“Faith & Physics” with Josh Gladden

Shownotes:

The intersection of science and theology can lead to some heated discussions, but for Dr. Josh Gladden, it’s more about being open and curious and willing to think beyond what the eye can see. Today’s episode dives into the Webb Telescope, the moral questions of certain scientific advancements, and how God fits into our ever-expanding world.

Dr. Gladden is the Vice Chancellor for Research and Sponsored Programs at the University of Mississippi. He earned his Ph.D. in physics from the Pennsylvania State University in 2003, and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He is a member of Oxford University United Methodist Church, where Chris serves as Lead Pastor (and where Eddie previously served as co-pastor with Chris). 

Resources:

Webb Space Telescope

Transcript:

Chris McAlilly 00:00 Hi, I'm Chris McAlilly.

Eddie Rester 00:01
And I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight.

Chris McAlilly 00:04

Today we're talking to Dr. Josh Gladden, who is the Vice Chancellor for Research and Sponsored Programs at the University of Mississippi. His background is in physics, and that is the topic of today's conversation.

Eddie Rester 00:18

I was talking to somebody earlier today about having this conversation and their eyes kind of glazed over. Because, you know, not a lot of folks engage. They like the pictures you see from the Webb telescope. We appreciate people who find knowledge so that we can have cell phones. But Josh is one whose entire career has been just deep into the workings of the world and creation. And so this was a fun conversation for me today.

Chris McAlilly 00:46

Yeah, it was great. You know, really, the space that we're talking about is science and religion. We're talking about the Webb telescope, which is an incredible feat of our... Yeah, engineering and our ability to see and understand the structure and nature of the universe. And we get into kind of the mechanics of it and then also the implications of it. And then we kind of speculate widely on all this knowledge that we're acquiring within the scientific world. What do we do with that? And how do we handle that wisely and well, in a way that leads to constructive and not destructive ends? And then, you know, by the end of the episode, you can see and hear kind of how we land there.

Eddie Rester 01:02

Engineering. Well, I think one of the things, the threads that we didn't get to talk about much is we mentioned Galileo, but the church and science have always had a difficult relationship. And I think for me at least, Josh helps us have a conversation about what does that really look like for science and faith to go hand in hand.

Chris McAlilly 01:58
It was great, great conversation. Really enjoyed it. We've been thinking about doing this for months now. And so we're glad to...

Eddie Rester 02:05 For a long time.

Chris McAlilly 02:06

Finally get it in. We're glad that you're with us on The Weight. If you would like to support the podcast, you can do that by sharing any episode. You can go and leave a review. You can visit our website and make a donation. We are grateful that you're with us on The Weight. And we hope you enjoy the episode. [INTRO] Life can be heavy. So heavy, in fact, that the weight we carry can sometimes cause us to lose hope.

Eddie Rester 02:36
But we've all come across those people in life who seem to be experiencing the same world we live in, except they maintain a great depth of joy and hope.

Chris McAlilly 02:45
A former generation called this gravitas. It was their description of a soul that had gained enough weightiness to be attractive, like all things with a gravitational pull.

Eddie Rester 02:56

Those are the people we want to talk to. On this podcast, we talk to pastors, entrepreneurs, artists, mental health experts, and many others.

Chris McAlilly 03:06
We will create space for heavy topics. But we'll be listening for a quality of soul that could be called gravitas.

Eddie Rester 03:13
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]

Chris McAlilly 03:15
Well, we're here today with Josh Gladden, Dr. Josh Gladden, who is Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Mississippi. Josh, we are so glad that you're here today.

Josh Gladden 03:28
Well, Chris, thanks. It's great to be here. And I think we got a great topic to talk about today. So thanks for having me.

Chris McAlilly 03:35
Talk a little bit about your background, kind of what your background is in physics, and you have kind of had a long career in the academy. But talk a little bit about your journey.

Josh Gladden 03:49

Sure. Yeah. It's been a great journey. Um, so Right. My background is in physics. I got my PhD from Penn State University. But before that, I was a high school physics teacher for about five years at a couple of different high schools, including an international boarding school, which was great. And I knew then that I love teaching. I love being around students. I did miss research, and so I went back for my PhD and then came to University of Mississippi from State College of Pennsylvania. Mostly because of the physics department here and also the National Center for Physical Acoustics, which is my particular area of research, and that's a well known national treasure. So it was a thrill to be here and that was 17 and a half years ago. And...

Eddie Rester 04:49 It goes by fast.

Josh Gladden 04:50

It goes by fast and we've just loved our time and Oxford, our time at the church, and also the University.

Eddie Rester 04:58

And I know that people may not know much about the National Physical Acoustics Center, but it's an amazing, amazing gift. And y'all do, I mean, been a part of groundbreaking research that it's impacting our military but also, I remember gravitational waves. A lot of the professor's there were involved in some groundbreaking research a few years ago.

Josh Gladden 05:21

Yeah, yeah, that's right. It's a fascinating place to to work. And what's great about acoustics is-- and physical acoustics is different than things like room acoustics, or, you know, microphone design or bio acoustics or hearing aids. All of those are sort of in the acoustics umbrella. But physical acoustics is really about the physics of how sound and vibration are generated, and what you can tell from the signals. And so they do a lot of applied work, like you said, in the military, listening for hostile fire events and characterizing them--everything from nuclear explosions, to snipers, to landmines, mortars, that kind of thing. But also, you know, biomedical acoustics, focused ultrasound. We do a lot of work with USDA on how you use acoustics for soil, characterizing soils, and earthen dams and levees. And then we have a huge aero acoustics facility with a Mach 5 wind tunnel. And we do a lot of work there around jet noise and things like that. So it's just, it's all over the map. And that's the way I like it.

Chris McAlilly 06:38

So I can tell you, when I burned out with physics. I flamed out in 10th grade. And I don't know. I don't want to blame it on the teacher. I'm sure it was on the student. But I, after that point, never took another physics class, I confess. And so I went into humanities. I went to... I read a lot of books, went to seminary. And so my whole world really is devoid of physics. And so I need you to dust me up, Josh, on just a basic definition. What is physics?

Josh Gladden 07:13
Sure. So well, first of all, I'll say, Chris, your world is not devoid of physics. Your world is surrounded by physics, every second of every day.

Chris McAlilly 07:25 Thank you, Josh. Thank you.

Chris McAlilly 07:30
I just don't understand it.

Josh Gladden 07:32

It's around us all the time. So physics is really the study of both matter and energy and how they interact. And so everything from light waves to how materials work, how electricity works and magnetism, to how atoms are put together and how they stick together or why they stick together, to lightning, how lightning works. Atmospheric physics is something that we do here. We have some really interesting stuff going on there. To the bigger universe questions, gravitational waves, how is our universe structured? Why is it structured that way? And what can we tell from the signals, which are largely energy based--that could be light, could be radiation--that we get from the universe and how we interpret those to learn more about what's out there.

Chris McAlilly 08:36
That's very helpful. Thank you for coming down to my level.

Eddie Rester 08:42
While Chris has been devoid of it since 10th grade, I went to college.

Chris McAlilly 08:46 I also went to college.

Eddie Rester 08:48

You did go to college. But I went to college in sciences. I was a pre med major, loved chemistry and biology. Never got to physics, although my daughters are taking physics at Ole Miss. And one of them is not a fan of physics at the moment. But so science has always been a part of my world. Astronomy, I thought for a while, when I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. One of the big science stories, and this is one of the reasons we want to talk to you today, one of the big science stories last fall really brings a lot of what you just talked about as you define physics. It brings it all together. The Webb Space Telescope, that's sitting way out in space. I was talking to somebody today, and I said we were gonna talk to somebody about the Webb Space Telescope, and they looked at me with this blank look on their face. "What is that?" So Josh, tell us what it is and why we should be excited about it, because I'm excited about it.

Josh Gladden 09:49

I'm excited about it, too. And so let me let me back up a little bit. So if you sort of look at our human history and the tools that we have to understand the universe around us, there's a couple of real big pivot points in that evolution. So the invention of the telescope, you know, around the time of Galileo and Newton was one of those pivot points. The telescope allowed us to gain visibility and to see things that we couldn't see with the naked eye. Of course, through our whole history in the human race, we've always looked up to the stars and tried to figure out what those things were, why they moved the way they did, how all that system worked. And so the development of the optical telescope was one of those pivotal moments. The invention of the radio telescope, which does similar things, but with electromagnetic waves that aren't in the visible spectrum, because that's really a fairly narrow range of all the electromagnetic waves around us on earth and coming to us from the universe. So radio telescopes gave us a whole new way to look at the universe. And it allowed us to see things that were out there that we couldn't see with optical telescopes. Another pivotal point was something, Chris, you mentioned earlier, is the ability to detect gravitational waves. And this is, honestly, it was one of the most exciting things in my professional career as a physicist, is developing an instrument--not me personally, but the the community--humanity was able to develop an instrument that was so incredibly sensitive that they could detect incredibly tiny vibrations and oscillations in the fabric of spacetime itself. These are gravitational waves. That's not even electromagnetic waves. That's a whole nother way to look at the universe. Now, bring in what the Webb telescope does is it's in the electromagnetic spectrum. That's the kind of waves that detects, but it detects waves a little bit longer wavelength than what we call the infrared. So right, you see those warming lights in the restaurants, you know, when a plate is prepared, these sort of reddish looking lights. The stuff you can see is red, but there's actually a lot more radiation--and I'm using air quotes here--light coming from those that we can't see, that's in what we call the infrared. A little bit longer wavelength than what we can see. And Webb was designed to detect and be extremely sensitive to that range of wavelengths of light. And that's important, because a lot of the really distant objects that we want to see are moving away from us. So this gets into the expansion of the universe. And it's well understood that our universe as a whole is expanding. And what that means is, similar to when a police siren or ambulance siren is moving away from you, it sounds a little bit lower pitch, right. So we have all had that experience, that siren sounds a little higher pitch when it moves toward you, and a little lower pitch when it moves away from you. Well, light does the same thing. So if these objects are moving away from us, that means that their wavelengths are a little bit longer, a little bit lower frequency, a little bit longe. And there's a lot more information there, therefore, in the infrared, a little bit longer wavelengths. So that's why they designed it to detect in that range. And the other really important piece of Webb, similar to Hubble, which are both space-based telescopes, is that a ground-based telescope has a tremendous limitation because it's got to look through this thick layer of air that we all know, especially in our wonderful state of Mississippi, that air moves around and it's humid and it's got all kinds of stuff in it. And it's really hard to get very sensitive measurements through all that chaos. So by putting it out in space... Well, and also the other part of that is that the ground just shakes all the time. I mean, trucks, earthquakes, air conditioners turning on, all of that causes vibration, which is a problem for telescopes. Take all that and put it out into space and you've got... You don't have all of that atmospheicric problems, and then you also eliminate the vibration. So that's, I know, that's a long-winded answer, but that hopefully gives you a little bit of an arc. And I think that it is that next big evolution for it.

Chris McAlilly 15:15

So the the difference, though, between the Webb telescope and the Hubble telescope is quite significant. My understanding is that Hubble telescope, it orbited about 350 miles away from Earth. Webb is designed so that it can go a million miles away, like four times farther, then look farther back and deeper. That's a significant... That's just a significant difference in the span of only, you know, a few decades.

Josh Gladden 15:46

Right. Yeah. So that distance, that million mile distance from Earth, is a design, important design part of Webb. So primarily, for one reason is that, because it's an infrared, and heat, as we talked about with the heat lamps, heat emits infrared radiation, so the earth will emit infrared radiation. And so it was important to get, because that's where... It's sort of like if I want to see something and I've got a bright spotlight that's on me, I can't see very well, because all that light is obscuring what I want to see out there. And so by putting Webb way, way out there, it really cuts down on that amount of infrared radiation that it's exposed to. In fact, another part of that is there's a big huge, I think it's about the size of a tennis court, kind of sun blocker. It's like a huge umbrella thing that blocks the sun itself from, you know, overwhelming the sensors on Webb.

Eddie Rester 17:02

It was so cool to watch all that unfold, because everything had to go right. I remember that some of the scientists who developed that heat panel that you were talking about, I can't remember exactly what it's called. But they were real worried that it wasn't going to unfold, or would only partially unfold, or that it might get a hole torn in it in the journey or even as it unfolded, because there's so much that they can't know. And it's really... You know, now we get to enjoy the science of it, but it's an engineering marvel, in and of itself that drew hundreds of folks together. And so, you know, again, I'm kind of, for me, it's a pretty exciting thing. What's the long term hope of having it there? Is it so we can see the earliest beginning points of the universe? Is it so we can find habitable, or what we would think would be habitable planets? What's its primary purpose?

Josh Gladden 18:03
Yeah. So before I get to that, can I just talk a little bit about the engineering?

Eddie Rester 18:09 Absolutely.

Josh Gladden 18:09

Because that to me, you know, sometimes physicists, we're sort of looking at the fundamental questions and really focusing on that, but the art of the engineering, I'm just amazed by. What they had to do is they had to take 18 incredibly precisely engineered mirrors, they had to figure out--that are ultimately about 21 feet across from edge to edge--they had to figure out how to take all those mirrors, pack them up in such a way, take that huge tennis-court sized shield, fold it up in such a way, package all that stuff into a little bitty package, put it in a rocket and put it out there. And then it all had to unfold perfectly. Less than a hair of deviation on any one piece would screw the whole thing up. And nobody-- it's way too far out for anybody to go fix it. And then we had to do that with Hubble, right? Hubble had a problem with just a minor grounding error in the mirror. There was no option. This was a do it once, do it right, or it's 100% gone. So just a shout out to the engineers that did that. I'm sure their stomachs were hurting quite a bit.

Eddie Rester 19:49
One of the women talking about it, I mean she was visibly terrified. Because, like you say it goes forever. And then it's got to suddenly awaken, put everything in place, and work.

Chris McAlilly 20:03

Yeah. And it's not just the engineering feat, it's the sheer cost of the thing. You know, and I think that's one of the questions like, for someone who's skeptical about science as an endeavor, why? I mean, there are all kinds of ways that we could spend $8.8 billion. Why, in your mind, is that a good investment? You know what I mean? If you think about the sheer cost, why spend that much money? It seems like maybe that's too much, especially if just it could be lost just with one simple error

Josh Gladden 20:37

With one simple error. And no, it's a very good conversation and debate to have, because it was a tremendous investment. It went way over budget and way over time. Because I think the the actual necessity of the equipment and the engineering was, once they really got into it, it was more overwhelming than they thought, the requirements, the tolerances, all that kind of stuff. So, I think that question of is that a good investment of American taxpayer dollars, European taxpayer dollars, Canadian taxpayer dollars, all of which were part of the overall project? It kind of goes to Chris's question earlier about why do we have it? What are we going to learn from it? And I would say this, that Hubble, more than any other telescope today, or device today, is already giving us more detailed information about what's going on out in the universe, and how we fit into that big picture than any than any other instrument that we have today. Now, you can debate about how much is worth gaining that knowledge. As a human race, we've always had a drive to figure out what is next, how do we fit in this big, crazy universe of ours, and to understand it better. And those are robust and excellent debates to have. I would say that what we are learning as a human race from that instrument has been worth the cost and the effort. And honestly, don't forget, I mean, it's only been in operation for six months now?

Chris McAlilly 22:33 Six months.

Josh Gladden 22:35

Six months. This will go on. This is one other thing is that, I can't remember the details, you guys might remember, because positioning it went so efficiently and effectively, they have a lot of reserve fuel on there. They didn't have to do a bunch of fine tuning and maneuvering. It stuck the landing, so to speak. And so we're gonna get decades of information and data from this thing.

Chris McAlilly 23:06

So I know Eddie may have another question. But I want to... I asked the question in a pointed way, but I mean, I agree that it's a good investment. One of the answers to that question that I found compelling was from a Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist, Dr. Frank Wilczek, I think he writes in either the Washington Post or one of the newspapers. This is what he said, "My everyday life has been very much enhanced by occasionally reflecting on what's going on under the hood of the world. Science doesn't answer the questions of why I'm here, what's the purpose of my life, but there's a lot that can be learned from science about expanding your imagination,and realizing the background over which the questions are posed." And I just think that's so lovely, because I'm just struck by the the sheer aesthetic beauty of the images and the way in which, you know, just the idea that you could see light coming from the beginning of the universe. There's a poetry to that. It's just... I don't even understand it. But it's quite amazing. If you think about expanding the human imagination, the knowledge and understanding that we would have of our world and that seems basic to what it means to be human.

Josh Gladden 24:29

Yeah, I agree. And I agree with you. That's a very well put quote, I would add to it this, that, to me, that it's important for us to kind of understand... But let me back up a little bit. I think that as humans, you know, we're, as we should be focused on our day-to-day, our interpersonal interactions and how we're working as a society, how we work as a group of nations, as a city of Oxford, as a state of Mississippi, as a country of the US. And we have our difficulties, and we have our disagreements and our agreements and our moments of joy and sadness, but the overlay, or maybe underpinning of all that is how we all fit into the grand scheme of things. And to me, that's really a big important question. And it's, I want to say humbling, I think, to see the images that the Webb is sending back. Hopefully, we'll get into a little bit about what you're actually seeing in some of those images. Because once you really understand what those dots,or those shapes are on those images, it helps me put things in perspective that, okay, we can have our little disagreements, but we're all living in this amazing universe. And from a theological point of view, to me, it is really important that all of this beauty and structure and design is out there. That's the Lord's work on a grand scale, right. We're an important part of it as a human race. But let's not forget, we're just part of the painting. And there's a beautiful painting out there. And the more we understand it, the more complex and beautiful, in my mind, it becomes.

Eddie Rester 26:46

You talk about theologically, one of my heroes for science and faith is Francis Collins. His book, I think, "The Language of God," came out, gosh, 20-something, 20 years ago now maybe. He decoded, part of the team that decoded DNA for us. Now, you know, he once said that DNA is the language of God. And it's one of those things that science doesn't push him away from God, science draws him into conversation with God. And we've talked about this before, Josh, but I think that is how you feel as well, that it draws you into that larger conversation. Would you say a little bit to that? How you hold your faith and your love of science and exploration, how you hold that together?

Josh Gladden 27:38

Yeah. So that's a big question. And I won't sugarcoat it. There are times where I've struggled on what that balance is, because the way I might approach it might be quite different than the way someone else might approach it. But, you know, to me, similar to Dr. Collins, I see that beauty in the universe around us and not just the outer universe, but my particular area is more kind of on the subatomic, how atoms are put together and the rules around how all that works. And to me, that's also part of God's plans, God's design. And there's a sort of a famous quote, and I won't, I can't remember who it came from just one of these lore things, I guess. But in physics, you know, you could ask the question, why four times. You know, why does this happen? Well, because of this law. Why is this law the way that is? Well, because of this fundamental principle. And why is that? And then, but after a few times, you're going to get to the answer, "because that's just the way it is." And those are the rules. Those are the laws. And so at that point, for me, that's when religion and theology come in, because there are rules. That's part of what physics is all about, is understanding what the fundamental basic rules that drive the whole universe are, to understand those things. The next layer question is well, then, where did those rules come from? And that's where I think theology comes in. And science won't... You know, we can talk about all the way up to the Big Bang, and we can talk about how those different rules evolved over time, but it's really ultimately going to come down to theology and design.

Chris McAlilly 29:49

Years ago, I came across a quotation from Pope John Paul II. It's a letter that was written to the director of the Vatican Observatory, so kind of a similar set of questions around kind of the structure and nature of the universe. And the quotation is helpful because it kind of talks about the way in which science and religion are mutually purifying. He wrote, "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." I think it's lovely, just, you know, I think one of the things that you see at times in religious circles is the way in which religion can be prone towards error and superstition. And, you know, Galileo is a great example of someone who intersected with the Pope and the Vatican Observatory, in a way that that was ultimately purifying the Catholic Church of error and superstition, although he wasn't viewed in that way. But I also think the other side is true, that religion can help in an age in I mean, the predominant ideologies and philosophies of our time are materialist, you know, this idea that all there is, is what can be seen. And I think one of the things that I find profound about the Webb telescope is that it is drawing our attention to the things that can be seen beyond our sight, beyond our optical sight. It gives a different dimensionality and depth to what can be perceived beyond our perception. And I think that helps draw us out of kind of, I guess, in this case, kind of secular idolatries this idea that, just because we can see the material world around us, that that is all there is. That's not true, you know, and religion just presses that. I mean, I think good science presses that. But I also think religion, at its best, can press against that as well.

Josh Gladden 32:06

Yeah, that's a good... I like that. It's a good connecting point, or sort of parallel that, you know, we talk about in the context of religion of sort of whether it's faith or understanding that there are things that you cannot see, you cannot feel, you cannot taste, but you need to have some faith that those things are out there, and they are forces for good. And, you know, similarly, what Webb is doing is, one of the things that it has done initially is it points toward just what we've always thought of as just dark, empty sky, dark, empty spots of space. And then lo and behold, comes back--it's not empty at all. There are whole galaxies in that, what we thought was just this empty spot out there. And it's sort of like, you know, going into an art gallery with the lights off. Like you can see, oh, there's... You know, spending your whole life in an art gallery with the lights off. And you can see that there's a couple of images and there's a shape, and you might admire that shape and think about what a nice shape, and then somebody flips the lights on. You're like, oh, my gosh, there's color, and there's detail and all of that, and your whole universe just expanded.

Chris McAlilly 33:33
That's awesome. I love that analogy.

Eddie Rester 33:36
I remember seeing some of those early images of, you know, just a screen full of galaxies, and then showing what the Hubble saw in that same space.

Josh Gladden 33:47 Yeah.

Eddie Rester 33:48

It was just amazing. You know, one of the intersections, I read, again, I love following science. And when the CRISPR gene editing technology came out, the woman--can't remember her name off the top of my head--who really was able to figure out how to do that gene editing was very clear that the science had brought us here, but they needed conversation partners, before the world really started using what she had discovered. That they needed ethicists and they needed theologians and they needed people to help us think deeply about the world we were about to step into, or not step into, to give some boundaries to the work of that science. And one of her laments in that I remember was that it was already too late by the time she had announced it, because it had just gone beyond. There wasn't a sense of, in the early stages, of who do our conversation partners need to be beyond just scientists. I know there's a lot of work in ethics around how to do things. Who are some of the conversation partners that are typically used, I think, by scientists or organizations doing this kind of thinking?

Josh Gladden 35:13

Well, I think you're hitting on a really important point, especially in our... You know, we talk a lot about our knowledge, our technology, doubling every X years, and this sort of exponential growth, and a lot of that has been driven by, we do it because it's a challenge to figure out how to do it, and we're driven to--all of us--we're just driven to challenges. You tell us something can't be done? Well, we're gonna try and figure out how to do it. But we are entering into a phase, maybe some would argue we've entered into it a while ago, where we need to start asking more stringent questions about whether we should do that, not just can we do it, but whether we should do it. So CRISPR technology and gene editing is a good example. You know, really any powerful technology or tool can be used for good or for bad. All right, we've seen this. Splitting an atom can power cities and hospitals, and it can destroy cities and hospitals, right? It's a powerful tool. And so, you know, who should be around the table in those conversations, this is something I think that scientists and ethicists and policy people--this is the other part, on our public level, our lawmakers and our people who develop policies and guidelines about that--You know, there's more conversation, I think, around with those circles of people that will help inform the directions that we go. I will sort of point to some evolution on the federal side, on research and development. You know, the federal government, through grants and initiatives and things, is really pushing for these broader interdisciplinary teams in the initiatives that they're trying to push forward on research and development. So it's not just the tech, just the engineers and scientists and so on. But it's also some of the dealing with ethical and policy issues.

Chris McAlilly 37:38

I think that, you know, this question of where theoretical knowledge, just kind of understanding for understanding's sake, and then then kind of the applied sciences, the way in which our knowledge and technology then gets applied, broadly... You know, I think one of the places where the broad population intersects with applied sciences is in hospitals. And so you have these questions of, you know, how and when and if. And it really comes down to end-of-life questions, you know. It's like, we can keep people alive for a very long time. But should we? And I think the question of,,, I think that's where the questions... It's not just ethics, but kind of where we should limit ourselves. Are we capable of self limiting? You know, how do we develop the kinds of virtues and habits and mindsets and collective cultures that would allow us to have knowledge with wisdom, you know, or with a kind of restraint? I mean, I have to say that I'm fairly pessimistic, I think, about humanity's broad capacity to handle the knowledge that we're acquiring at the speed and rate that we're acquiring it. And, you know, you kind of wonder if there has to be some kind of cataclysmic event in the 21st century that would allow us to kind of recalibrate in the way that the world wars kind of caused a massive mid century recalibration in the 20th century. I hate to say that because that's a horrific thought. But you know, I think it definitely... It just doesn't seem like we can handle what we're acquiring the capacity to do. This became the most depressing episode of The Weight ever right there, Chris, You guys, I'm counting on you guys to bring the tone back up.

Eddie Rester 39:44

You know, just my response is that I think that's been the human struggle from the beginning. What do we do with what we know? I mean, if you go back to the book of Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve. What do we do with the knowledge that we have have about this thing we're not supposed to go after? And there were consequences to that. But there's also a growth and a learning from that along the way. That may not be a great example, but...

Chris McAlilly 40:15

No, I think I feel good about that. I feel good about that. Eddie. I think for me, you know, ultimately, I'm not a pessimist. I'm certainly not an optimist. But I think what a biblical, a scriptural imagination would offer you as a way to say, yes, there is an amazing world, and it is exceptionally beautiful, far beyond what you could imagine. And I think the Webb telescope does the same thing. It kind of puts us in touch with the explosive beauty of the universe. And our unique, small but important place within it, that we have more power than we even know what to do with, you know. We have the capacity to touch and to know the full the full spectrum of good and evil, and yetwe're probably going to screw that up. And yet God doesn't. You know, God doesn't. As long as we don't end ourselves, God doesn't end. God doesn't take us out. There's a capacity to co-create, and to make the world, ultimately, a better place. And I guess that, to me, makes me hopeful. At the end, there's the biblical frame... I think, honestly, if I were only looking at things in a materialist frame, without a transcendent or biblical mindset or mentality, I would have a hard time being hopeful. I'm just being honest. But I think for me, you know, the idea that in the end, God redeems, restores, and human beings can be a part of the co-creation of a good future. That's a way for me to live in the world as it is, seeing everything and yet still being hopeful.

Eddie Rester 42:06

Well, I think, Josh, I think I'm gonna point this back at you, I think part of that good work that God has given us the ability to see and discover and know, and the fruit of science for humanity has been huge. And I tend to think of healing ,the healing of doctors, the work of scientists is part of God's work of discovery for humanity. How do you see that?

Josh Gladden 42:34

So, I would say that throughout our existence, one thing that we have all--and it doesn't matter what culture, where you came from, what time you came from--there has always been this element of humans to desire to know what the next thing is, to see around that next corner, to go across that ocean, to climb that mountain. It's always been there. And so that must be something that's innate in our human nature that was put there by God in our human nature. And so this is what drives us to acquire more knowledge. Right? So I think it's part of that plan is that's what we're designed to do, is to expand that. And so it would be remiss of us to try and squash that. I think that that's not what God would want us to do. He wants us, I think, to explore and to gain more knowledge with the understanding that we're also flawed, all of us flawed individuals, and we're going to individually and collectively repeatedly make mistakes and fall down, and we'll pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off and move on and learn hopefully, and then move on to the next phase. So Chris, just to your point, you know, we probably will have some kind of sort of collective event, you know, and that's, I think that's just part of our journey as a human species.

Chris McAlilly 44:22 Yeah.

Eddie Rester 44:23
And we'll pick ourselves back up.

Josh Gladden 44:26
But we'll pick ourselves back up. That's the important part, right?

Chris McAlilly 44:31

I guess the way I think about it is like if there is no God, right, like, then yeah, it's gonna be difficult. But if there is a God--this is just where I'm coming from--there's the capacity for God to continue to work with humanity as we are and with the world, with the created things that God has made in the direction of a good future that ultimately is in God's hands. Now that, you know, I think will be a stretch for some folks. That's a bridge too far. And yet, and so where do you put the emphasis? Do you put the emphasis on humanity's resilience, or in God's steadfast love and faithfulness? And thankfully, we don't have to resolve that question on the podcast. We're not preaching today. I think that's maybe a good place to land.

Eddie Rester 45:26

Josh, this has been fun for me. I just appreciate you spending some time. I've been sitting here thinking about what Scripture promises us is the redemption of creation. And what we're getting to see through the work of science right now with the Webb telescope is the fullness of creation that humans have never been able to see before. So thank you for helping us understand that a little more.

Josh Gladden 45:49
Well, thank you both. This has been a lot of fun. I hope we get to do a conversation like this again.

Eddie Rester 45:55
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like,

Chris McAlilly 46:04

If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]