The Book of Works

The book starts out as an idea. It’s vague, incomplete—more texture than substance, more flavor than bulk. Then you start to write. Words appear and form ideas, thoughts connect, a sense of communication develops. Finally, a draft takes shape. A terrible, awful, lousy conglomeration of words, where nothing fits, and nothing meaningful is said. So you fix it, again and again and again. If you’re lucky, somebody else helps you fix it also.

Finally, it seems OK. Maybe even good, or at least good enough. Anyway, by now you hate it, and you never want to see it or think about it again. So off it goes to the publisher. And then the real misery starts. Lots of people start fixing it. Some are kind and gentle; some are merciless and cruel. It is transformed—it undergoes mutilation, amputation, rearrangement. You hold your breath, nod OK, and click “accept, accept, accept” over and over again. And, finally, you are forced to admit—although you don’t want to—that it’s now much better.

Then it’s done. Now you really are through with it. Book? What book? There is no book, just some chapters, some words, some quotes, some sentences. Leave me alone! there is no book, it’s not real. I want to do something else.

And then the real work starts. Getting permissions, checking references, approving galleys, getting endorsements, doing interviews, talking about it, posting about it… You can barely remember what’s in it, and it feels less real than ever. It was never real. It was just an idea, a concept… , just words.

Finally, a big box arrives, so heavy you can’t lift it. You open it, and there they are. Books. Actual objects. Many, many identical copies of THE BOOK!! You pick one up, open it, look at the back, and at the cover, where you see your name. Maybe you even fan the pages and read a few words. Your words (mostly). They seem familiar, but it’s different now. Those are your words, but now they are in an actual book you are holding in your hand. It’s beautiful, this book; it’s yours, it’s real. And it will never die.  

To all my friends and followers, all readers of my first book, “The Works of His Hands”, and all who agree that science is not the enemy but the friend of Christian faith, I invite you to pre-order my new book “Science and Faith in Harmony”. It is a scientific, non-technical, religious, philosophical, personal, metaphysical, and passionate set of 45 vignettes on how science and Christianity play different notes, on different instruments, but are always in beautiful harmony with each other. After all the beauty of harmony depends on different voices playing different melodies.

Learn about how quantum theory, molecular biology, anthropology, biochemistry, and all of science can be viewed from a theistic, Christ centered framework, pointing to the same universal truth about reality. From following the path of Jesus, and the pathways of metabolism to the dual nature of Christ, and the dual nature of electrons, to the worship networks in churches and ;the regulatory networks of gene expression, Christianity and science speak the same language in harmony. 

Each of the short chapters includes a “Going Deeper” section with QR codes to links to books, articles, podcasts, videos and papers on each subject covered. The book, with Foreword by Sean McDowell will be released on Feb 13, but you can order your copy now at rb.gy/b01ds8

Seventy years ago, a woman entered a Woolworths store with her young son. She was there to buy some aspirin and other medications for her daughter who was feeling ill. It was mid-December, the weather was cold and snowy in Brooklyn NY, and the bus ride had been slow and bumpy. The boy was feeling grumpy, but as they entered the store, he felt much better. It was his first time in such a big store, and there was so much to see.

And also to hear. There was music playing, songs his mother had warned him about. “This is Christmas season” she told him on the bus. He had heard of Christmas from his friends on the block, but didn’t really know what it meant, except that kids got presents, and he had seen Christmas trees. His mother told him that he would hear songs about Jesus and God, but “we don’t believe in any of that” and he shouldn’t feel bad about missing any of it, because its all about making people buy things they don’t need.

Like many things his family told him, he only half understood, but the message was clear – ignore what you see and hear, there is nothing good about it. In fact, the music blaring from the speakers in the store was loud and annoying. The words were silly – all about bells and sleighs (an object of unknown nature to him)  and drums, and reindeer, and he tuned it out, while standing online at the cashier with his mother.

But then another song began to play, a quiet and slow one, without any noisy instrumental music. A soft voice sang, “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.” He stood stock still listening, trying to grasp the words, and the melody filled him with…something. Something brand new in his young life. Again, he heard the refrain “all is calm” and he sighed with a sense of peace that was also new. He had rarely felt calm, and yet this song seemed to promise him that being calm was possible.

On the bus ride home, he remembered some of the other lyrics of the song and asked his mother “What’s virgin mean?” She shook her head, “Pay no attention to that nonsense. All of this Christmas stuff is just to keep capitalism alive.”  He nodded. He already knew that while Christmas day would bring no presents, he would get his presents a week later on New Years, just like the children in the Soviet Union.

Trudging home from the bus stop he thought about the gaudy, garish lights and the frenetic chaos of the store and was glad to be back in the relatively quiet snow-bound street. And the words again came to him with the melody “All is calm, all is bright.“ And although he could not possibly have known it at the time, the Holy Spirit had in that moment come to his soul.

Seven decades passed in the blink of an eye, and now that same soul is typing these words, listening to the same song, and praying his everlasting thanks and hallelujah to the baby born on Christmas day who brought peace and calm, along with everlasting joy and salvation into the world, and even unto me.

Merry Christmas to all.  

Writing books is hard work, takes lots of time, and involves a great deal of angst and emotional turmoil, for not much financial reward. It does feel good to finally have the finished book in hand and to see it on the shelves. But the real reward, the thing that makes all of it worthwhile, is getting letters like this.  

“Just read your book and attempting to find Christian faith again after a long gap. Did you ever have to get over the feeling with finding Jesus that perhaps it is “too good to be true”? For me, I know that if I were to come to faith it would bring meaning and hope back to my life, but I have a block on this point. I was very moved by your story, and I am hoping to have the same experience.

J.”

Dear J,

Thanks for writing to me. The answer to your question is an emphatic YES!!! In fact, thinking it was all too good to be true was my final stumbling block in coming to faith. I was brought up to believe that reality is harsh (which it most certainly is), and that the famous Dawkins comment on the “pitiless indifference” of the universe is ultimately true. I was also pretty sure that I myself was not someone worthy of any “special treatment” like love or protection. 

But what the Holy Spirit did for me (as you read in Chapter 9) was to convince me I was wrong. After all, I already knew that there were things about me and every other human being that just didn’t fit into the purely “naturalistic” and materialistic concept of universal mediocrity. Why do I cry while listening to music, why do I seek love and not just sex? (The latter is easy – the evolutionary pressure to procreate, but love? where is that from?) What is the source of passion—mine, yours, and everyone’s? Sure, we can explain it all away with just-so stories about brain chemistry, but that isn’t actual science. Actual science has no answers to these questions. 

Frankly, even now I sometimes hear a voice telling me “You’re just fooling yourself. It really cannot be true because it’s too good.” But now I can answer that voice: “I can demonstrate that goodness is real, and you cannot tell me where it comes from, so how do we know how far goodness can go?” And the voice has no answer. 

So I have faith, and I pray, and while I know that doubts will never disappear, I take comfort in the joy I feel when I get a letter like yours, and when I see so much evidence of Jesus’ effects on His people. 

My suggestion (not original) is to try acting as if you do have faith and see what happens. Pray your thanks when something good happens, and when in difficulty, pray for Jesus to stand with you. I believe after you try this for a while, God will answer you, as I was answered. I have no idea what form that answer will take, so be prepared for something unexpected. God is real, and God is good. Blessings, 

Dear Sy,

Thank you so much for your reply! I find it to be very relevant and meaningful and you have given me a lot to think about. 

Thank you again for writing this book and for this response. You have reached me and helped me more than you can know.

Best Regards,

J.

I’ve been doing lots of work around the house now that the weather is finally cooler—replacing rotted wood outdoors (fence, shed, flowerboxes), gluing, measuring, cutting, painting, etc. And just as happens every time I start working with tools or doing anything requiring manual skills, the expert trio shows up. The trio, who among them know all there is to know about doing anything with wood, metal, furniture, machinery, or anything, are my father and my two grandfathers.

And, as usual, they have plenty to say. Grandpa Harry was an upholsterer but had also done an apprenticeship as a carriage painter and builder back in the late 90s (the 1890s, that is). Grandpa Max was a carpenter—specifically, a wood turner, who made table legs and other round items with a lathe. My dad, Max’s son, worked in his father’s shop while attending college. He eventually became a PhD chemist, but he never forgot the joy of craftsmanship and in retirement made stained-glass objects.

Compared to these three, I am of course a novice in everything. And so they delight in showing up together whenever I take hammer or sickle in hand (a not-so-subtle metaphor, since all three were ardent communists). A few days ago, as I was taping the edges of the door frame prior to painting, Harry chimed in with “Sam [my dad]! Didn’t you teach him how to tape? That is a mess!” Oh, I should mention, they never address me, only each other. And Harry, as when he was alive, does most of the talking.

On another occasion, I was cutting a one-by-four board for a new fence top rail when the power saw kicked a bit at the end of the cut. I knew I was going to hear about that one! Even Max (always the quietest of the bunch) had something to say: “Does he know how dangerous that is?” (I might mention that Max learned his trade before electric lathes existed, and I remember his foot-pedal-driven lathe with the enormous granite flywheel attached.) His son shook his head. “I told him about safety with saws and drills over and over again…”

I practically burst out, “Yes, thanks, Dad! And I have never had an accident, so I must have been listening.” But there was no point. I learned quite some time ago that they couldn’t hear me. It was a private conversation that I could eavesdrop on but not participate in. Probably much like the reality when I was a child.

My father mostly taught me stuff by having me watch him, but Harry took it upon himself to actively teach with prepared lessons. He loved to give me tests, like showing me a chair and asking me what was wrong with it, and how I would fix it. One time he told me a lamp wasn’t working, and he was quite pleased when I pointed out that the cord was not plugged in. “Always check the easy stuff first,” he told me. He couldn’t have known how often that advice came in handy during my career as a laboratory scientist, working with equipment and tools he could never have dreamed of.

He didn’t teach me everything he knew how to do. There was the art of rapid-hammering tacks into a sofa or chair, for example. He would throw a handful of these very sharp, small tacks into his mouth. Then, using only one hand (the other one occupied with holding the material in place), he would bring a magnetized hammer up to his mouth, where one tack would attach to it, then bring the hammer and tack down to the work, and with two strokes of the hammer—one to hold the tack in its place, the second to drive it home—the tack was in, and, almost instantly, the next one was on its way. Using this method, he could drive in a dozen tacks in about a half minute. As a ten-year-old, I of course wanted to try this, but my mother forbade it. I mean, what could possibly go wrong with a ten-year-old boy holding a dozen tacks in his mouth, and bringing a hammer right up to his mouth several times a minute? When she voiced this objection, her father reminded her (probably for the hundredth time) that that was exactly what he had to learn to do at the same age during his apprenticeship in Tzarist Russia, where he worked twelve hours a day for room and board. He would also mention that one of his friends bashed his teeth in with the hammer, and another swallowed several tacks and was lain up for a week (no hospitals for apprentices).

Both Harry and Max had their own shops and were thus technically small businessmen. This might seem ironic, given their devotion to communism, but there was in fact a link between the two. Both had found jobs when they arrived in the Boston area from Russia, but both were eventually fired and blacklisted for trying to organize unions, so they became independent craftsmen. Despite all they had in common, and despite their children marrying each other, I don’t remember them being friends, and I am sure there was some ancient quarrel behind that, but it’s long lost to history.

Of course, they have long since passed on, Harry living into his late 80s, Max departing a bit earlier, as did my dad. But they can still enjoy watching me make a total fool of myself building a bookcase, or birdhouse, or, most recently, a new flowerbox. As Harry said when I held up the four-piece wooden hanging box for their approval, “It will work, but as I have told him many times, the most important part of carpentry is the finish. Otherwise, it just doesn’t look professional.” Both Max and my dad nodded in agreement. Max then pointed out that one of the screws was not well set and could be seen, while my dad mentioned the lack of a flush joint between one of the sides and the back support piece. I knew it was no use saying that once hung, neither of these blemishes would show, because they wouldn’t hear me. And, even if they had, “There is no excuse for shoddy work” was a motto emblazoned in my mind around age five.

Of course, I don’t really mind any of this. I am not bothered by their visits but honored and delighted by them. I am not a young man myself, and I find it a source of happiness and good fortune that I had such honest, hardworking, decent men in my life. And even if I am a complete disappointment when it comes to fine carpentry or making things of beauty and utility, perhaps their wisdom and experience did me some good in my long life. At least it is comforting to think so.

It is time for Christians to stop arguing about evolution. Here is why: A lot of the things people commonly claim about evolution in these arguments are wrong.

For example, evolution has nothing to say about atheism, creationism, Christianity, any other religion, politics, social issues, the origin of the universe, the meaning of life, the origin of life, how can animals give birth to different animals (they can’t and don’t) why people behave the way they do, whether there was a global flood, whether Adam and Eve were a real couple, whether Jesus rose from the dead, or whether the Bible is true.

Here is what evolution does say—this and only this: Certain environmental conditions can lead to a change in allele frequencies in populations over many generations. If that sounds sciency, it is. Evolution by natural selection is a well-grounded scientific theory, with no theological, social, or other implications. It is equivalent to saying objects attract each other with a force proportional to the product of their masses divided by the square of their distance—the definition of Newton’s theory of gravity. We might as well argue about gravity as about evolution.

Another reason to stop arguing is because everyone agrees that evolution is real, even Answers in Genesis and The Discovery Institute, and all other scientists, religious or not. The AiG model for adaptive radiation after the flood includes evolution by natural selection. Everyone now agrees that “microevolution” is real (thank God, since it has important medical implications). So all the arguments are about the details, as well as some of the consequences of evolutionary dynamics, such as the common ancestry of all extant life starting with LUCA (the Last (i.e. most recent) Universal Common Ancestor—which was not the first living cell).

A third reason is that unless you are a graduate student in biology, it really doesn’t matter if you believe the diversity of species got here by evolution or direct creation—it has no effect on your life, or your faith in Jesus. It only becomes a problem if it leads to a generalized distrust in science, which is then extrapolated to other matters, such as the efficacy of vaccines, the reality of climate change, or the fact that all human populations are members of one human race (which is also in accord with Jesus’s ministry). So, believe as you wish, and stop fighting with those who disagree with you.

And finally, a scientific reason to forget about the evolution debate: Evolution is not the ultimate bedrock of biological science that many think it is. In fact, evolution relies entirely on something else, and follows automatically from it. That something else will be discussed in my next post.

My son told me he thinks the people living in ancient times were really ignorant. I told him that they didn’t know any better, since their science was very rudimentary. They did the best they could with the little they could understand about the world they lived in.

“Yeah, I know that” he told me. “But still, so much of what they believed was just so far off. I mean who could seriously believe that the weather was some kind of magic, and they were always getting stuck in storms or earthquakes?”

“Well, again, they didn’t know what we know, and they couldn’t do what we can do”.

“I am so glad I wasn’t born in those days. I can’t imagine trying to live without my holoscopiter, and having to type words on some kind of device whenever I want to tell you something”.

“I know. The age of devices was pretty brutal. People barely lived for a hundred years and had to spend most of their time doing something called ‘work’. We still can’t figure out what that meant”.

“Right, and they had to get on a device that flew through the air and took hours to go from one place to another, never mind being stuck on one silly little planet”.

“Well, they knew nothing about the 5^th law of gravitational entropy or the theory of peribolenism, so they couldn’t imagine interplanetary telepathy or galactic teleportation”.

“And they thought the speed of light was constant. What idiots”.

“No son, they just didn’t know any better. They even thought that what they considered to be science was the last word, and that it disproved God”.

He laughed. “You mean they didn’t know about Rogerton’s proof”?

“No, that was published only a few centuries ago. I heard Rogerton speak once, when I was about your age. Brilliant man. I saw recently that he is quite close to God these days and is still publishing his ideas in the Journal of Heavenly Truth”.

Did you ever think that the aggressive, deceptive, and philosophically and scientifically erroneous form of modern atheism, called “New Atheism” could be instrumental in bringing atheists to faith? The proponents of this cult (Dawkins, Harris, Coyne, Krauss, etc.) that denies not only God, but free will, the soul, human exceptionalism, and any shred of  purpose or meaning to anything, have apparently dealt a severe blow to the cause of Christ by their rhetoric. But it turns out that sometimes this stream of hostile negativity has had the opposite effect, that of making people think that these arguments for atheism are so weak and devoid of truth, that maybe God is actually real.

A new book titled Coming To Faith through Dawkins will be released by Kregel Publications at the end of August, this year. The book is edited by British scientist Denis Alexander and theologian  Alister McGrath It  includes twelve testimonies in chapters by an international variety of former atheists, whose reaction to the venomous rhetoric of  New Atheism was to consider and then accept Christianity. I am the author of one (the first)  of those chapters, as is my wife, Aniko Albert, who was raised in communist, atheistic Hungary, and m so is my friend Ashley Lande, an author who writes about her conversion to faith after being immersed in the psychodelic drug culture.

My chapter describes how The God Delusion and other books by the original New Atheists, actually helped to buttress my new found faith, rather than derail it. The absurdity of the scientific and philosophical arguments of these proponents of a pitiless, meaningless existence, left me both horrified at the distortions of reality in their arguments, and thankful that the Holy Spirit had saved me from such a hellish worldview.

The book is already listed on Amazon, and is available for pre-order.

While the theory of evolution by natural selection has become the well established basis for all biological science, and while further developments in genetics and molecular biology have confirmed the theory, it continues to suffer from an affliction that has always plagued all of biology – the lack of any mathematical rigor. To date there is no useful mathematical law that fully encompasses the meaning of Darwininian evolution. Fisher’s famous “genetical theory of evolution” published in 1931, describes the general idea of the statistical nature of genetic variation, and posits that fitness must always increase. That is useful, but not comprehensive.

It is often held that biology has been resistant to mathematical treatment due to the enormous complexity of the subject. That is not quite true. Science has never actually described its subjects by mathematics, that is impossible for either physics or chemistry, whose subjects are also extremely complex. What science does do is describe a model of reality with mathematics. The laws of motion are based on models, as are the laws of chemistry. Because such models, (eg a frictionless inclined plane, or an ideal gas) do closely resemble their real world counterparts, the equations generated to fit the models, do a pretty good job with reality as well.

Biological models are rare. When they are produced, the results are often quite brilliant. The literal model building by Watson and Crick led to the solution of the DNA structure, which some consider to be another revolution in biological science. Models of predator prey interaction, using difference equations, led to the understanding of the role of chaos and nonlinear dynamics in biology. Even Mendelian genetics, including the Hardy Weinberg equilibrium law is a model (which is why Mendel’s actual experimental data didn’t quite fit his theory).

But no useful, mathematically describable model of Darwinian evolution has yet been constructed. Actually, there are hundreds of such models, but none that has risen to the status of universally accepted law. Does it matter? Does a theory need to have a mathematical expression in order to be true? Not at all. The mass of data supporting evolution, and the absence of any real data opposed to it are sufficient. Still, it does matter for other reasons, not for establishing the truth of the basic theory, but for demolishing the pseudo-science that seems to accompany scientific ideas that are not easily contained in a set of fairly straightforward (and often simple, elegant) equations.

For example, once we know that laws of thermodynamics and electromagnetism are both true, and easily described by mathematical equations, we can test any future ideas to see if they violate these laws by mathematics as well. However, in biology, especially evolutionary biology, such tests don’t exist, and this allows for many misinterpretations, misunderstandings and even fraudulent distortions of the basic theory to gain some measure of credence.  

An example of an extension of Darwinian theory to an area that is actually not supported by either the theory itself, nor any other scientific underpinning, is evolutionism, which includes social Darwinism, evolutionary psychology and other ideas. Evolutionism (a branch of scientism) is the fundamental concept that the principles of Darwinian theory can be applied to all aspects of life on Earth, and perhaps to many other phenomena as well. A good example of evolutionism is the concept of the meme, invented by Dawkins, which is the mental equivalent of a gene. According to the idea, memes compete and reproduce, follow the rules of natural selection, go extinct, and so on. Religion is considered a meme, as is prejudice, fashion statements, popular tastes in food and hair styles, philosophical and political ideas, and so on.

This idea is quite charming, and makes considerable sense. But it isn’t science. Technology also seems to follow similar evolutionary rules. The fittest (meaning most useful, cheapest, etc.) new devices survive and edge out those that do not compete as well. One can even talk about the evolution of everything from pianos to telephones, to calculating devices. Clearly there is something about change that is quite universal, and that applies to living creatures as well as to human artifacts, thoughts, nations, and so on. But let’s be very clear. These simple observations about the nature of change, and how so many competing entities survive and prosper, or don’t, are NOT what Darwinian theory is about. The theory of natural selection in biology does not at all apply to memes, disc players, or societies. Any more than the attraction felt by two lovers is explained by gravitational theory.

Natural selection, as outlined by Darwin, and then as explained by our current understanding of molecular genetics, involves very specific biological parameters that are not found in these analogous systems. Those parameters, which are uniquely part of biological systems, include reproduction of the informational DNA molecule with a close genotype phenotype interaction, variation produced and controlled to a very fine degree, and a method of change that depends on random and non-random mutational events followed by strong interaction with the total environment. Electronic devices do not reproduce themselves, so the target of selection is not the device, but the people who decide if the device is worth manufacturing.

In other words, there are some very general laws of change, and biological evolution is a very specific special case of change. If we are ever able to formulate a useful model for biological evolution, I’m sure we will find that it will be highly useful in combatting the excesses of evolutionism as well as putting biology on a much sounder scientific footing.

I believe I got my strong reluctance to indulge in personal insults from two very different communities with whom I have had strong ties. The first, from age about 6 till 13 was made up of my neighborhood friends in Brooklyn NY, some of whom were the offspring of actual mafiosi. The second was the community of scientists I joined after becoming a professional doctoral level  scientist. Both communities taught me the danger of using direct personal insults, publicly or privately, and the lessons were similar in that both could result in death. In the first case that meant the death of me, and in the second of my reputation.

For this reason, I have always been shocked at the massive level of invective and deeply wounding insults one encounters online, often by anonymous sources, who apparently have lived lives devoid of either of my two communities or anything like them. On Twitter, I instantly block anyone who insults me directly (getting close to 500 such cases). I will not watch dumpster fire style debates, and (although it hasn’t happened) would immediately leave such a scene if I were directly involved.

Perhaps I feel so strongly about this because I have personally witnessed the consequences of stepping outside those rules. In the first case the memory of a teenager hanging from a schoolyard fence, and in the second, the immediate fall from grace of a fairly famous senior scientist who began publicly badgering a terrified post-doc at a conference. This post-doctoral fellow worked in the lab of another famous scientist who was also at the conference, and in full view of a couple dozen colleagues (including myself) came to her protege’s rescue. With a few well-chosen words she reduced the badgerer to near tears. I won’t mention the name of the badgerer (who I never heard of again), but the rescuer was Charlotte Friend, the brilliant and pioneering discoverer of the Friend Leukemia virus.

What I learned, and live by, is the principle that politeness is a sign of strength, and the converse is also true. It might not be a coincidence that the well acknowledged toughest military unit in the world, the UK’s SAS, hails from a nation famous for its politeness.   

Of course, I claim no credit for this wisdom, it is found throughout the Bible, and is at the core of all religious teachings, as well as many secular sources. It forms the basis for academic and scholarly exchange in all disciplines,  not to mention ordinary casual interactions between all people.

So, I will end with this. Be nice. It doesn’t pay to not be.