Speaker 1 00:00:05 ID the future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
Speaker 2 00:00:12 Greetings. I'm Tom Gilson. Here to introduce an intelligent design conversation that originally aired on the Table Talk podcast. A podcast that's subtitled connecting culture with Christianity. Our hosts are Jack Timney and Graham Johnstone. They'll tell you more about their guest, Dr. Richard Bugs. He's a senior research leader on plant health and adaptation at Royal Botanic Gardens at q and Professor of Evolutionary Genomics at Queen Mary University in the uk. I found a couple of new favorite quotes in here, especially where one of the hosts, speaking of evolutionary science and natural history, said, I thought it was all done and dusted. And it's all so much more unimaginably complicated than we knew, and I'm glad they asked Dr. Bugs about what it means to bring his Christianity into his work as an evolutionary biologist. We'll let them take it from here.
Speaker 0 00:01:09 Hello
Speaker 3 00:01:10 And welcome to another episode of Table Talk. Thank you for joining us. This is the Paul Cast where we connect current culture with Christianity. We hope that you have been working hard on your life audits. If you haven't kicked that off yet, jump back to our previous episode and have a listen and I'm sure you'll, uh, you'll want to get into one shortly after that. I'm Graham, I'm joined by Jack in our virtual studio.
Speaker 4 00:01:31 Hi guys. I'm Jack and yeah, we have got a very interesting episode for you today. It is usually a top question surrounding the Christian faith, and so we wanted to help you guys, our listeners think it through and that is evolution and Christianity. Is there a conflict, and you'll be glad to know that Graham and I are not working through this question on our own, although Graham does, has a medium to large size brain.
Speaker 3 00:01:58 Good to medium size. I think it was Ben
Speaker 4 00:02:00 Too. Okay. It was good. To medium size, we are joined in our virtual studio by Fessor Richard. Bugs. Richard, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for
Speaker 5 00:02:08 Having me. We've
Speaker 4 00:02:09 Got lots of questions for you. Tell us a little bit about your professional background. Well,
Speaker 5 00:02:14 I spend all my time working on trees. Mainly I'm trying to understand how they're adapted to their local environments, and so how we can plant trees in the right place for them to grow well and fix carbon well. And also how they resist pests and pathogens. And so when we get a new invasion of a fungus or a bacteria that's killing our trees, like for example, the ash dieback fungus that's killing ash trees in the UK at the moment. How can we breed trees that are gonna be more resistant? Is there a genetic basis of of resistance?
Speaker 4 00:02:45 And where are you working out of, Richard? Where are you based at the moment?
Speaker 5 00:02:48 So I spend most of my time at Q Gardens. I work for them four days a week. And then I also work one day a week for Queen Mary University of London over the other side of London. Brilliant.
Speaker 4 00:02:59 Okay. I mean, Q is just the most incredible place, isn't it? Like, do you feel Oh, it's fantastic place. Do you feel really privileged to work there? Like is it exciting for you to work there?
Speaker 5 00:03:08 Oh, absolutely. Most of my time is glued to a computer screen, but it's so great, you know, to be able to just go out and have a walk around the garden, see how the ash trees are doing, come on. I just noticed this morning they're just starting to come into flowers, so that's that's really good. So, um, yeah, very privileged place to, to work here.
Speaker 3 00:03:27 That's great. But is it in terms of its position as a clearly as a, as a research facility and, um, is it, is it well regarded on that sense? Is it a sort of center of those sorts of things or?
Speaker 5 00:03:37 Yeah, Mo most people don't realize we have over 300 scientists working at Q Wow. Uh, we're one of the UK's biggest plant science research institutes. Uh, we have a, a massive herber, um, which is a collection of press dried plants. It's not open to the public, but it's, you know, it's one of the leading hubber of the world. So yeah, Q is very much seen as a, a leading institute for plant science research globally. Brilliant.
Speaker 3 00:04:04 And Richard, so you are an evolutionary biologist and you specialize in the areas that you've just described, but you, you are also a Christian Richard, I suppose, uh, may at first, uh, first glance seem a sort of unusual mix. How does your faith affect your work? How does it play into that?
Speaker 5 00:04:22 Well, I, I think the main thing my Christian faith does is, is motivates me to, to do my research in that Christianity teaches that we, human beings are stewards of the natural world. The natural world is God's creation and we have a job of looking after it. And part of that job is naming things. Part of that job is understanding them, managing them, caring for them. You know, we're, we are in a environmental crisis, uh, a biodiversity crisis. And part of our role as humans is to, to actually try to look after this planet. So, um, the main thing my faith gives me is a motivation that this is something that God has given human beings to do. I think the other thing Christianity does is it enables me to, to think in, in slightly different ways about some issues than maybe a colleague would who was an atheist. So, um, it, it opens up my thinking to different perspectives and that's very valuable as well. Um, partly in a, in a theoretical sense, but also in terms of the people that we work with around the world. Of course, if you start working in in Africa or South America, most of the, the local people there who you'll meet will be very religious people. And, um, it's great to be able to cultural bridges and just un understand the people groups who are stewarding different parts of, of the natural world.
Speaker 3 00:05:47 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and Richard, can I ask a follow up question? So in your, uh, in your experience as a, as a professor, as a researcher in this area, has it been your experience that you are something of an anomaly? You know, are there many other Christians in this field or is it, is it fairly uncommon?
Speaker 5 00:06:02 I I do come across other Christians in the field, but it is, it is fairly uncommon. It typically evolutionary biology and ecology is dominated by people who are atheist or agnostic or maybe compartmentalize. If they do believe in God, they just leave him at the door when they go to work. If that, that sounds slightly derogatory, but, but don't necessarily try and sort of think everything through through a Christian worldview, which, which is what I'm trying to do in my life. Hmm.
Speaker 4 00:06:32 It's interesting, Graham, cuz I think in, in our world of work, you know, quite corporate large corporations, like there's a big push to diversity because I think businesses are recognizing that you don't want homogeneous kind of ways of thinking. Cause that doesn't actually produce like good results. It's just interesting that actually the same is true in the world of research. Like you think, oh, you just want like clones of people that just all sit in the same laboratories doing the same work. But just listening to you Richard, I can tell you're quite passionate about diversity. Yeah, well
Speaker 5 00:07:07 There's a, there's a very similar push for diversity within the sciences and particularly in ecology and evolutionary biology. There is, there is a widespread acknowledgement that it is a very white discipline. And one thing I've, I've tried to point out to my colleagues that part of that might be a sort of unconscious bias in favor of atheism. Not that there's discrimination going on necessarily, but maybe biology lecturers are sort of making throwaway comments and lectures to undergraduates that are derogatory about religion and maybe culturally religious people feel excluded. And if that is the case, that also impacts racial and ethnic diversity because there is such a big correlation between the two, you know, living in London. Mm-hmm. You know, it's the most diverse part of Britain. It's also the most religious part of Britain. Mm-hmm. Um, and if consciously or unconsciously you are discriminating in favor of atheism, you are also in a way discriminating for whiteness as well. And, and I think that's something people probably aren't as aware of as, as maybe we should be.
Speaker 3 00:08:12 Because if I was to think of an area where it would be most important to have a broad set to have cognitive diversity, it would be in something that ha that is trying to be objectively seeking the truth, objectively seeking what the evidence points to. And so it seems, yeah, it is quite strange Jack, as you say. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:08:33 But, but it's actually probably not very diverse. No. Okay. Guys, I'm gonna pull this back a bit. I'm gonna just keep these big pictures because Richard, our listeners are brilliant people. We are not expecting any level of scientific prior knowledge to this episode. Not to insult our listeners, but just to bring everyone with us, especially Graham and myself. And so I thought if we could start just quite in terms of popular culture in terms of just what people think or the common perception is of evolution. Is that representative, is that right? That, that that kind of common understanding? Or how would you articulate it? I tend
Speaker 5 00:09:12 To find that the person on the street has a view of evolution that is quite different to the way I think about evolution as an evolutionary biologist. And, and I even find this with students, you know, I teach on an MSC course and a lot of, a lot of the, the new students on the MSC course have done a bachelor's in biology and still many of them don't properly understand the, the Darwinian mechanism of, of evolution and have this this view, which is sort of quite common in the public that evolution has some sort of inherent tendency towards progression. And there's something sort of pushing it along as if it had an end goal in place. But of course, if you think about the Darwinian mechanism of evolution, it doesn't have an end point. It doesn't have a purpose. It is just natural selection happening on random mutations.
Speaker 5 00:10:08 And so it's just a, a trial and error process that it, but not a trial and error process like we might do in when we're doing some DIY where we do have an end in mind and we're trying to head towards that. Darwinian evolution is just about something surviving and reproducing better than something else. And there's a surprising lack of understanding of that in the public and even in <laugh> biology graduates. I think part of the issue is the word evolution is used in a lot of different ways. And in fact it's, it's used in so many different ways. It's almost become useless as a word. You, you have to explain what do you mean when you say evolution? And so when, when we come to the, the title that you've got for this podcast, you know, is there a conflict between Christianity and evolution?
Speaker 5 00:10:55 Well, what do you mean by evolution? When, when you ask that question, because to me as, as an evolutionary biologist, I would define evolution as simply a change in allele frequencies in a population over time. Uh, where an allele is just a, a variant of a gene, a gene that codes the same protein has, has more than one type that's that's out there in the population. And it's just them shifting in frequency in a population over time. So just the population of London slightly shifting in the number of people with red hair over a decade, that is evolution. Cause it's a change in allele frequencies and populations over time. Of course there's no conflict between that and Christianity whatsoever. On the other hand, some people would say, well, evolution is the view that the way we got here, the way the world got to be like it is.
Speaker 5 00:11:48 And life arrived and life is as diverse and complex as it is today. That whole process happened by a Darwinian mechanism that had no purpose, had no guidance, no oversight. God was not at all involved. Everything came about by purely natural processes that did not have us in mind. Well if that's your definition of, of evolution, yes there is a conflict with Christianity cuz Christianity says there is a God. God is the creator. He did want us to be here. He did have a goal in mind. So it's very hard even to answer that simple question like the one you've posed in the title for this podcast, given the amount of ambiguity there is about this term evolution. Hmm.
Speaker 3 00:12:30 Now can I ask Richard to follow up on that? So you mentioned you have to sort of now define evolution. It's sort of spawned all these different meanings to the point where it's almost become meaningless. And that's an interesting way of putting it. Perhaps there is a perception that evolution is this Darwinian sense of evolution. This very atheist sense of evolution has been sort of commonly understood and commonly accepted. And perhaps it's not just that there is a Christian worldview that might bring a different understanding of that, but that perhaps that's starting to be revealed in the modern science of this. Forget your worldview. But if you just look at the science and the, and the, the latest research that's starting to raise questions around what has been a very commonly held belief up to this point, and it's starting to create some debate even amongst evolutionary biologists around, is this actually as clear as, as it once was?
Speaker 5 00:13:22 Well, there, there is a lot of debate going on at the moment among evolutionary biologists about the extent to which the Darwinian mechanism is sufficient to explain the evolution that we see going on around us today and in, in and in the recent past. Um, and there are some people who say, well we need an extended evolutionary synthesis where we take into account a lot more processes than just random mutation and natural selection. Um, uh, but there are others saying, well these other processes, they're just, they're a sideshow. Um, they're, they're providing a few sort of extra frills if you like, to the evolutionary process. But the thing that is really driving the origin of new complexity has to be the Darwinian process of, um, random mutation and natural selection because that is a sort of bottom up process generating thing, evolution from scratch. Whereas the other mechanisms being talked about are things like what we call phenotypic plasticity, which is where a plant or an animal can actually adapt its form within its lifetime to fit its environment.
Speaker 5 00:14:45 A bit like, you know, we might get a suntan when we go into a nice sunny environment. And some people are saying, well, a lot of evolutionary adaptation actually starts off with phenotypic plasticity. And so the new form happens really quickly and then after that you get genetic changes that fix that. So you, you effectively lose that plasticity, but in such a way that you adapted to your new environment. And there are lots of examples where you can actually show that that is happening, but then people would say, well, yeah, okay, that is true, but that isn't giving me new adaptations from sort of bottom up that's giving me a fairly complex organism that actually becomes a bit simpler. So that can't explain where everything comes from in the first place. And there are other similar mechanisms that are being debated and, and it's, it's actually become quite a heated debate at the moment. Do we need to extend the evolutionary synthesis or, or not? It's absolutely fascinating because of course there are things that in the past looked as if they were really good examples of the Darwinian mechanism at work in real time, which we now know are actually coming about by these, these other mechanisms. So they're not such clear demonstrations. Um, and so there is, there is a bit of a flux going on. Interesting.
Speaker 4 00:15:59 It's so interesting listening to that cuz for, for me, I, you just think, oh, it's all done and dusted. Darwin nailed it. And now I'm like, well what are you doing Richard? Do you know what I mean? What and what are the 300 scientists doing at q? And then you listen to you and you're like, oh my goodness, this is unimaginably more complicated than we ever knew. There's
Speaker 5 00:16:18 A lot we don't know.
Speaker 4 00:16:19 I mean we spoke a bit about this already, Richard, in terms of diversity, but also we acknowledge this on a lot of our episodes that we all come with a worldview. We, you know, none of us are blank canvas. None of us, we, we like to think we're neutral and objective. Well, we're not. Um, we all come with a point of view preconceived ideas and, and you are the same. And you've, you've emitted that you've said you're a Christian and so you don't leave your Christian faith at the door. You've said that to us and you bring that into your place of work. And I guess the question is, is that, is that a hindrance to you as a, as a evolutionary biologist or a help? No,
Speaker 5 00:16:55 I, I think it's a great help because it actually opens my mind to sort of view things from, from various different angles. For example, the issue of the origin of life. This, this isn't an issue that, that I work on myself in my own research, but it's an issue that of course I think about as I'm sure everyone does from time to time. Basically we, we don't have a clue how life originated. People are working on coming up with natural explanations that don't involve God, you know, how could this have happened just by chance and, and natural processes. And I think if you're an atheist, there has to be a natural explanation for it. And so any little sort of glimmer of hope, you, you attach that and you think, yes, that's massive progress. That that must be something like how it was your sort of threshold for belief is really quite low because you've got this strong prior belief that there must be such an explanation.
Speaker 5 00:17:52 But I think as you know, as a Christian, I can come at this and say, well, I'm open to there, there being a, a natural mechanism whereby this happened. If there is, then I think God set that up to happen. But equally, I'm quite open to God having intervened at the origin of life and got the whole thing going in the first place by a, something that was supernatural. And I think that means when I look at the evidence, because I've, I've got these two possibilities in front of me, I can actually weigh it up in a rather more even-handed way than I could if I was absolutely fixed on, on one of them being correct. And I think that's, that's not just true for the origin of life, but other evolutionary transitions that are really, really challenging to explain, having this possibility that well maybe there, there is no natural explanation for that, I would argue, opens my mind. Mm-hmm. Others would say no, that's sort of very non-scientific for you to entertain that possibility. But that sort of illustrates my point.
Speaker 4 00:18:54 So you feel, you feel more free as a scientist that you, you you can entertain almost any possibility. Yeah. Whereas your atheist friends, they've got a little bit more invested interest that no, it, it kind of needs to be this one. But would they not say that back to you in the same if we were interviewing an atheist, would they not say, oh, but Rich is actually a bit biased. He is trying to prove this
Speaker 5 00:19:18 Is why we need diversity. Yes. You know, we need people with different biases because you, you challenge each other in, in different ways and that can be uncomfortable at times. Uh, but at the moment I would say there's the danger in, in the field is not that there are too many Christians is rather that there's, it's so dominated by atheists or people thinking as if they're atheists, that a bit more diversity from people who are, uh, a theists is, is a good thing and will hopefully improve the rigor and, and the creativity of the scientific process. Hmm.
Speaker 4 00:19:56 How's that happened? What's the evolution of that? Because if what you are saying is true, i e there's so many unknowns is wide open still, and there's a lot of debate, like, why are you such a rare species?
Speaker 5 00:20:10 I think there's, there's multiple things contributing to it. I, I think one is that, um, lots of Christians who are good at biology at school decide to become medical doctors. Mm. Um, and I think Christians see that as a really good thing to do. And maybe going into research isn't seen as such a, a good thing to do. Um, of course there, there is the same perception among non-religious people, but I think the effect might be slightly stronger. Um, I think also a lot of the best known evolutionary biologists in the world, the best known to the public are also prominent atheists. Um, and so much of the popular understanding and perception of biology is mediated by people who are also using biology as a way to try to push atheism as well. And so that's inevitably off-putting. And I think sometimes in some Christian circles also, there is a tendency to view evolution as, as something suspicious. And this is partly because of the ambiguity about the word itself. As I say, there's, there are senses of the word which are opposed to Christianity, but there are senses that are not. But because of that ambiguity there, I think that can be a bit off putting for Christians too.
Speaker 3 00:21:26 So Richard, is it, is it fair to say that Charles Darwin was the sort of the author of this idea of, of evolution? Is is he, is, does it originate with with his thinking? Yeah,
Speaker 5 00:21:37 Some people have thought about it before him, but he was the first person who really published a, a good defense of a mechanism of evolution. Um, and he, he wrote a book about it, the original species as you know, which, which made a very sort of cumulative argument. And also he personally had the scientific background to be able to win people over, um, to it. So, so yeah, there's, there's no doubt that Darwin is the, the major, um, originator of mm, evolution as we see it today.
Speaker 3 00:22:17 Okay. And I suppose, Richard, so would it be a fair comparison to make if I think about, uh, other scientific theories that have been incredibly influential? So if I think about Einstein and his general theory of relativity, for example, I think one of the reasons that that is so well known is that it has been remarkably, um, powerful in explaining many of the things that we observe in the universe. Um, and so, you know, that's an incredibly powerful theory. It stands up to many of the, of the ways in which we test it scientifically. But what I also be right in saying that probably the objective of science is to then go out and observe more and more things and ensure that that theory actually holds water in all of these possible observable instances. Um, am I, would that be a, a reasonable
Speaker 5 00:23:06 Stop? You have, you have to be constantly testing and constantly challenging. And of course, as, as science and technology progress, more and more forms of data become available. You know, back in Darwin's time, you, you couldn't look at the intricate substructure of the cell. You couldn't read off the genetic code in dna. And so as science progresses and as, as these different fields open up, you have to be reexamining, um, his ideas. They have to be developed and also, you know, put to the test with these new sources of knowledge as well.
Speaker 3 00:23:45 And so perhaps similarly to Einstein's theories, which are starting to get a little bit interesting, as science has developed, as technology has developed, we're starting to get into more of the sort of realm of quantum physics and things that are going on there that's starting to test some of the limits of, of those theories. Is is it happening similarly with Darwin's theories? Are there elements of life that we're starting to understand more that are starting to, to test the limits of that theory?
Speaker 5 00:24:11 Very much so. Yeah. There, there are things that were sort of fairly easy to believe in Darwin's time that are much harder to believe today. You know, in Darwin's time, an individual cell just looked like, you know, a sort of fairly uncomplex bit of matter. But today we know that, that our cells are packed with the most amazing nanotechnology. You know, we have nano machines that are intricately doing most incredible biochemical processes. And for many of those machines just trying to imagine a step-by-step process by which they could have evolved where every step is viable and does the job and, and is an advantage. You know, we, we can't even imagine such pathways in many cases. And then when we look at, at D n A and we look at the, the pattern of genetic variation across species, we're able to test things in a new way.
Speaker 5 00:25:07 For example, Darwin's view of of evolution was that it was a tree shape and that branches split into two and then those split into two, and those split into two. And so, so the pattern of life was entirely a bifurcating tree. But now with genetic information, when we compare the pattern of similarity at different genes, we can see actually this, this tree analogy is really beginning to break down. And I'll commonly hear my colleagues comment, well, it's, it's not really a tree. And so, so there are different aspects that are, that are being challenged. There are, there are new unanswered questions arising because of our new knowledge
Speaker 4 00:25:43 On that. Let's just plug it, plug it now. Cuz uh, rich has recently done a fascinating lecture at Queen Mary. He, he talks about, uh, Darwin's, uh, tree of Life. I would highly recommend to our listeners, if you're finding this interesting, go and watch that on uh, on YouTube. We'll put it in our show notes. And, and Richard spent a lot more time go going into that. And visually it's really helpful as well. We can't do it justice on our podcast cause it's only audio. But I would, I really recommend that, just to paint a picture almost visually, um, not of the tree of life, but what you were describing as the intricate mechanisms even within plant cells. Well,
Speaker 5 00:26:19 For example, in every cell of our bodies we have a very large number of a, of a complex machine called Attp Syntase. And it sits on a, on a membrane and it's like a turbine that is effectively driven by a flow of hydrogen. It, it rotates extremely fast and as it rotates, it drives a mechanism that turns a molecule called ADP into a molecule called a tp. And it, you know, this is present throughout the whole of life and it is incredibly efficient and it's the kind of nanotechnology that, that we are at the moment simply unable to make ourselves. And it's mind boggling to come up with an evolutionary pathway for how this came about. You, you have to have a step-by-step pathway by which this, this turbine emerged where every step was only very slightly different, but every step did something that was, was useful. So far no one has has even been able to imagine such a pathway, let alone sort of test whether that actually happened. So there there are things like this that are very, very mind boggling and very challenging, and that's very much at the forefront of research.
Speaker 3 00:27:32 So Richard, just following on from that then, those incredibly intricate aspects of, of the cells that you're, you're talking about there, and if we think about the origins of, of humans, are there similar sort of unanswered questions in, in that origin from a, from a scientific perspective?
Speaker 5 00:27:48 Well, human consciousness is something, you know, we don't even know how it works on a, on a day-to-day level. No one can fully explain how the human mind functions and, and exactly how it's related to the brain. You know, given that we can't even explain how it works, explaining how it evolved is, is an even harder problem. Darwinian evolution is all about survival and reproduction, but our cognitive abilities are just far, far in excess of what we need for survival and reproduction. And in, in my circle of friends, I actually, it seems the more intelligent people are, the less they vanished to survive and reproduce. So, you know, there's, it's a bit hard to work out exactly how that could have come about by a Darwinian process. And so there are huge answer questions there to do with human consciousness. Richard Dawkins has said, well maybe there was some sort of massive chance event that happened. Um, but that's a cop out that's not suggesting a mechanism that's saying, I don't know. Yeah. Which is a very honest thing to say.
Speaker 3 00:28:50 Yeah. Interesting. And I mean, so if we think about then the evolution of, of animals and, and eventually leading to humans, I mean are are we just super intelligent apes? Does that feel, if we look at an evolutionary process, we look at the evolutionary biology, does that seem like a fair conclusion or is there Well,
Speaker 5 00:29:08 Biologically we're very similar to apes. You know, our, our genomes are, are very similar. It's, it's our cognitive abilities, it's our minds that really set us apart. Mm-hmm. And that is, that is the level at which we're different and that is something that we, we really struggle to explain by purely naturalistic processes. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3 00:29:29 And so Richard, just to come back then perhaps to one of the probably more contentious areas, if someone was looking at this from, okay, I wanna understand the science, I wanna understand the, the biblical view on this Adam and Eve, this idea that there was this Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve in there and we are all descended from them. What's your view on that? Because I can understand that, that as an evolutionary biologist, how do you think about that? I
Speaker 5 00:29:53 Thought about this issue about five years ago in some detail. Cause I was reading a book called Adam and the Genome by a, a Christian biologist and, and he said that modern genetic data shows that humans could never have come from a single couple. You know, there's just too much diversity genetically in the human race and that the pattern of that diversity means that we can never have come from a single couple. But as I looked at, at the arguments and he was quoting papers that used the kind of techniques that I use sometimes in my own research, I realized that actually he was just extrapolating from them, um, in a way that wasn't warranted. And that actually if there had been a bottleneck of two individuals, these techniques would never pick up on that as they extrapolate backwards in time from present diversity. And there's quite a lot of conservation genetics theory about what happens after bottlenecks because of course conservationists have to think about this issue a lot.
Speaker 5 00:30:54 At what point does a population get too small to be viable? And we have examples where just a single couple or even just a single fertilized female from a species is colonized an island. And then a population has arisen and work has been done on the genetic diversity. And the theory says that so long as a bottleneck is very short and you get a rapid expansion after that bottleneck, you, you actually preserve most of the diversity. And that is due to something really clever about dna. And that is we carry two copies of our genome, one copy from my mom, one copy from my dad. And so in a single couple you have four copies of the genome, but at each point in dna there's only four letters. You can only be a t, G or C. And so in two individuals you actually have the capacity to carry any possible variant at any possible site, which is incredibly clever. But it does mean that a single couple can carry massive diversity. And as, as long as the population expands rapidly, as long as they have a big family and their and big families for a while, you preserve all that diversity. So, so it turns out that patterns of genetic diversity don't preclude the idea that we could have come from mm-hmm. <affirmative> from a single couple. Of course they don't prove it. You can't prove that we came from a single couple, but you can't disprove it either.
Speaker 4 00:32:13 Can I just understand, I'm hearing you right. So just from our DNA it would be possible just, I understand the rapid expansion, but just from two people to get to the 8 billion we've got on the planet and the, all the diversity in those 8 billion theoretically could come from two from two people.
Speaker 5 00:32:30 Yes. But the particular pattern that we have of diversity does strongly suggest that there's a lot of diversity that has come since.
Speaker 4 00:32:39 Okay.
Speaker 5 00:32:39 So if, if you've got a particular variant that is only found in Iceland, for example, you, you can be pretty sure that that's a subsequent mutation. So, but there is the sort of coding capacity within two individuals to carry. Okay. Immense variation. But
Speaker 4 00:32:56 There's some environmental,
Speaker 5 00:32:58 Well there's just just random mutations. It's
Speaker 4 00:33:00 Just random mutation. Ev
Speaker 5 00:33:01 Ev. Every time we reproduce we give our children a few mutations that are not in us just because of errors in the DNA replication process. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, most of them, you know, do no harm at all. Some of them are make a difference. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:33:15 Yeah. I have to say, Jack, this is probably one of the things that I find most challenging. So a lot of people would say, you know, how does God allow suffering lot? There's lots of questions that people would find challenging about the Christian faith. This for me is one of them where, because I love reading about science, I love reading about, um, topics like this, I find them fascinating. I find them really compelling and I find it interpreting genesis I find quite challenging. You know, is it poetic? Is it just a sort of illustration of a simplification of what happened? Is it meant to be interpreted literally? Because I do look at other parts of the Bible, the resurrection of Jesus, for example, or the miracles and the accounts that we have of those in the Bible. I read those and I find those less problematic than many of the things I read in Genesis like Adam and E for example. I find that really, really difficult. Mm-hmm. So I just wanted to make that Yeah. I dunno who's listening I feel that as
Speaker 4 00:34:11 Yeah, well on that, well on that though, I think that is the great thing about the Christian faith that it doesn't actually hang on your interpretation of Genesis, it actually hangs on historical verifiable events in history. So let's, let's do that with Richard now. Cause I think that's really important. There are things you can test and the most important one would be Jesus rising from the dead. And that is the stand or fall for, for the Christian faith. Richard, how, let, let's spend a few minutes on that. How would you respond to the evidence for the resurrection? Yeah,
Speaker 5 00:34:45 Of course evidence for the resurrection is, is by its very nature historical evidence. So it's, it's different from the sort of evidence that I'm tending to look at in my work, whereas where I'm looking at natural objects in front of me and making inferences. So we have, we have to weigh up the historical evidence and it, it is more like a sort of legal case than a scientific case. But I do find the the case very compelling in that the early Christians were making some massive claims about things Jesus had done. And Christianity wouldn't have taken off if people didn't believe those claims were true. But the claims are so big that it would've been pretty straightforward for people to go and just get eyewitness testimony and say, look, you were there, did you see it happen? It would be so easy to just debunk it if it wasn't true to my mind that that actually makes quite a strong case that these things are true. And then when you see that the level of personal sacrifice that these people were willing to go through in order to not give up on their Christian faith, you know, they were being killed, they were being thrown to the lions culturally, they were taking on something that was very alien to them. It seems to me there, there's a very, very strong case that these things really did happen and Jesus really did rise from the dead.
Speaker 4 00:36:01 Thanks Richard, can I plug again your lecture as well just cuz you build on that also with the reliability of the New Testament. And again, you apply some of your methodologies and how you look at your evolutionary biology to the Chinese whispers theory of the New Testament, which I think is also really helpful. We're not gonna do it now, we don't have time, but I'll, I'll just replug that again. I want to say a big thank you Richard. Uh, thanks for joining us. Thanks for making some really complicated things. Understandable, but also your humility into saying also things are beyond our knowledge. And I think that's also fine. It's really exciting to hear someone really on the forefront of that trying to push our understanding as, as far as we can. Um, so thanks and thanks for the work you do. Guys do hit us up with questions. You've got off the back of this and we try and hoover some of those up and put them to Richard another time
Speaker 3 00:36:55 And I would love to hear people's perspectives on this having heard it, whether you are atheist, agnostic, Christian, whatever. I just find this fascinating and I would love to hear from people that are listening to this and just get their thoughts on it, get their responses and yeah, Richard, thank you so much for joining us. It's honestly fascinating listening to you and uh, and thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions and come on the show. It's been a pleasure. Thanks
Speaker 5 00:37:19 For having me. Thanks
Speaker 4 00:37:20 Richard.
Speaker 2 00:37:22 That was evolutionary biologist, Richard Bugs speaking with Jack Timney and Graham John Stone, host of the Table Talk podcast. And we say our thanks to them for their permission to republish this episode. Stay tuned to ID the Future for more great new insights into natural history and science today, especially as it relates to our design universe. And as always, thank you for listening. For ID The Future, I'm Tom Gilson.
Speaker 1 00:37:52 Visit
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