Notes and References

General Information

Header image courtesy of NASA and European Space Agency.

All Biblical references from English Standard Version. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.

Science As Worship

All images mine except Galaxy image from Wikimedia Commons under public domain.

  1. From interview on CNN.com, “Collins: Why this scientist believes in God,” http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/03/collins.commentary/index.html, last accessed May 7, 2008.
  2. Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” Poems (Bartleby.com, 1999).

The Wash of Scripture

All Biblical references from English Standard Version. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.

  1. Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” Poems (Bartleby.com, 1999).

Scripture, Science, and Wonder

  1. Darrel Falk, Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds between Faith and Biology (InterVarsity Press, 2004), p. 21.
  2. Francis Collins, The Language of God (Free Press, 2006), pp. 123-124.
  3. Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World, translated by Paulette Moller (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994), p. 14.
  4. Ibid., p. 13.
  5. Ibid., p. 13.
  6. Collins, p. 123.
  7. Leslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Eerdmans, 1989), p. 62.
  8. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 175.
  9. Quoted in Falk, p. 29.

Cosmology

The material for the cosmology lectures was drawn from the following books:

  • Paul Davies, Cosmic Jackpot (Houghton Mifflin, 2007).
  • Owen Gingerich, God's Universe (Harvard University Press, 2006).
  • Francis Collins, The Language of God (Free Press, 2006).
  • Darrel Falk, Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds between Faith and Biology (InterVarsity Press, 2004).

The idea of God's cosmic fireworks show was drawn from a conversation with my insightful friend Will Weir.

Neuroscience

The material for the neuroscience lectures was drawn from notes on Dr. Robert Sapolky's lectures in Biology 42 at Stanford University in Winter 2005. Dr. Sapolksy is a fantastic teacher and popularizer of complex scientific ideas, and he shaped my understanding of how the brain functions (particularly the idea of neurons as on-off switches). As far as I know, the material from these lectures has not been published, but I can recommend his book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, a popular exploration of the physiology of stress. Special thanks to my friend Joseph Tan for his detailed notes.

Origins

  1. Francis Collins, The Language of God (Free Press, 2006), pp. 198-199.

Discussion: How Important Is This?

  1. John 18:37, New International Version, Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.
  2. Timothy Keller, The Reason for God (Dutton, 2008), p. 94.

The Genesis Accounts

  1. See Timothy Keller, The Reason for God (Dutton, 2008), pp. 93-94.
  2. This section was adapted from a piece I wrote for The Language of God online FAQ: How to Interpret Scripture. The ideas are drawn from sermons by Rev. David Jones at Reformed University Fellowship, Stanford University, for his Fall 2006 series, In the Beginning. Sermons available at http://www.rufstanford.com/library/sermons.htm, last accessed May 7, 2008.
  3. Keller, pp. 93-94.
  4. Francis Collins, The Language of God (Free Press, 2006), pp. 151-152. See writings of Augustine in The Literal Meaning of Genesis, the Confessions, and The City of God.
  5. Saint Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 20:40. Quoted in Collins, p. 152. For more, including comments from John Calvin and John Wesley, see Darrel Falk, “Science and Religion,” Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds between Faith and Biology (InterVarsity Press, 2004).

The Age of the Earth

This section was adapted from a piece I wrote for The Language of God online FAQ: How Is the Age of the Earth Determined? It reflects input from Monica Slinkard and Syman Stevens.

  1. Darrel Falk, “Putting Creation Into a Timeframe,” Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds between Faith and Biology (InterVarsity Press, 2004), p. 61.
  2. Ibid., p. 74. The ages of the dead trees were calibrated by comparing rings from the end of their lives to the early rings trees still living. For example, a tree from 11,800 years ago lived 6000 years and then died. Its last 200 rings could be calibrated with the first 200 rings of a now living tree that is currently 6000 years old.
  3. Ibid., p. 74. There are actually even older sediment layers, but beyond 35,000 years, layers become so compressed that they cannot be distinguished for accurate dating.
  4. Roger C. Wiens, “Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective,” Science in Christian Perspective (American Scientific Affiliation, 2002), pp. 16-17, http://www.asa3.org/aSA/resources/wiens2002.pdf, last accessed February 18, 2008.
    See also North Greenland Ice Core Project Members, “High-resolution record of northern hemisphere climate extending into the last interglacial period,” Nature, 2004, 431: 147–151. (Reports ages back to 123,000 years)
  5. EPICA Community Members, “Eight glacial cycles from an Antarctic ice core,” Nature, 2004, 429: 623–628.
  6. Bob White, “The Age of the Earth,” The Faraday Papers, p. 2. http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/resources/
    Faraday%20Papers/Faraday%20Paper%208%20White_EN.pdf    , last accessed February 18, 2008.
    For Milankovich cycles, see L. A. Hinnov, “Earth’s orbital parameters and cycle stratigraphy,” in F. Gradstein, J. Ogg, and A. Smith (eds.), A Geologic Time Scale (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 55–62.
  7. It is important note that these methods give a bottom limit for the earth’s age, but not a top limit. They simply cannot point further back because of limitations in measurement. For the example of tree rings, around 11,800 years ago there was an abrupt climate change at the end of the last ice age, and the locations of long-lived trees underwent a major shift (Wiens, p. 13). For sediment in lakebeds, the layers become too compressed after 35,000 years and can no longer be distinguished.
  8. Falk, pp. 65-66.
  9. Review based on Falk, pp. 62-63.
  10. Ibid., pp. 63-64.
  11. Ibid., pp. 64-65.
  12. For a sampling of thirteen such systems, see Table I in Wiens, p. 3.
  13. White, p. 2.
  14. Falk, pp. 69-70.
  15. Ibid., pp. 70-72.
  16. Example from Falk, p. 133.
  17. A common response is that God could have created a universe with the appearance of age. This takes the question from science to theology. While God is certainly capable of creating the appearance of age, this does not align with his character or a clear reading of Genesis.

The Fossil Record

This section was adapted from a piece I wrote for The Language of God online FAQ: What Does the Fossil Record Show? It reflects input from Darrel Falk, Francis Collins, Monica Slinkard, and Syman Stevens.

  1. Darrel Falk, Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds between Faith and Biology (InterVarsity Press, 2004), pp. 83-84.
  2. Ibid., p. 84.
  3. Ibid., pp. 111-115.
    See also E. B. Daeschler and Neil Shubin, “Fish with Fingers?” Nature, 1998, 391: 133.
    M. I. Coates and J. A. Clack, “Fish-like Gills and Breathing in the Earliest Known Tetrapod,” Nature, 1991, 352: 234-236.
    M. I. Coates, J. E. Jeffrey, and M. Ruta, “Fins to Limbs: What the Fossils Say,” Evolution and Development, 2002, 4: 390-401.
  4. E. B. Daeschler, N. Shubin, and F. Jenkins, “A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan,” Nature, 2006, 440: 757-763.
  5. Falk, p. 103.
  6. Ibid., p. 103.
    Based on Michael Lee, “The Turtle’s Long-lost Relatives,” Natural History, 1994, 103 (June): 63-65.
  7. Ibid., pp. 115-120.
    See Pough, Heiser, and McFarland, Vertebrate Life, p. 607.
    M. J. Benton, Vertebrate Paleontology: Biology and Evolution (Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp. 228-231.
    E. H. Colbert, M. Morales, E. C. Minkoff, Colbert’s Evolution of the Vertebrates: A History of Backboned Animals Through Time (Wiley-Liss, 2001), pp. 274-277.
    T. S. Kemp, The Origin and Evolution of Mammals (Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 75-78.
  8. Ibid., pp. 107-109.
    For a general summary, see K. Wong, “The Mammals That Conquered the Seas,” Scientific American, 2002, 286 (5): 70-79.
    For a technical discussion, see J. G. M. Thewissen, E. M. Williams, L. J. Roe, and S. T. Husain, “Skeletons of Terrestrial Cetaceans and the Relationship of Whales to Artiodactyls,” Nature, 2001, 413: 277-281.
    P. D. Gingerich, M. ul Haq, I. S. Zalmout, I. H. Khan, and M. S. Malkani, “Origin of Whales from Early Artiodactyls: Hands and Feet of Eocene Protocetidae from Pakistan,” Science, 2001, 293: 2239-2242.
    Most recently, see J. G. M. Thewissen, Lisa Noelle Cooper, Mark T. Clementz, Sunil Bajpai, and B. N. Tiwari, “Whales originated from aquatic artiodactyls in the Eocene epoch of India,” Nature, 2007, 450: 1190-1194.
  9. Ibid., pp. 125-126.
  10. On pp. 126-130, Falk gives the hypothetical example of two bird populations, a small island community of 100 birds, and a large mainland group of 100,000. On the island, one bird has a genetic change that gives it a longer beak, which enables it to produce an average of two offspring instead of one. (For this example, the long beak increases the survival rate and the likelihood of reproduction via natural selection.)   Its two long-beaked offspring would be more successful than the other birds, and by the next generation, 4% of the population is long-beaked. In a relatively short time, the long-beaked birds will take over the population.  Now imagine the same changes happening on the mainland. The first long-beaked bird leaves two offspring, so now two out of one hundred thousand birds have long beaks. In later generations, four and then eight birds have long beaks, but the percentages are much lower. Clearly, it will take much longer for this change to take over this population of 100,000 than the island population of 100.This is compounded by the additional fact that many genetic changes are “recessive.” This means that a species’ offspring must inherit two copies of the gene in order for it to be expressed. For our previous example, this means that a long-beak can only be found among birds whose parents both carried the long-beaked gene. However, in larger populations, any long-beaked bird is more likely to end up mating with a short-beaked bird. But with inbreeding in small populations,it is far more likely that a bird will have two copies of the same rare gene.
  11. Falk, p. 87.

DNA Sequences

  1. Francis Collins, “Deciphering God's Instruction Book: The Lessons of the Human Genome," The Language of God (Free Press, 2006), pp. 109-142.
  2. Ibid., p. 127
  3. Ibid., p. 129.
  4. Ibid., pp. 129-130.
  5. Ibid., pp. 134-135.
  6. Ibid., pp. 135-136.
  7. Ibid., p. 137.
  8. Ibid., p. 137.
  9. Ibid., p.  138.
  10. See Darrel Falk, Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds between Faith and Biology (InterVarsity Press, 2004), pp. 182-198.
  11. Collins, pp. 140-141.
  12. Falk, p. 150.

Tying It Together

  1. Francis Collins, The Language of God (Free Press, 2006), p. 201.
  2. Quoted in Collins, p. 141.
  3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asa_Gray, last accessed May 8, 2008.
  4. Collins, p. 179.
  5. Timothy Keller, The Reason for God (Dutton, 2008), p. 87.
  6. Hebrews 1:3.
  7. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), pp. 72-76. Quoted in Collins, pp. 208-209.
  8. Lewis, p. 71.
  9. Quoted in Darrel Falk, Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds between Faith and Biology (InterVarsity Press, 2004), p. 169.
  10. Collins, p. 211.
  11. Quoted in Owen Gingerich, God's Universe (Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 121.