Language of God

As a sociologist, Brandon Vaidyanathan has been studying what scientists think about beauty. Some people might be surprised that scientists think much about beauty at all, but for many scientists, beauty is an important reason for why they do the work that they do. Brandon talks about his research and the different ways scientists understand beauty to be a part of understanding the world and also tells the story of his conversion to Christianity and how he found his way to sociology. 

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This Lent we’re reading reflections from Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing, by Gayle Boss. We’ll end with an interview with Gayle Boss in the last week of Lent. 

The reflections from Wild Hope are grouped into five different weeks, with four creatures in each week, through the season of Lent and four more during Holy Week. Week five is "the Hunted" and the story is about the hawksbill turtle.

Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing by Gayle Boss, illustrated by David G. Klein
Copyright 2020:  text by Gayle Boss, illustrations by David G. Klein
Used by permission of Paraclete Press www.paracletepress.com

In the debut of a new podcast Book Club feature we take on the novel Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi about a young PhD candidate in neuroscience struggling with questions about mental health, the problem of evil, and how to reconcile the evangelical faith she grew up with and her career in science. We asked three guests to join us to discuss the book. Lynette Strickland recently finished a PhD in biology, Rachel Wahlberg is a neuroscience graduate student herself, and Christina Bieber Lake is a literature professor. 

Join a conversation about this episode on the BioLogos Forum.

This Lent we’re reading reflections from Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing, by Gayle Boss. We’ll end with an interview with Gayle Boss in the last week of Lent. 

The reflections from Wild Hope are grouped into five different weeks, with four creatures in each week, through the season of Lent and four more during Holy Week. Week four is "the Poisoned" and the story is about the olm.

Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing by Gayle Boss, illustrated by David G. Klein
Copyright 2020:  text by Gayle Boss, illustrations by David G. Klein
Used by permission of Paraclete Press www.paracletepress.com

This Lent we’re reading reflections from Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing, by Gayle Boss. We’ll end with an interview with Gayle Boss in the last week of Lent. 

The reflections from Wild Hope are grouped into five different weeks, with four creatures in each week, through the season of Lent and four more during Holy Week. Week three is "the Homeless" and the story is about the North Atlantic right whale.

Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing by Gayle Boss, illustrated by David G. Klein
Copyright 2020:  text by Gayle Boss, illustrations by David G. Klein
Used by permission of Paraclete Press www.paracletepress.com

We have a lot to learn from Indigenous ways of thinking and knowledge about the world, particularly as it relates to the climate and environmental crisis and the place of humans in creation. And in learning about Indigenous knowledge we learn also that Christianity has played a role in the displacement of Indigenous People. Sarah Augustine shares the wisdom she has gained about how a Christian worldview can lead to a different kind of discipleship that both cares for the land and the people who rely on it. 

Learn more about the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery

Learn about Unraveling the International Law of Colonialism webinar on March 10th.

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This Lent we’re reading reflections from Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing, by Gayle Boss. We’ll end with an interview with Gayle Boss in the last week of Lent. 

The reflections from Wild Hope are grouped into five different weeks, with four creatures in each week, through the season of Lent and four more during Holy Week. Week two is "the Sick" and the story is about the Indiana bat.

Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing by Gayle Boss, illustrated by David G. Klein
Copyright 2020:  text by Gayle Boss, illustrations by David G. Klein
Used by permission of Paraclete Press www.paracletepress.com

We welcome our first non-human guest to the podcast, the language model ChatGPT. The chatbot joins us to answer questions about science and faith. ChatGPT draws on extensive digital information to answer the same kinds of questions we have been asking our human guests over the past few years. The results are…interesting. Jim and Colin reconvene afterward to talk about what to take from it all.

The voice of ChatGPT in this episode is given by Steven McClure.

A note about the role of AI in making this episode: staff (humans!) at BioLogos generated the text for this in part with GPT-3, OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model. Upon generating draft language, we reviewed, edited, and revised the language to our own liking and take ultimate responsibility for the content of this publication.

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This Lent we’re reading reflections from Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing, by Gayle Boss. We’ll end with an interview with Gayle Boss in the last week of Lent. 

The reflections from Wild Hope are grouped into five different weeks, with four creatures in each week, through the season of Lent and four more during Holy Week. Week one is "Tthe Hungry" and the story is about the red knot.

Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing by Gayle Boss, illustrated by David G. Klein
Copyright 2020:  text by Gayle Boss, illustrations by David G. Klein
Used by permission of Paraclete Press www.paracletepress.com

Jimmy Lin calls himself a scientific doxologist. The science part of that title describes his work to find cures and treatments for cancer and rare diseases and he talks about the real progress that has been made to that end. But for him, the science is merely his path toward doxology, the praise of God, and in this way, his work becomes a kind of hymn of praise. 

Join a conversation about this episode on the BioLogos Forum.