ASM002 Pangea, Prayer, and Pretending God is Real

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pangaea prayer and pretending god is real all that and more on this episode of ask Science Mike

[Music]

ask science mike it's a weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life

i'm science mike of course

and i'm completely blown away by the reception to the program already

thousands of people subscribed on itunes after just one episode

you guys are nuts

i'm totally excited to see where you take the show so keep those questions coming

i can't do it without you

let's get this started

## Can God make a rock so big that he couldn't lift it?

our first question this week comes from tom in new jersey who sent in a pretty old school paradox question

there's all kind of questions people ask each other to try to prove whether god exists or not

it's a very boring game people play on the internet that i used to have a lot of enthusiasm for but i thought it'd be really fun to tackle this question with science instead of the usual theology that goes into it so here we go

question one for this week can god make a rock so big that he couldn't lift it

now this question is designed to present a paradox since god is said to be all-powerful or almighty and able to do anything

the question poses a problem for omnipotence because either god can't create the rock or he can't lift it

there's no way for an omnipotent god to win here

but this question actually says more about the human frame of reference than it does about god or physics

what do i mean

well human intuition has developed and evolved under a particular set of circumstances

like liam neeson we have a particular set of skills and those skills are understanding the way objects behave when they're a bit bigger than a grain of sand and a bit smaller than a mountain

that's the environment that we find food and avoid prey in

that's where we build civilizations

everything humans do and that our intuition was designed to process happens on the scales

that also means that the behavior of very small things say quantum mechanics or very large things say general relativity does not line up with our intuition at all

and this so-called paradox absolutely reveals the flaws in our intuition

what does it mean to lift something

if i lift something i am using energy to work against gravity's force upon it

so if i lift my iphone off the desk i'm using the biomechanical energy stored in my muscles using my bones as levers to lift my phone against the 9.8 meters per second squared of the earth's gravity

well that's lifting

well if we keep making a rock bigger it's going to have its own gravity

everything has its own gravity of course that has mass

but rocks have more gravity

and we already have a word for giant rocks

they're called planets right

so if we continue to scale up a rock at some point it's going to be a planet

and if that planet got larger than say the earth you'd actually be lifting the earth instead of lifting the planet because you'd be working against the larger body's gravity of course if you had a rock that large near the earth, a planet-sized rock, the tidal forces of these two rocks acting on each other would cause catastrophic damage to them

both physics uh specifically gravitation would tear them to pieces

it would not be a good scene

but let's let's think bigger okay let's just keep making our rock bigger and let's just assume we can set it next to a mass and then lift it

well as we increase the mass of a rocky object eventually you're going to get a star

now i had to do a little research because everything i know about star formation has to do with gassy planets because in the natural world there's an upper bound on the size that rocky planets get

so if you look at jupiter which is a gas giant it's made of the same stuff as our sun

if you increased its mass you know 80 times you you'd get a star but if you in made a similar rocky object the size of this this stellar jupiter you would not get a star because the the silica and the the iron and the sorts of things that are in rocky planets don't fuse as easily as hydrogen and helium so you would actually need a rock primarily composed of silicon and other elements dozens of times the size of our sun

but at that point it would cease to be a rock

it would become a star

so it's no longer there's an upper bound in our universe on the size a rock can be now if we change the so-called rock composition to be primarily iron no matter how much iron you add to a mass no star can fuse it together right

fusion happens stars are born when the gravity in the middle exceeds the force of the atoms and their nucleus is holding themselves apart

gravity gets stronger than the repulsive forces

that's why stars are stars no matter how big a star gets you can't get enough gravitation to fuse iron

that only happens when stars explode

that's how we get elements heavier than iron

are you with me

and so we could still scale up

if we had a mainly iron rock you could scale it much larger than you could a traditional rocky planet

what would happen

well eventually it would become a black hole because although you couldn't fuse the iron you could continue to add mass and increase gravitation until you get a singularity

the gravity will get so small that you get an event horizon

and now your iron rock star turns into a black hole

it's no longer a rock

there's absolutely hard limits on how big a rock can be in our universe

now of course if you continue to add mass to this black hole it's going to get larger and larger and larger

and if you increase its mass enough it could potentially consume the observable universe

so can god make a rock so heavy that even he can't lift it

no of course not by the definition of what a rock is there are hard limits on how big a rock can be in our universe

## Prayer

hey science mike i've got a three-parter for you about the brain and spirituality

the first part is when we use our imaginations what does that mean uh in terms of the cognition going on what parts of the brain get activated and interact with one another when our imagination our mind's eye is being used?

so second part is what happens in the brain when we're praying and connecting with god?

and then finally how do those two things interact and can that teach us anything about healthy spirituality? thank you

oh you've asked me like my favorite question

i love it so much that i have about a 45 to 60 minute talk i do on this topic

so we're going to do a very top-line view for the podcast today

one what happens in your brain as you imagine things

well it depends on what you're imagining

imagination is an incredibly varied activity neurologically

when we've brain scan people who are imagining something, the parts of their brain that are responsible for processing that sensory input in a non-imaginative scenario lights up right

So if you're imagining verbal things then your verbal cortex and the left temporal lobe is going to light up

if you're imagining something visual then your visual cortex in the back of the brain is going to light up

so pretty much the whole brain can be active in imagination

but it's really important to understand that brain imaging is in the galileo stage right

when we first had telescopes wow we learned a lot about the universe because for the first time we could peer deeply into space

but a lot of what we figured out was wrong because our tools were primitive and our understanding limited

so here we have the brain this incredibly complicated intricate bit of matter in the universe

and our tools are still pretty primitive light years ages ahead of what we've had in the past but ultimately primitive compared to what we're examining

now let's talk about prayer

depending on how you understand god different things happen when you pray

there are two primary neurological conceptions of god

when people who believe in a loving god contemplate god or pray they see increased activity in their prefrontal cortex

that's in the front of your brain

that's where your agency and willpower come from also your ability to focus

they also show activity in their anterior cingulate cortex that's a part of the brain sort of between the limbic system - the primitive brain - and the higher brain that's responsible for compassion and empathy and love among other things

you're also going to have activity if you're a westerner in your temporal lobe the part of the brain responsible for language because we mainly speak to god

people from eastern faith when they pray tend to have activity in the visual cortex because their prayers tend to be centered around a meditative practice that involves visualization

now you can also believe that god is primarily wrathful or angry

and if that's the case when you pray you're going to have prefrontal cortex activity of course but you're also going to have activity in your amygdala that's the part of the brain responsible for fear and anger which is like the most powerful human emotions we have

they trump everything else they cause stress they cause anxiety uh they're the fight-or-flight response and they actually undermine the ability of the prefrontal cortex to do its thing

our brains have a strict energy budget and we don't have the oxygen or nutritive or heat capacity to both run our very very advanced and an expensive prefrontal cortex and our very potent amygdala at the same time

you cannot be both analytical and angry at once

it's neurologically impossible

now the last part of the question - what does that tell us about healthy spirituality

it tells us that belief in a loving god is most beneficial to our health and to our behavior when you believe that god is loving and you pray towards a living god and contemplate a loving god

you're going to see lower stress

you're going to see reduced blood pressure

you're going to see an increased ability to experience compassion and empathy

you're even going to have an improved ability to focus and concentrate to the point that this type of prayer has been shown to be therapeutic for people with alzheimer's or dementia and medical trials

but if you believe that god is angry it's going to increase the arousal in your limbic system

you're going to get angry easier

you're going to be fearful of outsiders

you're going to be have trouble forgiving yourself and forgiving others so peering into the brain actually tells us a great deal of what theological beliefs are actually helpful and beneficial to humans versus harmful

and it's absolutely clear open and shut that belief in a loving god works best

## Pangea

hey science mike this is christopher

i have a question regarding pangaea

i remember being in my christian grade school and raising my hand and saying hey it looks like all these continents are puzzle pieces that fit together in a much larger super continent

i was rebuked thoroughly and told my idea was anti-biblical and anti-god

but today i am still raising my hand saying hey it looks like all these continents fit together in a much larger super continent

i would really love your thoughts and insights if any on pangaea and geological history as a whole

but more so i'd love to know your opinions on why you think this concept as well some other ones are so threatening to the evangelical christian world especially here in the states

thanks mike

well first i'd love to note that pangaea is a widely accepted concept in geology and geologic science

there's not really any controversy among people who are experts in the earth about the existence of pangaea

now pangaea was a super continent about 300 million years ago

it was not the first supercontinent

there is a cyclical action on the earth geologists believe where the continents in their drifting are sometimes merging into supercontinents and separating again

and it's also important to note that pangaea was not all of the earth's land mass just most of it

now how do we know pangaea existed

well the continents move

we know that plate tectonics is active today

our continental plates float on the earth's mantle and they move and we see this happening right now

california is sliding against the rest of the united states

places that continental plates are crushing in each other's

you can get mountain ranges in places that they're drifting apart

you can get rifts in the earth's surface

and this action of plates drifting and releasing energy as they have great friction energy build up is earthquakes right

so plate tectonics is really really really well grounded science

now if we if we want to talk specifically about pangaea how do we know that continents once fit together other than you know that they look like a jigsaw puzzle

well if you put those uh jigsaw pieces together and then study for example the distribution of fossils from that time in history you'll find that there are species separated by thousands of miles of ocean that are identical in that time period

how are these diverse groups not only across these continents but in places that really line up well with each other

if you squish the continents back together the same is true for different rock formations and rock stratification

if you begin to look under the earth's surface you'll find that on other sides of these drifts when you go into rocks from that time period you find very similar rock formations and finally coal

coal forms in warm and humid environments and yet we can find coal in antarctica the coldest place on the planet today

and that means sometime in the past antarctica was warm and humid because the process by which coal forms is really well understood so that's interesting but it doesn't really tell us a lot about why there is this controversy in the first place

now i grew up evangelical and i don't remember any tremendous upset about pangaea specifically

but i do remember people being upset that geologists tend to assert that there was no global flood

and i've experienced this already in this podcast

in the first episode i mentioned that i don't read genesis literally and that i believe that genesis is especially the early chapters a largely mythical work or mythic work and that it certainly contains components of history but large parts of genesis are based on oral tradition and mythology

and that upset some people and confused others

when i say genesis is mythical i don't mean genesis is bad or wrong

the reason people get upset about pangaea or the flood is that they have been taught that a concept called biblical inerrancy or biblical infallibility is essential to our understanding of god essentially that the accuracy of the historical claims of the bible are an essential part of proving or believing that god exists

now this as we understand history is a relatively recent phenomenon

it's not an ancient belief in the church

and even early saints for example saint augustine spoke against reading genesis literally and encouraged people to let science be science

science is great at uncovering facts about the physical world

so let's just let it be science

let it do what it does

but when you've attached your belief in god to a belief that the bible always 100 percent accurately describes the events of history when science builds compelling cases for other stories and other ideas that threatens your belief in god

and it's really frightening to have your belief in god threatened because for people who believe in god brain science tells us that that's foundational to their identity

and people do not like it when you threaten their identity myself included

nobody likes to have their identity threatened so i try to be very gracious towards people who disagree with me on biblical inerrancy and the story of how the earth was formed

but you can't accept modern science and accept biblical inerrancy

i know i just generated a thousand email messages

but i gotta call it like i see it

when we have this mentality it creates an environment where we force people to choose between god and science we make it god versus science

and this actually turns people away from the faith

what's much more important about christianity is the way that it calls us to a better life the way that we're called to emulate jesus and to be people of love and grace and forgiveness and to rely on god for our well-being and not on ourselves

that's way way more compelling stuff than pangaea or adam and eve

so i say let science be science

i say pangaea is an open and shut case in the sciences but that does not mean that god isn't real or the bible is worthless

quite the contrary

as i said in the last episode genesis is better than history it is a thematic exploration of what it means to be human and what it means to try to walk with god

## Pretending God is Real

this last question is the reason i have the science mic stuff i do, the reason this podcast exists, the reason i do the liturgists

so it came in the email box and i just want to read it to you before i answer it

hi mike my name is emily

i'm writing you today because i want to believe in something

over the past couple years i've started to delve into religion and the idea of belief

i am not someone who grew up with religion

i grew up being told i was half episcopalian and half jewish

i'd like to say this is a statement coined by americans that essentially means you believe in whatever i feel like i've missed out on a great deal of life by not having something to believe in

i believe in humility and good creating good

but i just constantly feel like there must be something more

there is something moving behind the curtain but i can't find the rope to pull it back

i've listened to podcasts like reasonable doubts and you made it weird for a while now not knowing a thing about religion myself

and i've lost count of how many times i've listened to your episode with pete

i've created reasons to go for a drive just so i can hear the words of doubt and faith a rising blaring in solitude and i don't know why i know something is inside of me i guess i've always pictured myself as an atheist or agnostic

but until i started hearing people talking over my speakers about their belief i've been hooked

i just don't know where to go from here

even as i write this i feel my eyes burning

but i could not label that emotion for you

where do i start

thank you

i just don't know who to ask about this

i don't know how to feel about fate but if i believed in it i think that this opening to write you would fall under that category

any guidance you can provide me would be so appreciated

with gratitude emily

emily thanks so much for your question um i was an atheist for a couple of years even though i grew up religious at some point in my life i decided this whole thing just didn't make any sense that the description of god and my understanding of god did not conform to reality

i learned enough about science that god seemed silly and superstitious and childish

but for some time i wasn't at peace with unbelief

i longed for something more a meaning for life some greater plan in time

i actually found peace in humanism

and i know many people who are happy healthy well-adjusted atheist and secular humanists

and towards the end of my era of unbelief i was one of those two

but i returned to the faith

i returned to the faith because i had an experience with god that was powerful and profound and moving and at this point is all over the internet if you're curious it's a long story

but there's a tendency today because modernism and secularism make people feel silly to believe

and they portray belief as somehow unnatural

and that couldn't be further from the truth

belief in god is a natural normal healthy thing for humans

oxford actually did a study on this and they found that there were several factors that contributed to the very natural and normal belief humans have in god and higher callings and higher purposes

one, humans have a remarkable bias towards purpose-based explanations

we tend to have a belief that our parents are all knowing as very small children and this belief in an all-knowing parent gets transferred to an unseen entity as we learn that our parents are not in fact all-knowing

and we also tend to believe in the afterlife

even in secularized cultures where belief in god is relatively low belief in the afterlife or some persistence of consciousness beyond death maintains majority support

that's awfully interesting

these things sort of get into a pot and soup together and mean that it seems to be that in people there is some propensity some need for god

now it varies

i think some people don't have as much of a need for god as others

i think i am a person who has a very high need for god

i think my friends who are very happy atheists are on the other ends of that spectrum

but if you're like me if god is important to you if belief is something you want to explore science actually draws a path on how you can feel closer to god and how you can experience god more readily

it begins with prayer

people who pray for at least 30 minutes a day six days a week feel remarkably closer to god

now if you don't believe in god praying is going to seem very silly

so let me start by telling you that praying that much has remarkable cognitive and health benefits

so even if god doesn't exist you're not wasting your time

but to pray you're going to need to pray to someone or something

so i'm going to tell you something that you may not have heard a church person say before

if you don't believe in god it's okay to pretend

you can just pretend that god is real

make god imaginary

picture a face

picture a god as you would understand god to be and begin to pray to him because over time that little construct you're building of god is going to become more real to you

this is actually what happens to everyone by the way

this is how god develops in human brains

so you're going to pray and if you if you don't believe enough to pray you're going to pretend and then pray

you're going to adopt a regular prayer practice simply talking to god that's going to take you a lot of the way but the last part is to put this faith you have and i believe that a simple act of prayer and an openness to the idea that god could exist is a perfectly valid form of faith

but it's going to help if you put this new faith into practice and some form of spiritual community

now if if you're a person whose beliefs are somewhat ambiguous and you're uncomfortable with some of the more dogmatic claims of christianity you probably want to find a spiritual community that is more open

but the fact is human beliefs are largely driven by social identity

we believe what those around us believe

and so when you immerse yourself into a community of people who love and worship god it's going to be easier for your brain to make god more real for you now

if you want more than belief you also want to experience god in the sort of mystical and powerful way that i have in my life you're going to have to up the ante a little more

and there are more specific meditative practices that increase an individual's propensity to have mystical experiences

those are more intense forms of meditation like centering prayer or the jesuit spiritual exercises

any sort of very visual or very deep meditative practice done regularly is going to make it more likely that you experience god in a profound way especially when practiced in community

does any of that prove god is real

no

no one can prove god is real

but what we do know through science is when people trust that god is real they can experience god as if god is real

for me i've given up the search

i don't care if i can prove god is real

it's enough for me just to trust

## Closing

thank you guys for another wonderful episode of ask science mike this is your program because i answer your questions i have no editorial plan other than following where you guys lead so if you want to be involved in this program if you'd like to ask a question and help others learn more about science and faith in the process just post a question to either twitter soundcloud or youtube using the hashtag asksciencemike you can also visit asksciencemike.com and click the ask science mic button to submit a question that you'd like to submit anonymously for example if you're in a faith community that's not open to science you can ask your band questions here if you go to ask sciencemike.com that will take you to my website mikemcarg.com where i blog about these topics in greater depth and you can also find all the ways to contact me and by the way if you're interested in having me in an event to talk about science and faith i do travel and go places so you can find that on my website as well i'd like to thank jeb bodaford for the wonderful theme song that i enjoy so much if you have a podcast that you'd like some themed music for i bet jeb could help you and uh his link is in the show notes on ask sciencemike.com along with resources to all the questions i answered there's gonna be something for every single question on ask sciencemike.com that can help you dig deeper and learn more about science thanks a lot you guys and i will see you next week you