Science And Scripture: Bridging The Gap With Dr. Hugh Ross
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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius podcast. We've got a great guest today, physicist Hugh Ross. He's the founder and senior scholar of Reasons to Believe. It's an organization dedicated to communicating the compatibility of science and the Christian faith, not the incompatibility. And I do believe they're compatible, as I'm sure you

Hugh does. So welcome, Hugh. Thanks for coming. Oh, my pleasure. Yeah, do you want to give me a bit of background on yourself first before we get started? Yeah, I was born, raised, and educated in Canada. And I have a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Toronto and did five years of research at Caltech on quasars and galaxies. And I'm the founder of Reasons to Believe. I mean, it's an organization of scientists around the world that researches the record of nature to develop

scientific evidences for God and to show that the more we learn about nature, the more evidence we have for the God of the Bible. So when you first started the Ephesians and studying, were you always of faith or were you secular for a while? When did this transition occur? Yeah, I was not raised in a Christian home. In fact, in Canada, at least in the large cities, Christians are quite rare.

And so, but I got into astronomy and physics starting at the age of seven. In fact, it was normal for me to read four or five books on physics and astronomy a week. And during my growing up years, I would kind of look at different sub-disciplines of astrophysics. And it's when I was 16 that I studied cosmology. And that's when there was a lot of debate about, is it a steady state universe?

a Big Bang universe, a hesitating universe, an oscillating universe. But I knew that the evidence was heavily favoring the Big Bang. And I knew if it was Big Bang, the universe had a beginning and therefore had to have a cosmic beginner. So starting at age 17, I went on a quest to find that cosmic beginner. And I felt, well, the best place to start would be the books by Immanuel Kant,

since he's known as the father of cosmology. So I read his Critique of Pure Reason, some of his other works, but recognized that what he was writing wasn't compatible with what I knew to be true about the universe. I read other philosophers, and finally I went into the Hindu Vedas,

the Quran, the Buddhist commentaries, Zoroastrianism, and finally I did pick up a Bible. And when I began to go through the Bible, I realized this book alone got all the cosmology right. In fact, what's really surprised me is how the Bible, written thousands of years ago, had accurately described four of the

fundamental features of the Big Bang creation model. And so I spent years... - What? - Yeah. - What do you mean? - Well, for example, the Bible frequently talks about the fact that the universe has a beginning. Of all the philosophy books I read and the religious texts I read, it was the only one that said that the beginning included the creation of space and time.

And, you know, I was reading this Bible at the same time that physicists in South Africa and Britain were beginning to develop the space-time theorems. And it's those theorems that prove that space and time indeed are created entities that began when the universe began. So that's one example. Another example is how the Bible says

that the laws of physics are immutable. They don't change throughout the history of the universe. And, you know, that's a fundamental feature of Big Bang cosmology. Probably the best known feature is that these laws of physics include a pervasive law of decay and then that the universe expands. I mean, I found 11 different texts in the Bible by six different authors that said that

that we live in a universe that continuously expands. I mean, verses like you see in Job 9-8, how God alone stretches out the heavens. And recognize that the word for stretching out means expansion. And

And so, if the universe expands under a constant law of decay, that means the universe must get colder and colder as it gets older and older in a highly predictable way. So that had a major impact on me during my teenage years.

and also in spending two years going through the Bible, realized number one, it always got the science correct, and number two, in over a hundred places, it had accurately predicted future scientific discoveries. And that's what persuaded me that this had to be a book that came from the cosmic creator.

And so I was at age 19, I signed my name in the back of a Gideon Bible, committing my life to Jesus Christ. Which hotel does not have a Bible now? Yeah, well, what happened in Kansas? Yeah.

is that the Gideons were allowed to give away Bibles in public schools. So I had a Bible thanks to the Gideons. And so, and frequently I speak on behalf of the Gideons. Okay, so when you were seeing that all these things were true scientifically, what was going through your mind? Like, were you just...

amazed? You know, did you have to do some legwork or verification to go through the whole Bible to see this? Or was there people that already had done it? Yeah, starting at age 17, I spent typically an hour, sometimes more, between midnight and 2 a.m. secretly reading my Gideon Bible and testing everything that it talked about. In fact, what impressed me about the Bible is how frequently

It commanded objective testing. Test everything. Hold fast to that which proves to be good and true. That's from Thessalonians. But it's throughout the Bible, this concept of testing. I was also impressed when I looked at Genesis 1 and Job 37, 38, and 39, how the Bible perfectly follows the scientific method. Now, I have to admit I was naive. It wasn't until I was 27 I discovered why.

That's when I read the multiple volumes by the Scottish academic press that basically showed that the scientific method had its roots in the Bible and Reformation theology. But that made a big impression upon me as I was going through the biblical text, and

But I was rigorously testing it, and I think what really got me to a point of saying, okay, this has to be from the creator of the universe, is when I realized the probability of the Bible correctly predicting all these future scientific discoveries without divine intervention was far more remote than the possibility that the second law of thermodynamics would be violated in such a way that a human would be killed by it.

And I actually had, was given that as an assignment as a sophomore physics student at the University of British Columbia to calculate that probability. It's less than one chance in 10 to the 80th. But I'd also calculated at the same time the probability that this book, the Bible, did not come from the one that created the universe was less than one chance in 10 to the 300th power.

And that's when I realized that it would simply be irrational for me not to put more trust in the Bible than I put in the second law of thermodynamics. What do you think it would have been like to be one of the people that was inspired by God to write things that they couldn't have possibly known about through

Does anyone in the Bible mention anything like that? Or what would you guess it was like? Like when they got this information, they must have been like, Lord, how is that possible? Well, Peter talks about this in both of his letters in the New Testament, where he says that these

prophets were inspired by God to record Scripture that they themselves longed to understand, but realized that what the Holy Spirit was asking to record was for future generations to understand. And it was also Peter who talked about the letters of

Paul and basically told the readers of his letter, hey, these letters from Paul, they're inspired by the Holy Spirit. You need to pay special attention to Paul's letters. So at least Peter had this understanding that he and others indeed were writing inspired scripture. Yeah, that's weird. I mean, I wonder what, like I said, I just can't imagine what they would

they would think learning these things that wouldn't be discovered for hundreds or even thousands of years later. Well, what's interesting about what they did write is that the content, can

communicates to all generations of humanity. But there's also a progressive revelation in what they write, in the sense that successive generations are able to understand it to a greater depth than former generations. But notice the Bible only contains vocabulary that's accessible to all generations. And so people often ask me, "How come the Bible never mentions Neanderthals?" Well, Neanderthals weren't discovered until the mid-19th century.

For the same reason the Bible is silent on neutrinos. It's only people living in modern times that have any idea what that would be. But nevertheless, in using rather common vocabulary, it's able to communicate things that just now we're discovering. In fact, what I find interesting, you look at the book of Job, God asked Job and his friends 60 questions.

Several of those questions we're still struggling to answer this day. But we will answer a whole lot more than what was possible for Job and his friends. What's unanswerable as of today? Well, for example, you've got Job in the 38th chapter where God is speaking and says...

Do you know where darkness resides? Do you know where it is placed? Where is its light? He's basically saying that there's dark stuff in the universe and it's real stuff. It's not just, you know, absence of light. There's something material about this darkness and it has a special location. Well, today we have a whole astrophysical discipline dedicated to the study of dark matter.

But we still do not yet know what composes this dark matter. We know a few places where it must reside. We have a good idea of the abundance of this dark matter. But there's still mysteries we're trying to uncover. And this is what you see in Job 38. God is asking Job and his friends, Hey, you think you're so smart? Try answering these questions. And I find it fascinating that these questions are still a significant challenge to us today.

Before we continue, I've been personally funding the Finding Genius Podcast for four and a half years now, which has led to 2,700 plus interviews of clinicians, researchers, scientists, CEOs, and other amazing people who are working to advance science and improve our lives and our world. Even though this podcast gets 100,000 plus downloads a month, we need your help to reach hundreds of thousands more worldwide. Please visit findinggeniuspodcast.com and click on support us. We have three levels of membership from

from $10 to $49 a month, including perks such as the ability to see ahead in our interview calendar and ask questions of upcoming guests, transcripts of podcasts you're interested in, the ability to request specific topics or guests, and more. Visit FindingGeniusPodcast.com and click support us today. Now, back to the show. Yeah, it's amazing. So what, you know, people talk about the fine-tuning of the universe and, you know, the various constants that make up the universe. Can we delve into that a bit? Sure.

be able to put some numbers on it. What have you seen? How many constants are finely tuned and what does fine-tune mean for them? Well, I've now written seven books on fine-tuning. And what I've noticed in my study of church history, this has always been the go-to argument of Christians who are trying to present a scientific case for their faith, is that they

they say, hey, look at the universe, look at all of its components. What we recognize, it's been designed or fine-tuned to make possible the existence of human beings. I think what's interesting in the time in which we live is

is that we're discovering this evidence for design and fine-tuning at an exponential rate. So for example, when I speak to university audiences, I can say to the skeptics, if you're not persuaded today, wait one month. The evidence is gonna get at least 100 times stronger for God based on fine-tuning than it is now.

And yes, you can go to reasons.org/fine-tuning and you'll see a fine-tuning catalog there and literally hundreds of different features of the universe, our galaxy, our solar system that point to the fact

that the universe and all of its components must be fine-tuned to a far, far greater degree than we humans can fine-tune anything that we design and build. But what are just a sample of some of the constants and the fine-tuning, how finely tuned are they?

Yeah, maybe some examples. So, for example, to have a stable star, which is essential for life, you need heat and light flowing out of a star in a stable way for physical life to exist on a planet orbiting it. But for that to be possible, the ratio of the electromagnetic force compared to the gravitational force must be fine-tuned to better than one part in 10,000 trillion years.

trillion, trillion. I mean, what keeps a star stable is gravity is trying to collapse a star, radiation from electromagnetism is trying to expand the star, but yet they literally have to be balanced to one part in 10 to the 40th power.

And to put that in context, the very best fine-tuning we humans have ever achieved in any of our designs is about one part in 10^25. But when you look, for example, at the fine-tuning necessary to get the universe to expand at the just right rate, that means that dark energy in combination with the mass of the universe has to be fine-tuned within about one part in 10^122 power.

So now we're dealing with a fine-tuning design level that's literally trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions, trillions of trillions, trillions of trillions of times greater than anything we human beings can manifest, which implies that the one that created the universe in such a way that it expands at the just right rate, that you get the chemicals you need for life,

and you get the stars and galaxies and planets you need for life, must be that many times more intelligent, more knowledgeable, more creative, and more powerful than we human beings. So this is an argument not just for God, but for a personal God, and in particular, the

personal, intimate God we see described in the pages of the Bible. So those are just three examples. But again, if you go to reasons.org slash fine tuning, you'll find about 700 similar examples. That's crazy. So if you stack the probabilities of all the constants being what they are, what they have to be with tolerances,

Then what do you get? Well, what you'll see in that fine-tuning catalog is that what we know today, not what we're going to discover in the future, but what we know already is that to get a planet that can support microbes for a few months, you need to fine-tune all these characteristics to a degree that works out to be less than one part in 10 to the 312th

power that this could all happen without the intervention of the God of the Bible. But if you put it in the context of which you need to have microbes existing for at least a billion years, which is the minimum in which you need for those microbes to chemically transform a planet so that bigger life forms can exist, then the probability becomes more remote than one chance in ten

to the 512th power. If you're talking what you need to have human beings, less than one chance in 10 to the 1600th power. So now we're talking 1600 zeros between the decimal point and the one. And one way to visualize that, the probability that our universe and all of its components would be fine-tuned, designed, so we human beings can live and thrive,

on a planet within the universe. And to have all that happen without the intervention of the God of the Bible is more remote than you winning the California lottery 300 consecutive times where you only buy one ticket each time. Or just one. Yeah. So very tiny possibility.

That's amazing. What do people say when you tell them that, when you look at the aggregate probability of it being like one in tens of the 1600 at least? Well, it's similar to what happened to me when I realized, hey, the probability of all these predictions of future scientific discoveries in the Bible happening without this book being inspired by the God that created everything

When I realized how remote that possibility was, I realized, okay, it would simply be irrational for me not to commit my life to the one that inspired this book and to receive its offer of redemption. However, as the Bible warns us, the human population is filled with irrational people. What's happened when...

When you discovered this and you came to faith and you continued to interact with secular science and secular scientists, what happened? That's one thing that did happen to me. Having spent two years studying the Bible before committing my life to Jesus Christ, I realized that committing your life to Jesus Christ

is making him the most important person in your life and publicly declaring your relationship with him and also committing yourself to encourage other people to do the same thing. So within a few weeks after I gave my life to Jesus Christ, I started sharing with my lab partner. And that was an interesting encounter. I remember him stopping me saying, Hugh, I can tell you got something important you want to say to me. Please.

please let me speak first. I've been going through struggles in my life. I need to talk to somebody about God. Do you know anybody on this campus that knows anything about God? And I said, well, that just so happens. So that led to a four-hour conversation. So I've been active in sharing my faith since that time. And, you know, my wife and I wrote a book called Always Be Ready, based on what you see in Peter's first letter. And it

you as a Christian will prepare sound reasons for your faith and hope in Jesus Christ and are able to share those reasons with gentleness and respect. You'll see God supernaturally acting to bring people into your life that he in advance is prepared to hear and respond to those reasons. And so I've seen that happen so many hundreds of times. I said, hey, I need to write a book about this. And basically I discovered that

is that anyone who makes that commitment, they do see God performing miracles, akin to what you see in the book of Acts, where God performed miracles in the life of Peter. He performed miracles in the life of Cornelius so that Peter could share with Cornelius and his family.

and Cornelius and his family all came to faith in Jesus Christ. God will do those things. And just to give you a quick example, I travel a lot on airplanes. So I often have conversations with people seated next to me in the airplane, next to me in the airport waiting room. And, uh,

Over half the conversations I have with people are with people that have doctoral degrees in science or theology. And you and I both know that doesn't make up 50% of the U.S. flying public. But God knows who they are. He knows who I am. He makes sure that we get to meet. Yeah, that's fantastic. So do you feel like it's helped you to...

advance faster and more in physics because of your faith? Like, are there problems that arise where you're somehow able to reconcile the, you know, the spiritual component and the science-based component? Well, my latest book on the fine-tuning argument is Designed to the Core.

where I basically make the case, just like you see exponentially more evidence for design when you go from microbes to plants and animals, and exponentially more when you go from plants and animals to the equivalent of human beings, the biggest exponential jump is when you say, "Okay, how does the universe have to be designed so that billions of humans can live on a planet and hear and respond to the Gospel message?"

And so basically what I put in Design to the Core is the fine-tuning argument in the context of the biblical message of God wanting to redeem an uncountable number of people unto himself, for they're delivered for all eternity from sin and evil. And so what I've been sharing lately with my secular peers is, look, I know you're not yet a follower of Jesus Christ, but if you will do your scientific research from the biblical redemptive perspective,

it will make you more successful in making scientific discoveries. Give it a try and see what happens. And so I found that to be an effective tool to reach out to scientists. But what about when you're pursuing your own knowledge in physics, do you pray and ask Holy Spirit for answers? Or do you use more principles that are in the Bible to help you figure out? Well,

Does this make sense in the biblical context? I've been writing for literally decades, and every time I start writing a book, and particularly when I'm writing a scientific paper for the secular peer-reviewed literature, yes, I stop and ask God and say, hey, help me with this. Give me grace with the reviewers of my paper, because typically I draw atheist scientists as reviewers.

and that I would be able to engage them in a gracious way and persuade them that the content of my paper is worth publishing. And also say, hey, am I leaving something out of what I'm sharing here in my paper? Are there things that I should drop because they get in the way? So yes, I...

And then I do the same with people. I have review my writings before I send it off to a publisher. Hey, go through what I've written here. And I ask the Holy Spirit to help them in critiquing my paper to show me, hey, you need to drop this, but here's something you need to add. And so, because I want my material to have maximal impact when it gets published. I mean, a good example of that is a paper I wrote called Black Holes as Evidence of God's Care.

And I sent it to a journal where the reviewers remain anonymous, but they have to make public their critique. And they allow for as much as three back and forths between the author and the critical reviewers.

And so, and what I love about that particular paper is that the entire paper is available for free to anyone who wants to read it. There's no paywall. They also make available for free the critiques of the peer reviewers themselves.

and my responses to them. So I like the fact that people actually get to see the exchange that's going on, because I think often there's more ministry that happens through people reading the exchange than even the paper. But that particular paper, it's now gotten over 22,000 views. So it's showing that it's indeed having a significant impact on the scientific community. What kind of pushback have you gotten from secular people when they appear reviewing your papers or...

when they're just dating with you? I mean, do their arguments kind of like, do they give up in frustration or do they, they feel like one restraints you? You can read that paper again. All you need to do is put it into a search engine. Black holes is evidence of God's care. It'll pop right up. And what you notice is that two, the three reviewers, uh, wanted the paper rejected because I thought I was making too strong a connection between the science of black holes and the God of the Bible. Uh,

And one of them even claimed that I was actually presuming that black holes actually existed and said, hey, you never addressed the possibility that these objects we're observing may not be condensed ordinary matter at all, but might be exotic matter. And so, but I had a chance to respond and say, well, what I've noticed in all the papers

publish on these soliton stars and neutrino balls, nobody even theoretically can make them stable. Whereas if the black holes are condensed ordinary matter, it's straightforward to make them stable. And by the way, there's 27,000 papers published on black holes and only eight papers published on these soliton stars and neutron stars. So he wound up backing down and saying, okay, I think we need to have the paper published.

So, and the other atheist reviewer also recognized, hey, the case you're making, because he asked me to say, hey, I don't think you've made a strong enough case for your position. Here are some places where there's some holes, and those holes were quite straightforward to fulfill. And what I found fascinating, his critique was predominantly philosophical, not scientific. And so I was able to point out to him, hey, I didn't address those philosophical issues, because that's already been addressed in the philosophical literature, sight of the

papers, he said, put those citations in and I'll let the paper be published. So that kind of gives you an example of how the back and forth can go. Yeah. And you shouldn't need to prove something that's, like you said, has already been so well documented that black holes exist. That's crazy. Okay. I remember I learned, I don't know if you know him, there's a mathematician called Paul Erdős and he was like obsessed doing math. He did like a thousand papers. But he would always say when he figured out something, if he had a

managed to read another page of God's big book of either math or design or whatever it is. Right, right. How do you feel when you make new discoveries or see new things in the universe, you know, in physics that you're researching? Like, what's your, I don't know, like... Yeah, good question.

What I notice is that research mathematician, that's where you find the highest percentage of scientists believing in God in an afterlife. It's above 80%. To get another discipline, physical chemistry is at 60%. Physics is above 50%. But mathematics is the highest. And that's because there's an undeniable beauty and elegance and symmetry about the equations that describe the physical universe.

And it's like, how can you explain that unless it's all done by a God that himself enjoys beauty, elegance, and symmetry? So, and yeah, when you make a discovery, it's like, here's an equation that describes something that I, you know, why do equations so well describe physical reality? So I think that makes a big impression upon mathematicians.

And yes, there is a real thrill in all the scientists, on all the scientific disciplines, when you as a scientist make a discovery. I remember feeling that thrill when I discovered new quasars at a time when the number of quasars was only a couple of dozen. It's like, wow. And I was finding quasars had features that had never been seen before. So there's a real thrill in that. And that can basically say, hey, there's a God out there.

that wants me to have the joy of discovering what he has done. But I've also seen in some of my peers where their scientific research can be a diversion. So, for example, I debated a very well-known atheist paleontologist years ago

and he referred to himself as an atheist. But I could tell he was fascinated by what I was sharing and very fascinated about his own research. And yes, he had the thrill of making amazing discoveries in his research on paleontology. But what I realized was

He was addicted to his scientific research to such a degree he never spent any time thinking about the most important issues of life. And he admitted to me, yeah, I've been calling myself an atheist all these years, but you're right, I'm really a default atheist. I'm so fascinated by my scientific research and I get such joy from it that's

What about...

Let's say you're looking into some kind of scientific concepts. You know, again, the default is for everyone to say, okay, based on the science I know and all that stuff, we think it's the reasons that this happens is ABC, X, Y, Z. Does anyone ever then deliberately say, okay, let me think about it from the perspective of why would God...

create this and allow it to exist in our universe? What purpose does it serve? Do you ever take a deliberate way of thinking to rethink through a problem from that standpoint? Yeah, I do that all the time, but I recognize there's a lot of scientists I know who really don't pay attention.

hey, the universe screams it at its purpose. What is that purpose? They just seem to say, hey, I just want to dive into my research. But even before I became a Christian, I was pondering things like, you know, when we live in a universe with electromagnetism, gravity, and thermodynamics, we have this huge degree of decay. And a degree of decay brings a lot of suffering into the lives of

plants, animals, and especially human beings. If there is a benevolent God, why? Is there some higher purpose behind this universe being governed by these laws of physics? And that's when I was starting to read the Bible, I realized, oh, now I understand. These laws of physics play a crucial role as tools in God's hands

to eradicate all sin and evil while at the same time he enhances the free will capacity of his followers to experience and express love and recognize that if it wasn't for the thermodynamics, gravity, and electromagnetism being fine tuned exactly the way they are, evil would run completely out of control or God would have to create beings that had a very weak free will. But God's will... Why? Why? That's interesting. How come? Pardon me?

It's very interesting what you're saying, but why? Why is that the case? Well, one way that God could ensure that evil would not spread out of control is to make sure we're kind of robotic-like, or we've got such a weak free will that we never rebel against his commands in our life. But if that were the case, our relationships with him and one another...

would also be at a weak level. And it's clear when I read the Bible, God wanted strong love, not weak love. And that's why he gave angels and human beings a strong free will and knew ahead of time a certain percentage of humans and angels would say, I don't want a relationship with you. I don't want anything to do with you.

I guess a bad joke would be that God doesn't want Vanderwall's love. He wants like strong nuclear force love. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And that's what led me to realize, well, for that to be possible, for God to have strong love relationships with us and for us to have that with one another, then and for evil not to run out of control.

We need thermodynamics, gravity, electromagnetism. As you see in Genesis 3, the moment that Adam and Eve rebelled against God, he said, from now on, you'll experience more work. You'll experience more pain. And the principle is, the more evil you commit, the more work you're going to have to do,

the more pain you're going to experience to undo the damage of your sin and evil. And those are strong motivating factors in our life to avoid evil and pursue virtue. We save time. We save a lot of hard work and pain. And it's those laws of thermodynamics, gravity, and electromagnetism that ensure that in proportion to the evil we commit, we will experience more pain, more work, and more wasted time. And in the same process, we discover that

hey, I know this is a way to avoid a lot of work and pain and wasted time, but I don't seem to have the capacity to do it in my own strength. And this is where we realize, wait a minute, the God that created this universe from what I can see in the universe is incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable, very creative and very caring and loving. Therefore, he must be willing to do for me what I can't do for himself. And that's the core of the Christian message, that we're all sinners, we're all in rebellion against God,

And we have a mission to overcome that. But the only way we can overcome it is to go to God for him to do what we can't do for ourselves. Another concept I thought of, you know, you ever see like a nightclub and they have the velvet ropes and they only let certain people in. They keep most of them out. Do you think there's knowledge that God will just never let us get? Like we can't get to absolute zero. We can't get to like 99.99999% of the universe. We can't do anything.

We can't see what's beyond death. I mean, there's all these velvet ropes, I guess I call them, in life and science and world. Why do you think they're there and what's the purpose? Well, it is true that God is the only being that knows absolutely everything. But he's given us the capacity to learn and he wants us to learn. He knows that through learning, we're going to develop

about better relationships with one another and with him. As it says repeatedly in the Bible, people perish for a lack of knowledge and understanding. So he wants us to gain that. But there's an infinite amount of stuff to learn. And we're finite beings. We're never going to get there. But God also wants us to have the thrill of discovering all these things. So I'm convinced that when we have this universe replaced by the new creation, we're still going to be engaged in the

learning. So the education will not be over when we leave this life and enter the next life. It will continue and it's going to be enjoyable, but we're never going to attain God's status. Only He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. But we're going to actually experience a love and a capacity to express love in degrees that are exponentially greater than we can right now. Because a time will come when there will no longer be thermodynamics

gravity and electromagnetism. But the Bible tells us that will only happen when evil is completely eradicated. It also will be delivered from the dimensions of length, width, height, and time to a different dimensional reality where we're going to be able to experience simultaneous intimate relationship. And so, for example, when I conduct

a wedding ceremony, I tell the bride and groom, this day you're committing yourself to say yes to one person and no to the rest of the human race. It's the only way that we can experience the intimacy that God wants us to enjoy in marriage.

But in the new creation, we're going to be delivered from linear time. The reason why you have to focus on one person is that we're constrained to a single dimension of time. And you say, well, why doesn't God give us geometric time right now? If he did, evil would run out of control. The last thing you want to do is give a serial killer access to two independent dimensions of time where they live forever. I mean, that's something else I saw in the Bible.

is that God moved to shorten human lifespans from a maximum of 970 years down to a maximum of 120. Because if you let evil people live to be nearly a millennium, they can do a lot of damage. And who do they do the damage against? Not other serial killers. They basically attack and wipe out the righteous. It explains why what you see in the days before Noah's flood

was virtually the entire human population becoming reprobate in their evil because the righteous people got killed off. So God blesses us with a short lifespan. We all think it'd be great if we could live for several thousand years, but we're far better off living for just a few decades. That's really interesting. Another thing I thought of too is some people say, you know, God knows not only the past and the present, but the future.

But then again, if you have like, okay, so how could we have free will and at the same time God knows what we're going to do? What if our future possibilities are like this huge superposition of uncountable things that could happen and that somehow shield God because of his design from knowing what will happen in the future 100%. Maybe he has a fuzzy idea, but

I mean, he deliberately put like this fuzzy filter on everything with, you know, again, with like a superposition of all these possibilities in the future to selectively blind himself or I don't know. What are your thoughts there? That's a great question. That's actually part of my conversion story.

As I was going through these different holy books that are undergird the world's major religions, and what I noticed is they all contain teachings that we could visualize in length, width, height, time. And that was a time when I was taking a course in the complex variables of the University of British Columbia. It's basically a field of mathematics where you look at what can happen if you've got more than four space-time dimensions.

And when I realized that, you know, we humans can only visualize phenomena and dimensions we experience. But when I picked up the Bible, I noted that it was filled with teachings that can't be visualized in just length, width, height, and time. It's the only holy book that contains those teachings. For example,

The Bible talks about God being a triune being, three persons, but possessing just one essence, one mind, one set of purposes, one set of character attributes. You don't find that in any other religion, and you can't visualize how that can work out if all you're looking at is length, width, height, and time. Then there's the big one you mentioned. The Bible immediately tells us that

God has given us free will, but it also tells us that God controls the future. He predetermines every thought I think, every word I speak, every action I perform, yet at the same time, he holds me personally responsible for all my words, thoughts, and action. What I saw in the other holy books is one or the other, but not

both. So I said, okay, this is something that you simply can't comprehend in length with height and time. This is evidence for me, the message of the Bible must come from a being that transcends the space-time dimensions of the universe, whereas all these other holy books have the signature of being merely the invention of human beings.

I wound up writing a book called Beyond the Cosmos. It's now in its third edition. And in the 13th chapter, that's the chapter we give away for free at reasons.org/ross, I take on this issue. How can you resolve human free will in the context of God predetermining everything and basically show if you allow God to move and operate in the equivalent of three independent dimensions of time, you can have both. You can have both human free will

simultaneously and continuously operating in the context of divine predestination. And it's quite possible that the three solutions I offer in my book Beyond the Cosmos are all wrong. My whole point is, if we allow God to be as big as what the new physics proves he must be, then indeed there are multiples.

even millions of ways, God can predetermine everything and yet give us free will and hold us accountable for free will decisions. And what amazes me about the Bible, there are eight passages in the Bible, eight sentences in the Bible that teach both doctrines in the same sentence. So there's no getting around it. This is really what the Bible teaches and it's something that can only be comprehended if we allow God to move and operate in more than four space-time dimensions.

So is Jesus, for instance, like the projection of God into and onto earth, and therefore his abilities weren't more limited than the Father's? Because again, he was projected here, and therefore, you know, I would say decided to or had to obey all the laws of being a being on earth. Well, the Bible tells us that Jesus is a second person of the Trinity. He shares the character attributes of being all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving with God the

Father and God the Holy Spirit. It tells in the Bible that Jesus was the one that created everything, the universe and the angelic realm, in agreement with what the Holy Spirit and God the Father wanted. But we see in the book of Philippians, the second chapter,

is that here's the creator of the universe deciding to humble himself and lower himself and become a human and dwell amongst us. So he chose to limit his divine attributes so that he could demonstrate to us human beings, hey, this is what moral perfection looks like. I mean, what impressed me about Jesus of Nazareth, he said in front of a huge audience that included his mother, his four brothers and his sisters, I

morally perfect. Can any of you have accused me of any moral imperfection? And even his mother said, nope, he's morally perfect. I know there's no way my mother would have said that or anyone else's would have said that. Jesus is the only one who was able to get away with that in front of his mother and his brothers and his sisters.

But what he was doing is basically saying, look, I'm suffering the same way all of you are suffering. In fact, he suffered to a far greater degree. So he had a purpose in lowering self and becoming human amongst us, multiple purposes in that incarnation. But notice, after he sacrifices life on the cross to pay for the sins of all human beings, he rose and took on all the

powers that he had before he came to earth so today he's just as powerful as he was when he created the universe so for a short period of time he humbled himself and lowered himself in order to bring about the redemption of all of humanity so is the holy spirit another distillation of the father that exists in certain other dimensions and again it works with us but in a limited capacity deliberately

Well, what we notice is that both God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are spirit entities without a body. Jesus alone amongst the three members of the Godhead has a physical body. As it says in Colossians, the fullness of the deity dwells in Jesus in bodily form. But

All three members of the triune God share the property of being all-powerful, all-knowing, all-intelligent, all-wise, all-caring, and all-loving. They share the same character attributes. As Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And so what you see in the expression of his message and his demeanor is identical to what you'd see from God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Now, when you look at the first letter that John wrote,

the end of the New Testament, he makes the point that though they're all equal in their character attributes and their power, they divide their labor. And so he begins in chapter 1 by saying God is light. But he makes the point that God's light has three separate components. Number one, it has the component of life. And it says God the Son is the one that bestows life upon all of us humans. Then in chapter 3, it talks about God the Father.

and says he's the one that bestows love upon all of us humans. Then in chapter 4, it talks about God the Holy Spirit as one that bestows truth upon all humans. And the combination of God's life, God's love, and God's truth adds up to the light of God. And we just see in the Gospel of John, God has sent his light into the heart of every human being. So all of us are received life and truth

and love from God and we're held responsible for what we do with that. We can reject it or we can accept it. But it says in the Gospel of John, those humans who receive God's light proceed unto salvation and deliverance from their sin and evil, and those that reject it proceed towards condemnation. Or as I often share with non-Christians, God gives every human being a choice

of where they want to spend eternity. They can spend eternity with God or eternity without God. It's up to them where they want to spend eternity. Okay. Well, very good. I mean, it's great to talk to you here. You thought through a lot of things that I've almost heard no one else has thought through. So what,

Well, it would be a great way for listeners to go deeper into your answers to some of these questions. Can you point to specific books that you've written or videos you've done where they start? Well, I've now written 23 books. I'm working on number 24. So if they go to reasons.org, they'll find those.

I do answer questions on both my Facebook and X page. So if people want to pose questions, they can do that. Or if they want to send their unbelieving friends towards me, that will work. I have a major presence on YouTube. So if you put my name into YouTube, you'll find lots of debates I've done with atheist scientists, but also with Christian leaders and agnostics as well. So I'm

Probably the one that's gotten the most traction is where I debated the Oxford chemist, Peter Atkins. And all you got to do is put in any search engine, Hugh Ross, Peter Atkins, it'll pop right up. And it's a great debate that we had on, is there a scientific case for the God of the Bible or not? There's also a lot of humor in that debate, though.

So anyone can check that out. Okay, excellent. And then your main website, just to restate, is what again? It's reasons.org, and you can get free chapters of eight of my books at reasons.org slash Ross. Okay, well, very good. Well, Hugh, it's been awesome talking to you. Thank you so much for coming, and I really appreciate it. You're very welcome. Thank you. If you like this podcast, please click the link in the description to subscribe and review us on iTunes.

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