Disciple Science Podcast

The Reverend Hunter is an evangelist but maybe not in the way you think. Dr. Tony Jones does like to talk about Jesus but he is equally effusive about how time in nature, and especially hunting, is good for our spiritual journey. This conversation explores some new topics since I am not an avid hunter or fisherman but there is a lot examine as we consider how hunting and fishing bring us face to face with the death that is both abundant in the natural world and is necessary to bring about life.

You can find more of Tony on his website or on the Reverend Hunter podcast. Links to both are found below.

Many of the tensions between science and Christianity over the past century can be tied to differing interpretations of Genesis one. While searching for the singular best interpretation, few have considered that Genesis intentionally communicates multiple valid and unique messages simultaneously. In this episode, Dale speaks with Dr. Gregg Davidson, co-author of The Manifold Beauty of Genesis One, to talk about why we should reconsider our approach to the first page of the Biblical narrative. 

Our changing climate, and its devastating impacts on our world, have left many of us with little hope. If you are struggling with anxiety about the climate or just looking for good news about what is being done to dig out of this mess, we recommend you read the latest book from Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, “Saving Us: a climate scientist's case for hope and healing in a divided world”. In this conversation you will hear Dale and Katharine discuss the climate, Christianity, science and how to find hope.

When it comes to Christianity and the Covid 19 vaccine, things are complicated. We all long for the end of the pandemic and the health of our neighbors, but some of us are exposed to confusing and misleading information on the vaccines and the infection itself. How can we have respectful dialogue when we are surrounded by so much vitriol and misinformation? Don't you wish you could talk to someone you trust? In this episode, I talk with Madelyn Schwieters, Christine David, and Kendall Luman about their experience with the Interfaith Youth Corps faith and the vaccine ambassadors program. They talk about their roles in speaking with their community about the vaccine in an effort to encourage more people to get the shot.

Is climate change real, is it serious, and is it caused by humans? If you ask someone those questions, a pattern will emerge. The degree to which someone is skeptical or accepting of human-caused climate change is most heavily influenced by race, politics, and religion. Dr. Robin Globus Veldman set out to explain why evangelical Christians are among the most persistent climate skeptics in western cultures in her book The Gospel of Climate Skepticism: Why Evangelical Christians Oppose Action on Climate Change. Enjoy this conversation as we discuss her work and her findings. 

Pastor John Kirkwood started the Sparrows Call and a YouTube interview show called Voices in the Wilderness. 

He is working to reach those who disassociated with Christianity, the exvangelicals, the nones and the dones, by creating spaces to explore Christianity (and science) outside of the confines of a traditional church. 

He is a voice of wisdom for deconstructing and reconstructing Christians who may be critical of religious but compelled by Jesus.  

Many of us wrestle with two questions that we falsely believe are unrelated. How should I relate to nature and the environment around me and how should I relate to God? Old Testament scholar Dr. Sandra Richter's connects those two topics in her latest book, the delightfully readable and quotable, Stewards of Eden. In this episode we discuss her shared interests in Biblical scholarship and Christian Earth-keeping how the first pages of the Bible, the laws in the Torah and even the New Testament depict our participation in Gods kingdom intertwined with our relationship with the world around us.

Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap is emerging as a voice of reason, wisdom and grace as Christians explore our relationship with the created world In this episode of the Disciple Science podcast hear Kyle and Dale talk about how he came to see care of creation as a central part of Christian discipleship (hint, it had something to do with his brothers dietary choices) and how we should view our relationship with the created order.

The Galileo affair is often portrayed as a science vs. faith scenario where a narrow minded Catholic church punished an innovative scientist for trusting his data. However, the true story is much more complex and reveals lessons on wisdom that apply to every opportunity to defend your beliefs.

Science is always changing but the Biblical canon is fixed.  While that is technically true, it doesn't account for the subtle ways Biblical interpretation mimics scientific analysis. This video discusses how the transition from geocentrism to heliocentrism influenced our understanding of the Bible and Dr. Gentry presents his belief that Biblical interpretation functions like Thomas Kuhn's models of science.    

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The Bible is a book of science, but it is a book of ancient science, and that is just the way God wanted it to be.  In his latest book, The Bible & Ancient Science: Principles of Interpretation, Dr. Denis Lamoureux helps readers understand why scripture often doesn't align with modern science and why that isn't a problem. This conversation give further depth to our discussion of the influence of Copernicus and Galileo and the transition to heliocentrism and how to read the Bible in light of modern science.  

500 years ago almost everyone was certain that the earth was at the center of our solar system (geocentrism) but now we are certain that it is not (heliocentrism).  This podcast/vlog discusses that transition to provide context to the bigger debate about how to read the Bible.  In a later episode we will cover how these scientific findings were received by readers of the Bible and why they are so frequently mentioned when we discuss Biblical interpretation.

Dr. Elaine Howard Ecklund is a Professor of Sociology and director of the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice University.  Her recent book, "Why Science and Faith Need Each Other: 8 Shared Values that Move us Beyond Fear" takes a novel approach emphasizing similarities rather than differences between science and faith. We discuss her book and her years of experience studying the people groups involved in the intersection of science and Christian faith.  

The North American meteorological summer is nearly halfway complete! In this short episode, Dale will give you a sneak peak at what you can expect from Disciple Science for the remainder of July and August.  

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Christian theology contains a few remarkable paradoxes.  That Jesus was fully God and fully Human, the trinitarian nature of God, the now and not yet of the Kingdom of God. These oddities of Christian doctrine do not make simple rational sense and yet we are invited to seek God through these foundational paradoxes.  They should prepare us to recognize when we are offered dualistic false dichotomies to societies problems.  Yet false dichotomies are what lie at the center of our current tension around race relations, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the best way to tend and watch over God's good creation.  Today on the disciple science podcast, do we have to choose.

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While Christians have a strong moral foundation for earth keeping, we don't have a sterling reputation for practicing what we preach.  From that knowledge comes the recent book Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care, a collection of essays edited by and contributed to by Calvin University professors, Ecologist Dr. Dave Warners and Engineer Dr. Matt Heun.  In this two part interview we talk about the Christian Environmental Stewardship paradigm, where it may be lacking and how we can re-frame a Christ centered commitment to tend and watch over all of God's creation to better inspire the next generation of earth keepers.  This is the second half of the interview, check out last weeks episode for part one.  Enjoy.

While Christians have a strong moral foundation for earth keeping, we don't have a sterling reputation for practicing what we preach.  From that knowledge comes the recent book Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care, a collection of essays edited by and contributed to by Calvin University professors, Ecologist Dr. Dave Warners and Engineer Dr. Matt Heun.  In this two part interview we talk about the Christian Environmental Stewardship paradigm, where it may be lacking and how we can re-frame a Christ centered commitment to tend and watch over all of God's creation to better inspire the next generation of earth keepers.  This interview spanned two session so it will be released in two episodes, this is part one.  Enjoy.

"If you have a why, you can bear almost any how."  This concept leads me to seek the "why" behind Christian earth-keeping and secular environmentalism to determine which worldview has a better foundation for stewardship of the environment.  

Fundamental to the question of whether Christians should take care of God's creation is if the earth serves any ultimate purpose.  Do we hope to be ushered away from the earth, in which case we should see it as disposable, or is our hope for something else?   In this episode Dale explores how different understandings of the Christian gospel influence our penchant for or against environmental stewardship.  

Survey data show that evangelical Christians are among the least likely to identify as environmentalists and most likely to deny that humans play a role in climate change.  In this first episode addressing the latest video, The Gospel and the Environment, we will explore what is behind the pattern of Christians wanting to disassociate from the environmental movement.  

We interrupt our normal schedule of discussing Disciple Science videos to address the topic of the day, the coronavirus pandemic.  This issue invites us to integrate science's ability to understand how the world works and Christian faith's framework for hope, meaning, purpose, ethics and relationship.  Dale will will talk about what we can learn from this shared experience and how to respond and act as Christians in the midst of economic, social, personal and social strife.   

Dr. Sy Garte has a remarkable story.  Raised as an atheist, he came to follow Jesus in part because his training in science led him to question his materialist worldview.  Hear the second half of Sy's story in this week's episode.  You can read the whole story in his recently published book, The Works of His Hands: A Scientists Journey from Atheism to Faith (linked below).

Dr. Sy Garte has a remarkable story.  Raised as an atheist, he came to follow Jesus in part because his training in science led him to question his materialist worldview.  Hear the first half of his story in this week's episode.  I encourage you to read the whole story in his recently published book, The Works of His Hands: A Scientists Journey from Atheism to Faith (linked below). 

Dr. Gregg Davidson is professor and chair of Geology and Geological Engineering at the University of Mississippi.  In this week's episode we discussed his recent book Friend of Science Friend of Faith, where Gregg outlines his vision for the compatibility and harmony of science and Christian faith.  This is part two of an hour long interview.  The first portion of the interview was in the previous weeks podcast.

Dr. Gregg Davidson is professor and chair of Geology and Geological Engineering at the University of Mississippi.  In this week's episode we discussed his recent book Friend of Science Friend of Faith, where Gregg outlines his vision for the compatibility and harmony of science and Christian faith.  This is part one of an hour long interview.  The second portion of the interview will be released next week.  

Christians see the Bible as the inspired word of God.  So we usually check for compatibility with any idea in science, or any other field, to confirm that it fits with what we learn from scripture.  In this episode I will take a big picture perspective to review the first few chapters of Genesis as well as select verses from the New Testament, to determine if Evolutionary Creationism is compatible with a high view of scripture.

Many Christian are only aware of one view on origins (young earth creationism), and most Christians don't know why there are so many models for when and how God creation.  This episode will discuss the six views on the of everything and which are compatible with Christian beliefs.  

Pope John Paul II said, "Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish." This week on the Disciple Science podcast we will begin our exploration of the origins debate by asking if evolution caused more problems, or solved more problems, for Christian thought.

Why did God create?  This week I interview Dr. Lisanne Winslow to discuss her soon to be released book, A Great and Wonderful Analogy.  She will outline the views she shares with Jonathan Edwards, the early American preacher and theologian, that God is using creation to reveal God's self to us.  

Seeking God in nature may come easy to some but is new and uncomfortable for others.  Dale provides some suggestions for how to bring scripture and nature together in this weeks episode.  

Should an active imagination be a part of your journey of faith?  The abundance of poetry in the scriptures and the rich metaphors describing God suggest that you do, but should it also be part of our search for meaning from creation?

"The heavens reveal the glory of God," this refrain from Psalm 19 points to a connection between what we see in the natural world and our desire to know God, but did Jesus and the authors of scripture practice this method?  This week we will explore the Bible for connections between nature and a clearer understanding of God.

Before we explore the applications of natural theology, Dale seeks to define the term and addresses some of the criticisms of seeking God in creation.

There is an old concept, first introduced hundreds of years ago, that doesn't get much airtime in the modern western Church, that God authored two books of revelation.  Not two actual book, but two metaphorical books, the books of scripture and the book of creation.  This episode is the first of a series of episodes asking what we can know of God through the examination of creation.  

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While assigning blame for a problem may provide a sense of relief, it won't necessarily make the issue go away.  However, as we finish our brief tour of the history of the relationship between science and faith, we will find that both the Christian and scientific communities have missed steps.  We should learn from those stories as we work to carve a way forward into a future where the two worlds can coexist and even overlap more peacefully.

Modern science assumes that no divine intervention is needed to explain the ways of the world.  Will this approach to answering scientific questions leak into our psyche as we explore ideas of meaning and purpose?  Listen in as Dale, Joel an Matt explore the concept of methodological naturalism as it is applied in the scientific method and how extrapolating from science into life can lead us into a naturalistic worldview.  Be sure to watch our first video on our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCptRedo--XTWgHyUc0SsAIA). Also check out our website (https://www.disciplesciencecom) for more resources on science and faith.  

Study after study confirms that the public believes there is tension or conflict between science and faith.  But is the tension real and has it always been there?  This week, Joel, Dale, and Matt begin to discuss some of the history of the intersection between science and faith.  Be sure to watch our first video on our youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCptRedo--XTWgHyUc0SsAIA). Also check out our website (https://www.disciplescience.com) for more resources on science and faith.