they trying to make the world a better place? Or were they just simply wanting to know the mind of God, as you said? And making the world a better place kind of came along later. So I guess my question is, to what extent was the motive to make the world a better place important for the rise of science?
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Well, that's one reason why I mentioned Bacon, because he is probably the most famous person for bringing that attitude to the fore of, you know, it's great to kind of know the mind of God better, think his thoughts after him. But, hey, let's use this in some practical ways to apply it in medicine, apply it to make better foods and so on.
That motive is there again, 1600s and so on. And I'm sure people prior to that had it, but Bacon is the one whose name is most associated with it. But that requires a culture that. This is just an interesting point. This requires a culture that rewards the people who bring us these new ideas. Right. Because why am I going to bother to bring something to market if there's no market there? Why am I going to invent and go through all the work to make some new medicine if some other company is just going to steal my idea? And that's it. So there's intellectual property rights, there's a certain legal system that protects the poor and the rich, that protects the innovator from those who might try to steal from them.
There's aspects of the Christian culture that created the environment to harness people's innovation, to harness people's desire to help others with a little personal benefit for doing so. So there are those interesting aspects to, gee, there was just.
Capitalism was getting started at this time in England and other parts of Europe and so on. It's like, you know, that actually helped foster the application of science to make people's lives better. And where did those ideas come from, that legal system came from? Well, that came from people applying some of the very key principles for how to govern and how to treat people and how to recognize that people are sinful and yet how to help people flourish in that environment as well. But yes, overall, science being able to give the applications that made our lives better is dependent on the culture that it's in. But that again, is one of the big driving forces for it that we all enjoy today.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: Okay, so you're covering a lot of different aspects of the culture of Judeo Christian Europe that helped give rise to science. What about the view of time? We obviously have a very linear view of time in the west, but other cultures have a more cyclic view of time. Did the concept of a linear rather than a cyclic view of time play a role in the rise of science?
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Yeah, again, there's a lot of factors here that one can look at. You look in the ancient near east, you look in, again, most cultures and the notion, like you said, is basically cyclical time, or that time is just basically seasonal. There's spring, summer, fall, winter, and that was just extended to all of time. But eventually everything will repeat itself or cycles of growth and decay, but nothing's going anywhere because there's no place to go.
But yet Judeo Christian history says, no, there's a. There's a beginning, there's a creation. Oh, whoops. Then things got messed up. But then there's a redeeming of history or redeeming of nature to a final consummation of it. And, hey, wait, wait, there's progress along the way here. And so science can contribute to that progress. Was the thinking that we can make the world a better place. Again, back to Bacon. One of his motivations was, if we apply this stuff, we can overcome the effects of the fall.
So this vision of we're not stuck here inevitably in the same rut and never going anywhere, it's like, no, wait, wait. We're given an opportunity here. We're seeing history moving forward. There's progress in history. Redemptive history is what this is called in theology. But there's a progress in human history, and science can contribute to that, to make people's lives better along the way. Yes, it's sometimes called the Western notion of time. That it's directional and moving forward as opposed to being cyclical was. It's kind of a subtle factor in terms of how you think about the future and why bother to do anything now? But that, again, was a motivation. We can make the world a better place. Our kids can have better lives than we did.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: So in the final analysis, was religion a hindrance or a help when it comes to the origin of science?
[00:18:42] Speaker B: Well, let me qualify that. I would say maybe not religion in general was a help, but Christianity or Judeo, Christianity definitely was a help in providing, again, this monotheistic view of a God who set up the world and then established it to work via regular patterns, who gave us the ability to think about it and maybe think his thoughts after him, that the world he created is not evil and bad and to be avoided, but we can actually. We can actually glorify God by studying the things that he's made. So all these factors, again, from the Christian worldview, were foundational in people's thinking in getting science started and is still foundational. A lot of scientists who are Christians thinking today in terms of why am I doing this and what are we here for? So, yes, it has been a significant thing in the development of science with the benefits that we've all enjoyed as a result.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Okay, well, thank you very much, Dr. Bloom. Your chapter again is Did Christianity Help Give Rise to Science? It's in the book the Comprehensive Guide to Science and Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life in the Cosmos. The book is available on Amazon, and I hope you'll check it out. So, Dr. Bloom, thank you so much for coming on the show with us.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: Today, but it's been great to be here.
[00:20:07] Speaker A: I'm Casey Luskin with ID the Future. Be sure to check out the comprehensive guide to Science and Faith on Amazon. Thanks for listening.
Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org this program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
