Scientific Theology
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While I'm sure that there are many people working in scientific fields who would claim to be religious, it always seems to me that there really is a basic conflict here, rather than a misunderstanding. At what point can any dedicated scientist investigating a difficult problem decide that there is no scientific answer to it, and that it can be explained only as an act of God? John Killingbeck, The Guardian.

Scientific practices, observation and experiment, the development of falsifiable hypotheses, the relentless questioning of established views, have proven uniquely powerful in revealing the surprising underlying structure of the world we live in, including subatomic particles, the role of germs and the spread of disease. Religion has no equivalent record of discovering hidden truths. Paul Bloom, The Atlantic

Science works on the basis of reason and evidence. While religion often appeals to faith, an airplane is different from a car, and indeed if you want to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco, you would take either an airplane or a car, not both at once. But if you take a car and your friend takes a plane, as long as you both end up in San Francisco, your journeys were perfectly compatible. Likewise, it's not hard to imagine an alternative universe in which science and religion were compatible.

one in which religious claims about the functioning of the world were regularly verified by scientific practice. It's just not the world we live in. Sean Carroll, Discover Magazine. It's a popular misconception. Science and religion are like oil and water. They just don't mix. If science is your guiding light, you're going to see the world in a particular way. And if you hold religion, you're going to imagine the world in another way.

At least that's how it seems to many. But in today's episode, we're going to meet someone who's thought and written about this problem more than just about anyone else on the planet. And he has a pretty convincing case to make that while science and religion are fundamentally different, they remain complementary.

They are two arms on the same clock rather than arms locked in battle. And right at the moment, as half the world faces a viral pandemic, I suspect science and religion are on the minds of loads of us. Many are placing their hopes in science for a vaccine, and many are praying and pondering a little more than usual.

I'm John Dixon, and this is Undeceptions. Undeceptions is brought to you by Zondervan Academics' new video streaming service, Master Lectures, featuring the world's leading Christian scholars. Each week here, we're exploring some aspect of life, faith, history, culture, or ethics

that's either much misunderstood or mostly forgotten. With the help of people who know what they're talking about, we'll be trying to undeceive ourselves and let the truth out.

Alistair McGrath is the Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University. He's the author of many well-known books, including The Dawkins Delusion, Theology, The Basics, and most recently, Inventing the Universe: Why We Can't Stop Talking About God, Science and Faith. I caught up with Alistair on a recent trip to Oxford just before our World Health Scare and began by asking him to explain the idea behind his academic post.

Alistair, some will be surprised that there could be such a post as a professor of science and religion. So what on earth does such a beast do? Such a beast. Science and religion, I think, are really important. They're both incredibly important elements of Western culture, and they need to talk to each other. John Dewey, who in my view is one of the greatest American philosophers, said that the modern crisis is that we're unable to bring our dialogue about how the world works

together with our dialogue of what things mean and we need to bring together functionality and meaning. And that's why this dialogue or debate, whichever you want, between science and religion is so important. Whether they agree or disagree, they need to talk to each other and that's what I'm all about.

How do you think we're doing on that debate in the West? We're not doing it very well, I think. It's true to say most people are in their silos. They refuse to talk to each other. And very often it's a defense of hostility. I don't want my views to be disturbed. I want to be, in effect, left alone.

I do not accept that. I'm an academic. I think that whether you like it or not, whether you find your views to be affirmed or challenged, you need to talk to other people. And that is why I purposefully read people I disagree with so that in effect I challenge myself and also know where things are going.

This is the first challenge for both science and religion, listening to each other, challenging our own preconceptions, recognising each other's contributions. But often the battle lines are set before we even get the conversation going.

One standard salvo from Christians is that virtually all the early scientists were Christians. Ergo, what conflict? There's some truth to that. Most of the great minds that laid the foundations of what we call science were people of faith, and not just in a formal way. They were passionately religious in their wonder and joy at discovering God's world. For

For example, Nicholas of Cusa, the 15th century mathematician, philosopher and theologian who made breakthroughs in astronomy and medicine. He's actually the guy who worked out the importance of taking your pulse, counting 100 heartbeats per leaking bucket.

Seriously, that's what he did. And it got easier when we invented the watch. Or Francis Bacon. He's the famous pioneer scientist credited with developing the scientific experimental method. He also spoke of the need to study God's two books, the book of God's word, the Bible, and the book of God's works, meaning the physical creation.

Then there's Johannes Kepler, the German contemporary of Galileo over in Italy. He described mathematically how the planets could revolve around the sun. He was also a Lutheran priest and he described his work as thinking God's thoughts after him.

We astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature. Or there's the amazing Belgian priest who first argued for the primeval atom theory of the universe. We now call that the Big Bang. I could go on, but you get the idea. Here's the thing, though. The presence of so many Christians in the scientific family tree doesn't convince everyone.

The standard atheist response is to say, "but everyone was a Christian back then, so what's your point?" But as Alistair says, recognizing our shared history really does matter.

The historicity of these things does matter, but just saying that they used to be Christian and it was incidental, well, they used to be atheists now, but in 100 years' time, what's going to happen? We can't really invest in these things. We've got to look at the way things actually were and say, well, they said they were Christians, let's look at what they said were their Christian ideas and see if those feed into any of their scientific discoveries, which of course they do.

How? Well, let me tell you a very obvious example. I mean, one of the paradoxes of science is you have to assume the uniformity of the world in order to make science work. In other words, you are assuming something you can't actually prove. For Newton, for Robert Boyle, you know, Christianity gave you this idea of an ordered world.

Sir Isaac Newton was a groundbreaking mathematician, physicist and astronomer in the 17th century. He's the guy who discovered gravity. Robert Boyle was his contemporary, a natural philosopher, physicist and inventor, who's regarded today as the first modern chemist. But is their shared motivation to discover an ordered world really a Christian thing?

The Greeks also believed that. Of course they did, but Christianity believes it as well. It's not as if it's a unique Christian idea. The point is, it's Christian. And that gave you this context in which you were able to engage an ordered world and make sense of it. And that's really important. So do you see any conflict at all between science and religion? Of course there is conflict. The issue is simply that the idea that there's a universal essential religion

The so-called warfare thesis is historically nonsense. But there are obviously areas of tension, just as there are obviously areas of synergy. And I think it's very important to look at what those areas of conflict are. And sometimes they're about areas of cultural authority. Who is able to attract public attention? Very often science will say, well, we have the answers. Religion doesn't. Sometimes religion will very unhealthily say, we have the answers.

And the answer is actually that, if you like, there's a big picture. And maybe science fills in part of that big picture and religion another part of it. But nevertheless, getting them both to talk about these things seems to me to be a very important thing to do. But making peace between science and religion is no easy prospect.

There are two big guns people roll out to justify their rejection of religion. The first is Galileo Galilei, the 16th, 17th century Italian astronomer who's been called the father of observational astronomy, the father of monoculture.

of modern physics, the father of the scientific method, the father of modern science. That's probably a bit of an exaggeration, but he was a big deal. He famously proposed that the Earth revolved around the sun rather than, as was popularly believed at the time, that the sun revolved around the Earth.

Opposition to this heliocentric view was bolstered by religious objections. Some theologians believed passages like Psalm 93 ruled out Galileo's views because it said the world is established, it cannot be moved. So they thought that doesn't really work with Galileo's proposition.

There was a Roman Inquisition and Pope Paul V ordered the world's greatest astronomer to abandon his opinion. And so, the story goes, religion is restrictive, whereas science is investigative. When Galileo proposed something that conflicted with the Church's teaching, the Church tried to shut him up. Well, not so much.

Well, the Galileo conflict is actually complicated in the sense that it's not just about the idea that the earth goes round the sun, it's the institution of the church. And bear in mind that Galileo was Catholic and therefore there's this very complex entanglement with institutions, which is the church, which you do not find in Copernicus or Kepler, who of course were Protestants and therefore these issues didn't

not arise. So that's a very important point. Galileo is often single diaries. This somehow is normative. It's not. Galileo basically got into an institutional conflict with the church over parties within the papacy. And that's a very important point. It was not the church versus Galileo. It was one faction within the church gaining ascendancy and in effect taking it out on Galileo. So we need to calibrate this pretty carefully. If we say the

The issue we need to focus on is how did Galileo deal with the issue of the earth going around the sun and the interpretation of the Bible? There was no problem for Galileo. This is very straightforward. The Bible could easily be interpreted in this way. There wasn't a problem. Then the institution of the church got involved for cultural and historical reasons. So it's more complex than the simplistic accounts very often indicate.

One of the unsurpassed authorities on the history of science is the Cambridge History of Science in multiple volumes. And Volume 3 has an article about all of this that says the modern understanding of the Church's opposition to Galileo, and thus of Christianity's historical conflict with science, is basically a parable deliberately constructed

years later in the 19th century. Let me quote: "More than any other single decision made by the Roman Church during centuries of symbiotic coexistence with natural philosophy, the rejection of Copernicus and the silencing of Galileo by a judicial act represented the repressive face of the early modern Catholic Church. Thus, the trial of Galileo was transformed from a historical event

into a powerful cultural symbol which loomed large in the 19th century treatments of Draper and White. Draper and White wrote some histories of science.

However, 20th century investigations of the trial on the basis of the inquisitorial documents have pointed out the importance of the specific historical and political circumstances in which the trial took place. Without reaching agreement about the causes of the trial, such studies

have been effective in eroding, though not erasing, the belief in an inevitable conflict between science and religion that grew out of the 19th century understanding of the trial of Galileo.

The thing is a parable, in other words. Hey, for the three nerds listening, that is The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 3, Early Modern Science, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pages 746 to 747. Okay, so what about big gun number two, Charles Darwin?

Darwin is best known for his theory of evolution by natural selection, of course, the idea that biological populations inherit changes over successive generations, and that's the origins of species. It's often just referred to as Darwinism. This directly contradicts the church's teaching about a creator god, doesn't it?

Darwin himself spoke about the relationship of evolutionary theory and Christianity at several points. He makes it clear he can see no reason why his theory of evolution should cause Christians any discomfort.

Now that may surprise anyone listening to this podcast because of course very often Darwin is presented as if he knew his theory of evolution would be subversive of belief in God. He did not think that. And also if you were to ask Darwin this question very very clearly, do you think your theory of natural selection is bad news for religion or in any way conflicted with religion, his answer is given and it's no.

So we need to ask what has happened to make this a point of conflict. And again, my own reading of what is a very complex situation is just a cultural agenda going on here. It's about a certain group of Christians, mainly in North America, feeling threatened and in effect, as a result, putting up defensive walls against anything that they saw as being corrupt.

contaminating or a threat to their faith and Darwin's theory of evolution was seen as integral to American scientific culture which they saw as an enemy. I don't think any other religious people do but these guys are seen as normative by people who want to tell a particular story.

That's one of the interesting nuances, isn't it? That there's a North American response to evolution that's quite different from the British Christian response to evolution. Am I right? You're right. It's quite dramatic, the difference. And of course, this immediately suggests to any intelligent person that there might be a cultural element in this matter. It's not Christianity versus Darwin. It's very much, in effect, a

an American form of Christianity, a very specifically American form, which arose in an American context, responding to an American agenda, not Christianity globally. But there are those who simply want to make their own points, and very often they will distort an episode to make these points.

Alistair McGrath just doesn't believe there's an intellectual conflict between science and religion, even if there have been various sociological battles between scientists and religious authorities. But what about the world of scientific academia? Is it true that the higher one's rank in the scientific field, the less likely it is they'll believe in God? And wouldn't that suggest a conflict?

I think the higher you are in the scientific field the more you keep your head down. I mean that is a simple fact of life that in effect you are obliged to be very very careful what you say and certainly we've seen examples of people who in effect have spoken out on religious issues and wish they hadn't. So I think there's a diplomatic issue here and I think that's a very important point to make. Then in terms of the ideas, okay, the fundamental ideas

I do not see any reason for asserting the incompatibility of science and religion in the general sense of the term. There may be points of tension, but the idea that there's some necessary conflict between them is simply very difficult to sustain because here is the really important point. We are used to the fact that different scientific disciplines use different methods. Ethics uses different methods to science and so does politics.

Is anyone listening to this podcast going to say that because a scientist used one method professionally in his discipline, but another method altogether in developing his ethical or political views cannot hold both together at the same time? No. The idea of a scientist who has no interest in ethical questions is outrageous because we want to make sure these guys are alert to the ethical implications of the research that they are doing.

For Albert Einstein, who in my view is one of the best scientists of the 20th century, you had to hold together your science, your ethics, your politics and your religion. And that made you an authentic human being. And for Einstein, there was no difficulty in doing these are different. They use different methods and these can be brought together. Not the same, different, but they're all part of being a meaningful human being.

But some scientists now believe that science can do one of the key jobs that religion used to do, define morality. Religion is therefore, in effect, unemployed now that science can explain everything. That's our fun after the break.

This episode of Undeceptions is brought to you by Zondervan Academics' new book, ready for it? Mere Christian Hermeneutics, Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically, by the brilliant Kevin Van Hooser. I'll admit that's a really deep-sounding title, but don't let that put you off. Kevin is one of the most respected theological thinkers in the world today.

And he explores why we consider the Bible the word of God, but also how you make sense of it from start to finish. Hermeneutics is just the fancy word for how you interpret something. So if you want to dip your toe into the world of theology, how we know God, what we can know about God, then this book is a great starting point. Looking at how the church has made sense of the Bible through history, but also how you today can make sense of it.

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Science is certainly the intellectual success story of the last few centuries. It's incredibly elevated in our society. Science is perceived as the universal constant. It can explain everything, communicate everything.

If we discovered alien life in the universe, we would speak to them not through language, but through maths and science, as the 1997 film Contact suggests. Writer and astronomer Carl Sagan imagined communicating with extraterrestrials using mathematics. And when an alien calling card arrives, it's in the form of an unusual signal from a system called Vega that startles scientists from their sleep.

One. Seven. Seven. There's primes. Two, three, five, seven. Those are all prime numbers. And there's no way that's a natural phenomenon. So if scientific knowledge is the fundamental reality of the universe, discernible even by aliens, what need is there for God?

It's tempting to think that science is the supreme form of knowledge, perhaps the only form of true knowledge. What's left? Well, the answer is rather a lot. There are issues of value and there are issues of meaning. These are really important.

And you will find writers like Sam Harrison in his book The Moral Landscape saying science is able to determine moral values. When you read that book rather more closely, you see that in effect he's borrowing moral values from somewhere else. He's in effect ignoring Hume's disjunction between facts and values. And above all, he's simply importing moral values such as, for example, utilitarianism. And it really is very unsatisfactory.

The more we know about science, the more we understand the fact that it is limited, that there are certain areas which it cannot cover. And the only way in which science can, in effect, deal with this is to colonize those other areas. To, in effect, say these are really science. We're expanding and taking you over.

Most scientists I know are appalled by this because it in effect is about the contamination of science. It's about in effect a failure to take science as science with the greatest seriousness. And I think that's a really important point.

Science fills in part of this big picture of our world, but there are other sources of knowledge. And unless you're going to say science is all knowledge, you can't go there. For me, let me tell you, science is one form of knowledge.

But that's as far as it goes. Peter Atkins, however, a famous chemist here at Oxford, says science is omnicompetent. Quote, science has never encountered a barrier that has not been surmounted. Oh, he's wonderful. I love Peter Atkins. He taught me quantum theory back in the 1970s. And he's one of the most effusive and vivacious people I know. He's wonderful. But on this one, I'm afraid I think he might be wrong.

I mean, let's take an example. I mean, you and I are sitting here in Oxford, a wonderful place. And suppose we are sitting here in this equally wonderful place 100 years ago, and we're having a discussion about the origins of the universe. You see, we wouldn't be, because in those days, scientific consensus was, the universe has always been here.

If science is so wonderful, why does it keep changing its mind? That's a very important point. Because Atkins seems to be saying in effect that science tells us the way things really are. Well, no. Science tells us the way it thinks things are at the moment, but it's on a journey and it's going to change its mind and we don't know which way it's going.

I would say, I would agree with Atkins, that actually science is absolutely wonderful within its own domain of competence and that's a critical qualification because clearly it is not going to tell us the meaning of life, it is not going to tell us what is good and how to live the good life and it's not going to tell us what the causes of the First World War are because that's a different kind of question.

Let science be science, but also let history be history, let ethics be ethics. Let's be realistic about this. What Alistair is objecting to here is commonly called the God of the Gaps theory.

This is the idea that God is the explanation of the things we don't understand in the universe, the gaps in our knowledge. And as science progresses, those gaps in our knowledge disappear, and so God himself disappears. God is left with very little to explain, so maybe God is no explanation at all.

Isn't the God hypothesis less and less necessary the more science discovers about the world? I mean, what's left for God to do? Well, if you think that we define God by what God does, you know, then obviously that is going to be an issue because in effect science is able to give a very good account of the mechanisms and processes of our universe, but not, I have to say, where these come from. I think that's a very important point.

If you take someone like Steven Weinberg, for example, who's an atheist physicist and a very good physicist, he will make the point that in the end, scientific explanations about going right back to the origins of the universe are saying there are these fundamental constants. They explain everything. Why are they there? We pass. We don't know. We can't know. In other words, you know, there are big questions that remain unanswered.

But I'm very unhappy about, in effect, simply defining God in relation to unanswered questions. You know, that we have to, in effect, expand our vision of God very much here. Charles Coulson, the Oxford theoretical chemist who I have great admiration for, was very critical of the idea of God of the gaps. Because he said, look, all this does is, in effect, reduce God to things you can't explain. I mean, who would believe in a God like that? In effect, for Coulson...

The point was not that Christianity, in effect, dealt with things that science couldn't explain. Science provides a big picture, an explanatory framework, which shows you both why science works so well, but also what science's limits are. And to me, that's really important. Albert Einstein famously said that the great mystery of the universe is its explicability. Explicability needs explanation. I want to quote you back to you.

The complexity of the world requires the use of multiple levels of explanation, both within the natural sciences and beyond. Are you just trying to smuggle in a space for religion by effectively claiming there are multiple rationalities, or to quote the title of your book, multiple territories of human reason, and you can smuggle religion in that way? Well, my view is this is the way it is. In effect, whether we like it or not,

Different intellectual disciplines use different methodologies. They are not arbitrary. They are not invented. I could quite easily pick up a ruler and say, "Look, this is a ruler. It's very, very good measuring. It measures my desk very well. Therefore, I shall use it to, in effect, tell you the speed of light." But you know, it's not going to work. The tool is effective in this domain, but not in that domain.

We need to be respectful of the fact that different scientific disciplines use different methods to investigate the particular aspect of reality they're engaging with. Let's press pause. I've got a five-minute Jesus for you.

Jesus often called on people to believe in him, to exercise faith in him. His opening words in Mark's gospel, for example, are, The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe. Have faith in the good news. The word faith, of course, has a bad rap in our scientific age. It's often thought to be the opposite of reason. One well-known atheist, no prizes for guessing which one, has said, quote, Hey,

"A case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate. Faith being belief that isn't based on evidence is the principal vice of any religion." This badly misunderstands the biblical usage of this word. Faith is a relational term. It means to trust someone.

When I married Buff, there was no proof she could love me for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer and so on. But there were indications. There was some evidence that made that step of trust, that step of faith reasonable. And 26 years later...

Actually, I hope it is 26 years later. I hope you're not listening, darling. 26, 27. It just seems like three years. There's still no proof, actually, that she will continue to love me until death do us part. By definition, the future is unseen, unprovable. So faith is always future looking, trusting past indications that make it perfectly reasonable to put my faith in my darling buff.

The same point was made in a lovely little exchange between John Lennox, a good friend of this show, and Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, in a debate, said, quote, We only use the word faith when we don't have evidence. Lennox replied, Do you have faith in your wife, Richard? Dawkins replied, Of course I have faith in my wife. Lennox, is that faith based on any evidence? Dawkins,

Dawkins, lots of evidence. And as the words left his mouth, he realized the trap. The crowd erupted with applause. Fairly or not, I'm not sure. Faith, though, is not the opposite of reason and evidence. It is a reasoned trust in someone's reliability.

That's the sense of the two Bible passages often put forward to mean that faith is the opposite of evidence. One of them is Hebrews 11:1. It reads, "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

This isn't a total definition of faith. It's not a textbook entry. It just highlights an important dimension of faith for a church going through a painful present, which is what chapter 10 of Hebrews is all about. The author is just saying the God who gave us his son and then raised that son to glory can be trusted to do what he has promised to do, to bring about a glorious future from this painful present, the visible out of

The invisible. The whole chapter functions like a court of law. Witness after witness is called to testify that God can be trusted to make good on his promises, which is why the closing statement of the whole section, Hebrews 12.1, says,

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us hold on and so on. The author's argument is not that readers should keep trusting God without any reason. He's saying there are 21 reasons to think that God will come through for his people.

Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and all the others listed in that section. The other passage people sometimes use to say that Christianity rejects the notion of evidence in favor of blind faith is in John chapter 20, where Thomas, the original doubting Thomas, says he's not going to believe that Jesus is raised from the dead unless he sees the risen Jesus for himself. Here's the text.

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.

This is really strong stuff. He's not just saying in a sort of humble atmosphere, I don't think I'm able to believe. He's actually in Greek saying, which means not ever shall I believe. Thomas has made a decision not to trust the testimony of his closest trusted friends, but only to trust what he himself can see and touch.

He sounds very modern. But actually, in the next scene, Jesus picks him up on this. A week later, the text goes on. His disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here. See my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Stop doubting and believe. Thomas said to him, My Lord and my God.

Then Jesus told him, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. That last line is the one that people think means that faith is the opposite of evidence. But here's the important thing.

Jesus isn't saying, shame on you, Thomas, for needing evidence. Blessed are those who can believe without evidence. No way. He's just criticizing Thomas for thinking that the only way of knowing anything is by seeing and touching, rather than believing on the basis of good testimony.

And when you think about it, if we decide only to believe what we can see and touch and reject what comes to us by good testimony, we aren't going to know much at all. Most legal judgments in court, except where there's forensics, are based on witness testimony or expert authority. Same with history. Most of what we know about the past comes through written testimony.

In fact, unless we happen to be scientists ourselves, most of what we all believe about science we got through testimony, whether some textbook we trusted or a science teacher.

I know that people often think that faith is believing stuff blindly without evidence. But faith in the Christian tradition is more like the way the Oxford English Dictionary puts it in definition 7 of the word faith, which is "belief based on evidence, testimony or authority." That's an excellent description of Christian faith.

When Jesus asked people to believe, to trust, to have faith in him, he wasn't calling for blind faith. He was asking people to look at him, assess him, weigh the testimony about him, and then depend on him and his offer of grace. Faith is a reasoned trust in the goodness and mercy of Christ. You can press play now. ♪

Where does our culture's deep trust in science come from? For one thing, it's from the incredible success of science over the centuries.

But it also comes from a philosophical mistake of thinking that science can not only explain the physical mathematical stuff, but also show us what that physical mathematical stuff means. It's sort of a leap from thinking because you can explain the mechanics, you can also understand the meaning. Do you have an answer for you? Yes, I have. There really is one.

There really is one. To everything? The secret of the universe, the great question of life and everything? Yes. And are you ready to give it to us? I am. Wow. Though I don't think you're going to like it. It doesn't matter. We must know it. The answer to the great question... Yes. ...of life, the universe and everything... Yes. ...is... Yes.

It was a tough assignment. People my age still joke that the answer to any intractable problem is 42. And that's going to sound weird to some listeners, and I apologize. Not really. You should all go and watch The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Anyway, the American neuroscientist Sam Harris isn't joking when he says science can answer our deepest questions, including the question about right and wrong. Harris believes science can help define morality because we can now measure human well-being scientifically. So whatever actions enhance well-being, scientifically understood, are good, and whatever actions inhibit well-being are bad.

Sounds simple. Well, I want to make the point immediately what Harris is doing is simply taking something that's scientifically measurable and equating this with morality. And I won't say that is a very, very unsatisfactory method. I, for example, could be a very healthy person who spends my life killing off minorities.

You know, there's nothing to stop me being moral at one level, having well-being, but at the same time doing some awful things. And in many ways, to me, Harris is a very good example of what I might call a weird mentality. Western educated individualists, you know, and so on. You're just taking one particular measure. I mean, it does not deal with the complexity of moral situations.

How do you define well-being? I mean, in effect, you have to smuggle in definitions to make that a moral concept. But rather than try to colonise each other or one-up each other, Alistair suggests there is a way that science and religion can actually mutually enrich each other.

We're talking about a critical conversation, not a kind of patting each other on the back conversation where you agree on everything. There is definitely tension, but there's also room for enrichment. Let me give you a very simple example. Let me take a theological statement. This is from the beginning of Psalm 19. The heavens declare the glory of the Lord.

Now I want to say to you that science enables you, if you believe in God, to enrich that. What you're saying is that the heavens, the night sky, you know,

gives you a richer understanding of the majesty, the glory of God. If God made those things, look at how wonderful they are. That moves you from God as concept to God as somehow linked with the sense of vastness and immensity and beauty. It's a bit like reading a book about somebody and then meeting that person. And that enriches your understanding. To me, that's really important, being able to go deeper and further.

What positive reasons for believing in God can you give to my atheist listener who's just willing to give you a go to explain why it's wise and sensible to believe in a creature? I think that's a really interesting question. When I was a teenager myself, I was a scientist, I was very aggressively atheist and I thought this was simply nonsense.

I think over the years I've changed my mind quite decisively. Look, I'm a scientist, you know, I studied science here at Oxford, it was a wonderful time. But one of the things I've noticed is that when you evaluate a scientific theory, one of the things you are trying to do is to ask how well does this theory map onto our observations? In other words, the better the theory, the better the correlation between what the theory is all about and what you actually observe.

And like C.S. Lewis, I began to realise that if there is a God, then a lot of things which actually might otherwise be puzzling or difficult to explain, for example, I yearn for certain things I can never actually grasp or achieve, those begin to make sense. Why do I have this deep moral sense within me? Again, these things begin to make sense within the theistic context.

But for me I think the big answer is this and it's an answer very similar to what the atheist philosopher R.S. Murdoch gave which is basically we need this sense of there being something transcendent beyond us which stabilises our notion of good but also gives each of us individual meaning. And Murdoch really gives you almost like a platonic answer but for me the Christian answer is better

because it's a personal God who relates to and affirms each of us individually.

Got questions about this or other episodes? I'd love to hear them and we'll answer them, and try to anyway, in our upcoming Q&A episode. You can tweet us at Undeceptions, send us a regular old email at questions at undeceptions.com, or if you're brave, head over to the website undeceptions.com and actually record your question there so we can hear the audio and maybe play it in the show. And while you're there, check out everything related to this episode.

Hey, and if you like this show, maybe I could give you a gentle nudge to check out, with all due respect, with Negan Pal Dutrois and my good mate, Michael Jensen. It's another member of the Eternity Podcast Network. And what they do is they argue about all sorts of top issues of the day, and yet they do it in a really beautiful way. Check it out over at eternitypodcasts.com.

Next episode, I go to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, to speak to a nuclear physicist about miracles, of course. See ya. Undeceptions is hosted by me, John Dixon, directed and produced by Mark

with special assistance from Kayleigh Payne. Our theme song is by Bach, arranged by me and played by the fabulous Undeceptions band, editing by Bryce McLellan. Head to undeceptions.com. You'll find show notes and other stuff related to our episodes.