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Join us on our quest for the extraordinary!
Sam McKee (@polymath_sam) has 9 university qualifications across 4 subjects including doctorates in history and philosophy of science and molecular biology. He researches both at two British universities and contributes to both space science and cancer research. Meet fellow polymaths and discipline leaders working on the frontiers of research from all over the world. Be inspired to pursue knowledge and drive the world forwards.
Watch and share interviews with professors, lecturers, researchers, engineers, scientists and astronauts, right here! We talk to the most extraordinary people working on the frontiers for humanity, driving research forwards and changing the world that we live in. We dive deep with thinkers, academics and true icons - many of whom you won't yet have heard of.
Listen to us here and on podcast whilst you drive, exercise, do chores, and be inspired to pursue extraordinary in your own life.
www.sam-mckee.co.uk
Polymath World (00:01.369)
Hello and welcome to the Polymath World channel and I do have a true polymath here with us today. One of those wonderful people who's got two PhDs and is working in academic research and this is going to be really really fascinating because we're combining the sciences and the humanities which is often my favorite thing to do. I'm joined today by Professor David Wilkinson who is professor of theology at University of Durham. Thank you so much for joining me David.
David Wilkinson (00:26.936)
Sam, it's a pleasure, nice to be talking with you again.
Polymath World (00:30.191)
Yeah, always has been. I actually first heard you speak in a science and religion forum at a summer festival in 2011, so nearly 15 years ago. And it was good fun because you've often blended in clips from young Sheldon or family guy or anything and everything to help. And I just sort of sat there thinking, I think this is my guy.
And you've always been very warm and generous with students who want to chat afterwards. And that always left a mark on me. So it's great to be able to get you on here. Now, you have a PhD in astrophysics and a PhD in theology. We spoke to Dr. Julian Strain recently as well, who's a very similar background. And you guys who've done physics and philosophy or physics and theology always fascinate me. So.
Would you take us through your career journey? How did you, what was it like? you a real physics nerd as a child?
David Wilkinson (01:33.401)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Sam. No, I wasn't, I'm afraid. I I loved science fiction. I remember at the age of six also seeing the first moon landing, Neil Armstrong and a grainy black and white television. So I've always been fascinated by space.
I think science always interested me but I was never the kind of four year old who built a telescope or kind of did experiments in the back garden or things of that sort. My real passion as a child was something about sports. I loved sport, I still do. I went to a local comprehensive school, had a really good time at that comprehensive school. Very impressed with...
the maths teacher, the chemistry teacher and the physics teacher for different reasons. The physics teacher was a complete eccentric. He used to have hollowed out television which when he wanted to say something really important he would put the television over his head and speak out of the screen because he reckoned that we only remembered things that were on television. Chemistry...
teacher was a wonderful woman who also happened to be a lay Methodist. So there was a sense in which science was fascinating and interesting for me. But I think the turning point for me, looking back, and it's only looking back, was when I made a commitment to Jesus Christ at the age of 17.
This was just before going up to university. And at that stage, I'd chosen to do physics at university, partly because I was reasonably good at maths and therefore I thought I wouldn't have to work too hard with all these essays and things that artists do. But what happened was that as I began to learn about the God revealed in Jesus, the creator of the universe,
David Wilkinson (03:34.915)
then what Jesus had done in terms of the creation of the universe, what we were studying through science, became more more interesting. And then put alongside that, if I tell you the first two courses in Durham University Physics were quantum theory and general relativity, those were the first two courses that first-years did. Now none of this old
Polymath World (03:57.701)
Wow.
David Wilkinson (03:59.983)
science that you have to do where you have to roll wooden trolleys down benches or do experiments that people have done countless generations before you. But actually once you get into these big subjects which really challenge common sense you begin to see a universe which is fascinating, surprising.
and a universe that has mathematics as a core to understanding some of these bizarre concepts of time dilation or uncertainty of where an electron is. So it was those kind of influences I think that came together. There was this new sense of what it means to be a person of faith.
and what that means for being a scientist alongside some of really interesting science that you do at university.
Polymath World (04:57.485)
Right, you're saying that you're coming to faith, and I'm really intrigued, I'd like to ask you about that in a moment. Your coming to faith sort of accelerated your drive into physics as a student, sort of amplified your excitement and interest in the subject.
David Wilkinson (05:15.138)
Yes, very much so. And that kind of subverts the often retold model of conflict between science and faith. And lots of people say, well, you know, did you become a scientist first and how did you cope with the problems that faith had, et cetera, et For me, it was a very much more natural emergence of science and faith going together. I think
I sometimes use the illustration, it's a rather silly illustration. When my kids were small, they had many great qualities, but one of the things that they were both useless at was art. But they would bring home from school these endless pictures that they'd done at school. And we would put them on our refrigerator doors.
And if you came into our kitchen in those days and said, those are beautiful pictures, A, I would know you were lying. But B, we would say, yes, they are very beautiful indeed because we know and love the person who has created them.
Now when it comes to looking at the heavens, looking at the simplicity and complexity of the physical world, there was a sense in which faith was introducing me to the one who created these things and therefore that which had been created became even more important, even more interesting for me. Now I stress that this is with hindsight.
I think if you'd asked me when I was a 19 year old undergraduate in physics who had just joined the Christian Union and was beginning to emerge in terms of faith, I wouldn't have articulated it in that way. But perhaps what I would have said was, it seems to me that if Jesus is Lord, then he needs to be Lord not just of what I do on a Sunday, but also what I do Monday to Saturday as a scientist.
David Wilkinson (07:23.256)
And that actually the affirmation of Jesus as Lord is a conviction that Jesus is involved in everything. That there is always something to be said of God in everything. And that's how I would have articulated in those days. And so it was a sense of discovering the garden that God had given.
for us to be curious in.
Polymath World (07:55.312)
Wow, I have so many questions already and I do pride myself on having conversations with theists and atheists. mean, last week we had a chat with Lawrence Krauss and our first chat was with Peter Atkins who are two people who are certainly no friends of religion. But I am always intrigued by people who become religious later on. So you weren't raised a sort of
David Wilkinson (08:06.702)
Absolutely. Yeah, makes sense.
Yes,
Polymath World (08:24.261)
creationist who took like a fundamentalist position on on that and that never
David Wilkinson (08:29.346)
No, wasn't. My parents were Methodists. I was taken along, sometimes dragged along to church. And I think for me, it certainly wasn't a place where I had any particular views on the Bible or Genesis. I did have an intellectual belief in God. It seemed to me that
you know even as a young teenager, it kind of made sense that there was a God. But for me that God was a deistic creator, a God who created the universe and then went off for a cup of coffee not to have anything more to do with it. This wasn't a God who could be real and personal in present day experience, in my experience. So it was a kind of rational
Polymath World (09:10.725)
price.
David Wilkinson (09:27.852)
belief in a deity, nothing more than that. So I went along to church, partly out of respect for my parents, and then a number of things happened when I was 17, none of them to do with science. So I fell in love with a girl who went to the local Christian youth group, so I started to go to a different church, and
found, not a new girlfriend by the way, that never happened, but found amongst these young people in this church something different about their lives. couldn't quite put my finger on it. Second thing was, this was the late 70s, early 80s, and I was really into the music of Bob Dylan in a big way. And Dylan went through his Christian phase.
where he sang about Jesus in a language that I understood, in a culture that was mine. That made a huge difference to me. The third thing was I simply read the Bible for myself. I had never done that before, I had just listened to what other people had told me about the Bible, and particularly the Gospels. There was much of it that I didn't understand. And truth be told, Sam, there still much of the Bible that I don't fully understand. But...
I was taken, inspired, grabbed by this person of Jesus. And there was no other way that I could explain who Jesus was apart from. This was God himself walking the pages of history. And it was at that point that those influences came together and it seemed to me that the God who I'd believed in intellectually
actually could be real and present in my own life now.
Polymath World (11:29.593)
Yes, I mean my first doctorate is in history and philosophy of science. There's no way you can read the history of science and say well obviously there's no way religion and science can go together. I your answer, your initial answer didn't sound all that different from Einstein's belief really. It's sort of an impersonal Spinoza's god behind it all. And then of course Isaac Newton thought that he would be remembered most for his exposition of
David Wilkinson (11:41.902)
Absolutely.
David Wilkinson (11:48.109)
Yes.
That's right.
Polymath World (11:57.146)
the the gospel of St. John more than his more than his his science which obviously is not what he's more remembered for but you know if you try and read Newton's Principia it's you know talking about God all the time but you never had a Laplace moment of I have no need for this hypothesis once you started doing your degree and your PhD nothing like that
David Wilkinson (12:03.15)
Yes.
David Wilkinson (12:13.198)
of this.
David Wilkinson (12:21.486)
No, there were, I mean, before I come to that, let me just affirm the work that you and others do on this, because I think it is often neglected and people present a naive view of the history of science as if conflict has always been there and we know that that is not the case and is projected back onto the history. There were moments, however,
in my own development as a scientist and a Christian, of challenge. And I remember going as a PhD student. In those days, all the astrophysics PhD students were brought together for a summer school. And so about 40 or 50 of us throughout the country went down to the University of Sussex for a summer school in effectively introduction to astrophysics.
And we were the only people on campus in Falmouth and there was one pub. I think all the students and all the staff had left. Indeed, all the flies had left for the summer. But we all went down to the pub every evening. And I remember sitting with a very, very bright PhD astrophysicist who was there as well.
who in about half an hour convinced me that God didn't exist. Now, he was a very skilled arguer, very skilled in terms of philosophy in a way that I wasn't at that stage. I remember thinking, gosh, he's right. Arguments for existence of God don't...
don't really tie up. think his arguments for atheism are very strong. I remember wondering back to the student bedroom thinking, well, I've been a Christian for a few years. I suppose I better give it up. Now, it happened in those days that each student room had a Bible in it presented by the Gideons. And so I saw this Bible on my bedside table and so just sat down and thought, well,
Polymath World (14:39.659)
yes.
David Wilkinson (14:46.77)
and just opened it to John chapter 1, which we were talking about earlier. the Word became a human being and lived amongst us. And I realized that actually the arguments that had been given to me in the pub over half an hour hadn't taken into account at all really what Christianity is about. It had focused on this impersonal nature with a big N or
God in the impersonal, whereas at the heart of Christianity is the claim that God has revealed God's self in many and various ways, says the book of Hebrews, but supremely in his son, Jesus. And it's been, there have been moments where in a sense I've moved away from what I think, from what I know is the heart of Christianity and got involved in arguments on the, what I would call secondary arguments.
And when I've lost the big picture of what Christianity is about, which is a way of integrating lots of different arguments, Christianity does not rest on one knockdown logical proof. It exists as an integrating explanation of a whole number of phenomenon. And when I've forgotten about that, there have been those moments of real challenge for me.
So after five minutes of reading the prologue to John's Gospel, I thought, I'm alright here. This makes a lot of sense.
Polymath World (16:24.741)
That's really interesting. I'm really enjoying this already and we haven't even got into the astrophysics. just, but I want to ask, you know, I don't begrudge anyone or blame anyone for being an atheist these days. There's, there's, there's just so many things that I just find completely understandable why someone wouldn't believe. Whether it's personal suffering and issues like that, though,
David Wilkinson (16:37.198)
Sure
David Wilkinson (16:45.763)
Yes.
Polymath World (16:51.461)
I have noticed in my own life and the life of others that actually suffering as an existential experience, you can blame God, but I found it difficult to hang on to that for too long. And I have met a of people whose suffering has brought them to faith as well, and I've got to acknowledge that. But then there's just things like, well, why isn't there more physical evidence for the resurrection?
or having issues grappling with some of the some of the text in the Old Testament. I mean, we're not here today to get into all that, but I certainly don't blame anyone who doesn't believe for not believing. I completely understand that. And I recognize, I think that there are some some aspects of my own belief, which is based predominantly on a religious experience I had in the lab at Cambridge. I don't know if that's rational or not. I don't know if that's rational, but it is real.
David Wilkinson (17:29.966)
Yeah, sure.
David Wilkinson (17:42.44)
Yeah, absolutely.
Polymath World (17:47.846)
I don't know that it wasn't a vision of heaven, of the risen Christ, or the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but it was the most personal experience of my life. And so I wrestle with whether that's rational or not. But anyway, that's me, not you. I wonder why there are more... I meet more people like you who say things like you're saying in physics.
David Wilkinson (17:50.007)
Thank
David Wilkinson (18:07.224)
don't know.
Polymath World (18:15.417)
than I do in biology and chemistry and I wonder why that is. Is there something about people who are in physics and maths who faith comes to them more readily and deeply and easily than biology and chemistry or the social sciences? Is that just because biology and religion have had a lot more conflict in the last century, century and a half? What do you think?
David Wilkinson (18:18.094)
against.
David Wilkinson (18:39.736)
Yes, think absolutely, Sam. I think that's one of the factors. I think we're still living in the post-trauma of the Darwinian controversies, which again, as you know, are often misrepresented as a battle between church and science. In fact, the history is far more compelling and far more interesting than that. But nevertheless, legacy is, I think,
Polymath World (19:05.381)
Hmm.
David Wilkinson (19:09.742)
that biologists do have this history where they think there was conflict. I think the second thing is that biology perhaps hasn't been through some of the revolutions that modern physics has been through. And that is that we mentioned earlier in our conversation, general relativity and quantum theory, the two great
theories of 20th century physics. And in the 1920s onwards, they revolutionized our understanding of the universe. They said that our current understanding of the universe, inherited from Newton, was only a very, very small part of understanding. That in fact the universe is far more interesting, far more complex.
far more simple in lots of ways, but doesn't follow common sense, our everyday experience. Now I don't think that biology has quite had that revolutionary experience, which has led, I think, to a number of physicists having a new humility about how things are. I also think that there's something
still deeply embedded in biology about reductionism. Reducing a system to its component parts and understanding once you've understood the system in its smallest part then that means you understand the whole system. again as you know within biology that's actually not fully the case because we've now begun to understand emergence and complexity and a whole number of things. But I think the
kind of put those three things together and for your, let's say your typical undergraduate biologist, there's a lot of pressures coming from those stories, those narratives. As I talk to people much further on in terms of their research careers, I think all scientists, including social scientists, begin to realize that there are big questions here which
Polymath World (21:13.669)
you
David Wilkinson (21:37.518)
are the key to what science is about and that there's a greater openness towards questions of faith than the undergraduate physicists and undergraduate biologists who here at the University of Durham I often find myself having a talk to. So yeah.
Polymath World (21:59.398)
Interesting. Thank you your take on that. back to your story. You did astrophysics at... Did you do astrophysics at Durham? Sorry. Physics,
David Wilkinson (22:07.576)
Thank
David Wilkinson (22:12.686)
I did a physics degree first and then I had two options open to me. One was to go into particle physics and the second was into astrophysics. And this was quite a surprise to me because I was a late developer in ability. As I said, I'd gone to a comprehensive school, really good teachers, but I was one of three people from my school who went to university. And when I arrived at Durham to do a physics degree,
I certainly struggled to try and catch up with people who'd done additional maths and other things. And so I remember scraping through my first year exams by 51 % scraping through. And then things began to click for me in the second and third years. I began to enjoy and understand a bit better and was surprised at in a sense that I had some ability in it. And so
When I came to the end of my physics degree, felt that God may be calling me to full-time Christian ministry, but as I talked to various people and got their advice, they all said, that's too early, why don't you continue with the physics for a bit longer. so, PhD in particle physics, PhD in astrophysics. The head of department at Durham was
Arnold Wolfendale, Sir Arnold Wolfendale who was astronomer royal at the time. Big personality and cosmic ray physicist who was moving into astrophysics and he sat down with me and said we want to keep you in Durham, I want you to come and work with me and because Arnold knew how to convince people he said
And of course the Christian questions, he said, I know you're a Christian, the Christian questions are much easier to see in astrophysics than they are in particle physics. Now he was a very wise operator, Arnold Wolfendale, and so it won't surprise you to know that that argument won the day for me. And I stayed and started with him thinking that I'd be working in cosmic ray physics.
David Wilkinson (24:37.846)
And these are very high energy particles which come from a variety of sources into the Earth's atmosphere. Arnold, however, knew that astrophysics needed to develop in Durham. And so a number of us in this group were given other problems to look at. And one of the problems that I was given was the link between star formation rates, how many stars form in a galaxy.
compared to how much molecular hydrogen is in that galaxy. And as he was astronomer, head of department, very famous in lots of ways all over the world, he put me to work with one of his post-docs. One of his post-docs was a very bright young Indian astrophysicist, Narayan Chandra Rana. And we began work on star formation and chemical evolution of galaxies.
stars, as you know, as stars form and go through their lives they burn their hydrogen and their helium into carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, all the interesting stuff that makes us us. So we worked on a number of problems in this area and I found it fascinating. Theoretical physics is really, it's
It's much easier at times than experimental physics or biology because you can stumble on a model fairly early and if that model happens to work then actually you don't have to wait for results from a big experiment in the third year of your PhD. We were fortunate that we stumbled on a model of how to relate star formation to molecular hydrogen and a little bit of dark matter and things of that sort.
I was fortunate to get this model fairly early, which meant that the PhD journey for me was freedom and joy rather than desperately trying to find a thesis to write up at the end of three years. So it was fascinating to have that experience and I'm very grateful for it. It doesn't happen to everyone and it was a bit of luck.
Polymath World (26:55.109)
You're very lucky there. We've certainly heard plenty of horror stories. So you really enjoyed, you really, it sounds like you really enjoyed your PhD project. Did you go?
David Wilkinson (27:01.41)
That's right.
David Wilkinson (27:07.086)
Yeah, I enjoyed working as part of a group. again, this is really interesting compared to theology. Theology PhDs go off to the library and sit by themselves for hours upon hours. And you'll know this in your own experience. Whereas scientists, we work together in a group. We would all go into a shared suite of offices. We would all have coffee together in the morning.
the whole department would have coffee together in the morning. We'd have tea in the afternoon. Even if you'd been up all night and in those days you had to be up all night in order to run computer programs. You were still expected to be in for morning coffee and to chat with the other physicists and astrophysicists. So I did enjoy it and
when I eventually made the move away from science to theology, it wasn't because I got frustrated with science. It wasn't because I had found problems within the process or the methodology or the culture of science. It was simply that I felt God wanted to move me on. And I still enjoy science immensely and I'm excited by it.
Polymath World (28:28.613)
So what science did you get to do after your PhD or what science do you get to be involved with since then or even these days?
David Wilkinson (28:38.168)
Well these days, in a sense, I don't work professionally as an astrophysicist anymore. I need to probably fill in that when I felt a call to ministry and therefore to go and study theology, I thought at that point I was giving up science. There was a real sense in which I was coming to the end of my
scientific career, was going to become a church leader and I felt that's what God wanted me to do. And at that point I was at peace with giving up science and I thought that would be the end of it. I then arrived in Cambridge to study theology to find that a certain person called John Polkinghorne, former
Polymath World (29:34.469)
Thank
David Wilkinson (29:35.438)
Professor of Particle Physics at the Cavendish had just arrived in Cambridge at roughly the same time and in the theology department he was now teaching a course in theology and science which would eventually become a book called One World, one of his first books on science and theology. So I found immediately that within theology I was being given back not just astrophysics but a whole number of different
Polymath World (29:53.829)
Yeah, legendary.
David Wilkinson (30:03.214)
insights and questions of science. And then I did a dissertation with John as part of my undergraduate work in theology. And then found some that, as I went out and I led a church in Liverpool for a decade, what happened was that people seemed to be interested in someone who was a scientist and who happened to be a Christian leader. And so members of the congregation
would ask me questions. remember going to our church luncheon club, which was for elderly people every Wednesday, sitting beside an 80 year old who'd left school at the age of 14, never left Liverpool where we were. And she turned to me and rather than conversation about the weather, which often happened, she said to me, now then David, this Stephen Hawking I've been reading about, what's his theory of quantum gravity?
Polymath World (31:00.687)
You
David Wilkinson (31:03.298)
different questions within Christian ministry, whether they be about physics or evolution or aliens or we were beginning to see some of the technological transformations of society, genetic engineering and others. Those questions began to come to me as a Christian leader and I needed some theological thinking to engage with.
And so as time developed, I was given back this kind of engagement with science, not as I stress, as an ongoing professional scientist. I wasn't working in the physics department, but I was spending time with scientists from lots of different disciplines in conversation, in discussion, whether it be those who were members of the congregation or those within media or broadcasting or
indeed at some of conventions that you and I have shared over the years. And that was quite a surprise to me, that often when you give something up, God gives back in far more abundance. I've been learning that and continue to learn.
Polymath World (32:22.489)
Wow. So there's two things that I really want to go into a bit deeper. The first is definitely John Polkinghorne, Sir John Polkinghorne, former president of Queen's College, University of Cambridge, knighted by the Queen for his services to science on the same team as Stephen Hawking, but obviously a lot less famous popularly than Stephen Hawking, but professor of mathematical physics.
David Wilkinson (32:31.64)
Yes.
Polymath World (32:50.853)
but also got ordained and became a priest in the Church of England, I think. Not too far from Cambridge. I mean, he remained involved with Cambridge for the rest of his life and he passed several years ago now, didn't he? But he's got to be the most famous and important writer on science and religion of his generation.
David Wilkinson (32:50.893)
Yes.
David Wilkinson (32:58.254)
exactly
David Wilkinson (33:08.821)
That's right.
Polymath World (33:17.955)
and you had the opportunity to study and learn from him. That's incredible. I'd love to know more about that.
David Wilkinson (33:25.198)
Sure. So you're right, John was at the height of his scientific fame and work and came to a point where he felt that God wanted him to go into Christian ministry as a priest in the Church of England. He therefore resigned his position, his chair at the Cavendish and went to Westcote.
house in Cambridge as an ordinate and studying theology. In fact, he had more qualifications as an ordinate than any of the staff at the theological college. And then he served as curacy and priest in Kent and then returned as Dean of Trinity Hall in Cambridge and then moved to become president of Queens College in Cambridge.
John was one of those people who I think has been often not given the credit within the theological community for just how important his voice was. With Arthur Peacock and Ian Barber in the late 20th century, these three voices, and they were all, as we call them, scientist theologians.
Polymath World (34:38.233)
Right.
Mm.
David Wilkinson (34:54.328)
They'd all come from science with distinguished careers and then got involved in theology. They revolutionized, I think, the theological academy by providing a space for science and religion within theology departments, which up to that point had been maybe one or two interested individuals over the years. But I think also, Polkinhorn
reached out and his books were accessible to those who had a scientific background, clergy, lay leaders within the church, and indeed those who were on the fringes of faith. And so he would give talks and broadcasts as well as writing books in a way which was
we would recognize in some ways as evangelism or apologetics, but it was a very gentle form of evangelism or apologetics. He had a very firm Christian faith. As part of the Anglican tradition, he would read his Bible regularly, would say his prayers regularly. And indeed, that was the working behind the presentation of what he would talk about. He wasn't the type of Christian
academic or indeed lecturer who would say as it says in Romans chapter 1, but you can't read Polkinhorn on science and faith without realizing that he had a very strong belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. He had a very strong belief in the Trinitarian nature of God. And when you met him and spent time with him, there was this sense of deep
Polymath World (36:38.085)
Mm.
David Wilkinson (36:51.562)
encounter, experience of Jesus Christ. And he was very kind to me over the years. I think we owe a lot, don't we, to those who've gone before us, those who have modeled a way of being a scientist and a Christian with authenticity, both as a scientist and as a Christian. And I think it was that authenticity.
third was the chord to John's character.
Polymath World (37:29.753)
You use the word deep and the thing I really appreciated about Polkinghorne, I've read a lot of his books, is that his books aren't very long. They're not very big, but they are extremely deep. I mean, as much as anyone I've ever read, you get a small A6 100 page book and you feel like you've taken in a lot more than that because it is very deep. But also you're right, he's very accessible. A real gem. I can hear...
David Wilkinson (37:40.46)
That's right.
That's right.
Polymath World (37:59.492)
the atheist friends of mine in my head saying what a waste to have such an incredible scientific mind leave their post and go and train as a vicar what a waste for humanity but with Arthur Peacock who you mentioned who I absolutely love and Ian Barber those three men they transformed the discipline of academic science and religion they absolutely changed the
David Wilkinson (38:27.81)
Yes, they did and also made wider contributions. So, Polkynon, for example, was a member of various government committees on science and technology. And often this broadening that theology gives you allows you to see how science engages with real life and real people. John, of course, used to joke that
you know the way that brain cells are after the age of 30 mathematicians go downhill very quickly because the brain cells don't cope as much but I think his ability for thinking in a more general way that located science towards making the world a better place was not just
about the academic science religion world was a wider question and I think more and more we're seeing scientists who take that sense of communication of the science, that sense of responsibility, that sense of openness to bigger questions far more seriously and I think people like Polkinhorn and others were part of that movement.
The sense in which theology allows science to engage with a wider constituency is really important and how science helps theology engage with a wider constituency is also important.
Polymath World (40:18.403)
Yeah, physics lends itself very readily to the big questions. It's not a discipline for those who aren't given to awe and wonder. I mean, my philosophy of science PhD was on Sir Arthur Eddington and also Sir James Jeans, Edward Arthur Milne, very, very Christian people. Maybe not so much in Jeans, but Jeans is the one who wrote very much about God being a master mathematician.
David Wilkinson (40:25.134)
does.
David Wilkinson (40:41.646)
Absolutely.
Polymath World (40:47.929)
rather than an engineer. And that was really where those things went. Of course, Milne ended up writing Modern Cosmology and the Christian Idea of God, one of his last books. Eddington as a Quaker, The Nature of the Physical World, mean, they all sort of conceived of God as something of a more mathematical mind, very much with a capital
Could you tell us about how you, coming from astrophysics, what kind of work you've done in theology? I think my atheist friends would just imagine that science and religion is a discipline where you just defend creationism and it could not be more the opposite of that. It really is. That's antithesis of it. So what does it look like?
David Wilkinson (41:33.762)
That's right, exactly right. I don't like the word defend at all because it's never been really part of my experience in it. I think what Polkinghorne and others did was to establish the relationship between science and faith as one of dialogue. That is, just as we're having a conversation here, science and theology, Christian faith and science.
Polymath World (41:55.076)
rise.
David Wilkinson (42:03.562)
are in an open dialogue. Now the advantage of that is that Sam, this conversation at times is messy. Sometimes we're making different points. Sometimes we may disagree in a conversation. The conversation never comes to an end. It will continue between us whether it's been broadcast or not. We'll keep continuing. And so science...
poses questions, I think, for faith and theology likewise poses questions for science. And so although they have their own realms of interest and focus, you have got these overlapping circles with a messiness in the overlap, which actually is really fruitful and exciting. So for instance, if we take a very, very simple
profound truth from astrophysics and say the universe is big. Now I mean everyone knows that of course but it's not trivial how big the universe is. If you begin to take that insight from astrophysics and say to our theological colleagues what do you make of this?
What are human beings in the vastness of the universe as Islamists said many years ago? Why did God create such a big universe? And incidentally this might be an important corrective to God as the mathematician because the vastness of the universe might be a sense of God not just as mathematician but also as God as extravagant artist. God who just
loves to create. And then what about a sense of just how big God is, how we image God, how we understand God, how does such a God reveals God's self. So there's a whole number of things that begin to be important for people of faith. Likewise, the theologian who says God is a God of order and a God of
David Wilkinson (44:23.96)
faithfulness and a God who is the universal creator. Then that goes back to science and says, it's not surprising is it that we have laws of physics which are universal and orderly and understandable or intelligible. And so we've got an ongoing conversation here. I think often when people think about science and faith, you're right, they think about some kind of defending.
against or ethical questions. What are the ethical questions involved in genetic engineering and AI? Those questions are important but there are some deeper fundamental questions I think about the nature of reality, the nature of God, the nature of the universe itself. Where do the laws of physics come from? It's a question that I find myself
Polymath World (44:59.279)
Yes.
David Wilkinson (45:21.826)
fascinated by, but also many of my friends who wouldn't call themselves Christians, who as cosmologists are asking the question, where do these laws come from that seems so beautiful and elegant and intelligible to us? So I think there's multi-layers of conversation going on here between theology and science, if we're prepared to keep that openness of conversation going.
Polymath World (45:49.06)
May I ask you what your opinion is on aliens and what effect that would have? There's very interesting information coming out from recent stuff on Mars of these sort leopard spotted rocks that imply that life used to be there if it's not there now. if there was life on other planets, would that have any effect on your theology?
David Wilkinson (46:09.826)
Yay.
David Wilkinson (46:18.606)
It would have an effect but it wouldn't be a serious problem for me. Let me put it like that. I think firstly, scientifically, the jury is still out. There's a number of arguments for and against the possibility of life. And then we have to make a distinction with intelligent life. Most people watch Star Trek because they're interested in intelligent life, not because there's little bits of bacteria.
the Starship Enterprise to discover. often in the popular discussion we merge those together. But the possibility of non-human life is not a difficulty for theologians because we're surrounded by it on the Earth. How we care for the non-human creation and environment and how we marvel at the extravagance of the non-human.
Polymath World (46:50.649)
Thank
David Wilkinson (47:17.102)
creation. If that involved organisms deep below the surface on Mars in the permafrost, that's just part of God's extravagance for me. I think some of the more interesting questions come with the possibility of intelligent life. Here we've got a whole number of scientific issues at the moment. We've seen the growth in observing exoplanets.
planets beyond our solar system, 5,500 if not 6,000 by the time we're talking, some of which are terrestrial rocky planets. Might there be intelligent life on some of those? The US government and senate have been taking seriously unidentified aerial phenomenon, what we used to call unidentified flying objects. Are we a visitor
planet. R.V. Loeb at Harvard has been claiming that one or two bits of rock that have been flying through our solar system are not just bits of rock but remnants from an alien civilization. So there's a huge kind of interest in this. I think for the Christian theologian at one level there's some interesting questions. Not about creation because Christian theologians since
the Church Fathers have been open to the argument that if God is free, God can create whatever he wants in the universe. We shouldn't be worried about that. But the question is, what's the relationship of the Jesus event, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth here on the earth in Palestine 2000 years ago? What might be the relationship of that to other
intelligent life that may be elsewhere in the universe. And their Christians have disagreed. Milne, who you've worked on and you'll know, said, I can only think that the Jesus event is once for all for the whole universe. If there is other life out there, then
David Wilkinson (49:40.578)
Well, actually, Milne is forced eventually to say we have to become cosmic missionaries and take the gospel to other parts of the universe. That's a long missionary journey, by the way. Others opposed Milne and said, if there is other life elsewhere in the universe and it's intelligent, might God have become incarnate in the flesh of aliens? So if there are little green women, little green men.
Polymath World (49:46.533)
Thanks.
Polymath World (49:51.589)
I'm
David Wilkinson (50:07.714)
does God become incarnate in little green flesh in the same way that he became a human being on the earth? And so the question of multiple incarnations raises this question. I think this is interesting theological speculation. I think at the end of the day, Sam, the God that I see in Jesus is big enough to work this out.
Polymath World (50:37.188)
Ha ha.
David Wilkinson (50:37.29)
and until we actually see other life and counter other life, if it's intelligent, has it sinned in the same way that human beings have sinned, etc etc. There's a lot of speculation here, so I'm relaxed about it, but think that there's some interesting theology that we can do together on it.
Polymath World (51:01.933)
I think I'm very happy to leave that to the theologians. The scientist in me says, I don't like speculation, just give me data, actual data I can work with.
David Wilkinson (51:13.582)
Well, absolutely. you're right. You know, spot on on that because in a sense, you know, until we get the data and particularly with intelligent life, until we get the data which comes from encounter and we find out ways of communicating so that we can get data from intelligent aliens, which is in itself quite an interesting question. Yeah, we've got to we've got to
we've got to wait. But I think just as a scientist plays with models, before you get the data to tie down those models. So theologians can play with different models of the incarnation before we eventually get the data to tie down. Yeah, fair point.
Polymath World (52:05.561)
You've written a number of books. Could you tell us briefly about them for those interested?
David Wilkinson (52:10.19)
Yeah, thank you. All available in bargain basements as in the run up to Christmas, I'm sure. Well, one of them is exactly on the question we've just been talking about. So Science, Religion and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence was a book I did for OUP just a few years ago. And it charts not just some of the science at the time when I wrote it, some of that has progressed.
But perhaps more importantly, the story of how Christian theologians over many, many centuries were some of the first to speculate about other worlds and did so because of this sense that God was free to create. And then I come back to some of the questions we've just talked about, creation and incarnation and things of that sort. The most recent book I've
I've just published is by Wipfenstock and it's called, How Does God Act in the World? Science, Miracle and Mission. And this was a series of lectures, annual lectures called the Didsbury Lectures, which gave me a chance to write up for those a little more interested in the theology. Some of the questions about how does God act?
Is it all ruled out by Newtonian clockwork mechanism? No. What does chaos and quantum theory say to the issue? So there are scientific issues. But then there's that question we talked about earlier, the presence in our world of suffering and evil. How does that come into the question, how does God act in the world? And then the question of miracle. And here, particularly following the work of Craig Keener, the sense that
Throughout history and throughout the global church, this openness to God doing unusual things, signs and wonders become important. But then the final lecture or final chapter of the book I think for me is perhaps the most important and that is, okay this is the academic discussion, how does this work out if you're in a local church? What does it mean for the way you pray for people?
David Wilkinson (54:38.222)
What does it mean for the way you talk to people about suffering and how do you embody in a local church death and resurrection? And so I've tried to hold together the science and the theology with also the practicalities of what this means for the local church. And whether, well, as you know,
You never quite know whether you're successful in writing a book that works or not, but that's the most recent one.
Polymath World (55:14.777)
I think I am... I think... Yes, I've got one on my shelf actually that I picked up. Here. God, Stephen Hawking and the Multiverse. I think I picked that up at the last time I saw you when you were speaking at the conference in Birmingham. But I haven't read it yet, so would you tell us about this one?
David Wilkinson (55:26.252)
Yes. Yes.
David Wilkinson (55:33.582)
absolutely and there I need to acknowledge that this is largely written not by me but by a brilliant writer, physicist, he's a physics teacher in York called Dave Hutchins and this is a successor to a book I wrote many years ago called God the Big Bang and Stephen Hawking and here we explore
Hawking's particular views on the origin of the universe and Hawking of course believed that simply to say that if we don't have a scientific theory for the very beginning of the universe that must be God Hawking said no no no that's a God of the gaps type argument so Hawking believed that science itself could describe the initial conditions
of the universe's expansion. And in order to do that he needs to bring together those two great theories of 20th century physics, quantum theory and general relativity. And at the moment we still don't have a way of doing that. Hawking speculated about what such a theory might look like and what its consequences would be. And in his own A Brief History of Time and leading through to a later book called The Grand Design,
Often he thought about this was about an absence of God, that in a sense philosophy and theology had little to contribute to it. I certainly think that Hawking does us a service, a very good service, by getting rid of and therefore in absence not of the Christian God but of a deistic creator, a God who simply winds the universe up.
and then says cheerio folks see you on judgment day. That's not the Christian understanding of a God who sustains every moment of the universe's history, sustains the laws by which the universe develops. So what we try and do in this book is just tease out some of the science that leads to the need for a quantum theory of gravity, bringing together quantum theory and general relativity.
David Wilkinson (58:00.494)
but also some of the limits of that theory and what it may or may not explain. you'll know that Sam that often Hawking talked about a theory of everything, or a lot of people use that of his work as if once we get this theory, it would explain everything.
Well, no it wouldn't. It would explain the initial conditions of the universe, but it doesn't explain everything. And we've got to be careful about sometimes the way that science is translated into the media and people are given wrong impressions of what scientific theories can or cannot do.
Polymath World (58:48.101)
Fascinating, absolutely fascinating. If people want to find out more about you or find your work, where should they go?
David Wilkinson (58:57.006)
We have a project at the moment which is called Equipping Christian Leadership in an Age of Science. E-Class, E-C-L-A-S. And if you Google E-Class Project dot org, you'll find our website and some of the things we're doing at the moment. And one of the things particularly that we're doing is we're looking at how Christian leaders and theologians
see scientists and science in different contexts. So our partners are in post-communist, Roman Catholic Poland, in the developing world in Kenya, in Singapore with its multitude of different cultures and religions, and in India. And we work together on research projects and insights to see how we can support, equip,
Christian leadership in an age of science.
Polymath World (01:00:00.729)
Wow, fascinating. I've really enjoyed this conversation with you. It's been wonderful to dig into your story. It's been wonderful to talk about faith, actually, I've got to say. I mean, this is by no means like a Christian channel or anything, but I've really, really enjoyed digging into it. So thank you. And I hope we can speak again, perhaps maybe on science and religion with someone else as well. But in the meantime, thank you so much, Professor David Wilkinson.
David Wilkinson (01:00:27.246)
Sam, always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for the work that you're doing. You take care. Bye bye now.