Down the Wormhole

Life, the Universe, and Everything with David Wilkinson

Episode 104
Today we welcome the Rev Dr David Wilkinson all the way from Durham, England. Dr Wilkinson is an ordained Methodist minister with PhDs in Systematic Theology and Theoretical Astrophysics. In addition to working for St John's College, he is the project director of “Equipping Christian Leadership in an Age of Science” which seeks to do exactly what the name implies. We talk about their surprising research into Christian leaders' attitudes towards science, how to think about biblical miracles, how to have constructive dialogue, and what happens when you put bishops in a room full of humanoid robots. This is an engaging, heartfelt, and inspiring conversation, and we're excited to bring it to you. 
 
ECLAS - https://www.eclasproject.org/
Reid, Lydia and Wilkinson, David. (2021.) ‘Building Enthusiasm and Overcoming Fear: Engaging with Christian Leaders in an Age of Science’, Zygon 56 (4). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14679744/2021/56/4
 
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produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
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Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
 
Zack Jackson 00:00
Hey there, Zack here. Before we get to today's episode, which is so good, by the way, I wanted to let you know that my wife, Nicole, and I just launched a new podcast called reimagining faith with the pastor's Jackson. I haven't really shared a whole lot about this on the podcast yet. But we both just quit our church jobs, and are in the process of planting a new faith community called Open Table United Church of Christ. At this new faith community were committed to being theologically progressive, locally minded with Jesus at the center. We're starting from scratch. And we are rethinking every part about what it means to be a community of faith in this particular moment in history. We are really excited about the ways that the Spirit is moving among our little team. And we wanted a way to share that with you all as well. Hence, the reimagining faith podcast, we'll be posting new episodes every week, delving into our particular convictions, telling stories, interviewing difference makers and giving you an inside peek into the messy and ridiculous process of planting a church that is not quite a church, but it's also kind of a church, but not really, you know, it'll probably make a lot more sense after you hear a few episodes of it. So why don't you just go ahead and subscribe. Just search for reimagining faith with the pastor's Jackson wherever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you want to help us expand to this work, you can support us at patreon.com/reimagining faith. And now, on to the podcast. You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. Our guest today is the current principal of St. John's College Durham and a professor in the Department of theology and religion. He has PhDs in both theoretical astrophysics and systematic theology, having served as both a Methodist minister and an academic professor. He's also the project director of equipping Christian leadership in an age of science, which is a project whose goals are near and dear to my heart. And I'm sure many of yours as well. It is my privilege to introduce the Reverend David Wilkinson. Welcome to the podcast. Thank
 
David Wilkinson 02:19
you, Zack, it's so lovely to be here. Lovely to talk to you.
 
Zack Jackson 02:24
Yes, I'm so glad that we were able to coordinate across the ocean, get our time zones correct and, and that you're able to be with us today I am fascinated by just the breadth of the work that you have done and that you are doing with the organizations that you're associated with. And so, again, it's an honor to have you here with us. So I mentioned in that that introduction, equipping Christian leadership in an age of science, or EC L A s do you do pronounce the acronym when when you're in a company,
 
David Wilkinson 03:01
about team pronounces it in class, and part of our team pronounces it at class. And we haven't come to agreement on what the correct pronunciation is. So I'm happy with the project.
 
Zack Jackson 03:15
Did any of you consider switching the acronym the words around so it would spell something like Eclair or something that well,
 
David Wilkinson 03:22
as you can see, remember and see from me, I'm very open to a close and as many as possible, probably too many for me. But, I mean, you know, sometimes theology and science is dominated by some of these acronyms. I think what we've been concerned about has been that sense of equipping Christian leadership. And about almost 10 years ago, my friend and colleague Tom McLeish, who's a theoretical physicist and a lay theologian, and I were speculating about what happened when senior Christian leaders, such as bishops, or leaders of other denominations, or leaders of parachurch organizations, those organizations that span different churches, were asked about science. And one of the things that we noticed was that senior church leaders often responded with fear, or negativity, or silence. And the problem with that is that then those who serve as Christian leaders under them, if they come from a scientific background, if your senior leader responds with fear or negativity or silence, then that doesn't really affirm what you're bringing to ministry, in terms of your interest or passion about science. And then that ripples down into congregations, where disciples who live out their lives with a vocation to be scientists, technologists are in Engineers, they're not affirmed in their vocation. And of course, that then ripples out to reinforce this very dominant model of relationship between science and religion, that conflict model of science and religion or independence, that the two have to be separated. And so we thought, Is there a project to be done where we can equip Christian leaders to engage with science with joy, with humility, with confidence with excitement? And that would have a ripple down effect throughout the church?
 
Zack Jackson 05:36
Yes, I mentioned I resonate with this. This is the this is the project that I'm working on for my doctrine ministry program right now, creating resources for pastors to engage, to equip them to have these conversations because it is just so important. So in what ways have since you started this program? How have you been able to start equipping leaders,
 
David Wilkinson 06:00
one of the things we first realized sack was the importance of personal relationships and conversations. And so we started with, with conferences, where we would invite a small group of senior leaders, intentionally inviting them to come here to Durham. And we would take them into science departments, where we introduce them to world class scientists. Now, sometimes, in this work, organizations will choose a scientist who happens to be a Christian. We didn't do that. We just went for world class scientists, whatever their religious backgrounds, and we threw the bishops into their labs. And we got these people to talk about their own science and their work. And it was just terrific from cosmology and simulating universes through to biology, genetics, we even had one wonderful incident where we took 30 bishops into one of our engineering labs here in Durham, where we have small robots, six of them, artificial intelligent robots, humanoid robots, and the bishops were kind of pressed against the wall. Worried about this, these little robots who are wandering round, and the robots went up to the bishops, and started to talk to them. And suddenly the bishops move towards the center of the room, as they started conversing with these robots. And I wish I'd had a video camera to show you. And in a sense, we start with with bishops who are a little worried about science. And slowly they move into the center. And part of that is talking to research students, and talking with professors, and actually seeing that these folk work in science, because they're passionate about finding out about the universe, or they're passionate about helping society and other people, that some of the the big, bad images of science are not quite true when you meet scientists themselves. And we brought into that conversation, then theologians into the conference, to help decode some of the issues of play within the interplay of science and theology. And so this bringing together of people to talk together, and what we found, was after the sessions, the bishops were thrilled to have encountered science. And the scientists were thrilled to encounter bishops, and other senior church leaders who took science seriously. And many of the scientists without any Christian commitment turned up at the bar later on in the conference, to talk more with the bishops. I think there's something really important about that kind of interaction of people, that learning not just about the science in the abstract, but science in terms of it being done by scientists. And then we thought to ourselves, Well, there's one or two other things that we really need to do about this. So we've had a research strand, where we've interviewed 1000, clergy and a number of bishops and senior church leaders about what they really think about science. That's been an important thing. And we might want to go on to some of those findings in a little bit. We've also followed the US in a program called Science for seminaries and working with church leaders are beginning of their ministries. And then we wanted to provide some model situations where people could see how a local congregation could use the scientists within their congregations to do something fruitful for the kingdom, either for the church or for the community. And we call that scientists in congregations. And that's a program that's been used in lots of different parts of the world. And then the final strand that we've done, which is peculiar to the UK, in the UK, the Church of England is the established church. It has a lot of political and media presence. There are bishops in the House of Lords, for example, scrutinizing legislation. And so we embedded a team member within the church of England's work in that area, to assist on some of the questions such as fracking, or AI, that are going through legislation to help Christian leaders give sensible voices within the public debate. So those are some of the things that we've been really excited by Zach.
 
Zack Jackson 11:07
Oh, wow. Yeah, that that sounds very exciting. I would, I would venture to say that most congregations have at least one professional scientist within it, whether they, they're open about that or not. But I'm curious about the ways that your program has, has used scientists within congregations, how are you using those those gifts of people?
 
David Wilkinson 11:32
I think, I think that's a really crucial question. And so let me give you some for instances of some of the projects that we've supported. So we've supported a project called Take your vicar into the lab, where a number of scientists in the congregation have said to their church leader, why don't you come into our workplace, and we'll tell you about what we do day by day. And again, we're talking about people with vocation, and a very different context to what happens in the church on a Sunday. One group of scientists have worked with a professional theatre group drama group, to write a play on artificial intelligence. And this play will, will tour the country, the 45 minute one act play, then there'll be a coffee break. And then into the venue will come a number of local scientists who work in the area of AI for a question answered on AI and religion and Christianity. Another group we've worked with, has produced some resources for something that we call messy science. Now, in the UK, there's a very strong program called Messy Church, which is a way of doing church, for families with young children. And that involves some crafts, and making things. And what we realized was that actually, there are a number of children who are much happier to blow things up in science experiments, to make craft activities. And so we've we've created a book called Messy science, which is scientific experiments that you can do and as part of Messy Church, or indeed, that you can do for an all the family or all age worship on a Sunday, which involves some of the fun of science. Why, for instance, you can take a beaker full of water, and just put a piece of paper at the bottom of it, turn it over, and the water doesn't fall out most of the time. And so these kinds of things is about using the gifts and the passion and the interests of scientists. And I think you're right, like I think virtually every congregation has scientists or teachers of science or technology or engineering within it. But what we're not good at doing is affirming those gifts. So some of the churches I go to, if a young person says the Lord has called me to seminary or Bible college, the congregation will say hallelujah, they will bring that young person to the front. They will so we're going to pray and lay hands on you. And here's a big envelope with money in it to support your expenses. But if a young person in that same congregation says, I'm going to go and study chemistry, I wonder whether that congregation also brings the young person to the front, lay hands on them and gives them a big envelope to help them with their expenses. And I think that's about out, saying science as a gift from God. And to be a scientist is as much a vocation as it is to be a pastor, or to be a missionary.
 
Zack Jackson 15:11
Wow. That is a that is profound. It's I don't think that any churches out there would affirm a child's choosing to become a scientist the way they would be so proud of our little, our little boy who's grown up to be a pastor, and we'd love to help you out in any way we can. But a scientist is essentially seeking out God in just empirical ways through the creation as opposed to
 
David Wilkinson 15:40
theology, Kepler, the great astronomer, once said that science is thinking God's thoughts after him. And what a wonderful way of looking at the universe and that guy became a Christian at the age of 17, just before going up to university to study physics. And early in my Christian life, I kind of realized that if if I say that Jesus is the Lord, then he is Lord of all, not just what I do on a Sunday, but what I do in terms of my interest in mathematics and astrophysics. And so what does it mean to be disciple within that area, as well as what I do in terms of lifestyle with money and relationships, and all the rest of it. And I think that's an area that the church hasn't been good at, in an area that we can work out and help Christian leaders to see science as gift. And the responsibility that that brings.
 
Zack Jackson 16:42
Yes, I wish that more churches had that kind of had that kind of understanding, you know, that that kind of heart and belief. But according to the research that you all have done. That was there was a paper that was published in zeigen, Journal of religion and science, recently, looking at the disconnect between religious leaders interest in science and their willingness to talk about it publicly. There were some very interesting findings in there, would you care to tell us a little bit about
 
David Wilkinson 17:17
Yes, absolutely. And some things that surprised us. We wanted to serve a clergy first of all, and we surveyed about 1000 of them from all different churches and backgrounds. And one of the most surprising things was how often they find themselves talking about science, or engaging with people about science in their ministry. Now, we didn't expect that to be the case. Although looking back on my own ministry, I was a pastor for a decade, in full time, work leading a church. I remember, it was in Liverpool, just off Penny Lane for those who remember the Beatles. And we used to run a luncheon club, where, on a Wednesday lunchtime, we would gather together some elderly folk and provide them with a fairly basic but nutritious and wholesome lunch. And I remember going to a lady who was very elderly, and left school at the age of 14. And I would normally wander around and say hello to people. And I sat down at her table. And she looked at me and said, Now then David, she said, What's this Stephen Hawking and quantum gravity all about? And what does this mean for God? Now, I think sometimes we underestimate the kinds of questions that people have. And so we found that clergy were often addressing questions about the environment, questions about genetics, questions about what does it mean to be human? These big questions, and yet, often, they felt a little bit of a lack of confidence in engaging with these questions. And I think that partly comes from this conflict model, which is so embedded within Western tradition, which you found in the New Atheists. So for Richard Dawkins and others, you now find in many stand up comedians, who also represent the conflict model. But I think sometimes it's also about those subtle messages from the church that has said, Beware of science. And they've often coupled science with images of the Tower of Babel with trying to replace God or atheism. So I think we found that I think we also found and this is, this is something which really fascinated me. And that is the Sometimes the how why distinction becomes a avoidance mechanism for deeper theological questions. What I mean by that, is that when we talk about science and theology, and I often do this myself, we can talk about science about the how, and theology about the why, when it comes to the origin of the universe, for example, my area of, of work and science and, you know, quantum gravity, and is the how of God doing it. Questions of purpose and meaning or value is why, and that's a useful first order distinction. But we found that many senior church leaders were using it as a way to avoid some of the deeper questions. So if you use the how wide distinction, you can perhaps avoid the question, well, how does God really work in the universe? How does God work in healing in miracles in prayer? How is God involved in the laws of physics or not? Now, those can be quite scary questions to folk. But they're important questions for many people. And then I think we I think the third thing that we found was sometimes this fear of certain ways that science has been used, protect, particularly when it comes to theories of evolution. So although there was an openness to assessing scientific theories, there was a sense of those who have used the post Darwinian controversies to argue against Christianity, and to use some scientific theories and evolution and sociobiology. Sometimes I used to argue that once you have a scientific understanding of something, it's nothing but that. So religion could be seen and the way that it's developed, and its socio biological, biological origin. But then that quick move to say, and that's all it is. That's the mistake. So those are some of the things that came out of the research.
 
Zack Jackson 22:23
So I hear the the one idea that science provides the nuts and bolts the understanding of how things work, and religion then gives it the meaning, right, I've heard the illustration that you can learn all you can about the molecular makeup of a chocolate cake, and you can know all about its compounds, but no part of the science can tell you that it's a birthday cake, I'm sorry, that that that then has to come from the meaning. And then I also hear you mentioning, sort of at the end there about the God of the gaps that God develops as a way of explaining the things that we don't understand and has a way of helping us to sleep at night. Giving us a sense of control over the crops, as it were or the movement of the stars and the future and helping us to be less afraid. And as science then explains all of those things, then God gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And that model is just created in such a way that it eliminates itself. It does. And both of those two ways of understanding God are so prevalent, and they both are so limiting. What how do you how do you navigate this world? How do you hold both your faith and your understanding of science in intention in tandem?
 
David Wilkinson 23:47
Yeah. And the sack you've put your finger on it? I think and it's a question that goes back to an old book written by Jeb Phillips, many years ago, which was a book with the title your God is too small. You see, the problem with with God of the Gaps is, as you rightly said, God is too small. And the God that I see in Jesus is not a God who hides in small gaps of scientific ignorance. This is the Lord of all, who is the one who sustains every physical process within the universe. So for me, God is the Creator and Sustainer of the laws of physics. That's the first thing to say. I think secondly, God is big enough that he can sometimes do unusual things, beyond his normal ways of working. And therefore, both as a scientist and a theologian, I'm open to miracle. I'm open to God doing unusual things because I think God is big enough to to go beyond his normal ways of working and special prayer. Within SOS special events, I think the third thing that really helps me to navigate some of this sack is going back to Jesus time and time again. I remember, as a young research student, I've been on a conference in the middle of the summer in the University of Brighton, and Sussex and England. And we were the only people in the university, a group of 40, astrophysics PhD students. And there was only one pub. And so every evening we'd all end up in the same pub. And I remember sitting down with a with a colleague, very, very bright astrophysicist, who within half an hour, had proved to me that God didn't exist. I mean, he just argued against with all the classic arguments against the existence of God. And I remember wandering back to, to the small bedroom I had, and and thinking, Well, you know, I've only been a Christian two or three years. This guy's convinced me that the intellectual argumentation means that God doesn't exist, what am I going to do? And it was that point that by, by my bed on the bedside table was a Bible. I just opened the Bible, and I read again, the Gospels, and I become a Christian, because I'd seen in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God Himself walk in the pages of history. And there are many questions that I don't have the answers to, there are many intellectual conundrums about the problem of evil, or about how does God actually work in the world, which I don't have easy, simplistic philosophical answers to. But what I see in Jesus is a God who becomes a human being and lives amongst us, in the space time history, a God who participates in the consequences of suffering and evil, he bears them as well as I do. A God who gives me hope, in terms of bodily resurrection, going beyond our normal accepted patterns of what's possible in the world. And a God who actually has a historical record in Palestine, that you and I can sit down and discuss, we might not come to similar conclusions about it. But the data is there for us to discuss it. And so my understanding of science and theology is never simply what we might call the old, big arguments for the existence of God, the design argument, or the First Cause Argument, if I'm authentically Christian, then I have to bring into the conversation. God who reveals Himself in Jesus. And that's been an important part of, of my journey in trying to navigate some of these difficult questions.
 
Zack Jackson 28:14
As a pastor for the past eight and a half years, I not only get questions, nearly weekly, from, especially from the conference, and these teenagers who are thinking through these things in school, but also the adults I, I feel questions from my colleagues almost constantly, who likewise have people asking these questions, and they do not feel equipped to answer them. And so they, they give them you know, shrug shoulders, and I'm sorry, this is just what I believe I'll try to find resources for you. And one of the things that comes up quite often is miracles, when it seemingly when God breaks the rules, yeah. Because even if somebody who values God and values science, they will often just find naturalistic explanations for things. I mean, famously, Thomas Jefferson cut out all of the references of, of miracles in his Bible, and it was much smaller at that point. You know, for example, that if we believe that Jesus in the wedding in Cana and the book of John turned water into wine, using natural processes, I mean, just the fusion of atoms would have created so much energy, it would have leveled all of the Middle East, you know, in a nuclear explosion, and clearly that did not happen. So, either there was a sort of social miracle in which Jesus inspired people to run out to the liquor store, or there is something else happening something super natural. You've done a little bit of work into into miracles and what happens in prayer and things like that. Do you have any insights that you could offer to As clergy out there,
 
David Wilkinson 30:01
well, I have some insights, whether they're useful or not is another question.
 
Zack Jackson 30:07
Oh, the story of my life, I'll put that on my tombstone.
 
David Wilkinson 30:11
I think the first thing to say is that I want to take the gospel writers seriously. And I think sometimes Western scholarship has been rather patronizing to the writers of the Gospel by saying that they simply have rewritten the stories of social miracles, in terms of supernatural miracles, you know, and so, even more extreme would be those who've written that Jesus walking on the waters was actually because he was on a sand bank at the time. Well, I mean, you know, fishermen would know where the sand banks would be, and things of that sort, I think, the Gospel writers are being authentic in terms of what they believed, and I want to take that seriously. And then secondly, there is a granularity about some of the gospel reports, which suggests to me that they aren't simply made up to express theological truth about Jesus. So for instance, you mentioned the wedding at Cana, one of the one of the extraordinary things about that miracle is that Jesus turned between 120 gallons, 280 gallons of water into wine. Now, that that's, that's not the kind of usual detail that you would expect, in terms of if you'd simply wanted a miracle of water into wine, there's something really quite extraordinary about that unexpected about it. And I think there are a number of the miracle stories which just have that ring of truth about them. Now, that's the biblical scholarship at one level, which I think is important for us to do. I think then, as a scientist, I want to come with a number of convictions. The first is that 20th century physics tells us that the universe is far more subtle, and subtle than we ever imagined it to be. We live with the legacy of Isaac Newton's clockwork universe, where the universe is picture herbal, and predictable. And so the transformation of God has rules which he can't break, is based on that clockwork universe. But in the 20th century, as you well know, quantum theory, and then chaotic or complex systems, like the weather, we discovered that actually, the universe is not as picture trouble or as predictable as that clockwork universe was. Now, I don't want to push that too far to say, well, this is where God works in quantum systems. But I do want to take seriously as John Polkinghorne used to say, these things remind us of the danger of the tyranny of model of common sense. Our everyday experience and common sense isn't a good guide to the way the universe actually is, or indeed how God might work in the universe. And then I think coming back to that sense of the God who created the laws, has agency to work in through and beyond the laws is a very important theological question. And that maintaining of some limited agency, for God to work means that, that I'm open to God work in unusual ways. Now, all of that is not to say that I don't think there's an interesting question, as a scientist about where the energy comes from. I want to ask that question. And as a scientist, I want to say, when people claim evidence for healing, or evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, what is that evidence? And let's have an honest and serious conversation about it. I think that's important. But I don't think that all of those things need to be talked about in the round. I don't think that one of these things rules out the possibility of miracles. And so I know that's a very long answer to a very succinct question. But I think sometimes we get ourselves fascinated with wanting to give one line answers to actually very difficult questions. And one of the real problems of miracle for me, is actually not besides The real problem of miracle for me is, if God can work by miracle, why can't he do it more often? And in more serious ways, you know, so the Christian who says, I drove to the supermarket, and it was raining, and there was no parking spaces. But I prayed to the Lord, and suddenly a parking space was there for me. Now, apparently, I want to say to that Christian sister or brother, well, wonderful. But, Lord, why provide a parking space when actually, you know for that particular sister or brother, they could have done with a little extra walk, compared to what's happening with COVID? Or what's happening in Ukraine? And that's the problem of evil. And sec, I don't have any real answer to that. That's one of the big questions that I have. For when I see the Lord face to face. But I'm not prepared to reject the biblical evidence or the scientific openness. Because I can't fully understand the problem of evil, but I want to take it seriously.
 
Zack Jackson 36:16
That is a fantastic point. I think our anyone out there who's a religious leader has probably heard that second argument far more, you know, you hear stories of healing, and then I prayed for my mother to be healed and she wasn't healed. And then, then you have, you know, is the problem, my fate? Did I not pray properly? Did does, am I not favored by God?
 
David Wilkinson 36:41
And that's profound, profound, isn't it and that, and what that means, and that's where, for me, the what I sometimes call the messiness of the Bible, is really important. Because, you know, we have instances within the Bible itself, when Paul, for example, prays three times, about this thorn in the flesh that he has, and he's not healed. When, when we have this unusual incident of when Jesus is called by Mary and Martha, that his friend Lazarus is sick. And Jesus didn't immediately go and heal Lazarus. There's indications in Mark's gospel of times when the whole town or village were brought for healing. And Mark says, many of them were healed, not all of them. Now, that for me actually embeds this problem, not just in our experience, but there is a mystery going on within scripture itself. And, and the thing with Scripture is, it doesn't always give us the answer. I mean, I would love it. If Paul had provided not yet another letter, but a chapter entitled frequently asked questions. been brilliant. The apostle Paul had had a chapter on frequently answered questions, asked questions. And, and one of them would be the problem of evil. But of course, Scripture works often in narratives, in telling of testimony of story. And it's not the place where we get easy answers and philosophical theology. But it's important that our philosophical theology takes those stories seriously.
 
Zack Jackson 38:42
I can't imagine Paul trying to succinctly answer any question. Yes, let's say this is the man who spoke for so long that a boy fell asleep and fell out a window. Which, by the way, you know, he was able to raise this child back from the dead, but couldn't cure his own problem. preacher once told me that Lazarus still died. Yes. And that that sticks with me anytime I think about miracles. So aside from that, aside from the miracles, what do you think it's important that religious leaders should understand and, and in terms of science, and how can they possibly keep up with all of the new research not being scientists themselves?
 
David Wilkinson 39:34
I think both of those questions are really important. So let me take the second one. First, I'll come back to the first one. I don't think this is about equipping Christian leaders in terms of knowledge of science. I think this is about changing attitudes. So that as new science comes about, new discoveries are made new questions arise. Most religious leaders can encounter it, not with fear. But with a sense of, first of all, that this doesn't undermine faith. And second, that they already have resources within their own congregations that can help them. And we've talked already about the role and the vocation of those who are lay Christians and scientists. This is a terrific resource that God has given to every church leader from, you know, teenagers who are fascinated with the questions of science through to those who are at cutting edge research level. And so part of I think the change in attitudes, is that the church leader begins to see that ministry in this area is not just about them. But it's about the body of Christ together, relating to some of these questions. But in order to access that the initial response to science has to be changed away from fear into a humble listening to what's going on. Now, I think, to come back to the to the first question, I think, then there are some big questions for the next decade. And I think one of the biggest questions, which you and I have talked about before, is the question of what it means to be human. You know, I think we've gone through some of the interest and some of the big questions about origins, Big Bang, evolution, those types of questions, Christians still have different views on them. And we'll still keep continuing talking about them. But the central question of what it means to be human, I think is going to be highlighted in lots of different ways. For example, will artificial intelligence become conscious at some stage? If we discover extraterrestrial intelligence? What does that mean for human beings? The mind brain relationship, as we know more about what the relationship between mind and brain is all about? What does that mean, to be human? And, you know, even the Human Genome Project, that if I share 67% of my genes with cauliflower, which you can probably tell by looking at me, then, where's the distinction and being human? Now, I think, in lots of different ways in medical science through to what the James Webb Telescope is going to produce. That question of what it means to be human, is a central question for culture, for society, and for theology. Now, I think the great thing about the Christian faith for me, is that actually the question what it means to be human is a central theological question. It's been explored by generations of theologians down the ages. And one of the fascinating things for me is that it's not defined in the Christian tradition, by what I'm made of. It's defined by who I'm related to. So for me, the question of what it means to be human is a gift from God, a gift of intimate relationship, a gift of responsibility, a gift of creativity. So that to be human is not undermined by better understandings of what I'm physically made of, or that there may be other forms of consciousness out there. But that actually, what defines me as unique as a human being, is that God loves me. And God wants to be in relationship with me. And that may not be exclusive. In her there may be other intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe, who knows. But I don't think that's a threat to that central understanding of what it means to be human, or the kind of the shorthand that we use as theologians been made in the image of God.
 
Zack Jackson 44:34
That's beautiful. I, I'm so fascinated by the relationality of the cosmos, that we identify ourselves as a human by our relationship to each other, but we see it down to the fundamental level that 91% of the mass of the nucleus of an atom comes not from the proton and the neutron but from the forces that are generated by their interaction, and everything down to the fundamental Fields up until the galaxy clusters only exist in relation to one another. And if I mean, obviously, I'm, I'm imposing some of the meaning that from being a relational primate primates into the, into the cosmos, but you almost can't help but see the, the, the brushstrokes of a relational creator, in the fact that everything only exists in relation to each other. I
 
David Wilkinson 45:34
think that's right. Second, I mean, let me let me confess to you and to the listeners, that when I was trained first, as a, as a physicist, I thought that physics was the only true science, that chemistry, chemistry was for people who couldn't do physics, biology was for people who couldn't do chemistry. And I won't tell you what I thought of sociology. Now, now, of course, I have repented of such things.
 
Zack Jackson 46:03
For example, other mathematicians out there, for exactly
 
David Wilkinson 46:07
the reason that you've said that when atoms get together in relationship to four molecules, then a new series and levels of reality occurs, which is called chemistry. When those molecules get together and form living beings, a new level of biology emerges. And when human beings get together, a new level, which can only be studied by sociology emerges. And that's that emergent relationality, which you've talked about. And that reminds me as a physicist, that the universe cannot be simply reduced to its constituent parts, you have got to understand its constituent parts, but you can only understand them fully, when you understand the relationality between them, which is exactly the point that you beautifully made.
 
Zack Jackson 47:05
Well, thank you, thank you for the relational work that you're doing. And for that, being at the heart of your mission, understanding that it's not enough to just simply give information to clergy and to scientists, but to build relationships of understanding and mutuality. And that's, that is certainly how we interact. So for all the work that you're doing, through the foundation, through your your writings, and through, you know, the work you do at the college, thank you for for your life's work you're doing, you're doing really important work. And as we kind of ended our time together. Is there anything else that you would like our listeners to know, to take away from this conversation? I've
 
David Wilkinson 47:50
I've enjoyed the conversation immensely. Of course, I think it's important to say one of the fascinating things for me, as always, anything that one is able to achieve as an individual is only as strong as the team that you work with. And one of the great things about the work that we've been doing here in the UK is a combination of collaborations and partnerships between different universities and the Church of England. And the quality of the colleagues that that I work with, who involve scientists, theologians, sociologists, historians. And that's a very important part of understanding science. Science doesn't exist in a pure scientific vacuum. It comes with history that comes with philosophy. Indeed, it's framed for me by theology. And so as we work together, across different disciplines, so our understanding of these things becomes much, much richer. And the problem of divorcing the church from science is partly the way that our culture has divorced arts and humanities, from science. And I think particularly in the UK, that's been the case. And so part of this is a bigger cultural issue, which is valuing all types of human knowledge and how we interact together and learn more as community together. But thank you, Zack, I've really enjoyed this. It's a delight. What a wonderful podcast you doing. And thanks for for the time this afternoon.
 
Zack Jackson 49:35
Absolutely, and if any of our listeners out there are interested in learning more, they can go to E c l a s project.org. There's will be a link in the description if you'd like to learn more about what the equipping Christian leadership in an age of science is doing. There's plenty of videos from your previous conference, there's articles, there are links of places to get involved and to learn more and to help help equip you to do this very important work out in the world. You can also listen to any one of the 100 or so episodes of the podcast previously. We've where we've talked about a lot of these issues more in depth. So, again, thank you, David, for being here. And I wish all the best in all of your future endeavors. 
 
David Wilkinson 50:20
Thank you very much.

Talking BioLogos with Jim Stump

Episode 103
We are so excited to welcome Dr James Stump to the podcast today. Jim is the Vice President of Programs at BioLogos and hosts the podcast, Language of God. He is a passionate speaker, author, and organizer in the field of science and religion. He has written multiple books on science and religion, and has the uncanny ability to bring disparate groups together for meaningful and respectful conversation.  We sat down for an hour to talk about the work that BioLogos does, what he's most excited about, and how to have productive conversations with people who disagree with each other. 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
 
Zack Jackson 00:04
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. Our guest today is the vice president of programs at BioLogos. And host of the podcast the language of God is a passionate speaker, author and organizer in the field of science and religion. He's also the author of four views of creation, evolution and intelligent design, science and Christianity in Introduction to the issues, how I changed my mind about evolution, and the Blackwell companion to science and Christianity. We are so excited to welcome Jim stump to the podcast today. Welcome.
 
Jim Stump 00:42
Thanks, Zack. Good to be here. Thank you, Ian.
 
Zack Jackson 00:44
Yeah. And thank you so much for taking this time out of your day. I know that there's so much going on right now with BioLogos. We were just talking before the podcast started about the conference that you have just a couple of days, which, unfortunately, by the time that this podcast airs will be over. So
 
Jim Stump 01:02
there will be virtual recordings available to see if you're interested in that sort of thing. Yeah.
 
Zack Jackson 01:08
Oh, excellent. That was gonna be my first question. So for the folks who did not register, because they are just hearing about it after the fact, they can go watch
 
Jim Stump 01:17
those. So I think the way it works is you can register for the online portion. And it's a pay what you can kind of thing, and those are going to be available for three months after after the conference. And then there may be free versions that that come out. Don't hold me to that. I'm not entirely sure about that. But I think that's the way it works.
 
Zack Jackson 01:40
Excellent, wonderful. So you heard it here. First, folks. Actually, you probably already here last point. So for those of our listeners who are not all that familiar with BioLogos, could you take a minute here and explain a little bit about what it is that you that you all
 
Jim Stump 01:57
sure the BioLogos elevator speech. We are a nonprofit organization, founded by Francis Collins, who was the leader of the Human Genome Project, and then became the director of the NIH is currently the President's science advisor. He wrote a book in 2006, called the language of God after which our podcast was named. And in it, he shared about how he is this world class scientist, he didn't call himself a world class scientist. He's too humble for that. But he is a world class scientist, and how he came to understand these scientific things about the world, but then also how as an adult, he came to faith in Christ, and tried to show how those two things fit together in his own life. And after the publication of that book, he got lots and lots of questions, emails, even letters at the time, from people asking follow up questions. And he quickly got overwhelmed with all of that and put together a group of people to write out answers to frequently asked questions and they put it on a podcast or sorry, they this is a podcast, they put it on a website and call it BioLogos. And that's how biologists got started, it was answers to frequently asked questions about primarily science and evolution at the time, just after that podcast, after that website went live was when he was tapped by President Obama to become the director of the NIH and had to separate himself from bio logo. So it became a little more organized and incorporated and started having things like conferences and doing a blog and writing some other books and those kinds of things. And so here we are, 12 years later, or so that we're now a staff of 1414 people. We have a speaker's bureau, we have this podcast, you mentioned the website is still kind of the main hub of what we do. We had over 2 million unique visitors to the website last year, lots of them interesting, interestingly enough, still landing on these pages of frequently asked questions that Milo has gotten started with. So somebody does a Google search on something related to human beings and Adam and Eve and evolution or these days, we also talked about climate change and vaccines and those kinds of topics as well. And I think it's fair to say we've become a pretty trusted organization within the Christian community for people who are trying to take their faith seriously, but also want to take the findings of contemporary science seriously.
 
Ian Binns 04:35
Yeah, yeah. So
 
Zack Jackson 04:36
you've been with them since 2013. Or so I
 
Jim Stump 04:39
started in 2013. Half time I was a philosophy professor and split my time between BioLogos and the college I was teaching at for a couple of years and then went full time starting in 2015.
 
Zack Jackson 04:55
But what about your trajectory of your life led you to that point to the place.
 
Jim Stump 05:00
So I did a PhD in philosophy and was always interested in science. My undergrad degree was in science education II and I would have had you as a professor somewhere along the, along the route. And my father was was trained originally as like a middle school science teacher, he eventually became, became an administrator. But I, and we grew up in a Christian family, a very conservative Midwest Christian community. And so I was always interested in these two things and was never really forced into the kinds of positions you hear lots of people from conservative Christian families were creation science or young earth creationism or something we I was never forced into those kinds of positions, and was always encouraged to investigate and ask questions and look at the natural world as a good place, and was always interested how that fit with the Christian commitments that I had. And so I did this undergrad degree in math and science education, thought I might become a high school or middle school math and science teacher. And then immediately after college, my wife and I went to Africa actually to teach in a mission school for a while. And there I started Reading, Reading books more seriously than I did as a math major and in college. And so it was primarily the 19th century fiction shelf in the library in this little school way out in the middle of, of the jungle, actually. And somewhere in that conjunction between the math and science analytical training I had and then Reading 19th century fiction like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Melville and some of these great ideas that came out somewhere in the conjunction of those two things out pop philosophy, and I'm not the first person I've heard to say that, that they were attracted to philosophy through literature, but came back from there and went to grad school and philosophy, wanted to do something related to science and religion in a philosophy PhD, but was said no, you can't really do that in this department. But you could do science and, and metaphysics science and philosophy more generally. So I did a I did a dissertation that was kind of historical in nature, the scientific revolution, how the advancing scientific theories interacted with, with the advancing philosophical theories of the time, and how these two disciplines interacted with each other, all with an eye toward how does this affect science and religion. And so then started teaching in a small Christian liberal arts school where you teach about everything and don't have too much time to research yourself. But I got a fellowship one year through the Templeton Foundation to go to Oxford, for to do some projects in science and religion. And that was where I was introduced more specifically to the academic discipline of science and religion and really liked it, and started doing some things there. In 2013, BioLogos had a new president who was from Grand Rapids, Michigan, the BioLogos offices were previously in San Diego, the the past president was a professor at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. But when Deb haarsma became president, she said, I'm in need to move the headquarters to where I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and only two of the staff wanted to move from San Diego to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Surprise, surprise. And so she put out a call looking for some new staff. And in particularly, she wanted somebody in philosophy and theology that could help to curate some of the resources for the website, and so on. So I responded to that saying, I am really interested in this and the work BioLogos is doing. And I think I could help in, in what you need, but I'm not ready to quit my full time, full professor tenured position to do that, can we work out some other deal? And to my surprise, she said, Yeah, let's do this. So for two years, by oligos, bought out part of my faculty contracts so that I could do each of them half time. And that was with the full, full permission of the administration from this little college where I was teaching and but then as word started getting out to some of the broader constituents in that community, it made them nervous that there was a faculty member, so closely aligned with BioLogos that accepts evolution, you know, so sort of long. We called it a dialogue started, but it was more of a one way monologue, I'm afraid and ended with some of the documents that faculty have to sign every year being changed. And it kind of forced me to say, I probably don't belong here anymore, and biogas wanted to hire me full time. So in 2015, I started working for them full time. That was a very long answer to your question of how I got here, but that's the know the nitty gritty like taste a lot of her.
 
Zack Jackson 09:57
I feel like a lot of our listeners can resonate With that, there's a lot of folks, especially those of us, who come from a more conservative background and more evangelical background, who we dip our toes into this world, we realize we're not alone in the people who really want to engage with science with integrity, and maintain our spirituality. And we discover this new and beautiful and exciting world that God has made. And there's a new life in us. And then we're met with a brick wall of opposition from the people who used to accept us where our identity used to be. And they've now changed, that'd be the fact that they changed their covenant that you could no longer sign in. Very similar thing happened to me in a church once, but is one of the things that I really appreciate about BioLogos of all of this sort of organizations that that are tackling these issues. You all seem to have the best inroads into the evangelical world, where there is, you know, historically, anyway, a lot of science denialism. What is it about about your organization that, that gives you this ability to speak, to speak science speak truth into a world. So full of denialism?
 
Jim Stump 11:17
That's kind of you to say that, and I wonder if one day somebody in the sociology department might write a write a big dissertation and do a big study related to science and religion organizations in the US because it's, it's a fascinating territory. BioLogos in its earlier days, so soon, after Francis Collins had to disassociate himself with the organization, there was one group of people that came in, and you can go, you can still find some of the the early articles that were written, more so you find when I travel, people who reacted in a certain way that wasn't very positive, I think there's a natural, I think there's a natural kind of progression for people that start to entertain these kinds of ideas. That leads them away. Part of what happens when you when you're trying to figure out how to reconcile evolution with Christian faith, and particularly with the Bible is your interpretation of Scripture, you start to realize has to be a little more nuanced, and, and not quite. So look, I just read this in the Bible, and therefore that's it. And we come to think that that wasn't a good way of interpreting scripture anyway. But what it does is it opens the doors for you to reconsider lots of other things, right, that you see, this is harder, this is messier than, then perhaps the community I came from had led me to believe. And I think there were some instances in those early days of BioLogos, where that was almost pushed down people's throats a little too harshly. And they felt like BioLogos was saying, Oh, you poor benighted evangelicals, let me help straighten you out. And let me you know, show you the truth. And you'll come to be just like we are, then that's that's maybe not a charitable way of interpreting that. But that's the kind of message I hear from people who were only acquainted with BioLogos in some of those early days, and then there was a very intentional decision for a kind of kinder, gentler approach, and the hiring of people that identified themselves as evangelicals, and we're still part of this world. And so I think we took on more of an aura of trying to reform from within rather than taking potshots from the outside, that's a little too simplistic and is perhaps a caricature of what was actually happening. But I think that's, that points to some of it that we have very intentionally tried to keep one foot in the evangelical world, even though you know the way the culture wars have bundled issues together. Science is on one side, and religion is on the other side, way too often. And we find ourselves in that No Man's Land out in the middle. But instead of just going with the flow of saying, well, then we're just going to become this progressive organization that sneers at evangelicals. You know, we've said no, we're, we're still part of this and many of these impulses we share. And so it's much more an issue of how do we articulate within, you know, the the framework that makes sense to that community? So I don't know it's a it's a really good question, and we are not a perfect organization and we misstep and stumble all the time, but It's a it's a one of our one of our values. I mean, our, in our founding documents, our values, say, rigorous science, Christ centered faith and gracious dialogue. So it's not I think too many people use the speak the truth in love verse as a weapon that gives themselves permission to club people over the heads with the truth as they know it now. And we're much more concerned about, you know, winning people through graciousness than just clubbing them with the truth.
 
Ian Binns 15:35
So I'm curious, I'd like that idea. You talk about the having the conversation, right, making it so that you can actually have a conversation? Which I really liked that how do you approach those who? I mean, I'm certain there are individuals or groups maybe who've started off maybe more antagonistic, or they've started off their conversation with you in an attacking type manner? How do you handle that? Or Or do you initially do? Do you know what I mean? More? I'm trying to get out here like it. People who maybe approach more with my way or the highway? I am correct. You were wrong. type of approach. What have you done in the past?
 
Jim Stump 16:20
Yeah. So thankfully, those people are the outliers. Actually. They're the ones that get the most press. They're the loudest voices out there. But it's not the norm. We commissioned a sociological survey origins a few years back, and it was really fascinating to see, yes, you can if you only ask the question, like, How old do you think the earth is? Or do you think human beings evolved? evangelicals? Still, the majority of them, say our, you know, young earth creationists or old earth creationist at least saying that there's no such thing as evolution. But when you dig a little deeper and ask, and how important is this to you? It's a really small percentage, it's like less than 10%, who pound their fist on the lectern and say, I'm a young earth creationist Darnit. And it has to be that way, or you're all going to hell or you know, that you hear those voices on the internet, particularly, but that's not the majority of people. And so there's a, there's a middle ground of people who are, you know, either don't really care that much about the issues, or they say, this is interesting, but it's not hugely important to me, and I'm not going to get into fights over it. So that's the first response to your question in is that it's not as many people doing that, as you might be led to believe, by if you only follow these issues on Twitter, right. But then there are those people and one of the things BioLogos has done is that we don't really do debates. I mean, that became that became part of the DNA, I'm afraid of evangelicalism and apologetics, to say we're gonna get up and, you know, have a debate and trot out all our fancy reasons and show people why, you know, we're really just as smart as you are actually smarter. Because we believe the truth. We've said, we're not doing that. We're happy to have conversations with people, but we vastly prefer those conversations to come out of relationship that has happened. So just as an example of that, reasons to believe is another science and faith organization out in California, founded by Hugh Ross, who is an astrophysicist, became a Christian later in his life and started this as an apologetics ministry. They're old earth creationists. So they accept the science of physics and geology that points toward the ancient age of the Earth in the universe, but they don't accept evolution. And we've had really good, interesting, productive talks with them. But it's only because we've spent a lot of time with them. And when I say spend a lot of time with them, it's not a lot of time on stages, talking in front of other people, or even doing this kind of thing on a podcast where you're having a conversation, but secretly, you're just trying to talk to your own audience, you know, preach to the choir, in some sense, we spent a lot of time with them behind closed doors out of the public eye just getting to know each other. So four or five representatives from our organization would get together with four or five representatives from their organization. And we'd talk about the common ground we have we talk about our differences. We'd also pray with each other and we'd hear each other's spiritual journey and stories and we'd eat a meal together. And so I often have said in response, in reaction to that and to these kinds of questions, that it's a lot harder to be snippy over the internet at people with whom you've prayed. People that you people that you have out with people that you know, their testimony, their stories, in when when you have that kind of a relationship, it's it's way harder to be uncharitable toward them. Where when it's people that you don't know anything about, you read a quote, or two, and you make all these assumptions about who they are and what they must be like, and you just go from there. So developing relationship has always been really important in the BioLogos approach to these things.
 
Ian Binns 20:30
Yeah, I like that, if you're talking about debates, you know, I've never found debates on these types of issues, worthwhile. And when I was faculty at LSU, for three years, from 2008, to 2011. And Louisiana, you know, at times has historically said trouble with teaching of evolution in schools and, and they still do, and I was testifying a lot down there against efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution, and also to undermine curriculum materials. And right before we moved back to North Carolina, I don't remember the name of the person. But someone reached out to me from a small group in Canada, wanting to set up a debate as a way to come after me. And I immediately turned it down. But I reached out to some of my mentors about it. And they just said, it's, it's not worth it. So you're, you're going the right way. But it was it was interesting to finally get on someone's radar that way. But again, I just saying it's not worth my time. So
 
Zack Jackson 21:30
there seems to be a fine line between a debate and a conversation. Right, and you are a podcast host? Do you find yourself in situations where things start turning into a debate over a conversation? And?
 
Jim Stump 21:49
Not very often, not very often. And I'm sure part of that comes through the selection of the people we have on the podcast to talk with. Most of them are people who agree with us to start with we we do consciously try to look over the course of a season or over a calendar year to make sure we're talking with people that are outside the tent, and outside the tent in different directions, whether that's they don't agree with us on science, or they don't agree with us about Christianity. And but those have those who have never, like gotten ugly or nasty or anything, so.
 
Zack Jackson 22:28
Okay. And so for those of you who are listening who are not familiar, Jim is the host of the the language of God podcast, which is saying before, one of the only regularly updating podcasts that tackles science and religion on a regular basis with any kind of intellectual integrity is how I think I would put it, but but I do regular Google searches because, well, you know, one of the reasons we started this podcast was because there wasn't a whole lot out there. And we were in conversation, the five of us and I, we realized there was not a whole lot of content out there. And there wasn't a whole lot of organization of people, everyone kind of felt like they were on their own. And so we wanted to create a community of people who, who at least were asking similar questions, if not on the same page. And you do that on a regular basis. So first of all, thank you for doing that. And I wonder if you might take a little, a little bit of time here and tell us a little bit about what is sort of the driving ethos behind your podcast and what you're trying to do with it?
 
Jim Stump 23:47
Yeah. One of the most frequently requested resources we had it BioLogos, in the middle teen years of the 21st century, was to have a podcast and we always replied with Yeah, that would be great. But we just don't think we have the resources to do it. Both the human resources as well as money we had known and that that answer was fairly, an uneducated, but we didn't, we didn't we just didn't know about podcasting. And I had a chance, depending on your theology, you might say providential conversation with a former student of mine, at a party one night, I asked him what he was doing. And he said, I started this new business, and I'm a consultant for podcasters. And I'm like, seriously, there is such that you can do that. And he said, Yeah, lots of people want and I said, What does it take to do a podcast? And we had this conversation for about an hour and at the end of that hour, I had the whole plan in mind to go back to the leadership at BioLogos and say, we need to do this. We can do this. It's not as complicated as I thought. It's doesn't take as much money as I thought. and using somebody like this, we can figure out how to do it well BioLogos we're, we're funded entirely through grants and donations, we don't sell anything. So our only revenue comes from those. And so anytime we have a new project, we ended up pitching it as a grant proposal, or we find a donor who's interested in that way, we really thought we needed to hire one more person than we then we had to be able to devote time to doing it. And so we ended up getting, we ended up getting a grant to start it to start it off. And to do that, you have to write up this big document saying this is what we want to do. And essentially, it was taking the academic conversations of science and religion that you guys know that that go on at all sorts of levels. But it doesn't often trickle down into the people in the pew. So this was a grant that was intentionally pitched to say, we want to bring the kinds of conversations that the scholars in our network are having regularly and to try to translate that for a general podcasting audience. For people that say, Yeah, I'm kind of interested in where humans came from. I'm interested in what the Bible has to say about this. And I'm interested in the latest scientific discoveries, but to take that and package it in a way that would that would be interesting for, for for those kinds of people. So it's designed very much to take the all the topics that BioLogos is is interested in and engaged in and to find the interesting people to talk to about that. My only qualifications as a podcasting host. Before starting this were that I was I was the announcer for the women's basketball team at the college where I was teaching for a number of years. And so I had practice speaking into a microphone in that regard. But I was something I thought I can I'd really like to do this, I think I can do this. And there was some skepticism going into it, whether this was really the right fit for me to be the podcast I was about, we started doing a few and people said, Yeah, I guess you can do that, that I guess, announcing three pointers translates Okay, and talking about science and faith, so, so now it's, it's like half of my job. It's and it's been one of the most enjoyable things that I've done. I really enjoyed having these kinds of conversations with with lots of people. So we just like you have recently hit the 100 episode mark, and have continued, continued on for we'll go for at least another couple of years. And we'll see what happens then.
 
Zack Jackson 27:42
Yeah, I only just realized that you all launched your podcast just about just a couple of months before we launched our podcast. Yeah, it was we must have lost at the same
 
Jim Stump 27:52
time, we must have sent the same need out there.
 
Zack Jackson 27:56
I think we probably did, it sounds like we sent the same need anyway, the the taking the from the the academy and bringing it back down to the people as it were. So in the past 100 and some odd episodes, what what are some of the things that you've learned that stand out to you?
 
Jim Stump 28:17
So, I mean, I think I've learned how to be a better podcast host than I was at the beginning. I've learned I mean, just through conversations with people, one of the things you see over and over again, is that what people believe is really deeply connected to who they are, where they live, the community that's around them, the ideas that we have aren't just floating around in, you know, some ether, that they're deeply connected to the people that we are to the communities that that we're part of. And that can be troubling to people sometimes if you think that leads you down this road of relativism of some sense, but I think instead it shows the embodied pneus of our faith, it shows that our faith can take on particular particular guises depending on where we are and who we're around. And that shouldn't be threatening, that should be an indication of the incarnational element of Christianity. Right. And so it's it always gives me I think, great hope to hear people different people's expression and articulation of their Christian faith dependent on the circumstances that they've found themselves in. And there are obviously commonalities through that. And different challenges. It's similar challenges that come out and are expressed in in similar ways but it it doesn't take away from the kind of uniqueness and embeddedness of of the faith in our in our lives as we find them. Use if
 
Ian Binns 29:59
Zach knows this. We've been friends for a long time night, I always bounce back and forth. And you were talking earlier. Jim, when you're talking about your journey, and you refer to a fellowship that you did, I think you said it was with Oxford maybe or something. Can you delve more into that a little bit? And what was that experience? Like? So what was it then? What was that experience for you?
 
Jim Stump 30:19
The John Templeton Foundation is the major funder of all things science and religion in, in this country and in several other countries. And they started a program designed for primarily for faculty at Christian colleges to get more engaged in the academic discipline of science and religion. And so this was, it was actually three summers in a row held at Oxford University. Wickliffe Hall is one of the colleges, one of the halls of, of Oxford University. So three summers in a row, I went over there for four weeks, each two of those summers, I even got to bring my family with me. And it was really transformative time. For me as a scholar and understanding deeper the the issues involved in science and religion. So we each had to pitch a project of some sort to work on throughout those times. And then there was a cohort of about 35 people who were there, and we got to know each other and became friends, and had these kinds of conversations a lot. And so I came back and started working and writing more seriously in the academic field of, of science and religion. And that's kind of what led me to BioLogos then, too, so yeah, and they've done so Templeton has done this several times with different cohorts. I was I was part of the second cohort. So it was see if I have my dates, right. 2003, four and five. Were the years that the summers that I was there, there was a three year program immediately before that, too. And since then, I think they've been doing just two year cohorts, but have had similar programs for quite a while. Yeah.
 
Ian Binns 32:01
That's because just for me, personally, that's something I'm interested in. And obviously I work at a secular institution, but of the fellowship that brought all of us together. Sinai's snaps as it was, was something that, you know, obviously was very powerful for me personally. And it led to the five of us becoming very good friends in this podcast. But it's something that I am more interested in trying to find other avenues just because, you know, as Zack mentioned, of the five of us, I'm the only one that's not as engaged, I guess you could say, within the religious community, as the others just because of my work. And as a science educator, which is not a bad thing. It's just something that I crave. So
 
Jim Stump 32:47
I think, when we have so when BioLogos has these conferences, like the one you mentioned, that's, that's coming up here this week, that's, that's what we hear most from the people who come and attend that they've been just craving fellowship around like minded people. Because for too many for too many people in their, in their religious communities, they find it challenging and difficult to talk openly about science. And for many scientists, then in their work situations, they find it difficult to talk openly about their faith commitments. And so again, we're kind of in that no man's land between those those two ideological camps. And so but there really are a lot of people out there like us that are interested in both of them. So it's, it's very, very nice to have a community of people that are involved in both.
 
Ian Binns 33:38
Well, and thankfully, my my church community, I'm an Episcopalian. And within my Episcopal Church, community, immediate community, at least it is very much welcomed. You know, I've taught several classes from my church, with my former Rector and my current Rector is a huge fan of our podcasts. And he actually was a high school biology teacher before he went to seminary. So it's an area that I get to talk about a lot, but you know, academically, you know, I get to do work on it and write about it. But you know, I do, I'm trying to get to know people in our religious studies program, for example, but also to to get to know people at different institutions around the country and seminaries and things like that as a way just to kind of collaborate more of science and religion centers as a way to collaborate more, because it's something that I find very fascinating, obviously, since we do this. Good. Yeah.
 
Zack Jackson 34:31
So you've, you've done a lot of work on with with BioLogos in the in building resources, right, with answering Frequently Asked Questions for for faith leaders for Christians, across the board. But what is it that within this, this fear this this, this world of science and religion, this relationship between the two that that just gets you jazzed? That That makes you excited that you could talk about for an hour.
 
Jim Stump 35:03
Yeah. So I got into this work primarily, because I'm teaching at this Christian College. And I started hearing more and more former students after I'd been there long enough former students, I'd start hearing that had left their faith, because they got out of the bubble that we were part of, and saw how science works in the real world. Maybe it was just watching the Discovery Channel, seeing nature, and, and somewhere deep inside them, whether it was ever articulated this way explicitly, or not, somewhere deep inside them from the religious communities they had grown up in, we're like, this doesn't fit. This doesn't work this with my faith, this view of the world doesn't, you know, I can't reconcile this. And I'm feeling that I got to choose, am I either going to double down and be part of this religious community? Or am I going to say, Yeah, this is the way the world works, and the what scientists told us, and they would feel at this fork in the road of having to choose between these two. And so I got into this because I was tired of hearing that of hearing people think that somehow they had to choose between science and, and faith. And so I said, I gotta sort some of this out myself. I gotta I mean, I've, as I told you before, I've I've never really tempted by things like young earth creationism, but neither was I ever completely sure how to reconcile, in my own mind, things like what Genesis says, with evolution. And so it was through some of my own Reading through some of the work in this Templeton group that I was talking about in Oxford, where it was like, Okay, now I'm starting to see the way that it's not like you have to compromise somehow, on your faith, it's that I need a little better, more sophisticated under understanding a way of interpreting scripture, that's actually better. It's not somehow, you know, shirking responsibility, but it's like, no, these, these documents didn't fall from heaven, that they were written in a time and place. And so coming to understand that just like, opened my eyes to say, Okay, I'm free. Now, I feel like I'm free to explore the scientific evidence and let that lead me where it will, because it's not going to threaten this commitment to faith that I have to this understanding of the Bible, even as this inspired document that that is, you know, been so important to our, to our tradition. So that in my own journey, led to I think I can show this to other people here now, too, I think, I think we can help people come so that they don't get to a crisis point the way so many of my former students had. And so that part of understanding in one bigger, more coherent picture has been really important for me, and I think, is is one of those things that keeps me juiced up and in talking to other people about this, that, that you can take both of these seriously, right, so that it's not not giving up on one or the other. More recently, so BioLogos, here about three years ago, made an intentional decision to expand the topics we talked about. Earlier on, it was mostly evolution and origins related work. And that was an intentional decision also to try to unbundle it from the other issues, because as we talked about on these culture wars, that too often the culture wars come as prepackaged bundles of of issues and topics and that you have to take all of one or all of the other and BioLogos said, No, we're not trying to get you to we're not trying, we're not talking about climate change. We're not talking about homosexuality, we're not trying to get you to vote democratic. We're just trying to talk about evolution as a way of unbundling that, but after doing that for about 10 years, we said we think we've earned enough credibility and trust that maybe we do need to talk about some other scientific topics. That was a at a strategic planning meeting in 2019. And we thought that 2020 was going to be the year of climate change and creation care for BioLogos. And then COVID happened. And we pivoted really hard in 2020, then to trying to provide scientific resources from a Christian perspective that people might trust related to COVID and really ramped up very quickly in that regard. And so then by about 2021, by the middle of 2021 or so we we started thinking more seriously and developing more resources on climate change. And that's become an issue now for me, that keeps me animated and sometimes keeps me up at night. And seeing that just the psychology of the way this is an issue works, that it's just far enough away that it doesn't feel like a crisis right now. But it really is a crisis right now. I mean, the things we're we have this short window right now as a civilization, to make the right kinds of choices, and to show how this ought to flow out of our faith. You know, rather than again, it being bundled on the opposite side of the culture wars from where many people of faith are. And they think that's what those liberal people are worried about. I'm not worried about that, well, to show that this ought to flow out of our faith, that we ought to be caring for creation, and that we ought to be worried about the justice have we in the in in the Western world, the industrialized world who have caused almost all of this are going to suffer the least from it, it's going to be the people who didn't cause it that are going to suffer the most. And what does our what does our faith commitment have to say about that? Right? Shouldn't? Shouldn't we of all people be most concerned about what the poorest and the least of these around the world are going to suffer as a result of what we've done over the last few generations? Yeah, yeah,
 
Zack Jackson 41:19
I was just Reading that the, you know, the Solomon Islands are probably going to be the first nation that is completely eradicated by the sea level rise, and they're trying to purchase large swaths of land in Asia is or
 
Jim Stump 41:32
relocate a country
 
Zack Jackson 41:34
to create a new country, as theirs is disappearing. We hear our are saying, well, you know, maybe it's 100 years out. I think we're all pretty, pretty aware. If you're listening to this podcast, you are probably fairly aware of the awful parts of climate change and the things that we shouldn't be doing. And there's perhaps, a sort of paralyzing nihilism to it. For those of us who think about this a lot. Is there anything happening in this in this realm that brings you hope, right now?
 
Jim Stump 42:12
Right at the end of 2021, we did a series on hope. And I've been thinking about it a lot lately, because in the in the sense of, is it possible for me to be hopeful, and yet not terribly optimistic? Because when I read the data, when I read the new IPCC report, I'm not very optimistic. And is that something different than hope, and I'm persuaded that I can be hopeful as an intentional choice of commitment, as a way of saying, this is how I'm going to look at the world. I'm committed to seeing it as God's creation as a place where God is sovereign, not in the sense that God controls every detail that happens, but in the sense that the good guys win. In the end, I'm committed to that view of life that, that God will work all things together for good. I'm not very optimistic about the the way things are going. But that ultimately, I'm not. I'm not even called to be effective. We had a podcast guest use this line that I just think is super powerful that we are not called to be effective. We're called to be faithful. And what does it look like to be a faithful Christian in these days? When it doesn't look like we're being very effective at convincing people to do the right thing? What does it mean to be faithful in that, in that kind of circumstance, and I think it's to continue to say that God's on the throne, Jesus is the Lord, within our tradition. These are the phrases we use that order our order our lives, and that we're going to continue to love our neighbor, and love our enemies, and to honor God with our hearts and souls and minds and strength. And hope then becomes the kind of outflow of looking at the world in that way and of being committed to that, to that way of looking at the world, that hopefulness can be and affect an outcome from the commitment to being faithful. And again, I think it's possible to have that attitude while at the same time the sort of emotional risk sponsz to immediate circumstances is not always very good. But that optimism or pessimism I see is that emotional reaction to what I see right now. Whereas Hope is the commitment to what I believe the way things are going to be, ultimately, much longer perspective, eternal perspective that hope derives from as opposed to optimism or pessimism.
 
Zack Jackson 45:28
I think you've just described Isaiah as call from Isaiah chapter six, where God says, you know, Whom shall I send to bring a message to the people and Isaiah says, ooh, pick me. And God says, Here's your message. Tell them to repent, but they're not going to do it. Thanks for that. I know from the outset that this is going to fail, but I need you to do it anyway. Oh, I like that, that a call to faithfulness, not effectiveness. Because there's a we, we just had a section in, I teach confirmation in my in my church, and we've got eight teenagers. And we were talking about Christology and talking about Jesus. And we got to the section on Christ's return. And they have a lot of questions about what it's going to be like, when Jesus comes back. Is it going to be like, when he came the first time? Is he going to be a baby? Is he already here? Is it going to be dramatic in the sky? And the big question was when, and most of them, uh, kind of agreed amongst themselves, without my prodding, that it was probably just going to be when the climate gets too warm, for humans to live anymore. And that we are going to once we destroy the world, that's when Jesus will come in. And so they were just talking amongst themselves about how bad it has to be first, before Jesus will come and set things right. And like the fact that this is the sort of casual conversation happening among 13 year olds, it was like a shot to the heart to me, because, you know, this is something that's deeply important to me as well. But when I was 13, I was certainly not thinking in these terms. Right? When I was 13, my, the limit of my understanding of the environment was that in all those six pack from soda rings, were going to kill turtles. You know, Captain Planet was the extent of my understanding of what we were doing to the world. But for them, they see this as a present reality. And I think the rest of us need to wake up to that.
 
Jim Stump 47:35
This is part of what has urged us at BioLogos. To make this to make this one of the core topics that we deal with the origins issues are interesting, they're important at some level, and have implications for things like how you understand scripture, and so on. But whether there was a historical Adam or Eve is not going to affect too many people's lives and livelihoods and caused countries like the Solomon Islands to have to relocate, right? I mean, there's a different sort of immediacy and importance to the topics of climate change that we've got to get this one, right, or it's not just going to result in splitting of denominations, it's going to result in inability to have a sustainable planet anymore.
 
Ian Binns 48:22
When you think about to, you know, there are still indigenous cultures out there that are completely cut off from the industrialized world, or the technological world, I guess you could say, you know, where they still live the way they've always lived. And we know they're there, but don't have any communication with them that those cultures and those communities, especially ones that are on islands will be wiped off the face of the earth, because of our actions, and then
 
Jim Stump 48:55
even the ones that aren't on islands, the ecosystems are going to change so dramatically already in Africa and South America, the kinds of crops that you can grow, and when you can grow them are changing pretty rapidly. And those kinds of indigenous cultures that have always done things the same way are not going to be able to keep doing those.
 
Ian Binns 49:14
Yeah, and it but it's very tragic that, you know, the Western world has to be has to know that its impact, at least the general thought seems to be that some believe that, well, it's not in my backyard. I guess that's the best way of saying that. Yeah.
 
Jim Stump 49:31
And that again, is part of this, like, that's part of the psychology that makes this so difficult to communicate because it's not immediate and in your face, it's off down the road or in another part of the world or something like that.
 
Ian Binns 49:45
Sure. And that's the loving others. Yep. Right. And so, you know, obviously if you identify as Christian, you can use Christian scripture to help you with that. But even if you don't identify as Christian or even if you don't benefit as a person of any faith whatsoever, you can still recognize the importance of loving others of caring about other people. So, to me, this is another Ask whatever your motivation is to help you care for others.
 
Jim Stump 50:13
This is another aspect of communicating to to two people that about these issues that again, span or try to at least span the culture war issues, that the theoretical side of this so we do this a lot in practice and have lots of stories to tell about trying to communicate to people in that regard. But there's a really fascinating theoretical aspect behind it. I don't know if you guys know that social psychologist, Jonathan Hite and his book, The righteous mind from a few years ago. And these moral foundations that people intuitively use to make their decisions and the research that he's done on the political left and the political right, primarily, and which of those moral foundations are most important to them. And you, you see pretty clearly that people who identify as liberal or progressive rank the highest on these moral foundations of care and fairness, and many of us that are on that at least lean that way, think that we can make these arguments just by appealing to Shouldn't we care about these other people? Isn't this fair, in order that the people who have, you know not caused this problem, they shouldn't have to be the one suffering from it. And the way you and I both just talked about this issue, that's what we were appealing to, whereas most people on the political right end of the spectrum rank way higher in these moral intuitions on liberty, and authority. And one of the challenges we face is how do we appeal to those kinds of moral foundations to talk about these issues? Because for them, they hear well, this isn't fair. Well, but their response is, well, you can't take away my liberty, you can't take away my choice. Right? Life isn't fair. Yeah, life isn't fair. Sorry, but or appeal to some other authority that they accept. So I think that's one of the big challenges for us in this business of how do we talk about these issues that are so important in ways that tap into the moral intuitions of people who are different than we are people who, who don't value is highly some of those other things that we value
 
Ian Binns 52:34
was obviously the last two years of this pandemic have made that that contrast even more, even more,
 
52:40
even more? You're right,
 
Zack Jackson 52:43
so we need a good alien invasion. Some some common enemy. So
 
Jim Stump 52:48
I'll tell you though, at the beginning of this pandemic, we at BioLogos said this is going to be what rallies the church to take science more seriously. We thought this is really the opportunity. And within a few months, it was no, the opposite of that has happened. Yeah. So
 
Ian Binns 53:06
yes, very tragic. Those witness.
 
Zack Jackson 53:10
Yeah, definitely solve those ideologies take over. And they made certain issues, political that I never imagined a million years could be political. And then I learned so much during that time about what it means to communicate with people and understand other people's values and try to communicate through them to find find some common language, not even common values, but a common way of communicating truth that I'm still working on very much. So
 
Jim Stump 53:39
there's another book if I can point it to. That's been very helpful for me in this regard to by a legal scholar by the name of John in NA zoo, the books called confident pluralism, which I think is really, really important. I actually just did a podcast interview with him about two months ago on our feed, you can find it but confident pluralism is he's coining this phrase to try to talk about how do we hold to our own convictions in a society where we can't, and probably shouldn't just impose them on other people. So the confident side is this isn't relativism, where we just say anything goes I really believe this is the truth. And I think it's really important, but the pluralism side is, I recognize that my neighbor down the road believes something different with the equal amount of fervor that I believe. So how do we in that kind of society have meaningful conversations? How do we try to break through these culture war bundles that that are there and the he talks primarily in terms of Supreme Court cases in the book because that's what he is. He's a scholar of the Supreme Court, Supreme Court, but really pushes us towards thinking within our communities. How do we move towards tolerance Where again, it's not just in some wimpy sort of anything goes, but rather, to be tolerant that I know other people don't all believe the same the way I do, and I shouldn't just exile them. And tolerance kind of plays off of certainty in a in a certain sense, where maybe toning down my certainty helps to communicate with people a little bit more, but he tries to push towards tolerance and humility and patience, that I think those are all really, really helpful ways of trying to engage people who believe differently than you do.
 
Ian Binns 55:36
I appreciate that recommendation.
 
Zack Jackson 55:39
Absolutely. Thank you for that. And we'll make sure to put those those links in the show notes, as well as links to your books that folks can can purchase and read, and all the resources that you've mentioned from BioLogos as well. Here at the end of our time together, first of all, I want to say a huge thank you absolutely half of the rest of our hosts and all of our listeners for spending this time with us. And before you go, what's coming up on the on your podcast that we can look forward to?
 
Jim Stump 56:12
Yeah, so this conference that we have coming up, we're going to do a live a live recording, which always sounds funny, because it's not like any recording isn't live, but we're gonna have a studio audience. That's what I should say, we're going to have a studio audience in front of us to record a conversation that I'll have with the artist Makoto Fujimura. To talk about creation, what does it mean to be creative, and to be made in the image of God? And what are the consequences that we find between science and art in some of those in some of those ways. We're going to do a whole series on climate change coming up in the not too distant, not too distant future. We did a we did a series last summer on what it means to be human that was a little different from the typical episode where I sit down and talk to somebody for an hour like we're doing here. But it's a little more highly produced, where we go out and talk to two experts in a number of different fields, and then have a narrative where we weave in, weave in quotes from from them. Throughout that. We are going to do a conversation with NT right about the resurrection for the week, right before Easter that will be coming up that I look forward to that we just recorded last week, an episode with Bill McKibben, who's one of the leading scientists, climate change activists, that was a pretty fun conversation than otherwise, we are looking toward the summer and putting together a couple of other series. One of them is related to a new project that I have going on. That is what I'm calling the spiritual journey of Homo sapiens. How did we become the kind of creatures that we are? And can we see in the journey of our species, something analogous to a spiritual journey of us as an individual, the highs and lows that we go through that helped to shape us and form us into into what we are today? So
 
Zack Jackson 58:21
we're looking at like, Paleolithic spirituality?
 
Jim Stump 58:26
How did this get started, I have a trip to Europe, hopefully, this next fall, where I'm even going to look at some of the cave paintings as some of these earliest sort of sorts of intimations of, of at least the records we have of our ancestors, looking at something else feel, you know, in a symbolic way of trying to figure out why we're here and who we are and all that. So I'm our series
 
Zack Jackson 58:53
on human evolution was one of them. It was my favorite series that that is where my, my brain is these days, and what gets me excited. So that's wonderful to hear that you're doing that as that
 
Ian Binns 59:03
sounds fascinating. Let me know if you need someone to go with you to hold your carry your suitcases. That just sounds fascinating.
 
Jim Stump 59:15
We'll see if it happens. That's the plan right now.
 
Ian Binns 59:18
Good luck with that. That sounds really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And as that moves forward, if that does happen, we'll have to have you back on to talk more about that. Because that that really does sound interesting. I'd be happy to.
 
Zack Jackson 59:30
Yeah, well, once again, you can listen to that and 109 other episodes of the language of God podcast, you can find that on BioLogos or wherever it is that you find your podcasts wherever you're listening right now. You can also find the language of God podcast. So thank you so much, Jim, for being here today and for spending this time with us. was a really wonderful hour with you. Thanks, Zack.
 
Jim Stump 59:53
Thanks, Ian. Happy to do it. Thank you

Time Part 4: When is Hanukkah?

Episode 102
How do we mark the passage of time, and how do we encounter the divine within it? From Shabbat to the Eucharist, our religious rituals play with time in unexpected ways. Take some time with us and explore the many ways that you can create sacred time wherever and whenever you are. 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
 
Zack Jackson 00:05
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 00:15
Kendra Holt, more assistant professor of religion at Bethany college and my favorite TV show all time is Avatar The Last Airbender
 
Zack Jackson 00:25
Zack Jackson, UCC pastor and Reading Pennsylvania and my favorite TV show of all time is Dr. Joe
 
Ian Binns 00:31
Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte. And I got a lot of TV shows that kept popping up, but the one that just keeps coming to mind right now, I would say is probably Ted LA. So
 
Rachael Jackson 00:45
Rachel Jackson, Rabbi Agoudas, Israel, congregation Hendersonville, North Carolina and favorite TV show of all time is the Big Bang Theory. Yeah, that's a good one is a good one. And this question is sort of a, you know, a little bit of an in and an intro to what we're talking about today, because it's our favorite TV show of all time. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. Thanks, like,
 
Zack Jackson 01:15
I segue. I like that even smoother.
 
Rachael Jackson 01:23
So we are talking about time. And unlike the the last two episodes, where we actually I think at this point, we'll have three episodes where we've talked about time, I wanted to talk about more of a corporeal human time and the experience and really just add the Jewish lens to this. We are saying before we really started recording that. Wow, I love being Jewish, and I have no problems talking about it and sharing it. I don't use that and present that as the lens. But that's really where my focus is going to be today. Because that's how I really understand time and its meaning. And so I'm going to give several examples of what that's going to look like. But I want to start with sort of a poetic read. This comes from reformed judaism.org. They have a blog series, and this comes from almost 10 years ago, but time doesn't matter. And words like this, get held thanks to social media and the internet. We can listen to them 10 years from now or 10 years from when it was written till now. So, but just giving it a little bit of a frame, this was written by Stacy's does Robinson, Zoho Nam live Aha. So she died. Not too not too long ago, and she died of COVID, unfortunately. But she's an incredible author and incredible poet. And so this is what she tells us. When my son was born, I cradled him against my heart, arms wrapped to gently get surely around his small and fragile body, I would stand holding him. Our breaths mingles our hearts beating in an elegant call and response, one beat to the next. And I would sway a slow and gentle side to side rock that lasted for the eternity, that exists between heartbeats, I could feel his body relax into the motion, like oceans, like drifting, like peace, above the simplicity of that rhythm, the warmth of him the smell of his newness and his infinite possibilities. As he drifted as he gem told my own body would react in kind, and I followed him, these moments became our own Fibonacci sequence, the delicate curve of our bodies in motion at rest, in motion again, twined in an eternal spiral, more intimate than a lover's kiss repeated again and again. And again. There's so much time that passes. Now, this is me, that is the end of what I'm going to share of hers for now at least verbatim. But I'll reference a little bit that too. There's so much time that passes in a heartbeat. If you ask someone, how long does this take? There cannot possibly be a single answer. It depends. But what were you how are you getting there? How old were you? How long has COVID lasted Technically speaking, technically, I can remember March of 2020. March 9, we did Perot, I, this is how I'm wound in Jewish time right now. So we did Param. And we had these Inklings. And there was something happening to the west to the east of us and something in a different country. And we weren't quite sure what was happening. And we did Param. And then we didn't come back to the sanctuary for 15 months, but in open the building for 15 months. And that's still been, that was still nine months ago. And here we are. My son, seven years old, finally got vaccinated in December. And there's still people here on this podcast and here who are listening, whose children have not yet been able to be vaccinated. So how long is this pandemic is still going on param for us is in three weeks. We'll be back in our sanctuary together. And we'll be wearing our masks, because that's what perm is about wearing masks. The problem is we'll be wearing two masks, the ones over our nose in our mouth and the one over our eyes, the ones that is a custom and the one that is for protection. So how long is COVID My son was in kindergarten when he got sent home. And he was at home in first grade. And he did virtual in second grade. And when I went and saw him this morning for STEM week show Intel he was in his classroom, five feet away from all the other students still wearing his mask, just like they all did. Not having any playdates. Because it's COVID. So how long is COVID for him? His whole life. He doesn't know times before COVID existed. That wasn't part of his memory. How long is COVID for me? A very, very long time. But something that I can see a life before and a life after. Because time, while quantifiable is meaningless. If we only use a clock, we have to use a relative understanding of time and how we relate to it. And in Judaism, it's I find it so beautiful. That we create time. So let me ask you, the three of you. When is Hanukkah
 
Ian Binns 07:49
right before Christmas.
 
Rachael Jackson 07:51
Right before Christmas.
 
Ian Binns 07:55
The winter season?
 
Rachael Jackson 07:57
Winter season.
 
Ian Binns 07:59
Typically when What's the date?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 08:02
Is this a trick question?
 
Zack Jackson 08:03
No. It's never the same day all the time. What if we lived every day like it was
 
Rachael Jackson 08:15
a miracle. Clean up your stuff, rededicate yourself to your people and your God
 
Zack Jackson 08:22
and slaughter some solutions and
 
Rachael Jackson 08:25
don't forget to pick up the pig guts. Like that's just messy. Could we not? That's right. Yeah. So what is Hanukkah?
 
Ian Binns 08:33
December actual real
 
Rachael Jackson 08:35
true. When
 
Zack Jackson 08:36
I mean, it's different every year, right? It's the lunar calendar.
 
Rachael Jackson 08:40
The 25th of Kislev. You're giving me What's this? 25th of Kislev? Ah, that's the same every year the 25th of Kislev. It doesn't change. I know exactly when it is. But
 
Zack Jackson 08:54
does it change according it only changes from my perspective,
 
Rachael Jackson 08:57
right? It only changes from our calendar because the majority of our calendar is the Gregorian calendar, not the Jewish calendar. So when is Hanukkah in December, ish this last year, it was in November this coming year, it's going to overlap with Christmas and if we thought it was bad last year where there was nothing Hanukkah, nothing's gonna happen this year because Christmas will win out. There will be not even inkling of Hanukkah wrapping paper. That is what it is. Yeah. So when is it? Well, it depends whose perspective you're asking. And it depends how excited you are. I don't really care that much about Hanukkah. It's kind of a tiny little nothing holiday I only get excited because I have a child. We have the same question of when is Passover? When is Purim when is Rosh Hashanah, I have an exact date for when those things are. But that's not how I live my life. When is Shabbat? The Israeli calendar is marvelous. I love it. So Jews are terrible at naming things like absolutely terrible. Imagine if all of our holidays in America were named similar to July 4. Like if you didn't know, and you came into America and everyone's like, Whoa, it's July 4. And you have no idea what that means. It is just a date on the calendar. Right? It doesn't tell you Oh, it's independence day. It's Memorial Day. It's Veterans Day. It's Presidents Day. You know what the day is? Almost all of the Jewish holidays are to Shabbat of the ninth of have to have the 15th of have to be Shabbat, the 15th of the month of Shabbat like this is not helpful. Except for some biblical holidays. Where, you know, Rosh Hashanah isn't actually called Rosh Hashanah. Yom true on the day of the sounding it's the day you get to go make noise with the kazoo marvelous. So when we name the days of the week, we don't use Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, right? Those are Greek and Roman gods. Those are not the days of the week. It's yom, Yom Sheni, Yom slushy, Yom obra, day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, day six and Shabbat. We don't say Yom seven, we don't say the seventh day we say Shabbat. It is different in and of itself. Because our frame of reference is not that it's Saturday, our frame of reference is that this day is completely set apart from all other days. When we look on our calendars as Americans, we look on the calendar and go okay, Monday through Friday, those days are particular and then oh, Saturday, Sunday. That's what we're gearing for. we frame our mind differently because of our response to time. One other sort of piece that I want to add for how we then mix time, so I've only been talking about my time, right? I, in this day and age, I'm looking forward to you know, this next upcoming poram Or this upcoming PESA or this upcoming Shabbat, right like we're recording this on a Friday, and I'm going home, oh boy. I have to lead services and five hours and I haven't written my sermon. Oh, boy. Right. That's so exciting. So how do I? How do I understand that time, like not just freaking out that it's five hours from now, and I haven't finished my sermon or started it. Tell people. But when I think about Passover, which is the story of the Jews leaving Exodus, or leaving Egypt in the Exodus, and we can talk in chat, we can check on chat on our Facebook groups about how literal we might take that. Right, we can that's not the conversation that we're gonna have at this moment, though, did did the Exodus actually happen? So that's not going to be part of my conversation. But there is the question of not the question. I shouldn't frame it that way. When we celebrate Passover and commemorate the Exodus, there are four children. The wise child's this simple child's, the child's who is so simple, they do not even know how to ask, and then the wicked child. Okay. So if the why the y's child says, Tell me all about this and what is the purpose of these greens? And what is the purpose of this and ask all these questions? What do you think the wicked child is? Non rhetorical? There's no wrong answers.
 
Zack Jackson 14:32
I feel like there's a few wrong it's
 
Rachael Jackson 14:35
a right answer, but there's no wrong answers.
 
Zack Jackson 14:37
Okay, cuz I'm thinking an Egyptian child would be pretty bad. But that's probably not the answer here.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 14:45
Kendra, ah, I'm trying to remember because I've been to
 
Rachael Jackson 14:50
a few. Save right because you've been to a few supreme
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 14:53
Yeah. And the wicked child when we go around the table. There's always like handful of people that are like, I think I'm the wicked child. So, I'm trying to remember because I think there's a couple that I get confused, but isn't the way your child, the one who, like asks too many questions or just is like a little bit. Like, out of the status quo of how they, like, think and problem solve. And so they're more disruptive, which is not, you know, I mean, it's like the wicked child, but in different contexts. It's not necessarily about like being good or bad. It's just different.
 
Rachael Jackson 15:31
Okay? It's kind of you're kind of mixing several of them in together. I, there's
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 15:35
two that I'm always like. So the
 
Rachael Jackson 15:37
wise one is the one who's always asking the questions. This is what we want, right? Yay. Asking questions. The wicked one asks, but a single question. And he says, What does this have to do with me?
 
Zack Jackson 15:54
Huh? Okay.
 
Rachael Jackson 15:57
Yeah. Whoa. And when we read the text, when we go through the Haggadah, and we we read, we asked, we say my father was a wandering Aramean. Okay, spoiler alert. My dad wasn't my dad was born in Australia. Like, he was not a wandering Aramean. But we say it in the present tense. God took me out of Egypt with an outstretched hand, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, right? I was there. I wasn't, I was there. I am there. I am going through this. And when we sing the same song, who is like you, Oh, mighty when Myka mocha by alien. I don't know who is like you're among the gods who? Who was this? Who took me out of this place? Who is taking me through redemption? Not going through the theology piece here today, just looking at time. Well, that exists in the Bible that exists in the Torah. That was theoretically, you know, 3300 years ago, I wasn't there. I'm only 41. But I was there. This is my story. This is my understanding of how time works, that it's now so even though it happened at one point, I was there and I am now and it is now. So that there's a meshing of while I might be looking at particular days in particular ways as how am I going to write my sermon? And when am I going to have for dinner? And who am I going to dress up as for Purim? Right. Am I going to be varsity this year? Or am I going to be I'm always a good character, by the way, always. I'm never the evil one.
 
Ian Binns 17:48
I think that's fitting.
 
Rachael Jackson 17:49
Thank you. I think so. Yeah.
 
Ian Binns 17:52
No, I thought him were here. He was he Yeah,
 
Rachael Jackson 17:54
he'd be Haman. Okay. Yeah, without a doubt he'd be or he'd be the guys. That's moto. Hi, spies. eavesdrops, on, where he's kind of there. But he's not really there. But he's totally a bystander. Now, I love Adam. He's much more of an upstander than any of those characters. He's just, he's easy to pick on. So time is not just what am I doing? It's about how do I go back and forth. And so my final thing, as I'm just like rambling at all, is, I understand time, Jewish type specifically, and my my life living a Jewish life as a slinky. So imagine your slinky, and I hope you've had the chance to play with a slinky recently because they're awesome. And it's closed. So imagine a closed slinky. And you're at the very start, and just go down one rung, it doesn't feel like anything has changed. It's the same time as last year, you're the same person that you were last year, not a whole lot. It's been different. But now imagine you're a slinky on a stair, and how far the distance is between one rung and the next rung. When it's opened like that. It's so much different, but it's the same time. So it allows us to come back together and allows us to check in with ourselves and say, Okay, I've been here before, but I'm completely different, or I'm not so different. It just asked us questions. So that's my sort of brief, very long sort of Drush on what time looks like and how we understand it quarterly.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 19:56
The, the thing that I I keep thinking of As you're talking about, I mean, it wasn't really like the central piece of what you're saying, but totally like thinking about time in Judaism. I'm blanking on the name of the, the, the book or like the essay that Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote about, like time was like the, the tabernacle of time, where like in Judaism, what is you can think of architecture as marking something off that is holy, in like, if you go to like a cathedral, like a Catholic Cathedral or something, there's way of using materiality to mark off space as designated, like holy locations. But I Abraham Joshua Heschel published a collection of like essays talking about how in Judaism, we have these really beautiful examples of, you know, not not so much like architecture, marking off holy space, but Shabbat as like a marker of holy time. And it's like, you know, he's like, using the metaphor of, like, the tabernacle of time, I think, is what he calls it. And so that's what I kept thinking about, because it's such a, like, the, the rhythm of Shabbat, being, you know, it's not just this, you know, it's more than just like something you take for granted, every week as a celebration, or like a time of rest. But Hashem just talks about it in this really beautiful way as being, like a marker to orient you to time itself as this special, special thing that is, it's, it's part of our rhythm of, you know, our bodies and our communities and our calendars. And I just love that metaphor of like, a tabernacle of time, in addition to or as a different thing from, like, a tabernacle in space.
 
Rachael Jackson 22:11
I so glad that you brought that up. So I think the essays that you're referring to are contained in a book called The Sabbath.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 22:20
Yeah, yeah.
 
Rachael Jackson 22:22
It's straightforward, straightforward. Again, we don't really, you know, mince our title is very much. You want to talk about time, the Sabbath. So one of the things that Heschel talks about and is actually in pretty much all Jewish books that talk about the tabernacle, or let's just use English, the sanctuary, a church, a synagogue, the place that you go, it doesn't matter. And that's, I know, we talked a little bit about this a year ago, maybe two years ago, when we're really talking about COVID. And not being in our spaces, and how that really isn't as challenging for Jews, as it is for other cultures and other religions. Because while we like our space, we don't define holiness, by the space our holiness is divided is defined solely by time, which means it can happen anywhere, it can be in the wilderness, it can be with ice cream, it can be with your child's it can be in a sanctuary, it can literally be anywhere. And that sacredness of time as opposed to sacredness of place is something you know that I love about Judaism, I'm not gonna say it doesn't exist in other religions a because I don't know all other religions be because I think that's a little too narcissistic, as, as a culture to say that we're the only ones to do it. But it does feel that it really doesn't matter where we are. It's about when we are so much so. I'm gonna poke fun of us for just a second. There are these rules that you there are things you can't do on Shabbat, right? Like you can't turn on light switches and you can't create a fire and you can't drive and you can't cook and you can't ride an elevator and I could keep going on and on about the sorry juice. Some of the extremely ridiculous things that we do in the name of Jewish law haha. But one of them that's been around for a long time is fire because we've had fire for a very long time. And so we're not supposed to light the Shabbat lights like fire is not fire is prohibited. You can't do that on Shabbat. But you have to light Shabbat candles. So how do you do that? Like how do you light Shabbat candles on Shabbat? We fool ourselves. We fool ourselves. It's beautiful. So what we do is we strike the match. We light the lights, we then cover our eyes, say the blessing. Open our eyes and go, Oh, look at that. candles are lit and now it's Shabbat. It's amazing.
 
Zack Jackson 25:26
Whatever. Right? Okay, so
 
Rachael Jackson 25:30
if you ever see somebody, right, I'm sure when you've seen Fiddler on the Roof, there's two sections when they're doing the Sabbath prayer, right? May the Lord protect and defend you that whole thing? Seriously, nothing. I'm looking at the three of you, and there's no recognition there. It's amazing. Well, but
 
Zack Jackson 25:49
it's been a long time ago. Sorry.
 
Rachael Jackson 25:52
Oh, Kendra, that's your homework. That is your homework. So anyway, so she's their blessing their family, and they like, do this whole, like waving the candle flames, and then they cover their eyes, and they say this beautiful blessing. It's because we're fooling ourselves of when that happened. Which leads me to sort of another question for you all, if we're looking at what time is, who decides? Who decides? So let's use a Shabbat as an example. In modern America, secular America, most Jews are not politically religious, in the sense of okay, Shabbat is when the sun goes down, and I have to be home and I'm not doing like etc, etc. Most Jews in America are not that way. And so, when is Shabbat at our particular synagogue, right now, we're having services at 530 on Friday night. And in three weeks, when we go through a time change, it's still going to be bright outside when we leave, and we're done with our service. Right? So we then have to say, well, when is Shabbat? So when is something actually happening? When we say it's happening? When we engage in activity? When the culture says it's happening, like when is or if we take also the majority of Jews. Question seven already, many Jews? Never. They don't observe Shabbat. So is Shabbat Shabbat because we observe it is or is it just a Saturday? So I'd ask the same question Quantum. Yeah. So I'm asking that question, again, using Shabbat as the example or the Sabbath as the example. But for anything, is it your birthday? Right? Again, we're all adults here. My birthday is technically March 2, because that's the day that I was born. I have four meetings on March 2, and it's a Wednesday. I'm celebrating my birthday on March 1. So when is my birthday? When should somebody say to me happy birthday, when do I open my cards
 
Ian Binns 28:17
all of March. That's what I do. Like my, my birthday is on April 3, and this year, it's a it's a Sunday, so I'm good. But even like when my birthday is on the day that I have class. Oh, I tell my students, I let them know what y'all know. It's my birthday. Just Just saying. The class goes.
 
Zack Jackson 28:46
So at the time of recording, and this obviously is going to go out in a couple of weeks. There's something similar going around in Christian circles. You may have seen in your Facebook feeds, that this one priest had been baptizing children incorrectly. One word wrong. He had, instead of saying, I now baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son of the Holy Spirit, he had been saying, we now baptize you, in the name of the Father, the Son of the Holy Spirit. We instead of I, we instead of I. And through a number of higher ups, having councils and discussing whether or not this actually changed the intent of the baptism itself, they decided that enough had been changed in the intent behind that word change that invalidated every baptism he had done for 20 years. Because the congregation present does not do the baptism. So their affirmation of it is irrelevant. Of course, according to the Catholic theology, God is the one that does the act, the actual, like sanctifying grace disposing act on dispensing not just those. No disposing of children, please. We go into that theology and the priest is the conduit by which that happens. And so the I in that sentence is the priest speaking through God. And so by saying, We, then you're just, it muddies the waters a little bit, and the priest has resigned and he has offered to re baptize anyone who's feels that their baptism is no longer valid, because technically, it's not valid anymore. And in all of the circles that I run in, between all Protestant circles, we were all people who were like, hey, nothing magical happens here. Our act of baptism is that it is not something that is happening in that moment. Nothing changes about that person in that moment. What is happening is it is a an A outward affirmation of an inward and invisible reality that a child is born. Beloved, already, a child is born already a part of the family of God, a child is born already having been awash in God's grace, and mercy and goodness. And the act of baptism is an act in which the community gathers together to affirm that truth that already existed time immemorial. And so whether that child is baptized on the day they're born, or when they're 99 years old, whether it is done using the right magic words, or some other totally different vernacular a bad thing? This is a good thing for me. I made something of the way goes, giant. I can't wait to see you're trying to Okay. Could you hear it? I want to
 
Ian Binns 31:59
see his giant castle.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 32:00
Did he say the banjo is not a bad thing. It's a good thing.
 
Zack Jackson 32:04
He says this is not a bad emergency. This is a good emergency. I made a giant Castle that's important. And I'll be up in a few minutes to come see it. Okay,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 32:14
got to work on your definition of emergency.
 
Zack Jackson 32:19
Timing. I say one thing and that's when he descends into the basement and comes and plays the banjo in the back of this little studio.
 
Rachael Jackson 32:28
And you were done such a
 
Zack Jackson 32:29
train of thought was? Well. So you know, it's almost ironic, though, that my child were to come in here when talking about during the time in which I'm talking about in which God has granted God's blessing on to children before they were born. And before they had a chance to identify it, or have it be given to them from an exterior source because, man oh man, we need to be reminded of that sometimes when you are in the middle of something like recording a podcast and your four year old decides to play a banjo in the room you're recording it in, because that child has already been a Washington grace and goodness and forgiveness. And I too, have been a Washington that very same spirit and me to learn how to honor and forgive and appreciate the toddler's giant Lego Castle he wants me to see. But the point being in their theology, there was a particular moment in which Grace was dispensed in a special way from God on to that child, it can happen one time, you cannot be baptized again. In fact, they they murdered quite a bit of Anabaptists in the Reformation because of that, there's one time only that it can be done. And when you believe that there's one time only that this can be done then there's a whole lot of now stricter rules that have
 
Ian Binns 33:59
to come with it. And the ramifications for this like I saw the headline and read a little bit about the situation with this you know the Catholic priests making an error with the use of the word we instead of I and you know I didn't spend too much time Reading an article about it but it just seemed like that there was there's some speculation I guess that this could have bigger impacts depending on how the whoever the powers that be decided on the rules, right? Like um, like, if you're not baptized, considered baptized, can you get married in the church? The Catholic Church are there certain rules that you cannot like you have to be baptized Catholic will do certain things in Catholic churches I thought or something along
 
Zack Jackson 34:48
not to be married. No, at least one of you has to be Catholic but you can be baptized Protestant and still be married in a Catholic church as long as one of the other ones Catholic you can take promise to raise your children me Catholic You can't take communion? No. Okay. But if you promised to raise your child as a Catholic, then they will let you be married in a church.
 
Ian Binns 35:08
Yeah. But anyway, I just remember seeing that and just being amazed by it.
 
Rachael Jackson 35:13
Right. And I appreciate that you brought that that piece in Zach, because it's really talking about when does something happen? Right, when? Yeah, when does it happen? And there are a few, there are a few moments in life that give us those very definite, this is when it happened. When are you born? Well, let's, let's just go with the medical piece there. When you exit the womb, right, that's, that's when you're born
 
Zack Jackson 35:48
when. But when the head exits? Well, because some children
 
Rachael Jackson 35:51
are not born head first. Right? So, you know, but when someone puts on their birth certificate, What time were you born? Right? It's when you scream. Right? That's what time you're born when you scream. So your heads got to be out whether or not that was first or not. But you have to scream. And that's when you're born. Now modern medicine that feels modern medicine
 
Zack Jackson 36:16
when you are first alive.
 
Rachael Jackson 36:19
Yeah, that all happens within a minute, right? Even with even with babies or especially with babies that are not born headfirst. Right? They're just out.
 
Zack Jackson 36:28
Rachel, I have a question for you about religious time. So as we're as we're talking, I'm remembering a concept. From I think I'd first read it in something written by Mircea Eliade, I'm sure I'm butchering the pronunciation of his name, about the importance of an axis mundi in religion, the center of the world, as it were, and that in the same older Israelite religions, that was the temple on mountain Zion, that was the, the place that connected the underworld with the heavens, that, that sort of central location to the world and every religion has that, right. That's, that's Mount Olympus, that's, you know, all the holy mountains, usually in the ancient world. And then the temples gone in 70 ad, and people are scattered, both Christian and Jewish people scattered to the winds. And the Christians later do find other centers at that point right in Rome especially becomes our center forever, and what becomes the Vatican and all of that the Jews don't get a center for arguably, even now don't really have a center, at least religiously. Christians seem to have then gone back to their being physical spaces, physical centers, as opposed to the temporal centers. As but what from what I hear you talking about? The Sabbath kind of becomes the temple. It does that does that track with kind of the the history of the development of the two religions?
 
Rachael Jackson 38:26
I think so. And you're, I think from a point of interest you very much like second temple times, right? That's that's where that's where you thrive? First, yes, yes. Like you, like that's just sort of you, you really gravitate toward that time period. That is my least favorite time period in Judaism.
 
Ian Binns 38:49
Why? And remind myself and those of us who are not familiar with the time frame, your calendar time frame, yearly time frame, what
 
Rachael Jackson 39:01
Thank you. First Temple first Temple was destroyed 586 BCE. The Jews were then allowed to come back 60 years later reconstruction it reconstructed the tempo plus or minus 520 BCE. It was then destroyed 70 C. And so second temple is considered, you know, 520 BCE to 70. C, by the way, I'm using C as common era or Before Common Era, Zack used ad, which translates to a year of our Lord, which is pretty common, or BC, you know, typically understood as before Christ. And so, for those that do not use Christ as a center point in time, but we still need to communicate that this is the year 2022. We just have communicated as BCE and see.
 
Zack Jackson 39:57
It also is a little problematic that Jesus was likely born between three or four BC, so Jesus was born before
 
Ian Binns 40:04
I use, but
 
Rachael Jackson 40:05
that makes a lot of sense. You know, I was born before I became something too, so.
 
Zack Jackson 40:10
So why don't you like that period of time.
 
Rachael Jackson 40:13
Um, so just generally speaking, I find that there's just, it's uncomfortable for me, because it feels very inviting. And that's to reminiscent of today. As far as Jews are concerned, I think that there's a lot of us and them within the Jewish world nowadays, just like, and I see that as an us and them when we look at Second Temple times. It's great Hanukkah started as a Jewish civil war. And I just don't, I don't like that. It just, it just makes me too sad. Frankly. That's why I don't like it. It makes me too sad. The
 
Ian Binns 40:48
split with the northern kingdom,
 
Rachael Jackson 40:50
the what split? Oh, that was. So the United Kingdom. Again, if we look at this, from a literal standpoint, the United Kingdom was 1000 BCE. And it was only united for three kings. So really not very long. And then the 10 tribes were theoretically lost, also known as probably the leaders got taken away and they got split up because, you know, bigger, better competitors came along, and that was 722 BC. Yeah, very, very different time period
 
Zack Jackson 41:27
of sort of civil wars, totally different. There's the influence of the Greeks after Alexander comes through which there's a whole Hellenized wing aspect of, of that region, and then you've got the Jews and Alexandria and the Jews and Babylon and the Jews in Judea, not to mention the Samaritans and the rise of Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes zealots, a whole Christians, the whole gamut of splintering, and it's very traumatic, which might be why I like it.
 
Rachael Jackson 41:58
And that's why I don't Yeah, it's too much. It's like, are you reform or conservative? Well, I'm Reconstructionist. And I'm humanistic. And I'm Orthodox, but modern Orthodox, but open Orthodox, but just regular Orthodox, just ultra orthodox, and you're not even Jewish to me. And it's just, it's just to
 
Ian Binns 42:15
all connected to this god.
 
Rachael Jackson 42:20
Right. So it's just talking to somebody theoretically, I was just talking to somebody about you know, the prayer, the Shema, which comes from Deuteronomy, here, O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One, etc. I like it better in the Hebrew, right Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai. God. I said, Well, kind of person who's not Jewish say that. So Well, sure. Right. It's, it's in the Bible. Lots of people say it. It's just sort of what your intent is. So what does it mean for God? I said, well, it it's a statement of if you believe in up to one god up to one god yeah, so yes, and Ian. But to go back to Zacks to go back to Zags, a whole point of where and when, and does that track? Yes, I think that totally tracks for it's not a when, and frankly, let's look at Judaism from the scriptures itself. Were like where, where was Judaism in the Torah? Nowhere, which means everywhere. So the Torah was given in the wilderness, the Torah wasn't given in Jerusalem, the Torah was given in Israel, the Torah was given in the wilderness, they were just wandering. They didn't know who or where they were. And that's when we get the tour. That's quite literally what's happening in this week's post shocky Tisa, like this week, we're Reading about when Moses goes up onto the mountain and God's like, Here have some stones that I carved and Moses is like, sweet, and then God's like, he should go back down there because they made an idol out of gold, and it turned into a calf and perhaps you should control that better. And Moses comes down and she's like, Are you kidding me? And pearls, the tablets and all that stuff? Like that's literally what we're Reading this week. So now y'all at home can check when we recorded this. So there is no place in Judaism. It's all about time. And in this exact same portion, it talks about the Sabbath. Like this is what you should do. And let me just also clarify one other piece when I'm talking about Sabbath and we talk about rest. We're not resting because oh my god, the other six days are so hard. That's Saturday. I that's what a Saturday is. It's a whole boy, I had so many meetings and so many emails and these kids are driving me nuts. Like, I just need a day like that Saturday, that's a day of rest. Mazel Tov, we all 100% need that Shabbat is, I am not resting to recover or prepare for I am resting simply to acknowledge that I exist now in this time, not for what I was or what I will be for right now. That's why Jews also still need a two day week right? We still are Americans. We still need a Sunday. We need a day that does not do. Right. That's our Sunday but that's not Shabbat. Shabbat rest is not weekend rest. It's a it's a complete wholeness of right now. And being connected to the text that was 3000 years ago and 3000 years from now. But really, it's just this moment. And we don't, we don't need a place for that. So our centrality? Yeah, wherever you want to be. Which is why a shout out to Rabbi Jaime Korngold who was the rabbi who had my did my bat mitzvah with her. She's the adventurer, Rabbi, I've talked about her a couple of times, right? She has Shabbat on the ski slopes, right? Shabbat on the slopes, they keep talking about mountains, Zach, great, go skiing and then have a Shabbat together. Right 15 minutes and the Shema say a few other prayers and go back skin. That's amazing. It was good enough for Israelite ancestors is good enough for us.
 
Ian Binns 47:10
One, so some of the readings you sent. Yeah, it makes me like I want to get the whole book. First of all, you know, like, the rejoice in your festivals, the Jewish year, sacred time in the Jewish calendar, just Reading some of that, but you know, the whole it is the when and not aware of prayer that counts the most in Judaism. Judaism is a religion. Indeed, the first religion and by and large the only religion that sanctifies time over space. And I just, I just find that really interesting. So it's not it's not the where you do it. It's the the time that you stopped to pray, is that right?
 
Rachael Jackson 47:59
It's not even stopping to pray, necessarily. It's a time of connection, whether that's connection. And so this is why I say up to one God, because when you pray, there's this idea that you're praying to God. Right? That's a very Christian.
 
Ian Binns 48:17
Yeah, please. So I guess what, I just keep thinking back to the, what we continue to find ourselves in with this pandemic. Right, and how, you know, we, you know, the whole world obviously went, has gone through time periods, some still going through it, and around the world have not been able to do like, go into places of worship, they want to people, you know, places around the world where people don't worship at all, they have no faith at all, in any kind of deity that we consider. Right? But that they're still limited on where they can go. How about that. So places, you know, that's still occurring around the world, and in some spaces in the US as well. And so, you know, but I remember when this first started, you know, and, and everything happened and people initially came together when everything was shut down. But then finally, it was, especially in our state, Rachel, in North Carolina, the you cannot shut down our churches, you cannot shut down our churches, like if we cannot be in our church, then we are not able to worship and I did not instill do not hold to that view. You know, I? Yes, when I go into the sanctuary of our church, it is a very, it has a very profound and powerful impact on me. It becomes very inspirational. I mean, there are many times where I start I'll take my phone out, start writing notes, and just things because it just inspires me every time I'm there, because I feel that connection, right. But I was I still felt to me it was like, I think especially with me, as one of the The lay leaders of the church of trying to help, you know, offer up worships at worship service every week on faith on Facebook for almost a year. I took it as like, almost like a, not a test of my faith, but as they making sure I understand, at least to me, the true meaning of all this and the faith is that it's not necessarily in that building. That's, that's not where it should occur for me. Right? It needs to be within me my time I, wherever I am. Right? It does not matter, I guess. And so that's why Reading that just really has such a profound impact on me, because it's just like, to me that's beautiful, of recognizing that it's more than the bricks and mortar that we find ourselves in. That should be bigger than that. Right? And that's, again, goes back to the whole limiting thing, I think back to our first episode in this miniseries on time, and we talked about how do we think of God? And how if we think of God as within the human concept of time, how that limits the power of God. And, you know, what God can or cannot do, is greatly limited by our our understanding of how time flows, right? Or at least the way we think about it, I think
 
Rachael Jackson 51:16
our connection? Yeah, and I think our connection, not again, I'm trying to keep this, I love that you keep bringing it back to God, I'm like, Nah, leave God out of the conversation. Bringing it back to community, and culture and connection, that it's not, right. I think the building can be beautiful. And I think that there can be holiness in the building. But were for those of us that may not have an interventionalist God concept. What was missing is that we weren't next to pitfalls, that the issue wasn't, Oh, I missed seeing the BMR. And then there to me, the eternal light, and I missed being physically in the presence of the Taurus. It was that I didn't hear the other people singing. I didn't, I didn't watch their faces as they prayed and cried, and that was hugged.
 
Ian Binns 52:11
And, yeah, that was a struggle for me with the way we did the Facebook worship, and the way Facebook Live works. Because I cannot see the people, right, you don't see the other people, but then also to one of the struggles that I dealt with. And again, it wasn't the space, it was that, as you said, a community of being together and worshiping as one, right. And so I started really struggling when people would, when it was just me and one other person live, knowing that, you know, people would then tell me, but even you so many people watch the video later, you know, and they take time later, which is something to be appreciative of, but at the same time to it, it was like, right, but I don't feel that community. Like, and there was a it wasn't just about offering it to other people it was also offering it's myself. Right, and so I needed that community, and I at times didn't feel it. And that's nothing against anyone of any of the my fellow church members go, you know, listen, that's nothing against anybody. It was just a recognition of, you know,
 
Zack Jackson 53:17
you know, Rachel, you say that nobody in your context said that they miss seeing the tour miss seeing that. But in my context, in which we are much more concerned with sacred space than sacred time, we, I was recording the services in my dining room for the first six months. And then after Nicole and I kind of parted ways as it were. I started recording services in the sanctuary. And I had dozens and dozens of people tell me how comforting it was, for them to see the stained glass to see the cross to hear the Oregon to, like, see the things in the sanctuary they weren't allowed to be in. And I think about the people who were really excited to be able to just go to the sanctuary, like open sanctuary hours, you can come in and just sit there in the space at any time. And like that was really important for them to connect spiritually, more so than it being on a Sunday morning. Like the time was just like that was just almost accidental. It was like a habit that it was going to be at that time. But the space is what mattered. People found it very hard to worship from their hallway. And
 
Ian Binns 54:31
so I want to make, you know, I want to clarify, sorry to interrupt, I want to clarify something that, you know, I still highly value that space. Right? And so I feel exactly what you're talking about Zach but the very first time that Father Greg, led a service from our church and our sanctuary. Shout out to one of our huge supporters that when the very first time he got one from there during the pandemic, it was a very powerful moment. I remember being very emotional because I could see it again, right? So yes, I have that deep connection to that space. But for me, what I found fascinating, were those who would advocate that the only way they felt they could worship was in that space. Like that was it. And it wasn't about the words, the connection outside of that space at a different time. That was they had to be in that space where they were not actually worshiping. And I struggled with that. Because to me, that seems limiting.
 
Zack Jackson 55:30
The only bit of our worship that is connected to time, specifically to time and not to space is the act of communion, or the Eucharist. It is, by its, by its elements in the way it's constructed in the words that you say, of institution around it. It is a a recreation of an event that happened 2000 Some years ago, that you're bringing into the present, and that you are looking into the future of a final reconciliation, we say the words and communion, all together as one people Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. And in that way, the act of communion acts as a sort of temporal Axis Mundi to us, you know, big old fancy words. But just like it stakes us in eternity, in that moment, reaching to the past, being in the present, pulling the future towards us. But aside from the act of communion, we are all about space. And we all care about time. So I am, I have learned so much from you, Rachel, today, and I've gleaned so much wisdom from you in this time. As you all didn't struggle the same way we did during the beginning of the pandemic, you struggle in the different ways, but not in the way that we struggled.
 
Rachael Jackson 56:49
Yes, so true. I love I love talking about this stuff. I love our ability to share and find appreciation in our differences and find commonalities. And that we all are seeking to find something sacred, whether that's time or space, whether that's now or eternity. So I appreciate my dialogue.
 
Zack Jackson 57:19
So welcome to a bonus edition of the dead Christian story hour. I think we're going out of order a little bit, but I have one prepared today. And we're not going to ask Rachel to talk more about about something and Ian has something but it's going to save it until the next time because and you'll see why then it's going to be great. So I'm going to go out of order because I have a fun story to share with you today about a dead Christian that I think is great. So our story today takes place in the little community that St. Francis had put together sometime in the early 1200s, late 1100s. Somewhere in there in Assisi in Italy. They were a wild and crazy group of people who left society because they thought it was getting too. Too rich, too wealthy, too disconnected. They were they ran away from their their family's prosperity from all of the wars and all of that stuff that was happening and they went out and they made their own communes out in the middle of the of the woods in the fields. And they lived this peaceful, happy sort of a life and they had some wild stories that are contained in a book called the little flowers of St. Francis. And now like all good hagiography, this takes this you take this with a grain of salt. Because all of our stories about our heroes of faith, a little bit of a comic book, sort of a bend to them. So this story, there was a there was a good fellow named Brother Rufino i Brother affino was in the woods and he was praying fervently. And suddenly, Jesus Christ appears in front of him. He's got the holes in his hands and all that stuff. He's like, look, it's me. It's JC. I'm here to talk to you. And brother finos. Like, wow, what is the great, this is great is the guy this is the guy rose talking about and he's right here. And he's got something to say to me. And so Jesus opens his mouth and says to him, Oh, brother Rufino. Why do you afflict yourself with penance and prayer? Since you are not among those predestined to eternal life, believe me, because I know who might have chosen and predestined and don't believe in that son of Pietro that St. Francis, if he should say the opposite. You know what, don't even ask him about this matter? Because neither he nor others know it, but only I know, because I'm the son of God. Therefore, believe me, you are certainly among the number of the Damned. And the son of Pietro This again is St. Francis As your father, and also his father, they're all damned as well. And whoever follows him as being deceived. Brother Ruffino at this point, he just met Jesus. And Jesus just told him, he's damned to hell. And sorry, dude, that's just the way it goes. And don't tell anyone about this, by the way. So kids, if you're listening out there and a grown up tells you don't tell anyone about this. That's a red flag. So he, he goes off and he's so sad and he's so despondent, and he says, I knew it. I knew it all along. I am an imposter. I really, I don't belong here. Everyone else is so much more righteous than me. And I am damned from the start. But God's like, I saw that. I saw that sneaky thing there. And tell St. Francis, hey, the devil just showed up. It was wearing my clothing, and is pretending to be me. I need you to go talk to brother Rufino. So St. Francis goes to Brother Rufino and he says hey, look, I know what you just saw. That's not Jesus. You can always tell it's Jesus because of the sorts of things he says that's the kind of words that the devil would say, Brother finos, like, wow, really? All right, if you say so. I'm just Dude, you're you're St. Francis. So San Francis says to him, go back out to the woods. And when this imposter Jesus shows up to you again, I want you to say these words to him verbatim. You say, Hey, open your mouth again. And I'm gonna take a minute. And I'm gonna bleep that out. But that is your King James II and translations may say, I shall expel dung upon thee or something like that. But there's a four letter word. So, brother afina, goes out into the woods again. And then, you know, Jesus, the fake Jesus shows up to him again. And because I thought I told you to go home. You are a damned soul. You have no place being here. What on earth are you even doing trying to pray? Stop wasting your time. And brother fino goes, Look, I'm gonna let you finish. But first, open your mouth again. And I'm gonna take a kid in it. And the devil at that point, you just bust out of his Jesus costume. And he's like, wow, you found me. How dare you speak to me like that. And he basically explodes and flies off into the distance and knocks the top of a mountain off. And there's this massive earthquake in like all of the region that everyone reported hearing, and seeing and a huge landslide that came down off of that mountain that other people saw and can attest to and totally definitely happened and was because the devil was so offended by brother Ruffino because he caught him in his in his traps. And that is the story of how brother Ruffino caused an earthquake in a landslide and destroyed the top of a mountain because he talked back to the devil. That's amazing. Okay, very good.
 
1:03:06
That's it.

Time Part 3: The Shape of Time

Episode 101
Let's talk about reincarnation, end times prophecies, and the shapes of our stories today. Kendra helps us to think deeply about how the shape of time informs the shape of our story and the ways that we make meaning in the universe. 
 
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More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
 
Zack Jackson 00:04
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are Zack Jackson, UCC pastor and Reading Pennsylvania and I am most productive when everyone else is asleep at night,
 
Ian Binns 00:22
Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte, my most productive time of the day, sadly varies. Because of my ADD, I cannot pick a particular time and say that's it. It just says that it happens. And when it does I get really frustrated if people get me out of that moment, because it takes hours to get into it. So, yeah,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 00:51
Kendra Holt, more assistant professor of religion at Bethany College in Lindsborg Kansas. And I used to be able to say, I was most productive at night, because I am a night owl, but the older I get, the more that varies. And I also don't feel like there is a particular time that works best if you just let the Spirit lead.
 
Zack Jackson 01:15
Just tired all the time. Yeah.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 01:19
Constant exhaustion, and just snippets of bursts of energy. So why high? You ask?
 
Zack Jackson 01:38
I was asking, I was asking it very hard in my head. Anticipating that why, why Kendra answer? Why, why?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 01:48
Why? Why ever? Why? Well, let me tell you, I have an answer for you. Oh, thank God. So we, we thought that today, we would talk about shapes of time, who. So shapes of time. So just to kind of start out so whenever I teach students, typically it's in like a world religions or an intro to religion class this semester. It was a world religions class, but when I'm having a conversation, in a classroom with students about different, you know, religious traditions, and how, like, what are some of the things that we can compare safely without sort of centralizing religious traditions. And one fun conversation I like to start with somewhere near the beginning of the semester, is to talk about shapes of time. And what I mean by that is, you know, cyclical versus linear conceptions of time, or, you know, some might argue also, like spiral shapes of time. And so the way this looks when I bring it up to my students is I, I typically use for my examples, Hinduism, or Buddhism, and Christianity. And I draw up on the board, just, you know, a simple like circle, and a simple, like, horizontal line, as just like two examples of shapes the circle and this horizontal line. And I talked about how, you know, time is something that we sort of take take for granted, as it's just sort of permeates everything, but we don't, we're not always like thinking about how our understanding of time, you know, like, really impacts us necessarily, or maybe I shouldn't speak for you all, but I don't always think about how time itself is like impacting my day to day, except when I'm trying very hard to get something done. And time is just slipping away that moment, or I become conscious of time, but on a grand scale. It's something that's sort of taken as just the way things are. And the way that we think about time, is I think we kind of it's easy to sort of assume, that are sort of grand notions of time and how time unfolds, that that there's nothing too complicated or like interesting about that necessarily. And, and so when I draw up this like circle and line on the board for my students, one of the conversations that I'm trying to get started is how we across like, religious and cultural traditions, we actually have very different understandings of, of of time. Time and by time I'm not not talking in this moment necessarily about like, scientific like theory of relativity, you know, kind of technical explanations of like space time. But like, cultural and social understandings of like what will happen, what has happened, what is happening and what will happen to us socially and culturally. And, and so, the circle on the board then is what I offer as like a Hindu or Buddhist example of cycles of time with regards to reincarnation and how, you know, the human soul if we're talking about Hinduism, but not not really a soul, if we're talking about Buddhism, but the the person, and the person's existence, moves through a cycle of time that is stuck in this cycle of reincarnation, of, of birth, life, death, rebirth, and that this is, the circle is, is known as samsara, if you're using a Hindu terminology and conceptions of time in samsara, is a cycle that you want to get out of. So samsara is like the way things are, from a Hindu or Buddhist perspective, in terms of thinking about time and how we exist in time, but samsara is not desirable, there are ways that you can build up better karma and be reincarnated in a way that is better or worse, contingent upon, like what kind of karma you built in your current life. But ultimately, the goal in in that version of cyclical time is to get out of the cycle to be released from the cycle. But the cycle can go on and on and on. And you can have, you know, hundreds and hundreds of reincarnations, and there's no like you, you have to there are certain practices and things you have to do in order to be released from the cycle. And, and so, you know, one of the we can put this in the show notes, but there's an article that has like some helpful kind of visuals, but I want to just kind of talk about, like, the way that this cycle of time for Buddhism is represented. And it's the Buddhist wheel of life. And you there are a lot of different I mean, if you just Google that, like, you'll find all kinds of really colorful, vibrant images that come up of this wheel of life. But the wheel of life, you can see like there are different realms, in the Buddhist wheel of life. And those are sort of the possibilities for how you reincarnate into the cycle of samsara. And so you can see like, why now, hopefully, like there's this distinction between like a cycle versus linear time, because there's not, there's not like one specific end goal that is clear to you, from the perspective of your current life, if you have the cyclical notion of time. I mean, yes, like ultimate release from it, you can see that as an end goal, but like the reincarnation cycle, it means that you, you will, again, experience what you have already experienced, you will again, experience birth, which is something that you already have experienced in the past, you will again experience you know, life insofar as you have experienced it, and you know, death will happen again and again. And again, it's not a single kind of destination point until you have achieved the right tools and practices to get out of that cycle. And so you can kind of think about like, how that might inform a person to like navigate through life itself. The other so like the linear line on the board, I uses Christianity, but I think it also applies pretty well to like the Abrahamic traditions in general of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, but I use Christianity in particular, because there's so much that has been written about Christian like apocalyptic. You know, eschatology, which is a fancy word meaning, like, study of in things, or you know, like end of time, and, and another, there are some images that we can also share, I think in the show notes of this version of Christian eschatology called Christian dispensationalism. There are different ways to kind of label this to like you may have heard Christian primo lineal dispensationalism, post millennial dispensationalism, however you slice it, it is a mouthful of a thing to say dispensationalism. But there are images, we can share that kind of show that in this version of Christian eschatology, it's not how everyone sees the end of time. But in this version of Christian eschatology that's popular in, especially some circles of like, Christian, like fundamentalism, types of theology or, you know, like some evangelical theologies, there are seven dispensations of time, and that time moves in a linear fashion. And a dispensation is just like a stage of time, I think that's the way I would describe it more simply because dispensation is also kind of a buzzy word. In this context, but there are, you know, like stages of time, that kind of unfold in this linear fashion, but the point is that we're not moving in a cycle with this conception of time, we're moving towards an end point that is the apocalyptic end of time. And after the end of time, eternity unfolds forever and ever. And it just kind of goes on in this linear, like, one, one way, there's a path a direction, and we move in that direction. And it's kind of inevitable, like, you can't really stop it from unfolding it's going to happen. And, you know, the some of these dispensations for Christian dispensationalism you have, like, the age of innocence, and that's, like, you know, Adam and Eve, you have you go up through like, 234567. But if the, I mean, I could like list all of those, but I'm, kind of move quickly. I'm timing myself this time, so that I'm not going like way over.
 
Zack Jackson 11:59
So it's like innocence. No innocence. Gods here, Gods there. Now it's Israel. Now. It's now it's Jesus. Now it's Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's also inherently kind of anti semitic. Yeah, in that dispensationalism, leaves Jews behind, but go on.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 12:17
So yeah, you have like innocence, stage one, stage two conscience, stage three, human government, stage four, promise, stage five, loss, stage six, Grace, stage seven kingdom age. And there are, you know, specific things that happen in each of those stages that kind of map on to biblical stories, and the stages that map on to like the time of Moses, and, um, you know, just like the time of Abraham. And all of these stages as they unfold, it's like, sort of this like, progression of like God's plan for time. And the way that that ends, is with this seventh dispensation, the kingdom age where Jesus returns and rains on Earth for 1000 years, and, you know, brings peace, and, you know, after that time is kind of over, there's like the final judgment, the white throne judgment, and then time ends and eternity begins. And that, that's kind of the the ending of this, like premillennial dispensationalist. Christian theology again, sorry, for the long buzzy terminology. But the point is that this version of time, is, is is different, like it's, it has that linear shape to it. And one of the things that I think is kind of interesting about this understanding of time, and it's, there's this like piece of inevitability. And it's not the only version of like, like, this is, I think, kind of a common kind of trope in like apocalyptic literature and thought is like, the apocalypse is coming, eventually, like, it's inevitable. And that means that you can't fight it and in some ways, believing in the inevitability of the apocalyptic moment of end of time can make some people sort of lean into that and welcome that end of time moment, if it means that the there sort of conception of time will actually like, ultimately benefit them. So for example, in like this Christian dispensationalist, Premillennialism version of the entire time. Christians who hold this, believe that they'll be gone there'll be sort of taken away by God out of out of the earth out of time so that they don't have to experience the violence and trauma of the apocalypse at Self, and that they will be, you know, held close, near and dear and safe with God and protected from the end of times. And so what this means is you have Christians who hold to this kind of eschatology are, I think more likely to say things like, well, let's just like let it all burn, because we're not going to be here anyway, like, only the unsaved will be sort of judged and condemned, but you know, Christians will be safe. So any violence that happens ultimately, it's, it's not going to affect us in the end and this kind of eternal way. And, and so I think the kind of extreme response through that kind of lens of time is, it can doesn't always have to, but it can lend itself to apathy, and even like a condoning of, you know, destruction and violence. And this is me sort of using that as an example, because there was actually an article that was published very recently in the Atlantic about this language like cautioning against the language of a new civil war that's like impending in the United States. And that the whole article is pretty interesting. But there's this line that caught my eye. And it says, you know, a several paragraphs down. And I'll just kind of like read the couple of sentences for free all that says, quote, There is a very deep strain of apocalyptic fantasy in fundamentalist Christianity, Armageddon may be horrible, but it is not to be feared because it will be the harbinger of eternal bliss for the elect and eternal damnation for their foes, on what used to be referred to as the far right, that perhaps should now simply be called the armed wing of the Republican Party. The imminence of Civil War is a given and quote, and, and that caught my eye because it's really talking about a shape of time. And, you know, like, the question that kind of arises from that, for me is like, what, what are practical implications in our behavior? When we think about, like, what our own shapes of time are? Do we have notions that lead us to an inevitable end? Is that something that we experienced over and over again? And like, is that just sort of philosophy or theological pondering? Or does that kind of impact us on this, like, deep on the ground level? And, and so that, that was, that was kind of where, where my mind was going, when I think about this, the shape of time? That's kind of why I have to start us here. No, well,
 
Ian Binns 18:09
says while you were talking about it, especially the last part, and I mean, y'all know, I don't have the theological background that you guys do. So a lot of times the words that are used in cotton, what are you talking about, but they may me just all of a sudden just reminded me of the Left Behind series? Yes, that was written the book series, right. And so
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 18:31
that is a great example, and that you have given us and reminded us that is Christian premillennial dispensationalism. Yeah. So now, translation, aka left behind,
 
Ian Binns 18:43
right, well, and I find it fascinating. So what's interesting is that I actually got into Reading this series in like 2000, it was when I was in the Peace Corps. And so when I was in the Peace Corps in Jamaica, and the main office in Kingston, I was had a library that we could go and just get books from and blah, blah, take with us back to our home and everything and and so I think that was the time I started getting into this series, because I saw it and I was calling God sounds kind of interesting. And so I started Reading it. And I was not very strong in my faith. Want to take that back. That's actually when I first started a Bible study, but it was a different time in my life, right? So I was 23 years old, 2223 different time of my life, different things going on. And I now that I looked it up, and just looked up left behind again to remind myself some of it and I'll be honest, I did not finish this series because I found it to be this is just my opinion. Some of the writing you know, again, I was not familiar with the language, the terminology that was being used and the description that you just provided Kendra, but there were parts of the books I found as I was going further for the series that I would skip hold sections because it felt like it was Reading the same thing I read in the book before, right? Like these long sermons from a character or whatever. And so it but I, I'm curious how would I approach the series now at this point in my life and at this point in my spiritual journey, right and starting to have a better understanding of time and just religion in general and what the underlying me I mean, I get what the meaning was, but like, talk about dismiss, dismiss, what is the word again? dispensationalism.
 
Zack Jackson 20:33
There you go. That word can you can approach that book series straight into the recycling bin if you'd like. Yeah,
 
Ian Binns 20:38
I don't think we have them anymore. I think like I ended up buying several of them and got rid of them.
 
Zack Jackson 20:42
That's Yes, pre trim these Corinne. Aspen's pre trib, premillennial dispensationalism is what that is essentially, with the millennial in the millennial and the pre millennial post millennial mid millennial that has to do with in Revelation talks about how there will be 1000 year reign of Christ. Before then Satan is allowed to return cause havoc, and then the final judgment. And so then the thought is the question is, when does that happen? So the pre millennial is that that hasn't happened yet. And that there will be this great time and then there'll be blah, blah, blah, then there's post millennial that's like, hey, no, that's where we are. Right now that this this kingdom age? Is is the millennial reign of Christ that the the age of the church or maybe that we're almost there. And then the trim part of that is not the trip. Yeah, the is the trick Great Tribulation, as in tribulation, right? The seven year tribulation that is foretold in Daniel and in Revelation. And at what point would the people of God be raptured out of it, so that only the unrighteous should suffer? There's some interpretations that Oh, before the tribulation, all the elect will be taken out. And that's what left behind is, there's some thought that it's midway through taken from a couple of phrases from Daniel, and then there's some that everyone will have to live through the whole thing only until the end, will then there'll be judgment on it all. And I mean, I was steeped in this stuff, my seventh grade Bible teacher had a timeline on the wall of the n times, with like, how many months in between events would happen, you know, the, the two witnesses would show up here, one of them would die, and then they'd raise and then there'd be, you know, the Antichrist would rise and he would have a mortal wound, and then he'd be healed. And then he'd be like, all along the way. We knew what the mark of the beast was going to be. And when it was going to happen, it was actually supposed to start happening on y2k. But then apparently, enough, people prayed and God delayed God's hand. Or so that's what they told me when it didn't happen. But it's, it's ironic to me that this group of people has latched on to second temple apocalyptic literature, which is this period of time, it's like a 300 year period, during the Second Temple of Jerusalem, where this genre starts to arise. They've taken that and applied it directly to this sort of straight line timeline that you're talking about Kendra, that, you know, this thing hasn't happened yet. But here are the signs to know when it's going to happen and what it's going to look like. And that goes from A to B to C to D onward until the end, it's a straight line. When that is the exact opposite of the way that second temple apocalyptic literature is written and met to be read. If you look at Daniel and parts of Jesus's little Apocalypse on the on the mountain and and the book of Revelation, and you know, all of the ones that didn't make it into the the Hebrew and Christian canons, they're all using coded language for things that are happening in the moment. Now, there's a great, great part in Daniel, in which they're talking about kings of the north, and kings of the south and marriages that between them and wars between them. And it's very clearly talking about the battles between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies. And like, historically, we know this, this is lining up exactly what it is until the desolation of the abomination of desolation. And then there's a straight war and then God comes down with his angels and saves the day. Which we know didn't happen, at least not in any kind of final sort of a way. So then, what do you do with that? Well, that's how all of them are written. They're all written with this great symbolism of things of awful apocalyptic sort of images. And, in the end Godwin's, and I say apocalyptic that word means to reveal to pull back the curtain. And so what that whole genre is doing is it says hey, You see these things happening in real life, but I'm going to pull back the curtain and show you the spiritual realities behind them. So you think Rome is this unstoppable force, but hey, pull back the curtain, and it's actually just this ugly dragon. And the ugly Dragon is going to be thrown into the pit of fire. So these books were meant to be read by people who are currently suffering, so that they can put themselves in the story. And then see that in the end, God rescues them. So in a way, second temple apocalyptic literature is like a green screen, in which generation upon generation upon generation can stand in front of it and put themselves in the story. So the, the beast from Revelation is originally Nero. And then, you know, it might be Domitian. And then it might be valerian. And then it might be Stalin, you know, like, you can put you can make the beast, any number of things, as it has been, I mean, Martin Luther said, that was the pope at one point. And, you know, for all intents and purposes, for him, it was, because that's the point is these, these, these prophetic visions are cycles of things that they're true because they keep happening. And then the point is, you get to put yourself in it, and then you get to see that God is faithful, and that you'll be brought through it at the end. And so to take that kind of genre of literature, and then to take that, that circle down that spiral, and to just stretch it out and say, All right, this is what it means. This is the start. And the end of the end times is just a It's such, it's so dishonest, and disingenuous. And it's it. It does violence to the Scriptures themselves.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 26:54
It also sounds a little bit like, I don't know if you necessarily intended it this way back, but like the, it seems like people when they're in the moment, especially with this dislike genre of like apocalyptic literature, being in it. The those like apocalyptic tropes, like they, it feels linear, because it's like, the cycle that you are experiencing, but you don't see it as a cycle. And, you know, obviously, like we've kind of used the premillennial left behind type eschatology is that but like, the, it's kind of easier to identify the genre of literature as a cycle, if you're sort of using hindsight to see that this happens again, and again, and again. Is that Is that how you would characterize
 
Zack Jackson 27:48
that's a really good insight there. It doesn't feel like a cycle while you're in it. But I think that's the power of once you realize that it is. So then, you know, everything looks bleak right now in the world. It does. And it seems like the cups, the bowls of judgment are being poured out upon us all. So then to be able to keep turning through the book of Revelation to get to the part where death itself, hell itself is thrown into the pit of fire and destroyed. And then every knee boughs and every tongue confesses, and all things are made new, and there's streams of living water and to be able to get to that point. Is there some some comfort in that?
 
Ian Binns 28:35
Well, it seems like in and I want to go back to that series for a minute. That's right, the Left Behind series that, you know, you talked about zakat being kind of a way, he's I think this is what you were saying a way of it, almost, you know, it seems to me to the way it was written was to help people relate to it, right, and then see that there'll be saved at the end and those types of things. And that's a very generalization, overgeneralization, I guess. But it's interesting while Reading more about the series, the efforts to turn them into films, and how they keep trying to reboot it. And they're actually in the process of doing that now, of redoing the series again, to see if that gets get more attention to it, I guess, and to get more people on board, this particular series, I just find that fascinating of what it is they seem to be trying to do, and I'm part of that part of me will be curious to see how will they try to connect or will they tried to connect it politically? Right in some way that you know, I saw I remember in 2011, or something, I guess it was when Obama was running the second time. I think that was right. Yeah. Chuck Norris and his wife came out talking about that election and that proclaim that if Obama won reelection, it would begin the 1000 years of darkness Oh, yeah.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 30:07
This is a political strategy because it works because it's drama. And it's like, you know, the religious affiliation of these stories. They're all encompassing, and it just moves people. And ah, yes, yes. The fact
 
Zack Jackson 30:24
that people think that this is the worst that humanity has ever been blows my mind like, have you read history? We used to murder people for sport. We're not. Yeah, there's not so bad things are not as bad as you think they are.
 
Ian Binns 30:39
Yeah. But it's just fascinating how they, they, you know, a percentage of the population kind of latches on to that messaging. And they're a powerful group of people, because especially when you talk about politics, you know, they vote, you know, you get them to vote. And that's how a lot of times, some of the bigger elections they win is because people know that if we can get the more fundamentalist, Christian and evangelical Christians out to vote that most likely they'll vote for the Republican candidate. And, you know, they go out numbers that can help. And so by tying in that argument that they use obviously didn't work because Obama won a second term. But I just found that so interesting that that was a perspective they were trying to use as a way to encourage people to vote is if you don't vote, if you don't vote for Romney, then the 1000 years of darkness will again,
 
Zack Jackson 31:37
evangelicals going if you don't vote for the Mormon, then that's outside years of darkness. Right? Which, you know, that's not a personal knock against Mormons, but just the those same evangelicals would not consider a Mormon, a Christian normally. But how do you come back from that, by the way, like, once you've gone totally nuclear, that the world is going to end and Satan himself will reign if this man gets elected? Like, how do you then say something about someone else? Like there's no higher? You can't go higher than that you've already gone nuclear. So
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 32:16
worse than the Antichrist, right?
 
Ian Binns 32:18
What do we do? Yeah, it's just seems like such an interesting way to live. And as I said, in fact, they're trying to redo this series again. And they're using the actor Kevin Sorbo. Who did, Hercules, right. No,
 
Zack Jackson 32:37
yes. And then every low budget Christian movie since then.
 
Ian Binns 32:41
Yep. And so and he is someone the right has, you know, latched on to and he that's he's found his niche. And so he's gonna star and direct in the new movie, I will only
 
Zack Jackson 32:52
watch it if Lucy Lawless is in it, as well as Xena Warrior Princess, not as anyone else.
 
Ian Binns 33:00
Yeah. Doubtful. It'll happen without
 
Zack Jackson 33:03
a man can dream.
 
Ian Binns 33:15
This right, anyway, sorry. I know, I keep going on tangent. But I just found fascinating.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 33:19
I didn't know that I didn't realize that they were trying to like reboot the
 
Ian Binns 33:24
and this is from last month. Hmm.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 33:27
Okay. Well, there you go. So I was, you know, talking, talking through this, you know, the shape shapes of time. And, you know, I kind of our plan for today's recording with my husband, Chad. And he told me of a helpful kind of connection that might be familiar to, to many of you, but there is a piece Well, first of all, there's a writer, he was an American writer, Kurt Vonnegut, who recorded I think it was kind of like a short lecture, but also published in several places about his early writing his like, I think it was his thesis on the shapes of stories. And so I just, I think that's a really interesting kind of connection here, as we're talking about the shapes of time. Like, are we really just talking about the shapes of stories, and Kurt Vonnegut had this whole sort of, like, charting out of different shapes of stories. And so, you know, he was like, writing and publishing has like a lot of novels and was thinking about, like, the structure of a narrative. And I think you can find, you know, his, his lecture online. I think it's like a 30 minute piece, but, you know, he talks through how, you know, when you're talking about like, any kind of job of story, there's like this stair step ladder where you're climbing upward things are going swimmingly. You know, the lovers, they fall in love, and they're like having a grand time. And they're, you know, giving each other flowers and walking, holding hands through the park. And, and then something happens. And this stair step ladder going upwards, suddenly crashes into a, you know, a desolate trough. And that trough, there's this low point, and then you have a low point that requires a creative solution, and then you start moving up on the incline again, and you know, maybe it flattens out, there's a plateau. And then maybe there's like another, a deeper crash, a deeper trough. And then the end of the story can maybe resolve coming again, out of the trough back up into an incline, that just keeps going up and up and up, and you have like your happy ending. And you know, I'm doing some heavy like paraphrasing of this shapes of stories, not something I had seen of his before. But like the point being that you can draw on like the same way that in my classes I draw like the circle and horizontal line to represent time qurbana gets it there's like a bunch of different shapes that you can put up on the board, variations of these shapes to you can have this staircase that goes up and then crashes down and then rises back up again, you can have something that looks more like a wave that bounces up and down, and up and down, and up and down, and up and down and just has, you know, twists and turns. And you can have a story that's just maybe it is a single horizontal line. And it's maybe a boring story where there's just nothing happens. And it's just plateau from beginning to end. And I you know, there are like shapes of stories that we are drawn to, and why are we drawn to those stories? Why would we prefer a story that has the, you know, peaks and valleys versus a story that's just a flat plateau all the way through? Is there you know, an excitement that comes with different shapes of stories? And like, why do we crave certain kinds of resolution at the end of a story. And it just is like, I think a really interesting and kind of perfect, like frame that Vonnegut's sort of offered that I think really maps on to the way that we think about these like big conceptions of time out of our cultural religious lenses, and that it seems that we, like we crave order, we crave orderliness. In the midst of you know, seeming chaos, that we want to feel like we have control, we want to feel a sense of meaning. And, and so, you know, I think like one way to sort of put put these shapes of time or shapes of stories and bring them together is that that's part of what's being offered to us. And you know, for better or worse, because the shapes are different. And they mean different things to different people. But I think the motivation of latching on to certain stories, is that sort of comfort that and like sense of belonging that we derive from particular shapes. So I don't know. I'm curious what what y'all think about that?
 
Zack Jackson 38:39
Yeah, reminds me of the end of the gospel of Mark. Which, yeah, Mark was written in the style of a Greek epic, which they don't all have perfect, happy endings. And the earliest manuscripts, it ends with, you know, the, the women come to the tomb, they find that it's, it's empty. There's, there's an angel who's like, Hey, check it out. He's not here. He's gone. He risen Hallelujah. And it ends with Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid. And that's how the book ends. But that only lasted like a couple 100 years, because then people added on to the end of it. And so all of the later manuscripts and like the ones that are like King James is based on the Latin Bibles, they all have this other lesson versus that's all like wrapping up the story, you know, the, like the end of the Lord of the Rings, where it's like, alright, well, then he appeared to two more of them. And then he appeared to everyone. And then he said, Go into all the world and preach the gospel. And then he said, I love you. I'm happy. I'll see you later. I left lunch in the fridge and everything got wrapped up in the end, and it was like they could not stand for the story tonight. And on a high note that it had to end there, or else they just felt weird about it.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 40:07
I love that as an example, because it's like you go from a story shape that kind of trails off at the end and this sad sort of dangling like downward slope of trembling and fear to like the sharp upward incline of happiness and resolution, very different, very different emotional responses to
 
Zack Jackson 40:27
the last chapter of Ecclesiastes does the same thing. Where it's like some some later editor was like, this is just this needs, this needs a pick me up at the end, nobody's ever people are going to finish this and just be upset. So we need like, a happy ending, tacked on to the end of the bow on it. Right. And then they did the same thing to I Am Legend. Anybody ever see that? The book, the short story ends totally differently. It ends with this great like Twilight Zone esque reveal. And it's like dark, and it just ends. But Hollywood was like we can't do that we have to have a resolution, we have to have some kind of happy ending, people have to leave the theater feeling good in some way, shape, or form. Like they didn't just Well, anytime
 
Ian Binns 41:14
you think about with storytelling, you know, as we've already said, that having that nice ending is what people human nature is what we want, right? We want to build a wrap up something type deal. And so, you know, John, my son, John and I are right now watching the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then release order. And so he came, you know, maybe a month or so ago, he was just like, Hey, Dad, I really want to my friend watched Black Widow, I want to see Black Widow. And I said, Okay, that's great, but we're not seeing the others. It's not gonna make you're gonna miss some things. Oh, yeah. So what are you ready to start watching these? And he's like, oh, yeah, absolutely. So we started and we're watching an order of release, not chronological order. And so it makes me think about, you know, he and I were talking the other day, and yesterday, he was kind of trying to make sense of how they're all connected. We've gotten all the way through phase two, we just started Civil War last night. Captain America Civil War, right. And it makes he was talking about how they're all connected and stuff like that. But are they really like Captain America? The second one is really a sequel and what that means and, you know, part one, part two, and it made me think about Avengers. The third and fourth one, right. So Infinity War the way it ends, and then you have in game and and it was kind of pitched as a part one, part two aspect of things because Part One does not end. All happy go lucky as part two does at least the ends were things more wrapped up part one ends with a major cliffhanger. Right. And you think about films like that, like, for example, the last two Harry Potter movies, the four books seven. You know, they're both the Deathly Hallows, but it was part one, part two, part one did not end on a high note as part two debt. And so it ended with something that you're just kind of like, well, what and so but you knew it Part Two was comment. So the story wasn't over yet. Is my point. Right? And we love it for the story to be over and happy, as you said, and I think the two examples you gave from Scripture is just fascinating. I was not quite aware that they did that with Ecclesiastes, but I didn't know that. That's how Mark changed is that here was the original version, then they added on some things too, which I've always found really interesting. And to me, that was take that as a what does that say about the Bible? Right, you know, and those types of things, but anyway,
 
Zack Jackson 43:51
most people want to believe that things are gonna work out well for them. And when we are in a storyline, we put ourselves in that story. And we, you know, we then want the characters to come out on top, you know, unless you are a person who is just super pessimistic, you know, you know, somebody like, like, I don't know, Adam, who picked out Pan's Labyrinth for his movie early last year. And that movie ends spoiler alert, with like, a dead child. And yeah, it's like, oh, that's an awful ending. You know, something like Requiem for a Dream that just ends with awful tragedy. Some people like that, and I don't know why. Honestly.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 44:47
I think it's like I think some, some of those stories can be really cathartic. Like, it's not that they're happy, but they reflect Something that you experience. And I think, like the cathartic experience of watching something that's super, super sad. I think what that gives people to some extent is a feeling that you're not alone and experiencing like deep sadness or trauma and that there's like a path. I mean, I guess if the story ends in, you know, death, I'm not sure that that maybe is a different message. But some of the stories that are really sad, there's still kind of a way forward through healing. And healing is really hard. And not, you know, it's not like a simple, straightforward, like, wrapped up in a bow type of process. And it's just, I think there's something that's comforting in seeing that being reflected in all its like ugliness and darkness, that kind of counter intuitively facilitates a kind of healing or a feeling of being seen. But that's a very different kind of story that I think then, you know, what we've been talking about with the sort of nice resolution that is happy, but it's, yeah, it's a different shape, with a different kind of purpose, I think. And then there's also the kind of, you know, like, storytelling problem, where people don't want the story to end. And so the story just like drags on and on and like, you think of like, a TV show that is, like, 10 seasons too long. And it's like, why didn't you just have a plan to do this? Well, in three seasons, phrase, and on and on, and on, and on, and on, and on and on.
 
Ian Binns 46:46
We gave that up a long time ago.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 46:50
But yeah, like, Why, what's the kind of motivation of that shape, and I think it's, it's like, related to the desire to want things to work out well, in the end. But I think people also want to keep experiencing that, that like, happy moment or resolution until, like, feel part of a story for as long as possible. When, you know, really, like all stories, they do come to an end or they at least change over time. And so there's like, I think, I think we all kind of have an impulse or like motivation to find like permanence in like goodness, or permanence and like stability. And that can like influence the way that we tell stories and sort of drag them on in hopes that we can be part of them for for longer
 
Ian Binns 47:54
well, and so if I can we talk about in the feeling of happiness, and just feeling good, you know, John and I, in this journey of Washington, these films together and we're having a great time doing it, you know, I mean, he's really getting into it, and we're having a lot of fun. But I remember sometimes he would talk to me about what was your favorite one and your least favorite and Babalon and I had told him that you know, we're not done with civil war yet. We're gonna finish it today. But that when I saw that film, I didn't want to watch it again. Like that even though you know the way it ends it's okay, it was still a you know, for two for what over 12 films or something like that so far up to that point. It's like all the heroes maybe they don't get along at times but they're still kind of on the same side and then all of a sudden you see in this one that wait a minute to the biggest characters are now on opposite sides fighting each other. And I struggled with that I gotta be honest watching that that was tough to watch because it made me sad and like oh, this is something I'm supposed to be able to just escape into and not worry and bola and all sudden this happens and and so that was tough. And so I like how they work with it later. But that is interesting to me. How you know so watching some of it last night I'm glad we're doing it. But even he was describing this morning so what do you think so far? And he's like, I like it. But I mean it's it's really good and the plots interesting but also don't like it because we've not gotten to the big fight yet. We stopped bright for that. And we had to because bedtime fight we had we'd have to watch the rest of the film. Right and so as I said, we'll finish it today. But he just was like, but I don't like the fact that they're they're starting to not really get along because he you know, we both love Iron Man and Captain America alright, and we just but all these characters you get attached to all of them. And so it's just interesting. What that how this all relates Hmm. So
 
Zack Jackson 50:01
yeah, superhero movies in general, kind of have the same shape as the New Testament. Where it's like, yeah. Which is like he does the shaped Zack. I will, I will paint you a picture auditorially Yes, please. So it begins, they all begin with humble origins, an underdog story of somebody with great promise and potential, who needs to go through a hero's journey in order to find their full potential. They discover their powers, they go up against the powers that be there's some some small successes, there's some small losses. And then there's the final, there's the big confrontation in which they lose. They always have to lose at least somewhat. They need to be beaten into the ground. You know, oh, no, Iron Man is falling out of the sky, because he's all frozen. And you know, Captain America shield is broken like that. You need to be broken in some way. But then, when all hope seems last look on the horizon. And there's no, no, that's Gandalf coming over helm steep, but I was really good to the same kind of deal, right? Then there's this dramatic resurrection. And then boom, there we are. There's the happy ending that death is no more Oh, oh, Death, where is thy staying? Oh, grave, where's the victory? You know that, how we have this final win. And then then the same cycle repeats again, with the early church and the book of Acts. And then we get through these letters. And then the book of Revelation does the exact same story arc of like this humble beginnings, and then these troughs, and then at the end, there's this great victory, and it always ends on a happy note. And all of the stories in the New Testament follow that same underdog hero's journey, sort of story arc.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 52:09
Shapes,
 
Zack Jackson 52:10
which is maybe why, maybe why I like superhero movies? I don't know. Yeah, it all
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 52:15
comes together.
 
Ian Binns 52:18
It makes you think about the matrix as well. Right? We're recording this. So less than a week before the fourth Matrix film comes out matrix resurrections. And I think that's gonna be really interesting. I'm actually excited about I really liked the series there had issues with the second and third movie. But I still liked the storyline, and the, you know, what it stood for, and stuff I thought was very interesting. But that's kind of like a superhero. Movie, or series as you just described, right. Um, and also even like the, with Star Wars, and the three separate trilogies. Yeah. Right. They help kind of follow that same, same description that you just gave us about superhero movies. And so yeah, I think it's gonna be very interesting, how they, how they bring all that together in this fourth movie of the matrix. Series. I don't know
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 53:13
beaking of shapes and superheroes in the Bible. Zack, do you want to tell us about a dead Christian story our How's that for a transition?
 
Zack Jackson 53:34
That is a wonderful transition. Because I still don't have a theme song.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 53:43
Tried it? Let's try to workshop that. Okay. Did Christian Story Hour? Do you want something spooky? Um, or like uplifting? Or like Halloween theme music type of you know, intro I don't know. I'm
 
Ian Binns 53:58
gonna make me believe
 
Zack Jackson 54:00
I'm kind of I'm kind of I'm kind of into the the sort of ironic theme music something chipper and cheery like a like a, like a Mattress Company jingle.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 54:16
Oh, yeah, that's perfect.
 
Zack Jackson 54:18
You got 805 80 to 300 M Pa. That kind of Well, welcome to part two of the dead Christian story our a part at the end of every fifth episode, in which I share with you one of my favorite stories from Christian hagiography. What is hagiography you ask? Well, I'll tell you. These are stories of dead Christians. And they are most of the time totally over the top. And I want you to take all of these with a giant grain of salt because they are not historically accurate and they aren't meant to be They are stories of heroes. And so that's what they're just meant to be. So just let them be hero stories, okay, and stop thinking too much about it because it's great. And I love them. This one comes from St. Lawrence. And St. Lawrence is the name of the borough where I live, which is named not at all after the actual St. Lawrence, but after a brand of stockings that the local knitting mill made in the 40s. But St. Lawrence, capitalism, right, it's too bad, because it's a great story. And I actually, this is the only dead Christian. That whose icon I own, I have, I have St. Lawrence in my kitchen, he holds my, my coffee scoops. And I'll tell you why in just a second, because it's great. So I'm going to take you all the way back to the mid to 50s. So this is like 200 years after Jesus. And Christianity is still kind of an underground sort of deal. But Christians in Rome, were starting to get maybe a little bit too powerful, a little bit too influential. You know, the whole thing was just kind of like back to Emperor valerian, he wasn't really having a whole lot of these Christians. So he issued an edict that all Christians in Rome must offer a sacrifice to Roman gods, or else lose their titles and land and standing. And anyone who persisted should be put to death. This was something that Roman emperors did from time to time, because they knew that Christians weren't going to do it, because Christians were stubborn. And they were in those days, kind of countercultural. pacifistic, anarchists, who loved to give the middle finger to the government. If you can imagine such a thing, that's what the church was like back then. And they were not, under any circumstance going to acknowledge of Roman God as any kind of God because they were like, it's Jesus, or nothing. Sorry, I'll die before I'll do that. And so the Romans were like, Great, then we'll kill you. So in 258, the Emperor valerian issued an edict that all of the bishops, priests and deacons of the Roman church should immediately be put to death, and all of their treasures confiscated because obviously, they would not make those sacrifices to Jupiter and such. So they started hunting down all the church leaders. And after they killed the Pope, and some of the most prominent leaders, their prefect of Rome, went after the arch deacon of the church, and demanded that he turn over all the treasures of the church. Now, deacons, for those of you who are not super into churchy stuff are the class of, of officers within the church who are tasked with feeding and taking care of the poor and the widows, the orphans, the lepers, anyone who has who has no social safety net in society. The deacons were the ones who went out and found these people and took care of them and help them so indirectly, they're also the people in charge of whatever finances the church has, which at those times was not a whole lot. But that was their job. And this fella named Lawrence was the first Deacon appointed of this church, and he was kind of in charge. So the Roman prefect went to him. And they were like, hey, Lawrence, so I gotta kill you. And I'm sorry about that, but I got to do it. However, if you turn over all of the treasures of the church to me right now, I might give you a head start. So you can get out of dodge, right? Because the prefect wants to take a cut, before he gives the rest of the Emperor. So he's, you know, he's trying to make it a little sweet for himself. So Lawrence is like, Alright, sure, I'm in, give me three days. At this point. I'm sure the prefect is like wait a second. What are these Christians? They're they're jackasses. So what, why is why is this guy on board, but whatever, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna think too hard about it. I'm gonna get some cash money. So three days later, Lawrence shows up in front of the prefix office. And trailing him is a crowd of the dirtiest people, the widows, the orphans, the lepers, the poor, the crippled the sick, following behind him in this crowd, and he says to the prefect, Behold, the treasures of the church. Yeah, because he had taken those three days and had liquidated all of the church's assets and had then just redistributed them to the poor in Rome. So the church had no money after that. And he said, we are far more wealthy than your Emperor will ever be. So as you can probably Guess the prefect was not a fan. And so instead of beheading him, as they did with the Pope, and everyone else, he's like, I'm gonna make this guy suffer. So we strapped them to a grid iron, and put him over a bed of hot coals to slowly cook him to death. And after a while of excruciating pain, he said to Lawrence, what do you have to say for yourself now? And Lawrence looked at him, and he said, I'm done on this side, turn me over. And for that, they made him the patron saint of cooks. And so the icon I have of him in my kitchen is of him happily standing there with this big smile on his face, holding a big gridiron with like a bunch of garlic and onions in his other hand, as if he was like the church chef, because he's the patron saint of cooks. And somebody told the icon maker, go ahead and make me a picture of St. Lawrence, the patron saint of cooks. And they're like, Yeah, sure, I'll give him a bunch of food and stuff. Because apparently he was a chef. He was not a chef. He was cooked alive on a gridiron. He is also the patron saint of comedians, which feels a lot more appropriate. Because dude was a smartass. And I kind of love him.
 
Ian Binns 1:01:24
The patron saint of chefs, even though he was cooked alive.
 
Zack Jackson 1:01:28
Yeah, the patron saint of dentists also got her teeth kicked out. So the people who come up with these things have a sort of sense of cruel irony, I think. Yeah,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 1:01:37
very much. So
 
Ian Binns 1:01:38
I would say so. Yeah. I love that.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 1:01:41
Is there a like a closing like, outgoing theme music that that we'll have for the fit too, because I feel like it really needs that. Oh,
 
Ian Binns 1:01:51
well, maybe something about magical breasts this time though.
 
Zack Jackson 1:01:55
No magical breast this time. Just a smart Aliki Deacon who got cooked alive and then later turned into the patron saint of yummy garlic and onions.
 
Ian Binns 1:02:08
Yeah, that was, yeah, amen.
 
Zack Jackson 1:02:12
Amen. Okay. So the next time you're having a barbecue, pour one out for St. Lawrence, and maybe give the middle finger to the government hits what he was with St.
 
Ian Binns 1:02:24
Lawrence for being cooked alive. Hey, go. Thank you.

100th Episode Extravaganza!

Episode 100
Episode number 100! Can you believe it?! It seems like only yesterday, we were nervously launching this podcast, wondering if anyone would listen, and here we are with 51,000 downloads, dozens of incredible guests, and so much more planned for 2022 and beyond. Thank you all for your incredible support. You are truly the best community on the internet. To celebrate this momentous occasion, we took some time to share our favorite recent facts, stories, and learnings. So if you want to learn about forests in the sky, insect superhighways, Olympic achievements, heartfelt wisdom, how to forgive, the clams who control Warsaw's water supply, and that time that Pepsi briefly became the 6th biggest military in the world, then you're in the right place.
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
Zack Jackson  00:05You are listening to the Down the wormhole podcast, exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This is our 100th episode. Oh Ray, which is why we're doing it live and not pre recorded. I mean, it's always done live. But you know what I mean, that clip of me at the beginning, which is why it's so unpolished here at the beginning, but it's our 100th episode, and we're super excited. And we're doing something totally different today. So everyone, just say your name as fast as possible at the same time, okay. Hurray, well, so after 100 episodes, hopefully you know who we are at this point. Today is going to be totally different instead of taking a topic and going into it, we are all coming here today with a fun fact or story or something that has filled our hearts with joy or wonder in the past. I don't know, I was gonna say in the past couple of months, but time makes no sense. In the world of COVID We have all been living in a wormhole for the past two years or maybe 12 years or who knows. So. So does anybody want to start? Or? Or do you want me to start?
Ian Binns  01:27Kendra razor
01:28Andrew wants to start,
Kendra Holt-Moore  01:28I can start. But if you want to start back then No, go ahead. Just anything.
Zack Jackson  01:35Tell me go ahead
Rachael Jackson  01:37and wait, go ahead needles here.
Zack Jackson  01:40What happens when we don't schedule,
Kendra Holt-Moore  01:43I am really excited to share this because I I love Radiolab it's my other one of my favorite podcasts. And I recently learned on one of their recent episodes, that a scientist for years have been, you know, in the forest, they pay a lot of attention to like what's happening on the forest floor. And for many years, scientists didn't like put in a lot of effort, or they just didn't think that it was as important to be observing, studying what's happening up in the canopy of the trees. And, you know, in in recent years, like, there's a lot more stuff that you can like, read about and, you know, we know more about the canopy of trees, but scientists were like, you know, we were we're on the ground, we're closer to the dirt and the roots and the trunks. And so that's where a lot of that like early work was taking place. But I learned in this episode that there is a scientist, I can't remember her name, but she basically was one of the first people to discover that there is there are trees that grow in the canopy of trees. It's not turtles all the way down, it's trees all the way up.
Zack Jackson  03:08There are trees growing in.
Kendra Holt-Moore  03:11And, and that's how Radiolab put it up, not turtles all the way down, but trees all the way up. And I really love that I was thinking it's also kind of like the men and black conclusion of the world inside of a marble, or the Dr. Seuss story of a dandelion that has like a world living inside of the dandelion. Like we're just, you know, it's it's a great alternative of like the multiple worlds hypothesis. There's just trees living in their own ecosystem in the canopy of the forest, because there's dirt that gets trapped up in the canopy, like in between, like tree branches. And so one of the scientists she had proposed, I think it was for her dissertation to, to do work until like study the canopy. And her advisors were like, Okay, if you want to do that fine, but they weren't like super excited about it. And so she started, you know, doing her fieldwork and would climb up into the trees. And the first time that she noticed this, like other ecosystem in the canopy, she like was able to reach her hand into dirt up in the canopy, like she's up off the ground, but putting her hand in dirt. That was like putting your hand in dirt that's down on the literal ground. And I just think that is so cool. I didn't know that maybe maybe y'all are more informed about tree canopies than I am but I just found that to be a really cool thing because especially if you think about like really dense, dense like tropical forests where you you can't actually see what's going on up at the canopy like you have to, you have to go up in it to get perspective So it makes sense why we would not be super aware of the the canopy ecosystem or like the canopy soil. But it it's a somehow dirt. I mean, it makes sense to some degree like the way that wind, wind blowing through the forest and the density of the canopy, like trapping a lot of stuff. But dirt is one of those things. And so there's stuff that grows up there. And we just don't even know
Zack Jackson  05:34I have that happening in my front yard, we're just noticing that there's a, there's a tree, and like the branches come out. And there's like a little, I don't know, pocket area where they're their branch away, and that the ants had eaten away in that little spot there. And so all like the decomposed ant poop or whatever, had made just like little thing of dirt. And there was a tiny sapling growing out of there. And I pulled it out, because I was like, that's gonna kill my tree. But I'm just I didn't realize that was happening, like
Ian Binns  06:05another tree to save a tree.
Kendra Holt-Moore  06:09Way to go, wow,
Zack Jackson  06:11there's some ethical implications there.
Kendra Holt-Moore  06:14Wow, that's cool, though.
Zack Jackson  06:16That's pretty amazing.
Ian Binns  06:18Tree murder.
Zack Jackson  06:19Hey, Kendra, that reminds me of the do you know about the like the insect jet stream? That's up there. Like, very far
Rachael Jackson  06:30up. I do love the bug.
Kendra Holt-Moore  06:32I think I do know about
Zack Jackson  06:34I do love books. It's true.
Kendra Holt-Moore  06:37It's not well, like, oh, go ahead,
Zack Jackson  06:40be flying airplanes in the early days of aviation. And they're like, why are there bugs on our windshield? Aren't we very hot 1000s of feet up in the air? Like, I mean, like 5000 feet up in the air and there's insects. I saw what estimate that like, How much was it, like somewhere between three to 6 billion insects are flying over your head up in like the jet stream all summer. They'll they'll get like caught up in updrafts. And then the wind is just blowing constantly up there. And so they'll just like travel. And they'll just fly around up there. Until they get they fall down to earth. And they're so light that, you know, it doesn't hurt them. And these aren't just like flying insects, you'll have like ants and stuff thrown around.
Kendra Holt-Moore  07:25That's really cool. I wonder if it's the same path, or like trajectory that other things will get like caught up in those high air streams to like sand. Like I think this is like part of how the dirt gets in the cannabis. There's sand from, you know, deserts that will kick up and travel from, you know, like Africa to the Brazilian rainforest. And the tiny organisms that live on those pieces of sand, nourish the soil, and nourish the ocean, like provide sustenance, like in places that you wouldn't expect that sand to end up. Like, you might not even think that sand travels. But I wonder if it's a shared sort of trajectory of the insects and sand. It's just like, it's crazy. It's in the world. unaccessible inaccessible to our everyday experiences, but it's just one big one big ecosystem.
Zack Jackson  08:26Yeah, every time I'm up there, there, the windows are closed. So I don't
Ian Binns  08:33you don't know if the sands gonna pull you in the face and
Zack Jackson  08:36Nope, never done it. So my story I wanted to share. Well, first of all, I'm six foot three. How tall is everyone else?
Ian Binns  08:455656 511 and three quarters.
Zack Jackson  08:52Okay, so all of you are children.
Adam Pryor  08:56But I'm five, nine.
Zack Jackson  08:59Girl about to do with five inches tall on my screen. Well, did you know that that on average, we in our generation are three inches taller than people were 100 years ago. might have heard that. It's true. And one of the reasons is because of German submarines.
Rachael Jackson  09:21Okay, that's gonna need some explanation. Yeah,
Kendra Holt-Moore  09:25I'm so glad. So technically, she didn't ask she's like demanded mark that
Zack Jackson  09:36I'm into it either way. So in the early 19 hundred's, people didn't eat a whole lot of meat. Right, because they didn't have modern refrigeration, meats expensive. It's expensive to raise them to all of that stuff. And so when people did eat meat, it was usually like canned sardines. That was the most commonly used meat in those days, at right, awful, most of the good sardines came from off the coast of France, and then off the coast of New England. So it's Atlantic based sardines were the best ones. And then suddenly, during World War One, there are German U boats in the Atlantic. And we didn't have the ability to know where they were all the time. And so people kind of freaked out and they were like, I'm not gonna fish anymore. I'm gonna get blown up. So they stopped fishing sardines, and there were no more sardines, and Americans loved sardines. So, overnight, almost this giant new industry started in Monterey, California, fishing for sardines out in the Pacific. And the reason why people don't normally eat Pacific, sardines is because they're awful. They're like, gross, and massive, and, and oily and disgusting. And if given the choice, Atlantic ones are always going to win. But then we didn't have a choice anymore. So this whole industry boomed in Monterey. And all these new fisheries went up, and they were taking in tons and tons and tons. And then the war ended. And then boom, the whole industry collapsed. They had all these new fisheries, they had all these new processing plants they had, they had all this new stuff that nobody wanted to buy anymore. And so nobody quite knew what to do until this industrious young man and Max Schaefer showed up with a novel idea. And he took these sardines and instead of canning them for human consumption, mashed them all up into a nasty fish paste, and then mix it with grain, and marketed it to farmers as cheap chicken food.
Ian Binns  11:40Sounds so good.
Zack Jackson  11:43And it was cheap. And it was so full of nutrients, because it was fish that the chickens all grew really big. This led to really fat chickens, which led to tender delicious chickens, which led to the chicken of tomorrow breeding competition in 1948, in which farmers around the country were invited to breed the chicken of tomorrow. And the chicken that one that is basically the modern roasting chicken, the one that can't really fly that has whose like skin is is like light colored and is easily plucked, and has large.
Adam Pryor  12:27The chicken with boobs so big, they can't fly.
Zack Jackson  12:29Exactly. Yeah, the chicken that we know and love and eat today came from that. So the consumption of chicken then skyrocketed and became a part of American culture, fried chicken and chicken breasts and all of that. We started eating more meat. And then we grew. And so the reason why modern Americans are three inches taller than their counterparts is because of German U boats in the Atlantic in the early 19 hundred's
Rachael Jackson  13:01that's pretty cool. Right? Because you're asking how tall we were? Years ago, I was obsessed with just records for no reason. Like, I would read the Guinness Book of World Records for fun.
Kendra Holt-Moore  13:17You know, that's not what I thought you were talking about there, but I like this better.
Rachael Jackson  13:22Okay, yeah. Now, I meant so five foot two was the average heights for women in about 100 years ago, right. Nowadays, it's five foot five. So it's so if we say older people are so short, that's true. They really are that much shorter than we are and has nothing to do with like osteoarthritis or because the you know, the discs between their vertebrae are thinning or anything like that they they literally are just shorter than we are
Zack Jackson  14:04should have eaten more chicken.
Rachael Jackson  14:05And so now what are How tall are people going to get 100 years from now Zack? Like if
Zack Jackson  14:14massive hundreds of feet, I think will be a race of monsters. And then the Lord will have to flood the earth in order to read us
Rachael Jackson  14:23only that's at least what we try to have a ladder and build a tower. Because
Zack Jackson  14:30know the people who made the ark. Who are those people who built the life sized Ark Ken Ham in them? They're building a tower of Babel. I know. That's literally the point of the story is you're not supposed to build it.
Adam Pryor  14:46You're building a tower of Babel that's the plan is it is it like a like you know, like a twilight zone like tower terror drop, like wow, like you get to go up and
Kendra Holt-Moore  14:56really miss the
Ian Binns  14:58levels. Yeah,
Zack Jackson  15:01I feel like if they complete it, I want to they've they've missed the point. But if they like leave the top intentionally undone, then perhaps I'm like, that might be fun.
Rachael Jackson  15:12You know, you sit down in a way that
Ian Binns  15:14I definitely want to share this episode with him.
Rachael Jackson  15:16Yeah, you you share it. You said that no way, like, the same way that Robin Williams did in one of his stand up comedies, by the way from like, 20 years ago, where he talked about, you know, touching the nipples of gorillas
Zack Jackson  15:34I think that's on par. Right? Tempting God and touching the nipples of gorillas,
Rachael Jackson  15:40you know, he had got to know what's gonna happen
Adam Pryor  15:45might be like a good activity for the top of the tower. Good. Wow. So that to Kenny, I will. Well,
Zack Jackson  15:55yeah, what if you weren't blocked?
Ian Binns  15:56I'm gonna do it from our purse or?
Zack Jackson  16:00Oh, yeah. Ian's personal account got blocked by Ken Ham. So last time, he wanted to share one of our episodes, he had to use the down the wormhole Twitter handle, because he's trying to get us blocked in him too. So thank you. It was a really
Rachael Jackson  16:14good Astronics were taken
Ian Binns  16:17at Jennifer Wiseman, are there poking fun at the you know, the new telescope up there. And so I felt like you know, help him out a little bit. And say, if you want to be really cool about it, listen to this episode.
Zack Jackson  16:30That's right. That's right. Well, Ken Ham, you're welcome on this show, at any point,
Adam Pryor  16:36oh, Gorilla nipples,
Ian Binns  16:39on the top of the new tower of tower that you're building. I'm still trying to figure out what it is I've learned that I want to share.
Rachael Jackson  16:51I don't I don't have anything that that fun. Um, I've just taken some time away from the worlds and just delved into my hobbies. And so I think at this point, y'all know that I like to cross stitch. So I cross stitch, like so many different space things, I can certainly share a picture of it, it was really awesome, especially brain freeze black holes, and different nebulae, and it was just really fun.
Zack Jackson  17:30But, oh, the Pillars of Creation orgeous
Rachael Jackson  17:33I really enjoy the Pillars of Creation. I have been like, desperately following what's going on with web. And so it's just so unbelievably exciting to witness this thing that costs so many more dollars than than anyone ever thought it was possible. And that gives me hope for humanity. Right. So and, and being Jewish, and living in a place where Christianity dominates and not just your run of the mill Christianity, but like, you will believe kind of Christianity and to see that. Yeah, exactly. To to watch that.
Adam Pryor  18:19It's gonna be what, Zack?
Zack Jackson  18:22I'm offended. Do you imagine that? I'm like storebrand Christianity?
Rachael Jackson  18:30Not at all. Not at all.
Adam Pryor  18:32Okay, good. But I think you could use that in a scary way.
Rachael Jackson  18:35Yeah, Tower of Babel. Go on. It got pushed back. So for anyone that wasn't really following the it was supposed to launch on the 22nd. I mean, it was supposed to launch at various times. And then they were smart, and they didn't make it launch. And then they they decided to launch it on December 25. I was like Merry Christmas Jews, like, cuz the Jewish Christmas is fast food and movie. Things open. But it's like, Yes, I can watch this. Like, that's the best, it was the best. So watching that, and then having it unfold a couple of weeks, like it made it. And now knowing that somebody did really good math and made sure that there was extras, right. So if any of you have ever gone on a road trip, I was certainly thinking about this. Because we're looking at electrical cars. It's like, well, how far can we really go and since there's no no stations where you could like fuel up your your electrical car, you can really only go a very short distance in most parts of the country. So you then say, Okay, well, how far can I go? And then you give yourself a little bit of buffer room because you don't want to be stuck there. Well, someone over at NASA and when I say someone, I'm sure that it was many, many teams of people said well, we want to make sure that it's kind of get there, right, it's going to get to L two. We don't really need it to stop and so they just put extra fuel But they did a really great job. And instead of it possibly lasting for 10 years, they think they now have so much fuel it might last for 20 years. And that's just I didn't hear that far out. And it's just really exciting that they have so much that it was good fuel usage on the way there, that they have almost doubled the ability to live and send better. So and
Zack Jackson  20:23so it would only be able to live for 20 years, or could it Outlast that? Does it have the power? No,
Rachael Jackson  20:28I think it's probably going to depend on what signals they send it, and what technology we come up with. But it looks like probably only only in air quotes, you know, 20 years. And you know,
Zack Jackson  20:43it's Hubble's going all
Rachael Jackson  20:44right, but Hubble, especially if you have read the book handprints on Hubble, you'll know, fascinating book, by the way. Hubble is so different than Webb, and pretty much everything else that came before it. The concept with Hubble is that it could be repairable in space. But that's what made it so unique and so challenging to build is that they had to constantly go over and over and say like, Can an astronaut actually attach themselves to this, right? Like, where do you put the foothold because there's no torque, if you're not holding on to anything, you're just like, off into space with no gravity, you can't actually use a wrench. So what do you do. And because they made the concept of this being repairable in space, they could make it so much better than it is, well, web is not going to be repairable in space, because it's a little far. So whatever it is, is what it is. So everyone was holding their collective breath for all of everything to unfurl, and then it did beautifully. And they're still calibrating it. So it's still gonna be like another 10 ish weeks until things are fully calibrated, and really sending pictures. But that that's just sort of my, it's not really a story. It's just I think that one of the things that I look at here is all of these, let's go and preach your style here. All of these extras that they put into it, the buffers that they build in, like, we can totally do that in our lives. Like we can build in buffer for times, we can build in buffer for gas, we can build in buffer for crying. Not that I've been doing that at all. Like we can just build in these buffers for each other and ourselves. And I think it's beautiful. And we decided, like it took so many governments to put web up there and we worked together and I am so a utopian universe kind of person. Right? Star Trek and Marvel all the way. Screw you DC and Star Wars. Oh, I know that. But this
Ian Binns  22:49DC thing you didn't have to throw both of you did?
Rachael Jackson  22:51We did. It has that that that nugget of hope and humanity and we put so much money into it. It's insane. And if we can do that, nothing functional. That's Darn it. I thought
Ian Binns  23:11the force.
Rachael Jackson  23:14Okay, I'm just gonna sit here and wait. And I don't know if any of this gets recorded.
Zack Jackson  23:18Oh, you're moving against the freezer. Oh, there she is.
Rachael Jackson  23:22Oh, you're moving again. Okay, she
Zack Jackson  23:25froze during her idea. Thank
Rachael Jackson  23:26you. So anyway, yay, us. And perhaps we could use all of that money to give stable Internet to Podunk places like where I live, that'd be great.
Zack Jackson  23:41Well, I did hear that some solar flare interference, sort of a deal knocked out like a couple dozen Starlink satellites recently.
Rachael Jackson  23:49Is that a problem? Is that really the problem?
Zack Jackson  23:54I mean, I don't think Starlink internet it's very expensive right now.
Rachael Jackson  23:59I think it's that we just live in the middle of nowhere and have bad internet today. So that's, that's, that's that's my story.
Ian Binns  24:06I feel like Adam should follow up with something.
Rachael Jackson  24:09I think so too, because he has to bring it down. Like I've got all this like ideal. I gotta be Ben. So Adam.
Zack Jackson  24:17Already reboot. Kendra,
Kendra Holt-Moore  24:19Adam, are you going to talk about web because I almost shared a story that I thought maybe you would talk about but it's actually something that I learned indirectly. From you through Chad. I love this. Oh, you're not going to talk about that. Then I want to say that you should say you can
Adam Pryor  24:35you can say it. Go ahead. I
Zack Jackson  24:36have a story about clams that I can share too.
Kendra Holt-Moore  24:40So web then clans then Adam. Wrapping us up. Great. Ian still has listening.
Zack Jackson  24:47We've got time. We're only halfway through. We've got time.
Kendra Holt-Moore  24:51Um, okay. Well, two things I want to share. The first thing is I I'm really happy that we're talking about web because the other day I brought up The Webb telescope in my class, and all my students were like, Oh, is that? And I was like, Are you kidding me right now? No NASA nerds. And they were all like, like, everyone shaking their heads. And I was like, this is this is this is unacceptable. And so I sent them an email later that was completely, like, unrelated, you know, it was about class. And then the end of my email was like, also, just for fun, please go read about the Gobi school. But I, I have been so inspired by keeping up with this, that I put a little like anecdote about it in one of my dissertation chapters, because I'm writing about off. But I think what's really interesting about the kind of all and like, inspiration and energy that people feel around the Webb telescope, is that it's not just what it could do for us. It's not just that, like, How amazing would it be, if we learn all this stuff, by, you know, being able to see the infrared light and knowing about black holes and exploring other planets, like, there's a lot of potential that's amazing and inspiring of like, all these people working together to such a precise degree that we've had this, like international success. So that's like, on the one hand, but on the other hand, I feel like it's also really easy to get caught up in the story and want to follow it so closely, because there's so much at stake because if it fails, right, that's also a pretty major, like, we're either going to see human achievement, you know, at its pinnacle, or we're going to watch $10 billion, just flushed down the drain. And either way, it's kind of on spiraling. But the other thing I wanted to share, which is again, me stealing something that Adam actually learned recently, I don't know where you learn this, so you can share that. But apparently, like the Collaborate, like everyone knows the collaboration of the telescope team, like it was a, you know, a lot of people involved. But one of the people who contributed to the design of the telescope was an origami artist who worked with scientist to come up with the the design and the folding, you know, technique of the telescope to get it to fit inside of the rocket, so that it could be compact enough, and go far enough. And then only once it was outside of the rocket unfold the way that it did in, you know, with all its like, single point failure, possibilities that it overcame. But it was an origami artist who, like inspired scientists, by just like looking at how, you know, you fold up paper origami. And I just think that's so cool. And what a what an interesting what an inspiring testament to interdisciplinary work, which is why I think Adam was talking about this to chat, but for those of us in academia, who are all about interdisciplinary Ness. This is a perfect example because it's the humanities, the the artists, working together with the scientists to make something beautiful, functional, and you know, hopefully not disastrous, but something amazing.
Rachael Jackson  28:37It did unfold that I have to say, awesome, and I'm going to add that if anyone actually does origami, you can download the origami Webb telescope itself. Like they created the Webb telescope origami pattern. That's awesome. So just want to add that. Did they really? Yes. Would you like the links, John?
Ian Binns  29:00Yes, I do. Because John loves to do origami stuff. Yeah, I think I need that thing.
Rachael Jackson  29:08It's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing.
Ian Binns  29:15Alright, Adam, what are you gonna do to bring us down?
Adam Pryor  29:18I thought Zack, I wanted to talk about
Rachael Jackson  29:20clam also Zack, are you gonna talk about other NASA thing?
Ian Binns  29:24I mean, I thought why more NASA stuff.
Zack Jackson  29:26I feel like I feel like several people are are hinting something to me and I'm not getting most of them. I know, my fun fact about clams was just that the water supply of Warsaw Poland is controlled by eight clams. What? Yo, yeah, no, it's true. They are the people. Okay. The people in charge of the Water Department found that clams were better at detecting pollution than any of their their artificial sensors. So they took eight clams. And they are in a tank, that the water comes from the treatment plant and it goes into the tank before it goes out to the people. And on top of the clams, they have basically hot glue to spring and put that in front of a sensor. So when the water gets too polluted, the clams close. And then the thing at the end of the spring touches the sensor and it's it turns off the water to Warsaw. And when the water is clean, they open back up again and the water turns on. And those clams are replaced every three months. And then they're put back in the pond. And they're given their March so that they don't get used again. And they have to go through a period of training in order to be to make sure that their senses are that's what I want to know
Ian Binns  30:50is the trainer. Eight clan
Zack Jackson  30:53clan Waterson Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Pryor  30:57I mean, essentially worse. I made clam thermostats. That's really what happened here.
Zack Jackson  31:01Yeah. And they work that they call it like there's a fancy word for bio monitoring. Huh?
Adam Pryor  31:10Yeah, that's just an easy way to say clam thermos.
Zack Jackson  31:13Yeah. I mean, it's a canary in the coal mine. But, but it controls the whole water supply.
Adam Pryor  31:17Yeah. Do they have like, like, does it can it like, Shut partway off? Like, you know, for clams today, we're close to your own rescue
Zack Jackson  31:25boil wars, like Minority Report. Right?
Adam Pryor  31:29But not when the clams are in the tank.
Zack Jackson  31:31Right? Don't do that. Don't do that.
Adam Pryor  31:36Because then train more.
Zack Jackson  31:39So what do you got? Adam?
Adam Pryor  31:40I want to make sure I understood the
Zack Jackson  31:45so this would be this would be like, textbook vintage, Adam, for you to come on and be like, Look, I got your question, but I did not. Well, and I would like to restate this in a way.
Adam Pryor  31:56Nine times out of 10. That's true. But so I'm supposed to come up with a story that has been inspiring to know how I learned
Kendra Holt-Moore  32:06just recently
Zack Jackson  32:08learned anything
Adam Pryor  32:10interesting. Just finding anything interesting or fun that I learned?
Zack Jackson  32:14Or inspirational or tragic? Or like or, or or? Okay. Well, I mean, the Sixers just got James Harden. You could we could talk about that. I talked
Adam Pryor  32:27about that. No, um, well, I guess.
Zack Jackson  32:36Are you looking around the room for inspiration?
Kendra Holt-Moore  32:39Do you mean something to you to talk about? No,
Adam Pryor  32:42no, I'm thinking like, cuz I I'm trying to say what to choose. Like. I mean, I could choose any number of depressing items. But that feels a little on the nose. Because a lot of what I've been learning is about the Kansas legislature right now. And that Oh, terrible. I don't think anyone should be subjected to that. Although I'm pretty sure it should be disbanded because they're useless. Coal coal. I've been Reading a lot about gerrymandering, but that also feels pretty, pretty dark. Even for me, that feels kind of dark, especially which state are living in Kansas is trying to put Lawrence inside the big first. If you don't know what the big first is, it's all of Western Kansas. And let me just say Lawrence is not in western Kansas. Right. So it makes this big U shaped come down and get Lawrence and put them into the big first. It's not political way. Yeah, these are the things I'm Reading about. Yeah, no, no, um, oh, wait, no, I have a heavy one. Hold on. Wait. Well, I mean, it's not happy. You happy, happy, happiest everything? I think it's happy. Um, hang on, man. I'm pulling it out to a low bar. So I was Reading this morning. This made me legitimately happy this morning. So I'm, in the times, there was this piece by Rabbi Lauren Holtz Blatt from Agoudas Israel congregation in Washington, DC. And she was writing about the whole debacle. Hmm. Feels like the correct term.
Rachael Jackson  34:28The misses with Whoopi Goldberg one, okay.
Adam Pryor  34:31Oh, yes. Yeah, right. Um, and, you know, if you're not aware of like, you know, Google it, you can find that, um, I was a little depressed the number of people who didn't know that that occurred, and I'm like, that says something about, you know, how Zack might haunt people. But what she wrote about in her piece, which I thought was really, really beautiful, and I'm going to do butcher the pronunciation and then you correct Rachel. So she wrote about tshuva should I get my accent right? Oh, yes. And as a process of Reading, renouncing, confessing reconciling and making amends right. And then she talks about to Shiva Shalimar complete Yep. Right this idea of complete to Shiva right where like, when you come into the same situation you act differently, right as knowing that this is like actually come to its peace. And then she makes this nice reference to tikun olam at the end of the article that like unless you're Jewish, you probably don't catch. I thought it was really brilliant. But I what, what I found, like, deeply hopeful about this idea is how generous a way of responding to that situation. That is, and that doesn't happen anymore. No one is that generous with other people today. And I kinda like that. At heart, I think there's something really beautiful about being able to write in the face of all horrible racism, that this is the kind of response we should be offering to one another. And it makes me more patient, generally, not specifically towards them. But generally, I like the idea of it. And what was the article? It's her opinion piece she wrote. It's called in the Jewish tradition, the words we choose matter. I just thought it was. It was really beautifully. I mean, it's beautifully written, like a whole wholesale, but I just the fact that that was how she decided to wrap this up and suggest people might engage. What has been a really, in some ways, underreported, in my opinion, and also poorly reported. Event. Is, is, I think, really helpful.
Rachael Jackson  37:27That's lovely. And I appreciate that you, you also brought it up. Yeah, it's definitely one of those things. Right? In Judaism, there is definitely that idea of if we believe that each person has the ability to mess up, and then fix their mess ups. How much more? How much more can we really ask of a person? And should we not then treat each other with that ability? So it's, I mean, she's she's farmer, erudite and Better Spoken than I also she's, she was writing instead of speaking, so she had the gift of editing. But no, it's really, it's wonderful. Right. And I think one of the challenges that we have, especially as Jews as like, Well, that was under reported. What about mouse? And what about, right, the synagogue shooting and in Texas, like, or hostage holding, not shooting, right? Like, how many of these things do we really want to be like, Hey, you didn't say that enough. So I like that there's this positive that you that Adam, you picked up this like, really good way of looking at this story. Thanks. Also to really great story.
Adam Pryor  38:43Yeah. Off to read that. There, I did something hopeful.
Rachael Jackson  38:48You shared 100 episode, you're like doing something different.
Adam Pryor  38:55I gotta flip things around.
Zack Jackson  38:58Keep it fresh. Just take us another three years to get through another positive.
Adam Pryor  39:02I mean, seems highly likely.
Zack Jackson  39:06Maybe the birth of your fourth child will springs there and into your life. Just,
Adam Pryor  39:10I mean, I probably won't be there. Let's just be real. 75% That's not Yeah.
Ian Binns  39:21If you're a professional athlete, maybe you make a lot of money.
Adam Pryor  39:27That's correct. C is for degree. So you tell your students. Yeah, I get degrees. They're struggling in my class. And they're like, 68. I'm like, Hey, you only got to get a degree. Well, sometimes I say that to majors, too. Not too many recently. Just a while. There. There were a couple.
Ian Binns  39:54I think the thing I want to talk about is I always appreciate The excitement around seen people on athletes at the Olympics. You know, there's always the, there's always issues with, you know how the Olympics are chosen. And you know, I'm not dismissing any of that what I like to see and I love to have the Olympics on is to just see their excitement that they have while they're doing something that they've spent an incredibly long time preparing for, right? And then even the the, like, good sportsmanship they tend to have for the most part, I mean, there's always issues but just how much they still celebrate each other because they realize that they're seeing something great. Like, it's really I just, it's very inspiring for me to see that to see people who are able to do some of these things that after they've done an event, you're just like, I don't understand how that just happened. Like how did that person just do that? You know, tricks, when you especially right now is skiing, you know, the aerials that they do, and stuff like that freestyle skiing, or whatever it's called. But even watching, like the level of excitement that occurs with cross country skiing, and biathlon, I'm not allowed to watch that. That's fun, curly, curly. It's fun, because they'll do things and everyone just be like, how did that just happen? Yeah, man. It's just it's so amazing to me that they're that far from the end. And they're able to like thread it between two of the rocks to hit this exact spot that they need to hit. It's just really cool. So that's kind of what's been going on in our house lately.
Zack Jackson  41:32And watch what was impossible, just like a decade ago, right? Someone would land like, like when Tony Hawk hit the like the 900. Right? Or whatever it was back in don't 20 years ago. That was that was mind blowing X Games explode. That and because there's nothing now it's like, oh, we figured it out. And now we can do it. We've progressed. Humans are amazing. Yeah.
Rachael Jackson  41:54What we asked him to do is really impressive.
Ian Binns  41:58Yeah, it's very, it's very interesting just to kind of watch these athletes who, as I said, that have dedicated their lives to perfecting what it is that they do. But to build on the Olympic theme, how about this? I was the first I now don't remember her name. But it was the first woman figure skater to land a quad. The Quad jump
Kendra Holt-Moore  42:24in the donation.
Adam Pryor  42:26Players that say you mean the dough for Oh, no.
Ian Binns  42:28Was she a doper? Yep. Did she test positive for doping? Yep. Oh. Does she really
Rachael Jackson  42:39do with extra hormones? Yeah, I mean,
Adam Pryor  42:44well, that's, I gotta say, right? Like, as you are seeing all this, I can't stop myself now. Now. We're gonna go for it right like Hopi and they like each other in this kind of thing. And I'm like, Yeah, you know what I see the instrumentalisation of 15 year olds by countries for profit.
Ian Binns  43:00See, this is the reason why I just get rid of that part.
Kendra Holt-Moore  43:05And I appreciate it because it parties. I love watching the clips. I watched the snowboarders yesterday and was like, Yeah, I'm gonna do that. I'm not, I'll never do anything remotely close to that. But it does. It makes you feel like you know, just before before Adam just ruins it. I just want to affirm your love of watching Olympic athletes.
Rachael Jackson  43:28Well, I'm I'm going to like switch teams here a little bit. And I'm totally with Adam. I can't stand
Kendra Holt-Moore  43:37I mean, you're you're not saying I just want it took them a while to think of something to share. have let them have this.
Ian Binns  43:47I'm not at all just dismissing the fact that you know, these that people are taking advantage of or anything like that. What I'm saying is that when you do see an athlete, excel at something that's exciting from even like, the NFL, right?
Rachael Jackson  44:00We'll never refuse. 100% Refuse to watch the NFL. It's just gladiators in the 20th century, and it's abusive in so many different ways and racist in unbelievable magnitudes. I watch the football.
Ian Binns  44:15A couple years ago, there was a marathoner who broke the two hour barrier. Are you gonna rain on that parade too? For me? Are we gonna be okay with that? Well, being
Adam Pryor  44:23surrounded by a whole team of people, was that really a good way to run a marathon fastest your hours?
Ian Binns  44:31It just could happen.
Zack Jackson  44:34The marathon is my favorite. Because like to home without why? Because the guy ran 26 miles from Marathon to Athens fell dead. And then we were like, We're gonna flex on this guy. And now we do it all the time. And we're just like, hey, one guy died doing this. Let's do it. And like, the net Great. That's Got it. Also, fun fact, the president of the Olympics for life for all time is King Herod the Great. Did you know that
Ian Binns  45:13I did not. The Olympics
Zack Jackson  45:14had fallen under disrepair. There was no money for it. They did. They barely happened. And Herod was travelling through the Greek area in 12 BC. Yeah, he was there in 12 BC. And he went, and he was like, Wow, this sucks. And he's like, here, if I give you tons of talents, are you going to be able to make this great? And they were like, Yeah, and he's like, then go zoos. Here you go, here's a ton of money. And they revitalize the Olympics. And it became a big thing again, and he was named president of the Olympics for life in perpetuity. And so his statue was there. And he is for all eternity. The president of the Olympics. I mean, it does make a lot of sense. I know Christians love to hate the guy, but
Rachael Jackson  45:59it does make a lot of sense, right? Like, he's this is how messed up the Olympics are. Right? He's the guy that decides to kill his whole family. So it
Adam Pryor  46:10I think they should start leading the Parade of Nations with a sketch. point home.
Zack Jackson  46:16I mean, do it. You know, one time Cleopatra came to visit, and she was like, showing them up. And he was like, he went to his guy. And he's like, can we kill her right now? And he's like, You can't kill Cleopatra. And he's like, but she's here. We can kill her now. Right? And they're like, You can't kill Cleopatra. And he almost did it. Because he's nuts. Right, but he loved the Olympics. Yeah.
Rachael Jackson  46:39It could have just been the metaphor. We ran on.
Ian Binns  46:41We're gonna go watch the Olympics. Fun. Let's go watch the bath one because I'm certain on the next lap, they're gonna all turn the rifles on each other. Like Adam and Rachel want
Adam Pryor  47:06to take solace in the fact that you got Rachel and I think that's the takeaway.
Ian Binns  47:12Oh, that person's head fell off when they land. There. Oh, no, that guy's a racist.
Rachael Jackson  47:20You know, it's just trauma. It's when I see the skiers. I can't see this gear. So no. Oh, yeah, I broke my body. I broke my brain. Oh, I totally, totally broke my brain
Zack Jackson  47:31that was in a previous episode. Everything.
Ian Binns  47:34We'll talk more about, like, you know, running not doing no, they cheat too. So no, javelin maybe someone hasn't been pierced lately.
Kendra Holt-Moore  47:45Well, setting aside just like the terribleness of human nature. Yeah, I, I wanted to also add, um, so like, I haven't really watched the Olympics flick very carefully. This year. I usually don't, I usually just like watch clips of things. So the stuff that I've seen is like ice skating clips, and like snowboarder clips. But I've been I was just thinking, the last couple of days about Simone Biles, and just the whole phenomenon of the twisties. Because a lot of the stuff that I'm looking at for like the snowboarders and ice skaters, you know, it's like a lot of tricks, a lot of jumping, and flipping and all of that. And I just, it is really amazing, especially knowing my own very limited abilities. It's like not an athlete person, but who has worked so hard to have, like very basic snowboarding skills, that it's, it feels so good when you can get to a point where your body just does. And that's kind of what you have to do to like, do it. Well, it's like the whole problem of the twisties. And like, when you start to think about what you are trying to do athletically, it messes with you and so it's just really interesting, like giving in to just your body. And I it's it's really like a very meditative experience and you have to be skilled, of course, but it's just such a such an interesting part of living in a body when we are so easily like distracted in our heads. So to separate those experiences,
Ian Binns  49:19you bring it up smoking balls, you know, the last Olympics, the Summer Olympics watching, especially being that your daughter Ellie is a gymnast, right? It's an even recently talking about you know, and so, I've always been impressed and admired have always admired Simone Biles, I think you know her what she embraced her struggles with her own. Her mental health journey I thought made her even more impressive. But when you talk again about someone who's become like an expert at what it is they do, like the things that she can do, is just mind boggling to me like what she is capable of as an athlete. Just her athletic ability, right? But even talking with Ellie Avella explaining to me that we talked about, you know, the other day that Ellie had a competition last week and met. Mary Lou Retton. Right, honey, who did le meet last week, Mary Lou Retton. Yeah, so she met Mary Lou retina at a competition last week. And it was really cool to hear about it. And I was kind of saying like, Oh be, you know, someone else get a 10 good Simone get a 10. And her response was, is that she her strength and power is so great, that the skills that she does that gets her such high scores would not wouldn't make it I think, very challenging forever to get a perfect score. Because you know, the way the score is done, that level is very different than the standard level, but that her power that Simone Biles has is just that much better than most anyone else in the world. That that's why be challenging for her become to get a perfect score because she challenges herself to that level. Does that make sense? Like she could land thing if she did
Rachael Jackson  50:59what other competitors did or if she did what other competitors did, she would get a perfect score, but because she pushes herself to make it harder.
Ian Binns  51:07And that's what raises like her ability to get even higher scores those because they realize that we have to change the scoring because of the tricks and the things that she's able to do the skills that she's able to do me that we have that scoring has changed, Miss fascinate, right.
Zack Jackson  51:23They had to outlaw some moves that she did, because no one else could do it.
Ian Binns  51:28They call it the Biles. I mean, she's got several moves on several different apparatus apparatus that are named after her, which is also on the land it
Kendra Holt-Moore  51:37just let her do it and let her just went all the time. Because yeah, pretty cool.
Ian Binns  51:41Right? Thank you, Kendra for bringing that one up. Because now I feel better again.
Rachael Jackson  51:46And I don't want to I don't want to poopoo the athletes themselves. They're doing amazing things, just the institutions they're in. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So just just to clarify, I don't mean to make any athletes upset. I think that what they're doing is truly incredible. Because I
Ian Binns  52:01would love to get Simone on here.
Zack Jackson  52:05Yeah, yeah. And if any Olympic athletes or regular listeners of the podcast I'd love to have you on to have you on Jake's, especially if you're in the by athalon would love to learn more about how that Aikido? Yes, that's one of my absolute favorite and
Ian Binns  52:17ensures my favorite winter sport to watch is potentially bad. Yeah. Or I
Rachael Jackson  52:22love calm you go. I'm your heart rate slow enough after doing this incredible thing that you can shoot steady.
Ian Binns  52:30That's impressive. So I'm
Rachael Jackson  52:33so American.
Zack Jackson  52:34They're like, yeah, here's a cool sport. How can we make it better? aren't that good at it? Yeah. What we're not good at a gun sport. And
Ian Binns  52:43we're not nearly as good as the countries, then the Canadians think they beat us every time
Zack Jackson  52:50unacceptable. So we're nearing the end here, buddy. And we're nearing the end here. And I love I want to, there we go. I want to say thank you to all of you, all the four of you. And thank you to myself as well. Because you all are incredible. And it has been a minute since we've had all of us here. And it has felt so good. Just to be here. For this time. I want to thank everyone at home or in the car or in the gym or wherever it is that you're listening. Now, those of you who have listened to all 100 episodes, and those of you who this might be your first You are wonderful people as well. I would invite you to check out the down the wormhole conversations group on facebook and join us there. We've got some. It's really fun to be able to talk with folks on there. And yeah, you can check us out on Patreon as well if you'd like to support the show. Does anybody have any closing stories or thoughts or fun facts you want to share before we call it a day?
Rachael Jackson  53:52I think Zack you should share the story of the person that works at NASA. It's a quick little
Zack Jackson  54:00it is a quick little story NASA has let me let me pull up the
Kendra Holt-Moore  54:08while Zack is looking that up, I'd encourage everyone to go look up whales, bubble netting to catch their fish. Because that's,
54:18that's amazing.
Zack Jackson  54:20I'd also encourage people to look up the story of how Pepsi briefly in the 80s became the sixth largest military in the world.
Ian Binns  54:29I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Zack Jackson  54:31That's a fun story as well, right?
Rachael Jackson  54:33That's homework, Pepsi military in the 80s.
Zack Jackson  54:39Basically, and here we go. In the 50s. They were trying to make peace between the Soviet Union and America. And so Eisenhower put together this American National Exhibition in Moscow, and he sent Nixon over there and Nixon is not a nice person. And so Nixon and Khrushchev are talking and then they start fighting about capitalism and communism. And so the CEO of Pepsi sees them fighting and steps in there. And he's like, Here you go. And it gives Khrushchev, a Pepsi, and he drinks it and he goes, damn, or whatever the equivalent Russian is, this is amazing. We have to have this. The problem was there was all of these, you know, trade issues. And not everyone accepted Soviet currency. And so Pepsi didn't want to do this transaction. So they signed a deal in which the Soviet Union would purchase Pepsi with vodka. And that was their agreement for like, 30 years. So then in the late 80s, the agreement was expiring. And Pepsi was like, we don't want to get paid in vodka anymore, what else you got? And they were like, well, you still don't want to take our money. So here's what we have. And Pepsi in exchange for $3 billion dollars worth of Pepsi products, gave the Pepsi corporation 17 submarines, a cruiser a frigate and a destroyer. Which then for that amount of time made them the sixth largest military in the world. Pepsi then flipped all of that to a Swedish scrap recycling company and made back the money. But for that period of time, Pepsi was the sixth largest military in the world. So that's my fun Pepsi fact. But anyway, every single thing that goes up into space that goes up into a habitable space, so anything that goes up into the, into the space station or in a in a ship that has humans in it has to pass the sniff test, literally, from a man called George Aldrich is the chief sniffer of NASA. And anything that goes up there has to be smelled by him. And then he has to approve it or not, because they they need somebody with a very sensitive nose to smell if like, is this going to be awful to be locked in a room with this? So if you want to get something sent to space, it's got to be sniffed by nostril Damas. So if that column
Adam Pryor  57:03I hope they quarantined him for a long time, so I didn't get COVID
Zack Jackson  57:06right how awful would that
Kendra Holt-Moore  57:08would that's a client he
Rachael Jackson  57:09needs to have insurance on his You had one
Adam Pryor  57:11job. I seems like you could train clamps to do this.
Zack Jackson  57:19I don't know if you know how smell works. But
Ian Binns  57:23I just looked that up, you know, nostril Damas because I saw that you put in my chat, Rachel. And I saw I typed that into Google and now that now that does come up as the second story. Second thing don't click on the first one with the Urban Dictionary and
Rachael Jackson  57:43you're not that is not this is not safe for work portion. Do not don't talk about that. Click
Ian Binns  57:50on that link. It is definitely NSFW. Not Safe For Work if you don't know.
Rachael Jackson  57:56Yeah, and that's dw.com like
Ian Binns  58:00Well, the thing is, is that I started looking at it. While right before Zacks are talking, I thought myself
Adam Pryor  58:07Where the heck is this story?
58:09Like they have nothing to do with each other. Like oh my gosh, this is so funny.
Ian Binns  58:14Kendra, are you looking it up right now?
Rachael Jackson  58:17No, don't don't
Zack Jackson  58:19just dear listener, don't don't worry about urban dictionary and teenagers putting crazy in there that they have nobody's gonna want to look at this. Don't worry about it. Instead, you can search for George Ulrich Aldrich, NASA employee g4.
Rachael Jackson  58:37If you're that, you know you can go back and listen to the rest of our other podcasts either for the first time or another time.
Zack Jackson  58:45Literally 99 other episodes you can listen to.
Rachael Jackson  58:48Did exactly do not go to Urban Dictionary go to D TW.
Zack Jackson  58:52Hey go that's a great closer, Greg sign off

Time Part 2 with Dr. Timothy Maness

Episode 99
Last time, we talked about relativistic time and its implications for faith in a theistic god. That conversation was... heady to say the least. So, here to help us further understand what all that means is our good friend Dr. Timothy Maness. We talk about the flow of time, where/when God is, fate, and more. Ready to have your mind blown? 
 
Timothy Maness is a scholar of science and religion whose recent dissertation, which he is currently adapting into a book, discusses ways of reconciling relativistic physics with a flowing model of time, in which past, present and future are really distinct from one another. It also explores how a relativistic theory of flowing time can complement Abrahamic theology, and serve as the basis for a view of existence centered on personhood. 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
 
 
Zack Jackson 00:06
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. Our guest today is an incredible scholar of science and religion whose recent dissertation which he is currently adapting into a book discusses ways of reconciling relativistic physics with a flowing model of time, in which past, present and future are really distinct from one another. It also explores how a relativistic theory of flowing time can complement Abrahamic theology, and serve as the basis for a view of existence centered on personhood, here to unpack what all of that means, and more is our good friend, Dr. Timothy Maness. Welcome to the podcast. Tim.
 
Tim Maness 00:50
Hi. It's great to be here. Yeah, I've been I've been a regular listener. And I've been I've been wanting to get on for quite some time.
 
Zack Jackson 00:57
I have been, we have been talking about having you on since almost the beginning of the podcast. So I do apologize.
 
Tim Maness 01:03
I know you guys have had a lot of things to talk about to, to clarify for our listeners, the wonderful Sinai and Synapses fellowship that is, is run by the the Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, the the same cohort of fellows were the hosts of the podcast met, I also had the privilege of meeting them as well. So we were we were all friends in that, that fellowship. So we've known each other for a while now. It was
 
Zack Jackson 01:33
a very good cohort. And the very first time that I met him, I remember us standing awkwardly as people do when they first meet, maybe nibbling on a bagel or something and saying, What are you doing? And of course, I felt completely out of place. Because, you know, I'm a, I'm a pastor who likes science, and I'm in a room filled with people with advanced degrees and understandings of things that are beyond my, my understanding, and that, you know that what do they call it? That imposter syndrome that everyone? You know, everyone will? I do? Say everyone, because we all think we're imposters, right? Yep, yep. Yeah, I was really feeling it. And I was all I had done some work in seminary on on relativistic time, and theology and our understanding of God and salvation. And so when I asked him, What is he was working on. And he said, he explained some of his dissertation and how it was exactly what I had been working on, I got so excited, I said, we need to talk, I need to read this, I need to, we need to hear it. And then when he started explaining it, to me, it went so far over my head, I realized how much I still had to learn. And I have and he's been really helpful in helping me to understand some things and inspiring me to learn more and to dig deeper into the things I thought I knew, and the implications that I thought were there. And so it's, it's, it's really nice to have you here to help unpack and open up some of this stuff. I think it was St. Augustine that said, I understand time fully until you asked me to explain it. I,
 
Tim Maness 03:07
that's that's one of my go to quotations, I think might be the introduction of my dissertation starts with that.
 
Zack Jackson 03:15
Oh, well, there you go. That's, that'd be fun to defend, I would imagine, where you just start off by saying, I can't explain any of this stuff.
 
Tim Maness 03:24
Yeah, yeah. But one of the things I want to argue is that is that you know, the average person, but But you, dear listener, understand time in you that you have in an important understanding of time, that, that you that ought to be taken into account. And that one of the ways that, that a lot of the philosophy of time over the past, you know, century and a bit has has failed, is in failing to take our everyday experience of time into account. So, I think that, you know, I want to be careful about trying about about going over people's heads. I think it was Einstein, who said that, if that happens is that one of the things that that's a sign of is that the person who is explaining doesn't understand their subject as well as they should.
 
Zack Jackson 04:25
So yeah, that's the, that's what sets like Jesus's teachings apart is that you can say a whole lot in a little bit because you really get it or Mr. Rogers. Yeah. So maybe you can help us to understand a little bit, you mentioned that we have an experience of time. I think that kind of goes without saying that the past is what you did. The present is what you're doing in the future is what you will do, and they're all connected causally. But that's about it. Right? You know, and that there's a static flow of time like a conveyor belt, almost Right, but that's not, that's not exactly how things panned out in the early 1900s.
 
Tim Maness 05:06
Yes, that's true. There are these these three modes of time, these three sort of general tenses, you might say there, if you get into the grammar, but you can come up with more that, that constitute our relationship with time. The, the philosopher, Immanuel Kant talked about PILOTs, one of the categories of our experience, you know, this thing that sort of gives shape to, to the way we experience the world. And, you know, we experienced that the past is accessed through through memory, that's the past is, is this set thing that we, that we, that we know, of, it's definite for us. To some extent, it's definite, but we forget things as well. But it's it's set, it has its own existence, and the future doesn't exist yet. It's some, it's the, the domain of, of sort of planning and also guesswork. It's, it's there to be defined, and the present is where those two things come together. But it's also more than that. It's, it's the, it's the way of, of the mode of times existence in which we can act, in which we make decisions, and, and do things. And it's those decisions, that that shape, the future. And all of those things are, are, are deeply tied in to our way of living in the world as human beings. Right, you know, that's all of those have a very sort of narrative kind of character to them. That it's like, it's like a story, right? That we talked about having a beginning and a middle and an ending. And even before Einstein, a lot of philosophers and scientists were kind of suspicious about that way of talking about time, precisely because it was so human. So, you know, the, the great philosopher, Bertrand Russell, who, you know, contributed so much to the philosophy of mathematics, among other things. Writing before Einstein said that, basically, the fact that this way of thinking about time has so much of the human in it has so much of our subjective, personal way of, of experiencing things into it, that, but there must be something wrong with it. Basically, that in order to be really scientific, where a scientific, you know, is considered to mean the same thing as rigorous. And, you know, and well thought out, then, a way of thinking also has to be objective, it can't rely on any particular point of view. And so Rafal, among others, thought it was better to imagine that that time, was I didn't really have this, this past present future character, that the differences among these three ways of, of experiencing time, were just an illusion, that are brought on by by some, some weird thing about human consciousness or another. And that, in reality, all events in time, exist in the same kind of way. In my work, and in the work of a lot of philosophers of time, we draw on the A category that got set up by this, this philosopher named James McTaggart, who wrote about sort of two ways that we have of talking about time, the A Series and the B series, like many philosophers, he was not really great at creative names. And so the A Series is, is it involves differences in past and present and future in that way that we talked about, imagines that, that the time flows, you might say that, that an event is, is in the future, and then it's in the present, and then it's in the past. And it has all of these different characteristics of past present and future as time goes on. And then on the other hand, there is the B series, and in the B Series events don't have the past, present and future relationships. All they have are the relationships with earlier and later on So for instance, if you can imagine looking at like a history textbook, and you see events on a timeline, where, you know, pen 66, the, the, the Norman invasion of England happens. And, you know, there's in, in this month of that year, this happens. And then a later month of the year, this happens and all of the events are sort of laid out next to each other on a line. All of those events sort of have the same kind of existence. They're, they're, they're sort of different modes of existence that used to see in the A series, the past, the present, and the future stuff. And in our daily lives, we use both of these all the time. Whenever you are planning out your schedule for the day, you are thinking about time in a B Series kind of way. You're saying, Well, alright, I'm gonna sit down to record this podcast at 9am. And then, you know, for my, you know, I should probably have lunch in there somewhere. So it's penciled in for noon, I've got this this other phone call that's scheduled at 330. And you're sort of laying these things out. That way, sort of, in kind of as though you're laying them out in space. And, and again, it's just, it's just an earlier later kind of relationship. But in order to, to take that schedule and translate it into something that you actually do, you also have to bring in the A series there comes a point where, you know, it's not enough just to say, you know, alright, I am starting this podcast at 9am, you are not able to actually do the things necessary to start the, you start the podcast, until unless you have the the impression that at some point 9am is now and and now is a concept that the B series does not have. There is there is no one moment that it picks out is having that special characteristic of noun, it's that moment where, you know, we are where we are acting in the present where things are present to us. You know, there's there's just earliness and lateness and, and so it takes that that intersection between the A Series and the B series in order to to make the the events that we schedule happen. So we have both a ways of picking the time and B ways of taking that time and we use them both all the time. McTaggart his question, or his way of framing the question is, which one of these two ways of thinking is the more fundamental one? Is it the case that time is is really like the B series that, you know, events all have the same kind of existence, and they're ordered by earlier and delayed earlier and later? And our sense of past, present and future is some weird kind of illusion that comes out of our brains? Or is it the case that time really has a past or present in the future, and the B series just comes out of our way of writing things down? And it turns out that, that McTaggart actually thought that neither of these was true, and that he thought that time was the time was just an illusion. But the use terminology sort of gave names to two of the major camps, the people who think that the past present future way of thinking about time is the more fundamental one tend to call themselves a theorist or talk or to talk about flowing time and the people who think that the B series of time the earlier and later there is no now, way of thinking about time is more fundamental They call themselves the B theorists. So, for instance, Bertrand Russell is is a good example of a a b theorist. And you have you know, even quite quite distinguished philosophers and and scientists people like like the, the eminent French, the French philosopher Ali Belkacem was a major proponent of the a theory. The the physicist Arthur Eddington was a major proponent of the a theory. So, this is this is already a hot topic of discussion coming into the 20th century, when Einstein is still a patent clerk and hasn't haven't made a name for himself yet. But then comes relativity as as as Zack has has already talked about, dear listeners and, and that throws a wrench in everything. thing. And it turns out that the assumption that was made in Newtonian physics and, frankly, has probably been made by just about everyone else ever. That, that everybody shares the same now. And that, you know, now is the same moment, you know, here on the East Coast of the United States, as it is in, you know, on the west coast that, you know, it might be the case that the time that we call, you know, 1030, on the east coast, is 630. On the west coast, we, you know, we assign it to different times on the clock, but we can agree that it's now, right, that, you know, you see this in like in like, you know, TV scheduling, for instance, you know, or at least you know, in the days before streaming, we used to we used to talk about TV scheduling this way, but you know, this thing is this, the show is going to come on at, you know, 730 Eastern 630 Central. That, you know, we assign the time when the show begins different moments on the clock, depending on the timezone, but we can agree that the time when the show starts is the same, even if people assign it to two different moments on the clock. So, so this assumption that, that there's the same now that exists here on the East Coast, and over there on the West Coast, and over on the planet Mars, and over in the Andromeda Galaxy, it is all one now, Einstein says, nope, nope, that's not true. That how we experience time, depends on where we are and how fast we're moving. And that people are going to disagree about how long things take. And about what things take place at the same time as each other, depending on how they're moving relative to the events that they're talking about. And that this sort of multisyllabic way of talking about that concept is the relativity of simultaneity. Simultaneous the fact of happening at the same time, simultaneously, the quality of happening at the same time. That's relative in in Einstein's terms, and, and the sort of classic example that that we have for that is, goes back to Einstein. It involves trains. And I think that the trains are going to come up a lot as an image has, as I talked about this. So you mentioned you've got a train that's that's moving past a station. And in the middle of one of the train cars, there is a flashbulb that will go off, let's say for an art project. And the flashbulb goes off in the middle of the train. And light starts coming out of the flashbulb and going towards the two ends of the train. You remember from the previous episode on relativity, that the speed of light is invariant, it's the same for all observers, we might say, for observers in all reference frames, for all points of view. And so a person who is sitting in the middle of the train next to the flashbulb, let's say it's the artist is going to, from that person's point of view, since the light bulb is in the middle of the train, light from the light bulb, is going to hit both ends of the car at the same time, light bulb is exactly in the middle, lightest traveling at the same speed. So it is going to take the same amount of time to hit both ends of the of the car, the front in the back. So from in that person's reference frame, the reference room with the artist on the train, the moment when the light hits the front of the car. And the moment when the light hits the back of the car are going to be simultaneous will happen at the same time. From the perspective of a person who is sitting on a platform as the train goes by, you know, presumably they're waiting for the local and this is the Express that's passing. And they're they're looking at this car wondering what on earth is going on with this flashbulb in this train car. From their perspective, the back of the car is is instead of moving toward this, this is the place where where the where the light was emitted, and the front of the car is moving away from it. So from the perspective of the person who is, you know, sitting at sitting on the platform with the train cars moving past, the light will hit the back of the train earlier than it hits the front of the train. So those two events are not simultaneous, one happens before the other. And the weird thing about relativity, or one of the many weird things about relativity is that it tells us that, that neither of these people is right, and neither of them is wrong. It's not the case that that motion is introducing some kind of distortion into things and that the person who was sitting still is right, because you can't say who's sitting still and who's in motion, all you can do is say that, you know, this is in motion with respect to this. So there's no matter of fact, about whether or not these two events happen at the same time, they happen at the same time in one reference frame, and they don't happen at the same time in in another reference frame. And that's all you can say, the the simultaneity of these two events is relative. So, if that's the case, then the idea of now becomes kind of complicated. You can't say that, you know, you can't say definitively I should say that, you know, a given set of events are all happening at the same time, a time that we can call now, some people moving at some speed with respect to those events are going to assign them all to the same. Now, some people are going to say that, you know, events, A and B are in the past of events C, and some people are going to divide things up differently altogether. So, past and present and future, from a point of view of relativity become a lot harder to divide up. And so, a lot of people, what they get out of this is the idea that this must mean that relativity is basically giving us a knockdown, scientific physical argument, that the are not just an argument that are proof that the beef theory, the the only earlier and later no past present, and future way of looking at time, is really the more fundamental one, that past and present and future are just things that human beings with their weird little brains are imposing on the the grand, impersonal scientific universe. How are we doing so far?
 
Zack Jackson 23:06
Great.
 
Ian Binns 23:07
I'm just listening. Because it still always blows my mind. All the time just blows my mind.
 
Zack Jackson 23:14
It's mind blowing. Well, anytime you say that, anytime you say that. You experience it this way. But the mathematics suggests that it's this other way. I mean, that in and of itself, you know, you've heard it said, But I say to you, right, you're blowing minds.
 
Tim Maness 23:29
Right? And, and, and that's, you know, that plays in with, with that, that way of thinking about science that Russell had, right? That, you know, here we have this this problem that philosophers were debating about, for centuries and centuries, and long come the physicists, and they solve it. Right? That, that, you know, it's the philosophy is, is about endless, fruitless debate. And science comes in and cuts the Gordian knot, and gives us, you know, the way things really are, and, you know, avoids all of this fog of mere language and gives us the truth in mathematics. And, you know, that's, that's something that philosopher after philosopher in the 20th century, brings out of this. And one of the things that they that they do, not universally, but really kind of a lot is that they, they go on from saying, mathematics is, you know, is reliable in a way that subjectivity and language aren't to saying that basically, the human experience of personhood is an illusion of of a similar kind. That, that all of all of our the subjectivities of our experience What what is sometimes called qualia, the hardness of our perceptions, you might see people talk about the redness of a rose, as opposed to the knowledge that you know, light is being reflected off of the rose itself in such a, such a wavelength, you know, or the, the, the emotional side of, of hearing music, as opposed to just being able to describe it in terms of, you know, frequency and amplitude, that all of that stuff is, you know, is is illusion. And that the, the math of those experiences is all that's really real. So, that has a lot of implications for religion, right? Because, so much of you know, of, of our religious experience is personal. In this way. One of my my favorite philosopher theologians, the, the Dane with the rather difficult to pronounce, name of Sir and Kierkegaard, you know, has has this, this whole book, where he talks about how the sort of basis of, of religious experience is this thing that happens inside of you that you can never fully communicate to someone else. And that all of our attempts to talk about religion are attempts that fail, more or less, to take this inexpressible thing, and put it out where other people can see it. And, you know, and and you hear you have this, this, this emerging philosophical viewpoint that, that claims to have, you know, to perceive basically scientific proof for itself, that that's just nonsense, that that nothing that's inexpressible in mathematics can even really exist, that anything else is a delusion. And even if you don't follow things quite that far, even if you don't take from this, the, that, you know, the science is really showing that human subjectivity is an illusion. Taking this, this sort of be theory view of time, poses a lot of problems for religion by itself. So if the B theory is true, time looks a lot like space. And all, you know, all the parts of space, all spots in space exists sort of alongside each other. And in the same way. Here's where here's where I bring in another one of my training analogies, that lots of train, what's the train analogies train?
 
Zack Jackson 27:55
Well, they go in straight lines. So it's very convenient.
 
Tim Maness 27:57
Most of the time, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're in the loop in Chicago, all bets are off for a lot of reasons. But so but but imagine that I'm going to train this traveling in a reasonably straight line, I'm on the Amtrak going up the East Coast, right? And imagine that my train is temporarily stopped in Philadelphia. And you know, maybe I'm going to get off at the station and grab a cheese steak and then get on before I move on north. So when I'm there on the train in Philadelphia, right. Washington DC still exists, even though I've left it, right. It's not present to me now. But it's still there. And New York and Boston, even though I haven't gotten there yet, exist, they're real. There are things going on there that are that are happening, even though I don't perceive them, they are real. So the, in this be theoretic way of looking at time now is like Philadelphia, and the pastor's like, DC. And the future is like New York and Boston. The past is still there, even though that's not where I am now. And the the future is out there that exists, like York and Boston do even though I'm not there now. And the present doesn't have anything really special about it. It's just where I happen to find myself at a particular moment. Right. So if that's the case, if that really is the best description of how time is and a lot of the stories that we tell, that involve time, which is to say all stories that we tell become, well, they become sort of different. So, in, in, in religion, right, we have a lot of stories about, say about people changing their lives. Right? Where, you know, in, in, in the Bible, God says to God says to people, you know, turn your lives around. And then as a result of your turning your life around, this will happen to you. Or if you don't turn your life around, this won't happen to you. Yes. So that sort of way of thinking about about the stories of people's lives depends on a particular way of talking about time, right? The the events, after you make that that critical decision to turn your life around or not to, you know, have some conversion or some repentance or some whatever else, that depends on an idea that the future doesn't exist yet, but it's there to be shaped by your decisions. And so it makes sense to talk about the events that happen after that, that decision as being in some way more important than the events that happen before. Right? That what happens later, can change the meaning of what happened earlier, can in some limited way, maybe make up for what happened earlier, can be more relevant than what happened earlier. This, this is sounding plausible, based on on, you know, the way that you think about time and, you know, regular everyday way
 
Zack Jackson 31:44
I hear kind of, at least in the scriptural analogy, there's kind of two stories that popped to my mind, I think of that whole, that whole paradigm is so important for the province, right? They they come before the people and they say, here's what you've done. Here's what you need to change, or else, this is what will happen, right? That's sort of the formula of every one of the problems, they're giving you a chance to repent, to change to move. So your future is not totally decided yet. The future is uncertain, it's being written now. And then the other story I think of is that of Moses and Pharaoh, where God tells Moses, go to Pharaoh say, Let my people go. And he goes to Pharaoh and says, Let my people go. And then God hardens Pharaoh's heart, because God has an ending in mind already, and is going to, like the future is unchangeable. In that story, there was always going to be plagues always going to be an exodus always going to be that. And God is still telling Moses to do this thing now, despite the fact that it's not going to change anything, because God is going to intervene, because the future is fixed. All right. And of those two stories, people generally tend to accept the prophetic version a lot easier than the the future is already fixed. And God is behind the scenes, you know, making this a deterministic situation, right? Because then they think, why do I even bother? Yeah, what's the point of any of this if the future is already if the future is already real? And whatever, you know, I should just sit back and do nothing. Yeah. Yeah.
 
Tim Maness 33:23
And which is not to say that there haven't been some theologians who have tried to embrace that, that sort of the future is set way of looking at things, right. Where you have people who are in favor of have a strong view of looking what gets hold predestination, where, where God has already set out your entire future for you, where all of the events of your life exists, like, like, you know, like, like, all the events in a book, right, where everything has already happened, even before you've in a circumstance, even before you've read it, it's just a matter of, you know, going through the pages, until you get to the the ending that was already there. And people like, you know, like John Calvin, in the in the Christian tradition, tend to have a strong view of predestination. That's, that is a really common view in, in Muslim theology. It's, you get a lot of Muslim thinkers who have that that particular strong view that God has planned out all of history. It's very uncommon in Judaism, you will find very few Jewish thinkers who wouldn't rather go with that sort of open future. There's there there's very little Jewish support for the idea of predestination. So yeah, you have you have, you can find some theologians who are going to be on either side of this debate. But on the whole, you're right people do like to they do like to opt for the idea of the open future because it makes our choices more meaningful. Right? It means that our choices are made, or at least, are potentially made by us. They aren't sort of written out ahead of time for us by God. And that means, for instance, that, that if we're making our own choices, that that that has implications for God's responsibility for evil in the world. If God has already made everybody's choices for everybody beforehand, then that means that God is responsible for all of the evil that people do. That God decided already decided, every time somebody was going to commit a murder. God made that happen, rather than than the person choosing to commit that murder against God's will.
 
Zack Jackson 35:57
Yeah, it's holding a marionette responsible for its puppeteers act. Right. Exactly.
 
Ian Binns 36:03
The idea of fate, right? No.
 
Tim Maness 36:05
Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's that's our
 
Ian Binns 36:09
that's already written or something like that. Is that kind of the same?
 
Tim Maness 36:13
thing? I think that's that's, that's a great one syllable way of putting it this is this is exactly fate. Right, in the way that that many cultures have had had it that the way you sometimes see like Greek and Roman ways of talking about the world, where everybody has their fate. It's laid out, you if you try to avoid it, it will just you'll just end up coming at it in a way that you didn't expect.
 
Zack Jackson 36:38
Yeah, that's all edifice. Yeah, there. Yeah.
 
Tim Maness 36:43
And that's, you know, it's not to say that that's, that that's a way of looking at God, that doesn't make sense, in a sort of abstract kind of way. But it's one that poses a lot of problems, especially for an Abrahamic view of God, where we want to talk about God as as loving, and as good. And in, it causes a lot of problems for the way we want to talk about the end of time. Right? We have this idea that at the end of time, God will will will wipe will wipe away every tear from people's eyes will make things okay. And that God will, to some extent treat people based on the choices that they've made during their lives. And if God has decided everybody's choices for them all along the line, then that makes a lot less sense. If people's, you know, if the will, the changes that people make in their lives. If the events that happen after those changes always exist, and the events that happen before those changes always exist, and they exist in the same way, then it doesn't seem like there's no particular reason to treat the events afterward as being more important than the events that happened before. Right? It's it's not as though if you're looking at a map of the US, right? But you would say, all right, everything that happens east of the Mississippi cancels out everything that happens west of the Mississippi, you know, that would be ridiculous. And if, if all events are laid out in time, the way, you know, places are laid out in space, then it seems ridiculous in the same way to talk about events, later, canceling out events that happened earlier. So there's, there's there's no particular reason for God to assign people to treat people differently based on on changes that they make. There's no sort of final victory of good over evil, because the evil always exists, it doesn't pass away. It's always there. In the same way that the good that God eventually brings him to be is always there. So even if you're if you even if you're not following these along these these be theorist philosophers in saying that, you know, the human personality doesn't really exist. The B theory causes all kinds of problems for for Abrahamic theology, and the the predestination list of theologians who would be happy to go along with the B theory. They don't have a lot of responses beyond Well, it's a mystery. You know, God see thing, God sees things differently. And it's not necessarily going to make sense to us. And that's something that we as theologians have to say a lot of the time because, you know, part of the way that we think about God is that yeah, God is different from us. And God does see things differently. But when you basically have to take that same explanation and apply it to literally everything in the way that we talk about God interacting with human beings, then speaking for myself, I don't find it very satisfying. It feels to me like, though it does make sense to say that there are there are things about God that we're not going to understand that we should, at a minimum, have some things that we can understand about the way God interacts with us in our own lives. If anything should be comprehensible to us, it seems like it should be that we should be able to understand the impact of what we do.
 
Zack Jackson 40:38
Yeah, that we can't necessarily understand the nature the full nature of a being that exists outside of our experience our universe, but we should be able to at least understand our experience of that. Right.
 
Tim Maness 40:57
Right. And especially if we're if retail was
 
Ian Binns 41:01
gonna, yeah, please go ahead. I was gonna ask about in, you just alluded to it that, Zach, that, because again, it's still this is still cooking my brain here a little bit, but so the idea that God would exist outside of our understanding of time, right, like, even based on all this stuff that you're talking about here, Tim? Um, is that okay, in a theological way or not? Okay, I'm not permission, but what are your thoughts on approaching it that
 
Tim Maness 41:31
way? Well, yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that's another big problem, that, that, that sort of exists at right angles to this one, right, you can have sort of different positions on that. And, and imagine it as impacting the way we think about time in different ways. Right? So people usually want to talk about God as knowing some things that exist in the future, right? Prophecy is, is assuming to some degree that God knows some things before they happen? And how are we going to reconcile that with the way that we think about time? Well, people have have proposed different things. You know, if the B theorists are right, and all events already exist, and that becomes very simple to explain, you know, God knows things. God knows everything that happens, because God sort of created it all. At you know, as it were, at the same moment, you know, God brought all that into existence together. With the great theologian, Augustine, the Christian theologian, Augustine, he, drawing on some, some sort of Greco Jewish ways of thinking about time, proposes that the time is this created thing. That, that, that there is no time, until God creates the universe. And when God creates the universe, you know, as God is saying, what it'd be like, then then time comes into being with things as as, as they start. And that would mean for Augustine, for instance, that God is is outside of time, in the same way that we say that God is outside of space. Right, that God doesn't you know, that God isn't located in space, you know, there's, there's not some place that you can go to the specialty that you've been, you know, getting the spaceship and travel to apply. And that's where God is, you know, this is one of the reasons why Star Trek five is a bad movie. And I'm wondering if
 
Ian Binns 43:31
you're gonna do that.
 
Tim Maness 43:34
And in the same way, there's, there's no particular moment where we're God is in time. And, and so, if God is outside of time, in that way, then then you could ask, you know, what is God's relationship to time like, there's this, this, this other Christian thinker on amblyseius, who has a way of thinking about time that has some subtle differences from Augustine, that we may or may not end up getting into he has this sort of famous image of God as it's the God's way of looking at time as is like a person in a watch tower looking down the road, right, that the person is not on the road, and what they see all events on the road from where they sit. So So God is sort of looking at time from outside and seeing it that way. And some people argue that God's knowledge of future events doesn't determine future events because God isn't really knowing them before they happen in a strict sense, because God isn't in the scheme of before and after.
 
Zack Jackson 44:53
That sounds like the sorts of ways that they handle pre cognition in dune Is that the he doesn't actually see what will happen. He sees what they describe as a series of threads that all come out and branch off of each other of possible probable futures based on where things are. And so when he has visions, they're things that don't necessarily happen, but are possible happenings and then is then current actions can then determine whether or not those potential futures happen. Yeah,
 
Tim Maness 45:30
you are it's also talked about that way in what is arguably the first time travel story. Christmas Carol. Where were we?
 
Zack Jackson 45:43
Oh, man, yeah, I hadn't thought about the Christmas Carol is as a time travel,
 
Tim Maness 45:48
we're screwed says to to the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come Are these the shadows of things that will be your those might have been things that might be only. And, and there's a moment there are other ways of looking at at time in which God's relationship to time is like that, in which God is in time with us. And that the future doesn't exist for God either. And that, that God has, maybe you might say that God knows, to some extent what might happen, because God knows us really well. In the same way that that, you know, you might say, if your best friend, or if some close family member, well, if you put this person in this situation, I don't know for certain what they would do. But I bet they do this. That if you have really good knowledge of someone, you have an idea of how they would react in a given situation. And so maybe God's knowledge of the future is like that, where God has perfect knowledge of all of the physical conditions, and God has really good knowledge of our personalities. So God can say with a high probability, yeah, this is what's likely to happen. But it's up to you.
 
Zack Jackson 47:06
When I was in seminary, I was a, I was in an arrogant little seminary, all army was all the things. And I had a professor who accused me of being more influenced by Greek philosophy than by the, you know, Christian theology, and which is fighting back against that
 
Tim Maness 47:31
theologians have been accusing each other of since the first century.
 
Zack Jackson 47:36
Sure, because it's true. Because what I was talking about with the the omnis of God, that God is omnipotent, so all powerful, omniscient, so all knowing omnipresent, so all prayer, all places, omnibenevolent, all loving these ideas of the omnis, which don't actually appear in Scripture, but that so very color, the way we think about God, and so what I was talking about what God being all knowing, so God knowing all of the things, and he challenged that and he said you where do you find that? And honestly, my basis of it was just the things that I was taught in Sunday school, that God these are the foundational characteristics of God, but not necessarily in Scripture other than in like the Psalms, which will say, you know, God, you've searched me, you know, me high and low, all those things. But he said, What if we follow instead, the line of thinking from Philippians? Two, and what we talked about kenosis, the emptying of God, and that instead of saying that God knows everything, what if you were to say that God knows what God chooses to know, that God is able to know everything, but in a way of as a way of interacting with finite beings, chooses instead to not know everything in order to interact with humanity. And so there is a kind of self emptying in order to enter into our world which, you know, if you imagine a three dimensional object, trying to interact in a two dimensional world, that three dimensional object would have to lose some of its three dimensional pneus and be emptied of its depth in order to interact with one of those.
 
Tim Maness 49:21
Edwin Abbott's great book Flatland.
 
Zack Jackson 49:24
Right, which ended up being I mean, that book was about economics, but ended up being a great illustration for all kinds of they also horribly
 
Tim Maness 49:32
sexist, I should I should point that out. So be warned. If you go in if you go in there, there's some some really awful stuff about the female.
 
Zack Jackson 49:43
Yeah, it's just a good illustration. But that's about
 
Tim Maness 49:46
I want to be careful. I call it a great book. And I want to be careful about that because there are ways we did is a super bad book.
 
Zack Jackson 49:55
That's kind of where where process theology comes up, that God is intimately involved. In the process of the unfolding of time that God has emptied God's self. And that's how God interacts in time and space is by leaving, the the timelessness and the unchanging pneus of the whatever imagined other dimensions and instead becoming, made flesh in in this existence. And that sounds really nice. Until I started learning about relativistic time and that there is no privileged present moment. And that so then in what moment, is God present in the now? At that point? Yeah, there is an acrobat now, actually, that does God exist in a black hole? Where the where time flows, so drastically different? does? Does God exist on the photons? Does God exist in the now of, you know, objects moving near the speed of light? It all kind of fell apart. And then yeah, wonderful narrative of God, growing and changing and loving and weeping with the death of the planet, all of that kind of fell apart, too. And I was sad to lose my beautiful theology,
 
Tim Maness 51:07
you might be interested to know that there are philosophers and theologians out there who are struggling mightily to take that beautiful theology and make it compatible with relativity.
 
Zack Jackson 51:22
Your being you being one of them?
 
Tim Maness 51:24
Well, yeah, I mean, in my dissertation, I talked about a couple of different ways that people try to, to reconcile that, that theology was depends so much on pulling time with relativity. And that idea of God is in time with us, is one of the ones that I look at. It's, that's, that's a way of looking at things that is being defended by by, for instance, William Lane, Craig, and John Lucas. I think, you know, I think that the way that they go about or I should say, specifically, the way that Craig goes about, trying to make this work, and relativity leaves some, some really big unanswered questions. So I think it's, it's maybe the less satisfying, of, of the two. But when I was finishing the dissertation, but before I had time to really do the research, and, and incorporate this, I was seeing some stuff about other physical ways of looking at time, that made me think, maybe, if I were to sit down and, and look at this in a future project, there might be more to be said, for, for that, that sort of God in time, way of of dealing with relativity. So that that may be a future project. And I should also say that, that specifically that idea of, of God not knowing the future, because it's not, you know, is is more characteristic of Lucas's way of looking at things than Craig's, because I think Craig takes a lot of the advantages of that way of thinking and first, not the window, again, by insisting that God has to know everything that happens in detail. Um,
 
Ian Binns 53:24
well, so, you know, I know we are slowly getting, you're starting to run out of time. I'm curious, how has the all this work that you've done the dissertation work, you just talked about, you know, future ideas, future things, you're curious about? How, if at all, has it impacted or influenced your personal theological journey?
 
Tim Maness 53:48
Well, personally is exactly the word for it. So, that, that brings me I guess, to the other way of trying to reconcile flowing time with relativity, that I think is the more satisfying one which comes out of the work that the the theologian Barbara John Russell, who is working at the the graduate theological Union are in Berkeley, the director of the Center for theology of the natural sciences, is instantly been a great friend tonight, a great friend to me. The way that that he tries to reconcile this is to say that a lot of the problems that that relativity causes here or that we we think of relativity as causing come from taking the idea of a now and trying to extend it in space. Right, to say that there should be a single now that can encompass, you know, where I am here and where you are there and where somebody else is on Mars and we're aliens are the Andromeda galaxy right? whereas one of the things that relativity should tell us is that the idea of now is inseparable from the idea of here. The what you have is not so much a universal now that we meet, you can fall about it, but here now, so I have one particular now. And, you know, you in in North Carolina, have a slightly different one, and use Zack in eastern pa have a slightly different one. And, you know, the farther you are away, but the more different your now is. And that the philosophers who want to say that, you know that everything breaks down, because you can't fundamentally assign things to a past and present and future, the mistake that they're making is trying to take different nouns and combine them into one to say that what is real for me, is real T is real to you. Because we exist in this, you know, that because we can interact with each other. You know, for instance, if I'm on the phone with one of you, right, and you're looking out your window, and you're seeing the squirrels doing something weird out there, the way they do that, even if even if you're not talking to me about the squirrels that those squirrels, and what they're doing is real to me on the other end of the phone. You know, that's the way we normally think about things happening, right? That what's real to you where you are, is real to me where I am, even if I don't know anything about it. And what Russell and a few others is saying is that maybe this is another one of those ideas that relativity should force us to abandon. Maybe what we should be thinking about is, rather than then one, universal now that encompasses everyone, maybe there are a myriad of individual here now that go with each particular observer, in each particular reference frame, whatever it might be, and they don't line up with each other, but maybe they don't have to. Maybe, because, you know, the thing is that all you disagree, we can disagree about what happens at the same time, or in some cases about the order that events take place. But we will never disagree about the causality of events. Right. That's that's one of the things that the big the big caveat to this story about, we tell about how relativity changes everything up is that relative even in relativity, even with all of these shenanigans about time, relativity never mixes up the order of events that are causally related to each other, you can always agree, no matter what reference frame you're in, that the cause happens before the effect. So in the end, we have different perspectives, but they kind of come out in the wash. And even though you might know something that I would consider repeated, so you might know something now that I would consider the time that you would call now that I was considered to be in the future. One of the things about relativity is that you can't get that information to me, before it would come to me anyway. You can't get me you can't transmit a signal to me at the speed of light in such a way that I find out about that event with advanced knowledge. So maybe what we should do, in Russell's point of view is rather than saying that, that God exists in a single universal now that defines what now really means, the way Craig would have done it to say that God is with us, each of our individual mouths. And that that's God's way of, of perceiving the universe is by looking at it through the eyes, so to speak, more or less metaphorically of everything in the universe, that that rather than, than sort of looking down at what's happening on the stage of creation from the Royal box, so to speak, that God is seeing what happens through the eyes of each of the actors. And for that matter, potentially through the through the eyes of all the props and all the pieces of scenery and if Go to a couple of theologians, or a number of theologians who get called the Boston personalist. Boston because they worked at Boston University. We find that they have, even outside the framework of relativity already come up with a way of thinking about God's interaction with the creation. It looks a lot like this. One of them incidentally, Edgar Brightman was Dr. Martin Luther King's PhD advisor. So when he was becoming Dr. King, he was working with Edgar Brightman. So I think these two things kind of fit together in a really productive, generative way. The idea that, rather than personhood, being this distortion of a timeless, pure mathematical, non linguistic reality, maybe personhood, is the core of what is maybe our individual, different irreconcilable ways of looking at the world is a really important feature of how the world is. And that because God, who created the universe who brought the universe into existence is a person. Not exactly in the same way that we are, because God is infinite, and has all sorts of characteristics that as we talked about, we can't know about or even talk about very well. But But God's personhood is in some way analogous to ours. And so that personhood becomes a really important thing for us to keep in mind as we talk about existence. And that if we can't translate that personhood into mathematics, then that's okay. Because mathematics doesn't have to be the only tool that we use to describe how things are.
 
Zack Jackson 1:01:57
Yeah, your explanation reminds me a lot of the way that Teresa of Avila saw the way that God interacts with people. Or she said, Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on Earth, but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on the world, yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world, yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, yours are the body. Christ has no body now on Earth, but you're right.
 
Tim Maness 1:02:24
And even I think this works beautifully. Well, even talking about Christ's incarnation, you know, during those 30 Some years in, in Judea, right? That, that when God became incarnate speaking, he was a Christian, that it was as a particular human being, in a particular time and place, that God was this one guy with a very, who only walked around a very small area of the earth. Right, that God did all that God had to do in that incarnation, even with this perspective, that was very circumscribed. Very short, in terms of of time, and very localized in terms of space. And, and that's okay, that's, that's just how things are.
 
Zack Jackson 1:03:16
Tim, as, as always, Tim, you've given me things to think about. You've given me scientific things to reread, as well as new perspectives on my own personal faith and theology to reconsider. So thank you again, for that. Any idea when this will all be turned into a book that everyone can read?
 
Tim Maness 1:03:40
The ways that publishers are mysterious to us mere mortals?
 
Ian Binns 1:03:45
Yes, this is true.
 
Tim Maness 1:03:47
And so one of the things that they unfortunately don't necessarily teach you in grad school is hard to put together a book proposal. So that's something that I'm having to learn on my own. But hopefully, it shouldn't be too long. You know, though, of course as as, as CS Lewis has gotten the former bass line saying I call all time soon.
 
Ian Binns 1:04:15
definitely agree with it. Yeah.
 
Zack Jackson 1:04:18
Yeah, with a quote from Aslan.
 
Tim Maness 1:04:20
Yeah. So it's been such a joy to to be a guest on the podcast and just to talk to you two guys, you're so great. And thanks.
 
Zack Jackson 1:04:29
We'll have to have you back on again sometime soon to
 
Tim Maness 1:04:32
say the word say the word and I am there and also then
 
Zack Jackson 1:04:36
alright at yes then and there at the same time. Yes, it also not and oh wibbly wobbly timey. Why me? Yep. God bless you all.

Time Part 1 (It’s All Relative)

Episode 98
This episode was originally recorded in early November and was set to be released at the end of December, but here we are at the end of January instead because time is a funny thing, isn't it? The moment you think you have a firm grasp on "now", it slips through your fingers. That's true both in terms of scheduling podcasts during the holidays and also understanding time from a relativistic perspective. Time might feel like it is moving at the same rate for everyone, but Einstein's theories (and later experimentation) prove otherwise. So without a universally agreed upon "now", how can we say anything true about a God who interacts within time? What good is repentance when the past and future are equally real? What about prophecy? Jesus' birth? Are we all destined for deism? Well, let's take some time to understand how relativity works first, and then we'll get to those (and many more) questions. 
Spoiler alert, we're going to talk about this one again in a special episode next time too because it's too much fun! 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
Zack Jackson 00:05
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 00:14
Kendra Holt-Moore, assistant professor of religion at Bethany college. And the thing I'm looking forward to in the next year is not being a first time first year Professor anymore, because the first year of teaching is really hard.
 
Rachael Jackson 00:34
Rachael Jackson, Rabbi at Agoudas, Israel congregation Hendersonville, North Carolina. And the thing I am looking forward to in this coming year, is first a nine week sabbatical and the ability to travel because of vaccines.
 
Ian Binns 00:56
Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte, the first thing that popped my mind when thinking about what I'm looking forward to is going to see Rob Bell speak in Dallas, with my good buddy mark. February in February,
 
Zack Jackson 01:14
Zack Jackson UCC pastor in Redding, Pennsylvania, and I am super excited for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, which I don't want to, I don't want to say that it's going to happen in a couple of days, because this episode is supposed to launch like three days before it's supposed to launch. Because I don't know, it was originally supposed to launch in 2007. So it's had a couple of delays. But it's going to make the Hubble look like a like a pair of binoculars, it is going to be able to show all kinds of super exciting things from the very beginning of the universe. And I cannot wait to see that. So I mentioned James Webb as well, because I think satellites are super cool, in general. And so I want to I want to start today with a story about a satellite, a very famous satellite, you may have heard of it. Its name was Sputnik. It was the very first human satellite we ever put up there. And back way back in 1957, the Soviets kind of surprised everyone and was like, hey, look, we've got the technology. And we did it. And everyone in the world kind of freaked out because they weren't sure if there was going to be nukes or anything like that, and alien technology or whatever. And because they it had never been done before. They had to prove to people that it actually was happening. And not that they were just making the whole thing up. And so they equipped Sputnik with a radio pulse. So it would go around the earth and be like me, beep, beep, beep, beep, so anyone on Earth could listen in and be like, Oh, look at that. It is up there. It's beeping at me. That's really neat. And so at the at Johns Hopkins, couple days later, October 7 1957, a couple of junior physicists were sitting around at lunch talking. And these two guys, these buddies, William Guyer, and George weissenbach, they were just talking with their friends. And we're really surprised to learn that no one at Johns Hopkins had bothered to listen for it, using their radio technology. Like, honestly, that seems like something that divino fancy scientists people should do. So wife and Bach was working on microwave radiation for his Ph. D. Program at the time. And so he had a decent radio in his office. And so the two of them went upstairs and just start messing around with it, waiting for Sputnik to crossover. And there was Beep, beep, beep, beep. And they had the clarity of mind to be like, hey, this seems like it might be a historical event, we should grab a cassette tape. And we should take this thing, just, you know, so we can show our kids, this is what Sputnik sounded like. And so they did, and they recorded it. And then the next day, they were like, I wonder if we can we can get this a little clearer. And so they they messed with the frequencies and got it so they could hear it really clearly. And one of the things that they noticed was that just like, you know, when you're when you're standing on the side of the street and a car is coming, and it goes and it kind of like the sound goes up and then it goes down. That's called the Doppler effect. That has to do with things that are emitting sound or light that is also moving in relationship to you. And so like if it's moving towards you, the sound waves or the the waves of light, they get compressed, because it's moving towards you. If it's moving away from you, they get spread out. So the sound would sound higher or lower as it's going. Same is true with like radio waves. So the sound coming from the radio waves, if you looked at it from like, the, the wave perspective was kind of doing b, b be, though wouldn't made that sound. And so they were like, Oh, this is really interesting, hey, Johns Hopkins, can we use your supercomputer for a minute, which I say supercomputer, it probably has had the computing power of like a ti 83. Now, it was one of the very first digital computers in the world. And so they used it to do some really complicated math. And were able to calculate Sputnik's orbit, and their look at its location, and where it was going. And were able to predict when and where it would come back, using just the what we call the Doppler shift of the the width of the radio waves. And that was kind of a novel thing to do. When they released their information. The Russians were like, what, come on, guys, we have this one thing, and you had to go and top US that was so rude. I think that's what the Soviet said, I don't speak Russian. So that was fun. And then Sputnik burned out. And that was no more. But then the next May, their boss came to them, and called called them into his office, which is always a good thing and said, Hey, remember that thing you did was Sputnik? Do you think it's possible to do that backwards? Could you do that in reverse? Like, if we had satellites, where we knew where they were, at the time in orbit, sending a pulse down to earth? Would you be able to calculate where the receiver is, if we knew where the satellites were? And they were like, well, I guess the math is kind of the same, it's just backwards. And thus, the transit system was born, the very first satellite navigation system, because the Navy had this problem where they had these nuclear submarines that had the nuke nuclear missiles on them in the Arctic, which is waiting to blow up Russia. But the, they were supposed to be secret. And so they couldn't use the traditional means of navigation because they didn't want to give away their location. And so they kind of were getting lost up there in the Arctic. And so the, the Air Force sent up an array of five satellites orbiting the Arctic, and every couple of hours, it would pass overhead. And then they could get a ping on their location. And they could correct their maps, and they would know where they were. And that was great. And that was wonderful. And then we thought, I wonder what else we can use this technology for? And so the global positioning satellite system started to get dreamed up together, like, what if we took that, and we made a whole array of satellites, up in orbit, all sending pings down to earth, and we could triangulate, given the pings and the locations of a couple of them, and be able to tell where all kinds of things are airplanes. And, and, and, and like troops. And this is the military, they're always thinking about war stuff. And so what they would need to have a real time local navigation system was that the clocks on Earth would need to be synced with the clocks in the satellite. That would be real important if we're going to do real time navigation. So they have these really, really accurate atomic clocks, that one is in on Earth, and one is in orbit. And that was great. Except for one problem. There was this guy, you may have heard of him. He's kind of a big deal name is Albert Einstein. And about 60 years beforehand, he had proposed this crazy thing called general relativity, after his theory of special relativity, which suggested that Isaac Newton's laws, which had worked very well, by the way for the past, like 300 years, which were the laws, which helped them to get the satellites in orbit in the first place, it didn't work so well, when you were talking about the effects of gravity. So in a larger level, Newton's Laws kind of stop working, in particular, his theory of time, and the way that time moves, see a part of relativity stated that one's relationship to gravity affected the passage of time, which was a very counterintuitive thing, and at the time in 70s When this was getting put up, there were still testing. It seemed like it was passing all the tests general relativity was, was passing all of these tests. But they still weren't entirely convinced. And some of the scientists on this GPS project thought that we were going to disprove Einstein. And so we should just put the clocks up there, up there in the satellites, and the other scientists were like, no, if we put the clocks up there as they are, and not adjust them in any way for relativity, then they're going to be out of sync. And so they couldn't agree internally. And these satellites are very expensive. And back in the 70s, it was very, very expensive to send the satellite into space, it's still very expensive, but it was much more back then. And so they had, they kind of did this interesting trick. A sort of cheat, if you will, to appease both sides, and to be able to tell once and for all, if time actually does move differently, the further you get from Earth, in that they sent it up with just normal atomic clock. But they also had a sort of switch, where they could flip that switch, and then there was a little computer inside that would then adjust the time on the clock to then send back the corrected time to Earth. So they sent it up. And they let it be up there for about 20 days going around and discovered that yeah, it shifted the time in orbit past differently than the time on Earth. Seven microseconds per day, which I don't know, a microsecond doesn't seem like a whole lot of time. So seven microseconds per day of drift. But in terms of GPS, that's a drift of 10 kilometers per day, if not corrected. So one day of the satellites being up there, and they're useless. Because time travels, passes differently in orbit than it does on Earth. Yeah,
 
Rachael Jackson 12:14
so incredible. Like, yeah, that's subjective,
 
Zack Jackson 12:17
like you said, not just a fun theory,
 
Ian Binns 12:20
the seven microseconds thing, when you first say that, I'm just gonna like, oh, wow, what did he do? But the ramifications for those of us on the ground? That's just wow, like, I did not know that. That's crazy.
 
Zack Jackson 12:36
Yeah, the, the closer you are, so that, it's because there's less gravity less of Earth's gravity, the farther you get from the center of Earth. And so time, time will pass faster. On in orbit, the closer you get to the gravitational well, the slower time will pass. But because these things are relative to where they're being observed, I always get that backwards as to if you were on the earth, looking at the satellite, versus if you were on the satellite looking at the Earth, actually, relative to the Earth's age, you know, a couple billion years old, Earth's core is actually two and a half years younger than its surface. For what it's worth, you go. So now every single satellite that's in orbit, every single computer every single time, a piece that is up in orbit, and every all of the robots on Mars and the satellites flying out into deep space, all of that has to compensate for the fact that gravity affects time. That time passes differently for different people, for different observers in different places in different gravity wells. Depending on one's mass on one's gravity on one's velocity, time will pass differently. So GPS only works because time is weird. So in a manner of speaking, Albert Einstein is the father of Pokemon GO and so for that we give thanks
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 14:27
what a storyteller you are Zack to be able to craft to craft a narrative that leads to a conclusion.
 
Ian Binns 14:35
And to me, I love it, you know, so that we all roads
 
Zack Jackson 14:38
lead to Pokemon, right? That's but that's a lot to take in. And there's a lot of moving pieces to that and there's a lot of confusing counter intuitive things about how relativity bends space and time and what are the implications of the fact that there is not a solid steady passage of time. Which means there is no preferred present moment that the past and the future in the present are all on a spectrum instead of one, instead of us always being in the present and the past in the future being always somewhere else, the implications of that, and even understanding how that happens and why that happens. And all of that is a lot to unpack. So let's take a 15 second break, and take a breath. And be thankful that we can time 15 seconds unless you're on a spaceship, going half the speed of light, and then this could take a lot more than 50. All right, I want to tell you a quick thought experiment, that I'm adapting from one of Einstein's thought experiments, because I find any time we talk about things happening on trains, and lasers and things like that, in thought experiments to be hard to, to wrap my mind around. So I want to imagine for a second that we have a basketball robot. And basketball bot is an awesome robot, and he's predictable. And the things he does happen very predictably, he's got a hand that reaches out, it's one meter above the ground, it can bounce a basketball in one second. And it's steady and repeatable. You know, bum, bum, bum, bum, he's basketball bot, he's a robot, it's, it's easy to do. So you're watching basketball bot, as he's bouncing the ball in the airport. And, you know, one second, one second, one second, one meter, one meter, one meter, one meter, one meter, one meter, and then you and a basketball bot, because you're going to baggage claim, you walk on to the, to the moving sidewalk. And so you're standing there next to basketball bot, who is still bouncing the basketball because he's programmed to bounce the basketball. And he's still going one meter down, one meter up, one meter down one meter up in one second. And that hasn't changed for you. But the person standing on the side watching this strange basketball bot, bounce a basketball in the airport, on the people walk thing is not seeing the basketball goes straight down and straight up. Because we've added a velocity in another direction. So if that is moving sufficiently fast, while he's bouncing straight up and down, with a person on the side is seeing is really it bouncing in an angle, and then bouncing up in an angle, because of the way that they're seeing. And so in classic physics, that's not a problem, the old heads of physics, they were talking about the same thing, that just means you have now added velocity in a separate direction. And so now there's more speed to be had. Right? Speed is just distance divided by time. So you know, we're just adding a bit more distance if you're moving sideways, as well. So it's speeding up. According to the person on the outside, which is fine. Basketball can go faster, because it can write, there's no limit to the speed of basketballs. So basketball bot is not a problem. He's a great guy, now, laser basketball man, robot guy who is doing the same thing, except instead of bouncing a basketball, he is bouncing a photon, up and down, up and down, one meter up and down, up and down. You're standing next to him, that photon is moving at the speed of light, because that's what they do, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, bouncing off a mirror coming back up to his hand. And that's fine. So then he goes on the people walk, moving sidewalk thing, and a person on the outside now sees if it's moving sufficiently fast, it not going straight up and down, but following the same vector that bounces sideways and up, which means that it would have to have accelerated in one direction. But we know that the speed of light is a constant, and you can't go faster than the speed of light. So how is it then that to the person on the outside, it appears that it has moved faster than the speed of light, magic. Speed is just distance divided by time. And the speed has to be constant. That means that time then has to change. If all the mathematics are going to work out, fine. Then if distance changes, so does time. And so when we're talking about things that obey the speed of light, like a photon that can't go faster than time then starts to get wibbly wobbly. So that's the that's the insight that comes from special relativity is that Newtonian physics works really well, from the perspective of your everyday life. Right? Bouncing a basketball, Newtonian physics works great. But when you break it down to things that either are massive, like planets, or that move incredibly fast, like light, then it starts to break down and relativity takes over. And so we start to extrapolate outward from that, and finding out that time doesn't move the same for everyone, time is dependent on your frame of reference on your velocity on your mass on your, on your gravitational pull. And so for most of us, that's not going to matter. Most of us are going to live our whole lives in roughly the same gravity, well, at roughly the same velocity, we're not going to be traveling near the speed of light, we're not going to have to worry about this. Right? So why even talk about it?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 21:10
Why even talk about it?
 
Ian Binns 21:13
Because it's really fun. I mean, there's more reasons than that, obviously, but I've always found this stuff just quite fascinating. Blows my brain just
 
Zack Jackson 21:23
gonna end the episode right there. Just no reason to talk about it's not gonna affect us show.
 
Rachael Jackson 21:32
Let's move on with our day.
 
Zack Jackson 21:34
But it does kind of bust the whole way we think about past present future, doesn't it that, that there is this constant flow of time from past to future, that past is gone. It's just a memory. The present is where we live, and the future is what's coming, hasn't happened yet. And like, that way of thinking, permeates all of our religious tradition, the way we think about God, the way we think about God's interaction with humanity is all based in this there was the past, it calls the present. And now the present will influence the future, especially in Christianity, because we are an eschatological religion, which is fancy theological ways of saying we are a religion of the end, we have people who are looking forward to the end to the redemption of all to the sort of an end goal of things being made, right? That only works if there is a progression of time. How do you save something if the end and the beginning and the middle are all the same? How does God interact in time? Do we believe that God is time less? And if God is outside of the flow of time, as we experience it, then which one is God's preferred time God's preferred now? Like there's some beautiful theologies like process theology, which believes with which teaches that God and creation are intrinsically intertwined, and that God is growing and changing and moving with creation. And I love that, and that God doesn't know the future, and God is moving along with us. But it doesn't work. When you realize that there is no preferred present moment, and everything breaks down on the macro level. You don't for example, if you and your friend were in in twin spaceships, and you were hanging out near a black hole, and your buddy got a little bit too close, and then got sucked into the event horizon, from your perspective, you could stay there for the rest of your life and watch them slowly fall into the black hole. They would just be falling and falling and falling forever. But from their perspective, in an instant, they would be instantly spaghettified which is the actual technical term for when you get sucked into a black hole and get pulled down atom by atom into single strand of be of existence spaghettified we get a five spaghettified you can quote me on that. That's, that's the science word. Well, so
 
Ian Binns 24:26
I've always felt like in, you know, when you come to the notion of God, that just seemed limiting to me that we could only think of God as a being that is limited to our notion of time, to the human notion of time, right. Like, I would like to think that there is a God that God is more powerful than that, right? There's not there's not a limiting factor there. If that makes any sense. Yeah. No, like one man literally interpret, you know, the story of great the creation story, or stories and, and Genesis, when they see that, you know, on the first day this happened second day Ebola seventh day God rested. And people like See, look, it happened in one week. I'm kinda like you, like really like you can't you struggle with the notion that it's bigger than that like that God is limited to our personal understanding our own individual understanding of what a week is, and what a day is like that just to me that that kind of puts God into a into a bubble. Right? That's like, the only way I can understand God is by God is in a life like mine. And I would like to think that if God does exist, that God is outside of that mentality, that there's God's not limited in that situation. That's just how I view it.
 
Zack Jackson 26:01
So then how would a being outside of the flow of time interact within the flow of time?
 
Ian Binns 26:07
I don't know. You know, when I die, and if there is a God, and I get a chance to meet God, that may be one of my questions. How do you do that? Can you teach me that trick? I mean, I know. But I just I don't know. Yeah, I feel like that's another good thought experiment.
 
Rachael Jackson 26:28
Man, please. Yeah. One of the ways that we've sort of wrestled with this idea, I shouldn't say we, that I have wrestled with this idea of time, and God. I've heard the idea that is, God is all good, all knowing, all powerful, and all time. That doesn't work for my theology, when I look at the world around me. So it's like, Okay, which of these variables Am I comfortable eliminating? And I was not comfortable with eliminating that God is all good. That that that feels really terrible to think that God is not good. So and I'll spare you all the details of going through that that journey, where I end up for this conversation is that if God is all time, perhaps God is the present, as we know it, that it's, it is in our time, that God is of all times, but we experience time in a linear fashion. And so that's where God exists with us is in our times. And so God has the ability to move through time space continuum. Great. I don't and so I can experience God in this time. And I employ that in one of the prayers that I say where we, we ask for healing. And at the end, I always say, made those in need find healing in a time near to us. I don't if we're praying to God, I want God to know that I don't want this on a god time scale. I would like this on our time scale. So I, I agree with you and that there it seems confining to have God exists in a singular time frame. But I myself do exist in that time frame going back to Zach's point of like, no Newtonian physics, pretty much my life not gonna break out in Newtonian physics, I don't really need to think too much on this. So from a theological standpoint, I say, Okay, God experiences or relativity in a way that I don't. So it's my question then have to wrestle with myself of how do I then have God in my timeline? In my time, so I don't know if that makes any sense. But that's, that's sort of how I answer that question.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 29:02
So the way that I think about alternative, like, forms of guard, like the kinds of theologies that I think are really compatible with this, you know, revolution in the understanding of time, it I think that mystical theologies become so much more kind of intriguing, and it you know, it's like, it does. Accepting, like, Einsteinian mechanics of time and you know, mystical theologies. It requires an acceptance of, well, I think most of the time it requires an acceptance of a non theistic version of God, or like a non anthropomorphic version of God. And so what I mean when I say those things is, you know, A version of God that that's not like, made in the image of like human beings are human ish versions of God, you know the God with arms and legs and a face. And that's really hard I think for a lot of people to kind of let go of, especially if, if we're talking about like the monotheism 's of like Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I mean, and really like the most of the major world religions that talk about God, there is something that tends to become very like humanoid about God, but that's never like there's always mystical strains of theology in, in religions. And so the, the ones that kind of come to mind that I think are are like some of the first ones that I thought of, and I know if Adam was here, this is probably something that he would bring up too is like Paul Tilex. Image of God as the ground of being. And Tillich kind of uses this phrase ground of being to, to be the stand in for God. And it kind of replaces this very anthropomorphic version of God with a vision of God that is, like a more like a foundation. And it's more like this stable, like, stable yet creative. floor at the bottom of all, all that is. And you know, there's, there's a lot in Tillich in theology and talking just about the ground of being if Adam listens to this and is like, Well, Adam, should have been here
 
Zack Jackson 32:01
wasn't the Paul Tillich society? At one point?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 32:05
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's true. But you know, that's like, that's your kind of letting go. It's a very, it's a more like, abstract kind of way of thinking about, like, what God is, but I actually, I think my personal favorite, like mystical kind of vision of God actually comes from a mystic named Nicholas of Cusa. And whenever I was, in my master's degree, I took a class called Nicolas of Cuza about this, like mystic theologian, and I remember Reading some of his primary works. And there was a chapter that was all about his, his, like, you know, his, kind of like systematic theology. And but there was a few pages in this one chapter that just had like math in it was like, what is happening? What, why I like circled all the math and wrote in the margins of my textbook, like, Excuse me, like, No, I think I even like wrote out a very dramatic like, no, with multiple exploits, XSplit exclamation, and was just like, This is not what I want to be, like thinking about when I'm trying to like foster a spiritual experience. And, and I have a, you know, a couple years later, after that class, I took a class called science literacy with my doctoral advisor. And in that class, it was like, one of the most fascinating and also difficult classes that I've taken, because it's like a crash course in physics. And like, you know, we talk about special theory of relativity, general theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, like all of that, and what are the philosophical and like theological implications of those things. And it was during that class that I had to kind of go back to the theology of Nicholas of Cusa. And look at my margins, in the notes on the pages where there is mass and the universe and God, and then I just like, it made sense to me. I was like, I still, I'm just like, not someone who naturally thinks in a very mathy way, and so I always find that challenging. But there's also like, the only times that I have been able to have been able to, like have an experience of all thinking about math is when I'm thinking about the implication of, like, math on like, I don't know, like, like metaphysics or like the structure of the universe. And so, the point being that Nicolas of Cusa talks about the enfolding and unfolding of, of God or of of the universe, there's, there's this breath metaphor Almost of this enfolding everything kind of collapsing into one unit, one like period, one point. And in that enfolding every, like you and I, and all that is, we are one, it's like a oneness. And then the unfolding is this like, you know, it's the, the exhale or like the other side of the breath it unfolds. And again, we all kind of diverge into particularities and we have our, you know, our specific to kind of tie it back to our conversation wells of gravity, where we exist. But we also keep in folding and unfolding. So there's like this dual experience of like, oneness, and specificity and like divergence. That is just like, I think such a beautiful image of like wholeness, and like, it's like both the duality and oneness that I just think is like such a perfect, like, non theistic kind of theological representation of these like time dynamics that force us to think beyond, you know, Newtonian mechanics. So that's kind of what comes to mind for me.
 
Zack Jackson 36:42
Well, if you're into sacred mathematics, and mysticism, you would love by Sagaris. They were all about that life, almost worshipping numbers and mathematics, thinking of it as this ticket in small doses. You also if you're a pipe factory, and you can't eat beans, that was that was against their religion to
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 37:03
work for me. Yeah.
 
Zack Jackson 37:05
I think he thought that the beans in humans came from the same source. And so it was a bit of cannibalism. Who knows you're that part about
 
Ian Binns 37:16
Sagaris when I was studying that, but
 
Zack Jackson 37:18
you mostly just hear about the whole triangle thing, right? You don't hear about the toggery worship numbers.
 
Ian Binns 37:23
It's been a long time since I took that really cool history science class.
 
Zack Jackson 37:27
So yeah, it's been a couple 1000 years since the Python, Koreans. But we're at
 
Ian Binns 37:34
that times all relative, right?
 
Zack Jackson 37:36
Well, yeah. I mean, how do we think of time typically, we think of it like, like those moving sidewalks at the airport, right? That we're all standing on it. And we're all moving at the same rate, or like a flow of a river, that we're all moving together along the same rate. But we found out that you can kind of move on that river, you can paddle one way or the other, and you can slow down or speed up your position in time in that river. And so it time kind of then acts more like a frozen river with kids ice skating all over it, rather than a group of people on a lazy river in their tubes, all moving at the same speed. So it does, I think this has been my problem to Kandra is that I'm fine with almost all of these weird things in about relativity and time. But it hurts my conception of a real time theistic God like the God that is in the moment with me right now. It makes that harder to stomach harder to conceptualize. You know, if if, if God doesn't have a preferred present moment, then like, Oh, okay. Then.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 39:03
Yeah, yeah, implications of that are really like they are really far reaching for for Christianity and, and Judaism in Islam, I think in particular. And it's, you know, I think there are also people who maybe, and I don't know if this like kind of resonates with your experience, maybe not Zack, but people who kind of like if you kind of asked them or forced them to explain their theology, they might they might actually say something that sounds more non theistic. But in their day to day lives, they kind of like re impose a theistic like face on there, like non theistic theology, like it's, it's, it's, you know, again, that's not that's, it's almost like Like, I don't know that this is like the appropriate way to frame it but like a second naivete
 
Zack Jackson 40:06
almost of like, yes. What we're doing physics
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 40:09
come to Yeah, like if you're if your theology if it's important to you for the theology and the physics to kind of fit together then maybe that's like what you do. But for like, you know, religious and spiritual community and talking day to day, you still use language that has like familiarity and like personhood, and I don't like this is something that people will argue about, because some people think that's like a disingenuous, and I get that. But I also, I think it's just important for the way that people relate to each other and to other things in the world and to relationships. So I actually find that completely, like understandable and normal.
 
Zack Jackson 40:57
It's like my day to day theology is Newtonian. But my, if I'm thinking about it, my actual theology is Einsteinian. Right? That right? It makes sense in the day to day to have an eminent theistic God. But it makes sense in the quiet moments where I'm thinking, to think about a, a more universal presence than a theistic imminent God. And I think we do that all the time. With our theologies, we've got, we've got different types of theologies that apply to different situations, the theology that you have when you're suffering is different than the theology you have when you're not. And we just, we all do, and that's fine. Like I don't at like funerals and stuff, people always talk about how that person has gone on. And now they're watching over me and blah, blah, blah. But like, there's no part in the New Testament that talks about that, there that the New Testament teaches that you die, you die, and you go on the ground, and your soul, your spirit, all of that is over. And it's done, until the Second Coming, and the resurrection of the dead. And then everyone comes back together, there is no, like waiting up in heaven, and playing a harp and watching you as you live your life. There is none of that in the New Testament, but we all just pretend like it's there. Because it is comforting to us in the moment, even if we don't really believe that so and so was watching us from afar, we like to believe that it's true. You know, I think we do that practically. And it's okay to admit that as a way of contextualizing our theology in the moment.
 
Rachael Jackson 42:27
And it's and it can be used as a coping mechanism. Yeah, theology has coping.
 
Zack Jackson 42:33
So when this episode airs, it's going to be like, I don't know, two weeks from Christmas or so. Which is, I don't know, sort of one of the important parts of of the Christian year. It's like, this moment in Christian theology where just a little, a little bit, a little bit. It's this moment in Christian theology, where it's like, God has been working through people for eons, and moving through the cycles of time, and nations and empires and kings and prophets and priests and individuals. And then, at some point, God says, Alright, kids, you sit down, I'm gonna take care of this for a minute, and comes in and breaks through, and there's this. Countless theologies that have tried to explain how God becomes human. How do we break this barrier between the infinite in the finite this, this this, we call it kenosis, this emptying of divinity in order to become humanity. I mean, there's none of them actually make a whole lot of sense. Logically, there are, which you sort of have to have to get all mystical and non dualistic before anything makes any sense? If you really think about it for too long, in terms of the Incarnation. But it's this breaking through a moment that we celebrate, in which something that is entirely other breaks into time and into history, that which is universal becomes particular, that God has to become a single person in a single time with a single genetic makeup who lives a single life. And there's some, I mean, that's helpful to some extent, to imagine that in our day to day lives, I also wonder then, if we were to draw that outward, if we were to say that time and space are connected, are one in the same. And just like, I believe that San Diego still exists, even though I'm not there. I also believe that three BC exists, even though I'm not there. And so in that way of thinking about time, that the past is not something that is gone, but it's just something that I'm not experienced. In saying that the incarnation the breaking in of God into the world is something that is happening in an infinite present moment in what we would consider 1000s of years ago. And so in all of these places in which God is breaking into time, those are places that are infinitely being broken into time. And you can think then of the final redemption of the world less as something to look forward to, and something that as opposed to something that we're living into something that we're experiencing the ripples of redemption, the way that you would experience gravitational waves of a black hole collisions. But these just musings of ways that I like to try to think about things that I have no real theological grounding, and I'm trying to be careful not to draw those conclusions too far as just rereading a paper I wrote in seminary, I posted it to y'all, it's fine. No one reads, that's 20 pages. And the the, the final conclusion I made was just drawn way too broadly outward, because I got excited about the implications of a God that breaks into time infinitely. And the ripples of redemption that can get flow through time through single redemptive acts, which I don't know if I would draw those points anymore, but they were fun to dwell on back then. So I should say, to wrap things up, we don't actually know why we experienced the flow of time. All of these revelations that come out of relativity are counterintuitive. It doesn't feel like the past and the future are real, it feels like they are ideas. And the present is the only moment we've ever experienced, that's our lived reality. That's the way our brains have formed. And for some reason, the way that we experience the dimension of time, whether that's just a way that our consciousness adapted to be able to function well, or if there is some divine reason that we experience a single moment instead of an entirety of moments. Nobody really has a good explanation. So a lot of this sort of thinking is theoretical, and a lot of it is hard to wrap your head around. And I think it's probably okay to have a an eminent theology that works on the Newtonian level of day to day life, as well as having a sort of what if kind of theology in which you are imagining the implications of something that has implications but are hard to fathom in our everyday life? If that makes sense. Do you think that's okay? Or is that disingenuous? No, I think that's good. If Adam were here, he would argue with me that it would be disingenuous, but again, Adam is not here to defend himself
 
Ian Binns 48:23
that since so vault.
 
Zack Jackson 48:27
So I would just like to end this segment by saying that I am right and Adam is wrong, and there is nothing that he can do or say, to correct me. And if he would like to correct me, he will have to do so in a future episode when he leads. So there
 
Rachael Jackson 48:51
so today's today's day down the wormhole, minute story from the Talmud. This comes from the Babylonian Talmud in Tractate to a neat around page 23. That's in case anyone wants to check my citation or read the entire story. There's a character a person however, you want to understand the people in these texts, whose name is Honi. And there's quite a few stories about him. And so one of the stories that I want to tell you about is the day that Honi slept. And as a tired parent, it just sounds amazing. Story. One day, Connie, the circle maker was traveling along a road and he saw an old man planting a care of tree when he stops and asks him, how long will it take for this Tree to fully bear fruit. And the man replies 70 years. Astonished Honi asks, Do you think you will live another 70 years? There, the man replies calmly. I found care of trees growing when I was born, because my forefathers planted them for me, so I to plant them for my children. Thereupon, Connie sat down to have a meal, and sleep overcame him. As he slept, a rock formation grew around him hiding him from sight, and he slept and he slept. And he slept. He continued to sleep for 70 years. When he woke up, he saw what it look like to be this same man gathering beautiful fruit fully bloomed a fully mature fruit from a Carib tree. Astonished Honi then asks, Are You the man who planted this tree? No. The man replies, I am his grandson. That's when Connie realizes that he has slept for 70 years. Connie goes home and finds that his son has died, but his grandson was still alive. And so he says to the members of his household, I am Honi the circle maker, but they didn't believe him, because it had been 70 years since when he had passed and vise been seen. Since then he left the house and he went to the Beit Midrash the study hall, and he announces, I am Honi the circle maker, but no one believed him and they didn't give him any respect. So Honee an utter despairs, praise for Divine Mercy. And he dies. To this Raava another person of the time says, For this reason people say give me companionship, or give me death. And it is for this reason that we gravitate towards others. That though time might pass we experience it in a linear fashion that it is the people with whom we have connections with it is a way of thinking about the past providing for the future but really living in these moments that make it worthwhile. That is what Honi the circle maker can teach us from his sleep of 70 years.
 
Zack Jackson 52:52
May we all sleep for 70 years.

Womanist Psychology of Religion with Rev. Dr. Vikki Gaskin-Butler

Episode 97
Today we are joined by psychologist, pastor, professor, podcaster, and the most interesting person you will meet today, the Rev. Dr. Vikki Gaskin-Butler. We talk about how womanism and what the psychology of religion has to offer at the intersection of class, race, and gender. Does religion actually make us better or should we spend our weekends at the gym instead? How do we raise emotionally children? How do we become emotionally healthy adults? Let's talk about it! 
 
The Healing the Human Spirit Podcast
https://anchor.fm/vikki-gaskin-butler
 
Rev. Dr. Vikki Gaskin-Butler is a licensed psychologist (clinical and health psychology) and ordained clergy person. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Spelman College and her Master of Science and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Florida. She also received a Master of Divinity degree from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
Today’s guest has served as a psychologist in university counseling centers, clinic director in an interfaith-based counseling center, and as director of a university psychology clinic. She has supervised numerous students in pursuit of psychology, mental health counseling, and social work degrees. She has led clergy consultation groups and served as a consultant with church/church-affiliated and secular organizations. In addition, she has served as a minister of education and an associate pastor in local churches.
Our guest draws on her knowledge of human potential from her experience as a psychologist and ordained clergy person to support the psychological, spiritual, and physical well-being of all people. Through her first-hand knowledge of life as a wife, mother, musician, professor, clinician, and minister, she has the insight to support the needs of adults, including performing artists, clergy, and health professionals.
In her words:  "My passion is to constantly move toward my own divine potential. Throughout this journey, I have experienced struggle, doubt, grief, joy, peace, and all of the emotions that make us human. These emotions and the experiences connected with them have made me more whole as I followed the thread of healing to freedom. These emotional experiences have also created within me a deep well of compassion for others as they journey on their paths to health and wholeness."
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
 
Zack Jackson 00:04
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion.
 
Ian Binns 00:12
Our guest today is a licensed psychologist, both clinical and health psychology and ordained clergy person. She received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Spelman College and her Master of Science and PhD in Psychology from the University of Florida. She also received a master of divinity degree degree from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Today's guests who served as a psychologist in University Counseling Centers clinical director and interfaith based Counseling Center, and as director of a university psychology clinic. In addition, she has served as a minister of education and associate pastor in local churches. Our guests are all in her knowledge of human potential from her experience as a psychologist, an ordained clergy person to support the psychological, spiritual and physical well being of all people through her firsthand knowledge of life as a wife, mother, musician, Professor, clinician and minister. She has the insight to support the needs of adults, including performing artists, clergy and health professionals. We're very excited to welcome to the show Dr. Vicki T. Gaskin, Butler.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 01:15
Thank you. I'm so excited about being here. Welcome.
 
Ian Binns 01:18
Welcome. Welcome. Okay, so I've done my part. You guys. Go ahead. What? Zack, you have to edit that out.
 
Zack Jackson 01:28
Oh, yeah. Mike drop. He hands down. He's gonna go home now. Oh, you are home?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 01:35
Yes. Oh, yeah. It's nice to have you at this Vicki. Um, do you and he in one or both of you want to share a little bit about like your connection? How did you meet? And how did we get, you know, how, how did we get to this moment where we get to have you on to talk to you and ask you about, you know, the work that you do.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 02:02
Okay, so I can tell you my said, and I think Ian should tell you his side as well.
 
Ian Binns 02:09
Sounds good.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 02:10
My husband introduced me to Ian via email. But before that, he told me about Ian. And he said, She's really cool. And he's doing some really cool stuff. And I know you'll be interested in it. And so he told me about your podcast, and you told me about the fellowship you had. And so then I started being nosy and looking around and try to find out who Ian was. And my husband said, Yeah, I told him about you. And y'all should get in touch. And I think you'll he'll, he'll be a good guest on your podcast, which I thought was great, because now I want all of you to be guest on my podcast, just just so you know. And
 
Zack Jackson 03:04
on your podcast. You want to plug your podcast,
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 03:09
I just started it's called Healing the human spirit. And it covers any topic, literally any topic that's salient for human beings. Because I I've said this a million times, but for me, as a psychologist and a clergy person. I use my dad's phrase that I heard him say when I was like in high school and middle school, inextricably intertwined. Psychology and religion for me, and spirituality are inextricably intertwined. And so the podcast is really about all kinds of things that affect our human spirit and how we can use any occurrences in our lives to help us heal. Whether those things are quote unquote, labeled as good things, bad things or in between.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 04:06
When When could people expect the first episode?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 04:11
Actually, the first episode happened a month ago because I launched before I was ready. And my husband was my first guest and he we talked about gosh, we talked about the Coronavirus, science, the Coronavirus and religion. So we talked about those three topics because he is a science educator and undergraduate degree in physics. So, we have lots of interesting conversations around,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 04:42
I bet. And it's so fun to talk to people who cast those wide nets, which sounds like that's exactly what you're doing in your work and what the podcast is like, everything that matters for human beings and human flourishing, let's just tackle it all. So that's great.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 05:06
My topic though, is science and religion. So I'm gonna try not to be too heavy on that. science, religion and spirituality, oh,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 05:16
we invite that.
 
Zack Jackson 05:18
I mean, heavy. I'm gonna jump right into that. That is literally what this podcast is about.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 05:25
So, I want to I do want to cover lots of other things, but that, as you can see, I'm here today with you. It's my favorite.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 05:35
No, I'm excited to hear more about that. Um, and was there anything that you wanted to share about your meeting?
 
Ian Binns 05:43
Yeah, so, um, Vicki's husband, Malcolm and I have known each other for several years, since we're both science educators. And we got to know each other in one of our professional conferences, and just would stay in touch. And every time we see each other, we'd sit down and hang out and just talk and catch up and stuff. And then he became or was one of the finalists for the Dean position for my college, college education, and ended up getting the job. And when he came on the interview, I was actually we were going to be recording an episode while he was there. And he was really interested in the podcast again, because he knew about it. And then that's when he told me about Vicki and said, I think y'all need to meet because you guys have similar interests. And so when Vicki and I met, and we've only met like this one time, and, you know, I remember after I hung up, my wife was another room, and she knew that I was meeting Vicki, and she's like, Wow, you guys hit it off beautifully. I was like, Yeah, that was a lot of fun. So, um, so I knew we had to get her on. And yeah, as I said, Before, we were recording I think Vicki and I, once they move up here in a couple months are going to become good friends, because she just has a lot to
 
Zack Jackson 06:59
offer. Yeah, Ian texted all of us almost immediately. And like, like he had just met the president or something. And he's like, yeah, oh, my gosh, you have to meet this person. She's a wonderful.
 
Ian Binns 07:11
Now, so I was sharing some of the things you mentioned. And everyone was like, Oh, well, amen. We got to do this. And so. So yeah, and it was just neat. It was fun for me, you know, with Malcolm getting hired. And, you know, as my next Dean, to have a science educator, as the dean, but then to realize, you know, and I know that Malcolm is a person of faith as well. But then when he introduced me to Vicki, and your areas of interest and expertise, I just knew right away, we would get along. Well, so.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 07:43
Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, vier, it's exciting. Yeah. So So Vicki, I guess the first the first thing that I want to ask about your work is maybe more of a general question, just so you can say a bit and like, let everybody know, you know, what it is that you do? Generally? So do you just want to tell us, like, what it means to, to do this work as a clinician, like the kind of intersection of your various roles as a clinical psychologist, and, you know, your work in religion and spirituality? Like, what? What does that look like for you? What are your research interests? And yeah, anything that you want to share about that to get us started?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 08:24
So when I was talking with Ian, I told him I call myself a womanist, psychologist of religion. And why is because I did my PhD in Psychology before I went to seminary, because I hadn't never had any intention of going to seminary. And if any of you know about some clergy people, it's like, never doing that. And for me, it was, I even know I grew up. I grew up in a religious family. In terms of, there are so many people who are clergy in my family that I would start giving you a list and there will be too many of them to name but I'm including my dad. And as a result of that, I figured there were enough clergy people in my family, so they didn't need me to be clergy. Nobody needed me to be clergy because they had a cover. So I wanted to become a psychologist, and I did and actually is partially from witnessing my dad doing his work. And, and I'll tell you, just a quick, quick story. I let's see, when I was in elementary school, I would go to work with my mom. As my mom walked next door to our house, literally, they built our house, behind the nursing home, the nursing home was our family on nursing home. And so when school was out, I go over there sometimes, but we were there every day, literally just about every day, except for weekends, and then sometimes on weekends at the nursing home. So anytime I could not go to the nursing home, I would go to work with my dad. My dad was the director of a, let's see, I think it was a day program. I think that's what they called it, it was the 70 day program for youth who had some kind of criminal background, they might have gotten in trouble be in it. And it may have been related to drugs as well. But it was a drug treatment program. But they also may have had some other offenses, right. And so I would go to work with him. And witnessing his work with those. They were all teenagers, they seem much older to me because I was in elementary school, but witnessing his work with them, made me want to become a psychologist. But I didn't have the language to know that that's what I wanted to be I didn't know it was a what's called a psychologist at that point. And because of that experience, and there's so much that goes into that, and if you want to hear it, I'll tell you later, but because of that experience, I watched my dad work with them, I watched them, and the way they communicate with each other and how my dad and other people who worked in the center facilitated that communication. And so even communication that would seem negative, or hostile, or whatever you call it, that wasn't good for an elementary school person. Then I also noticed that they were just very honest with each other. And they will walk away from those interactions, more connected with each other, not angry, not upset, not hostile, they were just more connected in. And I said, I want to do that when I grow up, I want to work with people to help them have those kinds of honest relationships where you can communicate freely, and not run away when there's some kind of difficult interaction. And so that's why I wanted to become a psychologist. Still didn't have the language for it at that point. And then I have to say that in my life, I the church was always such a part of life, just going to different things. But the church was more like a community center to me. And that our church was a Community Church that helped so many. They build apartments for low income housing, they had a credit union, there were all kinds of things that that church did, and I just noticed those things growing up and I thought this is really cool. This is what the church is supposed to be to help people. And for me I just had a good experience growing up learning all those Bible stories that some kids didn't care about, but I love them. And I really wanted to be like Solomon wise like Solomon and I was I still remember learning about the story of Solomon and the two women who were fighting over a baby and Solomon said Okay, cut the baby in half and I was like, Oh my gosh, you know, kids do this you know the suspense and then of course he did not the woman whose baby it was said no, don't do it. And the other woman say yeah, cut it in half. And Selma said, Okay, now I know whose baby it is. And I thought, oh, man, I want to be like that when I grew up. I just want it to be wise. What
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 14:27
follow up question. Have you ever had to threaten to cut in half?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 14:32
No, I have not thank goodness. Thank goodness. And just for the record, I would not use that tactic. Find another way to figure it out.
 
Zack Jackson 14:47
That's kind of go in the nuclear option right away.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 14:54
But I was just impressed with that. So I thought okay, I want to be wise and those like those critical things just stuck with me throughout my life in training, and then fast forward all the way to becoming a psychologist. And I was in practice for about four, three, actually three years out of graduate school. And I was in this church and working with a group of women. And we had this group we all wanted to meet, we were all the same age, it was really funny. We were literally the same age, we were all like 30 to 32. And dealing with life and having children and all that stuff, and, and we had this group get together, and I ended up becoming the leader of the group, and bringing together resources that we would study together and all that stuff. And I've ended up being like the pastor of the group. And from that experience, that's when I decided to accept my call to ministry because I thought, okay, it's not going to be me just donating, quote, unquote, my idea was to donate my services to the church as a psychologist, but I also realized I could do the other stuff, too. And so I accepted my call, went to seminary, and then seminary, I learned that I was a psychologist. Can I say that because my friends are terrible. They're really terrible. If they're listening, y'all should know y'all are terrible, because I really terrible, they're my friends. But I had this aha moment in one of my classes as we were getting near the end of the process in seminary and getting closer to graduation. And I said, Oh, my God, I'm a psychologist. I'm a psychologist. And they were like, Yeah, we know, we've been getting free therapy this whole three years. But what I mean was, I, I've always known that I could do all the local church stuff, because I learned it growing up, it was a part of my life. And in my daily life, especially from, I don't know, almost birth, but a part of my life. So I knew I could do local church, I could run a church, I could do all those things. I could do parish ministry. But in seminary, what I learned is, I really I just would say the world is my pulpit. Because I, I look at the intersection of psychology and theology for me, and it helps me to really relate better to everyone, anyone and everyone I encounter. Even the people that might be difficult. And I mean, I was challenged in so many ways like the I think it was the Timothy McVeigh. All remember Timothy McVeigh that Oklahoma City. Okay, so I was in a class and we were talking about Timothy McVeigh and and we were wrestling with how does God feel about Timothy McVeigh? And he came away with it, like, Oh, God probably loves Timothy McVeigh. Even though he may seem unlovable to all of us, he did something very awful, awful, write something that was so harmful and caused so much pain. And we were like, okay, so if God loves Timothy McVeigh, God loves everyone. And then we went to lots of other historical figures that were pretty awful, and awful in my mind. But those are the kinds of challenging discussions we had in seminary, and those are the kinds of things that helped me to become a better psychologist and being non judgmental and more understanding, and more loving and more kind, kinder, just to help me figure out okay, often when people come in my office, they're in a difficult spot and they've had some really difficult experiences, and it's my job to help them to see themselves even though I don't necessarily say it this way, but to help them see themselves as God sees them, in my estimation. And so that's the work I do, I really try to help people see themselves for who they really are not by all the labels that are placed on them. So anyway, that was a really long answer.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 20:25
Great answer. And I guess a follow up question that I have, immediately, you know, when, when you identify yourself as a woman, a psychologist of religion, like you've talked about the pieces of like, where the psychology comes in where the religion comes in for you. But can you talk a little bit about what it means to do that from a womanist? Angle? And just, you know, considering that there's probably many people who will hear that and not necessarily know what that means? Like, what is it to be womanist versus feminist? And how, like, how has your journey with that identity kind of unfolded?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 21:04
Okay, so, also in seminary, I realized I was a womanist. And it was basically because of how I was reared by my mother, other aunts, uncles, you know, extended family, grandparents, all of that. And so, Alice Walker coined the phrase womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender. And so, I was taught by a lot of womanist scholars, and, and I can't say a lot of them, I read a lot of their work, but I was taught by a couple of them. And so theologians, African American women theologians, took on the label of womanism, or womanist, because they read the stuff which is interested in the stuff my dad read, and seminary was Black Theology, by James Cohn and others, he kind of was the founder of Black Theology. And so those women were Reading it. And they were saying, well, we don't see ourselves in this literature. And so they started to read and write and interpret scriptures, and life experiences from their own perspective and not trying to read themselves into what was being written in Black Theology and, and feminist theology. And so, I say, for me, I live in the intersection every day of race, class, and gender, which is what woman is do. And so for me, and woman, as we say, those three things help us race, class and gender help us to relate to many different people, who have many different experiences and our role, our job, if you will, is to use those experiences to help others. So living in let's see, living with both privilege and oppression, at the same time, puts me in a different space than some other people who don't necessarily have both privilege and oppression, they're really living with oppression. And so, as a womanist, my goal, my role is to help elevate others, whomever they are not excluding anyone. And so, how I do that, or how I've done that is, in psychology, one of the two of the ways in particular, because of the things I like to do on learn about, I was able to pull psychology of religion into my work with others, and multicultural psychology into my work with others. And a special piece of multicultural psychology actually, is religion and spirituality. And not I shouldn't say not too many, but some psychologists aren't that comfortable dealing with those two topics. So I really helped my students explore those things and are, you know, allow and in a enable my clients or patients to do the same. So Oh, no,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 24:55
did I answer Yeah, no, I know. And I think it's, it's just helpful for people to hear because like the My first encounter with, like womanist scholarship was in grad school, and it's not, you know, I think that that's something for, for the person who's kind of on the outside of grad school in general, or, you know, just Reading, like totally different genres of stuff it, it just is, there's not a context, often I think, for people to know what that means, I think it's helpful. The way you frame that as being, you know, about, like, caring for people at the intersection of race and gender in particular, and classes you added. And, and I think that that's, that's interesting, too, like the, the intersection of identity as like a woman, a psychologist of religion, I want to ask you just about that a little bit more. Because a lot of my a lot of my own research is in psychology of religion. And so there's, there's a pattern in Psych of religion, just to kind of share for people on the outside. And I think we may have like, brought this up a couple times before, but a lot of the demographics of people who are studied in psychology research, I think, in general, but it also extends to like religion is it's the weird problem. It's that all a lot of the people the pattern is for them to be Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. And so I'm, I'm wondering, like you, Vicki, are sort of situated in a way where, like, the stuff that you do, and I also, I tried to do a little bit of stalking of you on the internet and found your CV and, you know, the work that you do, and is really like resisting that pattern of weirdness the acronym of the weird in psychology research. And I just, it's really, it's really cool to see that it's like filling a gap in a lot of the pattern of like, who gets studied and who gets brought into work and research on psychology. And so I'm just wondering, like, can you speak to that a little bit? Like, how does that? What are the kinds of things that you notice in your own work that seems to like resist, maybe, like, wider patterns that you see in publications in psychology on, you know, on stuff that you do? Or like, you know, how is that how does that feel different? I guess.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 27:44
So. Excuse me, one thing I wanted to say, I just thought of it. So I'm going to answer your question. But yeah. It just occurred to me again, that when I told you, I did that group with the women in the church, and that led to my call. The funny thing was, the first book we use was written by a womanist. theologian, in which she translated the she's an Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible scholar. And so she translated these different passages in the Hebrew Bible, interpreted them and then wrote a book to get other people to think about that. And so they're that womanism, and
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 28:28
I'm more shadowing you becoming a woman.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 28:35
But anyway, so. So let me talk a little bit about training, because I spent many years doing training of students. And so where I find this intersectionality is when we look at who becomes psychologist, right. So now worked in a training program in clinical psychology. Most recently, I worked in a training program for mental health counselors, school counselors, a mental health and school counselors. And then, prior to that, have worked with students who were in clinical programs as well, or pursuing a social work degree or counseling psychology degree. So those are the so this is the frame of reference I'm thinking about. And what I found is for me as a womanist. It's It's my calling, if you will, to make sure that students are learning about how to work with all people. Not that we'll be experts at working with all people, but we do really need to pay it tension to the people who come into our offices, whether it's a zoom office, or whether it's in reality, you know, face to face, we need to be able to look at all of the cultural issues that surface, right. And what I know from my own training is I didn't learn that I taught it to myself, honestly. And that's how I became this person who does multicultural work, I taught it to myself, in graduate school, and as a result of that, then I did the work while I was in graduate school, I was hired to do that work, working with multicultural populations in graduate school, and then it just kind of follow me until today. And so I was engaged in the work before I knew it was called womanist work. And so that's a key thing for me in training that I really work hard at helping students understand as much as they can about the different factors that affect people that aren't necessarily taught in the textbooks, the the traditional psychology textbooks, and I'll say traditional, because in traditional texts, there's not a lot of cultural diversity that's discussed in the traditional texts. But then there's always the separate multicultural,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 31:29
aka, white.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 31:34
Boy, and so many college students or, you know, middle class, you know, you just say that we're, and so. So that's one of the things I've done, and I, in terms of my teaching, that's one of the things I've enjoyed the most and also has been the most difficult at the same time. Because it's challenging when I'm the first person to bring all these things up, and somebody goes what, you me race does have an impact on health. Yeah, does a class has an impact on health? Yeah, it does. Physical health, yes, you know, those kinds of things. And so covering those kinds of things in my courses, that's been really fun for me, I'm really difficult, but I wouldn't have it any other way. And then the other side in terms of research, if you looked at one of the last things I did, before leaving USF St. Petersburg was working with a group, well, one of my colleagues, Jamie McHale, who is a zero to three experts, zero to three age expert, developmental clinical psychologist, but early childhood development, and do yoga, Bella, say he roped me into doing that work with because I was reluctant. I was like, I'm not an expert in zero to three. I'm not an expert, a zero to three. And he said, but you're the person I need to do this work because he was trying to develop co parenting intervention for first time parents of African American children. And first time parents together. And so again, that's woman his work, because most of the people involved in the study were low income, African American parents, and we work together to develop a curriculum and an intervention program to help them learn how to better co parent, their children. And I say children because often, they might have been having their first child together, but they had other children. And so one of the byproducts of the research was that not only did they do better with co parenting the first child together, but it also helped them with co parenting issues with other parents, you know, that they have been connected with previously. So it just pops up all the time. I don't really think about it. I just, I just live it.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 34:18
Yeah. Yeah. No, that that makes sense. And it's, it makes a lot of sense to to hear you talk about how a lot of the methods that you, you know, draw on to do the work that you do. It ends up being self taught for a lot of people. And that's, that's interesting, and like, of course challenging because it's like, you have to kind of be the one to pave the way for that to be more of the standard. I'm curious about how, you know, I I noticed that it looked like this might have been I can't remember when this was but you you've done some, like research and presentation on like religious coping, is that right? And so it, you know, it doesn't have to be like, religious coping specifically, but like, what is your experience of religious identity with things like race and gender? And how to how do those things come together in your work, especially since you have this interesting background where you did do an MDiv. And that's, you know, that gives you a lot of valuable experience and exposure to literature and care for people. But you know, it's like a different way of applying that kind of training in in research. So just yeah, what could you tell us about that?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 35:52
So, my work with religious coping, that was a long time ago. But I did teach psychology of religion for many years. And I have to say, my students want to ask, one student in particular asked me, How did I teach the course because I was a person of faith, and she knew it. Everybody knew it. But I taught it in a way that it taught it as a psychologist, really, I wanted people to understand that there are many different ways of looking at religion and spirituality. And it's not all helpful in terms of how it's applied, how religion and how spiritual things are applied, and people's lives. And so as psychologists, our job is really to help people utilize religion and spirituality in a way that's healthy for them. That's, that's our job. Our job is not to change people's religious beliefs, or any of that, to get them to believe or not believe any of that. It's really to help them understand the role of religion in their lives and figure out how it can be used to help them. And so. So my dissertation, oh, my gosh, I just laugh every time I think about what were my findings. So, in this when I was doing the research, I was in the space of oh my gosh, it's got to be this internal experience of the Divine that makes people you know, better people or makes them cope with life's difficulties. And then I laugh because what I found is what psychologists already knew, is that is not that not really bad internal thing. For the group that I study. It's not really that internal relationship with the divinity or with God, that matters most. It's really, these, it was called extrinsic social, religious coping. And what that means is, people go to mosques, people go to temples, people go to religious services of different kinds, or participate in religious bodies, not because of that, divinity. internal to the, you know, up, up relationship, it's the gathering around, it's the connection with other people that matters most. And with psychology, we call that social support. And that's one thing we know that work, social support helps people. So I did a dissertation to help us find out what
 
Zack Jackson 39:02
is there anything special then about, like, people who reach out to their religious organizations for that sort of support? Or do you see the same kind of coping being from book clubs and Zumba and CrossFit or whatever people are into?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 39:20
Honestly, with the dissertation? Yeah, it's, it's the same. It's just that there when people are gathered around something, whatever that something is, so it could be the religious thing. It could be zoom, but it could be the book club. What matters is the connection with the other people. That's the that's, that's the biggest thing. And now for because okay, how do I say this delicately, because sometimes when people gather with religious groups or people, the last thing they talk about Religion, sometimes they do, you know, if it's if it's a Bible study, or you know, a religious themed gathering, but what we found is these, these people will connect with each other beyond that, and the religion, religion was the thing that brought them together to connect. But it's not necessarily the thing that keeps them connected. It can be those other things like the same people might be in book clubs and other things like that, too. But social support really matters. Now, I'm not saying that religion doesn't matter, because that's the thing that brought them together in the first place.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 40:45
We're all watching the clergy person's facial expressions right now, like Zach.
 
Ian Binns 40:51
I just religion still matters by wish
 
Zack Jackson 40:54
that that wasn't. I wish that wasn't borne out in my experience so keenly, and the sort of thing that all US clergy people talk about all the time, where they're like, why are they even coming? When they don't care about this? They're here for the cookies. I'm like, Alright, so nobody comes to the Bible study. But 100 People come to the chicken barbecue. All right, then. Okay, this is we should just open a chicken shop.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 41:26
So you do like some organizations you have the chicken barbecue and Bible study together? Oh, there
 
Zack Jackson 41:33
you go. In the door, you have to quote a Bible verse in order to get your chicken that's that's how we do it. It's got to be Jesus. Oh, what is it Ecclesiastes 1019. Is that what it is? The food was made for laughter and whining gladdens the heart and money answers everything. My life first
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 42:07
answer your question Kim Jong
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 42:09
Yeah, no, I just Yeah, I and my question might have also been a little bit rambley. Because there's just so like, I love listening to people talk about like psych of religion stuff. And, and so yeah, like, just like anything that you want to share. I am curious about the class that you taught, or that you you taught or you do teach this still sometimes
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 42:32
I haven't taught it. I haven't taught it in five years now. I think Oh, yeah. How many years I'm trying to remember how many years it's been since I left, USA, three years, three years,
 
Zack Jackson 42:43
it's been at least five years, the past year.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 42:50
So psychology of religion, I approached it as. So we, we did a couple things. I'll use two different textbooks. One was on psychology and religion. And I can't remember the name of it. And I'm looking over here and I forget that's not my bookshelf and my other. But it's a very interesting empirical study of psychology and religion, right? You know, the empirical study. So I use that text. And I also used another text that was a psychology of religion and spirituality that, no, it wasn't empirical. It was really talking about a lot of Eastern religions, and how helping students understand the meanings of those religions, symbols and those religions, that kind of thing and how people utilize those religions in their day to day lives, right. But I also did something interesting where I threw in William James psychologist who wrote the varieties of religious experience and that the students, what is this rambling on and on and on? What is he doing? I used it because I wanted them first to see a psychologist who emphasize religion in a way that they perhaps weren't used to. And so and he had just had a lot of interesting life experiences moving all over the place moving back and forth from Europe to the United States and doing all this stuff. And then he was of course prolific in terms of writing and research and all that stuff. So anyway, I use that and I threw and stuff like that. Have you seen the video religious realist by Bill Maher? Yeah, I've
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 44:55
heard of it, but I haven't seen it.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 44:57
Okay, so I threw that a long time. I go, Yeah, it's old. But very good. I threw that in, I threw on stuff like What the Bleep doing? No, I threw in. See you. And if I was teaching it now I'd have them listen to your podcast too. But I put in a lot of different things to give them lots of different perspectives about religion, to help them understand that, whatever their way, is, is not the only way. Because inevitably, I'd have two camps in my class, every single class, the division, the people who are psychology, is it? What is this, the religion is the opiate of the people like this is ridiculous. And then I had the very religious students. And so I would try to get them to come toward center a little bit, just to move a little bit to understand the other side, I would, we would do debates on specific topics. And I would talk to them about the idea that what we're doing in this class is not to get you to change anybody else's mind. It's just to understand, try to understand others perspectives. And inevitably, they would do that many of them not all of them, because some of them would dig their heels in and say, You know what, that can damage your Gascon bowler, this religious stuff is just gone too far. I cannot, you know, this is awful. And I should also want call Jesus Camp heavy.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 46:38
But I'm gonna have to write down all these things. You're saying? I'm teaching this class in the spring?
 
Zack Jackson 46:43
Yeah, I live that. Jesus Camp both in in the documentary and also living through stuff like that. Yes.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 46:52
Yeah, it might hit too close to home for me to watch that. Yeah.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 46:57
So I will show all of those things. And we will have really rich discussions and relate it to the material we were covering in psychology of religion, especially on the empirical stuff, and then just looking at so what is it that? What is it about all of these things that helpful to the people involved? What's harmful? If you see it that way? Do they see it as harmful? Psychologically speaking, are they okay? I mean, and so we had lots of rich discussions about that. That was my absolute favorite class to teach.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 47:35
Yeah, that's so fun. What did you what what? What was the topic that people that? What was the topic that students got most worked up about? Or what was like, the favorite topic of the class?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 47:50
It wasn't a topic, but it was. It was the whole course. And I'll say it this way. Students were really upset with me that I could not say, the research definitively says this, oh, about anything, anything. Because I said, this is what we have, because psychology of religion is, it's still growing, right? But we don't have millions and millions of people studying this, right. But what we can say is, this is what we know, based on this research, and we went, I mean, we covered so many different topics, from clergy health, to religious attributions, and social psychology and all these different things. And, and they were just frustrated, because I wasn't giving them definitive answers. I said, this is the research we have. And you have to look at this research, and then look at the people you're with whom you're going to work, and figure out whether this research bears out or not. And it might not. And if it doesn't, at least you have a foundation to use to approach the people. And so that was the biggest issue. And on both sides, because students who were really religious, it didn't matter what their religious background was, because I had some diversity there. They really wanted me to just come down and say religion is great, it helps everyone and you know, because I'm a believer and this you know, particular faith tradition. And then the other who wanted me to just say, religion is awful, and doesn't help anybody else. Like Yeah, can't do that. So that was a big deal in Dallas. They were frustrated Oh,
 
Zack Jackson 49:51
we can approach our our like our theology or religion with that kind of mindset where you're like, here's what the here's what are this? Here's what scripture suggests, and here's how it bears out. And does that work in this context or not? And if not, like, what, where can we? How can we adapt? What can we do? Like, wow, what if that just that worldview that you just put forward, like apply that to our Faith Journeys? And I feel like we would all be so much more mature,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 50:18
knows that we need absolutely
 
50:22
no ambiguity, no room for a gray. ambiguity is hard to preach? I'll tell you.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 50:30
Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 50:34
I think that's really I imagine that there were days that that felt especially challenging to you, as the faculty member, like teaching that class, but there's something so satisfying about those moments in class to where students, they know, they're not going to get a clear cut answer from you. And they're forced to sit in the ambiguity, and you can just see the frustration. But it's like a constructive kind of frustration of like, you get the point. If you can see why this is complicated. And that is like a job well done, I think to like, have a roomful of students frustrated.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 51:15
The one of the last time that I taught of course, then students would leave class and follow each other down the hall and then go find a place to sit and talk and talk about what we talked about in class and then come back the next week and say, you know, we talked about this and
 
51:34
I love that that's awesome.
 
Ian Binns 51:42
Yeah, I don't know how many professors could actually claim that right that they would see their students especially in that type of class walking now and then continuing the conversation. That's, that's really cool. So
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 51:55
that was always they didn't know it. They didn't know that was my goal.
 
Ian Binns 52:03
No, I have to be honest, and you can delete this. It is fun for me to sit here and watch you. Kendra asked these questions, especially as a So Vicki, I don't know if you picked up on this. This is Kendra's first post as an assistant professor, as faculty. This semester, yeah. This semester, this is her very first semester as faculty, so
 
Zack Jackson 52:26
she's planning your syllabi right now. Talking to you. Yeah. Yeah,
 
Ian Binns 52:30
it's really fun to watch her do this.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 52:32
Yeah, like maybe I should email Vicki later, get some more tips.
 
Ian Binns 52:38
I will make sure you have her email. So
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 52:41
yeah. Um, yeah, no, I'm sorry, Carrie. I'm really excited though. Like I, I'm teaching psychology of religion in in the spring at, you know, 830 in the morning, so everyone who's registered for that class, like, wants to be there, I think because it's at 830 in the morning, and, and so I'm really excited, I think it'll be really fun. And it's fun to hear someone else who's taught this class, you know, reflect on that experience. Um, I, I'm wondering to just, you know, like, in talking about religion, and again, just considering like your, your roles and your experience in on the more like, spiritual, you know, MDiv side of that versus your experience with religion. As a psychologist. What do you notice, when, when, when people read, research or conduct research about religion, religion becomes a variable in a way that sometimes like you have to kind of, you know, we as researchers, we make decisions about how to simplify religion to fit as a variable that you can like, create, you know, find correlations with it with various other, you know, demographic factors or whatever. What are some of the challenges that you've noticed in, like simplifying religion in that way? And what what's something that you wish people knew about studying religion as a research variable, if that makes sense?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 54:20
So what I noticed in especially in teaching psychology and religion is looking at the, the way religion was operationalize as you said, it's, it's, it's very difficult to operationalize that was actually one of the exercises we did in class. We looked at words like faith, what does that mean belief? What does that mean and those kinds of things. And what I would say is psychologists of religion should be clear about what it is they want to No. And so, if I want to know how religion affects no cardiac health, then that's too big. All right? What aspect of religion? Are you concerned about? Is it something's simple, like church attendance? Is it something like, I walk in a group with people from my church? We have a walking group or you know, that kind of thing?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 55:36
I think it is a God.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 55:39
Yes. Right. Believing us What? What does it mean? And I think, and I also think that's just so hard to do, right? Because we're narrowing down something that's so big. But if you really want to answer some questions, I think it is important to operationalize, get it down to the, the more, the most specific thing you can think of that you really want to know about. Because that's what I noticed, makes the that's part of what leads to frustration with ambiguity. Because we could have 10 studies on how religion affects cardiac health, and they all operationalize religion differently. And so what do we really know, when we're looking at these 10 Different studies? Well, we know it, it's for the walking group, people, they walk with their, you know, friends from the synagogue, and they're good, right there, their health is really great. But then we also know, they probably eat more fruits and vegetables, like, external variables. Something else is going on there, too. So, um, so anyway, I think that's, that's one of the bigger things, and I that's a conversation that will I mean, in terms of research that's gonna go on forever and ever, I think, because we really have to, to keep working at it. And, yeah, just trying to understand what we really want to know. And that that's difficult, but I think it's, it does help in the study of religion when we get to those specific things. So does that answer your
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 57:28
question? Yeah. No, that's, that's a great answer. And I think, you know, like, what you're suggesting, too, about being very specific and narrow? I think part of that is also it's like the responsibility of researchers, I think, to to be transparent about that in their publications about like, what are we actually talking about? Because then, you know, we end up like, generalizing about religion, based on this, like, very specific oper operationalization of it. And so yeah, like, what you're saying it at all, that all makes perfect sense. Oh, God,
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 58:06
I just thought of, um, one of the things that I'm interested in and just read some about not a whole whole lot is just anecdotally, prayer can be a helpful thing, right? It can be. And so one of my colleagues said, he just looked at me with a frown. He was like, have you read this stuff? For it doesn't work. So I added that to the course. There was another study where prayer wasn't helpful. So anyway, but there, there's lots of books about how prayer is helpful. But it helps to define what's happening with prayer. Because sometimes people are praying in a way that increases their anxiety, and then it's not helpful. And then there are other times where they're praying in a way that makes them calmer and makes them less depressed, and you know, that kind of thing. And so, that I think, illustrates what I'm talking about, if we're gonna say we want to understand prayer, and its impact on people, what kind of prayer, you know, really be specific about that and, and try to understand how it can be helpful to to folks,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 59:27
yeah, I think that's a great example. The, the research on prayer like that, that really does, like hit on that point. Well, I have a question that I think could be a good final question. And unless Zach wants to add something else, but I was gonna say, Vicki, as we wrap up, like what do you want to share? Or maybe like, or maybe we kind of did this in the beginning, so I don't know if this is gonna work. But Vicki, what is it that you want to share with us as wrapped up about, like, work that you're doing right now, anything that, you know, you're excited about that you want people to know about. Let this be a shameless moment of self promotion of what you do.
 
Ian Binns 1:00:14
Can I can I actually, maybe make that question a little more specific? So, you know, as I said at the beginning, you and Malcolm will be coming to Charlotte. So what is it? Building on Kendra's question? What do you hope to do? Once you move? What are your goals when you come to Charlotte? Yeah, that's a good one and start a new.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 1:00:43
So excuse me. I actually started working in private practice here, virtual private practice here in Florida, just a couple months ago. And so I plan to get licensed in North Carolina, and started private practice there. But the funny thing is, I only want private practice to be a part of what I do, I don't want that to be my daily, like everyday, all day, kind of work. I really like working with groups of people. So here, you will see how that pastoral kind of influence comes out of me. Because I like working, and doing things like workshops and retreats that focus on spiritual, psychological and physical well being. And so those are some of the things that I want to do. And it'll be under the guise of my private practice. I also have this other project that I'm working on, I won't give you the name of it yet. But it's, it's a news network, I want to develop an online news network. And the site itself has already been developed, we're just needing to populate it with stories and stuff like that. So I had to put it on the back burner for a little bit while I got my private practice stuff up and running. But I want to do that as well. Because I just, I think that there are many ways to reach people. And I want to try to reach as many people as I can, in positive ways. And so my, my new site will do that, as well as my website. So, um, one more thing, I'm also working, I won't start start start, I've actually started writing, but I'm gonna work on my first book, started working with the editor in January. Because we're doing something small, like moving right.
 
Zack Jackson 1:03:00
Here at some point, you're asleep, right?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 1:03:03
Yes, exactly. So I have a lot of things going on. But this is the thing I always said, I am a person that I chose to become a psychologist because I get bored easily. So I need to be doing different things. Have my hands in different parts, I guess. And so my career I've done a lot of different things. But I feel like now, this is my time where I'm going to do all of the things that I believe I'm called to do at this point in my life, which is writing and doing retreats and workshops and consulting and that network thing on either side.
 
Zack Jackson 1:03:55
podcast
 
1:03:56
that's pretty Yeah,
 
Ian Binns 1:03:57
yeah. And podcasts. Don't forget your podcast.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 1:03:59
Yes. And the podcast. The blog and the podcast are on my on my it's got to be Dr. Vicki website is almost done. I just have to add a couple podcast episodes and then we'll make it live.
 
Zack Jackson 1:04:14
But in the meantime, it cool when people are done listening to this episode, they should search in their preferred podcast provider for the healing the human spirit podcast with and they should definitely subscribe to that and listen to the one episode that's up so far. Yeah. Exciting. Or maybe multiple guests.
 
Ian Binns 1:04:37
What would you say? Yeah, I said, I hear I hear he's a good guest. Your first guest he's alright now you said decent the first time. I did say decent, right?
 
Zack Jackson 1:04:46
This is your future boss here.
 
Ian Binns 1:04:48
You can keep that in because Malcolm will hear him like get that. Laugh he'll just laugh. I expect nothing less.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 1:04:58
Well, it's exciting to hear everything You're doing Vicki. And we're really happy that you decided to talk to us today. So thank you for being with us.
 
Zack Jackson 1:05:08
Thanks so much. Yeah. Thank you.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 1:05:12
Thank you. I'm so excited. I was really looking forward to this. And I have to say I was a little nervous. Oh God, what are they going to ask me? Will I be ready? Will I be ready? And what Ian, what did Malcolm my husband say to me, right before this, he says, Go have fun. And
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 1:05:36
absolutely, yeah, well, thank you. Thank you.