This article has been edited since its initial publication.
A nuclear chemist and a theoretical physicist walk into a lecture hall. They want to talk about God.
Over the past week, several college groups and departments hosted speakers who grappled with the relationship between Christianity and science. Nuclear chemist Jay L. Wile explored the history of science and how its methodology aligns with Christianity. Theoretical physicist Christopher Lee presented on symmetries suggesting the origin of Nature in an intelligent Creator, discoveries about the origin and evolution of the universe, and what details of Genesis align with these themes.
On March 20, the Apologetics Club and Career Services hosted Wile for his lecture “Christianity and Science: a Match Made in Heaven.” Drawing from his experience as a scientist, a man of faith, and the author of a K-12 scientific homeschool curriculum, Wile offered his perspective on the history of science, primarily focusing on European Christians, and the area of study’s own conceptual genesis.
Wile argued Christians brought something to the beginning of science that the Greeks did not have — an understanding that just as God gave humans laws, he also gave laws to creation.
“We need to figure out these laws, but the question is how,” Wile said. “When it comes to God’s laws for his people, you look at the Bible. Robert Grosseteste, the bishop of Lincoln in the 1100s, said that we have to develop a method for studying nature just like we developed a method for studying the Bible: theology.”
Wile brought up a wide range of scientists and thinkers over the course of history from John Philoponus to Sir Isaac Newton and honed in on an example of Johannes Kepler’s astronomical work regarding planetary ellipticals.
“Why would you rustle through trial and error to fit equations into data tables for 18 years?” Wile said. “Because he thought he was looking at the image of God. For him, astronomy was a worshipful act. By figuring out these laws, he was able to better understand what he thought was an image of the Trinity.”
Chairwoman and Associatiate Professor of Chemistry Courtney E. Meyet attended Wile’s lecture, and though she said she appreciated Wile’s intent to reach non-scientists, she said she was not impressed by Wile’s response to a student’s question about the age of the Earth.
“While Dr. Wile makes strong, valid points for the pursuit of scientific study by Christians, he seemed to contradict his main point when asked about the age of the earth by a student,” Meyet said in an email. “Citing one study, Dr. Wile quickly discounted the entire area of research pertaining to an old world, stating it, ‘lacked scientific merit.’ At Hillsdale, we teach our students that the scientific method always starts with a question concerning the natural world. If evidence is found that suggests the world is old (or young), it is a question worthy of pursuit. A question of anything in our natural world has merit. If the findings do not align with our belief system, it does not mean that the science is wrong, or that our beliefs are wrong, it just shows that perhaps we don’t understand how they connect.”
On March 24, Lee delivered his lecture “Symmetry, Order and Providence in Creation,” which presented a different perspective.
Lee is a scientist trained in nuclear and particle physics at California Institute of Technology and now located in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he was the founding president of the New Mexico Chapter of the Society of Catholic Scientists. The Michigan-area Colleges Chapter of the SCS and the John Templeton Foundation sponsored Lee’s visit.
Lee spoke to a Lane lecture hall filled well past capacity with students lining the walls, all in hopes of new wisdom or extra credit.
Using the example of the role played by gauge symmetry in Nature giving rise to the presence of photons in electromagnetism as well as the binding forces of protons and neutrons, Lee drew connections to the nature of the Trinity.
“There is no perfect human analogy,” Lee said. “But it’s hard for me not to draw a parallel with the nature of God himself as a Trinity. These are the particles that make up all of you and ordinary matter. They’re governed by this force, which comes from a symmetry, which means that we know there are three things in here. We can rotate them into each other so that they are not individually indistinguishable, and yet you can’t take them apart.”
Wile posed science as a divinely-inspired pursuit rich with tests similar to those of theological study. Lee suggested modern science and the timeline of natural phenomena in the physical universe are not incompatible, but rather affirming of each other. To both Wile and Lee, the study of these fields points to God, whether that be up at the stars or down into a Hydrogen tube.
“For me, everything is represented in this,” Lee said. “Our Lord coming to dwell with us, the magnificence of everything: the cosmos, the very particles and forces… they’re all kept bound together by the strong force and our Lord’s sacrifice for us.”
Students said they enjoyed the talks.
“I was impressed by both the immense size of the crowd turnout as well as Dr. Lee’s ability to make his complex examples intelligible to us without overly simplifying them or just pointing to large equations,” senior Jason Lu said.
