He has just written a book about his conversion to Christ (it’s a pretty interesting story, involving rather more “polygraph tests” than this sort of story usually involves) and also his experiences as a Christian in academia.\u00a0 The book, which was just released today<\/em>, is called:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I was asked by the publisher to include an excerpt from the book to help promote it.\u00a0 Completely disregarding their proposed selections, I have chosen one of the later chapters of the book, after he’s already become a Christian:<\/p>\n People often ask me what it\u2019s like to be a person of faith in the field of science. It\u2019s a hard question to answer, because my experiences have varied widely.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Sometimes, physicists will ridicule religion. Once, while visiting the University of Texas to give a talk on my research, I went to lunch with a number of physicists, including the late Nobel laureate (and outspoken atheist) Steven Weinberg. Unaware of my religious leanings, Weinberg began the lunch with a pointed question toward the antievolution movement: \u201cDo all these people who reject evolution also reject cosmology?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I thought about explaining the difference between young earth creationists and old earth creationists, but ultimately held my tongue.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Sometimes, physicists simply steer clear of religious topics. One day when I was a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the man whose donations to the Institute helped pay my salary came to have lunch with Ed Witten\u2014quite possibly the greatest living theoretical physicist, if not the smartest man on earth\u2014and me. A quick online search had made the donor aware of my religious views, so he spent the entire lunch asking me (very respectfully) about my opinions on religion and politics. It was probably the most stressful conversation I\u2019ve ever had\u2014talking about Jesus and Donald Trump with the smartest man alive and the man who paid my salary.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n During the entire conversation, Ed Witten was surprisingly quiet. His only remark came when we were discussing God\u2019s miraculous intervention. \u201cI think a lot of people wish God would intervene more often,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Sometimes, physicists respect religion. Several of my colleagues have expressed admiration for my religious faith, or religious faith in general, though they themselves do not have any religious convictions.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Sometimes, physicists embrace religion. I don\u2019t know very many Christians in my field, but whenever I meet one, I feel an immediate kinship. Our scientific drive for knowledge pushes us to learn as much as we can about the physical universe, and as Christians that same drive pushes us to learn as much as we can about God. The result is a common language of science, theology, and philosophy not so different from the \u201ctwin telepathy\u201d my brother and I have shared since childhood. Though sometimes it is discouraging that so few of my colleagues embrace religious faith, it is encouraging\u2014perhaps even more so\u2014that the ones who do are so strong in their faith and so capable of defending it intellectually.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In much of the world, there is intense animosity, and sometimes even violence, between people of differing religious faiths. Perhaps it\u2019s because we religious physicists represent a minority in our world, but I\u2019ve certainly never felt anything like that from my Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu colleagues. And I hope they\u2019ve never felt anything like that from me. Rather, there seems to be a sense of solidarity among religious scientists. Though there are important differences between our faiths, there\u2019s an even deeper sense of mutual respect among us: I\u2019ve probably received more comments of admiration regarding my faith from Jewish colleagues than I have from Christian ones, and a Muslim colleague once told me that my public interviews and articles on science and God had strengthened his own faith.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n On the whole, though, I can say with certainty that I have never felt persecuted or personally attacked for my faith. There are places in the world where Christians are suffering for their faith. But America is not one of those places. I can go to church, pray, read my Bible, and even write books like this one without fear of losing my job. Some of my colleagues may not agree with my faith, but fortunately my success in physics depends on my ability to do physics, not on how I worship in my free time.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Though science and faith are often viewed as enemies, I can also say I have felt less hostility toward religious faith in the upper echelons of physics than at the lower levels, or in the soft sciences or humanities. Anthropology, history, and religious studies departments are famously dismissive of Christianity\u2014a trend many of my Christian friends and I experienced during the course of our university studies.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n One of my friends who studied chemistry at Princeton had a high school science teacher who forced the class to learn the definition of a so-called scientific theory\u2014an explanation for some natural phenomenon supported by a vast body of evidence\u2014to refute the common creationist retort that \u201cevolution is only a theory.\u201d But when he got to college, my friend soon realized that such definitions are nonsense: In practice, scientists use the term <\/span>theory<\/span><\/em><\/span> to describe many different things. Some theories, like quantum field theory, are among the best tested phenomena in all of science. Other theories, like string theory, lack any experimental verification whatsoever.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n My high school physics teacher\u2014who was one the best and most important teachers I ever had\u2014occasionally made snide remarks about religion. Yet at Cornell, Harvard, and Princeton, I met several religious physics professors. One professor even suggested to his class that God might be the best explanation after all for the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life\u2014and he wasn\u2019t even a theist.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Now, it\u2019s also true that most of my extraordinarily brilliant colleagues do not embrace religion. But I\u2019ve found that their reasons are generally quite ordinary. If you ask the average atheist why he or she doesn\u2019t believe in God, you\u2019ll probably get some version of the problem of evil: \u201cIf God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, why do evil and suffering exist?\u201d If you ask one of the world\u2019s most brilliant scientists why they don\u2019t believe in God, you\u2019ll probably hear the exact same thing.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say that the problems of evil and suffering are easy for theists to deal with. It\u2019s simply that the most brilliant minds don\u2019t have a huge advantage over others when it comes to questions of faith. We all have basically the same questions, objections, and doubts. In my experience, the ones who find answers to these questions are typically those who need answers the most. Personally, before Steve\u2019s conversion and subsequent conversations with me, I never felt much need for religion, as I was generally able to get by on my intelligence alone. Perhaps other scientists feel similarly.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Finally, I have found that most scientists\u2014even nonreligious ones\u2014believe in some sort of power greater than ourselves. It\u2019s very common to hear physicists refer to Nature as a sort of placeholder god. For example, Ed Witten once said in an interview, \u201cIf I knew how Nature has done supersymmetry breaking, then I could tell you why humans had such trouble figuring it out.\u201d There is a widespread acknowledgment that Nature has chosen a particular way for our universe to be, and it could have chosen something different.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n What\u2019s the difference between this Nature and the God (capital G) I believe in? I think the biggest difference is simply that Nature doesn\u2019t really care much about the affairs of humanity, whereas God does. Most everyone would agree that Nature has a preference for order, simplicity, and beauty, but many balk at the suggestion that it would concern itself with the affairs of one particular species on one little insignificant planet. We humans are, to quote astronomer Carl Sagan, nothing but \u201ca mote of dust in the morning sky.\u201d [1]\u00a0<\/span>Why would God care about us?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n [1]\u00a0Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n To this, I like to point out that size is not a very good measure of value. I care more about the life of a baby than I do about most galaxies. I care more about the ten-nanometer transistors that make my computer work than I do about distant stars. And even as someone who studies black holes and the big bang for a living, I find nothing more incredible about the cosmos than the fact that it somehow birthed intelligent, conscious beings like us.<\/span><\/p>\n Ultimately, one can choose to view the size of our universe as a sign of our insignificance, or one can choose to view it as a sign of the great significance of its creator\u2014a creator whose attention is not divided, who built and sustains the intricate workings of the cosmos, yet who simultaneously cares enough about humanity to become a human himself, to experience pain, suffering, and death so that we could have life.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps you noticed that my name is also on the front of the book, in much tinier yellow letters at the bottom.\u00a0 (Or more likely, you didn’t and are even now scrolling back to see if my claim is true.)\u00a0 This is because I was asked by St. Tom to write a foreword to his book.\u00a0 (And not only that, I did.)\u00a0 My foreword begins as follows:<\/p>\n Foreword<\/p>\n (from this formative experience with the publishing world, I have learned that the word has an “e” in it) but after that it goes on to say:<\/p>\n The book you are holding is a remarkable one. There are lots of books out there promoting Christianity, by a type of person you might call salesmen. The goal of a salesman is to produce a watertight and squeaky-clean argument, to convince you that only one position is intellectually respectable, and fully capable of servicing your needs. He is afraid to admit any weakness in his arguments. He is afraid that if he talks honestly about his own doubts and struggles, his audience will take it as a reason to reject the product he is promoting. If you want a book like that, I suggest you look elsewhere. My friend Tom is not a salesman. But he is a person who cares deeply about what is real, both in scientific and religious contexts. And because of this, he is also unafraid to share his spiritual doubts and struggles, both before and after he became convinced that Christianity is objectively true.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n After that, the foreword includes\u00a0eleven more<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0juicy paragraphs, and importantly the only way to read them (if you don’t know about libraries) is by\u00a0buying the book<\/em><\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 You can do this by clicking on one of the following links:<\/p>\n Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n ChristianBook<\/a><\/p>\n Tyndale<\/a><\/p>\n Target<\/a><\/p>\n That’s right, you can now buy the equivalent of one of my blog posts, at the same store you can get detergent and kid’s T-shirts from!\u00a0 But, you should probably also buy the book to read an interesting and sincere account from Tom, about his obstacles coming to Christ and his emotional struggles with faith afterwards.<\/p>\n Now, you are going to buy the book at any time in the future, it would probably be helpful to Tom if you would buy it ASAP, for example TODAY<\/strong>, so it can go into the early sales figures that make the industry decide whether this book is hot stuff or not.\u00a0 Sorry, I don’t make the rules of worldly success in the publishing industry, that’s just how it goes.<\/p>\n Having said that, some of you may be tempted to write comments asking, well when are you <\/em>(Aron Wall, PhD) going to write your own<\/em> book about Sciencey-and-Religiony stuff, and not just a foreword or backewards glued onto somebody else’s book?<\/p>\n Well, as you can probably tell from my recent blog performance: I’m just way too busy (with mentoring PhD students and postdocs, parenting my 2 & 4 year olds, quantizing gravity, and doing faculty busywork) to get any useful writing done, for the most part.\u00a0 Nevertheless, you should expect some book about the Fine Tuning Argument for God and\/or the Multiverse to appear under my name (as well as that of my coauthors, philosophers John Hawthorne and Yoaav Isaacs), some time in the next oh 1-50 years from now.\u00a0 Just thought I’d give you a heads-up about that since a file looking deceptively like a rough draft basically already exists, more or less.\u00a0 Mostly less.<\/p>\n (If any skeptical promotion committees are reading this post, I promise I spent very few<\/em> of my months working on the Fine Tuning book, and any deficit of actual physics papers is explained by the other stuff in my life…)<\/p>\n Anyway, life is short so don’t save your money for a book that might or might not come out in the next couple of years.\u00a0 Instead BUY TOM’S BOOK NOW<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0(if you feel led to do that) and trust that you’ll have the spare change to buy mine later.<\/p>\n [Disclaimer: I understand that I will be receiving a free copy of Tom’s book in the mail.\u00a0 But it will come too late to change my opinion of the book\u2014I will always think of Tom’s manuscript primarily as a Word file.\u00a0 I’m sure the publishers put a lot of effort into making it look like a real book; but I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So my friend St. Tom Rudelius is a physicist who works on string theory, QFT, and early universe cosmology (e.g. the theory of inflation).\u00a0 He is also a brother in Christ who I have had the privilege to both mentor, … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/book.jpg\" "\\"book\\"")
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