Today’s podcast episode features Templeton Prize winner physicist Marcelo Gleiser, who considers himself a religious agnostic but he has consistently pushed back against the extreme scientism views that leave no place for religion.
LISTEN NOW: Marcelo Gleiser | Oceans of the Unknown - Podcast Episode - BioLogos
APPLE PODCASTS: Language of God: 21. Marcelo Gleiser | Oceans of the Unknown on Apple Podcasts
I like this podcast, and I appreciated how they talked about making room for religion and science, or something like that. I can’t remember the phrasing.
But I was a little alarmed in the latter half went both Stump and Gleiser seemed to agree that religious faith should not want any evidence. It almost sounded like Gleiser thought religious faith should be blind.
But I don’t think that is ever the case with the Judeo Christian faith. I think the Bible even rebukes blind faith. And it’s been my impression that BioLogos does not promote it either, so perhaps it was a misunderstanding. ( I can’t go back in “the episode right now.)
So I mean, for example, you can have a very reasonable discussion with her an agnostic about how all the rationality in the universe is evidence of a creator. Faith is not based on purely subjective evidence. The fact that rationality seems to govern the universe, that scientists even assume that rationality governs the universe, that is evidence for believing in God. If science has taught us anything over the past 2000 years, it has taught us to have faith that rationality governs the universe.
Paging @jstump!
After listening myself, I think they were primarily in agreement that with our limited knowledge about the universe, we can’t KNOW anything for certain, and that requires having faith. Jim can correct me if I’m wrong.
Hi Matt, thanks for your comments. I certainly do not agree that faith is just believing without evidence, when we understand that word in a normal, everyday sense. I think what Marcelo wanted to do was to make words like “evidence” and “explanation” part of the strictly scientific discourse. I’m not persuaded that is correct, but agree that the kinds of evidence we have for God are not just results of empirical tests (or whatever).
For myself, I think faith is better understood as commitment to a belief system, to a worldview, to a way of way of life and a way of seeing the world. Understood that way, there are all kinds of “evidences”.
My biggest concern with Marcelo was his insistence on calling God the “unknowable”. That would be utterly unimaginable to the Apostle Paul, who wrote “I know whom I have believed in” (2 Tim 1:12).
Oh that’s right, that’s what you were focusing on the knowability of God, which was excellent. I got distracted because it’s so common to hear people talking about religious faith as if it must be blind. But the knowability of God is the more important matter.
When I ran across this a bit ago and I saw ‘Templeton Prize winner’, I of course pretty much immediately thought of Francis Collins and BioLogos, and wondered if Dr Gleiser’s name might have come up here. Sure enough, here it is in the OP and podcast heading this thread.
Huh. I would have thought this was pretty eye-catching:
Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method, Prizewinning Physicist Says
In conversation, the 2019 Templeton Prize winner does not pull punches on the limits of science, the value of humility and the irrationality of nonbelief
Only one honest or humble or curious enough to follow the link though (I wonder who 'twas), based on the little gray counter circle (although if you pull up the context menu by ‘touch and hold’ on a phone or tablet you can ‘Open in New Tab’ and bypass the counter if you don’t count don’t want to be counted ; - ).
It is Christmas after all, Dale. Maybe some people are taking a Forum break. 
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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