ASM010 Sanctification, Miracles, and the Science of Why Jesus Told Stories

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sanctification miracles and the science of why jesus told stories all that and more on this week's episode of ask sciencemic

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grab your party hats it's the 10th episode of ask science mike we've hit the double digits and it's all because of you i want to thank everyone who submitted a question to the program or shared it with friends or rated on itunes or contributed through patreon to make sure the show is financially viable i couldn't do it without you we have some fantastic questions this week and thank you ladies for participating you answered the call let's get it started hey science mike my name is pat and i live in honduras and i was wondering what your take is on miracles and i guess when i say miracles i mean any time that a scientific law of nature is intentionally broken so something more than oh i i caught the bus this morning when i was running late what a miracle um philosopher david hume said and i'm paraphrasing here that scientific laws are basically little more than precise attempts to describe the way things have happened in the past and the correlations that observed but they are not binding causations on what will happen in the future even if they are useful at predicting what will so thus for example to say a ball dropped from two meters off the ground has always led to it falling to the ground in the past does not necessarily mean that it is the only possible outcome for the next it could for example float in the air like a man walking on water the fact that we have always observed it one way does not mean that there cannot be an exception to the law in air quotes so what would you say to the idea that science itself while wonderful cannot disprove the exceptions that we might sometimes call the divine thanks mike appreciate it if we look at miracles as any time the laws of physics are intentionally broken then we can't say a miracle has ever occurred because we don't have a properly recorded instance wherein the laws of physics have been broken it's never happened and so we can't have a scientific belief about that we don't have scientific documentation for contemporary miracles and ancient miracles are from human accounts and produce conflicting contradictory claims there were lots of claims to miracles performed by deities in and around the time of christ for example so how do we decide that you know the new testament is the trustworthy document and other mythologies are not well scientifically we don't you know such extraordinary evidence requires extraordinary claims now if we look at the sort of philosophical ideas that it is possible that the laws of physics just describe things as they have traditionally been and not necessarily how they will be that's okay you can say that and that's reasonable it comes with a cost though if we open ourselves to the idea that the laws of physics are not constant literally anything can happen anytime and you can't ascribe any useful likelihood of any of them so we can't disprove miracles but we also couldn't disprove that the universe is inside the small intestine of an incredibly large dragon because science does not prove or disprove anything if you want proof you have to look at mathematics right you can have a mathematical proof but science working in the physical world merely ascribes a probability to something based on evidence and because miracles haven't been recorded in the history of science science says miracles are extremely unlikely so scientifically speaking there is no such thing as miracles now do i believe in miracles well i've certainly observed the kind of made the bus miracles the question alluded to and i've also experienced um things in my life where it seems as if there is some divine agency at work in my circumstances now that could be a collection of psychological biases that could be me just interpreting data in a way that's favorable to my belief system and i hold open that possibility i also hold open the possibility that god is some kind of being who is aware of me and cares for me and that my experiences through christian spirituality mean something that the story of jesus really is special in some way and that the gospels point to something of significance this christ which draws all of us towards god's holiness but that's not a scientific belief that's a mystical belief and uh that's sort of the tension i live in when i want to know facts about the physical world i'm an empiricist i trust the evidence when i am dealing with mystery with things unknown where we came from and why we are here when i'm trying to ascribe purpose to my existence as a human being that's when mysticism plays a role that's when i'm comfortable accepting unscientific beliefs on a provisional basis emphasis on provisional my experiences with jesus convince no one but me and that means i never use my faith to influence others behavior i don't try to convince secularists that they have to live their lives according to biblical norms for example because they are personal beliefs now i will discuss my beliefs with anyone and in the context of christian community of course we have conversations about what the bible means for how we live but i think it's only fair to acknowledge that those beliefs are unscientific and unempirical and you know out of play in a secular society i can vote based on them i suppose but i can't expect other people to live according to my personal religious beliefs including the fact that on some level i do believe a miracle happened long ago that a man named jesus rose from the dead a thoroughly unscientific and somewhat unreasonable belief that i come to through a life of knowing and experiencing god that's probably an unsatisfying answer but it's an honest one and the reason i do this show is so that we can have these kinds of conversations and admit to what level of certainty we really have and we don't have i think when we resolutely say if you can't buy all these things you can't be in the christian tradition were encouraging a lot of people to show themselves out of the door and i think based on the model of the gospels and the disciple following jesus is open to anyone who chooses to follow regardless of what they believe [Music] hey science mike i have a question about jesus and storytelling why do you think jesus conveyed deep spiritual truth in the form of storytelling and what is the science behind storytelling let's take this one backwards let's start with the science of storytelling storytelling is remarkable from a science perspective here's why it makes us focus and it keeps us from daydreaming and that may not sound like a big deal until you realize that daydreaming is the normal state of a human mind up to a third of our waking hours in life are spent daydreaming and fantasizing now think about your own day today how much time did you spend imagining your circumstances as different than they are how many times in a meeting or in a boring circumstance did you imagine something exciting during the commute did you picture yourself somewhere more interesting after some embarrassing moment did you imagine a scenario of vindication it's part of how human brains work and it's because we build a space-time model of reality our brains are great at that and because we can imagine and be aware of the past we can also model the future or picture the past in ways different than it actually occurred now when you get into a mode where you're listening to a story something being told to you either in person or via media the distractions fade you stop fantasizing when you watch the walking dead or read harry potter you're completely present with that story and that's because your brain reacts to stories as if it was real stimulus you get just as angry you weep you laugh and you feel actual attachment to characters uh i personally was wrecked when dumbledore died spoiler alert if you haven't read harry potter i'm so sorry but you really should have by now that means that story changes our thinking and behavior in ways that facts alone can't think of it this way you can tell someone all day about an increased statistical likelihood for cancer in the mouth throat and lungs in conjunction with cigarette smoking and it does nothing to affect their behavior but if you tell them a story about a child who was orphaned because his father smoked or if you tell a story about someone suffering later in life dramatically because of smoking that actually has a measurable effect on motivation and experiments have kind of bared this out researchers actually paid subjects 20 bucks and had them read a really sad powerful story about a father and his terminally ill son and they took blood samples before the people read the story and after now at the end of the study the subjects were given a chance to give money to a charity for terminally ill children and guess what the blood samples showed spikes of oxytocin after people had read the story now oxytocin is our our cuddle hormone it's the empathy hormone and the more people had oxytocin in their blood the more people were likely to give to the charity in question there's a direct correlation between how much the story moved them and how much their behavior changed so stories actually change our brain chemistry when told well so why did jesus tell stories well of course jesus was a master teacher his teachings endure today thousands of years later he is arguably the most influential teacher in human history so jesus didn't just tell us that god is forgiving he told us the story of a prodigal son who betrayed his father and was then reunified he didn't just say that serving other people is important he told us the story of a rich man looking into paradise at a beggar he mistreated from the grave he painted pictures he made it real through story the stories of jesus are some of his most powerful teachings and science backs up that jesus's instructional methodology was quite good if you're interested to learn more about the science of storytelling there's a fantastic book called the storytelling animal and i'll have a link to that in the show notes on asksciencemike.com [Music] hi science mike my name is melissa and i'm an engineer but i'm currently involved in more jesus minded work i really miss nerd talk sometimes so i enjoy all the work that you do i have many questions as i look more into cosmology quantum physics and especially the origins of the universe i've seen several articles written by christians that attempt to say that a grand unified theory or theory of everything or even just a better understanding of quantum mechanics and dark matter could provide proof for god is this just an extension of the god of the gaps mentality or is the problem in how we choose to define what god is if there is a force that caused everything to be and continues to drive the universe is that any different from what christians or other religions call god please feel free to expand or simplify however you would like thanks and keep up the good work if we're talking about proving god you have to start by asking which god the humans don't agree on who or what god is think about it this way there are atheists who lack belief in any god or gods we'd call that weak atheism there are atheists who assert that there is no god that's strong atheism they don't just lack belief they actually make the fact claim there is no god there are antitheists and antitheists assert that belief in god is harmful there are non-theists who are atheists but don't like to use the term atheism there are agnostics who say they don't have any idea who or what god may be but are open to the idea that god may exist there are agnostics who say that they don't know if god is real but they don't think anyone else can know for sure either there are agnostics who say everyone makes too many assumptions when talking about god there are pantheists who say that the universe itself is god there are paninis who say that the universe is god plus more that the universe is a subset of god's wholeness there are deists who say that god made the universe but that god does not intervene in the universe anymore there are non-theists who say that god is real but beyond any human understanding or definition the mystics live here there are theists who say that god is a being with specific will agency and a plan for humanity and among theists there are many opposing ideas about god the world's three largest religions all point towards the god of abraham but they disagree wildly on god's character and what his or her plan for humanity may be all the world's theistic religions are subdivided into countless sects and denominations that disagree about the basics of god and god's plan for humanity to say nothing of polytheists who believe that there are many many gods out there so when we say ideas in cosmology or physics leave an opening for or prove god we have to say which god a god of deism is not a terribly difficult or implausible cell any reasonable philosopher will accept arguments for deism many scientists will as well it is curious and an unanswered question about how this particular configuration of the universe we call our observable universe came to be likewise it's really difficult to dispute pantheism because we know the universe exists as well as we know anything and if you're calling the universe god then god is real likewise spinoza's god or einstein's god the god of nature an unthinking animating force well that's just physics that god exists but if we're talking about the theistic god of the abrahamic religions cosmology is not going to get you there you're going to need a lot more evidence to support a claim like that scientifically and you know people send me videos all the time of theologians or rabbis or seminary professors or even even some scientists you know using the big bang or inflation or different scientific models to prove god but they're not proving the god they say they're proving they're they're making a case for deism or pantheism and then duct taping you know jehovah or allah to that explanation with no justification for how they made made up that middle ground uh here's the deal the biggest questions in life are unanswered we we don't know how we got here we certainly don't know why we're here and here's the thing we aren't even sure how to go about answering the most basic questions about reality you certainly see this in theology because theology produces so many conflicting claims but you also see it in secular philosophy we're not gaining significant consensus on where human consciousness comes from or how the world came to be but even in quantum physics and cosmology we don't have a good handle on those big questions because most of the theories that are coming forth to explain this phenomenon are not actually any more falsifiable than the information that comes out of theology or philosophy multiverse theory for example one explanation for the strange behavior of quantum particles doesn't have any experimental support or any theoretical framework for experimental support it seems mathematically plausible but so do conflicting theories huh at some point you kind of have to pick an operating philosophy but hold it in an open hand empirically i've got a definition for god i can defend and i use that as my go-to definition for who god is but it's incredibly limited you you can catch it on my blog later this week or if you go to gengarmusic.com and read the post for the doubters you'll see a really early version of that axiom and so there's that but it's it's almost it's almost an einstein's god plus a little neurology but i experience god as much more than that so i explore god's character experientially and in christian community through through my church through the bible but i understand that what i'm doing is is a as a non-empirical explanation so i hold those ideas very loosely and i trust that god and all the greatness of whatever it is that caused the universe to be the source of all from which we all came that allows unfathomable atoms to organize and then ask who am i and why am i here i trust that the story is better than anything i can come up with and all i'm doing is figuring out enough to enjoy the gift that this life is so the god of the gaps we ascribe to god what science can't explain so science today can't really explain fundamentally gravity it can't explain how the laws of physics achieve the particular configuration they're in that allows galaxies and universes in life to exist you know and you can do that the problem is science keeps advancing so if you if you use the god of the gaps ideas there's a real risk that something critical to how you understand god will get claimed by science and you'll lose that belief that's why i'm a mystic i just admit all the time i don't actually know very much if anything about god and yet i experience god in my life and i just hold on to that tension i'm completely comfortable with it and i've lost the need to solve the puzzle that doesn't mean i'm not fascinated with the puzzle it doesn't mean i don't study theology it doesn't mean i don't study science i'm a theology nerd and a science nerd my gosh they call me science mike but at the end of the day i'm comfortable not knowing and trusting that the story is better than i can imagine [Music] hi science mike um i'd like to know what your thoughts are on the process of sanctification thank you sanctification means to be set apart or set aside for a purpose it's a super churchy word if you didn't grow up in the church or weren't pretty seriously involved in the church it probably doesn't mean anything to you and even people who grew up in church don't know what sanctification means uh the idea in christianity generally across most denominations is that you are set aside when you're justified by christ now if i explore those terms that's a rabbit hole churches don't agree on what it means to be justified by christ but churches do believe there is some moment when you are justified by christ and however their tradition interprets that that's one thing then another part of sanctification in christianity is that you are continually sanctified you are on an ongoing basis set aside for a purpose as you follow christ and increase in holiness as you become more like christ and more like god it's a beautiful idea that is completely unscientific but there is some science to it for example when you believe in a loving god it changes your brain uh i talk about this all the time mainly because it's incredibly awesome it rewires the way your brain functions when you believe in a loving god and you contemplate and pray to that loving god regularly your brain changes its good research it's measurable it's not controversial and no one can take that away from you okay when you believe in a loving forgiving god it makes you more forgiving it makes it easier for you to extend grace to other people not only that we understand through cognitive psychology and cognitive sciences that when we believe we can change our lives through christ it can actually help you find the motivation to change even if there's no factual basis for the resurrection or the other spiritual themes in christianity that so many of us worry about today we doubt so much about the factual basis for our faith and forget about the fact that our faith is incredibly beneficial that's why i'm so comfortable just trusting this story of a of a rabbi son of a carpenter who was the son of god and who rose from the dead it's ridiculous but my experiences experiences make me trust the story pragmatically my life can change because of jesus and i can follow him and be a part of the church without closing myself off to science or new insights about the world i can both read the gospel of luke and on the origin of species i can read paul and a brief history of time there's nothing wrong with that in fact i think there's everything right with that so i can let jesus work in my heart even as i contemplate the standard model of physics in my brain like the church i believe i've been set aside for a purpose and that i am always growing toward that purpose i believe that i met god on the beach for a reason so that all the other people who wonder if god is out there and if this whole christianity thing is just some elaborate farce those people can stop being afraid of what may happen in their lives if they're wrong or if people find out about their doubts and instead learn to live a more abundant life in christ even in the face of tremendous uncertainty about the modern empirical scientific basis for christian practice and belief i can't prove any of this stuff but it doesn't matter my life is the proof my church is the proof when christian people express abundant love not only to each other but to society as a whole that's the proof of this faith if you want to show the world a resurrected christ be the person who always forgives if you want to show the world what sanctification means visit the sick clothe the naked feed the hungry and in that process i believe you will be sanctified science or no come on in the water's fine i can't believe it's already been 10 episodes of ass science mike holy cow thank you thank you for making this show not making this show possible making this show every question that's been submitted every dollar that's been given every idea that's been offered every vote for every question every itunes rating everything that's happening on this program is because of you thank you this week has been overwhelming i get so many notes from people telling me what this program means for them and their life and their faith and their community i don't i don't have words for how moving it is when you send me those messages and i just want to say thank you for letting me be a part of your journey and a part of your life it's all because of you it's why i do it that's why we all do it together this is an amazing community i could not be more impressed with the thoughtfulness the intelligence and the quality of the listeners of this program and the community that you're creating guys this is something special i want to thank everyone who put in a question this week especially the women i know science is a nerdy guy thing but we're changing that we're not only making uh sure people know that science and faith are compatible we are also making sure people know that science is not just for the boys keep your questions coming we need at least four every week to have an interesting program uh and i'm you know we made up increasing the length of the show so many questions are coming in um i'd actually love to hear about that if you're interested in longer run times for ask science mike let me know it's your show i'm going to do if you like it also i got a lot of follow-up questions after science mike after dark the the the drugs and sex edition of that science mike i'm going to do another one 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