Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.

Back to the Audio Episode

Paul 0:03

What science has taught me and what relatively few scientists will say, although it motivates them every day, is that with everything that we know about stuff, the more we know, it's like knowledge is not a closed system. It's not like, “Oh, we know that now we can put that on the shelf”. Every time we think that's true, we come to realize that that is not true and that that needs to be taken down because there are more questions, questions multiply as fast or faster than our knowledge does. And so, looking out and and seeing things that you might be able to understand is a pleasure but you have to also admit the pleasure of not knowing what's beyond what you know.

Seth Intro 1:11

Hey there everyone. I am Seth, welcome back to the Can I Say This At Church podcast. Short answer to that question. Yeah, you can say that at church and you should. I'm excited that you're here today is episode, I think it is Episode 113, which is crazy. Right? That's, that's a lot of hours. And thank you for those of you that have been here since the beginning. And also thank you to those of you that this is the first time you're listening. I hope that you'll stick around and see what you hear. And let me know what you hear what speaks to you. I'm excited for today. I thought back on the years that I've been doing this and I just want to say thank you so much to the Patreon supporters of the show. To those of you that rated and reviewed the show, so much, so, so much. Thank you, it is literally not possible, literally impossible, to do this without you people and I'll be honest, sometimes I get discouraged. And I chat with many of you and y'all are a blessing in my life. And so thank you.

If you haven't supported the show, consider doing that like literally one of the new things that I'm doing actually starting with this episode is you can see at a I forget what level I think I call it salty, the song book. Which, if you grew up in the church are familiar with it. That'll make you laugh just right there and if not, go to YouTube, and type in Salty The Song Book. But anyway, you can see the video of the conversation that Paul and I had today and I'm going to try to record every single one of these that I can this year. I won't promise they'll all be available to be recorded on the video because that's just not always the case. Some of these are done via phone and etc. However, this one is and so those of you in that Patreon tier, you will find that today I think it's a couple bucks a month, I forget which one it is, you can watch that and I hope you already have. Science, if you grew up in the type of church that I did, or the type of school that I did, has been relegated to something that apparently is out to make God small; is out to break faith, is out to do so many things that are detrimental to the health of you and me as a person. That's just not true, it's just not.

I chatted with Paul Wallace, who wrote a book called Love and Quasars and I bought his book a few months back and I loved it like it is so good. The way that it's put together the the metaphors, the the usage of science, it really, really is so good. And so it was my privilege to talk to Paul a bit about sound What the heck a quasar is? How we should read the Bible what wonder and mystery looks like to someone that has been trained, like in planetary, atomic, new killer science like just literally what someone that has that much knowledge. Like what wonder do they see in what God do they see when they look out, because they just got a different foundation than I do. And so I really hope that you enjoyed this conversation with Paul Wallace. Let's do this thing.

Seth 4:45

Paul Wallace, welcome to the Can I Say This At Church podcast! I'm happy you're here. I wish I don't have cup of coffee or I would cheers with you there. I just finished it. So I'm excited that you're here and thanks for making the time. on what day is it Thursday. Thanks for making it on this Thursday, to pop onto the show.

Paul 5:03

You're welcome.

Seth 5:05

So I like to start off with the same question because I think background context matters when we talk about faith and your, your story implies everything that you do now, if someone asked, you know, Paul, kind of walk me through what makes you..and you go through that really in brief in your book, but what would you say are kind of those high points that you're like, Yeah, when I when I reflect back, like, these are the things that matter, and they're why I do what I do today.

Paul 5:30

Okay. Well, I guess the main thing to know is that I grew up in a scientifically literate Baptist household, and which I think there's probably there were probably more of them at the time than there are now but what that meant to me was my dad was a was a professor at Georgia Tech, and knew a lot of science and talked about science a lot. There were a lot of science books around the house. And we also went to church every time the doors were open, which was more often in those days than it is now. I was there in church, probably three times a week and I loved it. I loved church growing up, it was a place that I felt most at home outside my own house. And all my best friends, all through my growing up years, all my best friends were at church. And so I grew up with both these things hand in hand and began to wonder about how science and sort of God or faith worked at a pretty early or pretty early age, I began to wonder about it. So that's kind of the background as far as the book goes.

Seth 6:49

What about so what about your background apart from the book, so you hold two hats now? So you're a professor, right? You're obviously extremely intelligent because you have like seventeen PhDs and that's, hyperbolic but…

Paul 7:04

(laughter) …it feels like 17 but only got one

Seth 7:05

So you got an M Div, you have a PhD in what astrophysics?

Paul 7:11

Nope, my PhD was actually in nuclear physics, but my research after graduate school was in astrophysics.

Seth 7:18

I don't really know enough about either of those to know the distinction. But I'm curious now. So how did those break apart?

Paul 7:26

Well, nuclear physics is the study of atomic nuclei.

Seth 7:30

Okay.

Paul 7:31

And it involves, my work, involves working in a lab, in what's called particle accelerator, proton accelerator.

Seth 7:41

That's like the Large Hadron Collider, right? Like a particle accelerator?

Paul 7:44

It’s like that but it was smaller. It was smaller. It was the size of about an average size gymnasium, roughly. So it was a smaller place, but it was experimental work and it was investigating atomic nuclei very small scale. And then when I graduated, got my PhD and went on, and started doing research after that, I started doing astrophysics.

Now there was a link between the two, they weren't completely separate. I started doing astrophysics and started studying things, you know, on the largest possible scale. So I went from the super tiny to the super large.

Seth 8:23

So you'll see me a reference back down to the notes here. So there is a part at the beginning of your book, and I buried the lead. So the name of your book is Love and Quasars. And so I had this yesterday, I was rereading it. So I've read it twice now, because it's an easy read, and it's not insanely long. And so I really appreciate that.

Paul 8:42

Those are both highly intentional.

Seth 8:45

Well, yeah. Because science can get. I mean, my wife is a nurse, and sometimes she'll say things and I'm like, if you want me to talk like a banker I can

Paul 8:52

My wife is too and I experienced exactly the same thing. Like I don't know what you just said,

Seth 8:58

Oh shoot! Your wife's a nurse.

Paul 9:00

Yes.

Seth 8:59

Yeah, yeah. She'll say things and I'm like, are they okay? What does that mean? I don't…everybody's alive. It was a good day as a bit I don't understand. Yeah. And then I'll often tell her like, you know, if you want, I could just start talking and banking terms, which is what I do for a living. But she she equally gets like the I don't know what you're talking about right now.

Paul 9:20

Yeah, language barrier.

Seth 9:21

Yeah. So my son asked me yesterday, we're at the doctor, and he asked me, he's like, what's a quasar? And so I pulled up a YouTube video. And I tried to show him that and he was bored. I kept fast forwarding and then we just saw some artist rendering. And he goes, “so it's just a flashlight?” I was like, No…but that's what that picture; that's what the pictures look like. I really wanted to know. So how would you explain a quasar to a 10 year old? Because honestly, I have about that education level when it comes to quasars.

Paul 9:50

Okay, let's start with the Milky Way. Okay, Milky Way's a galaxy.

Seth 9:53

Okay? Yes, I’m with you.

Paul 9:57

Now, the galaxy didn't always exist. There was a time earlier in it’s life when it was much younger, just like you and me, right, there was a time we were born. But it turns out that when a galaxy is formed when the galaxy is born, is extremely bright. It pumps out a lot of energy when it's very young, kind of like people right though they tend to lose the energy as they get older. And so what a quasar is, is basically a galaxy in its very early stages of formation.

Now, the deal is though, and this is where it gets a little bit head trippy is that the only galaxies that we see forming these days are the ones that are very, very far away, because we're seeing the light from them and the light that we see has been traveling for billions of years. The big galaxy forming stage and the universe was billions of years ago. So the only things that we're seeing that are the only galaxies that we see that are still forming ones that were formed billions of years ago. And we're just now seeing the light from them.

So the bottom line of all that, the clip didn’t say is that all you need to know, is that quasars are among not only the brightest things we can see, but the most distant things that we can see. All quasars that we see are extremely far away on a cosmic scale.

Seth 11:23

Yeah. And I do want to ask you about scale because you break down in the Washington Monument a bit about scale, but I want to get there a minute. So when I'm looking at the night sky, realistically, every star that I see is…I always understood as a sun. Some of those could be quasars, I guess, as well or can I not see them?

Paul 11:43

Not as individual stars, no. No, you you can't see any quasars with your eyes.

Seth 11:48

Oh because it's the galaxy.

Paul 11:52

There's only one galaxy…well, there's only a handful of galaxies you can see other than the Milky Way, that you can see with your eye and they're all very close to us. All quasars are too dim to see with your eye, sorry to say.

Seth 12:05

No, that's fine. Because people have made nice little YouTube renderings that confused me and my 10 year old. Um, so you talk about in the beginning, the importance of in your book, the importance of having a realistic view of science. And then you you basically say, what is official science? So what is official science?

Like when we say the word science, what are we intending to mean? Because I think people say science and they mean a lot of things. Just like people say banking and they mean a lot of things or ministry and they mean a lot of things.

Paul 12:38

Well, when I use the word science in the book, I'm not talking about technology, or, you know, not talking about computer's, not talking about, you know, medical technology. I'm not talking about artificial intelligence. I'm talking about science as a process of understanding and revealing the world around us a process of asking questions, you know, and framing experiments and getting answers within that sort of, it's a process of discovery. That's what I mean by science.

Seth 13:19

Okay. And so by the inverse of that, how would you then say the relationship to science and religion should be?

Paul 13:29

Well, I think the simplest word to use is cooperative as opposed to “opposed”. They are not opposed to one another. I think that there is some friction between them but I think ultimately, ultimately, they they are complimentary, and cooperative.

Seth 13:52

Alright, so where is it at? You where is it at? Come here to me book, um, I don't usually dog ear. The problem is I highlighted a lot. Here we go. So there's a concept that you break down and you reference it four or five times, and it's called chessboxing. And that's one word. And I didn't know that that was a thing.

Paul 14:14

I didn't either until very recently.

Seth 14:16

Yeah. And so I can't be the only one. And then you use that metaphor, test boxing, as, I guess, you know, having to do science, which would be head and boxing, which would be you know, total being faith, religion, wholeness, whatever you want to call it. So, can you break down kind of that metaphor chessboxing? Kind of how it matters, how you're using it in the book, to kind of break through the logic of both religion and science.

Paul 14:41

Chessboxing is an actual sport. And it's, it's, it's a pretty big deal in parts of Asia and Europe, and it's starting to, you know, make a little make a little showing here in North America, but basically, it's a game were in where you alternate between rounds of chess and rounds of boxing. It opens with chess, the two players compete on a chessboard, then they get into the boxing ring and they you know, they have a two or three minute round. And then they come back and somehow they score this and there's a winner at the end.

So basically, it's a combination of chess which is of course a mind game and boxing which a physical game. As well as a mind game, I think. Um, but the point I wanted to make in the book was this that sometimes science tries to do more than it really can like a like a native boxer who tries to play chess but can't quite do it right. Science sometimes exceeds its limits exceeds his boundaries. And sometimes faith does something similar as a native chess player. Sometimes it's gets good at chess and thinks oh it can box also and so tries to tries to do science also. And so the analogy basically is that we have a native boxer and a native chess player who is trying to both do everything. So sometimes science over reaches its limits and sometimes faith overreaches its capacity. And because both try to do everything, chess and boxing, and turns out that when science and faith try to do everything in that way, that if it turns into a mess.

Seth 16:38

I want to talk about those limits. So what would you if you had to draw a line in the sand, so again, let's just use the metaphor of my son, because honestly, he asked the most scientific questions of anybody that I know. But I think that's a lot of his age, you know, everything he's beginning, you know, he's coming in, he's about to be in sixth grade. And so, we're starting to talk about things that aren't just repetitive as we slowly build upon “we had Native Americans. Also they were named this” also they were the palette, you know, every year we just build a new name. So right things are getting more difficult.

So what should be a limitation of science? Because science seems to constantly push the boundaries of knowledge. And so what is the scientific limitation, I guess of science?

Paul 17:22

Well, the example I use in the book is that science, sometimes you see people who are scientists, reject Scripture say on rounds that it is contradictory, for example. Which of course is true within Scripture. There's all kinds of voices and sometimes there are contradictions. Sometimes those contradictions are fruitful and sort of lead to new questions that are fruitful, sometimes they're just dumb contradictions that just don't mean much and that aren't important. But the problem for the scientist is that there are contradictions. In other words some scientists look at the Bible in the same way that you would look at a data set you want, you want a clean, complete data set, no matter what science you're doing, the cleaner and the less contradictions that are are interdict, that the better life is going to be.

And so I use as an example of treating Scripture like a data set, you're taking the science mindset and applying it to Scripture. And I think that's this is I, that would be a line for Science.

Seth 18:28

And then so what would be the line for faith or religion and and I mean that in so much as not just Christian faith, because it's not the only religion or faith? So what should be a healthy boundary as the to interact?

Paul 18:42

Well, the crossing of that boundary is most evident in a for example creationism. Religious people Ken Ham, sort of young earth creationists term, who insists that certain scientific ideas are out of bounds based on their understanding of Scripture? So they're going the opposite direction. They're taking the understanding of Scripture and applying it outside the limits of the text and saying, okay, evolution can't be true because Genesis contradicts it. That is taking a faith mindset and trying to do science with it because you're using faith to reject science. And you can only reject science by doing science. You can't reject science, doing, you know, it any other way. So faith is trying to do science and in that case, it it makes a mess of it.

Seth 19:42

Yeah. So how I don't do this. Well, how do you find so I have that conversation with a lot of people about you know, because I'm not an inerrantist. And I think I'm saying that right. I'm a literalist in the fact that I think that We should read scripture in the way that the author, I think intended this to be read and the

Paul 20:06

In the old sense of the word literal, yes.

Seth 20:07

to the person that read it like, like, I've used this example before, but 1000 years from now, the word Snapchat means something to me. And then I don't know what it will mean to people 1000 years from now. And to read that word, literally, would be to talk about an iPhone and the way that it works and social media and the way that that works and the cultural context and relevancy. I want to drill deeper on creation and evolution, and how the two interplay because you kind of talked about it a bit in your book that you know, the word creation and the word evolution aren't necessarily saying the same thing. And maybe I'm saying that wrong, you know, religiously, we're talking about the moral, the why, the god behind; and then evolution is just the like the mechanical. How am I am I saying that wrong? Like, can you break that apart a little bit further because I struggle to have a conversation with people that do that because we have Approach scripture entirely differently, which is a bigger chat than science and it’s also a different chat than faith.

Paul 21:04

Are you talking about when I talk, when I talk about the two being more or less independent? And I say that creation is a theological idea, it implies certain it, you know, creation implies relationship between us and God relationships between us and one another. It's theological, whereas evolution. When you talk about evolution, you're implying certain observations have been made and certain theories applied. And there are two separate things like I use in the book, you know, hold of a grapefruit and you say, is this yellow or is it spherical? And that's both right? To say is it creation or evolution. It's a I think that is as non in that part of the book. I'm saying this is nonsensical saying is grapefruit yellow or is it spherical? Because it's both. And those two, those two things are independent, yellow and spherical. Right?

Now, I don't necessarily advocate that point of view. But I do describe that point of view in my book, yes. And also, I would say, if I can, that that's an excellent way to start with an 11 year old or a 12 year old or a sixth grader,

Seth 22:30

just go get a piece of fruit out of the fridge?

Paul 22:31

Yes and to talk about I think, using that idea is a great place to start when you're talking to young kids about this stuff.

Seth 22:38

There's a part in here where you say,

similarly, the theological term creation implies a relationship between the creator and the creation, while the scientific term evolution implies just an observation about all the data set that we have.

Right? So what do we do then when you say that to someone and it’s in a fundamentalist mentality, and they're like, yeah, but if we're talking about evolution, that means that God is not all powerful. And you go through this, although I got slightly confused, Paul, there's a part in here, let me find it. So you say, you know, there's a few different ways to think about, you know, omnipotence or God. And you say there's three, but I only found two. One would be process theology, and the other was natural theology. I didn't actually see the third unless I missed it. It's entirely possible.

Paul 23:28

Maybe I missed it myself.

Seth 23:29

Like you said, here's the first, process is the second. And then you say all three perspectives outlined here, you know, emphasize cooperation or competition. But there may be an implied

Paul 23:42

Oh, I know what it was. It was independence, the independence model. I was counting that as a third because the independence model. They cooperate by ignoring each other.

Seth 23:56

Okay, so that's the prior chapter. Okay, sorry. I got it for a second I literally was like, number three I saw number one. Number three. So can you define then what you mean when you say natural theology and what you mean when you say process theology because those are jargon, theological jargon, for lack of a better word, and I think I'm with you, but I want to make sure everyone listening is.

Paul 24:20

Yeah, natural theology is looking to creation looking to nature, looking to science, to see what we can learn about God. And it's really not doing any different than you know, looking at the paintings of Van Gogh and learning something about the artist from looking at the paintings. You know, we're listening to Prince and learning something about who Prince is by listening to Prince's music. That's natural theology, just looking at creation and drawing conclusions about the nature of God based on creation. And for some people, it goes so far as to say that we can prove God by looking at creation. Now, I don't think that's true.

But some people can, would would say that we can actually prove that there is actually a God by looking at creation as also natural theology. So that's natural theology. Process theology is a much more intensive, total reworking of the Christian faith. And it makes it essentially smooths off a lot of the rough edges between traditional Christianity and science, and puts the two into a single system that's more or less self consistent. And it's very deeply philosophical but thats process theology.

Seth 25:54

I need to visit that because I talked about open theism way many years ago. That's not quite the same thing as process theology…

Paul 25:59

There's some overlap. You know, the Venn diagrams do overlap. Yeah,

Seth 26:03

I'm gonna have to dig into that. But that…that will require many, many more hours of reading.

Paul 26:08

And I don't I don't get into it in the book at all, but I am I am very, although I don't really cross over that line, I am deeply deeply sympathetic to process theology.

Seth 26:19

Why?

Paul 26:31

Because it resolves some problems that are big problems like you know the arbitrariness of suffering. And also just how to sort of frame Christian belief within an evolutionary context. Which is one thing that you just can't avoid. If you take science seriously the idea of evolutionary story that you just can't have that. And so it resolves some some of those tensions right there.

Seth 26:58

Would you call yourself a process theologian or you just like some of the pressures actresses are some of the ideas?

Paul 27:00

I like some of the ideas. But in the end, I just can't do it because I feel like it. And I've got friends who are process theologians like better than railing at me. But in my mind, it tends to flatten the world out a little too much and nailed down and smooth off the edges a little too much for my taste it you know what I mean?

Seth 27:29

That’s fair. So I have a question. And you infer that the discovery is noteworthy. And so I want to if it's alright, I want to read a part of your So you talked about gamma rays, which I recently learned with my son because he's learning about spectrums and light waves and yeah, Isaac Newton, and so I've been quizzing him, you know, what are the, you know, on the frequencies here on the spectrum? What can’t we see? And he's like, you know, infrared X ray, gamma ray, radio, and then you know, the normal, you know, violet, all this stuff, right?

And he's like, gamma, so we're all going to be the Hulk? And I'm like, no! And you make the same joke in here. You say, um, you know, gamma rays stream down constantly from the sky. And you're talking about a scientific discovery that you did and you say, you know,

at the time very few quasars were known to emit gamma rays, making my discovery noteworthy.

So what did you do? Like what were you like? How did you what is that so you talked about? I guess, proving no not proving? Finding? I don't I don't know what the right word is…

Paul 28:26

Yeah, finding it's like suppose you went into the forest and you found a tree that didn't really fit anybody else's taxonomy of trees you didn't really fit in the the system anywhere, you know, because this bark had certain characteristics, its leaf shape was a little odd the way its leaves were clustered, its fruit looked a little different and didn't really fit into anything, any previous category. And so after you spend some time, you know comparing your tree to everything else you start to realize, you discovered a new species of tree. Yeah, that's kind of logically what happened is that I just discovered a quasar.

Now, finding a quasar. It's not a big deal. It's no no more of a big deal and finding a new tree somewhere that nobody's ever noticed before, right? That's easy to do. But to find this particular species of Quasar was a little unusual. Its characteristics were odd.

Seth 29:25

Yeah. Why is that a big deal? Like why does that matter? To me to science to you? Like why?

Paul 29:32

In one very real sense, it doesn't make a difference at all. This thing was 7 billion light years away and has virtually zero effect on your life or my life. But it matters to me and to some others, because it's just a new…

Well, for two reasons. One, is that we, we've learned something about the world that we didn't know before. It's a small thing. You know, it's one tiny little object on the shelf of knowledge, you know, down in sub-basement seven, you know, it's a tiny little bit of knowledge. But to me, it's important and it was personally important because I felt at the time as if I had made a connection with the universe. That I had been able to look at something that was billions of light years away, which is inconceivably distant. I could sit around all day long and try to paint analogies, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't relate to you adequately that distance. And I felt like I had connected with this object that is perfectly real as real as you and I; 7 billion light years away. And to me, that's a bit of a miracle. Yeah, that I could. That that is even possible.

Seth 31:00

Yeah, well, it's also, I don't, I don't really believe in luck. But it's serendipitous that the technology exists and your brain exists and the instruments exists that you happen to because you could have also missed it. Because it's going to shoot right past Earth and go to whatever. I don't know which direction the universe is going things going in all directions.

Paul 31:24

It is.

Seth 31:26

Which, I've actually, I'm going to ask you now, so I understand that the universe is expanding because I don't always talk to someone that knows their stuff about science and expanding to nowhere and everywhere at the same time and I'm probably saying that poorly but it's the best way I can explain it.

Paul 31:40

That's about as good as I've heard it said.

Seth 31:42

Perfect. But is where's the center? So like if light because light is going to go both ways, like because lights out stretching, but it's also coming here as well. So where is it going? Like when it gets to this? Like, you know what I mean? Like what's the there must be a destination? Well, foreign origin and I don't mean it in the big bank sense. I mean literally, like, Is there a way to mathematically fix where it's at?

Paul 32:11

No. That will be unsatisfying. And I'm trying to think of the simplest way to say this for our listeners, if I had 10 minutes with you with a diagram, I could draw for you, I could help. But here's what did not happen with the Big Bang. And this is a very popular misunderstanding that there was you know, space sitting around empty, XYZ, three dimensional space, sitting around empty and then all of a sudden into that space occurred, this boom.

And that that boom happened at a location and that's the center that you're talking about. But that didn't work that way, because space itself, you have to understand, and we’ve believed this ever since Einstein, he convinced us that space itself is a thing that itself is a player in the in the drama here. And space itself was wrapped up in that bang.

There was no space into which the bang happened. Ok. Space itself was created at the moment of the bang. And think of space kind of like suppose you are on a balloon suppose, imagine a balloon and you're a point on that balloon and you can't get inside or outside you're stuck on the balloon. Okay? The balloon is finite, right? There's there's not an infinite amount of area on the balloon. But it's also not bounded. There's no walls anywhere on the surface of the balloon. There's no place where you go and then all sudden the balloon ends. Space is more like that. Space is more like if I go in that direction ahead and if I go long enough, I'll end up background started. I won't, there's no wall anywhere. There's no end of stuff anywhere. So obviously this is going to be hard to for listeners to imagine and it essentially involves getting more than 3 dimensions into the picture. Yeah, so it's, it's, you know, yeah takes a little bit of background work to get a clearer picture.

Seth 34:34

Well, yeah, that's just the way my brain works. You know, if it's, if it's if it's a meeting somewhere else, it's got to be coming or two anyway, doesn't matter. Right. Right. I don't know if you watch Or if you've ever watched the watchman and for those listening, if you're under a certain age probably don't watch the Watchmen. It's on HBO. But there's a character in there named Dr. Manhattan. Are you familiar with him?

Paul 35:11

No, I know the premise of the show, but I've never seen it.

Seth 35:13

So Dr. Manhattan effectively steps into some kind of mechanism. There's a mistake, and he literally is atomized. And then over the course of time, he knitted back together. He still has all of his memories, but he also exists everywhere. And the reason I bring that up is there's a part in here where you talked about after you, you know, you measured the gamma rays coming out of the quasar. It's a big deal. You're exuberant and so you say, you know,

I can still see the scientific vision that emerged from my victory walk on that hot Maryland day, courts were buzzing frenzy atoms we're moving in long molecules of DNA.

You're going to talk about birds flying across the globe. Jupiter's red spot still turning stars are cycling through their lives and you just keep on going as you like, zoom out into the universe and for some reason it made me think of. So he kind of that that character exists in and out of all times. And so everywhere that he is he's there. But guess he's also here and there. And there's a there's a line in the movie. He's like, you know, I'm in all like when he's about to die like I'm in all the I'm in all the good places with you right now at the same moment, because that's where I want to be. And that's for some reason it made me…it gave me a different perspective of time. And I say that to say, you have a story about time where there's twins, one takes off, one comes back. Can you rip apart a bit about how time matters in a religious frame when we're thinking about God, when we're using a data set from science? Because I think that we think of time as 24 hours, or I guess right a year even as changing from the Gregorian to the Julian calendar, right. But time is the engine that drives I think most everything that we do So in a religious sense with science knowledge, how is time bigger and bow smaller than what most people think that it is in this 24 hour day?

Paul 37:09

You mean, you want to theological idea of time? Or do you asking for, like, description of time, from sort of Einstein's point of view?

Seth 37:16

I know Einstein, if you've watched Interstellar, I'm assuming that that is bad science, but maybe it's not…

Paul 37:28

Mostly it was right. Mostly it was right.

Seth 37:30

Well, if you haven't watched it, and you're listening, go watch the darn movie because it's…it's gripping. And it'll, it is time in the story of a father and the daughter and which makes it memorable. But no time at a cosmic scale, because we reference scale earlier. And so, you know, when we think about theology, and we think about time, should time be a thing that we're concerned with time for creation, days, hours, millennia, centuries, or should we not even really concerned with it?

Paul 38:01

Oh, I think I think we should i think that you know, I think one of my first real religious experiences that I had as a child came when I first came face to face with what we call it today, deep time; is when I first realized, you know, when I was young, I knew that dinosaurs came before people did, right. But I never had a sense beyond that. But when I was maybe 10 or 12 years old, I found a geologic timeline, basically a cosmic timeline in a book, and I realize just how deep time is, as far as you know how recently we've shown up and it really rattled me and really kind of left me questioning a lot of things.

I'm I was like 10 or 12 years old, and I was stunned by this. And it really kind of made me feel like I was a ghost. Because, you know, the brevity of life sort of struck me. Nobody I know had died. But I got I got the same sense of the beauty of life when I was very young. And but I think looking back on that now, that, you know, that was a religious experience, it was it was face to face with reality. And, you know, I do think that that was religious in the sense that I think that when we connect with reality, we're connecting with God, is what I think. And so I think time does matter, quite a bit. I hope I've answered your question. And in the sense that satisfying to you there.

Seth 39:53

Well it's your answer. So as long as you're satisfied

Paul 39:57

I just want to make sure that I heard the question right.

Seth 40:01

There's a character in here named Tycho, am I saying his name right?

Paul 40:08

(pronounces name) tea-co

Seth 40:10

So I'm not saying it right. Um, yeah. So you kind of frame his logic in the way that many people approach both faith and science and like kind of his issues with Copernicus. But can you kind of break apart? Not necessarily specifics of that unless you want to, but kind of the who he was and how that mindset still affects the way that we do so many aspects of everything today. Because I think that that's it's really important. Really important. Matter of fact, I'm, I highlighted almost the whole chapter because the thoughts behind that are…

Paul 40:42

I'm glad you liked it.

Seth 40:48

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, especially. It was because it was new.

I watch a lot of sci fi so there's a the Expanse, which is on Amazon now, but it was on something else. There's like a station by a guy named Tycho or tiko or whatever, okay, and it's spelled the same way as well…

Paul 41:01

Probably. Yeah, yeah, he was a 16 three astronomer. He died in the first years of the 17th century. But he was he was the greatest European astronomer to never use a telescope. He died a few years for the telescope was invented. But his career occurred after Copernicus died. So during these years the Copernican theory, the idea that the Sun was in the middle, and the Earth goes around it was a new and radical idea. And astronomers and philosophers did not like Copernicus’ idea for a number of reasons, they had some really good reasons. One of them was that all of Aristotelian physics and cosmology, which is what they were taught, was a unified set of ideas, but it was grounded in the idea of the Earth at the center of the universe or in the middle of the universe, I should say. And anyway, Copernicus upset that, right? Copernicus put the Earth out around the Sun. And it disrupted the whole system of thought that had dominated universities for several hundred years.

And so that was a problem. Also, the scientific evidence Copernicus had was very thin and have a very strange kind. So there wasn’t that much scientific evidence in favor of it, so Tycho rejected it, which was the majority opinion at a time, but for two reasons. One is that there was not much scientific evidence for it; well really three reasons. One, there wasn't much scientific evidence for it. Number two that disrupted virtually everybody's ideas what the world was like, but the third one was theological. And the third one, was this: what very few people know about the Copernican theory, the idea that the sun sits in the middle and the Earth goes around it, is that true? If that were true, then the stars would have to be much, much, much, much further away than previously thought.

And then the details of that are not important. But the point is, is if Copernicus is right, then there's a whole lot of empty space between Saturn, which was the highest planet, and the stars expanded that distance by almost 1000 times. Minimum. And this idea that the universe will soon was empty space in it, for Tycho was an argument against Copernicus, because he thought, God would not possibly the universe was so much wasted space. That was his argument.

In other words, his theological assumptions about God interfered with his science and his ideas about God…that God wouldn't possibly make a universe that is so out of line with a common sense, right? There's no, you know, God certainly wouldn't do that, therefore this scientific theory must be wrong. Yeah, you know, putting his idea of God against science that way, and because he could not accept that God would do that. He rejected one of the greatest foundational scientific theories of history, because of his theological assumptions.

Seth 44:27

With what you know of him do you think, had he lived a little longer and had a telescope, he would have recanted? I don't know how much you know about him.

Paul 44:36

Laughter…That’s an excellent question!

Seth 44:42

Like if he had if he's like, like, looks at it and goes, actually I'm sorry, I was wrong.

Paul 44:43

He might have, but he had his own theory, a third theory of the universe. He proposed sort of compromise theory between Aristotle and Copernicus, and he had a lot invested in that. And that would have been really interesting to see if he would have come around, I think he might have but it would have been extremely painful for him, because he had basically all of his professional career invested in a theory that Galileo basically, and really the people around him proved to be wrong.

Seth 45:20

Yeah. I just curious. It's one of the one of the few things I wrote in the book was, I wonder if he would have changed his mind? You know?

Paul 45:26

That's an excellent question. I've never thought of that before.

Seth 45:29

You just talked about scale and the blank space in between. And so I recently in September, went to DC with my son, we toured everything, we went into the White House, we did all that stuff. And I had never really comprehended, I think because no one had ever broken it down for me, just the actual scale, you know, because Elon Musk will be like, we're gonna go to Mars. And if we launch right here, I can be there in 10 months, but I have to launch right here by what is 2021-22 whatever it is.

I don't think that humans are built to comprehend time at a scale that way or distances at a scale that way because it might, it breaks my brain. The math checks out, but the numbers are so big that it's like trying to comprehend how much interest I'll get back to what I do Bill Gates makes in a day. And for those, and for those that want to know, is literally a waste of his time! If he walked past $100 bill, it is quite literally a waste of his time to lean down and pick it up, he makes more money if he was just going to where he was going to go. That hundred dollars is not worth that half a second that it takes .

Paul 46:28

Wow…cause he is making more than $100 every half second?

Seth 46:31

Correct and he needs to go wherever he's going to continue to do so. It's literally not worth his time.

Paul 46:37

Wow.

Seth 46:38

You know, so but most people that aren't in banking are like that. It's $100 I'm like yeah, but he makes money at the second level; not an annual level he makes money. The total amount you can divide by seconds, not days, not years, not months, it's literally that much money.

So can you for those listening kind of breakdown that you know if we're if we're going to plant Earth here or the Sun here, the distance because I love the metaphor, and I didn't expect you to get I found myself going, Oh, he's going to be in Asia or he's going to be as I just didn't really know where to expect you to get. But I love it.

Paul 47:09

Well, what do I say? Do I say the sun is a basketball; do I make basketball? I think that's what I do…

Seth 47:17

I'm not sure that the object matters, but we can make it a basketball.

Paul 47:22

Yeah, it does. It would be I think it's…

Seth 47:25

…let me find it. There's a grapefruit now there's a there's a blueberry. There's a golf ball that doesn't float. I'm just like trying to find it. Let me see if I can find it.

Paul 47:35

I think is-it an 18 inch beach ball? I can't remember…

Seth 47:41

There is a beach ball. I don't remember the inches.

Paul 47:44

That's gotta be the Sun, if there's a beach ball. It's gotta be the sun.

Seth 47:46

There is a beach ball.

Paul 47:46

Yeah, there is a beach ball. Okay, so imagine a smallest beach ball at the Washington Monument. Right there and in downtown DC on the Mall. You got the sun. So we're going to do is we're going to imagine for ourselves a scale model of the solar system. So if the sun is a 18” inch, say beach ball, foot and a half across something like that smallest beach ball at the Washington Monument, then the solar system itself could fit pretty snugly into downtown Washington DC. Okay. Certainly within the limits of the city, Washington DC, the solar system would fit pretty well. Now, I'm thinking that the sun was actually smaller than that, but I don't know. I can't remember how I did it. Do you have it there? I'm just trying to find the page. I stopped

Seth 48:52

I'm just trying to find the page. I stopped looking when you started talking; I'll find it…

Paul 48:57

What chapter is that?

Seth 48:58

I feel like it's three…

Paul 49:00

Oh that far in. It might be three. Here we go. Here we go it's chapter drumroll please — six.

Seth 49:06

Wow, I was halfway there.

Paul 49:09

Yeah. Okay. So if the sun were here we go if the sun were is on page 46

if the sun were shrunk down to basketball size and placed at the base of the Washington Monument in Washington DC, Earth would be a peppercorn about 80 feet away. A blueberry and a distance of about 1600 feet, at the end of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool would serve nicely as Uranus. And the entire solar system as I said a moment ago would fit within the limits of the National Mall, including Pluto; and comets and so forth.

So the thing that I'm trying to communicate is not so much the size of the solar system, which itself is beyond human understanding, but the distance to the closest star so we've got the solar system fitting pretty nicely into downtown Washington DC. The next closest star, Proxima Centauri would be in Hawaii, on that scale.

Seth 50:21

From DC to Hawaii?

Paul 50:23

from DC to Hawaii, the next closest star would be on the eastern edge of the Big Island of Hawaii.

Seth 50:29

And then just time out so for those not in Virginia and I am because when I lived in Texas, I don't even know that I would have understand that reference. So center (at) the eastern seaboard, literally off the Atlantic coast from Washington DC you can be at the ocean within well with no traffic within a matter of minutes.

Paul 50:46

Yeah.

Seth 50:50

So just for scale there. Okay, so we're at Hawaii, and that is the next star.

Paul 50:54

The next closest star if the sun is a basketball and downtown Washington, DC The next closest star is about the size of a bowling ball and it's sitting on the beach on the Big Island of Hawaii. That is the scale. That is the ratio of, you know, star size to empty space between star size. When I first made that calculation, I made it back when I first started teaching astronomy 15, 16, 17 years ago, I sat down and did that calculation, and I thought it was wrong. I really thought that was wrong.

Seth 51:37

You thought it was too far too short,

Paul 51:39

It was too far. I thought if the sun were a basketball in Atlanta, Georgia; that the star would be maybe in South Georgia, huh? You know, 400 miles away 300 miles away, but turns out is 10 times that distance it is 3000 miles away. So if the Sun is a basketball next closest star is between three and 4000 miles away closer to the four actually.

Seth 52:06

…and then if I was going to drive there hypothetically because you can't drive on the ocean but let's assume we can because literally we just made a peppercorn the Earth so we can do whatever we want to do. How long would it take me to get there?

Paul 52:19

Well at 60 miles an hour…

Seth 52:21

No, in just real time like how many years; light years?

Paul 52:27

Oh gosh; how many years if you were to drive there?

Seth 52:32

Nor necessarily drive but if I could get there as fast as I possibly could?

Paul 52:36

Say in the fastest possible space probe…

Seth 52:39

Yeah or even you talk about your hypothetical time situation earlier. A solar sail that is laser driven. I don't even know how that works on. I have no idea how that works or how lasers with would drive kinetic energy, but whatever.

Paul 52:57

It's a speculative form of interstellar transport basically that people were working on.

Seth 53:02

my first thought when I read it is when the laser burned through the sale. And I realized I probably don't understand what lasers are outside of Star Wars..

Paul 53:11

Well, at the fastest possible, you know, with the space probes we actually have right now it would take you billions of years to get there. At least hundreds of millions of years to get there. That’s moving like 20,000 miles an hour.

Seth 53:27

Yeah. And if I could move as fast as light, how fast?

Paul 53:34

You would get there and a little over four years.

Seth 53:41

That's still insane. Either way it's still insane from from DC to Hawaii in four years is still insane. You know what I mean?

So I want to ask a couple rapid fire questions. And then I do have one very loaded question. I don't know which way you want to take it and I'll let you go wherever you want to go with it. hear your answer. So just rapid fire just because I have questions you're a scientist let's do this thing. Is Pluto a planet? Yes or no? Because I need to know why…

Paul 54:07

No. I'm very sorry. Emotionally I feel you, emotionally I was hurt by the decision back in 2006 I was hurt. My son was six years old at the time and he thought that Pluto had disappear because he heard that it wasn't a planet anymore and he hadn't seen this.

Yeah, so emotionally I was also hard because I loved Pluto right. It's the oddball right? He's the oddball, he's the weird uncle in the family that you keep upstairs you know when nice people come over, you know? And I really have a soft spot for that.

Seth 54:44

Do people do that?

“Uncle you gotta go upstairs and don't come down here for 3 hours!

Paul 54:51

Yo got nice people coming over to stay in the basement or stay in the attic or something your family but yeah, that's what they tell was because because because Pluto broke all the rules, all the planet rules. And I won't go into those right now but they there are certain patterns that you see in the solar system and certain rules that kind of apply and Pluto broke all of them and so he was kind of beloved for that reason, you know, but also eccentric a little bit, you know, you know, black sheep. Emotionally i was i was saddened by that, but scientifically I feel like it was the right exactly the right move to make.

Seth 55:32

That’s fair enough, I want it because I learned mvemnsnp from Saved by the Bell. I don't know how old you are. But there was a mnemonic you know, mercury, like move him Shut up. And if you spell it out, it's the whole thing, but you need the Pluto for them. Because if not, there's no way to enter that word.

Paul 55:50

It ends nice and tight with a P

Seth 55:52

Yeah, it's great because there's a you end of breath or your lips closed or what it doesn't without it, so that's fine. Whatever I'm mad about it, realistically Is there a chance that we just haven't seen something and it would be replaced by something within our solar system? Or is that just out of the realm of possibility? Like we've looked at everything we can look at?

Paul 56:07

Do you mean is there is there evidence for another planet?

Seth 56:10

Yeah, I mean, whether or not there is or not, yeah, like so can we just substitute something else for Pluto like, or is it unrealistic to think that we haven't already looked and it's done?

Paul 56:18

No, it's not unrealistic. In fact, there is some evidence, I haven't followed up on this. But six months or a year ago, I read several articles that said, there's some pretty good evidence that there is actually a nice, like, quite massive planet further out, really,

Seth 56:37

Really?

Paul 56:39

but it's in direct evidence. It's good statistically though, it seems pretty compelling.

Seth 56:44

It's evidence like the way that they found all the other outer planets like Neptune and whatnot where they're like yeah, we can see where it's being bent by the gravity of other things

Paul 56:51

What this amounts to is this, when you're in a boat and you go across the water you leave a wake, right, there's a wake behind it. So what we basically see out beyond Neptune, there's something called the Kuiper Belt. And it's like an asteroid belt. It's just got hundreds of thousands of tiny ice objects in it. Okay? And we see a wake in the Kuiper belt as if something passed through it, and, and put these things on certain orbits that either it's just a really nice coincidence that they all have these odd little orbits and make it look like something passed through, or something actually did pass through and push them into these odd orbits.

Seth 57:36

I know you said you hadn't really dug into it much but I want to clarify when you say pass through like we can repetitively see that something is passing through or this wake is like frozen in time as it orbits?

Paul 57:48

Well, once you have when I say wake, what I mean is that is that there's been a disk. It looks like there's been a disruption of orbits of the objects in the Kuiper Belt, okay, like something more massive than the average Kuiper Belt object passed through and disrupted these orbits. And so we're talking about is not like a static thing, we're talking about something that the dynamics of these orbits is a little bit unusual. And either it's just a really nice coincidence. It's like flipping a coin 50 times and getting heads 50 times in a row. Right. And that could happen

Seth 58:29

unlikely

Paul 58:31

unlikely, you know, either either the coin is not fair. Or you just got really lucky. And suddenly, it was just a coincidence that's kind of what we're talking about here; the odds aren't quite that strong, but something like that.

Seth 58:47

Sure. So next question. Should it matter whether or not there's life outside of planet Earth, either at a religious level or at a science level? Because realistically, I don't believe I will live long enough for it to ever matter to me, but should it matter as a species, if that is a thing, either for God or for science, well, science, it must. But you know what I mean?

Paul 59:09

I think yeah, it will. I think it does matter. I think that if we actually I think in other words, I think there would be theological consequences of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

Seth 59:24

How so?

Paul 59:26

Because, um, I think that it would say something about God's creativity, about the richness of creation, about if there's one there's going to be more, and I think also, that it would tend to have a unifying effect. Not Just within Christianity, but I think within all, at least Western religions, I think they would be sort of, you know, maybe I'm just too optimistic, but I think there would be a sort of unifying effect.

And I also think that there will be an also think that although there would be a massive freaked out by some people, I think in the long run, there will be a unifying effect on human beings, because we will begin to see ourselves as not so different from each other anymore, our similarities would would be much more evident than our differences.

Seth 1:00:34

Yeah. Because we can look at a different way. We can look at a different analog and go I'm not that like, I'm not a deer. I'm also not that.

Paul 1:00:41

Right. But I do want to say this with this question that whether there is or is not intelligent life out there. either answer is pretty weird. Right? There's not a non strange option here. If we're alone. Wow. Because we're really alone; theres a lot of space out there. And if we're not, then wow!

Seth 1:01:10

then Wow. There's a concept that we don't have time to break apart because I try to be concise. And this has gone slightly longer than I normally do. But I'm really enjoying this. I hope you have a few more minutes. There's a concept called, and I know it's not a concept. It's a quote from someone that says, Well, he's not even not wrong, or No, he's not. He's not even wrong. He's not even on either.

So as you're teaching and so you now do you teach science or do you teach faith or what do you what do you teach?

Paul 1:01:44

Right now and I'm in the office at the college. I teach physics here, okay, at the college, so it side here, but I'm the pastor for adult education at my church. Okay. So I end up teaching a lot in church too.

Seth 1:01:52

Yeah. So as people come to ask you questions, and I probably asked some of these questions as well. Probably even today. What is one or two of the biggest misconceptions that you're like the questions not bad. It's just the question the answers like you're not even wrong, like it's just poorly. What are those? If you could remove a question or two that comes up every year like I've heard that before. Again, you're not even wrong. What would those be?

Paul 1:02:14

Yeah, well at pretty much any question. And I could be more specific, I suppose. But any question that assumes that what we call the God of the Gaps. And this is always happening I get a question. And the assumption behind the question is that where science has understood something. God is not present.

That God is somehow a magician that does all this magic stuff that science can explain. The God of the gaps is a fallacy. And it basically says that God lives in those places that we don't understand. Like to think about Newton, at the time of Newton, the origin of life and the origin of species was a mystery.

So, you know, Newton kind of figured out his rules about how planets go around other planets. But for Newton, you know, God was obviously had made us human beings and there was no explanation for that. So that's where God didn't really keep the planets going. Yeah, right God, God, God was responsible for life.

But as time goes on, you know, as Darwin shows up, oh, now we have a scientific explanation for you know, Origin of Species. So God's not there anymore. Right. So questions like, like, what's a good question? Basically, creation revolution? That's the big question. Was the world created or did it evolve? But the assumption being that if it evolved, and God said Nothing to do with it. Because why would God do it that way? That doesn't make sense. You know, the idea that the two are opposed any question that comes out of that? Yeah. Yeah, I just have to, you know, bite your tongue and good while and turn it into a pastoral moment, you know?

Seth 1:04:20

Yeah. Turn it into you turn it into many more questions. Yeah, yeah. And so yeah for but I love I never heard that I highlighted wrote down I actually have it taped right up here you can't see it but to the right of the camera here of just to be mindful because I asked so many questions with so many people have read so many things. And I think it's a good maxim to kind of, you know, make sure what you're asking matters kind of thing, at least.

Paul 1:04:45

And, and if you want a specific question it was it would be like I want to talk about in the book where the woman asks but how the Big Bang get started, like what has happened here is that God has been pushed back to this point before Big Bang.. And you know, God's responsible for that. Maybe everything is sort of, you know, went on its own naturally, but at least God got things started that That, to me is a sign that there's some god of the gaps thinking.

Seth 1:05:12

All right, so final question, I think. So with your training. When you look at things, you see things working in a way that I just don't understand, like, when I look at bank accounts, numbers that ticker across on CNN or whatever, like, I see that and I actually see other things, then I think, what my wife would see or maybe what you would see. And so, I mean, and so does she like when she looks at that stupid thing on Grey's Anatomy, and she's like, it's not even plugged in. That's not how you hang a bag and chemos like, that's chemos not that color that's just there for tv. She's like, there's there's four colors, and none of them are that, you know, she sees things that I don't see. And she sees wonder and mystery differently and as do you.

And so, as a scientist with all the information that you have about physics, and atomic science, and astronomy? Where do you look out at night? And you're like, this is where I see wonder. And this is where I see the divine. This is how I'm still amazed, like, what is that for you?

Paul 1:06:13

You mean? What is it that I actually see? Like that is actually different than what a non-scientist would see?

Seth 1:06:19

No, I guess maybe, but with what your knowledge… so a lot of people, the further they dig into science, and you allude to it in your book a lot, you know, they just move away from any faith or religion because they need the data sets nice and clean. But I think I think with the right mentality and you do this in Isaiah a bit as well, where you're like, you know, I see things this this, you know, I could take this and read it this way. Or I could also take it and go, how beautiful is this? But when you're at home, watching your kids, you with your wife or whatever, and literally not saying anything, you're just looking up at the stars or reflecting, you know, in your office or whatever. What is it that you're like, oh, man, this is where the….I cannot wait for science to get here because this is going to be wonderful. Or maybe that's the wrong question. Really, this is how I see wonder. And I asked that because you talk about wonder a few different times. Yeah, begin, talking about the wonder of God with a story about the, you know, the sun setting, somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

And there's a really funny story with your parents. And you know, I think either your mom or your dad's like, why do you gotta come on out why you got to do that? Don't be that stuff it. But you also talk about wonder at the tail end, you know, you're trying to reconcile it, you know, there is wonder and glory. And it's beautiful. So my question is, where do you see that?

Paul 1:07:33

I see it pretty much everywhere. I'll make two comments about that. One of the main places I see it that, to this day, I really can't quite believe is that everything that we experience, you know, our living body, our buildings, the sky, the clouds, cats, planets, galaxies, everything. The thing that kills me is that we are basically composed of like, three different particles.

Everything, when you break it down is is, you know, there's a universal sort of particle that just show up everywhere. But it's amazing to me that from such utter simplicity such complexity can come. That to me is it's it's very simple a lot, but it occurs to me nearly every day at some point.

Another thing is that when I do look around, you know, yeah, I do see things differently than you would or other people would just because of my own particular training. But what science has taught me and what relatively few scientists will say although it motivates them every day, is that with everything that we know about stuff? The more we know, it's like the knowledge is not a closed system.

It's not like, “Oh, we know that now we can put that on the shelf”. Every time we think that's true, we come to realize that that is not true. And then that needs to be taken down because there are more questions. Questions multiply as fast or faster than our knowledge does. And so looking out and, and seeing things that you might be able to understand is a pleasure. But you have to also admit the pleasure of not knowing what is beyond what you know. And that to me is everywhere around me.

Seth 1:09:57

Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Let's go winded down, where would you send people to Paul to buy the book? I didn't read your first one, but I'm going to buy it, that's going to happen. Where would you send people to though to get ahold of you read what you do? You know, listen to other things like where would you send people?

Paul 1:10:20

My website is pwallace.net. And everything you need is there.

Seth 1:10:30

So I will link to that in the show notes will good. I've enjoyed it, there's so many more things I want to talk about that we don't really have time for, you know, flat earth and there's a whole bunch of things in there. When I read that, I'm like, Yes. And that analogy with the boat and we don't have to explain it here that people go by the if you want to read the analogy he gives. It's actually the logic and its simplicity. I remember read it I was like, that make sense.

Paul 1:10:54

How the boat disappears over the horizon.

Seth 1:10:55

Yeah, but we won't break that down. People need to go by the book. So Yeah, thank you for writing the book. Thank you for making it readable.

Paul 1:11:04

You're welcome.

Seth 1:11:06

Yeah, very much so, and is written in such a way that my son read pieces of it with me. And so I love that, you know, that's not the case for most of the books that I read. So, thank you again for coming on. I really appreciate your time.

Paul 1:11:20

You’re welcome. I had a great time.

Seth Outro 1:11:35

How amazing is that like, just to think about the wonder of silence and the wonder of it all and to feel, you know, for me, I used to would feel small when I would think about God, but the more that I learned and the smaller that I realize I am, the bigger that I feel, the more not important. The more scene I guess the more known that I feel. And I hope and pray that You feel the same way like as you further question faith, and further learn new things, and wrestle with Scripture, wrestle with God, whatever you want to call that, God. Now I pray that you find a wonder like you've never found it before. It's beautiful. I continue to look for it. And I think that's it, you just look for you just look for it. You'll see it. I know I have special thanks to the Dodds for the use of their music. I was blown away when I realized that they currently reside in my hometown and so we chatted back and forth on the emails about that which is kind of neat. However, special thanks to them for their use of their music. In today's episode, you'll find their music in the links in the show notes and Spotify playlist and iTunes playlist and all the playlist and again, thank you to those of you that you know that decided I really should hit that Patreon button or glow. Either way works I become a supporter of the show. My I have big goals for this year, and I need your help to do so. So thank you in advance. I'll talk with you next week. It's gonna be a great January.

Be blessed everybody.