of the argument. The second premise is like ten marksmen aiming at a person— that it was highly improbable that the constants are what they are. Again, I think that is a premise that has not been proven. I am wondering if you would agree with those statements.
A: The first question is about everyday reasoning leading us to unreasonable effectiveness in mathematics. I tried to deal with that, and I think the answer is “No, it won’t.” The quantum world requires a type of thinking about it— indeed, it requires a type of logic that is different from the Aristotelian logic of the everyday world. So, we certainly didn’t get that out of just somehow generalizing our everyday experience. I think my answer would be no.
Let me try to answer the last part. Some people suggest that maybe the true constants of nature are absolutely fixed by consistency of the theory. I think that is only even remotely credible if you already suppose the theory has to contain quantum theory and gravity, because that is the only thing that would sharpen it up. But supposing that would, I am still very doubtful there will not be scale parameters in any successful combination of those two theories. Secondly, suppose it was the case that the only logically consistent theory happened also to be a theory that produced beings of our complexity. I would think that [to be] the most astonishing anthropic coincidence of all, in actual fact.
Q: Regarding what you said about mutations being both beneficial and harmful as part of your model of a created-by-design universe, as a layman, I have observed and heard constant news reports about genetic defects and so on, and that obviously points to harmful mutations. Do we have actual evidence— observable and empirically so, in the laboratory or in just everyday life— of bona fide beneficial mutations, as opposed to something by inference that we assume from billions of years ago?
A: We certainly have in things like bacteria, which have very rapid reproduction rates. It is beneficial to bacteria, but it is not beneficial to us. They mutate and produce strains that resist antibiotics, and then those strains, of course, become dominant. So, at the bacterial level, certainly we see that, and maybe a bit higher up, too. I think we do have that; that does happen.
Q: If natural laws reflect the mind of the Lawgiver and if natural laws contemplate cancer as a necessary component of evolution, what do you say to the skeptic who rejects the idea of God based on God’s culpability for the content of his laws?
A: That is a very fair point, and I did say that I didn’t think that observation removed, by any means, all the difficulties. They are considerable. We live in a world that is remarkably fruitful and beautiful, remarkably chilling and frightening and destructive. It is a very ambiguous sort of picture, and somehow or other, the bad things are the necessary cost of the good things. That is not an argument you can utter without a quiver in your voice. The world is too complex and too strange for that.
I have to say one specifically Christian thing this evening: For me, the possibility of religious belief really centers on my Christian belief. A Christian understanding of God’s relationship to suffering is not that God is simply a compassionate spectator looking down on the strange and bitter world that God holds in being. As a Christian, I believe that God is participating in the suffering of the world, that God is truly a fellow sufferer. The Christian God is the crucified God. That is a very deep and mysterious, though, I believe, true, insight. That is the deep level at which the problem of suffering has to be met, and the possibility for religious belief really, for me, rests at that level.
Q: This sort of involves both Eric and you, Sir John. In Eric’s joke about you being able to be knocked over by a feather, could you maybe use your applied physics to determine when the joke reached terminal velocity? Or retrograde? I had to say that.
There are several people here who are artists, writers, and people from California with questions. Here you described a theorem or a mathematical equation, when it is right, being beautiful. There is order and structure, maybe even scientific structure, and that is involved in beauty. You also mentioned obviously in physics and life, there is a story, a history involved in science.
There are a myriad of books out there about the right structure to art or the right structure to storytelling. In reading Joseph Campbell and things as a writer, I’ve had lights go on in terms of there being true structures. I am wondering as a priest, as someone involved in the clergy and also in the Bible, whether you see structure to God’s stories and to art in that there is something that you can determine empirically to be true.
A: I do believe that God discloses the divine nature through the unfolding of history and particularly, in particular people and particular events. There are particular occasions and particular persons through whom the divine nature is more visible than is normally the case. In my view, the authority of the Bible stems from the fact that it is an account of the history of Israel and then of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which, to me, are the prime events through which God has acted to make God’s nature and purposes known.
Yes, there is an unfolding there. We have to read the story and accept the story on its own terms, so to speak, it seems to me. The story is not determined by our judgment beforehand. We have to respond to that. Authors tell me that about writing novels and that sort of thing, and I am inclined to understand that may be so. So, there is a sort of authenticity that is involved in story, whether it is a scientific story or not. I am sorry that is a very stuffy answer to a question that leaves me a little bit at sea, as you may perceive.
Q: I had a conversation today with my mom, and I just have a very basic question. John, verse something [3:16]: “God so loved the world that he gave his only” whatever. If you don’t believe in him, you shall perish. Are we so right in our conviction that we are the ones that will be right? If you don’t believe in him, you shall perish. I think that has far-reaching implications to Muslims, Buddhists, Shintos, and there are more of them than us.
A: I believe that God is merciful and loving, and I believe that God’s offer of mercy and love is not a limited offer for this life only. After death, a curtain comes down, and if you are caught on the wrong side, God says, “Too bad, you had your chance; you missed it.” That doesn’t seem to be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Equally, I believe that whatever decisions and actions we take in this life, the beliefs to which we commit ourselves are very important. Those who wittingly and willfully turn from God in this life will find it, to say the least, more painful and more difficult to accept God’s mercy. I think more know Christ than know Christ by name.
I also believe that all will come to the Father through Christ ultimately, because believing, as I do, that Jesus is both human and divine, he is the unique bridge between the life of God and the life of created humanity, and that is the way. Our ultimate destiny is to share in the life and energy of God, I believe. The way into that is, indeed, the way through Christ. Again, I believe there are people who are on that way without knowing the name of the way in which they are coming.
Eric, Metaxas: We have time for one question, and it can’t be about evolution.
Q: You mentioned that evolution was absolutely fundamental to an understanding of science. As you know, in the biological world especially, the coded information passed on in DNA is extremely complicated— just the running of a body, the building of a body, and on and on. A. E. Wilder-Smith has made comments that in evolutionary theory, the missing fact is information. Could you comment on if the coded information that is in the biological world comes by chance through evolution, as you have talked about it?
A: Yes, that is a very interesting question. I think that the concept of information is going to be an extremely important concept in twenty-first-century science, and I venture to think that by the end of the twenty-first century, information in some sense—
