Episode 21: Hans Halvorson – God & The Cosmos

Jared  

You’re listening to Faith for Normal People, the only other God-ordained podcast on the internet. 

Pete  

I’m Pete Enns. 

Jared  

And I’m Jared Byas.

Intro  

Pete  

Hey, folks, it’s just me on the podcast today. But before I get started, I wanted to give you a final—that means last—final reminder about our July summer school class called “Heaven and Hell and Black Theology: Discussing Heaven and Hell Through the Lens of the Oppressed,” and it’s going to be led by Dr. Eboni Marshall Turman, who is a brilliant scholar, and we’re so excited to learn from her. Now, it’s happening on July 26th from 8-9:30pm Eastern Time. But don’t worry, if you can’t make it live, you can still buy the class during the pay-what-you-can window—which is about to end, by the way—and you’ll get the recording to watch afterward. Okay, so we’ll take care of you. Now, if you want access to all of our classes for just $12 a month, you can join our community called the Society of Normal People. And for more information and to sign up for summer school, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/SummerSchool. 

Well, folks, I’m really excited about this conversation today on Faith for Normal People, because this is something I’ve been wanting to talk about on the podcast for a few years now. And I am finally getting to do that with a really great guest. And my conversation today is with Hans Halvorson, and we’ll be talking about God and the cosmos. Now, Hans is a professor of philosophy at Princeton University. He’s written extensively on things like the foundations of quantum physics, the philosophy of science, a bunch of other stuff. Very nerdy guy, and as you’re gonna see, very relatable, and just super, super clear about stuff. So I just find that so valuable when philosophers can speak plainly. And I’m not being funny, right? Sometimes they can, but sometimes they can’t. Hans is one of those who’s really clear. So, also, don’t forget to stay tuned at the end of the episode for Quiet Time, where Jared and I are going to reflect on this conversation with Hans. Alright, folks, let’s get into it.

Hans  

Pete  

Hans, welcome to the podcast, it’s great to have you.

Hans  

Thanks a lot. Happy to be here.

Pete  

Yeah, having a real life philosopher who’s interested in science and faith and stuff like that is something that’s gonna resonate a lot with our listeners. And I think one reason why—and you know, you’re more familiar with this than I am—but you know, the science/faith relationship is one that’s often built on a conflict model where the two are at odds, or at least they’re in tension with each other. And I think I’d love to get to some of those questions with you about how you process the life of philosophy and science and also just the life of some type of faith. So let’s begin with this; Just catch us up on everything that’s happened that’s been important in the last 100 years of science. You’ve got one minute.

Hans  

Pete  

No, but pertaining to our understanding of the universe, really.

Hans  

Yeah. So it’s—We are very much at the tail end of an absolute revolution in our knowledge of the physical world. So—and I believe it was 1900, right around there—the famous Max Planck said, “We are within a decade of completely understanding everything in the universe.” And then like a year or two later, he was the guy who said, “Oops, there’s this new thing, a quantum sort of thing that I’m trying to understand,” and it took them, you know, 30 years to figure out everything we thought we knew before about physics might have been wrong. But actually at the same time—so this all sort of starts with 1905—Einstein was trying to figure out, there was a sort of fundamental tension in classical, the story of how particles interact with each other on the one hand, and then the new theory, from the 19th century, electromagnetism. So that describes electromagnetic waves. 

And Einstein was trying to figure out how these hang together, it seemed like inconsistent, and he comes up with special relativity, which was incredibly radical, because the key move was to say, “What we thought we knew about time, the very essence of time, we were mistaken about.” So is this the first of many upheavals, the special theory of relativity. Then Einstein himself again, only 10 years later, he really wanted to make his new special theory of relativity consistent with gravity, what we knew about the forces of heavy bodies attracted each other. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t consistent because the gravitational theory developed by Newton, it has action at a distance. So Newton says, for example, the Earth orbits around the sun because it’s heavy and there’s this gravitational attraction law. But Newton had no story about what was pulling the earth toward the sun. 

So Einstein, again, revolutionizes things by saying space and time is curved so the actual mechanism that holds Earth in orbit is actually curvature of space and time. That’s step two of three huge steps. The next step, which was sort of the longest in coming, was quantum theory. And that’s where everything gets explosively controversial, because in many ways, we still really don’t understand what the lesson of quantum theory is. And let me mention one last thing, this sort of actually wasn’t noticed when it first happened, because it also took a long time. And that’s right after Einstein came up with general relativity in 1915, he said, “Okay, I’m not done yet, I’ve got one more thing I want to do. I want to explain the history of our universe, I want to explain the large scale structure where, sort of, how it’s developed.” 

So 1917, Einstein comes up with the first rigorous model of physical cosmology, so sort of the origin of the universe. Oddly enough, his first model was a universe without origin, it was a universe that was infinitely old. And that in the next 20 years got undermined, so that we, you know, over that process, we got the current Big Bang model of cosmology. So all of this stuff is within the past 100 years. So it’s an absolute revolution in our knowledge of the nature of physical reality.

Pete  

So Einstein felt that there wasn’t really a beginning to the cosmos?

Hans  

Yeah. And people historians have conjectured about why did Einstein—So in one sense, Einstein really thought that wouldn’t make sense. So he was really concerned about there being stability of the sort of structure of the universe. He wasn’t a dynamical thinker, he thought, the way things are now should be the way they always weren’t. So some historians have wondered, was that almost a quasi-religious thing that Einstein thought in sort of eternal nature of the universe? And it was actually, so I would say, my own sense is, I don’t know that Einstein was that philosophical, I think that’s the conclusion he arrived at. And I’m not sure he, even himself would have said, “I have very good reasons for this conclusion.” But I think it was the model that he thought made most sense with his general theory of relativity. What Einstein wasn’t aware of—and this is also an amazing experimental fact—is he wasn’t aware of the fact that we can see that the universe is expanding, so we can actually look, you know, with telescopes, and we see that stars are receding away from us. So there actually is change on the large scale of the universe.

Pete  

So we have Einstein telling us that time isn’t constant, that arrow of time isn’t constant. 

Hans  

Yeah.

Pete  

Gravity isn’t really a force? Maybe I’m overstating here—but it’s not really a force, but it’s due to bending this space time fabric?

Hans  

Yeah. 

Pete  

I’m a layperson. Feel free to talk down to me. [Chuckles]

Hans  

No, no, I think the thing is-

Pete  

I just love this stuff.

Hans  

Yeah, it’s a thing- And also, one thing I love about this, too, is—and this is why I do what I do is because—this stuff gets philosophical very quickly. 

Hans  

Like you say, you know, “Is gravity a force?” And actually the truth, I think, we’d say, “Well, yes and no.” [Laughs] So it’s like we revised, we figured out better what we meant by “force.” And so it is a force. It’s just, it’s sort of, it’s a force, it’s mediated by something local. And that’s where the debate really takes off. Because there’s some people who think we’re talking about space and time is like a thing that has effects on physical objects. And there are others who are like, “No, no, you’re reading too much into the theory. It’s just a sort of description of this relationship between different physical objects.” So things get very philosophical very quickly.

Pete  

It’s hard to avoid that, yeah. And so you’ve mentioned quantum theory, of course, and that’s the big one. So could you—again, this is an unfair question to ask, because we want to get to the issues of faith and all that—but what did quantum theory do to upset everybody? 

Hans  

Yeah.

Pete  

Or some people.

Hans  

The crazy thing is—is Einstein himself…So actually, in one sense, Einstein is one of the fathers of quantum physics. He’s the guy who came up with what’s called the Light Quantum Hypothesis. So he said, “What if light is not a wave that actually comes in these little packets?” But then later, Einstein became deeply uncomfortable with quantum physics, because it looks like, on the face of it, quantum physics is the first physical theory to just say there are things that happen that don’t have any explanation or cause. They just are random. And this of course, for physicists who sort of, in general, that, you know, the physicists are the guys who explain stuff, right? They make sense of the universe. So for physicists to say “We’ve discovered that there’s stuff in the universe that we can’t explain, that doesn’t make sense, that’s random,” is a very hard thing for physicists to swallow. 

So there’s that on the one hand, and then in a way things get all the more intense in the past 50 years, because around 1963, there was this premonition that the early people in quantum physics had that something new is happening here with things that are far away from each other having—and this is where again, it gets very philosophical—either they affect each other somehow very rapidly, or they have some sort of like, affinity with each other, so they sort of know what each other is doing. And that became very sharp in 1963 with a physicist named John Bell who said, I’m going to explain what you would see if the world didn’t have sort of spooky, non-local stuff and that will give a prediction for what we’ll see in the laboratory and then we’ll go do the test. And Bell was right, that actually, the test shows that you can’t explain what we see in the laboratory with the sort of classical understanding of causation—happens just between things that sort of run into each other, things that are locally in contact. So now, in one sense, the big lesson of quantum physics seems to be a sort of non-local connectedness of things in the universe.

Pete  

You’re talking about entanglement…?

Hans  

That’s absolutely right. Yeah. 

Pete  

Could you take another minute or two and just explain that? 

Hans  

Yeah, yeah.

Pete  

Because this is one of these truly weird things that, to be honest with you, Hans, this is the thing that made me stop and realize, if I don’t understand the universe, my understanding of God is going to be affected as well.

Hans  

Yeah. So—and I liked the way you put that, because I actually think in a certain sense, this is a really wonderful thing about modern physics. I know I have colleagues who don’t agree with me on this at all, for sure. But I actually think that to find out about our ignorance, to find out that things are, that there is a deepness to the universe is a really wonderful thing for intellectual humility. And yeah, I think, again, with like theology—I’m no theologian—but the thing is, like, wow, if the physical universe is hard [Chuckles], what if we try to talk about, you know, something even bigger? 

So, but yeah, entanglement. Here’s the classic kind of example. So actually, in a sense, Einstein—once again with Einstein, he is often the guy who saw things before other people—in a sense, Einstein saw it already in 1935. He described an experiment, where he said, “Imagine we have two particles. And these particles, they are correlated in such a way that their distance is always the same.” So here’s what that means: You measure the one particle, and then if you measure the other one, it will always be the same distance. So you made the first particle, you may find it anywhere. Let’s just, sort of for simplicity, imagine, everything’s restricted to one dimension. 

So we’re really talking just about, you know, along a line. And assume this. So the one particle, we measure it, we find where it is on this line, the other one will always be say, let’s say one foot to the right. The strange thing is, the first particle, we find it all over the place. Some days, we find it way down the line to the left, some days, we find it way down the line to the right, but always the second one is just one foot away. It’s sort of like these things, it’s almost like they’re connected. But at this stage, right, so far, the fact is, it doesn’t make us to upset because we think, “Well, maybe the first thing the first particle is there, before we measure it, we just don’t know.” But then actually, Einstein pointed out, he said, “According to quantum theory, the same two particles can also have a perfect correlation in their velocity.” So in other words, whenever you measure how fast the one is traveling, the other one is traveling just as fast, say in the opposite direction. So they’re also perfectly correlated in their velocities. 

And then sort of the final blow is when you realize that according to quantum mechanics, if one thing has a precise position, it can’t have, I mean, it just can’t have a precise velocity. And that actually is an extension of the uncertainty principle. So the uncertainty principle, we’re told, if you measure the position of something, you can’t simultaneously measure its velocity or you disturb its velocity. But it actually is much worse than that. It’s that, the theory says, if it has a precise position, it just, its momentum is indeterminate. Its velocity is indeterminate. It’s just something- And the worst is the other way around. If something’s velocity is determinate, it doesn’t have a location at all, full stop. Which is mind boggling. But the strange thing about entanglement is you have these two things, in one sense, neither of them has a definite situation but their relation is nonetheless definite. So in other words, whatever happens to the one will happen to the other despite the fact that we would go wrong to say we know, I mean, we can’t know what the one particle of the pair, what it’s like.

Pete  

Just to clarify, this can’t be explained on the basis of, let’s say, conventional classical physics.

Hans  

Yeah. And that’s exactly the thing I was mentioning about John Bell, is John Bell said, if it could be explained by classical physics—and this was just absolutely brilliant—he said, “I’m going to describe an experiment, I’m going to tell you exactly the numbers you’ll get.” And he was right. Everybody agrees. He has a logically rigorous derivation. If classical physics can explain this, here’s the numbers you’ll get in the lab. And it took them about 20 years to actually test this very precisely, and they did and they got numbers that would not be possible according to classical physics.

Pete  

So for all intents and purposes, it’s been sufficiently scientifically demonstrated that this weird stuff happens on the quantum level? Okay. 

Hans  

Yeah. 

Pete  

So… Oh, well, so much for knowing what’s happening out there, right?

Hans  

Yeah, yeah. And I’ll say this, I mean, that’s why there are people with job descriptions like mine. So I do sort of philosophy and physics intertwined. And the thing is, there is a search, you know, there’s a search for intelligibility. And I think those of us who work in this area, we have various degrees of discomfort with what we know right now. And some people are sort of like, “Okay, look, we just have to admit, there’s just a part of reality, we’re never going to get a grip on, we just have to sort of come to terms with that.” And then there are other researchers who are like, you know, “We’re not… We haven’t tried hard enough. It’s not going to be just like classical physics. We know it’s not going to be, but it’s going to be more intelligible than what we know today.” And they’re working hard on that project.

Pete  

We needed another Einstein to come along, I guess. Right?

Hans  

Yeah. I think that’s sort of the feeling. It’s almost like- [Chuckles] Not to overexaggerate this. But I do think we’re sort of almost in like a prophetic period, right, where people are looking for the breakthrough to come in the future.

Pete  

Or maybe we’re waiting for a Hans Halvorson, too? 

Hans  

Pete  

Oh, right. 

Hans  

But actually, I am firmly committed career-wise, like I actually think conceptual thinking, pushing the boundaries of what we understand and what we don’t is why we need philosophers, and actually, I’ll say theologians, because I think that empirical science is very specialized. And I think for the most part, empirical scientists don’t get professional permission to think about the sort of harder philosophical questions.

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Pete  

Right, and sometimes they step into that, which is probably as annoying to some philosophers as when philosophers or theologians more often pontificate, right, on like, how quantum physics can’t be true. But they can’t do the math.

Hans  

Yeah, it’s true. And I’m grateful that I have met some intellectually humble scientists now. And the truth is, you know, honestly, our educational system is set up so that scientists often don’t get a chance to be exposed enough to philosophical thinking, and so on. And it’s not hostile on their part, it’s just they don’t know better. They don’t understand that, for example, it’s sort of commonplace among philosophers, like we all know, all of us who’ve been through the curriculum, that there’s this thing, the problem of induction from David Hume, that basically, inductive inference, you know, inferring from cases to a general law, can’t ground itself. Like it would be circular. And so we have no really good rational reason to believe that induction is true, it’s not sort of self-affirming. So in any case, this is something that most scientists just aren’t aware of and so I’ve heard many times over, scientists say things like, you know, “our method is based on induction.” And I think if they had been to a philosophy class, they would not make this assumption. So.

Pete  

Right. And that’s why I mean, this interdisciplinary process, I guess, that we have for us and seeing more conversations happening, perhaps, between scientists and philosophers, and I would say theologians also, insofar as theology can be a historical study. How people have processed these things in the past and… Yeah, I don’t think of theology as the higher science that has an immediate connection with God or something like that. It’s itself an academic discipline, as is Biblical studies, looking at historical criticism and how these texts were used. And I think those kinds of conversations—one reason why I really was excited to have you on here, Hans, is that that’s the conversation I know many people want to have, but they lack the vocabulary or the background to do it, because this is a huge undertaking. 

Hans  

That’s right. 

Pete  

So this is impossible for one person to really handle so to have these conversations is very important, I think.

Hans  

No, I completely agree and I think honestly, it’s a bit of a social dilemma that, in one sense, our universities are not addressing because, you know, we’re still feeding into traditional disciplinary channels, right? So we’re educating people to be physicists, there’re very few people, I mean, very few people who will plan to have a career in the humanities. But, you know, these are basically separate tracks. And so I completely agree, we should all be aware of this. I think it’s one of the biggest things is, we can’t be like thinkers were 300 years ago, when the body of knowledge was so much smaller than it is today. That is true. It’s just beyond human capability. So if we’re really going to make forward progress, it’s gonna have to be a conversation. 

And this is also I think, actually where like, you mentioned history, like I mean, there are people out there of course, who say, “Look, the humanities, philosophy, history, their day is over. It’s the day of the triumph of science,” and in general, people who say this are people who don’t know history, [Chuckling] because, you know, they’ll see that actually, people have said these sorts of things before. You know, it’s like, we have to know our own history, even our own scientific history to know what to do next. And in any case, my sense is what to do next is to just to realize, a human thought, it’s an interdisciplinary thing in its nature and we’re all just going to have to get used to the fact that none of us knows everything.

Pete  

Because, not only has our body of knowledge increased considerably in the last 300 years, you said, but what has been discovered is unsettling. 

Hans  

Yeah.

Pete  

And I mean that in a neutral sense, like I don’t lose sleep over this. I’m more in awe and in wonder and curious about this. But it does unsettle questions like what is real? What do we mean by reality? All these things, and that’s—maybe we can get into this stuff now a little bit more of the religion based or philosophically based or theologically based stuff—but how do you understand how science can or should or doesn’t, or whatever coexist with an understanding of God? That’s a huge question. Forgive me for asking it that way.

Hans  

For me, it’s an ongoing journey. I mean, I sort of, I would say, I’ve like had stages. Let me just start by just saying like, in a sense, for me, this has been the driving question for me, sort of career long, in the sense of like, I always sort of felt there was this tension to be addressed. In one sense of, sort of super general tension between faith and reason. And then more specifically, this tension between faith and modern science as we know it. And I’ll just be honest, that I grew up in a sort of pretty strictly evangelical community, where the big issue was evolution and creation. And that, for me, was a very sensitive issue, a very upsetting, troubling issue as a child as a young person. How do I make sense of this? Which team do I join? Because it seemed like you had to join a team and there’s dangers on all sides, and so on. 

And then I would say, as I started to—so in one sense, why I got into philosophy of science was for this reason. I would say there’s been a lot of positive insight for me since then. First of all—actually I’ll start with saying, like, historically—so I’ve noticed that our contemporary crises, so to speak, our faith and reason crises, our science and faith crises, these are not new, these crises go back a long time. There are different things, different topics, different focus areas, I mean, you can go back to the Middle Ages, and there was the big debate about is the universe infinitely old or not? Then again, in the early modern period with physics, Newtonian physics, so it looks like a clockwork universe in which there couldn’t possibly be miracles, that was itself a big faith and science crisis. So these things sort of keep coming back and going…So that’s helped me a lot to sort of think, “Okay, I can relax, take our current situation with a grain of salt, and step back a little bit.” 

And then the other thing is, I’ve come more and more to appreciate…I’ll explain that there’s a little danger here, because one could accuse me of just engaging in a certain sort of retreat, and I’ll explain that. But so, I would say one thing that’s really helped me to see is, I think, the really important role for in one’s mind, the relationship between science and God is, I see a theological mindset being actually extremely important for motivations for doing science. I see this both historically, and I’m actually convinced, a bit philosophically. I mean, I just think that I don’t think there’s any in principle conflict between a very rich, theistic worldview and an incredibly deeply scientific attitude. Both in the sense of like wanting scientific rigor, and then the sort of characteristically empirical side of science, like, go out and discover, go out and find out, because I think that actually has good theological grounds. I think that’s a very theologically proper attitude we should have as human beings. 

So yes, there I was going to say some people might accuse me of sort of retreat is because I think I just, in many ways, I’m just agnostic about specific issues. So one thing that a lot of people want to know is like, what I think about quantum physics and theology, and they’ll be like, “don’t you think that quantum physics and the discovery that there’s this sort of randomness in nature,” and they want to know, “Do you think either that’s, like really good for theology? Like now we have room for freedom, or maybe room for God’s intervening?” Or vice versa: Is that really bad? Because now it’s like God doesn’t have control or something? Like how can that be a universe created by God? And I think in a certain sense I’ve become more agnostic, where I just think I just don’t know, I don’t know what to think. So I think in a way, on the one hand, I’ve become more robustly theist and thinking in a certain sense, I think science needs God as a sort of guiding principle. On the other hand, I’ve become kind of like, I don’t think the idea of reconciling in details, you know, “let’s look at a particular thing that’s happening in physics right now, let’s ask how that fits with our theology right now,” I just think, often what I’ve seen historically, is people get worked up about the details only to find out later, the details were different than they thought, so maybe it was not the best use of their time to get worked up about that.

Pete  

Right. Yeah, people do get worked up about this sort of thing, too. That’s for sure. So. Alright, let me ask this question, then. You’ve already suggested that, you know, God is worthwhile positing for scientific inquiry. Do you think God is necessary for the universe to have come about? 

Hans  

So um… [Huffs]

Pete  

You know, and feel free to be honest here. 

Hans  

No, no-

Hans  

I think I have, strangely enough, a sort of double opinion in the following sentence. So here’s the first thing is; I actually do think, I mean, I am sort of, like—Put it this way. In a metaphysical sense, I do think it’s true that I think God—and this is gonna sound awfully like Greek philosophical, not maybe Christian or biblical theological—but you know, God is a necessary being. There would be no universe without God. I also think in a metaphysical sense, there really is a sense in which the universe, creation, etc, you know, the beginning, is unintelligible without the notion of God. I do think that’s true. On the other hand—so what makes my view a little bit delicate and light on the other side is—I think it’s possible to be consistent, I think one can have a consistent set of beliefs… Now consistent in a looser sense than like, you know, I think ultimately, it doesn’t make sense. But I think just talking about logical consistency, I think somebody can have a consistent set of beliefs where there’s a universe and God doesn’t exist. 

And what I mean by that is, I don’t think some of the traditional arguments, like sort of simplistic arguments, like everything has a cause, the universe therefore has to have a cause. I don’t think those are convincing. I mean, I just think there’s always a way to dance around those. And so I’m not motivated to go to colleagues who are not, you know, don’t have theistic inclinations, and say, I’m going to catch you out, because I think they’re always going to have some special logic trick up their sleeves, where they’re going to maintain consistency, they’re always going to find a way to defend the internal workings of their system. And actually, in a way, it’s funny, because I grew up on this sort of stuff a little bit too and so I, you know, I remember being taught as a young person, sort of apologetic things. It’s like, you can have these sort of like clashing worldviews, right? Where in some sense, they’re internally consistent, then what do you do if you want to sort of convince somebody with a clashing worldview, that they ought to have a worldview like yours? And I think that’s just a dilemma in the sense of, I’m not going to be able to convince somebody who doesn’t have God in their picture that they need to have God in their picture, to have a consistent science of the early universe.

Pete  

I think a lot depends, too, on what we mean by God, which, you know-

Hans  

Oh, yeah, yeah-

Pete  

And it gets a little bit tricky, but…

Hans  

That’s a whole nother interesting thing, because it’s one thing—that’s a really great point, because I myself would find it far, then, from satisfactory just to do some long, long argument to end up with, there has to be some abstract creator. You know, I think that’s still infinitely far away from the biblical God. Right? So it’s like, to go from our universe to there needs to be some very, very powerful type creator, maybe even omnipotent is one thing. Why would we land at the Christian God, is a whole nother stretch. And that’s actually a point that the philosopher David Hume made a long time ago, Hume said, you know, “What’s this extra step that people take from a creator to the Creator, we, you know, call God from the Bible?”

Pete  

Right, a specific religious system, or religious tradition, rather than just a general theistic argument. Yeah, because those two things. I mean, it’s hard. How do you jump from one to the other? I think you’re probably leaving the world of philosophy, then, is my guess.

Hans  

Yeah, it’s true. It’s- I mean, there are philosophers who… So this is, it’s actually interesting. I think it’s largely a semantic question, in the sense that I’m not sure there’s a very sharp definition that everyone agrees on, sort of “What’s the domain of philosophy and what’s beyond?” There were people you know, who thought, like, “Here’s philosophy, here’s reason, and then there’s faith or something.” But it is, let me put it this way, there’s some thinkers who think, I can give you logically rigorous arguments that are going to take you all the way, not just to God, but beyond specific, you know, biblical truths to maybe like reliability of the Bible or something like that. And I think just methodologically, I mean, I think I’ve just been convinced by people I talked to that—that’s, you know, overall, not necessarily the best strategy to, [Chuckles] to approach these things with, is like, that’s just sort of statistically speaking, one of the rarest cases of somebody having true realization, so to speak. So.

Pete  

I think there’s a humility in feeling like you can’t push things too far. And maybe just living with some of the ambiguities and you know, if there’s ambiguity in the created order, as Christians sometimes say, maybe there’s ambiguity in the Creator as well, and we just have to learn to live with our human limitations. And I sleep better at night thinking that way, than feeling like I have to have a handle on it all. You know, I can’t find my car keys half the time, I’m not gonna be able to figure out the nature of the cosmos.

Hans  

Yeah, I know, you know, from my own background, I think it’s it’s good to be decisive but it feels to me like there often has been sort of messages sent in maybe evangelical Christian communities that like, pick your side and be very clear about it, you know, either you have a totally intelligible Christianity, like your system has worked out, you know, you know how God works, or just kick it away, right? If you can’t have that, because you’re gonna have to have total clarity on one side or the other. And I think for many of us who grew up these ways, or you know, we’re educated these ways, it’s like, it’s a really important and very difficult thing, to be able to accept gray areas and to say, like, it’s a little bit of intellectual humility. Now, I mean, I’m very well aware we, it’s a judgment of wisdom. Where do we say humility and where do we say boldness, right? Where do we say humility, and where we say, “And yet we stand” about something? That’s really difficult.

Pete  

Exactly. And that’s a good way to get yourself into a good bar fight with Christians I think.

Hans  

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Pete  

Given your background, and then your training in philosophy, and your knowledge of science, and of course, you intersect with theology personally, and maybe professionally as well. Boy, I hate this question when I get it. But I’m gonna ask you anyway, because I have you here. Talk about what you think God is.

Hans  

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, actually I

Pete  

-By the way, there’s no right answer. So, go ahead.

Hans  

Yeah, no, no. And I do think I’m getting a better answer and it’s actually a difficult answer for me, because it sounds like the kinds of things I would have thought are wishy-washy. But you know, I do think God is infinite love, is the first thing. And that’s hard for me, because it’s not philosophically clear. You know, it sort of like subtracts a bunch of other things that we think are crucial, you know, God is law-giver, or you know, God is creator, right? All those things. But I think for me, starting there is the really important part because of its effect on me, where I think the first thing I should do when I think of God, is I should think of what it means for me. My relationship to God. It’s not an abstract theoretical thing—it is that, but beyond that—what kind of meaning does should my life have. And there is where, I think that, first of all, this miracle that we’re created, but then the sort of second miracle that we are loved, despite everything- I mean, all of us who’ve ever done some serious introspection, knowing what kind of garbage is inside of us. [Chuckles] And knowing that God continues to love us, and I, that’s just such an incredible miracle that one can, every day, be humiliated by it, but also uplifted by it. So that’s been really, really important for me through sort of rough seas, so to speak, of doubts, of thinking, you know, the Christianity I grew up with, I don’t recognize it anymore, I don’t understand where I came from, where I should be going. So I think that, for me, is the important thing. And it also is something sort of my most trusted fellow travelers, who I speak to about these things, who I even trust more than myself to say what they think and this is the sort of things the directions they’ve led me in. And it feels like, despite the lack of understanding I have, it’s a direction I’m still willing to go.

Pete  

Right. So it is a journey, in that sense, and not a scientific conclusion or something like that, I guess. Yeah. So I have to ask you this, too. But I mean, I agree with you personally, you know, God is infinite love. That’s a great starting point, and how that works itself out, and how we live and how we choose to live, so it’s not simply an abstraction, but it’s something that’s very grounded. But the question everybody will ask and has been asking since the Babylonians, “Okay, why does bad stuff happen?” The God of infinite love, and yet we have a universe that has, death is all around us, you know, cosmologically things, you know, stars explode, and new ones form, and then life comes from that and for many people—and understandably—so it’s hard to reconcile a universe that is not just random, but has a lot of violence in it, as if that’s almost the way of it. So you’re a philosopher, and you get to solve that for us. [Chuckles]

Hans  

Yeah, yeah. And so the first thing I’ll say about this—no, I think, here’s the thing is—philosophers, throughout history, often they feel like their goal is to take the mysterious and make it intelligible, to take the mysterious and make it make sense. And here, I think, with this issue, the issue of evil and suffering. I think this is one place where philosophers, the first thing they should do before they begin any further discussion is to tell themselves, this problem must not be minimized. I mean, I think the worst thing we possibly can do as thinkers, as philosophers, is to come and tell people, “This problem kind of doesn’t really exist. Let me explain why. So I’m going to explain to you why this all actually makes sense.” Because that denies a reality that I just think should not be denied. I mean, I honestly think in a certain sense—and listen, these are hard words—I honestly think it would be a better thing for a person to run away from God, recognizing this horror in our world, then to deny the existence of it. Because I think if you deny the existence, you aren’t really… I mean, I do-

Pete  

Well, you’re not authentic.

Hans  

Yeah, I think you’re not being authentic- I think, let me put it this way is, if God exists, I think the very fact that this stuff is there, that the word is so horrible, is something God wants us to struggle with. And that- It’s a horrible thing to say, like I just think, “I don’t understand, I don’t understand,” but I just think we can’t deny it. So in my life, I’ve actually faced, relatively, compared to the world’s masses, and even people I know very closely, I’ve faced very little direct horror and suffering. I’ve had a couple cases where I really—as I think all of us have had—at least a couple cases where you just think this cannot be true that there’s a loving God, this just doesn’t fit. And obviously, you know, in those sorts of cases, all the philosopher stories ever aren’t- They do nothing for you in that sort of setting. 

So anyways, that’s just the preface to say it, I don’t really- I do—now to sort of become much more sort of sober and down to earth about it—I can’t remember who, I think a few different historical theologians have said this. And I know a few recent theologians and philosophers have sort of repeated this sort of idea of soul making. And that actually does resonate a lot with me, this sort of profoundly interesting thing that this sort of once again, miracle that God could create free creatures—and let’s take that really seriously, right?—God really could create creatures who are participants in the creative action and who are actually really becoming individuals through their lives. And I think, I don’t necessarily want to say suffering had to be there, evil had to be there, but let me put it this way, it’s definitely true, I think, that the wrestling with the suffering, the wrestling with the evil makes us more, right? The process makes us more. And you know, I hate to say like, you know, “Okay, my theory is God knew this, God knew that to make souls, there would have to be a bunch of suffering, and so on,” like that, that gets us in a very tough theoretical weeds. But I will say, I think that’s the best answer. I think the best answer is, the suffering is allowed to be there because it is so valuable to God that there be created souls who can be in relationship with each other and with him.

Pete  

Hans  

Yeah, so I would love it if I could just launch straight in and say, like, take courage to yourself, because the thing is, you know, actually, in a way, it is really good for you, right? It’s really good for your faith to put yourself into these sorts of tests and so on. And actually, I do think that’s all very true. And I actually think that I do believe that it’s very important for young people to not think…I think there’s a huge temptation to think the best way to live a life of deep faith and integrity is to do something professionally or whatever that’s very closely related to your faith, like, to go into ministry or something like that to be a missionary, stuff like that. And not to denigrate those at all. I mean, as they’re incredibly important callings. But I actually think that God has a lot of lessons for probably the majority of us in much different callings. And I think to work out our faith in those very specific callings is really what’s needed. So I mean, I myself, I’ve had a strange career, because I am not a scientist, per se, I do philosophy of science. I still think though, it actually was like a really, really great thing that happened that I ended up doing what I was doing, because some of the tests I’ve been exposed to have strengthened me—I actually do think, truth be told, my faith is much stronger now than it was when I was young. It’s changed in some ways, for sure. But I do think it’s much more robust. 

Pete  

It’s matured.

Hans  

Yeah, it’s matured. And I think the fact that I was sort of thrown out into deep waters in a context where I was a minority of my belief and so on, was really, really good for me to have to see it from these perspectives. That’s one thing. On the other hand, I did- The one thing I did want to say is, I do think for everybody to journey, and I think that it’s perfectly… We should be okay, also, with being afraid, so to speak, like with saying, you know, “Look, I’m nervous about what could happen to me,” and I think that’s a very fair thing. I mean, look, to give a down to earth example, and Soren Kierkegaard gives this kind of analogy—he was the master at the analogy of our relationship to God with relationships with other people. And he points out that you know, when, for example, you get in a long term romantic relationship, or even you know, you get married, you don’t know what that’s going to do to you. It’s a huge risk. I mean, because you don’t know who you’re going to become in your relationship with this other person. And I can testify as a guy who’s been married for over 25 years, like, that’s totally correct. Like, I mean, it’s really interesting, you never know where you’re gonna end up. 

And so I’d say the same thing here is like, life is full of really, really big risks, especially for young people as you shape your life. And I think what I would say is, first of all, have faith. Also have an open mind, because there’s a lot of myths and misinformation going on and I would say about science, especially. You know, unfortunately, we live in a culture where, in one sense, the majority of—there’s different statistics here—but in one sense, a majority of people in science don’t have faith of any sort and there’s a lot of very vocal people in science, who act as if, you know, well, this is like a choice, either or choice. It’s science or faith. And I’ll just say flat out, misinformation. I mean, it’s misinformation historically. It’s misinformation about the origins of science. And it’s misinformation—if I can speak, anecdotally—just in my experience, it’s like, you learn a lot about faith in scientific settings and you learn that actually, it’s much less in tension than you might have thought when, say, you’re a high school student. It’s just, science is much more cool and interesting when it gets more advanced. And that cool and interesting includes more gray areas. It’s not like, you know, “Oh, science shows that miracles are not impossible,” that just is- I mean, if you get into the real nitty gritty of science, it’s more like when you get to the nitty gritty of science, we don’t even know we’re talking anymore about like-

Pete  

That’s right [Laughs].

Hans  

Everything now has gotten really, really murky and mysterious and beautiful and interesting. So I’d say on the far side of it is a sort of beauty that these vistas that open up—and actually let me give one little shout out to a friend of mine, who showed some of this to me. And he has a book that came out recently, maybe a year ago,—Andrew Steane, who’s at Oxford University. He’s a physicist, very, very sincere Christian, a wonderful example to me. And he’s written some incredible things about his experience as a physicist at the cutting edge, and how it’s built his faith. And actually, he’s a guy who didn’t grow up Christian. So anyways, he is an example to me. And I’m just very grateful for the other examples I met, who told me, “Don’t be afraid, things work better on the other side.”

Pete  

Thank you so much for, first of all, those closing comments. Very, very helpful. And just for the time to talk with us about things that are… Well, we could go on forever talking about this stuff, but just fascinating and important. And just want to thank you very much for being with us.

Hans  

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Ad Break  

Jared  

And now for Quiet Time…

Pete  

…With Pete and Jared.

Jared  

Alright, so you’ve been thinking about this universe creation thing for a long time. And you wrote “Curveball,” most recently, where I think, maybe the most explicitly you’ve delved into, you know, physics, cosmology, universe stuff. So knowing all that you know about the Bible, after all these, you know, interviews and all this research for your books, what’s your own conjectures now? Definitive, world premiere exclusive. 

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

Pete’s view about the universe and it’s creation- 

Pete  

Well, you say, I’ve been thinking a lot about it. I think I’ve been trying to learn a lot about it. Right.

Pete  

Because this is just out of my area. But I just listened to what scientists told me to think. [Laughs] I don’t mind saying that either because what do I know?

Jared  

Jared  

Sheeple.

Pete  

Yeah, no, “sheep.” It’s such- No, I’m not a sheep for thinking that. The sheep are those who say they don’t, they’re told they don’t have to listen to what scientists say and then go on with it. So.

Jared  

But where are you now? What’s your conjecture? Where- If you had to be pinned down? What are your… What are you lean? 

Pete  

In terms of like, where the universe-

Jared  

The universe and the creation. Where did it come from?

Pete  

I don’t know. I haven’t the slightest idea. Honestly. It’s just, you know, we’ve gone back to 10 to the negative 45th seconds or something like that and we can’t get beyond that. So… And is there a multiverse? I don’t know. Like, that just pushes the problem back further. What are we talking about when we talk about God in the midst of all this? When there’s no space or time, what does it mean to think about God? We just don’t have categories for that stuff. So I think for me, I’m just happy leaving it alone and just being curious about it, but just not knowing. So I don’t have the most definitive thing that I feel I can say to myself, as I’m really not sure, I just know that this is very old and incomprehensible to me. Even without a multiverse. Even if we could figure out what happened at the moment of the Big Bang—or whatever we’re gonna call it—I still wouldn’t understand it. It would still be so far from my mind and my ability to comprehend it wouldn’t be… I could never wrap my head around that.

Jared  

It just struck me in a new way when you were talking that, for so much of my upbringing, if we could go back and see when the world was created, it would sort of solve all of our theological problems one way or the other. Right?

Pete  

Right.

Jared  

So I feel like the scientists of my upbringing-

Pete  

You mean just our planet, even. 

Jared  

Yeah, like-

Pete  

Let alone everywhere else.

Jared  

-Scientists in my upbringing would have been like, “Well, if we could see it, then that would definitively prove that there is no God, theologically there’s nothing there. We saw what happened.” 

Pete  

Right.

Jared  

“It was it was purely, you know, materialistic, causation,” or whatever. And then the other side would be like, “Well, if we could go back, we would see an Adam and Eve like, we will see the Genesis 1:1 activities happening,”

Pete  

Right. Mhmm.

Jared  

And that would define it. And it’s just it just struck me when you’re saying that—it had struck me in a new way—We don’t do that with anything else. 

Pete  

Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Jared  

There’s nothing else where God is excluded because of the things that go on in our world.

Jared  

Right and it just seems so focused on origins.

Pete  

Right, exactly right. Yeah. Because we’ve had this fight between the Bible and science.

Pete  

Right.

Jared  

That when we extrapolate it, I don’t know, the problem doesn’t seem so severe.

Pete  

Right. And to think, you know, if we could go back and see the materialistic origins, whichever way you want to put that, I’d say, “Well, yeah, that’s exactly what you see, materialistic origins.” The question then is, what’s the theological conversation between that, and the, quote, “existence of God?” Which is a term that I have some still difficulty with, like, what does it mean for God to exist? And all that kind of stuff but-

Jared  

Right, right. 

Pete  

You know, so I think that brings us to, I think, humility. [Scoffs] You know, dare I say that? That seems like a throwaway line. But it’s not, we just don’t know. 

Jared  

Right.

Pete  

You know, we don’t know how things came to be really. We have a good idea about things. But we certainly don’t know or understand the relationship between God and the stuff that happened. You know? And the older view is a God is up there dictating or directing and—we’re conjecturing here—but that, to me seems to make… I just think that’s false. 

Jared  

Pete  

Even if the Bible talks like that in places, that—just from a scientific point of view—it’s hard to think that way. Right? So… So I don’t know, you know? But the thing is my belief in God has other struggles, but this isn’t really one of them. 

Jared  

Mhmm. Right.

Pete  

You know, this isn’t really one of them for me. It’s more like a place to respect the mystery at that point.

Jared  

Yeah. And when you know, you and Hans talked about this, this ignorance, the deepness to the universe, intellectual humility, and it struck me as I was listening, how much our culture—and I’m talking about it, and again, this sounds little, maybe, a little arrogant—but outside of the academy, just the basic popular level culture, still seems so tied to wanting to know the answers. 

Pete  

Yeah. 

Jared  

Because a lot of times, it was like.. I just hear this rhetoric on social media a lot where it’s sort of like, you question like, “I don’t know, science seems to say this,” and they’re like, “Oh, so you’re just gonna believe the scientists?” It’s like, “No, I’m saying I don’t know.”

Pete  

Jared  

And it’s like, there’s not a category for “I don’t know.” If you said, I don’t know, what you mean is “Oh, well you’ve just been bought- You bought into this.”

Pete  

Jared  

It’s like, no, there’s a- I don’t understand why, at the popular level, people don’t have a category for I don’t know. It just seems like, “Well, what do you mean, you don’t know?”

Pete  

Well, why do you think that? Why don’t they have a category?

Jared  

I’m not sure. I mean, I might-

Pete  

Do you mean Christians? Certain kinds of Christians? 

Jared  

No-

Pete  

You mean just people in general? 

Jared  

I think in general.

Pete  

Okay.

Jared  

I think we live in a world where that is a hard sell for people.

Pete  

Jared  

To just not know things. I think it’s easier for people to say, “I think I knew it. And then I learned better and now I know it.” I think that tends to be the progression. It’s like, we learn facts about Christopher Columbus in school. 

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

And we just go along knowing that quote, unquote, “knowing” it. And then maybe we read a, you know, another book by a person of color or a native person in our 20s and then we say, “Oh, well, I was wrong about that.”

Pete  

Yeah, right.

Jared  

“But now I know.” And so we just kind of replace knowledge for knowledge and it just don’t know if there’s a category in our popular, kind of, Zeitgeist for just perpetual not knowing. Like, I don’t know why I did- Why do I need to know? 

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

I just feel like there’s an assumption like, well, of course, we need to know. And like, I don’t know if that’s true for every-

Pete  

Well, let me ask you—I mean, not to collapse everything into one category—but does this have anything to do with the “Making of the Modern Mindset?”

Jared  

That- Well, yeah, when you ask kind of, why I think it, I think it does go back to that.

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

I think there is- The water we swim in, has base assumptions about what it means to be a good human or a good citizen, 

Pete  

Mhmm, yeah.

Jared  

And it’s highly intellectualized. And I don’t mean that in the sense of, we’re all really smart. I mean it in a, we all are incentivized, culturally to know everything. And I just don’t know how valuable that is. Like, it’s gotten worse with social media and politics, where it’s like, you’re shamed for not knowing all the goings-on of this thing that happened. 

Pete  

Jared  

It’s like, why would I know that? I don’t… I don’t need to know that. 

Pete  

Yeah. Right.

Jared  

But there’s a shame of like, “Well, why wouldn’t-” Like… And there’s not a good argument, it’s just like a baseline assumption of, in the 21st century America, this is- Or in the West, I don’t know-

Pete  

Well, knowledge is power, I think, too.

Jared  

Yeah.

Pete  

It’s part of it. Right. 

Jared  

But there’s a sense of, we do need to know.

Pete  

Knowing is what we do. 

Jared  

Right. Knowing is who you are. 

Pete  

Yeah. Right. 

Jared  

And I feel like that it’s so deep, and that’s what this conversation reminded me of. I think it’s so deep, that even at a popular level, I think there are deep assumptions about who we are, our knowing selves. And if we don’t know, we are not anchored in our humanity.

Pete  

Again, not to throw terms around that might be buzzwords for some but that’s, to me that’s about respecting mystery again, and it’s not a throwaway line. It’s the nature of our place in the universe, I think, to respect mystery. Scientific discovery, too.

Jared  

Is there another way to talk about—I’ll say this, this is new for me—I don’t like the word mystery. 

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

I think it resonates with you and I respect that. Because clearly like, Richard Rohr, there’s a whole- 

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

A lot of people it resonates with but for some reason it doesn’t…

Pete  

Is like, “not knowing?” Is that like, a better thing? 

Jared  

Yeah, I think, I guess-

Pete  

The cloud of not knowing?

Jared  

I think mystery for me has a mysticism…

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

-Bent to it that I don’t, I’m not always real comfortable with.

Pete  

And what’s wrong with that, Jared?

Jared  

I don’t know.

Jared  

You’re such a modern mindset person.

Jared  

Now we’re going into my… This is therapy now.

Pete  

Your therapy team.

Jared  

Pete  

I’ve been in contact with them.

Jared  

Pete  

About your aversion for a straight- [Chuckling] No, I know what you’re saying. It can sound like there’s a non-rigorousness to mystery, to saying mystery. I understand that. Yeah.

Jared  

So, what do you do with the people—Maybe this is a good way to end because I think people who are getting to that place of accepting mystery or not knowing. I feel like what can be lobbed at them is this; you’re just getting intellectually lazy, that you’re just giving up on it. There’s more to learn and more to decide on and you’re just kind of opting out of the process?

Pete  

I’d say, yeah, that’s fine. But I think when it comes to God, I think mystery has to be a word that connects with that right away. I mean, there are mysteries of the universe that can be solved, and the things that don’t make sense now, I think we’ll be eventually solved or understood better. Right. 

Jared  

In the natural world, you’re saying?

Pete  

In the natural world, just by scientists doing their thing. But when you move beyond that material investigation to the immaterial, it has to have that element of mystery in it. And I think recognizing that is actually not being intellectually lazy. I think thinking that everything has to succumb to our desire to know and the assumption that knowing is who we are? I think that’s intellectually lazy. 

Jared  

Mhmm.

Pete  

Thus endeth our TED Talk.

Pete  

That’s right. 

Pete  

Jared  

I mean, I hope it doesn’t feel repetitive for people because I feel like we… I feel like it’s a spiral conversation. Every time we have this conversation, I feel like it goes a layer deeper. 

Pete  

Jared  

For me kind of- I think there’s a… There’s an intuition for me about this, that I’m—even in this conversation—articulating better. This “knowing is who we are.”

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

That I think I’m growing more and more uncomfortable with. 

Pete  

Right.

Jared  

And in the world of Bible for Normal People and Faith for Normal People, I just see it a lot. Like we have a lot of Q&A’s and we have a lot of people that we talk to. 

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

And no matter how many times we say something, it still comes back to, “Yeah, but…”

Jared  

I get it, like a wink and a nod to the mystery, in the, yeah. But really, like what’s the answer? 

Pete  

Right.

Pete  

Yeah. Right. 

Jared  

And it’s like, no, that’s not a rhetorical device. 

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

It’s actually really important to what we’re talking about.

Pete  

Right. “Mystery’s fine, but just okay, but what’s the answer?” 

Jared  

Pete  

Right? Which-

Jared  

Do you get that sense that we get a lot of that?

Pete  

Yeah, all the time. Yeah, but I understand that, too. And I get it. But what does it mean to simply immerse yourself in the not knowing? Or what do I do? That’s life. You figure it out. Right, and you make decisions, but there’s a lot we just can’t know. You know? And the universe—getting back to our topic—the universe is screaming that at us, I think. I think it’s really screaming that at us. We just what? Heaven’s sake, what can we say?

Jared  

Yeah, well, the vastness and the complexity of the universe, I think, in the same way that meditation helps us move away from the fact that we are not just human doings-

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

We are human beings. 

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

Like, I think in our modern culture, we’re also addicted to doing. I think there’s a space for some practices that also help us move away from, that we are human thinking.

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

If we let it—the vastness of the universe—and understanding some of the science that is truly mind boggling, helps us get to that place.

Pete  

The thinking helps us realize that we’re not just thinkers. 

Jared  

Right.

Pete  

Right. That’s the irony of it. 

Jared  

Yeah. 

Pete  

It’s not like shutting off our brains. It’s, you know, a lot of the conclusions I’ve come to about mystery is because of working in, just Biblical Studies, which is a pretty narrow and concrete field, but it’s like, once you start thinking about God, it’s like… I don’t really know. And it’s, I didn’t come there because I’m lazy. I got there because I’m not.

Jared  

So there we go. We’ll end at-

Pete  

There we have it.

Jared  

Pete not being lazy. 

Pete  

Yes. Dagnabbit.

Jared  

Could’ve fooled us all. 

Outro  

Jared  

Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/give.      

Pete  

And, if you want to support us and want a community, classes, and other great resources, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/join.     

Jared  

And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode if you email us at info@TheBibleForNormalPeople.com

Outro  

Thanks for listening to Faith for Normal People! Don’t forget, you can also catch the latest episode of our other show, The Bible for Normal People, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People podcast team: Brittany Prescott, Savannah Locke, Natalie Weyand, Steven Henning, Tessa Stultz, Haley Warren, Nick Striegel, and Jessica Shao.