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If you could ask God one question what would it be? The “Why God Why” podcast is dedicated to exploring the questions that matter most in your life.
Deep questions often don’t have easy answers. We realize that we won’t solve all the world’s problems in one podcast. Our goal is to share our life experience, interview knowledgeable guests and look at how Jesus might interact with our concerns. We also hope to have a ton of fun in the process because even though the issues might be serious, it doesn’t mean that we always need to be.
No matter where you are on your spiritual journey, we are honored to have you with us!
>> Peter Englert: Welcome to the why god, why podcast. My name is Peter Englert. I am one of the cohosts of the show. We are in a series, questions of our day, and today's question is kind of based on some listener interaction. we're coming back to the topic of science and the Bible. doesn't science disprove the Bible? And we actually have someone that attends Browncroft Community Church who is a part of, just our Church. And Candice actually reached out to me and said, hey, I might be interested. And Candice here you are.
>> Candice Fazar: Here I am.
>> Peter Englert: We'll get into more with Candice but we are brought to you by Browncroft Community Church and the Luma Vaz podcast network. And as I mentioned today, we will be, responding to the question, doesn't, science disprove the Bible? So, Candice we're recording this on a Friday, and it's sunny. How do you feel about that?
>> Candice Fazar: It's a good day today. I really enjoy the coming of spring.
>> Peter Englert: Okay.
>> Candice Fazar: Yeah, we seem to be heading that direction, and maybe summer is right around the corner. And that's exciting, too.
>> Peter Englert: You know, interestingly enough, I just talked with a gentleman that, is a solar panelist, installer, and he told me that spring is his favorite season and just, it was interesting. What a great segue into science.
>> Candice Fazar: It's good for installing solar panels. Is it great for just being outside or does it work? Do they work better in the spring? All these good questions.
>> Peter Englert: See, that's why you're a great scientist. So let's talk about your story. So, one of the things that I was kind of surprised by is I believe you grew up in a home of, like, ten kids.
>> Candice Fazar: Yep. Yes. I have, I always say nine or ten siblings, depending upon how you count. we have a yours, mine in our situation. So we have my biological family. There are three of us kids, and the step side, there are five, and then there are two that are ours and one that's borrowed. So, that is my nuclear family. Growing up, there were lots of people always around. It was, if that has its pluses and its minuses, there's always some around, and then there's always someone around. So.
>> Peter Englert: Well, let's dive deep. Personally, just in that season, at an early age, how are you navigating faith in science? Or even. When did you kind of it click? Hey, I'd love to do science.
>> Candice Fazar: Well, so as Peter mentioned, I grew up in the Church. My big family went to a big Church back in St. Paul, Minnesota. And Church has always been part of my life. And so as I began to develop in my studies and study physical science, earth science, moving forward, I always viewed that in the context of, well, Church is part of my life and science is just something new that I'm adding to that. So from the get go, I wouldn't say there was any true conflict. I encountered conflict more, I would say, as I began to meet others who did not share that same background and they saw science from a very different perspective than I did. And so that, for me, kind of raise some of these questions. I remember there was a time in, I think it was 9th grade, we were in, in this teacher's class, and we were learning about, oh, we were learning about the strong force which holds the, the nucleus together in an atom. And that teacher said, he goes, well, I have my own reasons for why that, why that works. And we were, of course, as a class, very curious as to what his reasons were. And we, he said, tell us, tell us. And he's like, are you sure you want to know? Like, yes, yes, we, absolutely, we definitely want to know. And he goes, are you sure? I'm like, yes, yes, please tell us. So he says, you asked for it. He pulls out, opens the drawer on his desk, pulls out his bible, opens up to a verse, and I'm sorry to recall the reference, but it says, and in him, all things hold together. And he closed his bible and he tucked it back in his desk, and that was that. And so, and I don't recall any specific reactions to that. I know my reaction to that was like, hey, I wasn't expecting that. It was a very, it was a public school that I went to. I didn't go to a christian school or anything like that. And again, we asked for it. So we asked him to share his reasonings and his understandings, and there it was. And I think that was my first introduction, at least that I recall, to that connection between faith and science, and that there might be something there that there is, that it is, that why can't god be part of science? M why can't he be part of the conversation? Because we tend to leave him out a lot, and I don't, that was a very interesting, eye opening experience for me.
>> Peter Englert: We're gonna come back to that.
>> Candice Fazar: Okay.
>> Peter Englert: But, ah, let's keep moving in your story.
>> Candice Fazar: Sure.
>> Peter Englert: Tell us. you know, so you go to high school, you develop a love for science, you grow up in the Church. And I think if our listeners or parents their probably first reaction is, oh, no, my kids go into college. there's actually statistics out there that kids that grow, up regularly going to Church actually become stronger christians. you talked about not knowing statistics. It just hit my mind. So I just want to kind of be careful, but, somebody's probably going to fact check me on that. So then at some point, you decide, graduate from high school, you want to go into science, pick us back up with college.
>> Candice Fazar: well, my college journey is an interesting one, and perhaps one that maybe some of you know, maybe some of you don't know, most of you probably don't know in that I had dreams when I was gonna go to college, and those dreams, I was gonna be the next Amy grant. That was my goal in life. I was gonna be the next best singer and sing about all sorts of things. And. And I picked a. I picked a college that would allow me to learn. in particular, I wanted to sing. So I went to college as a music major, and I picked Bethel college at the time. It's now Bethel university. And I find this. This is a moment where you go. A man decides in his own heart, but god chooses his steps. And I picked the school that wasn't known for the thing that I wanted to do. And I started off in that major, and then I took physics as my lab science in my sophomore year, and I picked it because it's the clean science, don't have, to do messy things. And I really enjoyed it in high school. I did well in it in high school. And so I, So I. All right, so I chose to do. Chose to do physics, and so I was looking at which one I needed to do. There were multiple varieties of physics that you could do, and I chose to do physics for majors as compared to non majors because I enjoyed it, and it was fun, and why not? And so I started studying physics there, and it was after. I think after my first exam, when I did rather well, the professor came to me and said, you should do more of this. You should stick around, you know, you're good at this. And I said, well, okay. And it was at that time that physics started just to take me under their wing and pull me in. And music was less kind just in, generally, because music is. There's a lot of competition in music and in science, there's a lot of camaraderie. It's a different atmosphere, and I just. I fell in love with the group, the studies, the science, and I just. I love figuring things out. I like it when the light bulb goes on for me and for others. And so that was kind of how I started really getting into science, and I just chose to stick around and finally declared a major and really developed that. so I didn't really go to college planning to study science. but god ended up putting me at a place where Bethel university. Bethel university is actually known for their physics program. That is their strong suit. That is where they shine. And I get a kick out of the fact that that is where god said, you should go to Bethel. I knew that I should go to Bethel, and I went to Bethel, and god steered me, so to speak. He put me in that.
>> Peter Englert: Well, some of our listeners won't know you actually sing on our worship team.
>> Candice Fazar: I do.
>> Peter Englert: You still get to do that. That's great.
>> Candice Fazar: It is a love of mine that I will always have, and I am very thankful to be part of the team here.
>> Peter Englert: Our executive pastor, Jason Harris, who used to be our worship pastor, when he found out that you were interested, he gave you a big thumbs up. So, anyways, he's also your small group leader.
>> Candice Fazar: Yeah, we have connections.
>> Peter Englert: There you go. so you graduate from Bethel not knowing that you were going to end up in physics, not knowing you were going to end up in one of the best physics schools that you go to.
>> Candice Fazar: Right?
>> Peter Englert: Yeah, go ahead.
>> Candice Fazar: I was, yeah, I, had no idea that I was going to. Well, I knew I was going to go to Bethel. I didn't know that they were known for physics at the time.
>> Peter Englert: Okay, so there you go. And, you graduate.
>> Peter Englert: Now you got a big decision to make.
>> Candice Fazar: What did you do? Well, I didn't have any clue what I wanted to do after graduation. I just. I love to learn, so I just, I just learned. And my parents thought I was going to be a professional student because of how much I just, I take on more and more. I actually ended up as a double major at Bethel, taking both physics and music so I could learn as much as possible.
>> Peter Englert: Not too shabby.
>> Candice Fazar: Yeah. And I took Bible classes because that was really interesting, too. And let's see, what else can I take? It was kind of my mental process. And, so I neared the end of my career, and, of course, as many students these do these days, ran out of money, didn't have any money to continue learning more stuff. And so I remember my college physics professor coming to me and saying, well, what are you going to do next? And I said, I have no idea. He goes, you should go to graduate school. And I was like, oh, no, I can't afford more school. And he said, well, they'll pay you to go. And I said, okay, so that is quite literally how that went. And I asked him where I should apply, and he gave me some suggestions, and I applied there, and then I ended up at the University of Rochester to study, for my physics PhD program.
>> Peter Englert: So now I'm totally new with this. So you didn't have to even do a master's. You could jump right to your PhD.
>> Candice Fazar: Yes. So on the way to the masters, you do a, sorry. On the way to a PhD program. On the way to the PhD. Let me try that one more time. On the way to the PhD, you have to earn your master's along the way.
>> Peter Englert: Oh, okay.
>> Candice Fazar: So I do also have a master's in physics. I get a kick out of the fact that I have a bachelor of arts, a master's of arts, and a doctorate of philosophy, all in physics, like.
>> Peter Englert: Okay, let's have some fun for a second. Sure. What was your thesis or final project, whatever they call it.
>> Candice Fazar: All right. so I did my graduate work in infrared detectors for space based astronomy. So I work on. I used to describe it as cameras for Hubble, but not that. So I work on the actual sensing devices that are sensitive to the infrared wavelength region, and those are on telescopes that go to space. So to observe the stars low background. So that's what we did.
>> Peter Englert: So, for an idiot podcast co host, that.
>> Candice Fazar: That's my camera's for Hubble.
>> Peter Englert: what star or even what galaxy? Like, when you were looking, like, bring us in there.
>> Candice Fazar: Okay, nerd out, as I should say. So, I spent my graduate career studying the device physics. So how the devices work, how to make them better, how to understand what they're doing, because if you're going to do science, if you're going to look out at, various stars and galaxies and or one of the projects I'm currently working on, which is looking for extra galactic background lights. So the things behind all the things that you know that are there, you need to have really sensitive devices, and those devices need to be able to, show you the actual true signal of what's coming from out there. So you need to make sure that what you're looking at isn't limited by your sensing device. so that is really where I spent a lot of time in understanding devices and how to make, how to prevent them from being the limiting factor in your measurements.
>> Peter Englert: I'm going to try to see if I understand it, and I'm going to thank doctor Kim cheek from the University of Valley Forge. I actually think she teaches at the University of North Florida. So, doctor Kim cheek, if you're listening. There you go. So I think what I hear you saying, what I'm picturing is the telescope gets on a star, and because it's the speed of light or it keeps moving, you want to make sure what you're looking at isn't literally left in the dust, but you're actually looking at where it is. Is that a very lay way? No. Please tell me if I'm in. No, no, go ahead.
>> Candice Fazar: I'm trying to understand, what you mean by that. so there's a number of different things when you're looking out in space. You can look at the darkest spot in space where it seems like there is nothing. And there's a whole host of galaxies and stars that you just cannot see because they're very, very faint, because they're very, very far away. And so, and so I don't know if you've seen an image that looks kind of grainy because it just doesn't have much signal. if you were to look at stars that are in a very dark space with a detector limited, sensor, it would look very grainy. So you see maybe a little bit of stuff. You can't really make anything out because most of what you're looking at is just noise. It looks like static. So I used to call it the bug race. When we had those old tvs, the blacks and black and white, little things all over the screen, it just looks like that. so what you need to do is minimize that behavior so you can actually bring out, draw out the signal from the stars. So you have to really lower the, the detector's own internal mechanisms, from limiting what you're looking at. So it's just, it's for those of you that are sign that are, that have a little electronics background, we're trying to increase the signal to noise ratio. So you want your signal much bigger than your noise so you know what you're looking at.
>> Peter Englert: Got it.
>> Candice Fazar: That's the general.
>> Peter Englert: So you're. That's what you're currently working on at rat?
>> Candice Fazar: That's what I did for my graduate work.
>> Peter Englert: Okay.
>> Candice Fazar: what I'm currently working on at RIt is a little more holistic. I do work a little bit on the detectors, but I also work on integrating them into a telescope payload and making sure that they're functioning properly and working, with the whole team to prep a payload for launch into orbit or launch into. Well, most recently, we did a sounding rocket. And I didn't know what a sounding rocket was before I joined the group, but a sounding rocket is essentially a scientific payload that goes on a rocket to take some measurements when it gets out past the atmosphere or past some board of the atmosphere. And so we did that recently on May 5, actually, we launched a rocket.
>> Peter Englert: cinco de Mayo.
>> Candice Fazar: Cinco de Mayo. We had a m. Cinco de Mayo rocket launch from white Sands missile range, and we launched a telescope up to measure some extra galactic background light. So, as soon as the rocket was passed a threshold with regards to the atmosphere, the door opens, and it's amazing what they can do with their attitude control systems. And they point at a star, and they sit there and they stare. They sit and stare for a little bit, and then they reset the measurement. Look at another star and take another measurement. And as they move around a, star field, you. You can. You pick up light. So you pick up light not only from the stars, but from everything around it. And the goal is to figure out what's producing that extra light that you don't know about.
>> Peter Englert: So, let's back up.
>> Candice Fazar: Yeah, sorry. No, no, no. Jumped ahead.
>> Peter Englert: Well, no, no. I love this, and I actually think it's helpful for our listeners that you're not talking about this theoretically. You're talking about, like, this is like, you eat physics for breakfast, so I think that's good. So you moved to Rochester?
>> Candice Fazar: Yes.
>> Peter Englert: And I'm not hearing, like, this huge tension of, like, do I trust the Bible? Do I trust science?
>> Candice Fazar: Like,
>> Peter Englert: I actually hear it pairing very well. Is that true? Or how would you.
>> Candice Fazar: That is. I would say that's true for me. So, as in, I. I haven't found things in my discoveries in science that lead me to think that the Bible was untrue or inaccurate. I know others have encountered things that have. That have really. That they've really struggled with. And I find the more that. The more that I discover, the more that I see that those two things are. Again, why can't god be a part of the conversation? I think God's excited when we figure stuff out. I think god encourages us to figure stuff out. I think that, as we learn more. god. god. Cheers for us as we. Oh, they uncovered that new little thing. I'm really excited about that. What are they going to uncover next? Because he gave us a mind like him. We are made in his image. We can create, we can think. We can logically deduct, we can explore. We have these characteristics because god made us, in a sense, like him. Right? And so I do science because god made me that way. god made me to do science to uncover things. In Genesis, he talks about fill the earth and subdue it. And I looked up the word subdue at one point, and it's too, It's to. Now I'm forgetting what I. What I. What I uncovered. But it's to. If I think about it, it's to it. It's to. To rule over. He wants us to rule over it. And in order to rule over it, we have to understand what we're ruling over. We can't be good rulers in his image doing what he's called us to do if we don't understand what it is we are expected to. To. To, What we are expected to.
>> Peter Englert: It sounds like engage or study. Like, Yeah. So let's go to a fun example. So you and I had coffee.
>> Candice Fazar: Yes.
>> Peter Englert: and I'm not even gonna. I'm just gonna tell you what, like, just one sentence, and then I want you to explain it. Like I'm a fifth grader, but basically NASA had a finding about plants growing.
>> Candice Fazar: Oh, yeah. I actually. Okay. Sorry.
>> Peter Englert: No, no, no.
>> Candice Fazar: I should let you finish your stamp today.
>> Peter Englert: No, no, no. Just go.
>> Candice Fazar: Just go.
>> Peter Englert: Cause the less I talk about something, I don't know.
>> Candice Fazar: Okay. So, I had. Back when I worked at Roberts, we had this. We had a faith and science lunch discussion series that Karen and Karen Chesky and I ran for a while.
>> Peter Englert: We love you, Karen, by the way.
>> Candice Fazar: We do. And as we were thinking about different topics to study, one of the times. One of the times that we did one of these lunch discussions, I said, well, let's do the creation story. And they said, oh, we have just beaten that to death. I said, no, no, let's look at it differently. All right? And so what I wanted to do was to pull out the verses and talk through what the order of creation was in the Bible and where we get stuck. Like, where we can get stuck in terms of thinking that the Bible and science contradict. And so we go through, and you're looking through, and you say, well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. How are the stars and the sun and the moon put together on the fourth day? I don't understand that. That may be a place where people would get stuck and say, well, science clearly contradicts that. And so therefore, I can't. I can't believe anything. Well, I think that's a little bit throwing out the baby with the bath water. But if we were to take a look at what that's really saying. Well, perhaps if we shift our perspective and say, well, maybe on the fourth day, the fourth day of this creation, the sun, the moon and the stars were not put into place, but became visible. All of a sudden, you could see them from the surface when you couldn't see them before. And I was like, well, how would that even work? Well, how does our atmosphere even work? And I go on and digging, and I pull up one of the sidejinx, one of the NASA outreach sites, that allows you to learn a bit about our earth and how the atmosphere was made, how it works, how it does the things that it does. And I found it very interesting that on that site, it said that the the atmosphere that supports life was created by life itself. And if we think of the third day, we had plants. We had plants before we had the sun and moon and stars, it doesn't make sense. But if you actually think about it, it was the plants that cleaned up our atmosphere to give us the oxygen we needed to breathe so that mammals could be placed there. Right? Cause mammals can't breathe a, carbon dioxide methane atmosphere, but plants can. They like the carbon dioxide atmosphere, right? And so they. They start first, they come first, and then they clean it up and create a space where we now have nitrogen and oxygen in our atmosphere. And we have, And then we can perhaps that cleans up the sky. And now your clouds actually part, and you can see the stars at night, and perhaps they weren't visible before from the surface. We know if you get on the surface of Venus, you can't see the sky. You can't even get down to the surface because the atmosphere itself is so toxic. But with plant life, the plant life itself cleaned up the atmosphere so we could see the sun, the moon and stars. And it was. I found that very interesting in saying that perhaps. Perhaps. Well, perhaps the Bible is not wrong after all about that. Perhaps the Bible actually just has snippets of information that if we actually look at the real science, we see that it's it's it's breadcrumbs. I like to call it breadcrumbs. The breadcrumbs of creation.
>> Peter Englert: You know, I'm so glad that you brought that up, because, you know, we so, one thing I want to say, kind of based on feedback and conversations, you know, six day literal creationism, there's actually, like, normal, thoughtful scientists that that's where they land. So they look at Genesis one and two, and they say there's six literal days. Now, there's a number of people that, are extremist on both sides. And, you know, what I find interesting about that story, and this is where I would challenge our listeners, is there's a lot of mystery to Genesis one and two. And again, I think if we were to rewrite scripture, which we can't. There's no third Peter.
>> Candice Fazar: Right.
>> Peter Englert: Like, we would probably put a ton more detail. And, you know, I've heard it preached here at Brown Croft and other places. You know, when I think of day four, you know, I'm not thinking the scientific method. I'm thinking, you know, the author of Genesis, you know, most scholars agree that it's Moses, is making a monumental point, saying, hey, don't worship the sun, moon and stars. Don't do it right. They're later, they're created. And. And so, you know, I think that what makes this conversation so complicated is sometimes we have pastors that are trying to be scientists, and sometimes we have scientists that are trying to be pastors. And, you know, I would just encourage our audience to like to live in the realm of trying to understand people that love Jesus and want to get this question right. So you brought up Roberts, and that was kind of a good segue. So you taught science at a christian college?
>> Candice Fazar: I did.
>> Peter Englert: And you probably. You talked about doing a, science lunch. You know, as you think about the students that you were engaging, what were some of their perceptions? What were some of their thoughts? just to help every generation of what were they asking?
>> Candice Fazar: Well, we found, or I found students on all sides of the coin. So many of you have those that come, that is, from the literal six day creation, others coming from. No, it's eons of years over with evolution and all these various, methods by which creation came about. However, we all agreed on one thing, that god did it. We just differed on how he did it and how the explanations in the Bible mesh with the explanations of science. I think just because you don't understand how those two things work together doesn't mean that god didn't do it. It just means we don't understand it. So either if you look at the, creation story I had in my physics tree class, I had at Roberts, students do a faith in science paper. And in particular, I just wanted them to see how faith and science can go together, can go hand in hand, and basically, the world was their oyster. They could do it in any which way they wanted. I talk about how it requires. Well, we even have faith in friction, right? Because you. The fact that you slip sometimes when you're walking indicates that you expected friction to be there, to grab your foot, so you didn't slip. So there's some level of trust that we put in things that, we don't have. Well, we didn't sit down and check every piece of flooring that we walk on, right. We just assume that it's there. We have trust. We have faith in that. and so everything from that aspect of things to. To, how science is parallel to the Church, we have some of those interesting conversations as well as we had, I had one year where every single student chose to do their paper on, ah, the creation story. So on the. And I had everything. I did not realize that there were five or six different ways of viewing this, that you have everything from. It is literally six days. However, relativity comes into account. And what does it mean for the rotation of the day? And you have that aspect, right. All the way to know this is a metaphor. And we have all these. Put these pieces together. It's thousands upon thousands of years. and I kind of get caught in the middle and say, well, according to the Bible, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. What does that even mean? Like, what is a day in terms of understanding what is actually going on? And so you have all these multiple perspectives. So you'll find students on, multiple sides of the coin. And my goal as a professor was to get them to engage with the thought process, right? Because we're scientists, we're studying physics, we're scientists, and we want to. We want to look at the data, and we make. We make, interpretations of those data. We come up with theories that explain those data, and then we take more data. Right? We just keep doing that. We keep taking more data. And if the data fit with the theory, that helps confirm that. And then we got to take data in this way and take data in that way. We change our test. We do all these various things to try to make sure we understand this as best as we can. However, sometimes as a scientist, you will take data and that data contradict what your assumptions were. And then you need to understand, were there assumptions you were making when taking that data that are incorrect, or there systematic errors, things along those lines? Or. Or is this shining light on something new that you didn't encounter before because your assumptions before or your test before was incomplete or didn't have bits of information that this new test does. And when this new test shines light on that and causes you to question your initial theory, well, with, the scientists will change the theory, they will incorporate this new data, this new understanding into the theory. A, good example of that is classical mechanics. Newtonian mechanics was sufficient for us for many, many, many years, right? And then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, I'm sure it wasn't all of a sudden, even though I said it that way. individuals came along and started to question that, say, well, what about the really, really fast things? And what about the really, really tiny things? Do they obey these same principles? And the answer was no, they don't. And so they have to expand their understanding, have to expand their knowledge. And science being self consistent, when you expand this piece, when you add in this new understanding, this new theory that you have must be able to explain the other one also. so, for example, relativistic equations also explain classical ones. You just have a small enough velocity that it simplifies down to the newtonian equations. And that's how you know, essentially your understanding and your knowledge has grown, you've expanded in your understanding. So that didn't answer your question.
>> Peter Englert: Well, it actually set me up, and this is why I wanted to do this podcast, because that's actually a lot of how I interpret scripture. So, I grew up, I was very blessed to go to a christian school where I learned about all of this. And I think that there are many in my generation, as a millennial, that feel like it was more important to get it right than to have the conversation.
>> Candice Fazar: Yeah, I would say the reverse, the more important is having the conversation.
>> Peter Englert: Exactly. And so now there's individuals that I grew up with, there's individuals that come to Brown Croft, and it was, no, this is the, this is the way the story is, this is the way the science is. And so, you, know, I would just encourage our listeners, we have these podcasts to help you engage in conversation. I'm not trying to talk a six day literalist out of it. I'm not trying to talk someone that has a different theory, but I would just say you're capable of exploring the text, just like I'm capable of engaging the science and reading the NASA site. And so it's interesting. I'm going to take a real easy one right now. So Galileo is basically called a, heretic because he says the earth revolves around the sun and they're quoting scripture and most of the scriptures that they're quoting are the psalms, and we say it as a figure of speech, like the sun is setting. And that is based on almost a hypothesis of this is what I'm seeing. And I think universally, all christians, they can kind of say, hey, we might have misunderstood that passage or something like that. And so even with the creation story, the more that I study it, the more brilliant I think it is, but also the more layers. And so.
>> Candice Fazar: Absolutely.
>> Peter Englert: So, like, even when we sat and had coffee, my mind was just blown that, like, plants can exist and this isn't, you know, this isn't a Christian say, like, this is NASA, ah, that are telling you this. And so even with the scripture, when I read the Hebrew, and I actually can't read a ton of Hebrew, so I'm just, or like, when I read commentaries and there's a lot of great Genesis commentaries, I think you all who are listening, you're capable of reading those. Like, the more the brilliance I see is how the author is treating humanity. The idea of subduit, the idea of being created in the image of god representing god on earth, what that said to an ancient culture that there was tears of your value. and just even the hebrew repetition, like some scholars would say this was written to be memorized. It was interesting. You brought up the first Peter passage about a day being a thousand years. There's other people that would bring up Exodus 20, you know, the Ten Commandments, and they would say, sabbath is the 7th day, keep it holy.
>> Candice Fazar: Right?
>> Peter Englert: And so, you know, I think it's important for all of us to back up for a second and say, the Bible wasn't written to us. M the Bible was written for us.
>> Candice Fazar: Right. But not to us.
>> Peter Englert: and so I always tell people, there's three questions that I ask when I study the Bible. What does this passage mean to the original hearers? So if I'm listening to that, am I asking the questions they're asking? So even the Exodus 21, one of the things I'm wrestling with is the Israelites. They were in captivity. They work seven days a week. Moses is telling them, don't do that. god rested on the 7th day. And again, that's like the straight facts. What does this passage always mean? So, you know, Martin Luther, Augustine, you know, whoever, you know, you want to throw in there, what did they say about it? And then what does it mean to us today?
>> Candice Fazar: Lots.
>> Peter Englert: Of times we spend time on that third question where we have to really wrestle with the first question. And so that's not, you know, and I think it's a false choice to kind of say, well, you know, science disproves the Bible, or the Bible disproves science, and it's, hey, last I checked, I'm an infinite, broken. Well, I'm not infinite. I'm a mortal, sinful, broken human being, marred, by sin. Probably one of the easiest doctrine that you can prove. But there is something about wrestling with this question. I learn so much when I talk with a Candice or a sign, like so. I don't know. I settled. I went pastoral. So forgive me, but, you know, where do you want to go with that?
>> Candice Fazar: Well, that reminds me of our conversation. And one of the things that I said there that I think is really important is that coming as a Christian into science, I believe two things. One, the Bible is true, and two, the data are real. And so if I run into a situation where these two things appear to not mesh, then I either don't have a good enough theory to really explain my data that makes sense in light of the truth of the Bible, or I'm misunderstanding the purpose, perhaps, or the original intention of the scripture itself. and that, Or misinterpreting this piece, that then, if I understand this correctly, would make sense with this, because, let's face it, the physical world we live in is God's creation. And he's the one that created it. He's the one that put it there. He's the one that gets excited when we figure things out and discover things that he left behind. So, god being an honest god, god being a god of truth, he's not a god of lies. So the creation that he left behind is a reflection of the truth of who he is. The verse that I was looking. That I was looking up this morning, that I was trying to remember what it is, and forgive me as I grab my phone. There we go. Is from the psalms, and it says, the heavens declare the glory of god. Works well for an astronomer, right?
>> Peter Englert: Love psalm 19 one. Perfect.
>> Candice Fazar: The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech. Night after night, look at the stars. Right? Observe. They reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words, and no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. We can't ignore the creation because god put it there. It speaks to us of him. And I think that is, to me, that says that you really can't throw out one or the other, because they are. They're both like the word of god, in a sense. Right. Because god spoke them m into being. So creation is the word of god, and as well as the Bible is the word of god. And how do we understand those two things? They must work together.
>> Peter Englert: I'm about to embarrass myself right now. So, you know, the day of this recording is the night after. There's a television show called Young Sheldon's last episode.
>> Candice Fazar: I m have not seen it yet. I haven't seen the last episode.
>> Peter Englert: Oh, well, we should probably.
>> Candice Fazar: No go.
>> Peter Englert: We should probably just say spoiler alerts, but I won't spoil the ending. But I will say one of the most frustrating parts of the show is Sheldon as a teenager and a kid, his interaction with his mother of faith.
>> Candice Fazar: Yes.
>> Peter Englert: and even the interaction with the pastor, because I have enjoyed the conversations. And, you know, even listening to you like that, that is the most stereotypical way. The Christian that says the Bible is true, and then the scientist that says, you know, that's not logical, and that doesn't make sense. and we don't even have to necessarily touch that. But I think that that's what we're in this podcast trying to move you towards, is there are individuals, you know, like a Candice like a doctor Steve Pelton, like a Drew Johnson, and there's room at the table for discussion, and you are capable. You know, somebody m gave me feedback, and I just want to respond to it because I think it's a clean hit. You know, there was a comment about Genesis one through eleven being sophisticated, literature, as if to assume that it's not study. My job as a pastor is to encourage you to dig into the study Bibles, to dig into commentaries, to dig into Genesis. And my heart, even in doing this episode, part of this season and series questions of our day, is, are we walking in with an assumption that's blind to kind of maybe understanding where someone else is coming from? One of the things that I enjoyed about going to the university of Valley Forge, you got me going. So I'll try not to lose my thought.
>> Candice Fazar: Carry on.
>> Peter Englert: But, one of the things that I enjoy, we would study passages. So I think of my professors, doctor Dave Dippold, Doctor Ron hall. We would look at the four different interpretations of that scripture. They would let us know where they lean. Sometimes they would let us know, well, this is like heresy, but we wrestled with it. And so my hope with the Bible and with science. You wrestle with it?
>> Candice Fazar: Yeah.
>> Peter Englert: Now, your thought.
>> Candice Fazar: I forgot it.
>> Peter Englert: so let's just kind of come back just kind of for a moment, I'm listening to this podcast. Oh, you have it.
>> Candice Fazar: I have one piece that I have been itching on. it is important to recognize that the Bible carries lots of different types of literature. And some are poetry, some are like lyrics to a song, like the psalms that I was pulling out earlier. Others are historical accounts. When you talk about so and so, beget so and so, beget so and so, or instructions in how to treat the temple. And there's, there's a wide variety. There's a whole host of letters. There's apocryphal. I can't pronounce that word. Apocryphal. How do you say that word? Literature. There's, there are. There's an awful lot of different types because, it was written by, was it 40 people over a very long period of time, many hundreds of years. And so, And we have to also keep in mind the purpose for which it was written, right? The Bible is a book that describes the relationship between man and god, right? That's what the whole purpose of the Bible is, is to describe, describe that relationship. And the purpose of science is not that, right? The purpose of science is to understand the physical world, the creation that's around us. so they have different intentions now. It is entirely possible being the word of god, right? This word from god to man to. And sometimes man to man, right? Getting all those pieces together and how to, The history, the literature, all of those pieces are, I'm sorry, I forgot my words.
>> Peter Englert: All of those pieces, they come together, right?
>> Candice Fazar: They come together. They're part of a whole to. Oh. Because they are the inspired word of god. they contain elements of truth about the physical world. Because it is the inspired word of god. It contains elements of truth about our physical world, but it's not a treatise on that. And so what I like about genesis and pulling those pieces apart and pulling out the verses and seeing how that works in concert with how the physical reality actually took place. These are the elements of truth about our physical world left behind in the words, even in poetry. Poetry contains meaning. Poetry has underlying truth to it. Maybe every last word is not literal in a, poem, right? But there's elements of truth to it, and that's how it carries meaning for us and perhaps how it carried meaning for many others in the original writing.
>> Peter Englert: You know, I love that you said that, because something that's kind of clicking and maybe you know this better than I do, but, there's a story in the Bible, where god does this miracle, where the sun stands still. And interestingly enough, you know, I believe whether it's physicists or scientists, they believe that there's actually like a nine minute delay, right? Or is it longer?
>> Candice Fazar: Eight minutes. Eight minutes between the, between the emission of the light from the sun and when we see it. It takes eight minutes to get here because the speed of light is very fast, but it takes time to travel. The sun's very far away, put it that way.
>> Peter Englert: Well, it's very far away, but even just some of those details, you might be the full skeptic and you might. Or you might be the full christian. You're like, slap it down. The Bible story is true, but I think I bring that up because you can't deny that reality. You can't fully come in and slap the Bible down. You can't fully come in and say science. But I think that you start uncovering these things. We haven't even touched on archaeology, you know?
>> Candice Fazar: Oh, I had a story about that one, too.
>> Peter Englert: Oh, go ahead.
>> Candice Fazar: I thought you were going to ask me, like, about, well, when we talked about through the Bible and, science contradict or does science disprove the Bible? And I thought at this time that I was sitting in a mechanic shop and I pulled out a copy of the US news and World Report because it was sitting in front of me. And not only did they have a lovely recipe for banana bread that I have yet to try, they also had a story in there about archaeology. And they said in that, that archaeologists go searching for, they go searching with the Bible in one hand and a pickaxe in the other. And I was like, well, look at that. Because the Bible has very detailed information and accounts of where people went and what they did and in a way, much more detailed than other resources of the day. So it's, that's my archaeology story.
>> Peter Englert: No, no, that's, I think that that kind of illustrates, like coming. This is where the power of the Holy Spirit comes in, is that, you know, if, you're not a Christian, you're listening, first of all. Thank you. but I would just challenge you to read the Bible. You know, we.
>> Candice Fazar: There are elements of truth in there, even if, even if they are buried sometimes.
>> Peter Englert: Yeah. And we have this crazy, audacious belief that when you read the Bible, the god of the universe, the Holy Spirit, makes, himself visible. and we haven't even touched on the Trinity with all. But that's a whole other topic. this has been just a wonderful conversation. Something that's kind of hitting me. and I'm just going to try it out. And again, I'm not a scientist, so you can just say, do you think being in the field of physics.
>> Peter Englert: As opposed to maybe geology.
>> Peter Englert: Or biology pairs differently with the Bible than maybe some other discipline of science?
>> Candice Fazar: That's a very interesting question. I do also adore geology. I don't know a ton about it, but rocks are my jam anyways. So, I would say that very likely they pair a little bit differently. As in physics is the study of the physical world. It's not the study of spiritual world or even how biological organisms came to be. It is the study of how physical things interact and move and, or don't move things along those lines. and so I feel like, again, given the verse that I shared about the heavens declare the glory of god and night after night they proclaim knowledge. Right? So studying the physical world and the physical things, really, I think it tells us a lot about our creator and how he is logical in his creation, how he set forth meticulously, carefully the world we live in. Right. We study the stars and we're looking for other signs of life and we have not yet found them. Not to say that it doesn't exist, but it's rare. It's incredibly rare. Yet our world is so very perfect detail that god went to, to ensure an absolutely perfect place for his creation. It just boggles my mind. Right. and, but if you look at something like biology, now you're exploring the, the intricate workings of the human body, which I know very little about, except for my own issues that I deal with, as we all do. Right. but I'm, I personally am not concerned with how humans did or did not evolve to be here. I just know god created us and he says he created us in our image. However that happened, that is the truth of the matter. We are created in his image. how we understand what exactly went down. I can see getting caught up in more if I were really concerned about how the tree of. Oh, what is that?
>> Peter Englert: The tree of life?
>> Candice Fazar: The tree. Neither.
>> Peter Englert: The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
>> Candice Fazar: Neither tree, perhaps both trees. the tree of the genetic connections between all the different species and things like that. I'm not overly concerning myself with that because that is, for me, a question of how and not a question of who. so I guess they could perhaps interact a little differently. I think geology still falls on the physical side of things.
>> Peter Englert: I m love that answer, that was great. And I went all biblical and you were going all science. So last kind of question. Sure. What's your final word to our audience? Whether they this topic because they're bible believing christians makes Hm them anxious or just makes it hard to talk about or to individuals that are very skeptical and doubting, what would you say?
>> Candice Fazar: I would say don't be afraid of the discussion. Don't be afraid of having the conversation. think like a scientist and allow your worldview to expand should it need to, to be able to encompass both aspects, creation and the biblical literature. Right. You want, you don't put god in a box. Let god be bigger. I was thinking on the way over here, for many people who may be just scientifically minded and thinking that the Bible is full of crap, looking at, I have known many who their biggest hang ups are. Well, you use god to explain the space between the things that we don't understand about our physical world and then we find an explanation for that. So we don't need god. and I say if your god is only, if god is only necessary to explain the gaps in the physical things that we do not yet understand, then our god is no bigger than the god of the mythology. Right. Our god is so much bigger. Allow god to be big. Allow god to be god of both science and his physical word and the spiritual reality and all the multiple realms of existence. Let god be god of all, all of that. Let him be bigger. Don't put him in a box and don't be afraid to talk about it.
>> Peter Englert: Well, and I think the way that I would close is there are way more scientists and pastors that are willing to have this conversation, that are willing to engage in your doubts. I love what Jude, says. It's one of the smallest books in the Bible. It says, be gracious with those who doubt. And so we live in a time that, you know, I mean there's a fight for truth and I'm all about that, but you don't get to truth by beating someone over the head.
>> Candice Fazar: Right.
>> Peter Englert: You know, it's these types of discussions, it's, you know, the, the long filled and, you know, I think I'd even say to other christians is, you know, but can you be in a small group that has a different way to manage the Bible and science? Can you sit with them, in humility and have non negotiables, have convictions, but also be able to wrestle? I always thought growing up studying theology, studying the Bible, biblical interpretation, the best professors and the best teachers I ever had were the ones that could explain every view, and if asked, could actually defend a view that they didn't agree with, because that means that they've mastered it. It's not just mastering what you believe, but it's also mastering. Okay, that kind of makes sense over there. Candice this is, delightful. Can I just use that word? if people wanted to find you or just follow some of your work, where would you tell them to go?
>> Candice Fazar: that is a good question. I'd be happy to have these discussions with anyone. I find them fascinating. I learn more like talk about my little theories. I have my little theories over how things work. And when I get new information, I like to expand those series. I like to grow and learn and think. So, happy to have the conversation. You could probably find me. I don't hide. You can find me at Brown Croft. And, Or I don't know anyone. A number of different things. Contact Peter. He can get in contact.
>> Peter Englert: If you google her, you'll find her.
>> Candice Fazar: That is probably also accurate.
>> Peter Englert: Well, thank you so much for joining us. You can find this in other episodes by subscribing at ygoodwypodcast.