God in the Lab

How science enhances faith

Ruth Bancewicz

• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780857215680
• eBook ISBN: 9780857215697
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion & Science

For former biologist Dr Ruth Bancewicz, experiencing scientific research first hand brings a sense of awe that enhances faith.

As a communicator of science and Christianity over the last ten years, she has encountered many others who have similar stories to tell. This book is a distillation of that experience, and an exploration of the common ground that exists between science and faith. Science can be unglamorous and difficult, but people enjoy it. It gives the opportunity to use creativity and imagination, to appreciate the beauty of the natural world, and to experience the wonder and awe of finding out new things - thinking God's thoughts after him.

Through the eyes of the author and six other experienced scientists, God in the Lab shows how science can build faith in God, and gently challenges non-Christians to consider the connections between science and faith.

Chapter 1

The Theologian and the Telescope

Science is not threatened by God; it is enhanced.

Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project¹

the historical titans of the scientific revolution – Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, Pascal, and Newton – all devout believers to a man – could interrelate their Christian faith and their scientific discoveries.

Nancy Frankenberry, philosopher of religion²

I have always enjoyed science, particularly when it involves studying living things. I have happy memories of wading around rivers and rock pools on high school field trips, encountering microscopic organisms in university lab classes, and examining cells and tissues as a research student. Doing science brings the joy of exploration and the freedom to ask questions. There is a feeling of wonder and awe at what is found and an enjoyment of its beauty. Those moments of discovery raise deeper questions about the universe and our experience of it.

Now that I am working in science and religion for a living, I have learned that it’s important to keep reminding myself about the reality of life in the lab. During any intense discussion about an issue or seeming point of conflict between science and faith, we need to remember what life is like for those who actually do research every day. So I have developed a passion for helping people to enjoy the wonder of the natural world, and see beyond the debates to the more personal or spiritual side of science.

What I hope to achieve in these pages is best illustrated by a story about a theologian and a telescope. The theologian was a colleague from another department in Cambridge, and the telescope belonged to some friends of his. As we sat down to lunch one day, my colleague mentioned that he had visited these friends the night before. It was a clear night, so they had spent some time looking at the stars.

My colleague was a keen amateur astronomer as a teenager, but he had become involved in so many academic debates about science and religion that he eventually lost interest in science. That evening, he was reminded how beautiful and fascinating the universe can be. He realized that the experience of scientific exploration itself can foster awe, wonder, and – for people of faith – worship. As the theologian and former biophysicist Alister McGrath has often said, science points to questions that are too deep and too complex to be answered by science itself.³

These experiences of science enhancing faith are not unique. Science has a long tradition of being complementary to Christianity, although that is not always recognized now. The universities in medieval Europe taught both science and theology, and at the time they weren’t even necessarily seen as separate subjects. Experiments and field studies were largely carried out by the clergy, and it was only in the nineteenth century that science was established as a separate profession. The occasional points of conflict between science and faith have been well publicized by those who wish to drive a wedge between science and faith. In reality, these debates were not “scientists versus the Church”, because science has always been supported from the inside by Christians who are passionate about exploring the universe that God has made.⁴

A recent survey by the American sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund showed that both faith and spirituality are still thriving in the scientific world. Between 2005 and 2007, Ecklund and her team carried out nearly 1,700 surveys and 275 in-depth interviews with senior scientists in twenty-one elite US universities. Their goal was to paint a more accurate and up-to-date picture of how scientists approach religion, and the results make interesting reading. About 50 per cent of all the people interviewed were members of a specific religious group, and 30 per cent were atheists.⁵ The remaining 20 per cent did not believe in God, but valued something beyond science that they chose to call spiritual.⁶

Some of these “spiritual but not religious” scientists had a strong sense of awe and wonder at the natural world. There was a sense of mystery too – a belief that there is something beyond the material. These people found that their spiritual values motivated them to do things differently: to spend more time teaching so that others could share the same experience, to choose what they saw to be more worthwhile fields of research, or to change their behaviour outside of the laboratory. So while there may be some individuals who reject discussions about science and faith, there are plenty of others who are interested in a more thoughtful dialogue.

My own experience of science followed the usual pattern: an early interest that was encouraged by the adults around me, including my Christian parents, followed by years of study and a long apprenticeship in the techniques of laboratory research. There are always a few early-career scientists who decide to leave the lab and follow other science-related vocations, and I realized I was one of these people when I felt myself gravitating towards my desk. I enjoyed reading, writing, and giving presentations, and found that experiments interrupted the flow of my work! It was time for me to leave the lab, but not without some regret at no longer being able to see beautiful things under the microscope.

The unexpected part of my route out of the lab was that it led into science and religion. I was a Christian by the time I arrived at university, so I had joined Christians in Science (CiS): an international organization for those interested in the dialogue between science and faith. My decision to leave science coincided with an advertisement for a CiS staff position, so I instantly applied. A few months later I began to work with science students, lab researchers, and many others, helping to supply them with resources and organize events where various faith-based issues could be discussed.

After several years travelling the length and breadth of the UK with CiS, I moved to The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion in Cambridge, where I now work on the relationship between science and Christianity. I am more than content with my new career outside the lab, but I remain fascinated by science.

My first few years in Cambridge were spent developing Test of FAITH, a series of resources to help churches and other groups tackle questions about science and Christianity. During this time I was challenged to recognize that while debates and discussions are important, they’re not the whole story. In a video interview, Alister McGrath said that it is also important to start new conversations about how science enhances faith, rather than always responding to issues.⁷ So I followed up this idea, was given some generous funding from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to communicate some of these more positive stories, and my blog scienceandbelief.org is part of that work.

This book is the final output of that project, and is an exploration of the experiences in science that can enhance faith. It’s also about the human side of science: what drives and motivates us, and what we enjoy. For those scientists who are Christians, their research is simply one expression of a faith that covers every aspect of their life. For many others, science and religion will seem like two separate worlds, and the topics addressed in this book will act as a bridge between the two.

The journey described here is a personal one. Imagination, creativity, beauty, wonder, and awe are all subjects that are close to my heart, and I have thoroughly enjoyed exploring them. I’m not one for travelling alone, so during my writing I have spoken with a number of working scientists who are also Christians. Their stories are included in these pages, reflecting their own unique perspectives on science and faith.

I’ll begin by explaining how science works, including the people and their quirks as well as the day-to-day business of research. Practising scientists may wish to skip this chapter, but others will hopefully appreciate a fly-on-the-wall view of life in the laboratory. Next I will explain why I am a Christian, and how I see science and faith fitting together. The trajectory of the rest of the book is through creativity and imagination, which are vital to the practice of both science and Christianity, to the beauty, wonder, and awe that scientists experience in their work, and that (for some) lead beyond science to God.

These pages will contain no arguments for God as such, but are more of a thought experiment, particularly when it comes to beauty, wonder, and awe. If the God of the Bible existed, what would you expect to see in the world? Does viewing the universe through the lens of faith make it look more coherent? I find that what I see in science helps my faith to grow, and enlarges my view of God.

With apologies to social scientists, when I write about “science” here, I mean natural science (e.g. biology, physics, and chemistry). I should also add that this is not intended to be an academic book, although I have referenced plenty of more scholarly works for those who want to follow up particular points. I have touched on some complex issues, and my aim has simply been to share some of what I feel is interesting and valuable, drawing on enough of the thinking of others to start an interesting conversation.

I have noticed that when I throw a topic like beauty or awe into a debate, people start to tell stories and listen to each other. We sometimes concentrate so hard on getting our point across that it’s difficult to engage with others, so we need to find some ways to begin again. Like my friend the theologian, it’s easy to get lost in abstractions. I hope that these insights gleaned from the laboratory and the library will help to start some dialogues where it’s possible to learn from each other and appreciate both the fascination of science and the deeper questions that it raises.

Chapter 2

Life in the Lab

If you want to know how scientists proceed, do not listen to what they say but watch what they do.

Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist⁸

If we assume we’ve arrived, we stop searching.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell, astronomer⁹

I like finding out how things work. When I was small I did what all children do, asking “Why?” and “What’s that?” all the time, and I never lost the habit. I also enjoy being outdoors. My walks tend to take a long time because I want to stop and look at all the plants and animals I come across. If I have to be inside I tend to bring the outdoors with me, so my home is full of plants, flowers from the garden, and objects I’ve found on walks and brought back in my pockets. This combination of curiosity and an interest in living things meant that I was drawn to biology.

My sixth form¹⁰ biology teachers had specialized in plant science and genetics, so I went to university with plant genetics in mind. I felt immensely privileged to be spending my days in the library and lecture halls at Aberdeen University, asking “Why?” and “What’s that?” to my heart’s content. I eventually realized that I preferred studying organisms that move, so I switched to biomedical science, and spent my last few years at university focusing on human genetics and molecular biology.

The human body is a phenomenal self-building, self-healing structure. Its processes are so complex that I half-expected most of them to be beyond understanding, but thankfully I was wrong. In one class we learned about the ear, where sound waves are converted to brain waves through an ingenious system of tiny hairs and vibrating membranes. Muscles had me fascinated too. Each one is a bundle of thousands of interlocking filaments that can move along each other, causing the entire tissue to contract.

The poet W. B. Yeats said that “education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire”.¹¹ I think a fair bit of pail-filling is necessary in scientific education, and I enjoyed it immensely (I only recently threw out my first university textbook), but my lecturers managed to light a fire at the same time. They admitted when they weren’t sure how something worked, explained the alternative theories, and pointed out gaping holes in current scientific understanding – perhaps these were problems we could work on in the future.

Our practical classes were a bit more pedestrian. We worked through tried and tested protocols, hoping to see what we were told we should see. Looking for the right answers is one way to learn the craft of laboratory work, but it’s not always very motivating. We were all too eager to dump everything down the sink or in the bin at the end of the day and dash off to dinner. I’m sure our lecturers tried hard to provide interesting problems for us to tackle, but short of putting us in working research laboratories right from the start (now there’s an idea!), it must be nigh on impossible to design interesting experiments for a large and diverse class on a limited budget.

Some of our lab sessions were more interesting. There was the time we watched yeast grow – which probably sounds a bit like watching paint dry, but was an exciting moment for me. Until that point, growth had been something that happened when you weren’t looking: a mysterious process too slow to watch. We had learned some of the biochemical processes involved in laying down new cell wall material and expanding the cell’s contents, but it was one-dimensional knowledge.

The experiment that helped me to see growth in real-time involved putting some filamentous (thread-like) yeast on a microscope slide and using a microscopic measuring scale to follow the progress of a single filament as it grew. I remember calling my lab partner, Duncan, over: “Look, you can actually see it growing!” He was excited too. Only a biology geek could think a few millimetres of movement is exciting, but that’s the whole point of the story. One of the messages I hope to get across in this chapter is what makes a scientist tick.

In our final year we were each given a placement in one of the university research labs where we could work on a project of our choice. I picked cancer research, and spent several weeks scraping cells off microscope slides and analyzing their DNA. I was terrified of collecting the wrong cells or muddling the samples up, but it was exciting to be finally planning my own experiments and looking for answers to new questions.

The purpose of this chapter is not just to share my own experience, but to give a series of snapshots that demonstrate what really happens in science: the fun parts, the challenges, and the mundane – in other words, the human side of science, and particularly biology because that is what I know best. The first half is about the nuts and bolts of how things work in the lab, and the rest is more philosophical. As I’m no longer based in a lab I’ll share my own thoughts alongside those of a working scientist, and I’ll do the same for each of the other main chapters.

If you have not been in a lab since school, then this chapter is primarily for you. We hear about scientific discoveries in the news, but we don’t often get to find out how th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• 1. The Theologian and the Telescope
• 2. Life in the Lab
• 3. Christianity and Science
• 4. Creativity
• 5. Imagination
• 6. Beauty
• 7. Wonder
• 8. Awe
• 9. Conversation
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Index