Speaker 1: A warm Miami one Day. You welcome for Professor Kenneth Miller.
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Speaker 1: of Religious One Day University. The most acclaimed and popular
Speaker 1: professors from top colleges. They're best lectures, fascinating conversations. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Richard Davies. Let's learn. Thank you very much. I'm
Speaker 1: a cell biologist. I do a lot of my work
Speaker 1: with the electron microscope. But one of the reasons I'm
Speaker 1: here is because a number of years ago, a former
Speaker 1: student of mine drew me into the public sphere by
Speaker 1: a very provocative question, how did like to help me
Speaker 1: write a high school biology book? My name is Ken
Speaker 1: Miller and professor of biology at Brown University in Providence,
Speaker 1: Rhode Island. One of the first things I discovered when
Speaker 1: I started to write biology textbooks is that they were attacked,
Speaker 1: and they were attacked because they dare to include a
Speaker 1: topic called evolution, which I, as a biologist, regard as
Speaker 1: the absolute centerpiece of the biological sciences. So let me
Speaker 1: ask you first about the basic premise behind your lecture,
Speaker 1: which is science versus faith, addressing history's oldest debate. Can
Speaker 1: science and religion coexist or are they inevitably locked in conflict.
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty obvious that anybody looks around that
Speaker 1: science of religion do coexist and in fact, and this
Speaker 1: is something that that has always struck me. Science as
Speaker 1: we know it today developed in Christian Western Europe. And
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily because Western Europe was more advanced than
Speaker 1: other civilizations. You can make a very good argument that
Speaker 1: the Chinese civilization of what we call the Middle Ages
Speaker 1: was far advanced over anything in Europe. But when you
Speaker 1: look at the Chinese philosophical and religious traditions, they tend
Speaker 1: to emphasize the unity of human beings with nature. The
Speaker 1: Christian tradition taught basically that humans are set apart from nature,
Speaker 1: that we stand apart. Now, as a biologist, i'd go
Speaker 1: more with the Eastern style. But the interesting thing is
Speaker 1: the idea of setting oneself apart as an objective observer
Speaker 1: is actually the very basis for Western science, and in fact,
Speaker 1: um what we called for a long time natural philosophy
Speaker 1: and what we now call science was practiced by many
Speaker 1: in the Renaissance and post Renaissance as a way of
Speaker 1: affirming the glory of God. The modern science of genetics
Speaker 1: as we know today was invented by Gregor Mendel, who
Speaker 1: in fact was a priest, was a religious person, and
Speaker 1: I've often heard some of my colleagues say, well, that's
Speaker 1: because he grew up poor and the only way to
Speaker 1: get decent education was to go into the ministry. But
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is that when father Mendel
Speaker 1: had finished the scientific work which really did found the
Speaker 1: modern science of genetics um, he didn't leave the priesthood.
Speaker 1: He actually continued and became the abbey of the monastery St.
Speaker 1: Thomas and bruin Um, and therefore he continued his religious life.
Speaker 1: So this is a person in a deep religious commitment
Speaker 1: and made a major scientific contribution. So not only can
Speaker 1: religion science coexist in many ways. Religious faith and the
Speaker 1: faith in meaning, order, purpose, and value is what gave
Speaker 1: rise to the scientific tradition as we know it. Is
Speaker 1: there a problem here that we tend to see everything
Speaker 1: in modern society is either or Either you're in favor
Speaker 1: of science, or you're in favor of religion. Well, I
Speaker 1: think so, and I think that tendency to see things
Speaker 1: as an either or or also infects the scientific community. Uh.
Speaker 1: An awful lot of my colleague are profoundly hostile to religion. Now,
Speaker 1: they might say they have darned good reason for it,
Speaker 1: because when they see popular movements against the teaching of
Speaker 1: certain scientific ideas in schools, inevitably those are led by
Speaker 1: religious people. So many of my colleagues say, well, I'm
Speaker 1: anti religious, largely as a matter of self defense, and
Speaker 1: to some extent um, I can certainly understand that. Many
Speaker 1: times people who insist that science and faith can coexist
Speaker 1: are slurred by being called compatible lists, as if you
Speaker 1: have to water down science to make it amenable to
Speaker 1: religious faith. I don't think you do, and an awful
Speaker 1: lot of other scientists don't think so either. Are we
Speaker 1: really talking not about a clash between science or the
Speaker 1: theory of evolution and religion, but a clash between fundamentalists
Speaker 1: of both sides, fundamentalists who refuse to accept UH evolution
Speaker 1: and fundamentalists atheists who refuse to accept the idea that
Speaker 1: religious people can be intelligent. The first thing is yes,
Speaker 1: in many cases, in many debates on various subjects, and
Speaker 1: this is one the two extremes basically tend to validate
Speaker 1: each other, which is the scientific materialistic extremists say, look
Speaker 1: at those idiots on the other side and what they believe.
Speaker 1: And and then the religious fundamentalists who are extremists on
Speaker 1: the other side point to them and say, look at
Speaker 1: what they want to do. They want to tell us
Speaker 1: the teaching our children about faith is a form of
Speaker 1: child abuse. Um. They want to close the churches and
Speaker 1: do all these other sorts of things. Um. So yes,
Speaker 1: they do validate each other. I want to give you
Speaker 1: another statement from a religious person. This is now retired
Speaker 1: Pope Benedict sixteen. When he was still pope, he was
Speaker 1: quartered by a group of Italian journalists and he was asked,
Speaker 1: is it possible for someone to be a Christian and
Speaker 1: also to accept evolution? And he replied, and here's here's
Speaker 1: the essence of his quote. Now he speaks in sort
Speaker 1: of a popish style. The contray asked here is an
Speaker 1: absurdity because there are many scientific tests in favor of evolution,
Speaker 1: which appears as a reality that we must see and
Speaker 1: enriches our understanding of life and being. That's a little complex.
Speaker 1: So if you want to sort it out for you,
Speaker 1: do what I do. Go to that publication that always
Speaker 1: takes complex issues and makes them simple. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean. It's the New York Post Evolution and God
Speaker 1: do mix Pope. End of story. During your lecture, you
Speaker 1: talk quite a bit about evolution and the debate over evolution.
Speaker 1: Why well I do that for? I guess two or
Speaker 1: three reasons. One is, I'm a biologist, so this is
Speaker 1: an area of science that's near and dear to me.
Speaker 1: A second one is um I write textbooks, and I'm
Speaker 1: the co author of the most widely used high school
Speaker 1: biology textbook in the country. It's used in all fifty
Speaker 1: states and around the United States. When there have been movements,
Speaker 1: as there have been in many states in school districts
Speaker 1: to strike the teaching of evolution from the curriculum, to
Speaker 1: put warning labels on textbooks telling students evolution is just
Speaker 1: a theory, or in one school district, even to glue
Speaker 1: the pages of the textbook together in the evolution section
Speaker 1: so that students would not have to read them. It's
Speaker 1: very often been my own textbook, so therefore I have
Speaker 1: a lot of experience in pushing back against these issues.
Speaker 1: And finally, um, one of the major battles, legal battles
Speaker 1: we had about evolution in this country was a court
Speaker 1: case in two thousand five that attracted an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of attention. It was called Kids Miller versus Dover, and
Speaker 1: I was uh the lead witness in that trial. In
Speaker 1: the year two thousand four, the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: small town in eastern Pennsylvania, voted to adopt an intelligent
Speaker 1: design curriculum as part of their biology classes. Intelligent design
Speaker 1: is sort of a refashioned creationism that argues that some
Speaker 1: force outside of nature was responsible for the complexity of
Speaker 1: living things and what happened. They asked the teachers to
Speaker 1: prepare an intelligent design curriculum. The four science teachers Dover
Speaker 1: is a small town, at the risk of losing their jobs.
Speaker 1: The four science teachers at Dover High School said, we
Speaker 1: will not do this. This is not science. So the
Speaker 1: school board think of the horror of a board doing this.
Speaker 1: The school board wrote their own lesson on intelligent design.
Speaker 1: They gave it to the teachers. They said, well, at
Speaker 1: least read it to the kids. And once again the
Speaker 1: teacher said no. So on a certain day in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, the superintendent and the assistant superintendent had to
Speaker 1: go into the classroom and teach all the biology lessons
Speaker 1: that day on intelligent design, while the teachers literally stood
Speaker 1: outside in the hallway wanting to take no part of that. Well,
Speaker 1: what happened was the next day, eleven parents of students
Speaker 1: in those classes went to federal court in Harrisburg and
Speaker 1: they swore out a First Amendment lawsuit against the Dover
Speaker 1: Area Board, arguing that their First Amendment rights had been
Speaker 1: by elated by having an institution of the state. That's
Speaker 1: what a school board is impose a particular religious point
Speaker 1: of view in a publicly funded school um. The trial
Speaker 1: lasted for seven weeks. It was extensively covered in the press.
Speaker 1: My cross examination went on for nine and a half hours.
Speaker 1: So I had to do something that I had never
Speaker 1: done in my career as a college professor, which is
Speaker 1: to cancel the scheduled lecture. But something interesting happened when
Speaker 1: I finally did fly back. It was late in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: hopped in my car and I switched on National Public radio,
Speaker 1: and to my surprise, the first thing that came on
Speaker 1: was the trial, and they had a report on it,
Speaker 1: and the lead line was it's God versus Science in
Speaker 1: a Pennsylvania courtroom. And the reason I found that surprising
Speaker 1: was because of the expert witnesses. Three of the five
Speaker 1: were people of faith. Of the eleven plaintiffs, all but
Speaker 1: two were Christians, and two of them actually ran a
Speaker 1: summer Bible camp. So these were the plaintiffs, and they
Speaker 1: were not anti God. They were anti having a particular
Speaker 1: view of God dressed up and pretended to be science.
Speaker 1: This debate about science versus faith? Has it been made
Speaker 1: worse by media coverage? Has it been sensationalized? I'd like
Speaker 1: to say that almost every debate is made worse by
Speaker 1: media coverage, and the reason for that is there is
Speaker 1: a tendency in journalism schools to train people to establish
Speaker 1: the fairness of their own reporting by doing point counterpoint,
Speaker 1: by saying, here's one side, here's the other side, and
Speaker 1: this discussion will go on. That's a very very typical
Speaker 1: kind of reporting. What that does. And I'll take the
Speaker 1: part of this debate I've been most involved in, which
Speaker 1: is the evolution versus so called creationism debate. What that
Speaker 1: does is it takes an idea that has virtually no
Speaker 1: standing within the scientific community, creationism or intelligent design, and
Speaker 1: it lifts it up as co equal point of view
Speaker 1: with the overwhelming scientific consensus behind evolution. So when you
Speaker 1: say here are the two sides, make up your own mind,
Speaker 1: you're really not being fair. Um, you really should be said,
Speaker 1: And I'll give you a quick example of this. The
Speaker 1: Ohio Board of Education UH I think the year was
Speaker 1: two thousand and two was involved in trying to decide
Speaker 1: whether to adopt curriculum standards for science that included some
Speaker 1: lessons on what's something called intelligent design, which I would
Speaker 1: identify as a kind of creationism. So they decided to
Speaker 1: have a debate public debate at the board meeting, to
Speaker 1: which about a thousand people came in an auditory and Columbus,
Speaker 1: Ohio UM. And there were two people speaking on behalf
Speaker 1: of evolution, myself and a well known physicist named Lawrence Krauss,
Speaker 1: and it is an author as well, And there were
Speaker 1: two people from the pro intelligent design think tank in
Speaker 1: Seattle called the Discovery Institute, So it was two onto.
Speaker 1: The best line of the debate was from Lawrence and
Speaker 1: he got up there to begin his brief present, and
Speaker 1: he said, the audience is getting a false idea of
Speaker 1: the nature of this debate because we have two scientists
Speaker 1: up here against two people from the Discovery Institute. We
Speaker 1: should really have one person from the Discovery Institute on
Speaker 1: that side and ten thousand scientists over here, and that
Speaker 1: would give them a realistic view of the division of
Speaker 1: opinion within the scientific community. So this point counterpoint thing,
Speaker 1: it's a nice device. It establishes you as a fair journalism,
Speaker 1: but very often it takes ideas that have no legitimate
Speaker 1: scientific standing and elevates them and gives them a status
Speaker 1: they don't deserve. What do you say to people who
Speaker 1: may be tempted to come and see you speak at
Speaker 1: one day university, but are people of faith? Well? What
Speaker 1: I tell them, And I try not to put my
Speaker 1: own religious police front and center. Um, But the fact
Speaker 1: of the matter is that I'm a practicing Roman Catholic,
Speaker 1: and in terms of faith and science, I think this
Speaker 1: is something that people of faith and people who reject
Speaker 1: religious faith can agree upon, and that is it's important
Speaker 1: for religious people to embrace and accept science as a
Speaker 1: way of thinking and as a way of understanding the universe,
Speaker 1: and it's important for people within the scientific enterprise to
Speaker 1: respect people of faith. So I want to take a
Speaker 1: very very provocative quote from a colleague and friend of mine,
Speaker 1: and Richard Dawkins really is a friend of mine. We
Speaker 1: agree on so many things about evolutionary biology, but we
Speaker 1: completely disagree, of course, about religious faith. He's come up
Speaker 1: with this quote. He's actually used in two different books,
Speaker 1: so he really likes it. The universe we know about
Speaker 1: from evolution has precisely the properties we should expect if
Speaker 1: there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil,
Speaker 1: and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. And I
Speaker 1: remember the first time I met Richard in person. I
Speaker 1: read that quote out to him and I said, how
Speaker 1: do you adage to get up in the morning if
Speaker 1: that's what you think the universe is like. Richard looked
Speaker 1: at me and said, the universe may not have a purpose,
Speaker 1: but I do. The reason he says this is very simple,
Speaker 1: and that is he regards the physical universe as cold, indifferent,
Speaker 1: and maybe even hostile to life. If you doubt that,
Speaker 1: go to Mars or go to the moon and you
Speaker 1: will see this cold in different universe. But this puzzles me.
Speaker 1: How does he know the universe lacks of purpose? Can
Speaker 1: you imagine whether it would be like if I started
Speaker 1: off my talk by saying, experiments I have done in
Speaker 1: my laboratory have revealed to me the purpose of life.
Speaker 1: We all know science doesn't tell us about purpose. How
Speaker 1: then can science tell us about the absence of a purpose?
Speaker 1: And that's the problem basically with Dawkins Lodging. Where we
Speaker 1: get in trouble is when people use science as a
Speaker 1: cudgel with which to beat back the idea of faith,
Speaker 1: or when religious people go around tell scientists what they
Speaker 1: ought to discover or what they ought not to discover.
Speaker 1: We should recognize that there are certain questions that science
Speaker 1: alone can answer, and religious faith should respect that. Do
Speaker 1: you find when you speak to a group at one
Speaker 1: day university that you start with a skeptical audience that
Speaker 1: you have to win over? From my own experience that
Speaker 1: I've done quite a few of these, now I start
Speaker 1: with a confused audience. And what I mean by that
Speaker 1: is they're not quite sure what tack this guy is
Speaker 1: going to take. Um he seems to be a scientist,
Speaker 1: so is he going to tell us that science proves God.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, he's a religious person, so is
Speaker 1: he going to say, well, uh, there are these fuzzy
Speaker 1: areas where this spirit might reveal itself and so forth.
Speaker 1: So when people ask me, how do you find room
Speaker 1: for God in the evolutionary process, my answer is you
Speaker 1: don't have to. And the reason for that is because
Speaker 1: if God exists, then everything happens in nature, including the
Speaker 1: evolutionary process, is part of a world of his own making,
Speaker 1: So we don't have to find a way in which
Speaker 1: a divine can can come in and make things come
Speaker 1: out in a particular way. Now you might ask rhetorically,
Speaker 1: what kind of God could exist in a scientific world
Speaker 1: in which nature acts according to orderly and predictable rules
Speaker 1: that we in science study, describe and understand. That's a
Speaker 1: good question, and the answer to that is a God
Speaker 1: that fashioned a world that is rational and intelligible. And
Speaker 1: as scientists we take it almost as an article of
Speaker 1: faith that the world is understandable, and if we didn't
Speaker 1: think that, we wouldn't be scientists, would be doing something else.
Speaker 1: So I would argue that two people of faith, God
Speaker 1: shouldn't be seen as the antithesis of scientific reason. It
Speaker 1: can be understood as the reason why science works in
Speaker 1: the first place. How did the crowd or the audience
Speaker 1: at One Day University differ from the experience of teaching
Speaker 1: students that Brown University. Well, nobody at One Day University
Speaker 1: ever asked me is that going to be covered on
Speaker 1: the test? Um? So that's so. So that's really the
Speaker 1: first question, okay. Um. The other thing that that's interesting,
Speaker 1: and I find this important, um is um. I teach
Speaker 1: very large classes in introductory biology at my university, and
Speaker 1: I teach uh much smaller seminar type classes in uh
Speaker 1: selling molecular biology, which is my field. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that I find is that the my college students,
Speaker 1: if they don't quite get something that I've gone over,
Speaker 1: they'll figure, well, I'll get that later. I'll find it
Speaker 1: in the textbook. I'll ask him a question. The difference
Speaker 1: with the One day University crowd, and I'm really quite
Speaker 1: serious about this, is there in the moment they want
Speaker 1: to get it all right away, because they're moving from
Speaker 1: a talk on a different subject, very different subject that
Speaker 1: preceded me, to a talk on a very different subject
Speaker 1: that's gonna follow me. So they're gonna hear about science
Speaker 1: and religion. But then they're gonna hear about psychology, or
Speaker 1: they're going to hear about how to make better decisions
Speaker 1: in your business, or they're going to hear about films
Speaker 1: that changed American history, um intellectually in many respects. One
Speaker 1: day university requires them to be more agile than a
Speaker 1: student who's hearing a series of lectures on chemistry, biochemistry, physics,
Speaker 1: and computer science. And that makes them, uh in a
Speaker 1: way interesting and challenging. And the other thing, of course,
Speaker 1: is they bring a far greater diversity of experience to
Speaker 1: these events, and the questions I get afterwards are absolutely marvels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask you about the questions that you
Speaker 1: get afterwards. What are a couple of the best questions
Speaker 1: you've had from a one day university. Well, a couple
Speaker 1: of them are that you're practicing scientists, you you go
Speaker 1: to scientific meetings, you're off certain scientific societies. When you
Speaker 1: came out of the closet as a person of faith,
Speaker 1: that this effect your reputation the scientific community. And the
Speaker 1: quick answer to that is no. Lots of other people
Speaker 1: came up to me within the scientific community and said,
Speaker 1: either I share your your beliefs, or I don't share
Speaker 1: your beliefs. I'm an agnostic, or I'm an atheist, but
Speaker 1: I really appreciate your message that people of faith should
Speaker 1: embrace and support science. Um. Other questions basically involve things like, um,
Speaker 1: you seem like a reasonable person. How can any smart
Speaker 1: guy be a person of faith? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: And so there are a lot of people who come
Speaker 1: there basically wanting to hear a talk based on science
Speaker 1: against religious faith. And then there are other people. Well,
Speaker 1: how do you answer that question? Oh? Well, the answer
Speaker 1: is the science is by far the best tool we
Speaker 1: have for asking questions about the material world. It's worked great,
Speaker 1: It's given us the civilization we have. It's open to
Speaker 1: window on the cosmos, broadly construed that that no other
Speaker 1: way of thinking, UM has ever given us. If I
Speaker 1: thought science could answer all questions that matter, then um,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't think there'd be any any room for religious faith.
Speaker 1: But science can't ask a lot of the most basic
Speaker 1: questions that you see mold over in the writings of
Speaker 1: Aristotle and Plato. Just to take a couple of examples,
Speaker 1: what is the good life? What is the life worth lived?
Speaker 1: What is right? What is moral what is incumbent upon
Speaker 1: me in terms of my obligation towards my fellow human being.
Speaker 1: I think we can get better answers to those questions
Speaker 1: that are informed by science, but I don't think science
Speaker 1: answers those questions, and that's why I think other ways
Speaker 1: of thinking, including philosophy and even theology, are necessary. Do
Speaker 1: you find that there's a difference in the way you're
Speaker 1: received according to where you speak, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to evolution, which is a more charged issue in some
Speaker 1: parts of the country than in others. Well, I have
Speaker 1: to tell you something, um, and that is in the
Speaker 1: one day university crowd, no. And the reason for that,
Speaker 1: quite frankly, is one day university tends to draw literate,
Speaker 1: highly educated, engage people, and I don't see a regional difference. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the things I can tell you is a
Speaker 1: lot of my university speaking, which goes around all over
Speaker 1: the country, will occasionally go um into universities that draw
Speaker 1: students predominantly from fundamentalists and religious backgrounds, and in those
Speaker 1: cases it is a challenge to defuse um sort of
Speaker 1: the anxiety, if you want to call it, or perhaps
Speaker 1: even the hostility with which they might come to a
Speaker 1: special lecture. Uh, let them know. I don't wear horns.
Speaker 1: I'm not out to rob them of a religious faith.
Speaker 1: But what I am out to do is to convince
Speaker 1: them that, um, that we have two gifts from God,
Speaker 1: faith and reason. Religion is the child of faith. Science
Speaker 1: is the child of reason. And if God is real,
Speaker 1: those two things could be compatible. And if I can
Speaker 1: get them thinking along those lines, I think that I've
Speaker 1: won the day. Thank you very much my pleasure. I'm
Speaker 1: Richard Davis. Thanks for listening. Sign off on our website
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