WEBVTT - Science v. Faith: Addressing History's Oldest Debate 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:04.680 A warm Miami one Day. You welcome for Professor Kenneth Miller. 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:11.720 The Science of Happy Appreciating modern painting, Dilemmas of modern Medicine, 0:00:11.720 --> 0:00:16.760 Abraham Lincoln at the Civil War, The artistic genius Michel Angeli, 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:21.480 when Intuition fa Turning points that changed American mystic psychology 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:33.280 of Religious One Day University. The most acclaimed and popular 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:39.000 professors from top colleges. They're best lectures, fascinating conversations. Hi, 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:45.480 I'm Richard Davies. Let's learn. Thank you very much. I'm 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:48.200 a cell biologist. I do a lot of my work 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:51.320 with the electron microscope. But one of the reasons I'm 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:53.800 here is because a number of years ago, a former 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:57.760 student of mine drew me into the public sphere by 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:00.600 a very provocative question, how did like to help me 0:01:00.600 --> 0:01:03.280 write a high school biology book? My name is Ken 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:07.200 Miller and professor of biology at Brown University in Providence, 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:09.800 Rhode Island. One of the first things I discovered when 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:13.280 I started to write biology textbooks is that they were attacked, 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:17.000 and they were attacked because they dare to include a 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:21.120 topic called evolution, which I, as a biologist, regard as 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:25.680 the absolute centerpiece of the biological sciences. So let me 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:29.600 ask you first about the basic premise behind your lecture, 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:35.000 which is science versus faith, addressing history's oldest debate. Can 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:41.319 science and religion coexist or are they inevitably locked in conflict. 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:43.640 I think it's pretty obvious that anybody looks around that 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:47.400 science of religion do coexist and in fact, and this 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:51.000 is something that that has always struck me. Science as 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:56.320 we know it today developed in Christian Western Europe. And 0:01:56.400 --> 0:02:00.240 that's not necessarily because Western Europe was more advanced than 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:03.000 other civilizations. You can make a very good argument that 0:02:03.120 --> 0:02:06.440 the Chinese civilization of what we call the Middle Ages 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:09.840 was far advanced over anything in Europe. But when you 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:14.600 look at the Chinese philosophical and religious traditions, they tend 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:19.080 to emphasize the unity of human beings with nature. The 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:23.440 Christian tradition taught basically that humans are set apart from nature, 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:26.600 that we stand apart. Now, as a biologist, i'd go 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:29.480 more with the Eastern style. But the interesting thing is 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:33.040 the idea of setting oneself apart as an objective observer 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:37.160 is actually the very basis for Western science, and in fact, 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:40.440 um what we called for a long time natural philosophy 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:43.760 and what we now call science was practiced by many 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:47.160 in the Renaissance and post Renaissance as a way of 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:51.000 affirming the glory of God. The modern science of genetics 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:55.240 as we know today was invented by Gregor Mendel, who 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.000 in fact was a priest, was a religious person, and 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:00.560 I've often heard some of my colleagues say, well, that's 0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:02.079 because he grew up poor and the only way to 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:04.600 get decent education was to go into the ministry. But 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:07.480 the fact of the matter is that when father Mendel 0:03:07.840 --> 0:03:10.320 had finished the scientific work which really did found the 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:14.120 modern science of genetics um, he didn't leave the priesthood. 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:18.280 He actually continued and became the abbey of the monastery St. 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:21.839 Thomas and bruin Um, and therefore he continued his religious life. 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:24.079 So this is a person in a deep religious commitment 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:28.480 and made a major scientific contribution. So not only can 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:33.160 religion science coexist in many ways. Religious faith and the 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:36.600 faith in meaning, order, purpose, and value is what gave 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:39.920 rise to the scientific tradition as we know it. Is 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:44.400 there a problem here that we tend to see everything 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:49.080 in modern society is either or Either you're in favor 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:52.360 of science, or you're in favor of religion. Well, I 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:55.040 think so, and I think that tendency to see things 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:58.680 as an either or or also infects the scientific community. Uh. 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:03.080 An awful lot of my colleague are profoundly hostile to religion. Now, 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:05.320 they might say they have darned good reason for it, 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:10.600 because when they see popular movements against the teaching of 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:14.400 certain scientific ideas in schools, inevitably those are led by 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:17.640 religious people. So many of my colleagues say, well, I'm 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:20.479 anti religious, largely as a matter of self defense, and 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:24.120 to some extent um, I can certainly understand that. Many 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:28.080 times people who insist that science and faith can coexist 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:32.400 are slurred by being called compatible lists, as if you 0:04:32.480 --> 0:04:35.360 have to water down science to make it amenable to 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:37.679 religious faith. I don't think you do, and an awful 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:40.000 lot of other scientists don't think so either. Are we 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:45.560 really talking not about a clash between science or the 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:51.160 theory of evolution and religion, but a clash between fundamentalists 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:56.400 of both sides, fundamentalists who refuse to accept UH evolution 0:04:56.800 --> 0:05:00.520 and fundamentalists atheists who refuse to accept the idea that 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:04.160 religious people can be intelligent. The first thing is yes, 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:08.680 in many cases, in many debates on various subjects, and 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:13.279 this is one the two extremes basically tend to validate 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:17.800 each other, which is the scientific materialistic extremists say, look 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:20.000 at those idiots on the other side and what they believe. 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:23.240 And and then the religious fundamentalists who are extremists on 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:25.520 the other side point to them and say, look at 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:27.200 what they want to do. They want to tell us 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:29.880 the teaching our children about faith is a form of 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:32.760 child abuse. Um. They want to close the churches and 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:35.479 do all these other sorts of things. Um. So yes, 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:37.440 they do validate each other. I want to give you 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:40.720 another statement from a religious person. This is now retired 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:43.800 Pope Benedict sixteen. When he was still pope, he was 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:47.640 quartered by a group of Italian journalists and he was asked, 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:50.960 is it possible for someone to be a Christian and 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:54.599 also to accept evolution? And he replied, and here's here's 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:57.520 the essence of his quote. Now he speaks in sort 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:01.440 of a popish style. The contray asked here is an 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:04.880 absurdity because there are many scientific tests in favor of evolution, 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:07.560 which appears as a reality that we must see and 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:11.159 enriches our understanding of life and being. That's a little complex. 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:12.760 So if you want to sort it out for you, 0:06:12.800 --> 0:06:15.640 do what I do. Go to that publication that always 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:18.560 takes complex issues and makes them simple. You know what 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:21.200 I mean. It's the New York Post Evolution and God 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:26.600 do mix Pope. End of story. During your lecture, you 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:31.640 talk quite a bit about evolution and the debate over evolution. 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:33.920 Why well I do that for? I guess two or 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:36.560 three reasons. One is, I'm a biologist, so this is 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:38.400 an area of science that's near and dear to me. 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:42.760 A second one is um I write textbooks, and I'm 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:46.159 the co author of the most widely used high school 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:48.400 biology textbook in the country. It's used in all fifty 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:53.039 states and around the United States. When there have been movements, 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:55.720 as there have been in many states in school districts 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:59.719 to strike the teaching of evolution from the curriculum, to 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:04.080 put warning labels on textbooks telling students evolution is just 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:07.520 a theory, or in one school district, even to glue 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:11.480 the pages of the textbook together in the evolution section 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:14.600 so that students would not have to read them. It's 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:17.360 very often been my own textbook, so therefore I have 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:20.800 a lot of experience in pushing back against these issues. 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:24.640 And finally, um, one of the major battles, legal battles 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:27.360 we had about evolution in this country was a court 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:30.679 case in two thousand five that attracted an enormous amount 0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:33.960 of attention. It was called Kids Miller versus Dover, and 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:40.520 I was uh the lead witness in that trial. In 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:44.200 the year two thousand four, the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:49.040 small town in eastern Pennsylvania, voted to adopt an intelligent 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:54.360 design curriculum as part of their biology classes. Intelligent design 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:58.520 is sort of a refashioned creationism that argues that some 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:03.080 force outside of nature was responsible for the complexity of 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:06.880 living things and what happened. They asked the teachers to 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:10.720 prepare an intelligent design curriculum. The four science teachers Dover 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:13.520 is a small town, at the risk of losing their jobs. 0:08:13.920 --> 0:08:16.240 The four science teachers at Dover High School said, we 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:19.160 will not do this. This is not science. So the 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:21.360 school board think of the horror of a board doing this. 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.440 The school board wrote their own lesson on intelligent design. 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:26.680 They gave it to the teachers. They said, well, at 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:29.120 least read it to the kids. And once again the 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:32.040 teacher said no. So on a certain day in two 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:36.079 thousand four, the superintendent and the assistant superintendent had to 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:38.840 go into the classroom and teach all the biology lessons 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:43.280 that day on intelligent design, while the teachers literally stood 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:46.920 outside in the hallway wanting to take no part of that. Well, 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:50.160 what happened was the next day, eleven parents of students 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:53.440 in those classes went to federal court in Harrisburg and 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:56.559 they swore out a First Amendment lawsuit against the Dover 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:59.760 Area Board, arguing that their First Amendment rights had been 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:02.960 by elated by having an institution of the state. That's 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:06.440 what a school board is impose a particular religious point 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:10.400 of view in a publicly funded school um. The trial 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:13.440 lasted for seven weeks. It was extensively covered in the press. 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.960 My cross examination went on for nine and a half hours. 0:09:18.400 --> 0:09:20.520 So I had to do something that I had never 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:23.320 done in my career as a college professor, which is 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:26.760 to cancel the scheduled lecture. But something interesting happened when 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:30.000 I finally did fly back. It was late in the afternoon, 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:33.320 hopped in my car and I switched on National Public radio, 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:36.040 and to my surprise, the first thing that came on 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:38.360 was the trial, and they had a report on it, 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:42.560 and the lead line was it's God versus Science in 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:46.320 a Pennsylvania courtroom. And the reason I found that surprising 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:50.319 was because of the expert witnesses. Three of the five 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:54.520 were people of faith. Of the eleven plaintiffs, all but 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:57.679 two were Christians, and two of them actually ran a 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:01.480 summer Bible camp. So these were the plaintiffs, and they 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:05.040 were not anti God. They were anti having a particular 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:08.120 view of God dressed up and pretended to be science. 0:10:08.720 --> 0:10:13.480 This debate about science versus faith? Has it been made 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:17.600 worse by media coverage? Has it been sensationalized? I'd like 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:19.559 to say that almost every debate is made worse by 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:22.520 media coverage, and the reason for that is there is 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:28.199 a tendency in journalism schools to train people to establish 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:32.160 the fairness of their own reporting by doing point counterpoint, 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:35.960 by saying, here's one side, here's the other side, and 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:39.120 this discussion will go on. That's a very very typical 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:42.720 kind of reporting. What that does. And I'll take the 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:45.400 part of this debate I've been most involved in, which 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:49.079 is the evolution versus so called creationism debate. What that 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:53.160 does is it takes an idea that has virtually no 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:58.160 standing within the scientific community, creationism or intelligent design, and 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:01.560 it lifts it up as co equal point of view 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:06.480 with the overwhelming scientific consensus behind evolution. So when you 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:09.560 say here are the two sides, make up your own mind, 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:12.920 you're really not being fair. Um, you really should be said, 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:15.280 And I'll give you a quick example of this. The 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:18.280 Ohio Board of Education UH I think the year was 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:21.400 two thousand and two was involved in trying to decide 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:25.760 whether to adopt curriculum standards for science that included some 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:29.680 lessons on what's something called intelligent design, which I would 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:32.439 identify as a kind of creationism. So they decided to 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:35.760 have a debate public debate at the board meeting, to 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:38.720 which about a thousand people came in an auditory and Columbus, 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:41.640 Ohio UM. And there were two people speaking on behalf 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:45.840 of evolution, myself and a well known physicist named Lawrence Krauss, 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:47.920 and it is an author as well, And there were 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:51.680 two people from the pro intelligent design think tank in 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:54.400 Seattle called the Discovery Institute, So it was two onto. 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:57.800 The best line of the debate was from Lawrence and 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:00.199 he got up there to begin his brief present, and 0:12:00.760 --> 0:12:05.080 he said, the audience is getting a false idea of 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:07.839 the nature of this debate because we have two scientists 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:11.400 up here against two people from the Discovery Institute. We 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.360 should really have one person from the Discovery Institute on 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:19.040 that side and ten thousand scientists over here, and that 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:21.680 would give them a realistic view of the division of 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:25.319 opinion within the scientific community. So this point counterpoint thing, 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:28.520 it's a nice device. It establishes you as a fair journalism, 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:31.160 but very often it takes ideas that have no legitimate 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:34.199 scientific standing and elevates them and gives them a status 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:38.080 they don't deserve. What do you say to people who 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:40.840 may be tempted to come and see you speak at 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:44.920 one day university, but are people of faith? Well? What 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:48.240 I tell them, And I try not to put my 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:51.720 own religious police front and center. Um, But the fact 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:54.280 of the matter is that I'm a practicing Roman Catholic, 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:57.720 and in terms of faith and science, I think this 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:01.760 is something that people of faith and people who reject 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:05.520 religious faith can agree upon, and that is it's important 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:09.280 for religious people to embrace and accept science as a 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:11.840 way of thinking and as a way of understanding the universe, 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:15.280 and it's important for people within the scientific enterprise to 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:21.720 respect people of faith. So I want to take a 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:25.559 very very provocative quote from a colleague and friend of mine, 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:27.760 and Richard Dawkins really is a friend of mine. We 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.120 agree on so many things about evolutionary biology, but we 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:35.400 completely disagree, of course, about religious faith. He's come up 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:37.280 with this quote. He's actually used in two different books, 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:40.000 so he really likes it. The universe we know about 0:13:40.040 --> 0:13:44.120 from evolution has precisely the properties we should expect if 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:48.679 there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:54.120 and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. And I 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:56.600 remember the first time I met Richard in person. I 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:59.560 read that quote out to him and I said, how 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:02.280 do you adage to get up in the morning if 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:05.000 that's what you think the universe is like. Richard looked 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:08.280 at me and said, the universe may not have a purpose, 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:12.200 but I do. The reason he says this is very simple, 0:14:12.600 --> 0:14:16.520 and that is he regards the physical universe as cold, indifferent, 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:19.200 and maybe even hostile to life. If you doubt that, 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:21.160 go to Mars or go to the moon and you 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:25.160 will see this cold in different universe. But this puzzles me. 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:28.600 How does he know the universe lacks of purpose? Can 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:30.440 you imagine whether it would be like if I started 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:34.080 off my talk by saying, experiments I have done in 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:38.000 my laboratory have revealed to me the purpose of life. 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.960 We all know science doesn't tell us about purpose. How 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:45.320 then can science tell us about the absence of a purpose? 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:49.120 And that's the problem basically with Dawkins Lodging. Where we 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:53.960 get in trouble is when people use science as a 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:57.120 cudgel with which to beat back the idea of faith, 0:14:57.280 --> 0:15:00.920 or when religious people go around tell scientists what they 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:03.760 ought to discover or what they ought not to discover. 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:07.400 We should recognize that there are certain questions that science 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:11.480 alone can answer, and religious faith should respect that. Do 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:15.240 you find when you speak to a group at one 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:19.760 day university that you start with a skeptical audience that 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:22.600 you have to win over? From my own experience that 0:15:22.600 --> 0:15:24.160 I've done quite a few of these, now I start 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:26.600 with a confused audience. And what I mean by that 0:15:26.680 --> 0:15:29.080 is they're not quite sure what tack this guy is 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:32.040 going to take. Um he seems to be a scientist, 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:35.040 so is he going to tell us that science proves God. 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:38.040 On the other hand, he's a religious person, so is 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:40.400 he going to say, well, uh, there are these fuzzy 0:15:40.520 --> 0:15:44.240 areas where this spirit might reveal itself and so forth. 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:51.080 So when people ask me, how do you find room 0:15:51.200 --> 0:15:54.560 for God in the evolutionary process, my answer is you 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:57.840 don't have to. And the reason for that is because 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:02.000 if God exists, then everything happens in nature, including the 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:05.840 evolutionary process, is part of a world of his own making, 0:16:06.200 --> 0:16:08.440 So we don't have to find a way in which 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:11.360 a divine can can come in and make things come 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:14.200 out in a particular way. Now you might ask rhetorically, 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:17.240 what kind of God could exist in a scientific world 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:21.360 in which nature acts according to orderly and predictable rules 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:25.120 that we in science study, describe and understand. That's a 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:27.760 good question, and the answer to that is a God 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:31.760 that fashioned a world that is rational and intelligible. And 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.640 as scientists we take it almost as an article of 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:38.200 faith that the world is understandable, and if we didn't 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:41.000 think that, we wouldn't be scientists, would be doing something else. 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:43.800 So I would argue that two people of faith, God 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:47.520 shouldn't be seen as the antithesis of scientific reason. It 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:49.800 can be understood as the reason why science works in 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:53.960 the first place. How did the crowd or the audience 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:58.360 at One Day University differ from the experience of teaching 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:01.880 students that Brown University. Well, nobody at One Day University 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:03.520 ever asked me is that going to be covered on 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:07.199 the test? Um? So that's so. So that's really the 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:11.120 first question, okay. Um. The other thing that that's interesting, 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:14.840 and I find this important, um is um. I teach 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:18.679 very large classes in introductory biology at my university, and 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:23.320 I teach uh much smaller seminar type classes in uh 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:26.680 selling molecular biology, which is my field. And one of 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:30.080 the things that I find is that the my college students, 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:33.560 if they don't quite get something that I've gone over, 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:36.439 they'll figure, well, I'll get that later. I'll find it 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:39.400 in the textbook. I'll ask him a question. The difference 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:42.200 with the One day University crowd, and I'm really quite 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:44.639 serious about this, is there in the moment they want 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:48.760 to get it all right away, because they're moving from 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:52.639 a talk on a different subject, very different subject that 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:55.480 preceded me, to a talk on a very different subject 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:58.560 that's gonna follow me. So they're gonna hear about science 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:01.119 and religion. But then they're gonna hear about psychology, or 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:03.360 they're going to hear about how to make better decisions 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:05.760 in your business, or they're going to hear about films 0:18:05.800 --> 0:18:10.560 that changed American history, um intellectually in many respects. One 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:14.040 day university requires them to be more agile than a 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:18.280 student who's hearing a series of lectures on chemistry, biochemistry, physics, 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:22.000 and computer science. And that makes them, uh in a 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:24.960 way interesting and challenging. And the other thing, of course, 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:29.199 is they bring a far greater diversity of experience to 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:33.560 these events, and the questions I get afterwards are absolutely marvels. Yeah, 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:35.760 I was gonna ask you about the questions that you 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:39.240 get afterwards. What are a couple of the best questions 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:41.639 you've had from a one day university. Well, a couple 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:44.919 of them are that you're practicing scientists, you you go 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:48.639 to scientific meetings, you're off certain scientific societies. When you 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:51.280 came out of the closet as a person of faith, 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:54.800 that this effect your reputation the scientific community. And the 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:57.680 quick answer to that is no. Lots of other people 0:18:57.760 --> 0:19:00.640 came up to me within the scientific community and said, 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:03.480 either I share your your beliefs, or I don't share 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:06.240 your beliefs. I'm an agnostic, or I'm an atheist, but 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:09.760 I really appreciate your message that people of faith should 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:15.880 embrace and support science. Um. Other questions basically involve things like, um, 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:18.760 you seem like a reasonable person. How can any smart 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:20.879 guy be a person of faith? I mean, you know, 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:23.360 And so there are a lot of people who come 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:27.120 there basically wanting to hear a talk based on science 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:29.600 against religious faith. And then there are other people. Well, 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:33.200 how do you answer that question? Oh? Well, the answer 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:36.000 is the science is by far the best tool we 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:40.080 have for asking questions about the material world. It's worked great, 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:43.159 It's given us the civilization we have. It's open to 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:47.160 window on the cosmos, broadly construed that that no other 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:50.439 way of thinking, UM has ever given us. If I 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:55.600 thought science could answer all questions that matter, then um, 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:57.960 I wouldn't think there'd be any any room for religious faith. 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:01.679 But science can't ask a lot of the most basic 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.080 questions that you see mold over in the writings of 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:08.200 Aristotle and Plato. Just to take a couple of examples, 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:10.680 what is the good life? What is the life worth lived? 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:13.920 What is right? What is moral what is incumbent upon 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:17.359 me in terms of my obligation towards my fellow human being. 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:20.880 I think we can get better answers to those questions 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:23.639 that are informed by science, but I don't think science 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:26.160 answers those questions, and that's why I think other ways 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:30.680 of thinking, including philosophy and even theology, are necessary. Do 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:33.760 you find that there's a difference in the way you're 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:37.520 received according to where you speak, especially when it comes 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:41.360 to evolution, which is a more charged issue in some 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:44.119 parts of the country than in others. Well, I have 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:46.399 to tell you something, um, and that is in the 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:49.600 one day university crowd, no. And the reason for that, 0:20:49.720 --> 0:20:54.680 quite frankly, is one day university tends to draw literate, 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:59.400 highly educated, engage people, and I don't see a regional difference. Now. 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:01.320 One of the things I can tell you is a 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:05.040 lot of my university speaking, which goes around all over 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:11.600 the country, will occasionally go um into universities that draw 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:16.480 students predominantly from fundamentalists and religious backgrounds, and in those 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:21.560 cases it is a challenge to defuse um sort of 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:23.560 the anxiety, if you want to call it, or perhaps 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:26.159 even the hostility with which they might come to a 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:29.560 special lecture. Uh, let them know. I don't wear horns. 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:32.520 I'm not out to rob them of a religious faith. 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:35.320 But what I am out to do is to convince 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:39.160 them that, um, that we have two gifts from God, 0:21:40.040 --> 0:21:45.200 faith and reason. Religion is the child of faith. Science 0:21:45.280 --> 0:21:47.840 is the child of reason. And if God is real, 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:50.040 those two things could be compatible. And if I can 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:52.560 get them thinking along those lines, I think that I've 0:21:52.560 --> 0:22:03.080 won the day. Thank you very much my pleasure. I'm 0:22:03.200 --> 0:22:07.440 Richard Davis. Thanks for listening. Sign off on our website 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:09.840 one day you dot com to become a member and 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:13.800 access over six hundred full length video lectures from the 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:15.280 world's finest professors.