¶1Hello and welcome to Unbelievable where we're doing a special deep dive into the relationship between science and faith. I'm John Nelson and to help me tackle this topic, we've got two exceptional thinkers and scientists. Uh some of you will already be familiar with Sam McKe who's currently completing two PhDs, one in the history and philosophy of science and the other on cancer research. We're also joined by Simon Conway Morris who is ameritus professor at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of the Royal Society and one of the world's leading paleobiologists. It's an honor to be joined by you both on our ble.
¶2>> Thank you very much. Thank you. >> I was thinking before maybe we get into the science, I'd love to know a bit more about your sort of personal journey with faith. Maybe starting with you, Simon. Um did you grow up in a Christian household or what was your journey?
¶3Uh well my journey I'm afraid to tell you was exceptionally unremarkable. Uh my my mother uh as her father that is was a minister in Scotland. Um so there's some background there and then correspondingly my my father was brought up in London and he too had a Christian background. I think without simplifying things too much um we had a nominal upbringing but on the other hand especially towards the end of my father's life unfortunately he died far too young. Um, I think he returned pretty firmly to the fold if you like, but we never really talked about it in any great way.
¶4And so far as I have a a history or even even a journey, it was really increasing fascination with the areas. Um, mostly sparked, I think, in the early 20s and rather predictably through the agency of an otherwise obscure man in Oxford called CS Lewis and subsequently his colleagues, the so-called Inkings and the like. Um, but I'm not a philosopher. I'm not a theologian. I'm a scientist.
¶5Um, so my world picture is very much view on the way that one investigates evidence and I think that's true to some extent at least of CS Lewis. His persuasion was I think primary intellectual. I don't want to do the chuck a disservice and so too I think at a price myself. >> Fantastic. And how about Esam?
¶6What was your journey to faith? >> Well, it's sort of a bit like the tribe really. Um I I was raised in a very um Pentecostal charismatic setting and I uh but I lost all interest in faith sort of by my early teens. Um one doesn't like to be bullied for being different at school and I I just wanted to play football rather than go to church and that sort of thing. Um I came to faith in my later teens um and was very passionate about it.
¶7>> Very very committed and enthusiastic. went into youth youth ministry throughout my 20s and 30s. Had some bad experiences definitely didn't go to church for about a year. Um and I think at that stage sort of my mid to late 30s my heart had kind of left but my brain still thought it was true. Uh like like your good friend Alex Connor says you know one can't force themselves to believe but one also can't force oneself to not believe.
¶8Um and I ended up having an experience of God in the lab when I was at Cambridge as an undergrad. Um I went back to university much much later but um I had a very strange experience in the lab and it was very life-changing and put me back on the journey to faith. I mean faith changed shape a little bit but um it's was very satisfying and enriching coming back to it. So I've uh been been back uh fully with with my faith in this sort of new way for the last 60 years or so. >> So we have the sort of the intellectual defense at CS Lewis and then this sort of strange experience in the lab.
¶9Can you tell us a bit more about that lab experience? >> Oh it it's very difficult to put into words. I try I tried to describe it on an episode of the profile. Um but uh I was certainly not thinking about God. It was it was you the first first week of January back at back at uni and um we were looking at red and green algae and uh I was in the lab and uh I just yeah it's really hard to put into words.
¶10I just went up to my microscope. I looked down the microscope at this algae and I I had a a deeply profound spiritual experience >> for about 30 or 40 seconds. So, not um not really long, but definitely long enough for you to go, "This is happening. Is this real? Is this happening?
¶11Oh my gosh, it is happening." And um I I just kept looking down the microscope as this incredible feeling um surrounded me. It It was a physical experience. >> It wasn't a vision. Um and it it wasn't kind of distinctly Christian. And I wasn't having a a vision of Christ or hearing a voice from heaven or anything like that, but I just had a a really overpowering uh physical experience all over my my shoulders and and my head.
¶12And this what came with it was this pro profound sense that God knew who I was and that I wasn't forgotten. >> Um that was the deep impression that it left on me. So, I sort of after I realized that no one else in the room had had this experience and was just going about their business, making their observations and writing their things down, I swear to the bathroom and cried for about 15 minutes. And then I drove home different. I drove home different and I I wanted to go back to church and I wanted to um try and better understand, but I I it left me with a piece that I I hadn't had for years.
¶13M >> um and uh I I don't entirely know it was rational. I just know that it happened >> and I've been trying to sort of understand it since. But there was this deep profound sense that God knew who I was and that I mattered. >> Uh that was very powerful. >> So you've joined that long line of scientists going back maybe to Bla1 Pascal who have just been doing their scientific investigations but have also had a sort of profound experience of God.
¶14Yeah, that blaze Pascal I when I read that that really resonated with me. I had a sense of wow that looks a bit like what I know. >> Yeah. >> Um so yeah >> and Simon I'm interested in uh your fascination with the inklings you know that that literary circle that orbited Lewis and Tolken in Oxford. Um, how how did figures like Lewis help you to maybe reconcile tensions or or make make sense intellectually of your faith?
¶15>> I think first of all the point about Lewis is that um he's very well known and to some extent well respected. Um but it's sometimes forgotten what a formidable intellect he had himself. his ability in terms of literary uh understanding and his range of knowledge, his ability to communicate um was something which taught me a great deal about you know how important it is to get these ideas across in a fairly coherent fashion. Um beyond that I suppose my observations so far as they're worth anything is what fascinates me about the principal players of course there's a whole penumbra of associate including Lewis's brother of course uh was in their different ways they're all so different uh they they had close friendships which sometimes um ebbed a little bit but without reviewing all the all all the witnesses we have talking on one side who have had immense time Paul with regards to his books and this grasping of imaginative possibilities and I've been reading a great deal about Tolken in the last 5 years but it's the very first approximation why are they so popular those books how do they resonate with people so deeply why are they despised by a certain section of our community and I think cunningly or otherwise what he seems to do is invoke this world which you really believe exists and then when you learn a bit more about his life of course he was a firm Catholic for practically his whole life and that is actually shining through all over the place once you get your eye there. And then in another way Owen Barfield um who in a sense could have been an academic but I understand he had to go back to his father's law firm.
¶16is a depression. My name was short and he I think Lewis said was the cleverest of the inklings. He was a remarkable intellect. Absolutely. He has very interesting ideas about the origin of language and other things.
¶17And then beyond that as Charles Williams who in a certain sense was a bit of a late comer and he's the man who I think in in a way had the deepest theological imagination with his especially so-called theological shockers. Um and th those novels sort of show how the invisible worlds are much much closer to us than you might imagine and that in this particular way reality as we choose to look at it is much more porous than you might expect. Now none of those in themselves need to feed into a Christian perspective. I mean if you like they're broadly theistic but all of them were Christians. But Lewis of course as an expounder uh Tolken if you like as a witness and uh Williams as an enthusiast and Barfield as a thinker the four of them along with some of the other people sort of interacted in a way which was very very remarkable and I can see why people find them so fascinating just I should also add to this that behind them in a different sort of way there's a very very long shadow of GK Chester.
¶18>> Yes. and chested in a certain way I think is a sort of you know the motor for all of this because of the because he's a prolific writer and and um everlasting man in particular uh orthodoxy and all the newspaper articles and so forth and he too is sort of almost unknown to many people but as soon as you read even the shortest of essays you think how sensible how wise I can imagine a lot of listeners looking at an experience like your um or maybe these the narratives and seeing you a lot of beauty, a lot of meaning within them and yet being confronted with the Bible and looking at the and particularly um in those early chapters of Genesis, finding a picture of the world that is completely at odds with modern science. Um, so I was wondering maybe starting with you Simon, how do you reconcile uh your work as um a science professor with a reading of those early chapters of Genesis? >> Well, with great respect, I wouldn't use the word reconciliation. You know that I'm I'm not uh if you like a concordist.
¶19I don't want to find sort of echoes or something which I think anticipates some scientific observation. And there's several reasons that first of all because science is always provisional >> and I have little doubt that the earth is round. The universe is very old and the fossil record tells us all about evolution. I see no reason that's going to change forever. But I keep an open mind.
¶20Uh correspondingly so far as the Genesis narratives are concerned in the little way that I do understand them they were written in a society which in many respects was completely alien. it for instance of nails. This is a society with a different climate, nothing to do with climate change, just a different climate, a different agriculture and also a environment where routinely cities were sacked and everybody in that city once it was overrun were either murdered or enslaved >> as not say these things happened to happen more recently. But you've got to put yourself in that sort of frame of reference whereby one looks around as I think the writers are doing saying well actually looking around the world's a pretty terrible place but there seems to be an underlying goodness about this >> and then of course as I understand the creation narrative which is well known in Genesis of course to some extent draws upon pre-existing narratives from from that era um and they are intriguingly similar but in most other respects although the senses sound a little bit the same is utterly different. So the writers in a Genesis narrative from what I understand have completely changed the story.
¶21>> But to then look at that as an anticipation of a scientific description of the history of the universe is a waste of time in my view because what we have in the genesis narratives is a set of poetic statements and in the same ways to the present day those sorts of world pictures underpin what we see as the meaning of the world. M. So that's a lens in my opinion to look at it. The science of course tells us nuts and bolts day facts. That's fine.
¶22What it does, it does very well. But it's not asking us to investigate it through those lenses. >> Sam, would you be in board agreement with that? >> Yes, it certainly would. >> Yeah.
¶23Um I'm of the opinion that there isn't any science in the Bible. Uh I I don't see why there would be. And there's certainly nothing in scripture that I look at and say, "Well, yeah, that looks just like a scientific article, scientific textbook or or something like that." And people who disagree with that tend to say, "Well, how about this? How about that?" But they're normally pointing to as in Genesis or in Psalms or in Job or when or in Isaiah, but say, "This is poetry. This is song.
¶24This is a prophetic uh book. Why would why would there be science there? >> Um it's not I I can't find anything in the Bible that I look at and say this is a scientific description of the world or intended to be so. >> Uh and I think if God was to put science in the Bible, it wouldn't be vague. It would be clear, it would be helpful, it would be practical, it would be better.
¶25Um, and so and and then you you factor in uh well I I couldn't say it better than Simon's just said it but um the the conditions and the purpose and the genre and the authors and the setting and and you say well no no there's no way this is science I I broadly most of the early church writers and the Jewish writers saw it that way too. So >> um young earth creationism and things like that seem to be a very modern invention. M yeah we were talking before we started recording about St. Augustine um who had real problems with sort of taking the early chapters of Genesis literally. I mean he says that uh the the the world is the sun and the moon are created on the fourth day but of course you need the sun and the moon to have days in the first place.
¶26So he was writing in the fourth fifth centuries and saying we can't possibly take this account strictly literally. But I wonder, do you think there is a danger posed to Christian theology and Christian witness by taking it literally? >> Yes. Yeah. I I'd say so definitely.
¶27Um I paraphrase here, but Augustine said is it's a very foolish it's it's a very shameful thing for um for a non-believer to hear a believer speaking ignorantly about the things of nature because if they won't hear you on the things of nature, they won't hear you on the resurrection of the dead. So if if someone hears you talking about how flat the earth is or um or you know the geocentricity of the universe, the solar system and and all those sorts of things, they're not then going to take you seriously. Well, this person doesn't know what they're talking about. Um I did a little study a couple of weeks ago on um the the first church fathers and and how they saw Genesis and understood it. And you know, Pho and Josephus on the Jewish front didn't take it in a young earth creationist manner.
¶28Oregon didn't. Jerome didn't Augustine did well he took aspects of it but um from what I've just said and from how he wrote on the little literal meaning of Genesis he wouldn't have taken it in that way and then you go through to Thomas Aquinas and others you think well no one saw it the way that the the modern creationists do for hundreds and hundreds and over a thousand years so why would I think differently yeah I think we've we've already alluded to the way in which some people will take it literally or try to find clues in the Bible um predicting science. I know that some people in the intelligent design movement would point to certain things in science to suggest that um maybe life had some kind of intelligent design. Um often they will point to an area in your research, Simon, which is the Cambrian explosion. I was wondering if you could unpack for us, you know, what is the Cambria explosion and can it be used in the way that intelligent design advocates use it?
¶29Well, the Camry explosion is just part and parcel of the study of evolution. Um, and uh, in a nutshell, and I should also confess that I've not worked on that area very closely for some years now. I've been diverted into other interests. Um, is an interval of Earth history roughly between let us say 600 million years ago to 500 million years ago. So, it's quite a long period of time any case.
¶30And it seems to mark the rise of animals. Um there are various little sort of twists and turns in a story. It's now pretty clear that before the skeletons become abundant which was the hallmark until quite recently of the cameras because of course the skeletons preserve things like trilobyes or bracket and we now know that there are soft body creatures which are exemplified in the Burgess shale and also deposits in Greenland and China and elsewhere and they enormously enrich our understanding of the diversification of life at that time. They're preceded uh after a period of probably major ice ages by the so-called edi foreigners. It now seems pretty clear that they although they look very puzzling are also animals and this is still ongoing work.
¶31But the trick is to understand what relationship exists between the Cambrian foreigners which we now know reasonably well and the editors which paradoxically effectively lack skeletons but are abundantly preserved in many many parts of the world. So the whole process is relatively protracted. In terms of Earth history, it's relatively short. After all, if life evolved, let us say 4 billion years ago, then this interval is a relatively short interval. But again, there are explanations which I'm not particularly offay with to suggest once a popular idea of changing oxygen levels that may still apply to some extent, but also the nature of the ocean chemistry has changed as well.
¶32And so quite possibly animals could have evolved at any time as long as ocean chemistry was in a propitious condition. And for a long period of time it wasn't. Therefore these animals don't evolve. When conditions become propicious then the animals start to evolve. You mention to to my distress uh intelligent design um and I would have no trouble with this at all.
¶33uh not least is that my understanding of the bird shale in particular is that there are a whole lot of very puzzling animals where I first first started working on this many years ago and since then with almost no exception they've fallen into a much more coherent framework of fogyny. So they appear to be very puzzling. They appear to be completely extinct and bizarre groups that almost everybody's come home if you like. And the story which applies to them applies to my understanding of the fossil record as a whole. So I have no difficulties whatsoever in seeing this as just another example of evolution.
¶34I mean evolution still has things to explain. Uh but then that would be very strange because it's called a science and science based on what we don't know and what we want to know >> rather than what we know which is in the textbooks and is great for the students but not much use to us. Sam, is there anything you on that issue of intelligent design only that this this is moving very very quickly? I think evolutionary biology is in quite a rich period right now. We we've just got a new museum of zoology at the University of Reading on on the ground floor of our health and life sciences building.
¶35They've got not only some wonderful um Cambrian fossils, but we've got we've got some really beautiful edi ones as well. And I don't see how anyone could look at that and say, "Well, there was no animal life until the Cambrian and everything just came along in a creation event sort of instantaneously." I was very hard position to defend. >> Simon, I suppose the picture that we're taught about evolution at school is often one that's sort of uh driven by random mutations and random processes. Um and so it's almost as if if you uh if we could sort of run the tape of life back, we would get a completely different uh uh set of results from evolution. And so it's it's it doesn't look in any way like a guided process.
¶36And I think that's the idea of evolution that many of us have. Um but I know your work has challenged that with a school of thoughts known as convergent evolution. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is? Uh well certainly evolution must have a random aspect about it because there's always chance events. Uh some of them may if we later get to that discussion involve things like the arrival of an asteroid which appears to radically redirect the course of evolution.
¶37Uh actually I would suggest that's not truly the case. But with regard to convergent evolution at one level it's entirely unexceptional. All it observes is that uh from different starting points in what we call the tree of life and if any of you are unfamiliar with the tree of life go to the origin go to the end of the book open up the one figure and there Darwin depicts a ever diversifying uh set of of organ he doesn't label them but set of organisms if we look at many examples of convergent evolution and although my favorite example would be the camera eye which we find has effectively evolved independently in the octopus which is a mollisk little related to things like the earthworm and ourselves which belongs to a rather different group which is more closely related to the starfish for example then we can be fairly sure that the common ancestor did possess an eye but it' be one of some simplicity though simplicity and evolution is a dangerous word even a simple eye is still very sophisticated but the camera eye is a remarkable uh object in as much as it focuses light precisely and so in octopus we And one solution, the retina is actually formed from infolding of the skin in the embryology. In our case, the retina is an outgrowth of the brain. And actually, this has rather important consequences both about the way the light is channeled to our retina through an overlying layer of cells.
¶38But if you put it at arms length, those two eyes look practically identical >> and have come to the same solution. But I could give examples of convergution from molecular biology. One of my favorite examples, hold on everybody, is carbonic and hydrates, which is one of the essential enzymes in in life. Everybody needs carbonic and hydrates. It must be there on the first story almost on the first day life evolved.
¶39>> And therefore, we should all have the same carbonic and hydrates. What it does is it sort of deals with the sequestration vice versa of carbon dioxide and water. And carbon dioxide is a currency for life, >> right? carbonic and hydrates has evolved independently at least three times possibly as many as eight times please don't ask me why it's evolved again and again I have some ideas and they don't need to detain too much and correspondingly one can find examples of convergence um in things like uh other sensory systems hearing is one good example or echolocation which is unfamiliar to us but is certainly the way bats and whales vanish >> and in that particular case there's actually an underpinning whereby there are set of genetic convergences associated with echolocation which have evolved independently in the bat and a whale for the very simple reason that's the way the world works. So convergent evolution is not rocket science, but it does suggest that the number of alternatives in the history of life is surprisingly restricted.
¶40And the way I like to look at it is to remind ourselves that in principle the number of of alternatives of biological organization is an extremely big number, absolutely immense. But it seems at least on this planet and perhaps by extrapolation to other planets that the total number of solutions is an infintestinous small fraction of those possibilities. And my own view would be that those alternatives although in theory they could exist and we could think about them we can use our scientific imagination to see what they might be like in the real world simply cannot exist. They're non-starters. They're impossible.
¶41And that might hint at some underlying levels of organization. And that may sound strange to a biologist, but so far as I understand here, if I'm a physicist, I'm totally relaxed by the fact that what I think I understand about particle physics is a incomplete and b in some unknown fashion draws on deeper levels of organization. >> So if that can apply there, that might apply to evolution. That doesn't mean that you've got to have any particular belief system. This is a scientific observation which is open to testing and it may turn out as often in the past the ideas which I think are exciting and um interesting may turn out to be wrong but I'm a scientist so we live in it.
¶42>> So is this a kind of upheaval of Darwinian evolution or is it a kind of adaptation of Darwinian evolution or a way of interpreting it? >> It it's it's really an extension I would say. I mean Darwin I think didn't have a particular interest in convergent evolution. This is a bit of an aside but um he had various critics and amongst the ones which most nettled him was a very interesting man called uh Singent Mart >> and in his book he draws attention to just this example I mentioned of the Camaray in the octopus and in the human um and MV was a very fascinating man. He converted to Catholicism was a fairly young man which didn't help his family history from what I recall.
¶43Um, and I think Darin was rather nettled by this because I think he was sort of slightly getting underneath Darwin's argument, but Darin should have been relaxed about this. But I think Darwin wanted to have isolation. He wanted things to be as separate as possible. He wanted as many islands as possible where each evolutionary experiment would go on independently of everywhere else. >> So he arrives in South America and is bowled over this diversity of forms which goes far beyond what he ever expected I think.
¶44Then he ends up in a Galapagosable place which is a pretty barren part of the world but there are these finches waiting for his investigation and the rest is history. I certainly don't regard this in any way as Darwin being wrong and not even incomplete. It's certainly another aspect of our understanding of evolution. >> And I'm wondering about the theological implications of this because I suppose if you read someone like St. Thomas Aquinus, it almost feels like, you know, animal life sort of distinctly has a sort of a type of a teology, a kind of purpose.
¶45And then I suppose the way we tend to think about this in the modern world is evolution comes along and removes the purpose. Maybe we can talk about, you know, the function of things, but we can no longer talk about the purpose of things. Um, is this convergent to evolution reintroducing the language of purpose um of uh teology of direction back into modern science? Do you say what a question I think I I with respect I I I wouldn't quite put it that way. um convergent evolution as I think I try to indicate merely suggests that there are deeper levels of organization in the world in the universe if you like and that's something scientists want to play with >> they want to try and identify those and that does not in itself imply any sort of teology >> um it's certainly the case if you look at animals one regards them as being purposeful >> in terms of their behavior uh but I think the way to try and approach it is to remind oneself what sort of metaphysics you want to deal with.
¶46I've just finished reading a book which is restoring the importance of Aristotle and causation. And that too leads pretty quickly not to Augustine so much but to Aquinus as you just mentioned and of of course Aquinus has this idea that we alone possess if I understand him correctly an intellectual soul which allows us to reason and it's another story perhaps for another time but one can show I think fairly convincing you that animals bless them are certainly capable of cognition consciousness but they don't reason neither do they speak for that matter so when one's trying to grasp the metaphysics of causations then you're invited in to a theological argument because Aristotle obviously was who Christian Aquinas was but Aquinus has this remarkable acuity of thinking of course Chester wrote one of the best books on Aquinus >> and that's even more astonishing but here's a man as a journalist and yet a number of people said that was the best book I've ever read on Aquinus so it's not a question that they're separate parts of the argument but Aquinus I think with respect would not have been concerned about scientific information as such he would have simply said if the world is wondrously formed then it's even more wondrous so we can understand it and that's what a scientist does >> so they're complimentary but if as Sam I think was indicating once trying to force these things together actually I think you end up impoverished both as a scientist because you're being painted into a corner as I've said elsewhere painted in a corner in a room you don't even want to occupy >> and correspondingly uh if you're interested in metaphysics and philosophy then you have to become familiar with that language and with respect to the majority societies. This is not familiar territory and there's nothing wrong with that. There's no need to be until you start to investigate some of the deeper questions of the world around us. >> Sam, as someone who's working in science but also, you know, has this background in the history and philosophy of science as well, what do you make of these kinds of findings?
¶47Do you think that uh convergent evolution is congruous with a theistic worldview or might even point towards a theistic worldview or should we just keep these as kind of non-over overlapping magisteria and they can't really speak to one another? Yeah, there's different sort of levels of explanation and the tendency to point at something in science to say there you go that's evidence for my god or my beliefs is it it's a temptation people jump like but I I would say it's people should be cautious on that. Um if people want to know more about this um Simon edited a really terrific book called the deep structure of biology >> which is very very got a lot of interesting reflections on it and and also Dr. Zach Ardensson um some very interesting lectures on this that you can find on on YouTube as well. It seems like there's something there uh which is interesting to prove around about.
¶48I think it's uh infinitely more enriching than the the sort of the classical way of looking at design or or or the um the way the intelligent design people look at it. Um why is nature somewhat constrained >> is a very interesting question for both worlds. M >> um I I think when I explain it to students that there's a sense of disappointment that X-Men will never happen, you know, actually evolution can't jump off in this direction and we'll suddenly be shooting lasers out of our eyes and and changing the weather with our mind and that's that sort of thing. But um but theologically and scientifically you can you can ask the why here. Why is nature this way?
¶49Um, one could even put maybe the label finetuning on it. Um, but but maybe don't. It's more a sense that uh nature seems to be constrained. Uh, it seems to occupy the same avenues of success uh when there is so much space that one could go to. And that's an interesting question that one can theologically reflect on.
¶50uh I wouldn't then leap on it and say here we go as evidence for my religious beliefs. >> I I wonder though do you do you think that it poses any challenge to a kind of uh materialistic uh worldview or could a materialist easily look at conversion evolution and say this works perfectly within my my system? Yeah, I I I I kind of don't like um materialism as a as a label there because um science is the study of the natural world and natural processes. >> Um I think when someone is is putting medical physical stuff into their uh their translation of science, science will raise the questions, but I'm studying the natural world. Yes.
¶51So I'm I'm not expecting to find a supernatural outcome. Um but um yes, conversion evolution can fit perfectly well with with an atheist picture of the world and it should because it's true. Um but um but I think the the idea that uh putting it in the way Simon put it in terms of replaying the tape that like there's no reason for us to be here. Well, it seems like actually we pro we or something like us would have ended up anyway is a reasonable conclusion. That's really interesting.
¶52I suppose a a challenge that a challenge that maybe the atheist might bring using evolution is the problem of animal suffering. Because if we have a an evolutionary process which gives rise to life, then we have hundreds of millions of years of animals suffering in that time which seems to be disorded with with a theistic picture of you know a loving all powerful god. Um, we're not going to solve the problem evil on this show, but I was just wondering, you know, how how both of you would would resolve that that tension with with your own uh theistic belief. >> Maybe we could start with you. >> Well, one level the problem is in my opinion simply intractable.
¶53>> Um, but I suppose there are many explanations given for it. Uh, I don't think any of them persuade people at large. CS Lewis talks about is I know other people Steven Clark a philosopher in Liverpool and others have addressed this question and I wouldn't dare suggest that suffering is somehow acceptable. Um the standard answer is that um if you are about to be bitten by a leopard it's very helpful to know that it hurts >> and therefore you get away from the leopard. Uh there are also arguments that actually what we associate with human pain is not necessarily reflected in all animals but that too is understandably controversial and so on and so forth and I also have good reason to believe that a number of people simply find belief impossible because of this perceived evil >> but it's a metaphysical question in the end and it goes wider than animal suffering although that's an important part of it but it's no accident I think it's fair to say that there's one or two exceptions Only humans identify animals as suffering.
¶54Animals cooperate undoubtedly and sometimes different species cooperate. A very famous example in the Red Sea between a grouper which the big open water fish and moray eels which live in the uh in the recesses of the coral and uh both want fish to eat and they communicate with each other completely different species >> and if the prey goes into the coral reef the moral gets it. If it goes out into the open water, there's the group awaiting swallow it. And those sorts of examples suggest that, you know, there are levels of understanding which anticipate what humans are doing. But I very much doubt that a grouper or the moral feel sorry for the fish which was eaten.
¶55Whereas we ourselves can put ourselves in that perspective and to the best of our ability what we regard as uh difficult and beyond that I really dare not go >> um but there's a broader Christian perspective which needn't delay us here >> but I think Augustine probably Aquinus also would take if you like a wider picture and what is seen from a current perspective is utterly into >> and so it is from our perspective need not be the final story. >> Sam is there anything that >> yes let me venture unprepared and unrehearsed into this and just see what happens. Um firstly talking about physical pain I cannot conceive of a universe without physical pain for the same reasons that Simon mentioned. Uh a stress response is vital to our survival. Uh plants have a stress response.
¶56Even single cells have a stress response. Um pain is very very important for your survival. Is very very important for your development. It's very very important on every level. To see physical pain purely as an evil is a is a mistake.
¶57it it's a mistake in how you see science as well as philosophically >> when I was um I without going into detail I had one of the worst years of my life 7 years ago uh and I I was in deep deep pain um mentally emotionally all of that and I had a wonderful Christian friend during that year who would meet up with me and talk with me and prayed for me and uh he he said something that stuck with me throughout that whole period which was remember with God nothing is wasted. Uh nothing is wasted and that stuck with me and it did make a difference throughout that journey. When I look out at the world the the world of nature um I see in evolution a sense that nothing is wasted. Um death becomes life. Uh nutrients you know everything serves a purpose.
¶58There's a recycling, there's a renewing, there's there's a a reuse. Death for one becomes life for another. A niche is never empty for a long period of time. Niches get filled in evolution. Uh if I was to venture a guess as to what God was like.
¶59Yes, you could have a look at the world and say there's lots and lots of pain. I don't like that. Therefore, there's either a malevolent God to quote my friend Steven Law, or there's um no God at all. God must be a monster. And it's not like Darwin didn't wrestle with this, you know, when he saw the ign and and and saw the the suffering of of creatures and in the new worlds he saw.
¶60But I could also look at the world and see that nothing is wasted. I can look and see that there is renewal. There is death becoming life. There's something akin to resurrection um in nature. And that makes sense to me that even suffering is in some sense redeemed in lots of ways.
¶61There is suffering that one can point to and say, "Well, that seems entirely pointless >> in the animal world." But we tend to find out that actually we're wrong on that those things more often than not. Uh it does seem like even pain and death and and the very worst excesses in nature end up being new avenues for life. M I suppose one of the challenges that some people uh some Christians might have with evolution is that it it almost seems to undermine human distinctiveness. I mean we have this belief that human beings are made in the image of God. Uh and yet it might seem to suggest that we are essentially developed apes.
¶62And I wonder I wonder how you think about human distinctiveness. You know if we don't necessarily have a literal uh Adam and Eve, what is what is the image of God? How do we how how are we as human beings distincted? >> Darwin um especially in the descent of man and hinted at more I think at least in the early editions of the origin which I'm a bit more familiar with um clearly understood that um we were descended from primates >> and I find that totally uncontroversial. At that time it appeared that our roots might be in Asia.
¶63Subsequently, uh they seem to be in Africa. But even that may yet be revised and that's the nature of science. It doesn't really matter. The fact of the matter is so far as our nearest relatives are concerned, they would include the rangutang slightly more distant, the gorilla and the chimpanzeee. And Darwin regarded the differences between himself sitting in his study in down house and the chimpanzeee in the African forest.
¶64Those differences as being one of degree, not kind. But Darwin was no philosopher. Uh he admitted that himself. Nor need he have been one >> even though he was trained as a theologian originally. And I'm increasingly struck by the question of human particularity.
¶65What is it which makes us so different from animals? And I think again rather than diving down some rabbit hole called intelligent design which I wouldn't recommend to anybody or invoking some sort of um uh ex cathedral explanation one again just reminds oneself how is the world around us actually constructed? Why apart from anything else do we understand anything? Why are we able to use logical processes? Why do we have mathematics?
¶66Why is it so powerful? the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics as Gene Vner in a famous essay once wrote. Why do we have music which is not really the same as animal music? Why have the language? Why do we have language?
¶67And I think in all those cases what one's been invited to consider is that the world itself is full of for one of a better word orthogonal realities. There are things which we can access which for one reason or another seem to be invisible to probably all animals. Although maybe there are rumors of it amongst the chimpanzees and the gorillas and possibly in a parallel way with the crows and the parrots. Um but the area of animal uh behavior has evolved very substantially and in a number of cases what look like knockdown experiments to suggest to suggest that crows for example had an understanding of cause and effect. This is a famous set of experiments whereby they are trained, they have to be trained, we can't tell them, to drop stones into a tube full of water to allow the water level to rise, thereby recover a piece of food.
¶68Once you make the experiments a bit more sophisticated such unseen connections, the sort of thing we would arrive at almost by intuition within a few minutes remain a total puzzle to that crow until it works it out by trial and error. So the crow is not using cause and effect. is not using rationality. It's perfectly good for what it needs to do. That's exactly the way the world works for nearly everybody and we use that sort of thinking most of the time.
¶69Real thinking as I know as an academic is hard work and if you can take a shortcut assuredly you will. But for some reason we have been invited into this new world of possibilities. And one talks about Margo day. But so far as we have language, so far as Christians choose to worship, so far as they choose to understand a God which makes all sorts of remarkable claims and promises, one can see that there is an association between these. But you could only approach that view from first of all opening your mind to the possibility of metaphysical realities which are so to speak invisible but so as much as science of course.
¶70Has anybody seen an electron recently? Not that I've heard of. We know what electrums can do. And perhaps in a sort of analogous way religion in a sense sort of has a power to it which for very many people has a way of enriching their lives. And the anthropologist would simply say, well, you know, that's rather sweet and no doubt it gives them some degree of comfort, but nobody's going to take this seriously, are they?
¶71>> And other people will say, well, we will take it seriously because we think actually it's true. >> But if we turn out to be misinformed, let us say to take perhaps an example which I don't I hope doesn't offend anybody. Let's imagine as according to the Christian tradition, uh there's the resurrection. And I think the historical evidence of that is actually quite good. But it's history and of course it depends on documents which were written some time ago.
¶72Let us say for the sake of argument this is a dangerous argument that a skeleton is found which quite clearly is is a victim of crucifixion. Such have been found and for various reasons been showed beyond reasonable doubt actually belongs to Jesus. >> Okay. So there was no resurrection. Well St.
¶73Paul is very firm on this. Then therefore you know you no longer take that as your belief. Yeah, >> you'd have to, I think, go back to the Jewish tradition and say, "We're still waiting for the Messiah." >> But for a non-Christian, all this will seem completely ridiculous. >> And that's absolutely fine. All one can say is this is the evidence as I see it, and that evidence is not ever going to be proved.
¶74But there are enough congruences in the stories and the implications for it and some other eyewitness accounts which to my point of view have a consistency but they don't depend in any sense on science >> in any useful sense at all. They are simply that people saw things which were deemed to be impossible yet they were persuaded >> and it seemed to me that's worth listening to at the very least. So I I wonder what when do you think that human beings might have developed a kind of spiritual sense? I mean you've you've highlighted a few of the ways in which humans are different from um other forms of animal life but you know what what is this sort of spirit when does the the spiritual sense come onto the landscape evolution from what you can tell? >> Well with respect I think your question is um not helpful.
¶75Uh, by which I mean that there wasn't a time one Thursday afternoon, >> yeah, >> when somebody emerges from their grass hut and says, "Goodness gracious, >> that sky is blue. I wonder why." I can tell you if you're interested. Um, I think it's a in its own way, it's a gradual process. But what seems to be happening from perhaps 500,000 years ago discussed there is a a dawning realization that people are people and that one can become an actor and one clue is the use of a red pigment known as ochre. Now ochre can be used for a whole lot of things including canning hides but it can also be used for body decoration.
¶76>> Now it is true that there are a number of animals which do use a sort of cosmetic. So again, that's not to say that animals aren't in some way decorating themselves. And it is true that animals sometimes can recognize themselves in mirrors, though actually that is almost exclusively an area involving animals which are brought up in human company. >> They're inculturated. In the wild, I believe you don't see a chimpanzeee looking in a pool in a jungle saying, "Oh, I'm a pretty ch.
¶77I'm a pretty chap." I feel so although the inherency of that sort of behavior might well be embedded deeper in evolution and that seems to be entirely what evolution as a whole shows in the case of ochre it's possible in some cases it was used as body decoration. So what one's doing is one is actually displaying to other people not in the way perhaps of a bower bird but one is becoming a sort of actor. you're taking on a different role and you can understand from the response of the person on the other side of the hut what you're trying to do >> and from that one has an ever growing sense of potentialities and of course the archaeological record is much less perfect than is sometimes made out but things which appear to be necklaces bodily ornamentation are appearing about 120,000 years ago tool use begins to become much more sophisticated a little bit later >> uh and fire already is in use and probably used for cooking which we sort of take for granted. So these things collectively although most of them are to deal with material survival also open these doors to the numinous in particular >> where they then discover that certain areas for some unbelievably strange reason somehow are precious somehow are areas of sanctuary and this is a very very familiar feeling to very many people. They may not have any religion at all, >> but they'll describe again and again how they were on that island in Greece in that part of Central Asia at that time in the Lake District where something happened where somehow they felt that things were different.
¶78>> The world became much, as they say, much thinner. >> Uh, and I'm very familiar with that sort of feeling. I've never had anything like the feeling or experience which Sam had, but that's a sort of clue to me uh that one is stepping on the edges of eternity. >> So in in terms of thinking about that that notion of the image of God, is this picture then not like you have you know uh you know a couple and they give they give birth to uh you know a son and he's made in the image of God and they weren't made in the image of God. It's this sort of gradual sort of leaning into this this sense of personhood which is which is what we're describing as the image of God.
¶79>> I think that's right. I have to be again quite careful what I say because I'm no expert on it. But >> is it not the case that in a certain way what we refer to as the Old Testament is very much in the same tradition >> in as much as there are inklings so to speak >> of promise there and they are either frustrated apparently permanently so or derailed >> or in particular cases history seems to have gone completely against them and yet in terms of the Christian tradition in Acts after the resurrection and you feel the excitement of the people writing that time because they suddenly go back like the the famous story about uh the the the meeting on the road to Emmas >> and suddenly it all becomes a lot clearer. >> Yeah. And one has to ask oneself how come these people were so dim that they didn't cotton on.
¶80But on the other hand, in fact, they weren't being dim at all. It very much the reverse. But their eyes were not open. >> And this is true about all things including science because sometimes a scientific fact is staring you in the face. But because your world picture is not orientated in that direction, you miss the evidence completely.
¶81>> Yeah. >> You just don't see it. And as soon as you do see it, then the next thing you know is you're teaching undergraduates and everybody says, "Oh, yeah, that's obvious. That's of course it's like how how could you fail to see this?" And in fairness to Darwin, although the straws in the wind were already there with Robert Chambers in particular, with Lamar in a different sort of way, um Darwin's genius was to bring this evidence together. So although Huxley famously said, "Well, how stupid of me not to have thought about it." I think that really is not a very fair comment.
¶82Huxley didn't have that sort of mind. M >> and Darwin did. So the discovery if you like is always there but is no guarantee that you'll go there. >> Yeah. Sam, I wondered if you had any sort of additional comments on this this whole topic of Adam and Eve in the image of God.
¶83Um I uh again as Simon said this is quite controversial but it it it appears that um some of the homminids particularly Neanderals and Tanishs were a lot more like us than we than some people would like to think. Um I I think when people take ancestry.com or we used to do 23 and me, they're often quite shocked at how much neanditol they have and they sort of think no that's not right. And the problem with this this whole talking about human distinctiveness is is what do we mean by distinct? If we mean sort of an arrogance of well other animals are kind of beneath us. They're they're not they're less special.
¶84I I don't think that's a very healthy way to think of things. I think um that God delights in creation like he delights in us. I I imagine God thinks more of chimpanzees than we ever do >> and that as we might take it in the Bible, they're made for his pleasure and his delight and an expression of the joy and delight of his heart. If we mean that we are made for relationship with God, well, I don't know what evolution would have to do with that. Why would evolution be a negative uh or or a problem for the idea that uh a relational god created us in particular for relationship with him?
¶85I don't see why evolution be a problem with that. Why does it need to be a click of the fingers instead? Um what I do like seeing is uh and the ochre um illustration is a very good one but the sense of what CS Lewis talked about as a reaching up that we see throughout all the cultures and the religions in the world. There seems to be this rudimentary spirituality latent within humans but also perhaps in other homminids as well which is this reaching up this this uh inside reaching up to whatever is there. the spirit reaching up >> um or what we would call the spirit.
¶86And the fact that Neanderls might have buried their dead, that they might have used artifacts, that there's very ancient cave art, that there's very ancient forms of art and expressiveness. To me, that's that's a potential pointer to this reaching up >> that's been within humans and homminids. And um I see that as kind of what what you might call the image of God or a a spiritual relationship rel relationship sort of aspect to humanity. And yes, we don't seem to see that in other creatures. And maybe that's our human distinctiveness, but if that's part of part of our reason for being here, um I don't think see how evolution would would be any problem um or or or issue with that.
¶87That's sort of an alien idea for me. >> Well, speaking of aliens, I know Simon that you are fascinated by this whole topic and I mean this this this idea of conversion to evolution. I wonder, you know, would it suggest that were we to find um life on other planets that actually those alien life forms might not be the way that they are often depicted in the movies, but would actually be much more similar to us in that sort of there are there are certain things that we might expect um in different places even maybe in different planets. Wondering may have asked. Uh I think convergence would in my opinion strongly suggest that the number of options being so limited what would happen on an earthlike planet light years away would be pretty similar to what happens here.
¶88Um I mean in part it's because the molecular biology is there an alternative to carbon almost certainly not. Is there an alternative DNA? Possibly not. But it on a more macroscopic scale, the way that one locomotes, if it's in terms of swimming, there only about three ways fish do it. In terms of walking, look at a cockroach crossing the floor.
¶89Shortly afterwards, your dog crosses the floor. Although the cockroach's got six legs, the dogs's got four legs. Basically, they walk in the same way. Both in terms of locomotion, but also in terms of the neurology of of signaling to tell the limbs how to work. M >> um but as ever I could be gloriously wrong.
¶90Um it may well be that the extraterrestrial biospheres are genuinely alien. >> We may find out the problem at the moment which may be solved tomorrow is that we have what people refer to as a firm paradox. That is that to date there are no signals. It's very early days in terms of detection of distant planets and the possibility that their atmospheres might give you some clue as to the presence of life. But also, there's no evidence in the fossil record, which is not, I think, quite as daft as it sounds.
¶91Why not? Let's go and have a look. As I've said elsewhere, there's a dinosaur track and beside it, blow me down, is a jeep. Well, no. That's not being found.
¶92Um, and of course, there are all sorts of explanations for it. Maybe we're a zoo. We're kept out of bounds. or maybe life is very difficult to evolve and maybe we blow ourselves up. Um, and what's so interesting about this is because it's a science, the the the whole area is pregnant with possibilities.
¶93>> And that's why it's exciting. That's the sort of thing you want to teach. just say, "Well, quite possibly, although most likely I won't be alive when this discovery is made, the vast majority of astronomers and biologists are confident that some evidence will become available within a few decades. I myself are much more skeptical, but on the other hand, I have been fairly contrarian for quite a long time. But it actually goes almost full circle because I think there probably are extraterrestrials of a sort but they are if you like concerned with the things which were identified by the inklings.
¶94In other words, there are other powers and forces in the world. Uh some benign, some most likely less benign. uh and they're not extraterrestrials in any common sense >> but they are the suggestion that actually there is a richness about the world itself that if you are a materialist uh will remain with respect forever invisible >> but if you come from other traditions these things either are possible and in certain cases people I know they're almost familiar >> they may be deluded a materious would say they are but on On the other hand, one meets enough people and indeed Sam referred to his own experience in a laboratory or might reference to places full of numinous power which to those people as witnesses are utterly convincing. >> You can't persuade anybody else. Why should you?
¶95>> But the person themselves is utterly convinced that something real has happened. >> Yeah. Do I mean do you think that the the possible presence of alien life raises the theological you know exciting theological possibilities or maybe even theological problems or do you think it's a kind of you know it's neutral theologically? I think it's neutral theologically uh for uh the principal reason that uh there's no reason to imagine that we really understand God at all to begin with and what he chooses to do is in his own good time and his own good way and if we're completely alone I can see a consistency there if the world around us is thickly populated with planets full of different sworn and light that seems to be more in keeping with the argument of fondantity Um I I simp I simply don't know. I try and keep an open mind about this.
¶96Um there are some very interesting science fiction about discovering planets where either there hasn't been a fall. I mean Perilandra by CS Lewis is perhaps more familiar but there a whole set of other uh ones. A sparrow is one such example. A case of conscience is another one where you have a planet which seems not to have experienced a fall in a way analogous to Perilandra. And I think I find that for the time being a much more rich and actually in a nice way entertaining way of considering the problem.
¶97>> Um but opinions divided. Some some people feel that actually this is another proof like the question of animal pain against God after all. You know are we going to have a resurrection on every planet? I don't see any reason why but who am I to say? But again, the the possibilities of finding out something which will change our perspective in a good way, I think, is by far the most encouraging thing.
¶98>> Yeah. Sam, I mean, I know that you've been involved in a SpaceX project in the past. I mean, do you are you are you on the search for aliens? What do you what do you make of aliens both scientifically and theologically? >> Yeah, I I find it very exciting, the search for life and and the thought of the prospect.
¶99I'm I'm in complete agreement with Simon. I sort of see it as theologically neutral. I I I think if there are if there is life on other planets, I imagine the Christian God would delight in it in the same way he delights in all life on Earth. And >> um if you are a supreme creative being, then why wouldn't you take as much delight in creating as you do? >> Um so I I don't see any problem with it.
¶100I I'm aware that Billy Graham, you know, he he did an interview with David Frost and was asked what what question would you ask God when you die and appear in heaven? And he said that the first question was, "Is there life on other planets?" So, I I take some consolation that if Billy Graham can wonder like that, then then I can too. Um, no, I I find it exciting. I I'm very hopeful that um the continued search for life on Mars will will will give us more clues as to what the history of life might have been or could be elsewhere. But I don't I've never found it to be any sort of problem or challenge to my faith.
¶101Um I don't think that's a sort of a defined position. It's just I don't see why it would be. >> And I know you're both involved with Christians in science. I suppose as we draw this this conversation to a conclusion, um where are the sort of where are the exciting prospects and where do you how do you think that the the conversation between science and faith might be changing in a sort of more promising way in the future? Maybe we can start with you.
¶102>> Well, uh I'll pick one thing. Um as much as I am anything, I am a futurist. I'm a card carrying futurist. I'm uh I'm not dystopian about the future. I I'm a techno optimist, a science optimist, whatever you want to call it.
¶103Um I'm very excited to uh dream and imagine about what the world could be like as we continue to progress medicine, technology. Um and I I'm extremely hopeful about what the future could be. And I want to encourage young people to dream about how they can contribute to making the world an extraordinary place. I I see it as an a very Christian vocation to want to rid the world of disease, cure cancer, um make aging a bit less miserable for for people going through it, extend life, um rid the world of a lot of the the issues that have plagued humanity since its advent. and uh excited about colonizing other planets and extending humanity's reach across the solar system and beyond.
¶104And I um but that's not a very popular position for whatever reason among Christians. Christians tend to get locked into a very dystopian view of the future that's very apocalyptic >> where everything's going to get worse and worse and worse. But don't worry, one day it will all fade away and God will just make a new one. Um, I don't think that's a very good look or or very a very good position. So, in in terms of thinking about how Christianity and science intersect, I'm quite excited to sort of probe questions of the future a lot more.
¶105Uh, the the Royal Society when it was founded, of which Simon is a is a fellow and has been for for 30 years. Um, you know, that that room when the Royal Society was founded was full of Christians. It was full of religious people who were excited to see how this thing called science could um help your fellow man >> and what you could do with it. It it was about worship, but it was also about what what let's explore this. What can we do with it?
¶106And that early vision of the Royal Society I would love to see recaptured and renewed amongst Christians and have Christians getting excited about medicine and science. >> And Simon, how about you? What's what's exciting you in this conversation at the moment? >> Well, Sam in a sense wins hand sound uh as it should. Um I'm perhaps not as optimistic about that, but that's as I am.
¶107Um I I think that the only thing I I would observe is that for better I think there is an enormous thirst for these sorts of questions. Um and clearly if I say that then they think oh now it's going to start proitizing isn't it you know a child it's not that at all it's realizing that for a lot of people they are disillusioned undoubtedly they feel lost they are alienated and this goes back for more than a century at least and there isn't any magic formula here which will bring you back >> but if you invite people to consider what science can do And in many ways how interesting it is, but also that it doesn't do everything by any stretch of the imagination. >> And then you can inquire where you might find out there are avenues. And one would probably say, well, I think you should go and read some poetry. >> You should go for a very long walk by yourself and meet somebody you never expected to meet and have a conversation in the pub you never expected to have.
¶108You, dear boy, are going to listen to some music properly this time. not as oral wallpaper. And if you find that all of this suddenly gets under you in a way you didn't expect, >> then you will probably be slightly happier as a result. But there's no, this is not a pill. This is not some thing you take to get out of it.
¶109>> But it's simply an invitation. And I think the majority of religious believers of any shape would say you are always been invited to consider these things. You can turn yourself away. Uh, that's the risk, but you can accept. >> And I'm sure something you would recommend that we all do is read CS Lewis's sci-fi trilogy as well.
¶110>> I would. Yes. And so far as dystopia is concerned, which is the third of the one, that hideous strength, um, I think is more important than ever. >> I just finished that hideous strength. It's very relevant to this moment.
¶111Well, gentlemen, Professor Simon Conway Morris, soon to be Dr. Sam McKe. It's been such a rich and insightful conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today on Unbelievable. >> Thank you.
¶112>> Thank you, John. Thank you.