ASM089 Ask BioLogos

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what if we had actual scientist answer questions for a change welcome to ask bio logos

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welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life only this week i'm not answering your questions actual scientists and researchers and scholars have taken over the program in partnership with one of my favorite organizations biologos we'll have more about that after the break but i guess right now we've got a show to do and a theme song to finish so let's get it [Applause] started well this week i'm back in my recording studio to do the program if you've been listening to the show the last few episodes have been live episodes of ask science mike because i've been out on tour supporting my new book finding god in the waves so before we get started i wanted to tell you places i'll be let's say just through november and we'll talk more about later dates as we get closer to them so this week i'll be in kansas city for ask science mike live uh november 6th i'll be at uh the foundry for a service called open table in savannah georgia november 11th we'll be doing a science mike live in costa mesa november 12th in glendale november 13th in mission hills for those not paying attention that's three dates in a row in los angeles november the 20th we'll do ass science mike live in portland november 21st in tacoma seattle november 26th i'll be in thomasville georgia for a book signing at the bookshelf and november 30th we'll do an ask science mike live in quincy massachusetts which is just outside of boston tickets are going uh fast for all these events so don't wait to grab your ticket if you want to see me on tour just go to findinggodinthewaves.com tour almost every event has sold out almost every event's been at room capacity for the entire tour and the ones that haven't sold out have been very very close so uh i'd love to see you in person that's why i'm doing this and uh answer your questions and uh talked about how this book is impacting you what it's meant in your life in your story so more information on that at findinggodinthewaves.com tour now this week's show is a little different even though i'm back in my studio it's not a normal episode because i'm not answering any questions i'm partnering with an organization called biologos and they are an institution that is all about reconciling biblical christianity with darwin's theory of evolution in their words their mission is to invite the church and the world to see the harmony between science and biblical faith as we present an evolutionary understanding of god's creation i love biologos now when i announced this show some of my more skeptical my hot further down the atheism spectrum listener said what are you doing with biologos uh because let's let's be honest i'm theologically weirder than biologos they're a much more a conventionally christian theological organization but let's also be real they're a lot more qualified than i am scientifically so in in the spirit of hosting good conversations i think biologos is an incredible resource for people in a christian context trying to get a better understanding of science now if you're more skeptical if the core theological claims of christianity your total nonsense for you you've got a ton of science resources you can use right in the same way that uh you know people that are more conventionally theologically can walk into christian bookstores and get lots of resources that reinforce their ideas about god but biologos is rare in a genuine and academically credible uh work to integrate those two world views together so as i said i'm a huge fan and even if you know some places they might be more traditional in their theology than i am i still value their words a lot and given the number of people in my audience who frankly i'm theologically weird to them too i think you might enjoy this episode a whole lot so you can learn more about biologos at their website which is biologos.org that's b i o l o g o s dot o r g and amazingly at their 2017 conference the 2017 biologos conference i'm going to appear there along with like legit people some of the scientists that will actually be on this episode will be there in addition to other scientists uh aaron neequest who's a good friend uh will be leading worship nt wright uh the the stephen hawking of theology will be there to talk about the bible uh so it'll be an amazing event that's gonna be in houston and march 29th through 31st i'll have a link to that on the website if you're interested in catching me and biologos together in houston it'll be tons of fun but i'll tell you what let's go ahead and do a show where i don't answer any question these are my favorite our first question comes in via email and it reads hey science mike and biologos how do we reconcile the concept of original sin and evolution i find myself leaning towards the idea of evolution but have family members who would really discredit the theory due to the argument that it takes away the explanation given from the genesis story also what are some books you recommend that would deal with this topic thanks for all you do hello i'm deb harsma i'm an astronomer and i am president of biologos and i've been asked to address the question of how do we put together the science of evolution and the christian teaching on original sin that's a really important question so let me start with some things we're sure about on the bible side we know sin is a rebellion against god's revealed will all humans are sinners no one is right with god without the redeeming work of jesus christ biologos holds to these core teachings on the science side there's lots of evidence and this is evidence in god's creation that says that humans share common ancestry with all life on earth that means we evolved at biologos we see the science of evolution as describing the process god used to create all life including humans now the first humans numbered in the thousands evolution happens in groups and the genetic evidence shows that there were more than just two individuals at the beginning we also know that some human behaviors have been around in animals for a long time behaviors like nurturing offspring or being nasty to fellow creatures but behaviors in animals aren't morally right and wrong at some point in the past our ancestors became more than animals god called us into relationship with himself and set us apart from all other creatures obedience or disobedience to god sin became possible now here's what we're not so sure about when exactly did that happen when and how does sin begin this isn't an entirely new question long before modern science theologians were wondering about original sin what was the damage caused by the first sin and how did sin spread from generation to to generation today we can draw on their ideas and disagreements to help us think through these questions of modern science so let me briefly sketch two possibilities for what this might have looked like and there are many more possibilities so the first scenario genesis 3 could be symbolic as suggested by some christian leaders like alistair mcgrath and c.s lewis the text may not refer to a single historical event but to the gradual entry of sin into the world in this view over time our species became more aware of sin similar to the way a child becomes more aware of sin as they grow from a baby to being morally responsible for our ancestors the law may have been written on their hearts from the beginning but it takes certain mental capacities to become aware of and thus accountable to that law okay second scenario adam and eve could refer to two real people historical people leaders in the early human population god could have revealed himself to them gave his first commands and they chose rebellion from their sin could have spread to the rest of the early human population now that population would have been scattered in many hunter-gatherer tribes so it would have taken many generations for sin to spread genetically but sin could have spread much more rapidly through social interactions so those are two possible scenarios genesis 3 could be an allegory for the gradual entry of sin into the world or genesis 3 could refer to two real historical figures within a larger group this is challenging stuff my brief comments here probably leave you with more questions so i encourage you to check out the biologos website where we discuss many more possible scenarios and issues around original sin that's our approach at biologos not to give a pat answer but to foster discussion among the best christians in science and theology to wrestle with what god is revealing in his word and his world overall i'm hopeful we have an opportunity here to draw in centuries of christian theology and the discoveries of modern science to come to a deeper better understanding of how sin began but regardless of how sin got started we know that all people sin and that our only hope of salvation is in jesus christ our next question came in via email and it reads i often hear the topic of irreducible complexity come up in creation evolution debates this being the idea that certain biological systems cannot be reduced to more simple or less evolved components and retain any practical function for the organism and therefore cannot be a product of evolution the most common examples i've seen cited being flagellum or the i how does evolution best explain or refute this irreducible complexity proposition thank you that's a great question and one i hear frequently my name is katherine applegate and i'm the program director at biologos my phd is in cell biology and it was during my grad school years that i first began to hear about intelligent design or id and its central claim that certain features of life are too complex to have arisen through natural processes and therefore must be the work of a designer i and many other christian biologists find the evidence for this claim wanting before diving in i want to say that as a christian i view anything we refer to as natural or biological or physical is part of god's good creation it's not as if by uncovering a natural explanation we no longer think god is involved take the development of a baby for example i fully agree with david in psalm 139 that god formed my inward parts and knitted me together in my mother's womb but that doesn't contradict at all what we've learned about how a single fertilized egg develops into a walking talking laughing mess-creating child made of literally trillions of cells god works in and through his creation creating many amazing things with such regularity that we sometimes forget to give him credit id advocate michael behe has written the most about irreducible complexity he argues that some biological structures are too complex to have formed through natural evolutionary processes if you take one part away the function is lost so he argues how could such a structure arise in stepway's fashion if there is no function upon which natural selection could act it's a good question but perhaps not an insurmountable one as i hope to show consider the now iconic bacterial flagellum this exquisite molecular machine acts as a tiny outboard motor to help bacteria swim we don't have a complete picture of how the first flagella rose but many observations are consistent with the gradual stepwise evolutionary process contrary to beehee's claim early studies of the flagellum structure were done on a bacterium called salmonella tiffenmarium scientists found about 40 proteins in the flagellum each of which appeared to be indispensable later works showed that some proteins could be eliminated in certain conditions furthermore across bacterial species you can find many cases where one or more components is missing yet the flagellum functions perfectly fine only about half of the 40 genes appear to be universally necessary so the bacterial flagellum is complex but not irreducibly so but that doesn't show evolution per se the 40 parts of the s-tip and marine flagellum comprise three basic modules which are used to build the whip-like tail rotate the tail and change direction of rotation it turns out that each of these modules contains parts which are used elsewhere in the cell for different purposes at least nine core proteins in the flagellum all part of the module used to build the tail are related to core proteins from another structure used by bacteria to inject toxins into their hosts evolution occurs when existing parts or even complex arrangements of parts are co-opted for new purposes which which is exactly what we see here surely a designer might decide to use parts from one machine to make another yes that is true but the sheer diversity of flagella makes this explanation feel like a stretch we tend to talk about the bacterial flagellum as if it were a single entity in reality flagella look and behave very differently from one type of bacteria to the next some rotate using a proton motive force while others use a sodium gradient some rotate in one direction while others can switch directions some are straight while others are curly etc could each variant have been specially designed possibly but if so the designer's work is indistinguishable from what evolutionary theory predicts endless varieties of form sifted or selected by survival the evidence for evolution mounts if we look beyond bacteria flagella are found across the tree of life in some cases flagella can look very similar but they are built from entirely different sets of proteins and are constructed in unique ways this appears to be a case of convergent evolution where a problem like the need for swimming has been solved by independent means building a swimming machine may not be as unlikely as we might think by the way we see a similar story for the camera eye which you also mentioned in your question it appears to have developed six or more times independently in different lineages refuting intelligent design is always tricky because inevitably it sounds like we're saying god wouldn't do it that way but as i said at the beginning having an evolutionary explanation doesn't mean that god isn't the creator god could have created any way he pleased but the great diversity we find in the composition structure and construction of flagella suggests to me that work of an artist or conductor rather than engineer hi mike my name is michelle and i have a question for your biologos show um i grew up as a pretty conservative evangelical and was raised with the mindset that science and faith were um antagonistic towards each other and didn't really go together that you kind of had to pick one or the other and um it's only been in recent years that i've started to understand that that doesn't have to be the case and i'm so grateful for your work and the work of biologos that have helped me to understand how they are not necessarily at odds at all but just different ways of of looking at the world and so as i started to embrace the idea of of evolution and kind of come away from the literal interpretation of genesis one thing that has been a challenge for me is to reconcile the idea of evolution with the verse in genesis that god created us in his image so i wonder if you could speak a little bit about what it might mean to be created in the image of god but at the same time that was a process that happened over millions of years i think that it's kind of foundational to the way that i look at myself and others to think that all of us have this divine spark in us but where did that happen and and how how does that kind of mesh with the idea of being evolved from lower life organisms and when did that come into play so i hope this question made sense and and thanks for listening thanks for all you do well your question had the distinction of being the most frequently asked when we uh said biologos was going to come answer questions on the show so i'm going to hand you off to the brilliant john walton to offer his take on the image of god via evolution hi science mike this is john walton professor of old testament at wheaton college i have been participating with biologos for several years as i speak at their events and write for their website your questioner asked about how we can reconcile human evolution with the biblical idea of the image of god and i believe that can be done easily once we understand what constitutes the image of god when we talk about human evolution our focus is on physical being including the development of the brain in contrast the image of god viewed in the context of the biblical world in the ancient near east is not something that is connected to our material development and is not the product of evolution the concept of image in the ancient world expressed ideas of function substitution representation mediation status and identity in no case was the ideology focused on a physical resemblance or on characteristic abilities so for example in the ancient world the king was not identified as the image of god because he happened to have certain characteristics that the god also had or that he had been given by the god the king stepped in to his identity when he ascended to the throne in a similar way the cult image of the god was transformed through rituals that enabled it to function in its mediatorial role but it offered no information about the physical appearance of the god a pre-existing physical platform such as the manufactured idol or the human king is endowed with a divine image by an act of god on the basis of these observations we can now explore how the old testament develops the idea of the image of god and how its ideas are similar to and different from those of the ancient near east the first time this concept appears in the biblical text we find that people including male and female have been conferred the status of image of god in conferring such a status god gives people a new identity this new identity will allow them to understand how they should live in order to serve the purpose for which god has created them it is true that the old testament would see the image of god as differentiating us from animals genesis 9 is clear on that but any capability that we recognize as distinguishing ourselves from animals such as self-awareness conscience awareness of mortality ability to think metaphysically they cannot thereby be considered the image of god these characteristics may be thought of as capacities that god has given whether through evolution or some other way that enable us to function in our role but the image is a status not a set of capabilities in like manner the image of god should not be defined by a list of things that we may have in common with god we may talk about god being relational just as we are but that similarity does not establish relationality as the image of god the same is true of a category like capable of emotions in some the image is not genetic or biological when we think about human origins today we generally ask questions with regard to scientific issues biology genetics anthropology biochemistry etc this is understandable in our world but in the ancient world they had no such disciplines no such knowledge and no such interests what we learn of the image of god tells us about human identity not about human origins so an evolutionary view of the origins would not in any way conflict with god identifying corporate humanity as his image well as i mentioned at the top of the program i'm on tour right now so i'm out meeting all of you all over the country to support my new book finding god in the waves that's a story of how i lost my childhood faith became an atheist and then returned to a form of christian mysticism through science and when i wrote the book i thought most people who read it would be people in some state of existential crisis some uh point on their journey where they they felt too distant from god and felt god was too ridiculous to believe anymore but still had some kind of longing for god and that's certainly true many people who read the book are in that state but what has surprised me is the number of people who are relatively comfortable in their christianity or relatively comfortable in their skepticism who have read the book anyway what i thought was the secondary audience for the book it seems when i meet you in person are the primary audience that people are reading this book to get a better understanding of the other side of the god issue that people of progression christian faith progressive christian faith are trying to understand conservatives conservatives progressives all of them trying to understand atheists better and some atheists are trying to understand christians better it seems my story and my attempt to articulate it is helping people give language to this massive movement of people who don't identify with any particular religious faith and that astounded me the other thing that i've realized is a lot of you who love the book can't come on tour you can't get near me you can't get to a city where i'm showing up and you'd still like your own personalized copy of the book so here's what i'm going to do every week for the next four weeks i'm going to give away a personalized autographed copy of finding god in the wave so all you've got to do is go to finding god in the waves.com slash giveaway and enter your email address and every week we'll pick a winner at random and i'm going to mail you a book that i sign and personalize to you and write whatever message you want in there and that might be you want me to personalize it to someone else i'll personalize it to whoever you want so that'd be a free book free shipping signed by me go to finding god in the ways dot com slash giveaway for more information and to get your chance to win a signed copy of finding god in the waves [Music] hey mike long time listener first time caller i have a question about gk chesterton i just started reading the everlasting man and in the first 20 or 30 pages he talks kind of about how he seems to disagree with evolution and a lot of the reason being humans are totally set apart from all other animals he says when you start looking at humans you can't consider them regular animals and one of the reasons is because we are the only life force on earth that has ever made art and he kind of says he disagrees with evolution because you don't see you know the animals that he says supposedly came before us creating not that great art and then as you see time progressed you see they started creating better art and then now we create even better art than they started art just happened in the cave with the caveman these first 20 or so pages are about the idea of the caveman so i was just wondering like what are your thoughts on that and um love the show thanks for what you do and i hope to hear from you so i love this so much we've already heard from scientists and we've already heard from an old testament scholar so why not a philosopher meet my friend jim stump hey science mike this is jim stump i'm the senior editor at biologos my professional background is in philosophy and now i work on a lot of the scholarly projects at biologos the question about chesterton evolution and art is a good one i'm not a chesterton scholar but i'm familiar with the passage your caller refers to and i know the everlasting man was written largely in response to another book the outline of history by h g wells wells wanted to show that human life and culture are the result of gradual development from animal life like many others in the first third of the 20th century he thought that was the implication of darwin's theory and so did his best to produce examples that illustrated it what chesterton argues is that when we look across the species of animals today we don't see anything like a gradual range of artistic abilities we humans differ in kind from them not just in degree and even when we look back in time at the artifacts our ancestors left behind there appears to be a sudden explosion of sophisticated art not a gradual improvement over a very long stretch of time so what does that tell us about the evolution of human beings first it doesn't detract at all from the massive evidence there is now for our common ancestry with the other life on earth the fossil record continues to reveal more and more intermediate forms between us and ancient primates there are now more than six thousand fossils of individuals that don't fit neatly into the ape or modern human categories and there is a fairly gradual progression of forms the fossil skulls we've uncovered for example show a remarkably linear progression in brain size in our ancestors over the past several million years then there's the genetic evidence of the past two decades that shows in remarkable detail the common history between us and the great apes but if this data is so persuasive to the professionals in the field where 99 of them accept the evolution of human beings what are we to do with the obvious human uniqueness we see today evidenced by art and we could add to that language reason morality and culture i think this ought to force us to distinguish between different questions when we talk about human nature and evolution we might be asking what kind of thing are we or we might ask how did we come to be what we are and here i want to say what we are is not determined by how we came to be think about that in terms of us as individuals rather than as species how did you come to be well your mommy and daddy loved each other very much and made something very special okay but we have a very detailed scientific picture of this process now essentially a packet of genetic material from your dad combines with another one from your mom but you today are not just a packet of genetic material science tells the story of how you came to be but it does not tell the whole story of what kind of thing you are for that we need theology which affirms you are a creature made in the image of god so too for our species as a whole we can accept the scientific story about how humans came to be over long stretches of time while also agreeing with chesterton that humans are unique we don't have a good scientific answer for why art and language and culture exploded onto the scene so abruptly in our evolutionary past there are elements and even precursors of these human abilities and other species today which leads us to expect that there may be a scientific story to be told about the development of such capacities but there's no denying there was a tipping point at which we became a radically different kind of species we are not just art making apes [Music] hey science mike i'm a new mom and having a newborn has made me question some things regarding evolution mainly it seems like a flawed and dangerous evolution that when i am most responsible for the life of another i'm at my worst sleep deprivation has made me you know obviously tired but also sort of depressed when i'm so chronically tired i can't think straight and i'm super forgetful of important things and i'm stressed and i have almost paralyzingly low energy so why i know the biology that babies have small stomachs and need to eat every two to three hours for the first couple of months but is that necessary could babies be born with a more mature sleeping and eating pattern furthermore and kind of in line with this question are you familiar with the fourth trimester analogy or theory it's the idea that babies should actually be in the womb for 12 months but since their brains are so large they need to leave the birth canal in nine months hence the first three months postpartum are well what i have to call inhumane uh thanks can't wait to hear your thoughts hi my name is sarah bodbile rules i'm an evolutionary biologist at michigan state university i'm also a member of biologos voices a group of scientists and theologians interested in the harmony between faith and science particularly when it comes to evolution the question i'm addressing is why are newborn humans so needy it seems counterintuitive that human babies need so much attention and are so helpless that they exhaust their parents how could this possibly be adaptive well first know that you're not alone many species across the tree of life have to deal with demanding offspring we're familiar with how many baby birds and animals beg for care but there are hundreds of other stranger examples like frog tadpoles of some species that wiggle and vibrate and even insect young that sway back and forth or poke and tap adults to signal that they need care and feeding and many studies have shown that the young who beg the most whether alone or in competition with siblings get the most attention and resources making it more likely that they survive but with all the crying and catering parents of human babies can be quite fatigued how is this advantageous well simply for the parents it's not this question sets up some fascinating evolutionary tradeoffs meaning that in order to get something advantageous there's a price to be paid a first trade-off is due to competing interests in parents versus offspring evolutionarily speaking the goal for adults is to produce as many offspring that survive to reproduce themselves as possible thereby passing on the greatest number of genes to the following generations thus parents ideally would spread their care among a number of offspring however for individual babies their evolutionary objective is to survive so that they can eventually have offspring of their own regardless of the cost to their parents so it makes sense for individual babies to demand as much attention and resources as possible from their parents as a rather extreme example some recent research suggests that babies that cry lots at night may confer another surprising survival advantage by preventing siblings now that's some sibling rivalry but we still haven't addressed why human babies are so helpless many animal babies can take care of themselves when they're born that human infants can't even hold up their own heads this brings us to trade-off number two in general we know that brain size is correlated with intelligence bigger brains equal smarter beings smarter beings are more likely to survive and reproduce but brain size at birth is limited by the size of the birth canal which is itself limited by female physiological constraints so it turns out that humans with really enormous brains for our size give birth to babies that are quite underdeveloped compared to those of other animals even within primates the caller mentioned that having human babies born at nine months is almost inhumane and i tend to agree but that early birth coupled with intense and long parental care allows for impressively rapid development and the potential for unparalleled adult intelligence interestingly the trade-offs between human adult intelligence and infant helplessness may set up a never-ending dynamic cycle the more needy and underdeveloped babies are the more intelligence is required of parents to successfully raise them the more intelligent parents are which requires larger brains the more underdeveloped the babies must be to still make it out of the birth canal and so on and so on so being a new parent of a human child can be pretty taxing a direct result of evolutionary tradeoffs but it's worth it in the long run [Music] oh man [Laughter] okay that was awesome uh i learned as much as any of you did on this episode of ask science mike there were some really skilled answers there and frankly some good radio voices uh i can't wait to see what biologos does in the future maybe there should be a bio logos podcast of some kind i know i would listen anyway so i hope you've enjoyed this episode of ask science mike i would really encourage you to go check out biologos there's just nobody out there doing what they do so biologos.org to learn more to dig deeper to find more from the voices you've heard here and to discover others as well of course the show is impossible without our lovely patrons on patreon who sadly this week did not get to pick the questions for the show but when we get back to normal episodes will again so if you'd like to join them in making this show possible just go to asksciencemike.com and click on the patreon icon to learn more i want to thank greg nordin for his work in production and sound design for the show andrew golucky for pre-production and of course my friend jeb botiford for the delightful ask science mic theme song thanks for listening everybody and i'll talk to you next week