Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
With David Hutchings
68 Plays3 years ago
Apart from toddlers, teenagers probably ask the most questions about difficult subjects! Spare a thought, then, for Christians teaching adolescents in our schools. What can we learn about how to handle faith-questions in such an environment, where a mis-step can land you in hot water so easily? Today we hear from a science teacher about using questions like "Do you believe in aliens?" to encourage gospel conversations.
David Hutchings is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and physics teacher at Pocklington School near York. David is a regular speaker on the philosophy, history, and theology of science across the United Kingdom. He is the author of Let There Be Science and God, Stephen Hawking and the Multiverse: What Hawking said and why it matters. His latest book, Of Popes and Unicorns: Science, Christianity, and How the Conflict Thesis Fooled the World, co-written with James C. Ungureanu, examines the 19th-century origins of the faith-science conflict myth.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:09
Speaker
Well, hello and welcome to Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Andy Vanister from Solas and I am down a co-host. Normally my partner in crime, Christy Mayer from Oak Hill College in London joins me for a bit of banter and chat with whatever guests we've got on the show. But actually, she's not here with us today. So I have my colleague, Gavin Matthews. Gavin, thank you for leaping into the co-chairs seat. How are you doing today?
00:00:35
Speaker
I'm doing OK. I think the Christie Mayer fan club are going to riot. But don't worry, she will be back next week, I'm told. She's currently in the middle of a philosophy lecture. So she will be back. I think I'd rather she does that lecture to her students and not on pep talk. She'll just get a few more words like epistemology and other kind of things. But we have a great guest for us with us today, an old friend of Solace who's done several things with us across the years. He's spoken at conferences. He's been on webinars. Dave Hutchings, welcome to the podcast.
Cultural Pride and Teaching in Yorkshire
00:01:05
Speaker
Thank you very much. I'm thrilled and very honored to have made it this far. Whereabouts in the country are you, Dave? Where are you dialing in from? I'm from York, which I consider to be north, but you will consider to be south. And York is kind of the centre of the universe if you think about the late 600s, early 700s with the bead and
00:01:33
Speaker
um out quinn running running the medieval scholasticism so yeah york york is the center of the world as far as i also grew up though dave think he was central the world because my uh one of my grandfather one of my grandfather's was from was a york shaman and uh you know he would always say you should never ask a man if he's from york show and he never asked a man if he's from york show because of uh if he isn't you'll have embarrassed him deeply and if he is
00:01:59
Speaker
It'll tell you within two minutes anyway. He was right, because I told you at around about one minute and 40 seconds. You did, so he was right in that regard. Well, for those who don't know, Dave, do check out the other stuff he's done on the soap for so long. I'll put a link in the show notes. You did a webinar and a few other bits and pieces. But Dave, you are a high school teacher, right? Been teaching there for 17 years, right? So what do you teach?
00:02:23
Speaker
I teach physics to 13 to 18 year olds so GCSE and A level physics and along the way I've taught various other things too that my main topic is electricity, forces, space, the big bang, temperature. I mean I can see you getting excited now as I mentioned it.
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah, I am literally just bubbling with excitement. No, very seriously. But
Science and Christianity in Education
00:02:51
Speaker
then also the other thing, before we get into some of the stuff we want to talk about, Dave is also an author, published three books and a chapter and another, but your most recent book of popes and unicorns, science, Christianity, and how the conflict thesis fooled the world. We might get into some of the themes
00:03:07
Speaker
from that book in the in the interview but there'll be a little put a link to particularly to that book but also to some of uh Dave's other stuff again in the show notes if you are if you uh after you listen to Dave for 20 minutes you're like I want to hear more of this uh this this this guy um then um there'll be links to how you can do that but let's start with the whole question of teaching uh Dave's one of the things I I really admire about you I know some folks who are Christians and teachers find it quite hard quite hard to be a Christian
00:03:34
Speaker
in teaching and sometimes the temptation is to kind of sort of like hide your light under a rock and go well i'm just going to teach i'm not gonna i'm not going to be public in my faith but you don't do that you don't hide the fact you're a christian what are some of the lessons that you've you've learned playing that out because i'm assuming there have been things that have worked well i mean things that haven't worked so well what has being a christian for 17 years teaching taught you about about being public about your faith
00:04:01
Speaker
Well, I suppose the funny thing about being a physics teacher is that you would have to fight quite hard to keep God out of the conversation. He arrives naturally when you talk about the big questions like, where did the universe come from?
00:04:17
Speaker
or you start exploring topics like how big is space. It's almost inevitable that a student at some point is going to ask a God question. It might be the most obvious ones like, do you believe in God? Or they might be ones that open up that possibility. So another common one would be, do you believe in aliens?
00:04:44
Speaker
Well, when you get a question like that, I think you've got a choice. You can shut it down, or you can say, well, a student has asked a question.
Encouraging Student Curiosity
00:04:55
Speaker
They've brought it up. The class is interested. What kind of teaching do I want to model? Do I want to model teaching that shuts questions down?
00:05:03
Speaker
or do I want to model teaching that encourages questions and allows people to go off on various tangents if they want to. So if we take the alien question, for example, when the students ask me, do you believe in aliens? I say, well, I think that actually, that's a very different question depending on whether you believe in God or not. And I might even throw it back to them. Do you believe in God? And once you've got that,
00:05:34
Speaker
point made you can say well let's think about this if there's no God then the process that brings about life has to you know it doesn't have a creator there has to be some process that brings about life that is either random or lucky or that life is inevitable based on the laws of physics but when we study the laws of physics life doesn't seem to be inevitable at all so you're answering in a physics way
00:06:02
Speaker
And you can then say, so if I didn't believe in God, I would find the prospect of there being aliens anywhere else in the universe very unlikely. Because life is very, very unlikely if there's nobody stepping in to make it happen. That's what all the science tells us. But if you do believe in God, it's quite a different question. And the question becomes, do I think God has made life anywhere else in the universe? And so
00:06:32
Speaker
If it's happening a question like that, you might think, well, what does the Bible say? The Bible mentions angels. Angels aren't humans, but they are God's creation.
00:06:44
Speaker
And so maybe if you want to think of angels as aliens, that's life elsewhere in the universe, then yes, you know, I believe in aliens. But if you're saying, what about beings on another planet, a bit like humans? I'd say, well, the Bible doesn't really say anything about that. So it's an open question. And in fact, that's what was decided in the 1200s.
00:07:09
Speaker
When the monks in various different monasteries were wondering about this, did God make anybody anywhere else? And all of a sudden what you've done is you've had a God conversation. But you've had a God conversation without preaching. You've taken their lead on it.
00:07:26
Speaker
you've shown them different ways of thinking about the world. And it's usually quite a positive, interesting interaction. And so that would be an example of being a Christian in the classroom.
Handling Skepticism in Education
00:07:43
Speaker
without layering it on thick, without it being, hopefully without it being cringe worthy and leaving space for students to go away and have a think about that themselves.
00:07:58
Speaker
You've probably had lots of interesting conversations over the years, but what would you say to a student who would come to you and say, but my other science teacher says that this is all stupid and that there's no God and that God is completely ridiculous if you're a scientist? What do I say to my other science teacher who is taking a radically atheist line in the classroom? I've had this with one friend doing A-levels in England,
00:08:23
Speaker
and another one doing Scottish hires where a science teacher has taken a radically atheist line at the front of the class always mocking people with any faith and claiming that as the scientific high ground and the student says to you Mr Hutchings what do I say to my teacher? Yeah it's a very difficult scenario when there's a clear power structure or authority structure and like that where
00:08:46
Speaker
The teacher has authority in the classroom and it's a little bit like sometimes you hear you can't win an argument against the person with the microphone because they are in charge. So an argument is a bad idea but what's a good idea is to ask questions. So one question that would be interesting to ask for example would be
00:09:09
Speaker
Which paper was it that you read that showed that God didn't exist because I'd like to read it? So if you could tell me the paper that you've read and what journal it's in where science has shown that God doesn't exist, I'd like to read it for myself. Well, there won't be one. There isn't a paper like that.
00:09:32
Speaker
And so what you're beginning to do in a question like that is getting the teacher to provide evidence for what they're saying. Or you could say something like, another question would be, well, if belief in God is unscientific, why are three quarters of all Nobel Prize winners in the sciences Christians? That just seems strange.
00:10:00
Speaker
So if you go in armed with a few of these questions, that's how you can handle a power structure. You're asking up. You're asking deferentially. Hopefully you're asking somebody who's got an open mind. Or another question would be, why is it that so many people at the forefront of what we call the scientific revolution, why were they all Christians?
00:10:31
Speaker
And if they were all Christians, then why did they start science going? Or you could say, could you give me an example of an atheist who contributed to the scientific revolution? I'd be interested to know who that was. Or where have you read some of these things? So you're putting it back to the teacher to say, where have you got this from? Yeah. I think that's helpful. And one of the things I think
00:10:59
Speaker
I've learned over the years, and I wish I knew actually when I was a student. Interesting hearing you saying this, Dave, because I'm listening there thinking, gosh, I wish I'd had a teacher like you when I was a teenager to help me with the other atheist ones. I think that art form of asking questions and just poking, which teenagers are actually very good at doing, of going, well, hang on a minute. Where's the proof? Where's the evidence?
Debunking the Science-Religion Conflict
00:11:21
Speaker
I think one of the things that lies behind a lot of this
00:11:24
Speaker
is of course there is this sort of assumption that many people have it is an assumption obviously faith and science are are totally at loggerheads they always have been and of course i'm very struck by that idea you threw in a few minutes ago where you said you know medieval monks were thinking about aliens and they were asking questions about life and other planets and exploring this stuff and you know i've been used to a lot of people
00:11:45
Speaker
The new book that you've done of Popes and Unicorns is really kind of a, you know, a deep dive. Even on pep talk, we don't always do deep dives, but I also know you're brilliant at sort of summarizing. It's really a deep dive into this, you know, looking at where did this, where did this so-called conflict thesis come from that faith and science of doing this? You know, give us a bit of an overview. What's the sort of, you know, the bluffer's guide to that? Because that is the elephant in the room, isn't it? That I think is feeding a lot of this, that obviously science and faith
00:12:15
Speaker
don't fit together. They've always been at war and that's why they're at war today. Help us think some of that through. Sure, I think it's very helpful for someone to gradually be able to put together a timeline.
00:12:31
Speaker
If you say, right, let's go pre-1600s, so in the church, pre-1600, the idea that science and faith were at war with each other literally did not exist. If you had suggested something like that, it would have been considered to be absolutely bonkers, because the investigation of the natural world was just the part of Christian life.
00:12:54
Speaker
asking questions about the natural world, because that was one way that you would get to know the creator of that world better. So pre-1500, you know, there's no issue. In fact, probably pre-1600. Then in the 1600s, you have what we call the scientific revolution. Now, it's a bit of a cheat and it's a bit simplistic to call it that, but there were lots of things that happened in the 1600s where prominent Christians
00:13:23
Speaker
really started to push experimental science. We're not just going to think and reason about the world, we're also going to carry out experiments. And interestingly, one of the main reasons that they started doing that was a belief that when Adam and Eve fell, they didn't just fall morally, but they fell mentally. So their mental faculties became unreliable.
00:13:51
Speaker
And so just sitting and reasoning about the world might not get you the right answer because you might not be able to trust your mind because you're a fallen human being. So you better check your ideas. And that's where experimental science came from. The experimental scientific method came from the Christian doctrine of the four. So in the 1600s, you have the church and its doctrine driving science.
00:14:21
Speaker
And then in the 1700s, you begin to get the first real murmurings of, well, there may be some sort of difference between what we're doing in science and what we're doing in faith, in religion. And those murmurings in the 1700s become shouts in the 1800s. And that's when we arrive at two key figures, one called John William Draper.
00:14:49
Speaker
He was an Englishman who moved to America. He was a chemist, a very, very successful scientist. He took the first ever photograph of the moon. He took the first ever clear photograph of a human face. He was hugely influential. When he died, one of his victories said he may be the greatest American scientist ever to a moon, which is quite the claim.
00:15:11
Speaker
And the other person is called Andrew Dixon White. And he was the founding president of Cornell University, a senator and a diplomat and a teacher of history and of English literature. So these two people, John William Draper and Andrew Dixon White, they decided to compile all of the science versus religion stories they could find in history.
00:15:38
Speaker
And they wrote two books. John William Draper's was called Conflict Between Religion and Science. And the book by Henry Dixon White's called The Warfare of Science with Theology. And between them, those two books, they were bestsellers. Everybody owned them. And there where those stories are all put together that probably sit in the back of your mind, like Galileo being thrown into jail.
00:16:05
Speaker
The church taught everyone the earth was flat. The church banned dissection. The church binned Greek and Roman science and ushered in the dark ages. The church banned inoculation. The church relentlessly persecuted scientists. Calvin said, who are you going to trust, Copernicus or the Holy Spirit?
00:16:25
Speaker
So they compile all these stories into these two books and these books took over. They took over the world and that's where all those stories come from. The late 1800s and that's the origin. So you go further back in time than that, there's no issue.
00:16:43
Speaker
There's these two books that come crashing onto the scene in the 1800s and have seeped into our modern way of thinking about life with the help of people like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Dan Brown with his Angels and Demons and the Rinchy Code. So that's the origin of all of these stories. And if you would like me to, I can go through and debunk them. But if that answer was too long,
00:17:34
Speaker
True with all that.
00:17:34
Speaker
Everything you have to say is outside my credibility structure. I don't even have to listen because I have science. How can we start to change that narrative, change the story, and try and break down this idea that science and faith are in two hermetically sealed boxes and there's never the twain shall meet? How can we address the problem that has seeped down from those two characters you mentioned and gripped our society so profoundly?
00:17:58
Speaker
Well, I think the fascinating thing about it is that when somebody says, I believe in evidence and I follow science, that that box that they're sitting in is a Christian box. That scientific method box is an outfall of Christian thinking. So I'll give you a few examples of why. So the first and most obvious one is that Christianity is monotheistic. There's one God. If there's one God in charge of the world,
00:18:28
Speaker
then you expect there to be some kind of regularity and order in the world. You're not expecting there to be a pantheon of competing gods that make life rather unpredictable. You've got one supreme god in charge. And so C.S. Lewis says, men became scientific because they believed in a law giver. That's why they went searching for the laws. So my challenge straight back to somebody would be, OK,
00:18:58
Speaker
Why do you believe there are laws in the universe? Where does that come from? You've got no reason to believe that there are fundamental scientific laws in the universe. And in fact, nobody looked for fundamental mathematical scientific laws in the universe, pre-1600 really. They looked for patterns, but they certainly didn't look for mathematical physical laws in the way that we do now. It was the Christians that started looking for those.
00:19:26
Speaker
Johannes Kepler, for example, he said, right, God made the world. God made me. God made me in his likeness. My brain is therefore like a mini version of God's brain. So if the brain that made the world and my brain are similar, I should be able to understand something about that world.
00:19:50
Speaker
And he set out to look for rules and patterns in the world in order to get to know God better. And he was really firm on his theology. He said, a Christian should expect to find mathematical law in the universe, and I'm going to go look for it. That was his hypothesis. If Christianity is true, I'm going to find mathematical laws. He went and looked for them. He found mathematical laws. So this person's belief in rationality and evidence
00:20:21
Speaker
they just don't realise that you can tell them and the fact that they believe the universe is rational and that it's possible to find evidence is a Christian belief.
00:20:33
Speaker
I love that approach of just, well, I suppose in a sense it's the turning the tables approach, isn't it? I've taken the objection and turning it back and saying, well, hang on a moment, you've got some thinking here to do. I'm conscious we're running rapidly out of time and we've barely scratched the surface.
00:20:53
Speaker
Dave, you've been studying this stuff and immersing this stuff for years. You know it inside out and backwards and people want to dig obviously more deeply into it. Obviously, one thing they can do is have a check out of your books. But for folks who are listening to this who are like, oh man, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't give it a kind of answer that Dave
00:21:09
Speaker
What are some of the things that you might recommend to, I don't like to use an ordinary Christian, there are no ordinary Christians, so it hasn't got your specialism. What about the two or three things that might
Practical Advice for Faith Discussions
00:21:19
Speaker
be helpful? Just keep in the back pocket, just very useful things that almost any Christian should know around this, even if they then have to go look to go deeper, you want to check out Dave's books. What are some of the really practical things that perhaps every Christian should be carrying around in their heads or their back pockets when it comes to these kind of questions that come up from our friends and colleagues?
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah, OK, so there are a couple of useful sound bites. One would be that no organized church has ever put to death anybody for their scientific beliefs in all of recorded history. That's a useful thing to have on the back then. So if someone says, oh, the church has always persecuted scientists. That's interesting, because in all of recorded history, and make that point.
00:22:10
Speaker
Another useful one to have in the background is to say, well, actually historians of science universally agree, universally agree that there is no historic conflict between science and religion. This is the absolute consensus across the board. And then a third one, and this is
00:22:34
Speaker
This is not really so much a God and science thing. This is just in general when you're talking to people about God. People are more likely to listen to you and to think about the things you say if they like you, if they find you likeable. And that's difficult, isn't it? You say, well, how can I be likeable? But I think there's one very simple way to make yourself much more likeable. And that is people tend to like people who like them.
00:23:01
Speaker
And if you can always try and find a way to genuinely like the person that you're talking to, you know, enjoy them, clearly be on their side in every conversation so that the person knows that what you want is the best for them. They are much more likely to go away and then think about what you've said.
00:23:23
Speaker
That is fantastic. I think that's a good note to end it on as well, because our time is gone. Just want to say thank you so much, Dave, for being on pep talk this week. That's been really, really interesting. Dave is the author of of Popes and Unicorns, looking at the origins of the science versus faith conflict model, where it came from, how it grabbed our society and how as Christians we can respond to it. That's been really helpful thinking both about your work as a teacher and your work as a scientist and speaking into this whole area. Thank you for joining us and goodbye from us. Anything you'd like to add at the end, Andy?
00:23:53
Speaker
No, I think that's good. We'll see you in two weeks time for another episode of Peptalk with another guest and hopefully Christy will be finished scaring people with long philosophical terms and be back in the driving seat. You've been listening to Peptalk and thanks for listening.