Jo Vitale [00:00:35] So welcome to the podcast where we invite you to Ask Away. 

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Hi friends. Welcome back to the Ask Way podcast. I'm Jo Vitale, and I'm here with my husband Vince, who today is going to be in the hot seat as I will be interviewing him about a subject that comes up all the time in conversations and Q&A, and that is the relationship between faith and science. Now, I know some of you who are listening will love this kind of discussion. You're like, yes, faith in science. I can't wait. Tell me more. Well, others of you are maybe a little bit more like me. I have no hesitation admitting that science and I, we just don't always get along. We had a rocky start, as my physics teacher noted in my report card at the end of my first year in high school. Joanna and my relationship is like a roller coaster, sometimes up, sometimes down. Now, I would love to say I understood what my physics teacher meant by that, but unfortunately the physics of roller coasters is way beyond me. So that metaphor flew right over my head. 

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[00:01:37] But it is for this reason that I thought I would spare us all my scientific musings and instead turn the microphone around to Vince by interviewing him on this subject. Because Vince does actually love researching and thinking about this subject, and he's written about it, and he's also spoken on it in a variety of contacts, including at the annual Canadian Prayer Breakfast a few years ago. So I look forward to hearing from Vince on this, and he's probably dying to talk to somebody about it because I definitely don't ask enough questions. But before we get into, I just want to note that regardless of how scientifically inclined you may or may not be, this conversation is one that is critical for all of us to be able to engage in because we're just living in a world today that more often than not appeals to science, has the ultimate authority. So where does that leave us as Christians when we're looking to enter into dialog with people? But we often are coming at it from a very different starting point. And to be honest, a lot of us, especially if you find science hard to engage with, you can feel like you're on the back foot or like you don't even know what to say or whether you have anything good to say as a Christian in this conversation and you just need to keep your mouth shut. 

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[00:02:42] Is an appeal to science something that we as Christians should embrace or something to feel threatened by? And what authority ought it to have in our lives? And are these two faiths in science complementary or are they conflicting? So, Vince, I'm going to throw it over to you, but I'd love to start out with just a little bit of your own personal journey in this respect. Hopefully it started off better than mine did, but can you share with us how your views on the relationship between science and faith have changed over time? 

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Vince Vitale [00:03:10] Sure, Jo. After that introduction, I really want to turn this interview around. I feel like it'd be so much fun. 

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Jo Vitale [00:03:18] No, no, no. No one would learn anything. It would be completely a waste of time. 

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Vince Vitale [00:03:23] Yes, this started out as a stumbling block to me and has become one of my favorite topics to speak to. So it's exciting for me to get to share on this. Before I was a Christian, while I was still seeking Christ at the beginning of college, I can remember this is one of my first sort of vivid memories of really considering this relationship between science and faith. And I remember as a seeker walking into a bookstore and going up to a shelf and picking up a book that described itself as trying to hold on to a form of Christianity while doing away with all the supernatural stuff. It was trying to give purely scientific, naturalistic explanations of all the miraculous events in Scripture. And the interesting thing is that I can remember standing there in front of that shelf and I remember having the emotion of hoping it could be done. Because I had started reading the New Testament. 

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[00:04:14] I had started reading through the Gospels the story of Jesus's life and I was deeply attracted to the person of Jesus, but I just didn't think it could be true. I thought it was too crazy to be true. And I think somewhere along the way I had picked up this idea that science in particular had disproved Christianity. Now, the truth is that I had just sort of taken that on board without ever really thinking it through, and I was actually relying on some pretty bad arguments. I had sort of bought into this cultural myth that we used to need God to explain things like thunder and lightning, rainbows and shooting stars. But now we have scientific explanations of those things and so we should stop believing in God. I think something like that form of reasoning was going on at least implicitly in my head, but that's actually not a very good argument. We no longer think we need the moon to explain lunacy. Lunacy comes from the word lunar because people used to think the position of the moon explained what was referred to as lunacy. 

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[00:05:24] We now know scientifically that the moon is not a good explanation of this, but does that mean we should no longer believe in the moon? Of course not. And this is the point that Alvin Plantinga has made. Even if the moon doesn't explain what we referred to as lunacy, there are many other things such that the tides of the ocean that it does explain. And likewise, the reasons for believing in God extend far beyond just scientific reasons and include all sorts of other reasons, historical reasons, philosophical, moral, esthetic reasons, experiential reasons and relational reasons. And one other thing that never occurred to me when I was first thinking about science and faith but occurred to me later, is that saying that we need to choose between either God or science, that the two can't be compatible with each other is actually a major insult to most of the greatest scientists throughout history. Most of the greatest minds throughout history, they, on the whole, believed in God and they were much smarter than me. And many of them actually expected the elegance of the natural world precisely because of the existence of an intelligent God that they believed in being behind it all. So my initial approach to faith in science, I think now was misguided and not very well thought through. 

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Jo Vitale [00:06:41] I find it so interesting hearing you reflect on that because you're talking about something that was going on with you more than 20 years ago now, but that's still so timely today. I still feel like I hear comedians like Ricky Gervais make jokes around that all the time, but he basically is saying, well, now we don't need God to explain rainbows anymore. Essentially it's what a lot of the comedy underlying it is still about. And even just the other week we were talking with some Stanford students about some of the objections people have still today that we wrestle with in terms of how to think about our faith. And she also vocalized that same challenge of how do we believe the Bible and believe in Jesus, but also struggling to work through the presence of some of these miracles and what do we do with that? 

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[00:07:26] So, yeah, I don't think these questions have particularly changed even over time. So it's very interesting hearing you reflect that those are the same things that you used to struggle with yourself. But I want to dive right in just to see how you would handle certain hot button topics that particularly seem to bet in people most and come up often in Q&A when we're talking to general audiences. And then from there, after these hot button issues we'll broaden out to talk more about general approaches and general principles. But firstly, I just want to get right into it. Vince, does evolution disprove God? Let's just start right there. 

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Vince Vitale [00:08:00] Diving right in. It's true. A lot of people get hung up here and never kind of get further into the science/faith discussion because of this. But a few important starting points I think. First, science itself demands a real open handedness about the conclusions of science because so many scientific hypotheses get revised over time. In fact, it's probably fair to say that most scientific hypotheses that at one time were considered scientifically proven and decisive have now been either overturned or at least substantially revised. Now, that doesn't mean that there weren't elements of truth in those earlier hypotheses that get carried over into new theories, but it does mean that when we reflect on how much there is to know about the universe and then how much we know about it and appreciate what a small percentage our knowledge is, it should lead us to a real intellectual humility when it comes to our scientific findings and opinions. 

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[00:08:59] I remember a number of years ago being at an academic conference on evolution, and one of the experts who did take evolution as the methodological starting point for her work, she opened her remarks by saying, "Of course, in 300 years none of us will be Neo-Darwinists anyway." And yeah, it was such a surprising statement, but I loved it because there was this humble recognition in it that it's very unlikely that any current theory captures the full story and that there will be plenty of learning to do in the years ahead. And one of the reminders this gives us is to be careful not to jump too quickly from partial explanations to full explanations. Saying that natural selection and random mutation are part of the explanation of the diversity and complexity of life, is quite different from saying that they are the sole and full explanation of life's development. 

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[00:09:54] And we need to be careful because as humans we really like thinking we know stuff and we really like thinking that we know the full picture. This is a helpful example from the history of science that I first read in Peter Van Morgan's work. Berring Kelvin in the 19th century thought that the energy coming from the sun must be due to gravitational compression. And that was a good hypothesis, perhaps the best hypothesis given what was known in his day. And gravitational compression is indeed a partial explanation of the energy that the sun emits. But it turns out that most of the energy of the sun and far more than that produced by gravitational compression, is produced by nuclear fusion, where atomic nuclei in the core of the sun hit each other and fused together. This was something that science in Kelvin's day did not allow him to know about. There were going to have to be other discoveries to even make it possible for him to know about this. So it was completely natural to assume that the one mechanism that he could identify that was relevant to the Sun's energy gravitational compression accounted for all of it. That was a natural assumption to make. But the moral of the story is for us not to be too quick to assume that a relevant explanation is a full explanation. 

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[00:11:12] And so when it comes to thinking about evolution, I would likewise encourage us not to assume that the relevant mechanisms we may be able to identify currently are necessarily the full story. Time may tell a fuller and richer story. But that said, even if evolutionary theory were completely true in its current form, I would still say this would not in any way shake my faith because regardless of what scientific processes or mechanisms or explanations are or are not relevant to the development of life, the fact of life itself, when the universe could have taken so many forms that would not have been conducive to life-- and we'll get more into the details of that later. The fact of life itself is such a strong pointer that God is guiding our universe. On randomness alone, the chances of there being the conditions necessary for a process by which intelligent life could come to exist is utterly, outrageously tiny, no matter what that process is. 

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[00:12:12] And my God is omnipotent. He's all powerful and he's also very creative. So there are manifold ways that he could produce life. He could miraculously do so in an instant. He could also do so through a long biological process of millions of years. Or he could do so in any number of hybrid ways that have elements of natural process as well as supernatural components. So my conviction is that God is the best explanation of human life, regardless of whether human life came to be through God's direct, immediate creation or if it came through a long, indirect process that he initiated and sustained at every single point. Short miracle or long miracle, only God makes life possible. 

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Jo Vitale [00:12:52] I feel like that's a really helpful framework for a topic that people often get very bogged down in the [inaudible] so thank you for that. And I think one of the reasons people panic about evolution is because many see it as evidence which has already come to light in some way, which could challenge the concept of God as creator. But then on the other side of that, another question that we also hear a lot seems to be more based out of a fear of what could one day come to light, even if it hasn't yet, and whether the Christian faith could still stand up if it did. And so as somebody whose favorite movie as a teenager was Independence Day, this is a question that I'm personally very invested in as well. So, Vince, what if we found aliens? Would that shake your faith? 

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Vince Vitale [00:13:37] I love it. Yeah. Every science conversation always makes its way back to aliens, and rightfully so. As it should be. Yes. So I know. Even aliens would not shake my faith unless they came like they did in Independence Day. Anyway, bracket that. Aliens would not shake my faith. Not at all. In fact, I don't know if you're aware of this, but every Christian believes in extraterrestrials. We believe in lifeforms that don't live on Earth, that are extra-terrestrial. Angels and demons for example. I think it was John Lennox who I first heard say that. And as a footnote, it's even interesting to think of where Jesus is living right now, given that he has a resurrected body that has a physical component to it. But I'm not going to start us down that rabbit hole. The point is, for now, again, my God is very powerful and very creative and he's interested in life. So why would the discovery of aliens in any way bother my faith? I'd be like, wow, God, you're so cool and so creative. I can't wait to learn more about the other types of life you've created and what that tells us about who you are. 

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[00:14:44] And actually, while we're on Aliens, one more thought I'll just throw in the table in case anyone other than me finds this interesting (not likely, but always worth a try) there is something called the Fermi Paradox. And the paradox is that given the enormous scale of the universe, some people say we should actually expect life to be fairly common in the universe. Given probabilistically how many other environments throughout the universe would be similar enough to ours in the respects which are relevant as far as we know to being conducive to life, and given how much other life there should be in the universe and how relatively young life is on our planet, we would expect other forms of life to be far more technologically capable than us. And therefore it's actually highly surprising that we seem to have no evidence-- some would dispute this, but we seem to have no evidence of intelligent life anywhere else in the universe. 

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[00:15:42] I wonder if there's actually an argument for God hidden in this paradox because according to the paradox, in an atheistic universe, we don't have a good explanation of why we haven't heard from anyone. We don't have a good explanation of why we haven't had Independence Day. But if God exists, he could make that choice. Atheistic nature couldn't make that choice, but God could. He could decide to create an entire universe specifically because he valued the story of pursuing the hearts of one little species on one little planet in one far off corner of the universe. That's the sort of thing a loving God like him might do. And so, to my mind, the Fermi paradox is much less paradoxical if you add God to the equation. So not only do I think only God has a good explanation of why there is life in the universe, and we'll talk more about that, but I also wonder whether only God has a good explanation of why there seems to be so little life in the universe. 

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Jo Vitale [00:16:37] Yeah, I remember you told me about the Fermi Paradox not that long ago. I think I spent about 24 hours with my mind blown up. Still reeling. But it's kind of encouraging to think, well, either way we do not need to freak out. And also, I may get to bring back out-- I don't think you know this about me, but the first dance I ever learned as a child was to the men in black song. So maybe I'll get to bring it out again someday. 

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Vince Vitale [00:17:04] I know what we're doing with the kids later. 

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Jo Vitale [00:17:08] Yeah, I'd like to say I still remember the moves, but I just don't. But you'd probably find it online. Anyway, that is an absolute tangent. Okay, so neither evolutionary theory nor extraterrestrial possibilities are problematic for faith, is what I hear you saying. So are there any other scientific discoveries that would shake your faith or disprove God? 

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Vince Vitale [00:17:30] No, actually, not a single one I can think of. And here's the important thing. That's not because I've sat here and thought of all the possible scientific discoveries that could come and one by one decided that they're not problematic. No, my confident answer here is for a more general and principled reason, namely that my God is a really excellent engineer. And as a good engineer, the ability to explain his design in terms of consistently functioning scientific processes is exactly what I should expect to find. A less intelligent creator might make a deficient machine that he needs to keep stepping in to fix. But a perfect creator doesn't need to keep stepping in to fix his mistakes. He would create a regular universe that would be highly scientifically explainable, both because he engineered it well from the beginning and also because he cares about us being able to use our minds to live coherent and meaningful lives. It is the glory of God to conceive of a matter. It is the glory of humankind to seek it out. That's Proverbs 25. 

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[00:18:36] God intends and values our scientific exploration and discovery as a way of worshiping him with the minds he has given us. So for things to be explainable scientifically and naturally by regular, consistent, well-designed patterns is exactly what we should expect if God does exist. And if it's what we should expect if God does exist, then in principle that expectation being met can't be evidence against him. Ironically, if you wanted evidence against my God, then you might actually need to show me that there are lots of natural processes that cannot be explained scientifically. That might actually show that God is not a good designer if he has to keep stepping in to fix things because he didn't design it well enough in the first place. So for me, I don't get concerned when there's a new scientific discovery in the news. When science explains something new, I get excited. That gives glory to God. I think, God, you are so cool; you are so creative. And each new thing that science explains shows the greater perfection of the creator. 

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Jo Vitale [00:19:39] Okay, so if God doesn't need to keep stepping in to fix things, then what does that mean for miracles? Does that mean miracles don't happen? Or miracles would somehow show that God is not as good of an engineer as we thought? Otherwise, why did he need to step in to do the miracle in the first place? What are the implications for that? 

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Vince Vitale [00:20:00] Great question. And that can make me seem quite sort of deistic. But no, miracles absolutely can and do still happen. But here's the thing. When God performs a miracle, it's not because he didn't get the science right in the first place. It's not because he wasn't clever enough to design things right in the first place and so he had to step in to fix his design or do something different. No, when he performs a miracle, it is so that he can break into this system to communicate to us some sort of spiritual truth. The resurrection of Jesus, the virgin birth of Jesus, these are to reveal to us specific spiritual truths about who God is and what His purposes are in the world. Or if it's a more specific miracle in your personal life, that's not because God couldn't have done something scientifically, but because he wanted to communicate to you something specific about his presence in your life and his love for you and his plans for you. And here's the cool thing-- at least I think it's cool. 

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Jo Vitale [00:20:59] We'll be the judge of that.

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Vince Vitale [00:21:01] Yeah. People sometimes object that miracles are anti-scientific. But if you think it through, miracles are, in one sense, only made possible by science. They depend on scientific regularity. The only reason God can communicate something spiritually significant through a virgin birth or a resurrection from death is because he designed creation with a scientific regularity such that virgin births and resurrections are not the scientific norm. It is precisely because there is a scientific regularity that these types of events and what they communicate can be recognized as unique and distinct. So quite contrary to miracles being anti-scientific. Science is required for miracles. Science is precisely the reason that miracles can do their job. 

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Jo Vitale [00:21:51] That's pretty cool. 

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Vince Vitale [00:21:52] All right. I got it. 

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Jo Vitale [00:21:54] Yeah. Okay. Building on that, once you allow for miracles, don't you then just wind up with what people would sometimes call a god of the gaps, where whenever you can't explain something scientifically you just say, well, God did that miraculously. And then 10 years later we learn a scientific explanation for that thing and then you kind of wind up looking silly. Does God become merely this placeholder for what we don't yet understand scientifically? 

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Vince Vitale [00:22:20] Yes, that's a very good question. And I think the approach I take avoids this because if I don't understand something scientifically, I'm not quick to say, well, God must have done that miraculously. Because I recognize there's still so much we don't understand about science and also because I don't think the primary purpose of miracles is to step in and help when science falls short. No, I think miracles, again are intended to communicate something specific about who God is and what he's up to. And the other time that I think it makes sense to postulate God's miraculous intervention is when we are talking not just about the ongoing processes with which the universe functions, but about the ultimate cause of the universe. For example, where did the universe come from in the first place and why were its original parameters so precisely designed for life? Think about a car, just to take an analogy, I expect to be able to have answers to the ongoing functions of the car. 

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[00:23:20] If something goes wrong, I expect to be able to identify a regular process that should be functioning and a reason that it is not functioning a bad sparkplug or whatever it is. If I find a gap in ongoing function, I expect a scientific answer. And the same is true with the universe because I think my God is a very good engineer. But now if we ask how the car came to exist in the first place or why it's designed the way that it is, then I don't expect a scientific answer, but a more personal answer. Then you might have to tell me something not about a spark plug, but about Henry Ford or Karl Benz. I see the universe in a similar way. We don't just want to invoke God's name to plug holes in our knowledge about scientific processes when we have gaps. But if you ask why there is a universe at all, or why its fundamental features are designed the way they are, then I expect a more personal answer. 

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Jo Vitale [00:24:19] Okay, so if I'm understanding you correctly, you think science is an important type of explanation, but it's not the only type of explanation. And I've heard you speak before about different categories of explanation and why it's important to recognize them and properly categorize them. So can you tell us a bit more about why is this important? 

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Vince Vitale [00:24:38] Yes, it is very important. I kind of laugh when I read headlines like: New Cosmological Discovery Shows No Need for God. Because a headline like that totally confuses and conflates different types of explanation. Just because science has allowed us to understand more about how the world works, that doesn't tell us whether there is a who behind the how. Those are different categories of explanation. One has to do with mechanism, the other with agency. I can explain to you how Microsoft Office works. 

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Jo Vitale [00:25:14] You can? 

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Vince Vitale [00:25:15] Maybe not me, but somebody smarter than me who actually knows something about computers. Someone could. 

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Jo Vitale [00:25:20] It's like you know more than I knew. 

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Vince Vitale [00:25:23] Just trying to impress you. They could sit you down with the design instructions from Microsoft Office and give you a full scientific explanation of how it works. But that wouldn't show that Bill Gates doesn't exist. It wouldn't show that there is no who behind the how. No, quite to the contrary, it would show that Bill Gates is really smart. And the scientific explanation also wouldn't answer the why question. Why did Bill Gates develop Microsoft Office? That's a question of purpose. And that question can only be answered if you ask Bill. Only if the creator of this system decides to reveal it to you. So science explains to us how things work and increasingly and beautifully so, but that does not show that there is not a who behind the how. Oxford Professor John Lennox, dear friend of ours, he also puts this really well with a fun analogy. He says, if your Aunt Matilda bakes you a cake. A biochemist can explain to you the structure of the proteins in the fats in the cake. A chemist can explain about the elements involved in their bonding. A physicist can detail the behavior of the fundamental particles, and a mathematician can provide a set of elegant equations to describe that behavior. But it would be very odd to think that any of these explanations showed that Matilda doesn't exist. 

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[00:26:38] And then if you ask why the cake was made, well, now all the scientists are silent. Only one person is smiling. And that's Aunt Matilda, because only she can answer that question because she made the cake and she knows why she did so. Again, we have different categories of explanation: mechanism, agency, purpose. How, who, why? And they are not in competition with one another. The how questions are important, but we have to remember they are not the same as the who and the why questions. These different explanations complement and supplement one another as we seek a full and rich understanding of reality. And one of the things I love about seeing the world through a Christian lens is that a who behind the how opens up the possibility of why. Because the creator of a system is the one and only person in position to reveal why he did so and for what purposes. 

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Jo Vitale [00:27:36] Yeah, that's good. And I appreciate when you try to break it down for me. You pick the metaphor of a cake, speaking my love language there. 

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Vince Vitale [00:27:44] Preferred that to the car. 

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Jo Vitale [00:27:44] Yeah, I did. Yeah. The car was [crosstalk]. But that's really helpful in terms of understanding why science and faith are not incompatible. That actually they can coexist with one another. But let's take that a step further still. Yes, okay, they can coexist. But are there any ways in which you would think that actually science points us towards God? 

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Vince Vitale [00:28:07] Yes, absolutely. And this is an important kind of transition here in our conversation. Not only do I think the idea that science has disproved God is a baseless rumor, I actually think it's quite the opposite, that there are very significant ways in which science points to God. In fact, arguably, the two most significant cosmological discoveries of the last hundred years both point strongly to belief in God. Those two discoveries being that the universe had a beginning and that it is finely tuned for life. So I'll start with the universe having a beginning, which is not what people always thought. A hundred years ago, most scientists thought the universe had just always existed in a steady state. But today the majority of scientists believe that the universe had an absolute beginning. We now have instruments that can detect that the universe is actually expanding in size. And amazingly, not only that, but counterintuitively, it is actually expanding more rapidly the more it expands. And unless scientists are radically wrong about the amount of mass in the universe, it's never going to contract again by natural means. 

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[00:29:11] So the picture that results from this, if you think of the universe like an expanding balloon, if we trace back the expansion in history, you wind up with a universe that began with an utterly dense singularity where all the mass of the universe was consolidated into a single point and then exploded into the universe. A second scientific reason for thinking that the universe had a beginning comes from the second law of thermodynamics. You're going to love this, Jo. Which says that entropy will increase to a point of thermodynamic equilibrium. That's fancy language. But basically it means that the universe has a certain amount of usable energy. And eventually all of that usable energy will be used up. When it is, the universe will be said to have suffered a heat death. Think of the coffee you had this morning. 

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Jo Vitale [00:30:00] It was actually tea. 

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Vince Vitale [00:30:01] Think of the tea you had this morning. It's amazing I still make that mistake after 15 years of marriage. Think of the tea you had this morning. Its heat signifies usable energy, but if you leave it long enough, all of that energy will be used up and it will sit at room temperature. Well, if the universe had existed infinitely into the past, then it should already be at room temperature. Why? Because however long it would take to cool it down, that amount of time would already have passed. But the universe is not at room temperature. There is still usable energy. We're still drinking hot cups of coffee. And that suggests that the universe must have had a beginning. Now, if the universe has a beginning, it therefore requires something or someone to bring it into existence to explain that change from nonexistence to existence. If a light switch switches from off to on, you need some cause to account for that change. If the universe went from not existing to existing, you need some cause to account for that change. Otherwise, you wind up saying that the universe just popped into existence for no reason whatsoever. And that is a very odd claim. If you had absolutely nothing and nothing happened to the nothing, it would be very odd for it to somehow magically explode into something. 

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[00:31:20] None of us have ever seen a table or a tiger or the person sitting next to you just pop into existence. The physical stuff in our everyday lives does not generally pop in and out of existence with no explanation. And if it doesn't now, why would we think that it did at the beginning? So something must have caused the beginning of the universe. Which raises the question, what would that something has to be like? And the answer to that question gets pretty interesting once you start to think it through. For it to be the cause of the universe and not just some part of the universe, it would have to be outside of space and time, for it would have created space and time. 

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[00:31:58] And for it to be able to make our entire enormous intricate universe, I would say it would have to be highly powerful and highly creative. So the conclusion is that the cause of the universe is something highly powerful and highly creative that is outside of space and time, and all of a sudden it starts to become hard to think of a better candidate for this description than God. And so one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the last century that the universe had a beginning is actually a strong pointer to God and coheres amazingly, incredibly well with what the Bible has actually claimed for thousands of years. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 

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Jo Vitale [00:32:39] Yeah, Vince, I love what you're saying there, but at the same time, I feel like I also hear people come back a lot with their response, okay, fine you're saying God made the universe, but that's just pushing the problem back one step. If God made the universe, then who made God? 

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Vince Vitale [00:32:56] Yes. This question scares a lot of Christians, but it doesn't need to. In fact, you don't even need to have an answer to that question because as a general principle of reason, you don't need an explanation of your explanation in order for your explanation to be a good explanation. Got that? You don't need an explanation of your explanation in order for your explanation to be a good explanation. This is a basic point in the philosophy of science. Isaac Newton was able to excellently explain certain observations by postulating gravity, but the legitimacy of that explanation did not depend on him knowing where gravity came from or how to explain its existence. If someone said to Isaac, "Well, if Gravity explains that apple dropping, what explains gravity?" It would be perfectly legitimate for Isaac to just shrug his shoulders and say, "I don't have a clue, but my law of universal gravitation is still an excellent explanation of what I am observing and I can tell you some pretty cool things about it." So you don't need a good explanation of your explanation in order for your explanation to be a good explanation. 

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[00:34:04] And moreover, to take this logic a step further, if you always needed an explanation of your explanation in order for your explanation to be a good explanation, that would actually lead to an infinite regress of explanations, completely undermining the scientific enterprise. You would never be able to explain anything because you would never have enough time to give an endless series of explanations of your explanations. So the idea that an explanation is not legitimate unless it has an explanation is actually completely unscientific. One more point about this, when someone asks who made God? The implicit assumption is that God was made. But I don't believe in a made God or I created God. I believe God exists eternally, that there was never a point at which God didn't exist. And that's a standard Christian belief. Remember, our principle is that things with a beginning require an explanation in order to account for the change from nonexistence to existence. So the universe requires an explanation because it has a beginning, but God doesn't because he never began. 

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Jo Vitale [00:35:15] Okay. So the universe having a beginning points to God. Are there any other ways that you think science does point us towards God? 

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Vince Vitale [00:35:23] Yes, there are. I'm glad you asked. Almost as if we've spoken about this before. 

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Jo Vitale [00:35:27] Woah like we planned it? 

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Vince Vitale [00:35:29] Along with the beginning of the universe perhaps the other most significant cosmological discovery of the last century is that our universe is incredibly, finely tuned for life. What do I mean by that? Well, our universe could have taken many different forms, an infinite number of forms, but the conditions under which a process of life formation could take place in the universe-- not just life on the planet Earth, but any form of life anywhere in the universe-- are incredibly, ridiculously improbable. In order for life to even be possible anywhere in the universe, numerous fundamental features of the universe had to be precisely finely tuned just the way they are. Let me give you one simple example. If the force of the initial expansion of the universe had been different in just one part in 10 to the 60th, no life would have been possible. In other words, the percentage difference that you could have while still accommodating the possibility of life is a zero, followed by a period followed by 57 zeros, followed by a one. If the initial expansion of the universe had been even the slightest bit weaker, gravity would have made the universe collapse back in on itself almost immediately, far too quickly for any form of life to develop. If the explosion had been just the slightest bit stronger, particles would have dispersed so quickly and wound up so far from each other that all we could have gotten would have been cold, simple molecules. Nothing like the sort of complex chemistry required for any form of life. 

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[00:37:05] That's just one example. And there are multiple others as well. The precision necessary for meeting some of these conditions, even on their own, can be compared to being blindfolded and having one shot with a super high powered gun to hit a one inch target on the other side of the observable universe nearly 50 billion light years away and just happening to hit the target. And you need all of these features to be finely tuned, precisely as they are for it to be even possible for the universe to produce any form of complex life. Cambridge astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle likened the probability to a tornado blowing through a junkyard and just happening to produce a Boeing 747 airplane. Those are the sort of odds we're talking about. Oxford physicist Sir Roger Penrose, he estimated that the overall difference you could have in the fundamental constants, while still accommodating life, is less than one part in 10 to the power of 10, raised in turn again to the power of 123. If you were to write out that percentage, you would need more zeros than there are particles in the universe. These are the sorts of odds that we're talking about. So what explains this? Let me give you an analogy to illustrate the reasoning of this argument from fine tuning. Imagine that Jo and I are playing poker, and Jo gets 12 straight royal flushes. Take a moment to think about it at home. I know you really like Jo, but you have to be rational here. What happened? 

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Jo Vitale [00:38:47] I am really good at poker. 

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Vince Vitale [00:38:48] Jo is just so good at poker. 

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Jo Vitale [00:38:51] It's my scientific mind. 

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Vince Vitale [00:38:54] Yes. Jo cheated. And science is telling us this is exactly what's going on in the universe. Royal flush is turning up hand after hand after hand in these precise, fundamental constants of the universe. And here's the cool thing. Even if you thought there was only a 1% chance that Joe would cheat before we started playing poker, if you saw her get dozens of royal flushes in a row, you'd have no choice but to conclude that someone was cheating. Either her or someone is manipulating these cards. At some point, it just becomes blatantly irrational to just keep saying, I like Jo so much. Wow, what a coincidence. Jo is so lucky. 

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Jo Vitale [00:39:33] I've been framed.

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Vince Vitale [00:39:34] And at some point, it's just not rational to say that anymore. And likewise, we should come to the rational conclusion about the universe. Even if prior to learning about the fine tuning evidence you judge the probability of God's existence to be very low, once you are shown and convinced by the royal flushes turning up time and time again throughout the universe, I think there's only one rational conclusion. Someone is cheating. Someone loaded the decks. Someone intelligent designed the system. 

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Jo Vitale [00:40:02] Why was I the one cheating in your example, not you? Just a clarifying question. We'll talk about that later. 

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Vince Vitale [00:40:09] You're more intense about hard important things. I think it's fair. 

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Jo Vitale [00:40:11] It's true. I like to win. But don't people often object to this? That, well, perhaps there's a multiverse. In other words, not just one universe, but many, many universes, and that if there are enough of them, then it's no longer surprising then that one of them might wind up being life conducive. 

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Vince Vitale [00:40:29] Look at you asking about multiverse. 

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Jo Vitale [00:40:31] I know. I keep hearing that word around at home. I'd like to know what you're talking about. 

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Vince Vitale [00:40:36] So you do listen to me? 

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Jo Vitale [00:40:39] Yes. This is Vince's background noise. 

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Vince Vitale [00:40:40] Yes. This is exactly the objection that is usually made, but let me respond to it by continuing our poker analogy. Suppose you turn to Jo, you accuse her of cheating very rationally, but she quickly responds and says, "No, no, no, you've got it all wrong. No one is cheating. What you don't know is that Vince and I play poker all of the time. In fact, we've played all day, every day for years. We have a very exciting life." Now, if Jo said this and you had reason to believe her, that we play poker all day, every day, should you change your conclusion that she is cheating? Now it takes a minute to think it through. But no, you shouldn't. Why not? Because for all you know, Jo has been cheating for years and getting royal flushes several times a day throughout our entire marriage. All she told you was that we've played many other hands of poker. She didn't tell you anything about what happened in those hands of poker. So your data is still only that these 12 hands of poker, the 12 hands you have actually walked in and observed all came out as royal flushes for Jo. And that is just as unlikely, no matter how many times Jo and I have played before. 

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[00:41:55] You should only change your conclusion about your cheating if someone was able to show you not only that we have played cards all day, every day for years, but also that nothing like this has ever happened before. Then your evidence would change. Then your evidence would be that one time in very many, many, many attempts, something very unlikely happened. Then it might not be as surprising and could perhaps be explained by an appeal to chance. But that is not the position we are in with respect to the universe. Not only can scientists not tell us that there are other universes, but even if they could, we still wouldn't know if those universes, if they do exist, are fine tuned for life. And for all we know, if other universes do exist, maybe many of them are finely tuned for life, thereby further confirming the conclusion that someone designed the system. 

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Jo Vitale [00:42:46] Okay, I'm with you. But even if they had the fine tuning argument which I find incredibly compelling, it's quite mind blowing some of those statistics you just shared with us, but it still doesn't get us all the way to the Christian God. It only gets us more towards a general creator of the universe than the Christian God specifically. 

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Vince Vitale [00:43:07] Yes, that's right. Not all the way to Christianity. We'll need other arguments for that. But I believe we have them. Historical arguments, moral arguments, biblical arguments, and our personal experience of our real relationship with God. But nonetheless, I think sometimes we don't give the fighting argument enough credit in terms of how far it does get us. Maybe it gets us further than we think. What would something have to be like in order to fulfill the role of fine tuner of the universe? The fine tuner needs to be able to determine the universe's fundamental parameters. Therefore, he needs to be very powerful and very intelligent. The fine tuner needs to be there at the beginning of the universe to set those parameters. So this favors the idea of the fine tuner having always existed, his being eternal, or at any rate, very ancient. 

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[00:43:56] We can also infer that the fine tuner desired to create life and specifically higher order sentient life that could enter into a relationship, that could love, that could display virtues. And this favors the fine tuner being personal, moral, relational. So what we should conclude, I think, is that there is an eternally existent, highly intelligent, highly powerful personal and moral designer of the universe who values relationships, love and virtue. And now that starts to sound quite a bit like someone I know. The fine tuning that we find in the universe it's ridiculously unlikely in chance alone, but it is very likely if there is a God who desired to create beings who would be capable of meaningful life in relationship, including relationship with him. 

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Jo Vitale [00:44:45] This leads to the next point I want to discuss, that God not only designed a universe in which we could come to have life, but with relationship as the end goal. He also designed us and our universe in such a way that we can actually come to know things both about the universe and also ultimately about God. And I know this is another feature of our universe that you take to be very important as point towards God. Could you share a little bit more about that? 

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Vince Vitale [00:45:11] Yes. Another assumption of science that I think does point to God is the knowability or the comprehensibility of the universe. Einstein said the most incomprehensible thing in the universe is that it is comprehensible. And I think that's right. In fact, I think it follows that without God, there's no good reason to trust many of our beliefs. This is something that Charles Darwin worried about. C.S. Lewis also had the concern, and then the philosopher Alvin Plantinga had developed it more fully under the name The Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism. Here's the basic idea. If you're an atheist, it's common to believe that the sole guiding principle of human development is naturalistic evolution. Evolution disconnected from any divine influence. But then a question arises, why should we trust our cognitive faculties if they came to exist, if they were developed by, if they came to exist and function solely as a product of naturalistic evolution? Put crudely, evolution holds that species adapt genetically according to the principal survival of the fittest. 

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[00:46:19] And so, apart from any divinely set trajectory, atheistic evolution would cause us to develop our reasoning faculties in ways conducive to survival, not truth. And survival and truth are not the same thing. In fact, true beliefs often are not advantageous for survival. It's true that I am likely to break my leg if I jump out of a second story window to avoid being killed by an encroaching fire behind me. But it's actually far more advantageous for my survival for me to believe that I'm likely to land safely on my feet because then I'm more likely to jump. If I was very sick, it might help my survival for me to believe that I'm going to get better, but that might also be false. True beliefs are not always advantageous for survival. Sometimes they are particularly disadvantageous. Here's my point. If you think atheistic unguided evolution is all that determines human development, then you only have reason to believe that your beliefs are beneficial for survival, not necessarily that they are true. Our cognitive faculties don't care if our beliefs are true. All they care about is that we survive. 

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[00:47:33] And so to believe in atheistic evolution and think your beliefs are true is like stepping on a scale and thinking it will tell you the time. That would make no sense because scales tell weight, not time. Time is not what a skill is aiming for. It's not what it's directed at. Even though once in a while you might get lucky. If I weigh 159 pounds, I might just happen to step on the scale at 1:59. But there'd be no reason for me to trust that my scale is reliably going to tell me the time. Well, something similar is true with our brains on an atheistic picture of the universe. They are aimed at survival, not truth. And so there is a serious question about whether atheistic evolution is able to give us reason to trust that our brains are going to reliably give us true beliefs. And note also that the belief in atheism itself is no exception to this argument. So ironically, the payoff is that if you believe in atheism, you may actually have good reason not to believe in atheism, because that belief too, on your own assumptions is the result of a process that is not aimed at truth. On the other hand, if God exists, then we do have reason to believe that by whatever means he created human beings, he would create us so that in general our belief forming systems would be reliable and lead us to truth. For he is the truth and his purpose and desire for us is to come to know the truth. 

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Jo Vitale [00:49:11] Yeah, I actually find that really compelling because I think that's how we all walk around all day, every day, just assuming that. Of course, the things we're thinking are true or they're pointed towards truth. That is just such a basic common assumption that we can know things. But as you say, like, I think that without God there's no grounding for it. 

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Vince Vitale [00:49:31] Yeah, there's all these different ways that we actually walk around and live in ways that imply that God exists without ever thinking through that the way we live is relying on that assumption. 

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Jo Vitale [00:49:42] Hundred percent. Yeah, it really makes you pause and think. I know you could talk about this stuff all day if we let you. Speaking from personal experience, I know you would. But we only have time, I think, for one more scientific pointed to God. So, Vince, can you just tell us just a little bit about the significance of the regularity of the universe as well? Because I feel like that is also really relevant in here. 

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Vince Vitale [00:50:06] Sure. So just to summarize, in addition to the universe's origin, we've talked about that, it's design and knowability. One other feature of science and the universe that we just take for granted without realizing how utterly remarkable it is, is its regularity. We all just assume that when we wake up tomorrow, the universe is going to carry on in the regular, stable way that it always has, without pausing to consider what an absolutely amazing assumption that is. Think about all of the predictions that you make about even the next five minutes that have to come true in order for you to live a coherent and meaningful life. You assume that the objects in your vicinity are going to remain more or less where they are. That gravity is going to continue doing its thing. That atoms and molecules will continue interacting the way they always have. That the color of the things around us will remain constant. That the sun will continue rising and setting. The sound waves will continue to carry, as they usually do. Why? 

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[00:51:10] Why do we assume that the universe is going to continue to operate with regularity? Now, you might say, well, because that's how it's always operated in the past. But that's actually not an answer. That's precisely the question. Why? Why has it always done so? And why should we think it will continue to do so tomorrow? If I asked you to reach into a bag full of thousands of white marbles blindfolded and to pull out the one red marble in the bag, you'd think that's highly unlikely. You would not like your odds. Why? Because there are so many other possibilities that are not red and only one that is. While the same is true when we consider the regularity of the universe. There are all sorts of crazy things that physics could do tomorrow. An infinite number. Logically, there are an infinite number of different strengths that gravity could take, but there is only one way that it can stay the same. Second after second, day after day, year after year. It's so remarkable. And we don't even notice it because it's just our everyday experience. But every second we are reaching into the bag blindfolded and every time, over and over and over, we are pulling out the single red marble and just not realizing how incredible that is. 

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[00:52:30] On logical grounds alone, the regularity of that time and time again is enormously unlikely. We just take for granted that the universe will, of course, operate with regularity. The truth is, it's a great mystery. But if God exists, once again that refrain, then we have a perfectly reasonable explanation for why the future is likely to resemble the past. Why? Because the universe is regulated by someone who cares for us and therefore wants us to live orderly and coherent lives that we can make sense of and find meaning in. Theist and atheist alike go about life in a manner that I believe only makes sense if we are committed to believing that God is in control of the universe we live in. We simply take regularity for granted, but only God explains it. And remember, this is the very regularity which underpins the entire scientific enterprise. The only reason we can repeat experiments and apply the scientific method, the only reason we can do science at all is because of this remarkable regularity in the universe. We've spoken about how science does not disprove God, but when we reflect on the regularity of the universe, I think we can actually go much further and come to a much stronger conclusion that only God proves science. 

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Jo Vitale [00:53:54] God, I love that. And it really strikes me, actually, because this episode is going to be coming out on a Wednesday morning, which is kind of a big deal in the U.S. in terms of election week. And I think many people are going to be waking up and wondering today about all the uncertainty of what they're going to be waking up to in the world, depending on what the results are. But what we're not waking up and thinking is, is the sun going to rise today? Like those weird questions we were asking, there were so many things we assumed that would go on as they have been. And as humans, it's interesting to me that we so often focus on the things that we feel like are out of control or worrisome, but we're not reflecting on how much God is doing just to sustain and keep us going every single day and just how reliable and stable a creator and a God he is. In the midst of all of the turmoil that we experienced as human beings in this world, that there is a God who's actually keeping us going every day. And that brings me great comfort, even this week, just thinking about all that he's doing to carry us forward. So, Vince, we've run down the clock here. You've given us a lot to be reflecting on. But is there any final thought that you want to leave our listeners with today? 

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Vince Vitale [00:55:10] Yeah. I remember a number of years back I was in a taxi-- must have been a number of years back, I was in a taxi not an Uber.

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Jo Vitale [00:55:19] Yes, I believe that. 

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Vince Vitale [00:55:22] And I remember just asking the driver if he believed in God. And I was kind of almost surprised by his abrupt response. He said emphatically, "Of course I believe in God. If God doesn't exist, where did all of this come from?" And he sort of motioned out the front window of the car to all of nature. 

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Jo Vitale [00:55:44] Duh! 

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Vince Vitale [00:55:46] Exactly. He's like duh! You know. I think there's something right and something from God in that common sense, intuitive response to the universe. And sometimes we can second guess it and get worried when we hear a smart person pronounce something like, "I don't believe in God. I believe in science." As if those were mutually exclusive alternatives. But as I hope I've been able to show today that is a failure to understand the type of explanation that science is and that it is not the only type of explanation. It's a beautiful explanation. I'm so thankful for it. But it's not the only type of explanation. And I hope I've encouraged you that the more you look into science, the more you can see that science is not merely compatible with God, it actually strongly points to God. So I truly believe what Francis Bacon said. I believe he had it right when he said a little science estranges a man from God, but a lot of science brings him back. And some research studies actually suggest the same. That Christians who are practicing scientists tend to be more confident and more active in their faith, not less. 

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Jo Vitale [00:56:53] Yeah. 

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Vince Vitale [00:56:54] Bacon's quote has certainly been true to my experience. In fact, in many ways I think it was science that encouraged me to take the claims of faith seriously. Starting way back in that bookstore, but then beginning to think it through. If science can entertain the idea of the universe just popping into existence from nothing for no reason whatsoever, then surely I can take seriously the idea of the universe being created by God. If science can take seriously a virgin birth of the whole universe in a sense, then surely I can take seriously the possibility, at least of the virgin birth of Jesus. The more I reflected on science, the more I realized that science actually gave me permission to be open to the awe and the mystery and the mind stretching nature of some of the claims of faith. Because we all believe in unbelievable stuff. We are all in the same boat in that respect. Science and Christian faith are in the same boat in that respect. Christian faith makes the incredible claim that God the Father is immaterial. But let's not forget that science claims that 99.9999999% of the chair you are sitting on right now is immaterial. 

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Jo Vitale [00:58:08] That feels very unstable. 

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Vince Vitale [00:58:10] Christian faith claims that God is omnipresent. But our best quantum physics right now suggests that the same particle can be in two different places at once. That's crazy. Christian faith claims that the Incarnate Jesus has both a divine nature and a human nature, even though those seem like two very different things. But science claims that waves have a particle nature and particles have a wave nature, even though, again, those seem like two very different types of things. Faith claims we can really know God even though there is a lot about him that is far beyond our ability to comprehend. Science claims that we know a lot about the universe even though roughly 95% of it is made up of either dark matter or dark energy phenomena that are mysteries to us. I find it so interesting how differently we tend to treat the claims of faith in science when, to my mind, they are similarly mind blowing. When I tell people that quantum theory suggests that a single particle can be in two places at once, people go, "Wow, that's so cool!". 

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[00:59:13] But then when I tell people that God can be present in multiple places at once, they tend to think that's silly. Why the difference? Why the different response? And I think the difference may reflect more about the state of our hearts than about the rationality of the claims. For me, in some ways, ironically, I thought Christianity was the unbelievable option, where science was the sober, sensible, rational option for belief. I thought science was going to force me to reject the unbelievable nature of faith. But the deeper I worked, the more I found that it was precisely science that gave me license to believe the unbelievable. And I hope you'll find the same. 

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Jo Vitale [00:59:53] Thank you so much for sharing with us today Vince. And let me just conclude our podcast today by reading from some 19 verses 1 to 4. Even as our scientific knowledge and the questions that we learn to ask are advancing, I just find such comfort in these ancient words. The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim his handiwork. Day on today pours out speech and night and tonight reveals knowledge. They have no speech. They've used no words. No sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. 

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