Language of God

In the last couple of decades, we have solved the question of whether there are other earth-like planets in the universe by finding evidence of billions of them. But while we don’t know whether there could be life on those planets—or what it would be like if there was—we can still explore the theological questions that might arise if we did find life. These questions might seem like they don’t have much relevance for us, but besides being fun to think about, they help us to refine the theology of things like the incarnation and what it means for us here on earth.

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Being a good neighbor in a wide and complicated world can be challenging. Emily Smith has attempted to share her scientific knowledge with the hopes that it can contribute to neighborliness and even help to identify those who are most in need of the caring that can come from medical help. 

Emily is known to many as the Friendly Neighbor Epidemiologist. Her work as an epidemiologist is to study how disease and illness affects populations, specifically those who don’t have access to many resources. In the episode, she talks about epidemiology and about the pushback that came from her attempts to share information during the COVID pandemic. And she talks about her new book, The Science of the Good Samaritan: Thinking Bigger About Loving Our Neighbors.

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Jessica Moerman’s scientific research has included the study of stalagmites in Bornean caves and digging up ancient lakes in Africa. Through this work, she and other paleoclimatologists—those who study the climate of the past—have started to piece together the puzzle of how earth’s climate has changed in the past, which helps us to understand how it could change in the future. For Jessica, science has always been a tool for ministry and for understanding God’s creation. That idea has led her to her current role as the CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Network where she is able to share her knowledge of science, her passion for ministry and the call to act to bring about a healthy future.

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Joanna Ng has worked on many projects which have been turned into tools we use everyday. In the episode she talks about the journey to become a Master Inventor and some of the highlights of her career and then discusses some of the risks that come from putting too much trust in computers and artificial intelligence.

Glossary of Terms:
Groundtruth: The information or data that acts as a reference point against which we can measure the performance of computer programs or algorithms.
Compiler: A special computer program that turns the code that programmers write into something a computer can understand and run. It's like a translator between humans and computers.
Parsing: Parsing in computer science is like grammar-checking a sentence. It looks at the code to make sure all the parts are in the right order and make sense together, so the computer can understand what to do.
Black box: A system or device where you can see what goes in and what comes out, but you don't know exactly how it works on the inside. 
Bootstrap: The initial push that gets a computer or program running so it can do more complicated tasks on its own. Just like you need that first push to start pedaling a bike, a computer needs a bootstrap to get going.

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Sy Montgomery has been writing about animals for over 30 years and has befriended many fascinating creatures in those years. Both turtles and octopuses, subjects of two of her books, are ancient relatives of ours, separated from humans by millions of years of evolution. That hasn’t stopped Sy from connecting with individuals of each of these species, learning something about their amazing and special capabilities but also finding a surprising commonality that allows for a deep connection. In the conversation Sy shares her love for all creatures and calls for us to reach into our limitless compassion to care for the creatures that make our world bright and beautiful. 

This conversation was recorded live in Grand Rapids, Michigan at the BioLogos Creation Care Summit on October 7th. 

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Janet Kellogg Ray is a Christian science educator and author. In the episode, she shares her personal journey of reconciling her faith with the science of evolution and discusses the challenges faced by Christians in accepting scientific evidence. She explores the connection between the denial of evolution, climate change, and COVID vaccines, highlighting the cultural and political factors that contribute to science denial within religious communities. Janet emphasizes the importance of science literacy and understanding the nature of science in order to build trust and engage in meaningful conversations about faith and science.

Learn more about Janet Kellogg Ray and see her books here.

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In our second ever BioLogos book club, we bring you a discussion on the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Our expert guests include Carol Bremer-Bennett, the Executive Director of World Renew; Rick Lindroth, a retired professor of ecology; and Debra Rienstra, a Professor of English. They discuss various themes from the book, including the importance of reciprocity and harmony in our relationship with the natural world, the dangers of consumerism and greed, and the need for a more inclusive and respectful language to describe non-human beings. They also explore the intersection of indigenous wisdom, science, and Christianity, and the potential for these perspectives to complement and enrich one another.

Download our discussion guide for Braiding Sweetgrass here.

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The question, what does it mean to be human, demands answers from many fields of study. Agustín Fuentes has looked to anthropology for answers to this question but the answers he has found speak to something that is bigger than science. He proposes that one of the things that make us human is our ability to believe. 

Fuentes teaches anthropology and primatology at Princeton University. His studies have brought him around the world, to cities and to remote jungles. He’s written several books, including his most recent, Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being, a book that came out of his Gifford Lectures. 

This episode was originally aired on December 17th, 2020. 

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As the host of his own podcast, No Small Endeavor, Lee C. Camp is well-practiced at conversations that explore what human flourishing could look like. In this conversation, he looks back to his own experiences in which doors were opened to him in his thinking about faith. He tells about his journey from preaching sermons against the theory of evolution to coming to understand that scientific knowledge about the world was not a threat to his faith, even when that knowledge presented new and challenging questions.

Check out Lee Camp's podcast, No Small Endeavor Including this episode about science and faith with Francis Collins

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For some technology offers humanity a path into perfection. For others it is the means of our downfall. Somewhere in between there is Joe Vukov. In the episode, Joe helps to explain the pitfalls of both extremes—on one side, the transhumanists (who embrace technology as a way to become more human) and on the other, the neoLuddites (who shun certain kinds of technology)—and begins to clear a path somewhere in the middle. 

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Original music in this episode is by Carp.

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