July 1, 2025 • 31 mins
There are understandings/interpretations of the Bible that conflict with the conclusions of modern, empirical research - where science and the Bible are thought to be giving competing explanations of the same event or concept.
One way of reading the Bible leads to the conclusion that the Earth is 6000 years old while your local science department will tell you it is more like 4.5 billion years old.
Were human beings created in an instant from dust, or over billions of years through a gradual, meandering evolutionary process?
Was there a moment in our historical timeline at the curse of God on the sin of Adam and Eve when the physical nature of our universe changed?
Were there no volcanoes or earthquakes or floods or bushfires before the curse, or has the universe operated on the same physical principles since its creation, as the conclusions of mainstream geology and astronomy suggest?
Dr Lewis Jones is an astrophysicist from North Carolina, who moved to Sydney to do post doctoral research. Lewis is now director of the Simeon Network, the postgraduate and academic arm of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
humility and peace.
The relationship between thebible and science.
How best might we as pastorsunderstand evangelical faith and
its relationship with science?
It is the pastor's art, it'sdominic steel, and lewis jones
is guest.
There are understandings andinterpretations of the Bible
that conflict with theconclusions of modern empirical
(00:30):
research, where science and theBible are thought to be giving
competing explanations of thesame event or concept.
One way of reading the Bibleleads to the conclusion that the
earth is 6,000 years old, whileyour local science department
will tell you it's more like 4.5billion years old.
Were human beings created in aninstant from dust or over
(00:52):
billions of years through agradual, meandering evolutionary
process?
Was there a moment in ourhistorical timeline at the curse
of God on the sin of Adam?
Geology and astronomy suggestTo help us understand how he
(01:25):
thinks through those issues.
Dr Lewis Jones is with us.
Lewis is an astrophysicist fromNorth Carolina.
He moved to Sydney to dopostdoctoral research.
He's now director of the SimeonNetwork, the postgraduate and
academic arm of the AustralianFellowship of Evangelical
Students.
He's with us.
On the pastor's heart, Lewis,your heart.
(01:46):
On religion and science, theBible and science.
You used to say both were goodbut spoke different languages.
But now you say God created usto do science.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yes, absolutely.
I think, even when I would saythat they were speaking
different languages, um, I stillwasn't averse to the idea of
christians being involved inscience.
I mean, that's kind of what youwere in astrophysics that's
right kind of the I I I.
That's been my life for a longtime, um, but yeah, I, I think
(02:22):
um.
One of the things I picked upin my undergraduate years at
Erskine College in SouthCarolina, which was a Christian
college taught by Christianphysics professors, was the idea
that Christians are actuallymade to do science.
So Genesis 1, the very firstchapter of the Bible, in that
(02:43):
description of the creation ofthe world that God gives us
there, says that human beingswere made to rule over the earth
.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
And you're saying, ruling the earth involves
understanding the earth.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
That's right.
If we're going to fulfill therole for which we were created,
we're going to need to know howthings work, and so I take it
that that means science is oneof the tools in the toolkit to
do that job and to fulfill thepurpose for which God made it.
So I think we should be rightin there with science, new
discoveries.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
So go into science, go study science, you say to the
young Christian.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
It's not ruled out, but that way, and I think it
should be encouraged.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
So what should the Christian attitude be?
Or what is your attitude to newscientific discoveries?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, new scientific discoveries are often mediated
to us through the media to usthrough the media, and the
discovery is often couched interms that gets a good headline
and helps with advertising, andso they're usually
sensationalized.
And so I think there's twosides of that.
(03:57):
One is take a deep breath whenyou read a headline because you
don't really know what's goingon behind the scenes.
But as a general rule, the factis I just think it's exciting.
Every time I love getting tothe science section of the news
feed and seeing what people arediscovering, because the more we
(04:17):
know, the better we can, thebetter we're in touch with what
God has done in the world, thebetter we're in touch with our
ability to sort of harness theforces of the universe for the
good of humanity.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Okay, I want to push in to and I'm going to come to
some specific questions in amoment, but first I actually
want to kind of push into yourbrain and how you reconcile
these two big systems.
And how you reconcile these twobig systems and I mean you've
used the words humility andpeace.
But before we get to that, yousend me a diagram and we'll put
(04:53):
part of it up on the screen hereand just show me in this top
section of the diagram, hereyou've got creation and Bible,
yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, that's right.
So basically the top half ofthis diagram is really just a
Christian view of the world,right, it's just a simple, basic
Christian view of the world.
That is, god exists, god isthere and everything that exists
has been made by God.
And so in the diagram we've goton one end one side, creation,
the kind of physical reality weinteract with day to day, and
(05:25):
then the other side in thediagram we've got on one end one
side, creation, the kind ofphysical reality we interact
with day to day, and then theother side of the diagram the
Bible by creation.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
You're saying the mountains, yeah, that's right.
The mountains, the rivers, theoceans yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
The path I walk down, yeah absolutely everything you
interact with every day.
God made it and also, but byextension, god wrote the Bible,
and so I've separated those twothings out in a sense in the
diagram just to try and make apoint here in a second.
But both of those things werecreated by God and in our
Christian worldview that God isnot a liar, god is one.
(05:59):
God is a unified whole.
God is consistent withinhimself and therefore whole God
is consistent within himself andtherefore, by definition,
within our Christian worldviewthere are no conflicts between
what the Bible says about theway the world works, what the
Bible says about our history,the historical timeline of the
universe, and what we discoverabout the physical world when we
(06:21):
go and stick thermometers intothings and whatever and look
through telescopes.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Those things are not going to be in conflict.
And you're an astrophysicist.
I've actually looked through atelescope.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, many times.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah, but those things are not going to be in
conflict with one another.
So what we discover about theworld from the world, what we
discover about the world fromthe Bible, those things are not
going to be in conflict witheach other.
That is our basic Christianworldview.
Yeah, so that's what the tophalf of the diagram is trying to
illustrate.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
And then you say there's a second half of the
diagram, a subjectiveinterpretation half of the
diagram, and there are issuesboth in interpreting creation
and in interpreting the Bible.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Unpack that for me.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, sure.
So this isn't sort of ashocking point.
It's just, I think, helpful forpeople to make explicit in
their minds.
And that is that I mean thereare two things going on in the
world that make ourunderstanding of the world a
subjective thing.
(07:28):
That is, our perspective on theworld can never be removed from
our understanding of what we'relooking at, and by perspective
it could mean the country yougrew up in, the language you
speak, the people you went toschool with, the parents who
raised you, the religion thatyou're a part of All these
things create this perspectivein our minds and they limit the
(07:53):
way we understand the world.
And so the two basic broadprinciples would be this we do
not know everything.
Full stop, bottom line.
We are finite.
We do not know everything aboutthe world, and so we might be
making mistakes in ourinterpretation.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
In fact, we all will make mistakes, won't we?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Well, oh sorry.
At any given time we might bemaking a mistake in our
understanding.
That's right.
But secondly as well, againfrom the Christian worldview
side of things, we can say we'renot just finite, we're actually
sinful.
We're in a situation inrelationship to God where not
(08:37):
only is the world a sort ofbroken place because of our sin,
but our own attitudes can denythe truth that seems to be plain
before our faces.
And we've cut ourselves off asa world hopefully not as
Christian people, hopefullyreconciled to God but we've cut
(08:57):
ourselves off from the designerof all of this stuff, and so it
becomes very difficult to getinto the details and understand
the world because of ourattitude toward God.
And so we have this finiteproblem.
We just don't know everythingand we can't know everything.
And we have this sinful problemwhere we're sort of at odds
(09:18):
with the designer of theuniverse, which create
difficulties for us inunderstanding things.
And so we have this line ofinterpretation.
So the way I've described ithere is I'm calling science the
interpretation of creation andI'm calling theology the
interpretation of the Bible.
Just some shorthand for thesake of the diagram.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
And so different scientists will have different
interpretations of creation, anddifferent theologians will have
different interpretations ofthe Bible.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
That's right, and I think it's not.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
And different people like you who've dabbled in them
both.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah, yeah, and I think and realize that I could
be wrong about both of them atthe same time, even realize that
I could be wrong about both ofthem at the same time, even.
But yeah, I mean we go to Biblestudy every week because we
actually expect to learn newthings and to change our minds
about what we find in the Bible,because we don't think we know
everything about the Bible.
We keep doing science becausewe know we don't know everything
about the universe, right, sowe know we're limited in these
(10:20):
situations.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah.
So you've used these two wordshumility and peace because you
and I take it with thatworldview of I really don't know
and I want to recognize I'msinful and flawed and I want to
recognize you really don't knowand you're sinful and flawed.
We actually need to have thisstance of humility and peace.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah.
So in a sense, the kind oftakeaway point from the diagram
is to realize, above the linebetween what we call creation
and the Bible, there are noconflicts.
By definition, there are noconflicts and we can be quite
confident about that.
Below the line is actuallywhere we see the conflict, and
so what we realize is that theconflict is a human-generated
(11:07):
conflict.
The conflict that we experience, the tensions we are challenged
by as we experience the worldand read the Bible, are actually
between our theology and ourscience, our interpretations of
the objective reality, theconflict between the
interpretations, not between theobjective realities.
(11:28):
And so I would say the firststance, realities.
And so I would say the firststance when you know the default
stance when faced with aconflict, whether it's reading a
book or it's with a friendwho's challenging you about
something is humility is torecognize that well, we don't
know, and maybe they don't know,and we just take a deep breath
(11:49):
right and say, okay, where isthis conflict coming from?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I guess.
I mean there potentially arethree sorts of conflicts You've
alluded to.
I'm having my own conflict inmy mind.
I'm reading a book, I'm havinga thought, I'm playing a thought
experiment out, you know.
Then there's the moment whereI'm actually in a quiet.
The moment where I'm actuallyin a quiet, private conversation
(12:15):
with a friend.
That could take a couple ofhours, you know, it could be a
couple of rounds of conversation.
We go off and think aboutthings.
And then there's the third kindof conflict, if you like, the
bat, the shark kind of, whensomebody throws a quick line at
you and you need a kind of a45-second reply.
You know, I'm in the taxitalking to somebody.
(12:36):
Now you've kind of given me theway you're approaching it.
You, in your study, do you knowthat?
And you're saying I'm takingthe posture of humility and
peace.
But now, well, let me push youinto the two areas Before we get
(12:59):
to thinking about how you wouldtalk to somebody else.
The two issues we raised at thebeginning one was an issue of
creation and the doctrine ofcreation, and the other was the
doctrine of the fall.
Do you know of creation and thedoctrine of creation and the
other was the doctrine of thefall.
Now let's do just you and yourstudy how you think about the
(13:19):
doctrine of creation.
In terms of how do you reconcilethings like 4.5?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
billion years on the first day, god said yeah, yep,
so yeah, we're not talking abouthow you defend it in a
45-second clip, but what?
Do you do when you're just kindof there?
Speaker 1 (13:46):
thinking.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
My sort of default is really that I like.
My feeling is that most ofthese conflicts are related to
the kind of maybe the enemy orsomething who's challenging us.
I feel like almost every timeit's a question of how we read
the Bible.
And so for me, I think, whenI'm thinking about these
questions, I'm really focusingon trying to figure out how does
the Bible talk to itself aboutthese questions?
And so one of the questions isthere a timeline outlined in the
(14:41):
Bible?
Do I see a timeline outlined inthe Bible?
How does the New Testament lookat the creation?
And so John 1, for example, theprologue of John 1, is very
much taking us back to creationweek in Genesis 1.
(15:02):
But it has a different sort ofview on what that is, and I
would say even Matthew 1 withthe genealogies actually has a
little bit of a nod to thecreation narratives as well and
has its own sort ofunderstanding of how these
things are fulfilled in Jesus,for example.
(15:26):
What do I make of, let's say,creation week itself?
If the New Testament is lookingback on it in this sense of
showing us how it's fulfilled inJesus?
It makes me wonder how was theoriginal readers meant to take
(15:48):
it in the first place.
And so, yeah, I think that'skind of where, that's how I,
that's where my reflections gowhen I'm in the study and
thinking about this Now in termsof, I mean, in terms of a kind
of where I sit at the moment.
Would that be helpful?
Yeah, yeah, creation week rightup through Genesis 2, verse 3,
(16:16):
that's day 7, through day 7, isa picture of God's eternal plan
and in fact, the whole bigsummary of God's eternal plan,
and that the historical timelineof the Bible starts at Genesis,
chapter 2, verse 4, and ends inRevelation 22.
And so that's the historicaltimeline that is given to us in
(16:38):
the Bible, and we have thisintroductory picture of God's
big plan, god's big eternal planfor creation that starts with
creating everything, as it were,and ends at rest in eternity
with God, the endless day of dayseven.
And so I see, time-wise, thatthose two creation accounts, in
(17:01):
a sense Genesis 1 and thenGenesis 2, are quite distinct
and that Genesis 2 is thebeginning of the storyline of
the Bible, whereas Genesis 1 isactually an outside of time
account of something else whichI would say is actually the big
picture, eternal plan of God.
So that's how I sit with it atthe moment.
(17:23):
You can ask me in anothermonth's time.
We'll see.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
And so what happens when you're at a party and just
a non-Christian says to you ohwell, Lewis, you're a scientist
and you're a Bible person, howdo you resolve?
I mean, you've just given meyour thoughtful answer with the
15-minute preamble, but what'syour elevator pitch, your
(17:49):
30-second elevator line?
Speaker 2 (17:52):
in that situation, my 30-second elevator pitch is
John 20, 30.
That is, john tells us at theend of his gospel that he has
that.
He could have put a lot ofstuff in his story that he told
the things Jesus did could fillmany books, but he chose these
(18:14):
specific things to include inhis account of Jesus' life and
ministry in order to persuadeyou that Jesus is the Christ, or
maybe that the Messiah is Jesus, depending on the word order.
And so the elevator pitch isthe Bible is a book of theology.
(18:35):
It is explicitly taught to usfrom inside of itself to be a
biased account of history.
Right, it is telling us Abiased account.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
I don't like the word biased, whatever.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
It's constructed.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
It's got an interest.
It's got an interest, it's gota focus.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
It's constructed in a way to teach us something about
God.
It is not constructed asfundamentally, primarily a
historical book, an account ofsomething.
There are historical accountsof things in the Bible.
Of course there are.
It's not primarily constructedas a scientific handbook for
understanding the mechanisms inthe Bible.
Of course there are.
It's not primarily constructedas a scientific handbook for
(19:14):
understanding the mechanisms ofthe world.
Does it explain those things?
Yeah, sure it does sometimes,but primarily by its own
admission.
In a sense it is a book oftheology, trying to teach us
something about God.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
I mean, we were talking about Google Maps versus
WhatsApp chats.
Yes, do you want to explainthat to us?
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Oh, well, yes, I mean , you know, in a day gone by,
you might have thought of astreet directory and a phone
book as a kind of two differentways of holding information,
some overlapping information,because that phone book actually
has addresses that correspondto places in the street
directory.
Yeah, but it's different kindsof information and it's compiled
(19:55):
for different purposes.
In the same way, google Maps Imean the same sort of idea with
the maps shows us differentparts of the world and the
streets where we live.
But WhatsApp chats is all.
You know, the people you'reconnected with, and you've got a
long list of people there.
They all live somewhere inGoogle Maps, as it were, and you
might even drop a link fromGoogle Maps into one of your
(20:17):
chats because you're going tomeet up with those people one
day and you want to make surethey all go to the right cafe,
and so there's overlappingrealities between these two
things, but they're not createdfor the same purpose and they
give us different insights intoour lives.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Right, okay, now the fall.
Um, uh, I'm somebody whobelieves there's a historic fall
.
Adam rebelled against God, everebelled against God.
Can I be somebody who holds toa historic fall and believe in
(20:59):
theistic evolution?
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Short answer.
Yes, I could give you a kind oflonger explanation of yeah well
, give me a couple of minutes.
Okay, all right, well, okay.
So I'll try to give you twopossible kind of ways of
thinking about it.
So one is just purely on theevolution side of things.
(21:25):
Let's say that's the way Godmade everything.
You know, god made the livingcreatures and stuff on the
planet through evolution, okay,and so that takes a long time,
long history, billions of yearsin fact, to get to where we are
now, if that's the way thingswere done.
But at some point what youcould say is that all this
process is going on and thenwalking around the earth, at
(21:47):
some point in the past therewere things, creatures, that
looked a lot like you and me,mm-hmm.
At which point let's say, godcreates, well, puts his image
into these creatures that he'schosen to be humanity and to
relate to him going forward inthe future, takes those human
(22:09):
creatures, puts them in theGarden of Eden and they become
the first living beings.
Human beings, sorry, not livingbeings, pardon me.
Human beings, yes, because thereare creatures created according
to their kinds right a coupleof days earlier yeah, yeah, um,
(22:29):
and so uh, but everything hasbeen in a sense generated
through this process ofevolution.
But then certain creatures areselected to be humans.
They're made humans in theimage of god by god, by fiat of
god, at some point in history.
And there they are.
And then sin enters the world,through the sin of Adam in the
(22:52):
garden.
They're kicked out of thegarden and they enter into this
world.
That has already been sort ofpart of the evolutionary process
already, because they've beenremoved from that into the
garden and then they're castback out into that, into that
same world out there, and so youhave in a sense, a long history
of evolution.
That gets us kind of basicallywhere we are now.
(23:14):
God by fiat, makes um, certaincreatures human beings, puts,
separates them out, but thenthrough sin, as it were, they
get, get reconnected with therest of the world, and so that's
a way you could explain how anevolutionary process could
actually fit with the story ofthe Bible.
(23:34):
There's one other quick one,bill.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Dembski, who's a I mean, that's a line I presume
you might say to a science-typefriend.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, that's right.
That's how you might say GoogleMaps and WhatsApp chat come
together, yeah, if you'relooking, you can say that that's
how you might say Google Mapsand WhatsApp chat come together.
Yeah, if you're looking for, ifyou, if you, if really you know
, if you're looking for somekind of plausible explanation,
right, I mean, that's in a senseright that that allows you to
sleep at night, you know, thatjust kind of helps you sit with
that as you, as you keepthinking and doing the rest of
your going through the rest ofyour life, then it's, it's a
plausible explanation.
(24:03):
Bill Dembski has this great onein his book called the End of
Christianity.
He's a real proponent ofintelligent design.
But he says he's got this.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
That's a provocative title the End of Christianity.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
It's meant to be provocative, but really it's.
The goal of Christianity iswhat he's saying Is he a?
Believer, he is a believer, andhe's a believer and wants you
to be a believer as well.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
I don't know.
He wants the rest of the worldto be a believer.
I doubt Bill will ever watchthis, but I think that's a bad
title.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Well, it may take a little explaining.
Well, it may take a littleexplaining, but in there he
explains.
He gives this explanation ofkind of how you could have a
historical fall in the timeline,in our timeline, and still have
this evolutionary process.
And he says his scheme is this.
He says look, the cross ofJesus works both forward in time
(25:08):
and backward in time Right.
All the sins committedbeforehand looked overlooked.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
And we'd say that from Roman history, yes.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
And then God is seen to be just by actually dealing
with those sins through thecross of Jesus.
But we can also say it's notjust post facto, because
Abrahamraham is declaredrighteous in the moment.
Yep, right, well, how is that?
well, that's because the crosshas this effect, the sins
committed beforehand leftunpunished, right yeah and so
(25:36):
and so bill demsky just sayswell, what if the fall works
forward and backward in time aswell?
So that is, there's a moment intime, just like there's a
moment in time when jesus dieson the cross, and yet the
implications of that momentstretch through all history.
So what if the fall, the impactof the fall, which is a moment
in our historical timeline?
(25:57):
Actually the impacts stretchboth backward and forward in
time, and so the effects of thefall are baked into the creation
in which we live so effectively.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
he's saying you could have had an earthquake or a
volcano or a bushfire beforeAdam's historical sin.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Could have had a disease.
Yep, yep, that's right.
So there's another.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
But you wouldn't have had.
I'm feeling nervous about mynakedness.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
That's a great question.
I don't know.
That's a really good oneactually, Because I would want
to say that before Adam and Evesinned, they were naked and no
shame.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
They were totally vulnerable with each other
because there was no risk of youto me, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
And yes, and despite my reaction, the fact I agree
with you and particularly, Iwant to say particularly, though
, what makes it easy to agreewith that position, I think, is
to say, is to realize that thesepeople who were without sin,
were in the garden, they hadbeen separated.
They were created outside thegarden in Genesis 2, and then
(27:20):
God placed them inside thegarden, separated them from the
rest of the world out there,where the effects of sin, again
according to the Dembski idea,where the effects of sin had
been baked into creation, and sothey've been separated, and so
it's actually, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
so I agree with you, but it sounds like.
Even though I don't like thetitle, it sounds like a super
stimulating read it is a goodbook.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah, it is, it is a good book?
Speaker 1 (27:46):
yeah, what do you, as an astrophysicist, think about
falling stars and just the ideathat a star existed, was
extinguished and all of thattook place?
And so when I see a fallingstar, I'm thinking, wow, that's
(28:07):
got a history that's way, way,way back.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yes, sorry.
When you say falling star, doyou mean the shooting?
You're not talking aboutmeteors in the sky, you're
talking about like kind of thewinking out, as it were, of a
star, like the disappearing ofstars.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
The disappearing of a star, yeah, yeah, yeah, I just
wanted to clarify that's had awhole history and it's all gone
and I'm now just seeing itsdemise, yeah, yeah.
But it all happened.
Because of how long it takesfor me to see this, it all
happened a billion years ago orsomething.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah that's right.
This is.
This is one of those.
Yeah, god creates things partlyjust for the fun of it, partly
for the beauty of it, partly forthe joy of the creation, and I
(28:59):
mean we see that right through,well, through the Bible.
But the Psalms, I think, oftenkind of give us that picture of
just the joy of God at creation,and in some of the wisdom
literature as well.
And so it doesn't have to beabout us, because what we know
from the New Testament isactually it was all about Jesus,
it was for Jesus, and Jesushasn't missed it.
Jesus gets to enjoy it.
So, yeah, so I think it's God'sjoy in creation.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Thanks so much for coming in.
It's been super stimulating andI've learned some good things.
Lewis Jones has been my gueston the Pastor's Heart.
An astrophysicist, he hailsfrom North Carolina, although
for the 30 years I've known himhe's lived here in Sydney.
He's director of the SimeonNetwork, the postgraduate and
academic arm of the AustralianFellowship of Evangelical
(29:46):
Students.
My name's Dominic Steele.
You've been with us on thePastor's Art and we will look
forward to your company nextTuesday afternoon.
humility and peace.
The relationship between thebible and science.
How best might we as pastorsunderstand evangelical faith and
its relationship with science?
It is the pastor's art, it'sdominic steel, and lewis jones
is guest.
There are understandings andinterpretations of the Bible
that conflict with theconclusions of modern empirical
(00:30):
research, where science and theBible are thought to be giving
competing explanations of thesame event or concept.
One way of reading the Bibleleads to the conclusion that the
earth is 6,000 years old, whileyour local science department
will tell you it's more like 4.5billion years old.
Were human beings created in aninstant from dust or over
(00:52):
billions of years through agradual, meandering evolutionary
process?
Was there a moment in ourhistorical timeline at the curse
of God on the sin of Adam?
Geology and astronomy suggestTo help us understand how he
(01:25):
thinks through those issues.
Dr Lewis Jones is with us.
Lewis is an astrophysicist fromNorth Carolina.
He moved to Sydney to dopostdoctoral research.
He's now director of the SimeonNetwork, the postgraduate and
academic arm of the AustralianFellowship of Evangelical
Students.
He's with us.
On the pastor's heart, Lewis,your heart.
(01:46):
On religion and science, theBible and science.
You used to say both were goodbut spoke different languages.
But now you say God created usto do science.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yes, absolutely.
I think, even when I would saythat they were speaking
different languages, um, I stillwasn't averse to the idea of
christians being involved inscience.
I mean, that's kind of what youwere in astrophysics that's
right kind of the I I I.
That's been my life for a longtime, um, but yeah, I, I think
(02:22):
um.
One of the things I picked upin my undergraduate years at
Erskine College in SouthCarolina, which was a Christian
college taught by Christianphysics professors, was the idea
that Christians are actuallymade to do science.
So Genesis 1, the very firstchapter of the Bible, in that
(02:43):
description of the creation ofthe world that God gives us
there, says that human beingswere made to rule over the earth
.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
And you're saying, ruling the earth involves
understanding the earth.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
That's right.
If we're going to fulfill therole for which we were created,
we're going to need to know howthings work, and so I take it
that that means science is oneof the tools in the toolkit to
do that job and to fulfill thepurpose for which God made it.
So I think we should be rightin there with science, new
discoveries.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
So go into science, go study science, you say to the
young Christian.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
It's not ruled out, but that way, and I think it
should be encouraged.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
So what should the Christian attitude be?
Or what is your attitude to newscientific discoveries?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, new scientific discoveries are often mediated
to us through the media to usthrough the media, and the
discovery is often couched interms that gets a good headline
and helps with advertising, andso they're usually
sensationalized.
And so I think there's twosides of that.
(03:57):
One is take a deep breath whenyou read a headline because you
don't really know what's goingon behind the scenes.
But as a general rule, the factis I just think it's exciting.
Every time I love getting tothe science section of the news
feed and seeing what people arediscovering, because the more we
(04:17):
know, the better we can, thebetter we're in touch with what
God has done in the world, thebetter we're in touch with our
ability to sort of harness theforces of the universe for the
good of humanity.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Okay, I want to push in to and I'm going to come to
some specific questions in amoment, but first I actually
want to kind of push into yourbrain and how you reconcile
these two big systems.
And how you reconcile these twobig systems and I mean you've
used the words humility andpeace.
But before we get to that, yousend me a diagram and we'll put
(04:53):
part of it up on the screen hereand just show me in this top
section of the diagram, hereyou've got creation and Bible,
yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, that's right.
So basically the top half ofthis diagram is really just a
Christian view of the world,right, it's just a simple, basic
Christian view of the world.
That is, god exists, god isthere and everything that exists
has been made by God.
And so in the diagram we've goton one end one side, creation,
the kind of physical reality weinteract with day to day, and
(05:25):
then the other side in thediagram we've got on one end one
side, creation, the kind ofphysical reality we interact
with day to day, and then theother side of the diagram the
Bible by creation.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
You're saying the mountains, yeah, that's right.
The mountains, the rivers, theoceans yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
The path I walk down, yeah absolutely everything you
interact with every day.
God made it and also, but byextension, god wrote the Bible,
and so I've separated those twothings out in a sense in the
diagram just to try and make apoint here in a second.
But both of those things werecreated by God and in our
Christian worldview that God isnot a liar, god is one.
(05:59):
God is a unified whole.
God is consistent withinhimself and therefore whole God
is consistent within himself andtherefore, by definition,
within our Christian worldviewthere are no conflicts between
what the Bible says about theway the world works, what the
Bible says about our history,the historical timeline of the
universe, and what we discoverabout the physical world when we
(06:21):
go and stick thermometers intothings and whatever and look
through telescopes.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Those things are not going to be in conflict.
And you're an astrophysicist.
I've actually looked through atelescope.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, many times.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah, but those things are not going to be in
conflict with one another.
So what we discover about theworld from the world, what we
discover about the world fromthe Bible, those things are not
going to be in conflict witheach other.
That is our basic Christianworldview.
Yeah, so that's what the tophalf of the diagram is trying to
illustrate.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
And then you say there's a second half of the
diagram, a subjectiveinterpretation half of the
diagram, and there are issuesboth in interpreting creation
and in interpreting the Bible.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Unpack that for me.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, sure.
So this isn't sort of ashocking point.
It's just, I think, helpful forpeople to make explicit in
their minds.
And that is that I mean thereare two things going on in the
world that make ourunderstanding of the world a
subjective thing.
(07:28):
That is, our perspective on theworld can never be removed from
our understanding of what we'relooking at, and by perspective
it could mean the country yougrew up in, the language you
speak, the people you went toschool with, the parents who
raised you, the religion thatyou're a part of All these
things create this perspectivein our minds and they limit the
(07:53):
way we understand the world.
And so the two basic broadprinciples would be this we do
not know everything.
Full stop, bottom line.
We are finite.
We do not know everything aboutthe world, and so we might be
making mistakes in ourinterpretation.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
In fact, we all will make mistakes, won't we?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Well, oh sorry.
At any given time we might bemaking a mistake in our
understanding.
That's right.
But secondly as well, againfrom the Christian worldview
side of things, we can say we'renot just finite, we're actually
sinful.
We're in a situation inrelationship to God where not
(08:37):
only is the world a sort ofbroken place because of our sin,
but our own attitudes can denythe truth that seems to be plain
before our faces.
And we've cut ourselves off asa world hopefully not as
Christian people, hopefullyreconciled to God but we've cut
(08:57):
ourselves off from the designerof all of this stuff, and so it
becomes very difficult to getinto the details and understand
the world because of ourattitude toward God.
And so we have this finiteproblem.
We just don't know everythingand we can't know everything.
And we have this sinful problemwhere we're sort of at odds
(09:18):
with the designer of theuniverse, which create
difficulties for us inunderstanding things.
And so we have this line ofinterpretation.
So the way I've described ithere is I'm calling science the
interpretation of creation andI'm calling theology the
interpretation of the Bible.
Just some shorthand for thesake of the diagram.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
And so different scientists will have different
interpretations of creation, anddifferent theologians will have
different interpretations ofthe Bible.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
That's right, and I think it's not.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
And different people like you who've dabbled in them
both.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah, yeah, and I think and realize that I could
be wrong about both of them atthe same time, even realize that
I could be wrong about both ofthem at the same time, even.
But yeah, I mean we go to Biblestudy every week because we
actually expect to learn newthings and to change our minds
about what we find in the Bible,because we don't think we know
everything about the Bible.
We keep doing science becausewe know we don't know everything
about the universe, right, sowe know we're limited in these
(10:20):
situations.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah.
So you've used these two wordshumility and peace because you
and I take it with thatworldview of I really don't know
and I want to recognize I'msinful and flawed and I want to
recognize you really don't knowand you're sinful and flawed.
We actually need to have thisstance of humility and peace.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah.
So in a sense, the kind oftakeaway point from the diagram
is to realize, above the linebetween what we call creation
and the Bible, there are noconflicts.
By definition, there are noconflicts and we can be quite
confident about that.
Below the line is actuallywhere we see the conflict, and
so what we realize is that theconflict is a human-generated
(11:07):
conflict.
The conflict that we experience, the tensions we are challenged
by as we experience the worldand read the Bible, are actually
between our theology and ourscience, our interpretations of
the objective reality, theconflict between the
interpretations, not between theobjective realities.
(11:28):
And so I would say the firststance, realities.
And so I would say the firststance when you know the default
stance when faced with aconflict, whether it's reading a
book or it's with a friendwho's challenging you about
something is humility is torecognize that well, we don't
know, and maybe they don't know,and we just take a deep breath
(11:49):
right and say, okay, where isthis conflict coming from?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I guess.
I mean there potentially arethree sorts of conflicts You've
alluded to.
I'm having my own conflict inmy mind.
I'm reading a book, I'm havinga thought, I'm playing a thought
experiment out, you know.
Then there's the moment whereI'm actually in a quiet.
The moment where I'm actuallyin a quiet, private conversation
(12:15):
with a friend.
That could take a couple ofhours, you know, it could be a
couple of rounds of conversation.
We go off and think aboutthings.
And then there's the third kindof conflict, if you like, the
bat, the shark kind of, whensomebody throws a quick line at
you and you need a kind of a45-second reply.
You know, I'm in the taxitalking to somebody.
(12:36):
Now you've kind of given me theway you're approaching it.
You, in your study, do you knowthat?
And you're saying I'm takingthe posture of humility and
peace.
But now, well, let me push youinto the two areas Before we get
(12:59):
to thinking about how you wouldtalk to somebody else.
The two issues we raised at thebeginning one was an issue of
creation and the doctrine ofcreation, and the other was the
doctrine of the fall.
Do you know of creation and thedoctrine of creation and the
other was the doctrine of thefall.
Now let's do just you and yourstudy how you think about the
(13:19):
doctrine of creation.
In terms of how do you reconcilethings like 4.5?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
billion years on the first day, god said yeah, yep,
so yeah, we're not talking abouthow you defend it in a
45-second clip, but what?
Do you do when you're just kindof there?
Speaker 1 (13:46):
thinking.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
My sort of default is really that I like.
My feeling is that most ofthese conflicts are related to
the kind of maybe the enemy orsomething who's challenging us.
I feel like almost every timeit's a question of how we read
the Bible.
And so for me, I think, whenI'm thinking about these
questions, I'm really focusingon trying to figure out how does
the Bible talk to itself aboutthese questions?
And so one of the questions isthere a timeline outlined in the
(14:41):
Bible?
Do I see a timeline outlined inthe Bible?
How does the New Testament lookat the creation?
And so John 1, for example, theprologue of John 1, is very
much taking us back to creationweek in Genesis 1.
(15:02):
But it has a different sort ofview on what that is, and I
would say even Matthew 1 withthe genealogies actually has a
little bit of a nod to thecreation narratives as well and
has its own sort ofunderstanding of how these
things are fulfilled in Jesus,for example.
(15:26):
What do I make of, let's say,creation week itself?
If the New Testament is lookingback on it in this sense of
showing us how it's fulfilled inJesus?
It makes me wonder how was theoriginal readers meant to take
(15:48):
it in the first place.
And so, yeah, I think that'skind of where, that's how I,
that's where my reflections gowhen I'm in the study and
thinking about this Now in termsof, I mean, in terms of a kind
of where I sit at the moment.
Would that be helpful?
Yeah, yeah, creation week rightup through Genesis 2, verse 3,
(16:16):
that's day 7, through day 7, isa picture of God's eternal plan
and in fact, the whole bigsummary of God's eternal plan,
and that the historical timelineof the Bible starts at Genesis,
chapter 2, verse 4, and ends inRevelation 22.
And so that's the historicaltimeline that is given to us in
(16:38):
the Bible, and we have thisintroductory picture of God's
big plan, god's big eternal planfor creation that starts with
creating everything, as it were,and ends at rest in eternity
with God, the endless day of dayseven.
And so I see, time-wise, thatthose two creation accounts, in
(17:01):
a sense Genesis 1 and thenGenesis 2, are quite distinct
and that Genesis 2 is thebeginning of the storyline of
the Bible, whereas Genesis 1 isactually an outside of time
account of something else whichI would say is actually the big
picture, eternal plan of God.
So that's how I sit with it atthe moment.
(17:23):
You can ask me in anothermonth's time.
We'll see.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
And so what happens when you're at a party and just
a non-Christian says to you ohwell, Lewis, you're a scientist
and you're a Bible person, howdo you resolve?
I mean, you've just given meyour thoughtful answer with the
15-minute preamble, but what'syour elevator pitch, your
(17:49):
30-second elevator line?
Speaker 2 (17:52):
in that situation, my 30-second elevator pitch is
John 20, 30.
That is, john tells us at theend of his gospel that he has
that.
He could have put a lot ofstuff in his story that he told
the things Jesus did could fillmany books, but he chose these
(18:14):
specific things to include inhis account of Jesus' life and
ministry in order to persuadeyou that Jesus is the Christ, or
maybe that the Messiah is Jesus, depending on the word order.
And so the elevator pitch isthe Bible is a book of theology.
(18:35):
It is explicitly taught to usfrom inside of itself to be a
biased account of history.
Right, it is telling us Abiased account.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
I don't like the word biased, whatever.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
It's constructed.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
It's got an interest.
It's got an interest, it's gota focus.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
It's constructed in a way to teach us something about
God.
It is not constructed asfundamentally, primarily a
historical book, an account ofsomething.
There are historical accountsof things in the Bible.
Of course there are.
It's not primarily constructedas a scientific handbook for
understanding the mechanisms inthe Bible.
Of course there are.
It's not primarily constructedas a scientific handbook for
(19:14):
understanding the mechanisms ofthe world.
Does it explain those things?
Yeah, sure it does sometimes,but primarily by its own
admission.
In a sense it is a book oftheology, trying to teach us
something about God.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
I mean, we were talking about Google Maps versus
WhatsApp chats.
Yes, do you want to explainthat to us?
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Oh, well, yes, I mean , you know, in a day gone by,
you might have thought of astreet directory and a phone
book as a kind of two differentways of holding information,
some overlapping information,because that phone book actually
has addresses that correspondto places in the street
directory.
Yeah, but it's different kindsof information and it's compiled
(19:55):
for different purposes.
In the same way, google Maps Imean the same sort of idea with
the maps shows us differentparts of the world and the
streets where we live.
But WhatsApp chats is all.
You know, the people you'reconnected with, and you've got a
long list of people there.
They all live somewhere inGoogle Maps, as it were, and you
might even drop a link fromGoogle Maps into one of your
(20:17):
chats because you're going tomeet up with those people one
day and you want to make surethey all go to the right cafe,
and so there's overlappingrealities between these two
things, but they're not createdfor the same purpose and they
give us different insights intoour lives.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Right, okay, now the fall.
Um, uh, I'm somebody whobelieves there's a historic fall
.
Adam rebelled against God, everebelled against God.
Can I be somebody who holds toa historic fall and believe in
(20:59):
theistic evolution?
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Short answer.
Yes, I could give you a kind oflonger explanation of yeah well
, give me a couple of minutes.
Okay, all right, well, okay.
So I'll try to give you twopossible kind of ways of
thinking about it.
So one is just purely on theevolution side of things.
(21:25):
Let's say that's the way Godmade everything.
You know, god made the livingcreatures and stuff on the
planet through evolution, okay,and so that takes a long time,
long history, billions of yearsin fact, to get to where we are
now, if that's the way thingswere done.
But at some point what youcould say is that all this
process is going on and thenwalking around the earth, at
(21:47):
some point in the past therewere things, creatures, that
looked a lot like you and me,mm-hmm.
At which point let's say, godcreates, well, puts his image
into these creatures that he'schosen to be humanity and to
relate to him going forward inthe future, takes those human
(22:09):
creatures, puts them in theGarden of Eden and they become
the first living beings.
Human beings, sorry, not livingbeings, pardon me.
Human beings, yes, because thereare creatures created according
to their kinds right a coupleof days earlier yeah, yeah, um,
(22:29):
and so uh, but everything hasbeen in a sense generated
through this process ofevolution.
But then certain creatures areselected to be humans.
They're made humans in theimage of god by god, by fiat of
god, at some point in history.
And there they are.
And then sin enters the world,through the sin of Adam in the
(22:52):
garden.
They're kicked out of thegarden and they enter into this
world.
That has already been sort ofpart of the evolutionary process
already, because they've beenremoved from that into the
garden and then they're castback out into that, into that
same world out there, and so youhave in a sense, a long history
of evolution.
That gets us kind of basicallywhere we are now.
(23:14):
God by fiat, makes um, certaincreatures human beings, puts,
separates them out, but thenthrough sin, as it were, they
get, get reconnected with therest of the world, and so that's
a way you could explain how anevolutionary process could
actually fit with the story ofthe Bible.
(23:34):
There's one other quick one,bill.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Dembski, who's a I mean, that's a line I presume
you might say to a science-typefriend.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, that's right.
That's how you might say GoogleMaps and WhatsApp chat come
together, yeah, if you'relooking, you can say that that's
how you might say Google Mapsand WhatsApp chat come together.
Yeah, if you're looking for, ifyou, if you, if really you know
, if you're looking for somekind of plausible explanation,
right, I mean, that's in a senseright that that allows you to
sleep at night, you know, thatjust kind of helps you sit with
that as you, as you keepthinking and doing the rest of
your going through the rest ofyour life, then it's, it's a
plausible explanation.
(24:03):
Bill Dembski has this great onein his book called the End of
Christianity.
He's a real proponent ofintelligent design.
But he says he's got this.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
That's a provocative title the End of Christianity.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
It's meant to be provocative, but really it's.
The goal of Christianity iswhat he's saying Is he a?
Believer, he is a believer, andhe's a believer and wants you
to be a believer as well.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
I don't know.
He wants the rest of the worldto be a believer.
I doubt Bill will ever watchthis, but I think that's a bad
title.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Well, it may take a little explaining.
Well, it may take a littleexplaining, but in there he
explains.
He gives this explanation ofkind of how you could have a
historical fall in the timeline,in our timeline, and still have
this evolutionary process.
And he says his scheme is this.
He says look, the cross ofJesus works both forward in time
(25:08):
and backward in time Right.
All the sins committedbeforehand looked overlooked.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
And we'd say that from Roman history, yes.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
And then God is seen to be just by actually dealing
with those sins through thecross of Jesus.
But we can also say it's notjust post facto, because
Abrahamraham is declaredrighteous in the moment.
Yep, right, well, how is that?
well, that's because the crosshas this effect, the sins
committed beforehand leftunpunished, right yeah and so
(25:36):
and so bill demsky just sayswell, what if the fall works
forward and backward in time aswell?
So that is, there's a moment intime, just like there's a
moment in time when jesus dieson the cross, and yet the
implications of that momentstretch through all history.
So what if the fall, the impactof the fall, which is a moment
in our historical timeline?
(25:57):
Actually the impacts stretchboth backward and forward in
time, and so the effects of thefall are baked into the creation
in which we live so effectively.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
he's saying you could have had an earthquake or a
volcano or a bushfire beforeAdam's historical sin.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Could have had a disease.
Yep, yep, that's right.
So there's another.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
But you wouldn't have had.
I'm feeling nervous about mynakedness.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
That's a great question.
I don't know.
That's a really good oneactually, Because I would want
to say that before Adam and Evesinned, they were naked and no
shame.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
They were totally vulnerable with each other
because there was no risk of youto me, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
And yes, and despite my reaction, the fact I agree
with you and particularly, Iwant to say particularly, though
, what makes it easy to agreewith that position, I think, is
to say, is to realize that thesepeople who were without sin,
were in the garden, they hadbeen separated.
They were created outside thegarden in Genesis 2, and then
(27:20):
God placed them inside thegarden, separated them from the
rest of the world out there,where the effects of sin, again
according to the Dembski idea,where the effects of sin had
been baked into creation, and sothey've been separated, and so
it's actually, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
so I agree with you, but it sounds like.
Even though I don't like thetitle, it sounds like a super
stimulating read it is a goodbook.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah, it is, it is a good book?
Speaker 1 (27:46):
yeah, what do you, as an astrophysicist, think about
falling stars and just the ideathat a star existed, was
extinguished and all of thattook place?
And so when I see a fallingstar, I'm thinking, wow, that's
(28:07):
got a history that's way, way,way back.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yes, sorry.
When you say falling star, doyou mean the shooting?
You're not talking aboutmeteors in the sky, you're
talking about like kind of thewinking out, as it were, of a
star, like the disappearing ofstars.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
The disappearing of a star, yeah, yeah, yeah, I just
wanted to clarify that's had awhole history and it's all gone
and I'm now just seeing itsdemise, yeah, yeah.
But it all happened.
Because of how long it takesfor me to see this, it all
happened a billion years ago orsomething.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah that's right.
This is.
This is one of those.
Yeah, god creates things partlyjust for the fun of it, partly
for the beauty of it, partly forthe joy of the creation, and I
(28:59):
mean we see that right through,well, through the Bible.
But the Psalms, I think, oftenkind of give us that picture of
just the joy of God at creation,and in some of the wisdom
literature as well.
And so it doesn't have to beabout us, because what we know
from the New Testament isactually it was all about Jesus,
it was for Jesus, and Jesushasn't missed it.
Jesus gets to enjoy it.
So, yeah, so I think it's God'sjoy in creation.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Thanks so much for coming in.
It's been super stimulating andI've learned some good things.
Lewis Jones has been my gueston the Pastor's Heart.
An astrophysicist, he hailsfrom North Carolina, although
for the 30 years I've known himhe's lived here in Sydney.
He's director of the SimeonNetwork, the postgraduate and
academic arm of the AustralianFellowship of Evangelical
(29:46):
Students.
My name's Dominic Steele.
You've been with us on thePastor's Art and we will look
forward to your company nextTuesday afternoon.
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!