The Big Bang: A Christian Perspective on Cosmology with Dr. Jamie Probin

Joshua Noel: 00:00:23

Isaiah, chapter 40, verses 25 to 26 in the New American Standard Bible. To whom then will you compare me? That I would be his equal, says the Holy One.

Raise your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, the one who brings out their multitude by number. He calls them all by name because of the greatness of his might and the strength of his power. Not one of them is missing.

In this short pericope of scripture, God is communicating, commanding the leaders of the faith to comfort the people of Israel, the people of God, after they have endured much war punishment for their collective sins.

That kind of stuff and all throughout this chapter, the audience is reminded of God's greatness, how he has created the heavens on the earth, how no one can compare to him, that kind of stuff. And this chapter concludes with an admonishing that those who wait on the Lord will mount up on wings like eagles.

I think that's the first most people know of. Dr. Jamie Probin right now, we too live in a world of war and famine and evil that's in abundance.

So how do you think we might today be able to meditate on creation in a way that could bring comfort to those around us?

Jamie Probin: 00:01:36

That's a good question. I think, like a lot of these things is both a way to draw comfort, but also a way to draw a kind of a warning to us as well.

The comfort being that God designed this perfectly and everything that we need is that it is sufficient for us in every way with the warning that that's kind of on us to use it the right way that, you know, there are sufficient resources for everyone. There are, you know, sufficient situations for everyone. There is everything that we need but sink and distort that and we can end up where we are.

You know, we can end up in this kind of set of situations.

Like you say, where we're at war, there is famine, but generally speaking, there's this tendency to kind of say, well, come on God, sort this out, you know, why are you letting this happen?

And when we dig down, it's to typically us that's responsible for in some way or other, you know, either through greed or through neglect or whatever it may be. So I think the comfort is that we can make it right. It's not an, you know, an irreparable situation.

But the warning is if we carry on sinning, if we carry on doing those things, then we are not doing out of it. And the nature of free will is that those things can continue. So I get both comfort, but also a sense of responsibility as well, if that makes sense.

Joshua Noel: 00:03:13

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're both waiting on Lord and mounting up on wings like eagle. You know, it takes a little bit of both and. Yeah.

Hey, guys, welcome to the whole church science fair. You know, earlier this year, we did the. The job fair looking at what people, how their faith impacts their work.

And now we're addressing that faith and science thing for multiple reasons, partially a big part of it, so that we can advertise your Matter Matters, an educational podcast about faith and science in association with the ELCA that is going to be on our network on as a podcast network, but also because there's a lot of division in the church around this. So Church Unity podcast, not addressing it seems a little bit, you know, like we're not doing our jobs.

So I am here, of course, I'm Joshua Noel to introduce the one and only, the pot almighty, T.J. tiberius Juan Blackwell. How's it going? Yeah, good. And of course, we're here with. With a wonderful guest.

Jamie Probin: 00:04:13

This.

Joshua Noel: 00:04:13

If you guys follow and listen to the end of every episode, you'll be like, wait a minute, you guys didn't tell us about this until just last episode. Well, that's right. Dr. Jamie Probin originally wasn't part of the plan, but we were doing this episode early on.

One of the first episodes we did this year, we had a few of his colleagues from Charleston Southern on Specifically, we had Dr. Benjamin Phillips and Dr. David Berry and Dr. David Perry mentioned there was other people at Charleston Southern who were evolutionists and still part of this institution, teaching Christianity, believed in God and that kind of stuff. And we were like, I want to hear more about that. So then I Learned some about Dr. Jamie Probin. He teaches cosmology.

And I was like, okay, this is somebody we need to talk to. So we made it work in the series. So we added an extra episode to the series. This is like a bonus. You guys are welcome. Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:05:06

Just for you, Dr. Probin.

Jamie Probin: 00:05:07

I'm on it.

TJ Blackwell: 00:05:08

And our guest.

Jamie Probin: 00:05:09

I have to be a bonus.

Joshua Noel: 00:05:10

Yeah. Thank. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us.

I know, you know, we just messaged you a few weeks ago, but I really appreciate your willingness to work with us and make it happen.

TJ Blackwell: 00:05:18

Yeah.

Jamie Probin: 00:05:19

Pleasure.

TJ Blackwell: 00:05:21

Yeah.

So Dr. Probin, applied mathematics, theoretical physics expert, teaches cosmology, including the big bang at Charleston Southern University, which is a Baptist, you know, Southern Baptist College. If you are unaware, listeners who aren't from, you know, South Carolina, pretty much can't wait to start talking to him. Maybe he'll be on the show.

More like Beck and link. We have not been able to get rid of them since like four years ago. So five years ago.

Joshua Noel: 00:05:48

We have a lot of Charlton Southern guests.

TJ Blackwell: 00:05:52

Yeah, there's been quite a few. But if you're listening now, we mentioned it earlier, check out the Onaza podcast network website links below. A lot of stuff going on in there.

Convenient place to check out all of our shows and you know, the shows that are like our shows.

And if you're listening, consider a one time tip and you know you can do that in the comments with words like hey, open your mouth more when you talk or with your wallet. On our website.

Joshua Noel: 00:06:16

Yeah, yeah, lots of stuff on our website. You also get one so some nice merch and become official whole church member. All that good stuff. What's not on our website but is in every episode.

It's my favorite sacramental practice of unity as you can't be divided when you're being as silly as I like to be. So we always start with a silly question. And Dr. Probin, you inspired this one by telling me something we had in common.

So we're both fans of Doctor who.

For those who don't know, in the television series Doctor who, there's an iconic vehicle that travels through time and space that's called the tardis. Usually it looks like a police phone box because there's a chameleon unit.

roke when they were in London: 1963

The silly question is if the Doctor would have traveled to Jerusalem in the times of Christ when his chameleon unit got broken instead of London, what do we think the TARDIS might have gotten stuck as instead? Tj, you're always up first. It sure is a question.

TJ Blackwell: 00:07:31

And I. I really don't know. Maybe like I'm thinking it just looks like a really big olive tree. Could be you just disappear behind the olive tree, then you're in the tardis.

Jamie Probin: 00:07:43

I.

TJ Blackwell: 00:07:45

It's a hard question.

Also probably one of my favorite things about Doctor who, I'm not a big fan, but them, you know, in London in 19, whatever year the show started just being like, we need a reason for our time machine to look like this. Very convenient prop.

Joshua Noel: 00:08:01

Yeah, yeah, it's fine.

TJ Blackwell: 00:08:03

Let's come up with it.

Jamie Probin: 00:08:04

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:08:04

Oh yeah, that's great. I'll. For me, my guess, because in the times of you Know, Jesus, Rome is still in charge of Jerusalem.

I'm thinking it's gonna look like a Roman chariot. Yeah, yeah, we're just driving a chariot through space and time now. Dr. Program, what about you, man?

What do you think the TARDIS would have gotten stuck at if he would have traveled there first?

Jamie Probin: 00:08:30

It's a good. Yeah, I was thinking about this because it's supposed to, like, not only blend in, but it's supposed to be something that everyone ignores. Right?

I mean, yeah, the idea is that people don't. We are, like, poking around inside it, so being ignored. I got to thinking about how the Masters TARDIS did. Did work.

Like his chameleon circuit did work. So he blended into places. There was one episode where his was a. Like a Corinthian column.

I figured, well, that's probably the kind of thing that might happen, you know, especially since, you know, if it's Doctor who, you know, you're gonna be inside the temple, you know, it's go. You're gonna be in, like, the. The action place.

So probably like some kind of column, extra column that no one notices in the temple, Something like that.

Joshua Noel: 00:09:18

Oh, that is good. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:09:23

No one's gonna poke around the column because, you know, back then, no one's like, oh, wow, beautiful Roman column. It's just like, hey, look, another column.

Joshua Noel: 00:09:31

Why did it. So am I waste our tax money on another column? That's probably about it.

TJ Blackwell: 00:09:37

Yeah. But, you know, that's a good answer. That's a good answer. See, this is. There's levels to the Doctor Whodom thing, and I'm not there.

Joshua Noel: 00:09:45

I wasn't prepared for that either. That was a good answer.

Jamie Probin: 00:09:48

You opened that up.

Joshua Noel: 00:09:50

Yeah, I like that.

TJ Blackwell: 00:09:51

Yeah. But the thing I am better at is asking people smarter than me questions that I didn't come up with.

So many people think faith and science as, you know, opposites or in contention with one another, and that seems especially true of how people view more conservative Christian traditions like the SBC. Dr. Probin, could you fill us in on your faith journey, how you got into science and how you ended up teaching cosmology at csu.

Jamie Probin: 00:10:20

Yeah, I, um. I mean, faith journey is not super kind of dramatic, you know, just been to church my whole life. A gradual kind of deepening of faith.

You know, probably first worked out the. The real truth about salvation around about 14 or 15 or so.

But what I now look back on as a fairly superficial understanding, which has just kind of, you know, deepened and deepened That I couldn't really point to one moment of, you know, sudden revelation or anything like that. Just a gradual realization that I needed a savior, that Jesus was my savior and he deserved my life.

And I gradually have got better at that, and I'm still getting better at it. I feel like I've. I've still got plenty to learn on that in terms of the actual science side of things.

I mean, I've always been a math, science person. I've always wanted. I've always been the person who wants to know how things work and why things are the way they are.

But probably it mainly started when I went to university in England and join a. I was raised Methodist, joined the kind of Methodist student group there. And the. The church minister there had a PhD in theology, but also had a PhD in astrophysics.

He'd done kind of searching both and wrote books, spoke and just basically, you know, had a great interest in the connections between them.

And I got, you know, we got very friendly to the point where during the first year of my PhD, I actually basically lodged with him and his family, which gave me, you know, plenty of time to sit and talk and just explore it further. And that's kind of when I really started to appreciate just how much physics in general, but cosmology in particular can.

Can inform the way we look at the universe, can inform the way we look at God's creative power, just the way we can see the kind of evidence that sometimes we really, scientists at least, really crave. And from that point on, really, I've just. Just been a real fascination for me.

And when I started at csu, I fairly quickly explored creating a course to share that.

Joshua Noel: 00:13:07

Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. It's really cool.

Well, speaking of csu, you know, part of the sbc, in a lot of these more conservative traditions like the sbc, hold to what's often referred to as the literal reading of scripture. Not necessarily mean they take everything literally. It's just kind of meaning that the most obvious reading of Scripture is the correct readiness.

How they would word that. A lot of other Christian traditions believe similarly. Just a particular hermeneutic style.

I think actually Martin Luther is one who kind of started that, but Lutherans don't do that. It's weird.

I was curious, Jamie, how do some of your views around the Big Bang, evolution, age of the Earth, that kind of stuff either compliment or run contrary to some of those assumed beliefs with that kind of reading of Scripture?

Jamie Probin: 00:13:51

I mean, in terms of.

At csu, CSU is a very kind of encouraging place in that sense of lots of different viewpoints and opinions and interpretations of stuff, but in a very, what I think is a very healthy kind of conversational way where we will hear each other, we will, you know, listen to those opinions and discuss them in a very positive way.

So I have good friends who are, you know, strongly younger creationists and, and then others who are much more closely aligned, for want of a better word, to kind of the way I would view this, but you get that. And then the students themselves.

Where CSU is, you know, a university where whilst the faculty and staff are all professing Christians, the students are not required to sign off on any kind of statement of faith. So, you know, within the classroom you get an even bigger spectrum of, of opinion.

So you know, I would say on average it probably skews a bit closer to, I hate to, to use the word literal reading because that's a, A word that needs a bit of. Yeah, yeah, you go too far down that rabbit hole. But also an open mindedness.

And when I teach the class I find, you know, students are very prepared to consider new ideas and compare them.

Joshua Noel: 00:15:24

Yeah, so I'm right.

I'm kind of curious just given your context, I'm not sure what kind of responses you would get like, because I see going a number of ways of like maybe some people, students who aren't Christian, coming at you, going, you know, with.

Expecting you to say something different than what you actually believe considering, you know, the age of the earth and evolution, that kind of stuff. I could see some people coming in like really rigid beliefs and maybe being mad that you believe the way you do and are where you are.

I can see a pretty wide spectrum what I'm imagining of students and how they're coming at you.

What's your typical response when students enter your classroom and you kind of, you know, I know you don't teach evolution or anything, but like when these kind of ideas come up, how do the students typically respond?

Jamie Probin: 00:16:12

Yeah, I've ever had any kind of anger from it. You know, there's, there's been.

Joshua Noel: 00:16:19

That's good.

Jamie Probin: 00:16:20

Everything from kind of, yeah, there's, you know, clearly thinking hard about some new idea to, you know, still basically firm in their own position and having, you know, sort of reasons to, to be interested in, in cosmology but maybe not entirely convinced by it. You know, but it often has.

I think part of the thing is persuading people within the church that the Big Bang is not an atheistic philosophy that has been kind of inserted into science to disprove Christianity.

I think that that's the thing that usually makes people most antagonistic towards it is they feel like it sole reason for existence is to disprove their faith.

And so I'm fairly quick to get to the fact that that is not what the Big Bang theory is, not how it came about, not what it says, and try and really make them see just how much it does align with the Christian faith.

Joshua Noel: 00:17:34

Right.

TJ Blackwell: 00:17:34

Which is important because I've always just kind of felt that way. It's like God did the Big Bang. That's awesome. And I moved on and I accepted that at a very young age.

That apparently is not popular, but for this series we're doing something a little special. We're in the lab, we're doing a little science thing. So asking you to step into the whole church lab. You've agreed, you're now going to be asked a.

Joshua Noel: 00:18:01

You might not know. We agreed. But he agreed science.

TJ Blackwell: 00:18:03

He agreed. A rapid series of science adjacent questions altering from between four different categories.

And the categories are Biblical, religious, everyday and mythical. And we're going to see what you can tell us in the next five minutes.

Jamie Probin: 00:18:20

I wouldn't get your hopes up, but let's give it a shot.

TJ Blackwell: 00:18:23

All right, let's give it a shot. So when Jesus turned the water into wine, what actually happened on a molecular level, as in did the water molecules have other atoms added to them?

Did the water get replaced with a totally new substance? Was it a shape and density thing?

Jamie Probin: 00:18:39

I feel like, yeah. I mean, I think there must have been a change at the, the atomic level.

I mean these, these atoms are changing so there's a redistribution of the protons and the neutrons. But I feel like it wouldn't truly be water into wine if there wasn't a molecular change. That seems to be like the point of the miracle.

TJ Blackwell: 00:19:06

Right, Right. So you think it was the molecules changing and there wasn't like a few casks of wine somewhere that suddenly got replaced with water?

Jamie Probin: 00:19:14

I don't, I don't know. I mean, I'm.

TJ Blackwell: 00:19:17

Who knows?

Jamie Probin: 00:19:18

You know, I think, I think part of accepting. I agree with you though, Sign the scientific method is to acknowledge the fact that God is able to do miraculous things.

I don't think he does them very often. You know, it's not a day to day basis in terms of that kind of thing.

I mean, you know, daily miracles, perhaps in a more relational way, but you know, something like the virgin birth or something like water into wine is something that I think from A multiple dimensional point of view quite feasible for a being as powerful as God.

TJ Blackwell: 00:20:00

So most religions are believed to have formed their sacred traditions and items around the crops and climate changes observed during the middle Paleolithic era. What religious traditions and items should we then suspect if we discovered a people group that originated living underwater?

Jamie Probin: 00:20:17

I guess non soluble ones.

TJ Blackwell: 00:20:21

Good answer.

Jamie Probin: 00:20:25

It would probably help this but I don't know. Be interesting to find out a good answer.

TJ Blackwell: 00:20:32

So is there anything Icarus could have done that that would have kept his wax wings from melting as he got closer to the sun?

Jamie Probin: 00:20:41

I guess more wax. Although then they're heavier so then it becomes a pro hearted. Probably not. No, probably not. I don't think he would be able to do much about it.

TJ Blackwell: 00:20:51

Yeah, he should have just listened to his dad. Should have just listened. Some people swear by baking soda for cleaning others vinegar. Why is it that some people are choosing one or the other?

Jamie Probin: 00:21:08

Good question. I just generally I don't even know what I'm using.

I just go to the store if I need a look for X cleaner the thing I need to clean and then pour it in and hope that the manufacturers have put the best thing in there. So I don't know I've ever just dumped baking soda on anything so.

Joshua Noel: 00:21:30

Well that's fair.

Jamie Probin: 00:21:31

Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:21:32

We have to take advantage of.

Jamie Probin: 00:21:33

I imagine baking soda is a lot.

TJ Blackwell: 00:21:35

Cheaper than we gotta take advantage probably so that's a good argument. I might start using baking soda but why do some foods taste better reheated while others taste worse?

Jamie Probin: 00:21:47

Why? I don't know but it definitely is true. I mean that is for sure. I mean pizza just gets better as it gets older. No doubt. It starts.

TJ Blackwell: 00:21:57

It's crazy.

Jamie Probin: 00:21:57

It's like wine. It starts great and it just keeps on.

Joshua Noel: 00:21:59

I gotta disagree with the pizza one not good reason I don't like it. The texture just.

TJ Blackwell: 00:22:04

He's crazy.

Joshua Noel: 00:22:05

I don't know.

Jamie Probin: 00:22:06

I don't know something about it. I. I don't know what it is.

I mean forever, you know my kids never finish their meals so our fridge is constantly full of old bits of leftovers and you know it's 10 o' clock at night and you're just a bit hungry and it's all good like I just grab it out sometimes I don't even microwave it. It's. My wife hates it. But I'm with you.

Joshua Noel: 00:22:32

Yep.

Jamie Probin: 00:22:32

There's not much. There's not much that isn't at least decent.

Joshua Noel: 00:22:37

Yeah, yeah pizza.

Jamie Probin: 00:22:41

But yeah, actually maybe I'm with you there. Maybe I'm with you there. Cold pizza is maybe the. Maybe it's just like, the dirtier the food, the better it is as you go on.

Like, Like a really good steak or something is not gonna be. So maybe it's just. Maybe it's proportional to just how dirty it is.

TJ Blackwell: 00:23:03

I could get behind that. So with two more very important.

All right, if Jonah had a smartwatch in the belly of the big fish and we, you know, read the story, literally, what health warning would Jonah receive first?

Jamie Probin: 00:23:17

I.

TJ Blackwell: 00:23:18

To my knowledge, there's not one that says, hey, you're in a big fish.

Jamie Probin: 00:23:21

I guess my, My follow up question would be if he's got a phone inside the big fish, then maybe he could be calling for help. But I don't use the. The health stuff on my phone. I would think oxygen first, right? I mean, isn't that going to be the biggest problem in the.

TJ Blackwell: 00:23:40

We'll have to do some testing.

Jamie Probin: 00:23:42

Can it tell how your oxygen is?

TJ Blackwell: 00:23:45

I would have thought, yeah, it can read your blood oxygen level.

Jamie Probin: 00:23:48

Thought that.

Joshua Noel: 00:23:51

I don't know.

Jamie Probin: 00:23:52

I've never been inside a big fish, so.

Joshua Noel: 00:23:54

You know, to be fair, the heart rate thing might go off first before he even hits the water. Like, wait, God says I'm gonna get swallowed by a fish?

TJ Blackwell: 00:24:05

That would get it to spike. At least for me.

Jamie Probin: 00:24:07

It's probably the smartphone that got him thrown overboard in the first place.

TJ Blackwell: 00:24:12

Yeah, yeah. I'm not going over there. I got my phone right here.

But the last one, the most important one and seemingly the hardest answer, I don't think anyone's given a good answer for this one. What's up with the beach and the lagoon in spongebob?

Joshua Noel: 00:24:30

Why.

TJ Blackwell: 00:24:30

Why does that exist? How do they have a beach down there? They're underwater. What does science say?

Jamie Probin: 00:24:38

I've never watched spongebob, but I do have that kind of question with stuff my kids watch. So I, I kind of. I can't answer your question, but I can give you all the, like, like my kids, like Peppa Pig.

TJ Blackwell: 00:24:51

I understand.

Jamie Probin: 00:24:52

And, well, Pig world, they have a doctor and they have a vet.

TJ Blackwell: 00:25:00

That's pretty funny. I didn't know that.

Joshua Noel: 00:25:03

Equally as well.

TJ Blackwell: 00:25:03

That's why we have to talk to people. How do you know which one to go to?

Joshua Noel: 00:25:07

Yeah, sorry, that's just funny.

So I do want to get back to the cosmology stuff soon, but first I was wondering maybe if you could explain to us a little bit what is applied mathematics and what are theoretical physics. You experts above those teach that kind of stuff. Yeah. What are These topics about. And what about them excites you personally?

Jamie Probin: 00:25:34

Yeah, I mean, there's probably a gray area between, I mean, applied math is really just using math in some practical way. Like actually, you know, pure math is, is just navel gazing with numbers really. I mean, you just enjoying the artistry of numbers, if you like.

That's not really something. That's my cup of tea. I don't get excited by that.

But applied math is more how we can use the math to kind of model real world situations and solve problems with it.

I mean, I'd say applied math is largely problem solving of some description, but it's kind of the language that physicists use, economists use, you know, physical chemists use to, to both model a situation and then try and make predictions off it. And then theoretical physics is really kind of, I guess, kind of what emerges from that in physics.

But generally stuff that you can't do experimental work on in a lab. I mean, theoretical physics largely is stuff that is either too big or too small to practically, you know, run repeatable experiments on.

You can observe data and make hypotheses and see if things are consistent, but you know, you can't, you can't do another big bang in the lab to see, you know, how things play out second time around. Yeah.

So it's a degree of putting, putting the, the kind of the mathematical model under the microscope and seeing if we can make it consistent with the, the observations we have. But it's, it doesn't really, you know, fit neatly into the scientific method in that sense, because you can't just keep on doing it.

Joshua Noel: 00:27:37

Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:27:39

So what about cosmology excites you the most? Like, why is it, oh, I want to start a class, I'm gonna, I'm gonna teach class about cosmology.

Jamie Probin: 00:27:48

It just, I mean, was fascinating to me from the start. I mean, for one thing, it is basically the study of everything. It's a study of creation. It's the study of the entire reality that we have.

And so as a Christian, I kind of felt like, I mean, I'm basically studying God's work from a scientific perspective. So I mean, I, you know, I very, very early on stopped learning biology as fast as possible. I never really cared for, I never really got it.

So the, the aspect of science that kind of appealed to me was definitely the physics side of things.

And just the, the beauty of it, the simplicity of it, really the way that the whole of the universe has emerged out of some frankly, fairly straightforward physics, by and large, you know, I Mean, there's not an awful lot of complexity to the processes that have given us what we have. But at the same time there's incredible fine tuning to those processes. Everything is just so perfectly what it needs to be that I just found our.

I felt like I was looking at God's work, you know, through a mathematical physical lens.

TJ Blackwell: 00:29:13

Yeah, yeah, I understand.

Joshua Noel: 00:29:16

It's funny though, the physics are one of the big reasons I, I never actually ended up with a science degree. Every time I took that clusters couldn't get past it. Physics was like the one thing that my brains like. Nope. I'm great at math, I love chemistry.

But every time physics I'm like, just is like my brain's just like gear spinning.

TJ Blackwell: 00:29:35

I don't know.

Yeah, usually, usually when people say that kind of thing I'm like, well no, not really like, you know, physics just internally because, you know, you know how to throw things and you know like when you pick something up, you know how much is in it. But Josh really doesn't. I've seen him not be able to do those things. So.

Jamie Probin: 00:29:55

It is, it is. I mean, I would say it's the hardest science. I mean we, you know, I know a lot of universities in England are just basically dropping physics.

There's just not enough demand because people don't take it as much in school because it's challenging. I mean it's just, it's difficult. It's.

In and of itself, it partly it's the complexity of that and, and you just need to be very, very good at math to do it well as well. So it's kind of a double edged or double headed monster, I guess.

Joshua Noel: 00:30:32

Yeah, that's part that irritated me. So I'm like, yeah, they keep telling me if I'm good at math I'd love physics. And I'm like, I do great at math. It's just, it's.

Jamie Probin: 00:30:40

They say that if you're good at math. They say if you're good at math, you're supposed to be good at music too. And that does not work out for me.

Joshua Noel: 00:30:47

Absolutely not.

Jamie Probin: 00:30:48

I'm right there with you.

TJ Blackwell: 00:30:50

Yeah, it's, it's secretly. It's a, it's a two, it's a triangle. So math, physics and music are on a triangle. And you can be somewhere in that triangle. You can't have all three.

Joshua Noel: 00:31:03

That's funny. Yeah. I did have one friend who was like, I bet if Josh touched my guitar it would break. That's how bad he is at music.

And then I touched it just to like, you know, be smart. And then it fell over and broke, so I don't touch musical instruments anymore. Yeah, but sorry.

When it comes to cosmology, we know you teach the Big Bang as a means to bolster Christian apologetics, whereas a lot of people think of it as more of a challenge to it.

So I was just kind of wondering if you could kind of expound a little bit on how is it you see the Big Bang as something that's actually helpful to Christian apologetics or theology?

Jamie Probin: 00:31:44

Yeah, I mean, it's, it just, it's funny how you, you look for consistency in things.

ly disprove faith, and yet in: 2000

You know, science keeps on giving us results and ideas that fit with Scripture and, and I don't think there's ever been a greater kind of illustration of that than, Than the Big Bang.

I mean, you emerged out of the sort of the Enlightenment and the Renaissance with science very much holding the opinion that the universe was eternal, infinite, and had always existed and had no boundary. And the church was kind of saying, well, well, no, that's not true. That's not what scripture says. It, you know, the. The universe was created.

It is finitely old, it is finite in size, God created it.

And then suddenly, after a fairly tortuous kind of couple of centuries, Einstein comes along with relativity and basically shows, actually, no, the universe can't be eternally old and eternally big. It started at some point, is expanding, and therefore it started at some point in the past. So there was a creation moment and science hated it.

I mean, they absolutely despised the theory, did spent decades churning out alternative after alternative to try and displace it. And all of their alternatives lasted, you know, three, five, ten years before they were conclusively disproved.

That's how long it normally takes to disprove something that's not true.

Meanwhile, the Big Bang is, just keeps on saying the same thing in more and more detail, perfectly in accordance with the idea of a creator, a designer, and, and what we read throughout Scripture, basically.

Joshua Noel: 00:33:57

So I think, just to help me out, so I think a lot of times when I hear people say that Big Bang disproves Christianity, what they're trying to say is the Big Bang is. I don't know what the Big Bang is really, totally. So this is just coming from ignorance and maybe some listeners Also ignorant. This will be great.

The Big Bang is like just coincidence. Some atoms happen to find each other and then boom, Big Bang.

Whereas Christianity is trying to say, no, it was God intention that everything was created. Is that like, how far off is that understanding? And is that like what people, when they argue, is that what they're arguing about?

Jamie Probin: 00:34:34

I think so. I think that's, that's legitimate. But I don't think they necessarily have any concrete kind of foundation to the idea of it just happen.

I mean, usually somewhere along the way, someone will slip the phrase quantum fluctuation or you know, quantum event into play. And that's the kind of the, the magic wand wave to legitimize everything. But it's not consistent with quantum mechanics. It doesn't give any.

There's no coherent meaning to that idea. So, and bluntly, I mean, people think of the Big Bang as being the creation moment. It really isn't.

The Big Bang is really just the model of creation from the very first few, you know, micro ecoseconds of the universe and how it turned into what we see today. But the model itself doesn't actually explain where everything came from. It can't. It doesn't have that ability.

So you kind of have this kind of hidden center that science can't explain. As Christians and frankly, most monotheistic religions are going to be quite content with the idea of, well, yeah, sure, God did it.

And then this is what's happened ever since.

TJ Blackwell: 00:35:56

Yeah, yeah, it's so it. To me, it's kind of the same issue when people are like, okay, well, what caused the Big Bang? It's the same question as, well, who created God?

What do you want me to say, man? That's where we're starting. Don't ask me questions about before then.

Joshua Noel: 00:36:11

What do you mean, once upon a time? Where did that time come from?

Jamie Probin: 00:36:15

Well, that's.

TJ Blackwell: 00:36:16

Yeah, you're asking the wrong question.

Jamie Probin: 00:36:18

I think that's one of the things about the Big Bang and creation that people just don't get, is they just have this idea that there was like, empty space and time was passing. Time was passing, and then there was a, you know, tiny dot, and then suddenly one day everything blew up.

But the, the model of relativity is that time itself was created in the Big Bang. You know, time itself is an intrinsic property of this universe. So, so this idea of what happened before the Big Bang is a meaningless question.

There is no before the Big Bang. There's no time. Not time as we experience it, at least cause and effect.

And before and after rely on the idea of you've got a moment in time and then you've got something just before and something just after it, and there is no before. So all of those questions really sound like they make sense, but they don't make sense when you actually dig down.

Joshua Noel: 00:37:12

And that gets to the Doctor who stuff.

Jamie Probin: 00:37:14

Right.

Joshua Noel: 00:37:15

Like, I know they have a lot of fun with that in like sci fi, but haven't we actually proven that like time really is attached to space, like warping, One affects the other. Like they're space time, not just time.

Jamie Probin: 00:37:28

That's definitive. Yeah, I mean that's the core of general relativity.

Joshua Noel: 00:37:32

Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:37:33

So are there other like big cosmological misconceptions that people will come into or into your class with that they try to talk about or is like, what do we. What are some of the big.

Jamie Probin: 00:37:44

Yeah, I mean, like I said, just the idea that it is an atheistic theory. I think a lot of people, one of the arguments that you will hear is order doesn't come out of chaos.

So an explosion doesn't produce an ordered, you know, universe like we see. Which again totally misunderstands the Big Bang. It's not in any way an explosion is just a rapid expansion. You know, the.

There was a guy called Fred Hoyle who was probably like the most ardent opponent to the Big Bang when it first came out. English guy who kind of authored or co authored one of the main alternate theories. And he, he just hated it. He thought he, he was an atheist.

He thought it was basically religious fundamentalism. He did everything he could to bring it down. And, and it was him actually who in a.

An inter radio interview basically described it as saying that the universe died in some big Bang. And, and it just, you know, it. That caught that. Up until that point, that had not been the name of the theory at all.

And he kind of, he didn't really care for the fact that his derisive name became the name for it.

But it also, he kind of had a bit of revenge because it gives people this idea that it's some kind of like something exploding and it, and it just isn't. It's just an expansion. It's nothing to do with an explosion. It's not. There's no chaos.

Joshua Noel: 00:39:12

So should we start calling it the, the Giant Rapid Expansion Theory?

Jamie Probin: 00:39:18

That'd be great.

The guy, I mean the guy basically, the Greg corded it, you know, first published it was a Jesuit priest who was also an astronomer and he called it the hypothesis of the Primeval Atom. That was like its official name for a while.

Joshua Noel: 00:39:35

That does sound cooler, which is a cool name.

Jamie Probin: 00:39:38

Pretty cool. So maybe go back to that.

But, yeah, I mean, the model I kind of give to my students is when you see, you know, if you see footage of a plant blooming in kind of, you know, sped up in time, so, like, there's a bulb, and then suddenly the flower just kind of explodes out the bulb. That's a much better model for the Big Bang.

It's just, you know, something huge rapidly emerging out of something small, but in a very ordered and beautiful way.

Joshua Noel: 00:40:13

Although I do think that we called it, like, the Rapid Expansion Theory or something, that Sheldon probably would have been a whole different character. You know, that show would have been weird.

Jamie Probin: 00:40:22

That's true. Maybe we should stick to.

TJ Blackwell: 00:40:25

I would love to watch the Great Rapid Expansion Theory on Fox. Yeah, that would be.

So do you think cosmology is important for theologians and pastors to confront and understand and come to terms with, or is it more of a stumbling block for Christian evangelical efforts that should be avoided?

Jamie Probin: 00:40:45

Depends, I guess. Depends who you're talking to, really. I mean, if you're talking to a scientist who wants evidence and models and theory, then yes, maybe not.

I think what I would say is, do they need to be interested in it? Not necessarily. But if they're not, they probably shouldn't preach on it. I think harm is done by Amen.

People who don't really know what they're talking about, standing up and saying what this thing says or doesn't say incorrectly. And I. I mean nothing.

Not much is going to turn off a, you know, a scientist wandering into a church looking for answers, who thinks, you know, maybe. Maybe there's something in this God thing. You know, maybe I need to explore. And being told, well, the universe is 10,000 years old.

It was created in six days, and that's it. There's no other possible answer to that. There's no other interpretation. End of story.

They're not going to think, huh, well, let me explore more about, you know, this Jesus of Nazareth. They'll just. They'll never come back now. If they come in and just hear about Jesus and his. His salvific work and what he did for them, great.

But the minute they start hearing stuff that they know to be untrue, I think that's going to be a big hindrance to them. So it definitely could be a stumbling block in certain contexts.

TJ Blackwell: 00:42:18

Is. So I, you know, things I study, I like to talk about. Right.

And is there anything for you in, like, Just the field of cosmology in general, that gets you going. Like in Isaiah 40, about the greatness of God is you, like, are you a big redshift guy? Neutron stars, neutrinos.

It's one of those just like, really set you off and like, okay, you're talking about this now.

Jamie Probin: 00:42:43

Now it's, it's the fine tuning for me. I mean, it's the, the balance that everything has is when that. That'll light my blue touch paper. You know, you, you.

I mean, you know, the way the universe works is.

Is amazing, you know, incredible to think about and look at, but the way it was designed so perfectly is where I really start to feel like, just sit down and let me talk to you about this for a bit longer because, you know, yeah, this should be blowing your mind right now. And. And when it's not, that's very frustrating. But, you know, part.

Part of the issue is a lot of people don't really understand probability that well.

You know, the people I stand behind at the gas station buying all their lottery cards, I. I know that they don't really understand probability very well or they would not be buying these cards. So, you know, you have that kind of barricade in front of you of.

I want to explain to you how unlikely all of this is, but I first need you to understand probabilities before I can do that. So I want to do it, but sometimes I'm aware people just check out, so I have to kind of.

TJ Blackwell: 00:43:58

And you'd usually have to teach them a new number as well.

Jamie Probin: 00:44:01

Yeah, so that's part of the issue is, you know, I think the two biggest issues with trying to explain it all is people not understanding how time works and people maybe not understanding how probability works, because those are the things that tend to cause the most confusion, I think. Or just kind of neutralize the. The evangelistic or apologetic power of it, you know?

Joshua Noel: 00:44:33

Do you ever have students who, like, you're having these conversations and you're like, oh, man, they just. They don't know how time works or they don't get a probability. And then, like, you have to teach them that before you can move on with the class.

And if so, I mean, that's. How do you teach people probability or time?

Jamie Probin: 00:44:50

You kind of alluded to it before, but part of the heart of the. The inner church friction is this idea of how old is the universe? You know, when did this happen? When did God create?

What's Genesis supposed to be saying? And. And you just, you go down these rabbit holes of what's the Hebrew word for day? And what does yom mean?

And does it have a cardinal and does it have to mean 24 hours? And if you could just scrap all of that and say, time doesn't work that way. Time is not this absolute thing that you're talking about. Time is.

Only exists when it's measured by someone. That's the.

The whole kind of point of special relativity in the first place, when Einstein created it, is there is no such thing as the time between two events. There is only the time as measured by some observer, and a different observer can measure a different time.

And so this idea of, well, how long did creation take? Is just a doomed question from the start because there was no one there to observe it. It's.

It's a completely flawed premise to start talking about what do those days mean, because you don't have the context to actually interpret them in any way. That's not the point of the passage, so far as you know, I can make out.

But to end up having this kind of endless argument over what's a day and when did it happen? And that is. It doesn't make any sense.

Joshua Noel: 00:46:28

Yeah, that makes sense. It makes sense if it doesn't make sense.

TJ Blackwell: 00:46:31

Yeah.

So is there anything else, Jamie, that you think our listeners may want to know about you or cosmology or Charleston Southern or warp speed travel or anything else before you move on?

Jamie Probin: 00:46:44

I don't say there's anything they want to know about me. I guess just.

Just to me that it feels like for some reason, anytime the issue of science and faith comes up, you're like seconds away from evolution being the conversation. And that always seems to be where everyone goes. And that's. I guess I wish people realized in the church that that is a.

Basically, you know, that's a rabbit hole that you don't want to go down. You're not going to persuade a scientist of God's providence and God's nature that way.

Whereas cosmology is this simple, streamlined, you know, there's no counter argument.

You know, whatever you think of the idea of natural selection through random mutation, whether you think it makes sense or not, it has explanatory skill.

And so you'll always run into the barrier of someone say, but it could have happened, you know, and I choose to believe that whereas cosmology, there really is no. It could have beyond just, you know, now we have the idea of the multiverse, which, you know, is just a different faith statement to cling to.

But there is nothing else in Cosmology. So I guess I wish people realize that it from inside the church. I get why atheists love to talk about evolution.

They want no part of talking about cosmology because it does not suit their argument at all well. But I get why they want to talk about evolution.

I don't get why people in the church always seem to want to talk about evolution when there is a much more slam dunk route to go down.

Joshua Noel: 00:48:25

Yeah, all right. That makes sense to me. Oh, man, sorry. There's so much we could talk about.

But hey, maybe that's why people should take a class on cosmology and learn them some stuff or watch Doctor who or both. Both. Yeah, do both.

One thing we do always like to do before we wrap up is just to ask our guest for a single practical action, something tangible that our listeners can just go do that might help better engender Christian unity, church unity, ecclesiology, however you want to say. What's something you think our listeners could go do right now, as soon as this episode was over, that would help better bring the church together?

Dr.

TJ Blackwell: 00:49:11

Proven.

Jamie Probin: 00:49:13

Well, be humble for a start. Not, you know, don't be so sure that your viewpoint is definitively the right one and have the humility that you might not.

I've seen everything correctly and then just maybe try and see the bigger picture. I think we, we're inherently tribal beings and so we, we have this tendency to focus on what's different in other people or in other denominations.

But if you step back and look at overall, you see, well, you know, I'm a Methodist. A lot of my colleagues are Southern Baptist. That guy's Catholic. That guy's Lutheran. This, this woman's like Episcopalian.

99% of what we believe is exactly the same.

You know, it's really easy to, to dwell on these like, minute sort of discrepancies that we have and end up arguing about, are you supposed to have infant baptism versus, you know, adult baptism when, when you step back? I mean, you know, it, it's, it's nearly all the same. We, we are all, we all believe in the same Savior. We're all sinners.

We all come to the same cross. And really so much does unify us that we would do well to dwell on that and to glory in it.

TJ Blackwell: 00:50:35

All right, so what do we see change if everyone adopts that spirit of humbleness and actually tries to unify with one another?

Jamie Probin: 00:50:44

Well, I guess we, we stop having so much internal friction and maybe get to focus a little more on evangelism and I think the humility as well, allows us to just be.

You know, I think the view from outside the church is largely that we're pious, sanctimonious, judgmental people who think we're better than everyone else. And the humility and the unification, I think, allows us to say, no, we're sinners, maybe worse sinners than you.

We just know the person with the answer. We know what can be done about it. And it's not what we can do, it's what he can do when we ask.

But I think it allows us to show what we should be showing to. To the unchurched people of, you know, there's a place for you here. You're like us, and we'd love to share what we've got with you.

Joshua Noel: 00:51:46

Yeah. All right. Absolutely.

TJ Blackwell: 00:51:48

Before we wrap up, we would like to ask everyone to share a moment where they saw God recently. Whether that be in, you know, a moment of worship, a blessing, a challenge, a curse, whatever it is. That's what we're asking about.

And I'll just make Josh go first to give rest of us time to think about our God moment. So, Josh, do you have a God moment for us?

Joshua Noel: 00:52:08

Yeah. Recently I have started, I'll say, humoring. I don't want to say considering humoring the idea again of being called to the pastorate.

You know, I used to really believe that and then left. One church organization went with another. A lot of life has happened in between.

And at an event I went to last weekend, Kete camp at Lutheridge, I just asking one of the guys there who's a pastor, hey, why are you a pastor?

And he was just telling me about how, like, it was the one place he always felt welcomed, and he wanted to also contribute to creating a place where people felt welcomed.

And I was like, man, even if I do nothing with that, just hearing him talk about having a welcoming place for so many people who never feel that, I was like, ah, that's just. It was beautiful, you know?

TJ Blackwell: 00:53:02

Yeah, no, absolutely.

For me, my God moment, I recently, this past Tuesday, my mom went to the hospital with a GI bleed, and she went to the same hospital that her mom was in. So then something really funny happened. You know, their mother and daughter, they love each other.

Noam does not like to spend time with her mom, not if she can't leave. I'm sure people listening can relate.

So she was trying to keep it a secret that she was in the hospital so that her mom didn't, like, wheel her way down the hospital, down the hallway and like sit in her room. And now they're both out. And that's the God moment, is that they're both out of the hospital. That's the good part.

But the entertaining part was trying to keep it a secret from her own mother in the same hospital. I don't think they were on the same hallway, but that's still hilarious to me.

Joshua Noel: 00:54:00

I just hope that makes it to the Scrubs renewal series coming out in February. Yeah, but they are both your. Your family.

TJ Blackwell: 00:54:07

Yeah, they're both out and they're both better and that's. Yeah, that's good.

Joshua Noel: 00:54:12

Praise God.

Jamie Probin: 00:54:13

Have this kind of Benny Hill style view of wheelchairs being kind of racing through the hospital corridor, kind of missing each other by traction.

TJ Blackwell: 00:54:24

Yeah. She's lucky that she has. She doesn't have her maiden name anymore because you can hear Blackwell and not think anything of it. Like black.

There's a million of us. Well over a million of us. If you hear Stasilavage, you. You're pretty certain, you know, you know what they're talking about.

Joshua Noel: 00:54:44

But I pass a billboard that says Blackwell almost every day.

TJ Blackwell: 00:54:48

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:54:48

And about half the time it reminds me of something I'm supposed to tell dj.

TJ Blackwell: 00:54:52

Yeah, it's helpful. That's why I put it there. No. Jamie, do you have a God moment for us this week?

Jamie Probin: 00:55:00

Yeah. I mean, I have an easy warning that a friend of mine at church who had a cancer diagnosis has just had a pretty early and clean bill of health given.

But I'm always a little loath to use healing situations because for everyone who is healed, there may be someone who kind of hasn't been. And, you know, that's. It is a God moment. But I think my.

At the moment, it's just a stream of mini God moments with my 6 year old because she's just kind of getting to that age where when she's learning stuff at church, it's starting to sink in. You know, she'll come home after Sunday school, she'll come home after children's church with comments and questions.

And I guess it just, it's nice because of, you know, what we're talking about today, because I like to go down into details and mix things with the science and think about it. It just is a nice reminder of just how simple the whole thing is at heart. Like, she gets what she needs to get.

She gets that, that God loves her, she gets that Jesus loves her. You know, maybe she doesn't understand atonement and, you know, you know, the full details of what Exactly. Transpired in the resurrection. But.

But she gets that Jesus loves her and did that for her and that. And she loves him. And I was like, it's, you know, what is it really easy? It's so simple. We can. It's fun to talk about all the details.

It's fun to kind of speculate on stuff and get into the hermeneutics and stuff. But she just has been reminding me recently of just how easy the whole thing is. Hard to understand. And I need that sometimes for me.

So that's been kind of God just reminding me to not overcomplicate.

TJ Blackwell: 00:57:02

That's awesome. So if you're listening, please consider sharing with a friend. Share with your enemies. Share with a cousin.

Joshua Noel: 00:57:11

Especially your cousins.

TJ Blackwell: 00:57:13

Especially your cousins.

Joshua Noel: 00:57:14

Holiday season, they have to do what you say right now.

TJ Blackwell: 00:57:17

It's true. Because you know they're not gonna make it to something or they're gonna forget their white elephant and just be like, well, listen to this instead.

But rate and review the show. There is actually a link on our website that will take you to where it is the most beneficial to write and review the show.

That'd be cool if you did it over there on Podchaser. But seriously, wherever you listen, if you rate the show, it helps a ton. So please do that.

Joshua Noel: 00:57:40

Yeah, please also be sure you check out some of the other shows on the Onazole podcast network. You know, we're part of a greater network of podcasts.

If you want to see shows like ours and shows we like to like, as TJ said, you know, you can see my seminary life with Brandon Knight. You can check out Let Nothing Movie. Christian Ashley or Systematic ecology with me, TJ, Christian Ashley and like 10 other people or so.

TJ Blackwell: 00:58:03

So 11 other people.

Joshua Noel: 00:58:04

Good times. And we talk about the sometimes.

TJ Blackwell: 00:58:07

Sometimes. But we hope you enjoy the show.

Coming up, we're gonna have one more episode with just Joshua and myself to reflect on this series of faith and science.

Then we'll be interviewing Pastor Will Rose and Pastor Thomas Johnston about their upcoming educational podcast in association with the ELCA and the Onaz Podcast Network. Your matter matters.

Then we're going to be taking a quick one week break before releasing a Christmas Eve special discussing the past, present and future of Christmas traditions with Dr. Peter Beck. Big, big claps for. For Dr. Beck. Father Jonathan Rasmini, he's Greek Orthodox. And Professor Chris Moreland, who's devoted Catholic.

Finally, at the end of season one, Francis Chan is going to be on the show.

Joshua Noel: 00:58:46

Maybe, probably if somebody tells him or maybe if nobody tells him. He might figure it out on his own. Just show up, you know, Just studio one day. Yeah, that'd be a jump scare. Just get on. Francis. Chancellor.

Jamie Probin: 00:58:58

Let's go in.