The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 6 – Hugh Ross

Episode 6: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

Dr. Jeff Myers interviews Dr. Hugh Ross, an astronomer and author from the organization Reasons to Believe. Dr. Ross discusses his personal journey, beginning with his childhood interest in science and his diagnosis of autism, which he considers an asset. He explains how his scientific studies led him to believe in a cosmic creator, and how he subsequently found the Bible to be scientifically and historically accurate, leading to his conversion to Christianity.

He argues that science and faith are not in conflict, but that modern scientific discoveries increasingly provide evidence for a divine creator. He shares anecdotes about historical scientists, his interactions with Carl Sagan, and recent findings about the Earth-Moon system that he believes point to intelligent design. The conversation also touches on evangelism strategies for scientists and advice for the next generation.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:02):
Hey, it’s Dr. Jeff Myers. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show. We interview major thought leaders and show the worldview changes everything. Today, I’m interviewing Dr. Hugh Ross. He’s an astronomer and a bestselling author who studies the universe and he concludes that science should encourage our faith, not discourage it. He started really early with this from his early days as a child, crippled by the way, with a form of autism. To the latest scientific research that points to God, we are going to cover a lot of ground. So buckle up and welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show. Hey, Dr. Hugh Ross. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show.

Dr. Hugh Ross (00:47):
Well, thank you for inviting me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:49):
Now I’ve really enjoyed Reasons to Believe. I’ve read a lot of your books. Some of them are technical. Some of them are more for the popular audience. I’ve read some of the technical ones too and I appreciate you using words like “and” and “the” so I can understand some of what’s happening in them.

But you and your team at Reasons to Believe have gone against the grain of this impulse in our society that says that if you are going to be a scientist, you kind of have to be an atheist. And you have been able to show through your speaking team and all of the research that you’ve done in the writing that contrary to that, these scientific innovations and breakthroughs are actually a reason to have confidence in God. So anyway, thank you for joining on the show because we get a chance to kind of dive into that a little bit.

Dr. Hugh Ross (01:45):
Sounds great.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:46):
Now before we do that, I’d like to go back and talk about your life because you got interested in science when you were a small child. In fact, you got interested in cosmology, I think, when you were a small child. Tell us about that.

Dr. Hugh Ross (02:06):
Yeah. It started when I was seven. I was outside with my parents and I looked at the stars and said, “Mom, dad, are those stars hot?” And they said, “Yes, they are hot.” I said, “Could you please explain to me why they’re hot?” And they said, “No, you’ve got to go to the library.” Smart. And they were rather surprised that I came home with five books on physics and astronomy, and growing up, that was kind of what I did. I would read four or five books a week on physics and astronomy.

Although I do remember one time I was 10 and a half and my parents were worried that I was over specializing. So they bought our family this big thick book in evolutionary biology. I was the only one in the family that read it. I remember going to my parents and saying, “Mom, dad, the numbers don’t add up.”

(02:55):
And, “Can you explain to me why there’s such a disconnect between what this book is saying and what we see in the realm of biology?” And again, they told me to go ask my teachers or go ask the professors I knew at the university and nobody could give me a straight answer until I picked up the Bible at age 17 for the first time. I was not raised in a Christian home, but as through my studies of astronomy, I realized the universe had a beginning. If there’s a beginning, there must be a cosmic beginner.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:30):
So when you picked up the Bible then, having had that scientific foundation from the time you were a small child up to age 17, what was that experience like of reading the Bible for the first time?

Dr. Hugh Ross (03:41):
Well, once I recognized there was a cosmic beginner, I looked for them not in the Bible, but in the writings of the great philosophers, particularly Emanuel Kant and Renny DeCart and discovered they had really great mistaken ideas about the universe, now science works. And so that’s when I began to look at the holy books that undergird the different religions of the world and I saved the Bible to the end.

But when I got into the Bible, the first thing that struck me was how different this book was than say the Hindu Vedas or the Buddhist commentaries or the Quran or what you see in the Baha’i or Mormon writings. I mean, what struck me was that number one, it commanded objective testing. Everything must be tested. Don’t believe until you first put it to the test and actually showed me step by step how to put everything to the test.

(04:41):
Being educated in Canada, I was taught the scientific method in grade one. I was taught it every single year all the way through my public education, but none of my public school teachers told me where the scientific method came from. When I opened up the Bible, the very first page, Genesis one and two, the scientific method left right off the page and I realized that was true of all the creation texts in the Bible and recognized it was not an accident that the scientific revolution exploded out of Reformation Europe.

People there were reading the Bible for themselves for the first time. They saw this command for objective testing and that was the birth of the scientific method. So I began to apply what I then turned the biblical testing method in my study throughout the whole of the Bible. I was encouraged by the fact that even on the first couple of pages, it got all the science and history right.

(05:42):
Everything was correctly stated and the correct chronological order and I realized this was far beyond the scientific knowledge of Moses 3,500 years ago and that’s what motivated me to continue reading through the Bible. And I was reading it secretly because I knew my parents wouldn’t approve.

And so between midnight and two in the morning was my time where I would secretly study the Bible and basically put it step by step to a rigorous test on its science, its geography and its history. That took 18 months before I was able to get to Revelation 22. The reason it took me that long, it’s just filled with so much data that can be put through rigorous testing.

But by the time I got to Revelation 22, I realized I don’t understand everything this book is saying, but what I do understand, it’s 100% accurate in what it says about science, history, and geography. And unlike the old other holy books, it actually predicted future scientific discoveries and always without error.

Dr. Jeff Myers (06:53):
Wow.

Dr. Hugh Ross (06:53):
In fact, just before I gave my life to Christ, I calculated the probability that all the predictions of future scientific discoveries could be recorded in this book without being inspired by the creator of the universe and I determined that probability was more remote than one chance and 10 to 300th power and that happened to be the same week.

I was a sophomore at the university at this time getting a physics degree and our physics professor gave us the assignment to calculate the probability that one of the students in our classroom of 600 students would be killed by a sudden reversal of the second law of thermodynamics. And we had to actually come up with the equations to calculate that.

The probability is incredibly tiny, one part in 10 to the 80th, something we realized has never happened anytime anywhere in the universe, but it struck me. I had just demonstrated that this book we call the Bible is 10 to the 220th times more reliable than a law of physics. I gamble my life on every second of my existence. I want to give credit.

Dr. Jeff Myers (08:07):
Oh, no, go ahead. Yeah.

Dr. Hugh Ross (08:10):
I mean, this is the Bible that was given to me in a public school by the Gideons, and I want to give Gideons credit. Because what they put in every one of the Bibles they’re giving away at that time was, “Once you become convinced this is the inspired errant-free word of the one that created the universe, this is what you need to do.” And the first thing they pointed out is, number one, no human being is morally perfect, but God is. And that kind of struck me because when I began reading this book, the thing that hit me was the moral message in this is more elegant and beautiful than anything I’ve read in any other holy book.

And I remember when I first started reading this book, I said, “I’m going to do everything I can to live up to that standard.” But after two years, I was miserable. I was not doing well and realized I can’t do this. And here the Gideons were explaining that that’s just the way we humans are, but then laid out how the creator of the universe came to earth, humbled himself and became a human being and then paid the ransom price so that we can trade our moral imperfection for his moral perfection.

(09:22):
And the Gideons don’t let you off the hook. They have a place for you to sign your name and date it, committing your life to making Jesus Christ the master of your life and making him the one that you’ll follow.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:36):
And you did that.

Dr. Hugh Ross (09:36):
So you can still see my signature in this book that I signed back then, but also recognize, I mean, spent that long studying the Bible in a very detailed way. I knew that signing my name in the back of the Gideon Bible was a commitment to share my Christian faith with my professors, my students, my family, anyone I came into contact with. So evangelism became part of my life from the very moment I signed my name in the back of that Bible.

Dr. Jeff Myers (10:10):
You probably have studied the history of some of the scientists who were part of the Scientific Revolution. I remember Rodney Stark saying that of the 52 that he identified as having come up with the ideas that we call the Scientific Revolution, only one of them was an atheist. The others were Christians. They were. And it was their Christian faith that somehow didn’t pull them away from the world. It drew them toward the creativity and the rigorous research and even made scientific postulations possible.

Dr. Hugh Ross (10:52):
Well, what also struck me is that the best of the scientists in the scientific revolution were the ones that were most committed to their Christian faith. I mean, I particularly admired James Clark Maxwell. I mean, he died in his forties and at the point of his death, he was on the verge of launching both quantum mechanics and general relativity. It took another 30 years for scientists like Einstein to pick up where he left off.

And for four years of undergraduate, we were basically studying Maxwell’s physics. I mean, he revolutionized all the different subdisciplines of physics, but he was also one of the leading elders in the Presbyterian Church, very committed to his faith and was responsible for the tremendous growth of the Presbyterian Church at the end of the 19th century. So he’s been my hero, but he’s not the only one.

Dr. Jeff Myers (11:55):
Oh, there’s so many others. Well, Robert Boyle, Robert Boyle actually, the chemist wrote a devotional book and I read it and it’s sort of like a basic apologetics kind of book. And then Michael Faraday, I think there’s so many other examples.

Dr. Hugh Ross (12:14):
Yeah. Faraday is another hero, but what I noticed was the ones that were most committed to their Christian faith and walk were also the most productive scientists that were out there. So it was definitely a direct correlation, in my opinion, between one’s commitment to Jesus Christ and the biblical faith and one’s productivity as a scientist.

Dr. Jeff Myers (12:38):
This is great. I love this and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun for people to be encouraged and realize that this story that science and religion are somehow at odds with one another is a false story of the world, that they don’t have to be afraid when they’re going off to the university and entering into their STEM education.

Dr. Hugh Ross (13:00):
Well, they don’t and moreover, I think it’s a myth that there are not many science professors that are leading universities that are Christians. There’s a lot of them. I discovered, for example, when I was on the faculty at Caltech, how many of my fellow Caltech faculty members were Christians, but they were quiet about it.

I remember this one very famous astronomer called me into his office and he said, “Shut the door.” And he says, “I really admire the fact that you’re sharing with the atheist astronomers here.” He was impressed with some of them that come to Christ, and he told me about the church he was attending, the teaching he did there, the choir that he would sing in, but he said, “I want a commitment from you. Please do not tell anyone else here at Caltech that I’m a Christian.” I said, “Why?” He says, “I cannot defend it scientifically like you can.”

(13:56):
“Therefore, I need to, please don’t blow my cover.” So that’s one of the passions we have at Reasons to Believe is to equip fellow research scientists to evangelize their peers, not just their students, but to evangelize their peers. And so getting them equipped so they can do that because I think if we can see evangelism happening at the highest academic levels, there’s going to be a trickle down effect that could potentially transform the way our nation behaves and lives.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:27):
Wow. There’s so much more that we could do. I mean, just think in the first few minutes of our conversation together, the ground that we’ve covered, I want to talk with you about some of the research that’s coming out now and new things that are happening that should give Christians confidence in their faith. But before we do that, I want to talk, because I know some of our friends who watch this, they love to read. They may have even been precocious as children, but they weren’t reading the kind of books at age seven and a half that you were reading or at age 10.

The story you’re telling is unusual and incredible. And you shared at one point that you were diagnosed on the autism spectrum. I know a lot of parents who when that happens, they feel discouraged like, “This is a disadvantage for my child and I’m not sure what to do, but you’ve always viewed it as an asset and I wondered if that’s okay to take that detour for a couple of minutes to address those people who are wrestling with this.

Dr. Hugh Ross (15:35):
Well, those of us on the autistic spectrum do have handicaps. I mean, I’m especially handicapped trying to read people’s emotional state, just can’t do that. And if people think I don’t have emotions, I do, but they’re delayed. It helps me when I do debates because it takes me two or three hours to realize I’ve been insulted. However, after the debate is over, when I really feel the emotion of what happened, but during the debate, I’m able to just kind of let that go off my back.

But notice in 2 Corinthians 4, it says that we’re all cracked jars. All of us have handicaps, but Paul tells us these handicaps are a blessing from God. It’s because of these handicaps people can see, hey, the fact that Hugh can actually emotionally engage with people to some extent has got nothing to do with him. It’s got to be God working through it.

(16:39):
And it’s taken me decades to try to overcome these handicaps. That’s one thing I share with parents who have autistic children with the right exposure and training, your child can overcome some of these empathetic and emotional handicaps and please don’t think your child doesn’t have empathy. Children on the autistic spectrum do have empathy. It’s just that there’s a delayed response. It will come out and give them time for that. The other thing I’ve noticed too is that people on the autistic order spectrum who have a reasonably high IQ will be able to do things that people who are neurotypical can’t do.

(17:22):
And it took me decades to realize that I have a gift and that my gift is being able to integrate complex material across many different scientific disciplines. It also helps me in my Bible study. It’s really easy for me to integrate material across all 66 books of the Bible. Somehow that all hangs together in my head. But I also tell people on the spectrum, please don’t think that the rest of the population can do things as easily as you can do because when I first started teaching at a church, people come to me and say, “You think that everybody can do this as easily as you can? ” I said, “Well, yeah, of course. That’s the way we all are, right?”

And realize, no, that’s not the case, but that’s kind of shaped my ministry. My ministry really focuses on the integration of complex material and a lot of my scientist friends really appreciate that about me because for example, when I was at Caltech, because of the nature of the scientific research endeavor, you have to hyper specialize.

(18:31):
So I didn’t have time to read outside of my narrow subdiscipline because of how intense the competition there is. And so I wasn’t really able to express my gift because when I left Caltech, I now had the freedom to read widely across the scientific literature, not just in astrophysics, but across all different scientific disciplines and then begin to pull the pieces together and really to build a creation model, a falsifiable testable predictive creation model, you got to be able to do that.

And so one of the things I’ve done as a president of Reasons to Believe is look for research scientists who have that integrative ability and then kind of bring them into our team. And we’ve got a number of scientists on our staff full-time, but we have a much larger community of scientists who volunteer for us.

So we have a goal of building up a community of 300 PhD level scholars that are scholar evangelists, not only scholars, but able to evangelize their peers. And right now we have 130, but our goal is to get up to 300 and that worked for Gideon, we’re hoping it’ll work for the Christian community here in the US.

Dr. Jeff Myers (19:47):
I love it. I love that number of 300. That’s a great aspirational number. But even now, if somebody sees a study come out in the newspaper and something related to biochemistry, they can come to reasonstobelieve.org and there’ll be a biochemist who will say, “Okay, this is what this study is about and this is how to process this from a faith perspective.” At least that’s some of the videos I’ve seen.

Dr. Hugh Ross (20:11):
Right. But let me say one more thing to parents who have autistic children. Here’s how you can help them find their special gift and they call it a spectrum because everyone on the autistic spectrum is different from everybody else on the spectrum. They’re not going to have the same gift I have. It’s going to be a different gift and here’s how you can help your child find that special gift. Expose them to material that’s 6, 8, or 10 grade levels above where they are and see what really catches.

And so I encourage parents, just show them some college level material and see what grabs them and keep showing them stuff in different subject areas and you’ll find something that just really excites them and they will take off. But if you keep them at the level of the great group, you’re not going to find it.

(21:00):
For me, it happened by going to an adult public library going into the physics section and pulling the books off the shelf myself, but as parents, we can actually help them do that. And the interesting thing too is books written at a high academic level tend to be clear and more understandable than books written at a junior high level. I saw that with both of my sons.

They said, “Dad, we can’t understand our textbooks.” And I said, “Well, I can’t understand them either. There’s just so many errors in these books.” And I actually gave them college level material and they said, “Dad, we can understand this because it’s actually written by somebody who’s proficient in the subject matter.”

Dr. Jeff Myers (21:42):
You’ve given tremendous hope to a lot of parents and to a lot of students who realize I’m different and I don’t think this is a good difference. And now they’re realizing that God has prepared them for this moment. That’s incredible. Thank you. I’ve been promising that we’re going to talk about some of the new research that comes out.

But as we dive into that, Hugh, one thing I just learned about you is that you actually had classes with Carl Sagan, who was the famous cosmos guy in the 1970s, the forerunner of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who probably anybody who’s paid any attention to science in the last decade or so has seen him or heard some of his material. You sat right there in the classroom of this guy who basically said on national public television that the cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, all there ever will be, that if you are going to be a good scientist, you have to be an atheist.

Dr. Hugh Ross (22:50):
Yeah. Well, this is a course he taught during the summer. It was for professors and graduate students in astrophysics. So all of us were expecting this is going to be a really technical set of lectures he’s going to deliver. Instead, he gave talks like he would do on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. And so we were quite disappointed at just how popular a lay level this was. The other thing that surprises me is how much preaching he did and he particularly structured his course to talk about extraterrestrial intelligent civilizations and how there had to be these civilizations out there and how they must have solved the problems we’re not able to solve.

And so he says, “The only hope for humanity is to make contact with one of these intelligent civilizations and read their encyclopedical galactica. It’ll give us all the answers to the problems we face.” I was sitting in the second row just a few feet away from him, but I nudged a fellow graduate student and said, “Don’t we already have an encyclopedia galactica and maybe Carl’s just not willing to read it?”

(24:03):
Well, he overheard me and he says, “I know exactly what you’re talking about.” And he said, “Nobody can live up to the moral standard that that book talks about. It’s impossible, so that’s why I reject it.” And it’s like, “But Carl, that’s exactly the point of that book that none of us as humans can live up to that moral standard.” So that’s about as far as I got with him because he had a lifestyle at least at that time that was not, well, I’ll just say that it was not a very high moral standard.

(24:37):
Definitely a womanizer. I heard he matured later in his life. Matter of fact, one of the scientists that’s on our staff at Reasons to Believe, David Rogstad, knew him a lot better than I did. And when David found out that he had terminal cancer, he began a correspondence with Carl and says, “Carl, you have to at least concede the possibility that I might be right about what lies beyond the universe and you could be wrong.” And he said, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea for you just to cover your bets and tell you what, I’ll give you a test that I think you’re going to have to take when you cross the threshold from this life to the next life.”

And David began by asking him questions about the universe and the origin of life. And I remember Carl responding and saying, “Well, life originated in this vast primordial suit with all these chemicals and over a billion years out came the simple proteins and amino acids.” And David’s response was, “Carl, you’re way too good of a chemist to know that that has any plausibility.” And Carl said, “Yeah, you’re right. That can’t work.” And the last six months of his life, Carl asked for prayer from believers. So who knows what happened in those last few months of his life.

Dr. Jeff Myers (25:58):
That’s an incredible story I have never heard before. And Dave was the guy who had that opportunity to have that correspondence.

Dr. Hugh Ross (26:07):
He had that correspondence with him.

Dr. Jeff Myers (26:08):
Yeah. And I know you mentioned you’ve got 130 PhD scientists who are associates of reasons to believe. Many of them are on the staff there. I’d be curious if we could spend a few minutes just sharing, maybe you could share some of the new research or some of the new things that give you a sense of confidence that God exists and that our trust in him is what places.

Dr. Hugh Ross (26:37):
Well, one of the things I knew at Reasons to Believe is I put out a weekly blog called Today’s New Reason to Believe. And if I had the time, I could write several of those per day, but I don’t. So I just put one out every week. Every Monday I post today’s New Reason to Believe. And every one of those articles is about a new publication in the scientific literature that gives us a stronger case for the Christian faith.

And probably the one that excites me the most, it was published just a few weeks ago, was a research finding that the early earth did not have a strong enough magnetic field by itself to avoid having the early earth’s atmosphere and ocean sputtered away by the intense radiation of the sun. When the sun was younger, its solar wind was much more potent than it is right now.

But they also noted at that time the moon was much closer to the earth and when the moon was young, it had a molten liquid iron core and with the earth and the sun close together, their mutual gravity would develop tidal motions inside the liquid core of the moon and the liquid core of the earth and being close enough together their magnetic fields would couple so you get this coupled magnetosphere.

(28:05):
But the bottom line is that the physicists have put this all together and said, unless these two bodies get close enough together where their magnetic fuel can couple that way, earth would not retain its atmosphere or its hydrosphere, the oceans that would be gone. And the only way you can get the moon having adequate amount of liquid iron in its core is that the moon formed as a result of the primordial earth colliding with another planet called Thea where the two planets merged together and the merging it fit least of the formation of the moon, but a moon like no other moon, a moon that for the first billion years as is liquid iron core.

And of course today the moon has spiraled away from the earth where no longer that coupling happens, but no longer is the sun’s radiation a threat. It’s only a threat in the first billion years and during those first billion years you’ve got this amazingly designed coupled by needle sphere and the physicists who wrote this, they were not believers, but they said this is a habitability requirement.

(29:15):
The only way a planet can be habitable is if you have something akin to the Earth Moon system in the first billion years and we see nothing like that anywhere else in the universe. Wow. It’s unique to our solar system. So I’ve been telling people, because they always ask me, “Hugh, what’s the most spectacular scientific discovery the past year that strengthens our Christian faith?” That’s the one.

Dr. Jeff Myers (29:41):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Hugh Ross (29:41):
There are others, but that’s the most spectacular one.

Dr. Jeff Myers (29:44):
Yeah, that this planet was designed by God for us to inhabit it.

Dr. Hugh Ross (29:52):
While not only was our planet designed, the moon was designed, the sun was designed. There’s no other star like our star of the sun. It’s unique. We now know that all eight planets in our solar system and all five asteroid and comic belts play crucial roles in making advanced life possible here on earth. Nothing is wasted.

In fact, the book I just finished writing now, Cosmic Interior Designs, basically makes a point that’s true of the entire universe. Everything in the universe, every component, every event plays some role in making it possible for billions of human beings to live on a planet and to be redeemed from their sin and evil.

Dr. Jeff Myers (30:34):
Wow. Wow. That’s incredible. That’s the big picture of the universe. Do you have an example of the small things? Because people talk about intelligent design.

Dr. Hugh Ross (30:54):
Yeah, it goes all the way down to the fundamental particles. I mean, if you look at the structure of the electron, in fact, one of the today’s new reasons to believe I just finished writing, it’ll be coming up in February, is the fact that we’ve been able to determine the electron indeed is a true fundamental particle. It cannot be subdivided. And if it could be subdivided, life would not be possible.

And so we now have new physics that tells us the electron itself is incredibly fine-tuned to make life possible in the universe. And that’s kind of the point I’m making. Whatever size scale you choose to look at, the super galaxy clusters of the universe or the universe as a whole down to our solar system all the way down to the bacteria, then the fundamental particles, whatever size skill you look at, you find overwhelming evidence that there must be a supernatural, super intelligent creator behind it.

(31:53):
Matter of fact, I’ve been challenging my scientists, peers or not believers by saying, look, whether or not you believe in Christianity like I do, if you will simply do your scientific research from a biblical redemptive perspective on the perspective that everything is the way it is because there’s a creator out there that is intent on redeeming billions of humans from their sin and evil unto himself.

I guarantee this will make you a more successful scientist. Just adopt that worldview, put it to the test and see what happens. And of course, my goal is that when they experience success in their research, they’re going to come to the conclusion. Maybe there’s some truth behind this worldview perspective on scientific research.

Dr. Jeff Myers (32:47):
You’re planting seeds or as the guys from stand to reason say, you’re putting pebbles in their shoe?

Dr. Hugh Ross (32:56):
Well, something I’ve noticed about research scientists, it took me about 19 months from the time I started until I became a Christian. And I’ve led a number of scientists to Christ, but those that have not been raised in a Christian home, it’s always been a minimum of two years. And so I tell people, “Hey, if you’re trying to reach engineers and scientists, you have to be a patient fisherman. Don’t yank the hook too quickly and realize that these are the kinds of people that really want to take care of what we normally call discipleship before they convert. So give them time to do that.”

I mean, I teach a class for skeptics every Sunday through my church and I keep telling the Christians that are part of the class. If the atheist keeps coming to the class, don’t pressure them. I mean, just keep answering their questions, give them time, give them space and be confident that God will complete the good work that he has started. Just like with fishing, if you yank on the hook too quickly, you’re going to lose a fish.

Dr. Jeff Myers (34:06):
That’s a great analogy because I think that’s the pressure a lot of us feel, is that if you’re evangelizing, you’ve got to close the deal within that first couple minutes in order to really do evangelism well. And what you’re focusing on is the discipleship aspect of it, that you’re gradually through time helping or walking alongside that person as they come to see that Jesus’ authority extends to everything.

Dr. Hugh Ross (34:41):
Well, I’ve seen that with a number of scientists I’ve shared my faith with, is that, okay, they want to test out what it’s like to live the Christian life before they become a Christian. So their morality actually begins to change before their conversion. And then they’re always thinking, okay, if I become a Christian, my peers are going to hit me with these challenges and these questions, and they want answers before they give their life to Christ, not after.

Now, something I’ve shared with church leaders that, say, when a research scientist comes to Christ, you can probably have them lead a Bible study group very quickly after their conversion. I mean, all you’ve got to do is ask them, “How long have you been studying the Bible?” And I remember one really famous astronomer. I managed to visit him just shortly after he gave his life to Christ. I said, “Well, how long have you been studying the Bible?” He said, “For 35 years.”

Dr. Jeff Myers (35:37):
Wow.

Dr. Hugh Ross (35:38):
And he was talking serious study. Here he was a brand new Christian, but you could ask him anything you want about the Bible, and he had an answer. He was that well prepared. And so again, just encouraging people. Some people take care of the discipleship upfront, in which case you can turn them loose fairly quickly. And we even see that in the Book of Acts. I mean, here we got the Apostle Paul being converted and he was ready to go right out of the gun. Yes, he did take another 14 years to study, but look at the impact he had even as a brand new believer and that’s because of the fact he had done so much study of scripture ahead of time.

Dr. Jeff Myers (36:18):
Yeah, that’s a great example. People who are watching this or listening to this right now are probably asking, “Okay, so if I meet a scientist, I can look on the Reasons to Believe website, find some of the articles, some of the videos, some of the specialties there.” But this particular audience, we’ve been indoctrinating them at Summit Ministries that leaders are readers. So they’ll want a book recommendation. You’ve written lots of books. As I mentioned, some of them are more technical, some are written for a more popular audience. If somebody wants to get to know your work, which book should they start with?

Dr. Hugh Ross (37:01):
Well, people ask me that all the time. They say, “Which one of your books should I give to my non-Christian friend?” I’m responsible, “Well, tell me about your non-Christian friend.” There’s no cookie cutter approach. Our non-Christian friends are different from all other non-Christian friends. So when I find out what they’re like, if they’re raised in a Christian home, maybe they need to deal with some of the Bible issues that are a problem for them. So I might recommend my book Navigating Genesis.

Or if they’re not raised in a Christian home and they’ve been exposed to all these atheist physicists, I might recommend The Creator and the Cosmos. But I found that kind of a general all purpose book to get people started is why the universe is the way it is. I purposely wrote it at a lay level, but also not only answering, “Here is the best and easiest to understand scientific proofs for the God of the Bible, but at the same time, address the number one atheist issue.”

(38:04):
If there’s an all powerful God who’s all loving, who created the universe, why is there evil? So I basically make the point in why the universe is the way it is. God actually designed all the laws of physics and the space-time dimensions to be tools in his hand to permanently eradicate evil. So explaining to people why thermodynamics is necessary, why you have to have gravity, why the universe has to be as large as it is, because God’s got multiple purposes.

The atheist often only looks at one reason why God could create the universe, namely to make a home for us. So why the universe is the way it is, I said, “Here are 12 different purposes we know of for God making the universe the way he did, and you want to have all 12 purposes fulfilled. There’s no other way to make the universe and it is a universe whereby we can be delivered from evil and suffering in thousands of years, not billions of years.”

(39:06):
So that’s the book I’d recommend. But one I can share with people, you can get a free chapter of at least eight of my different books. I’ve written 20 books, but for eight of them, we’re giving away a free chapter at reasons.org/ross and there they can kind of figure out, okay, this is the one I need to give to my non-Christian friend and they don’t want to buy the book. They can have their non-Christian friend get the free chapter.

Dr. Jeff Myers (39:32):
They can test it out.

Dr. Hugh Ross (39:35):
They can test it out, get the conversation started and hey, if they get in over their head, we’ll help you out. Great. I mean, we frequently will do that. People say, “Look, I’m getting these questions I can’t answer.” We say, “Well, let’s set up a Skype meeting or a Zoom meeting, a phone call, whatever, and we’ll directly help you with your non-Christian friends.”

Dr. Jeff Myers (39:56):
That’s so good. Hugh, as we draw toward the end, there’s a question I always like to ask on the show and that is, speak to the next generation for a minute. What would your word be to those young adults who are in high school, college and their 20s from the things that you’ve learned?

Dr. Hugh Ross (40:16):
Yeah. I mean, the Bible is explicit that God has given us two books, the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture and both are the utterly trustworthy and reliable revelation from the creator and every day we’re learning more from both books, but especially in the 21st century, our knowledge of the book of nature is exploding exponentially.

But a principle you see in Job and Psalms, the more we learn about nature, the more evidence we’ll uncover for the supernatural handy work of the creator and therefore recognize that’s the reason why the Bible says, “Do not leave theology up to the professionals, your pastor or your seminary professor. We’re all to be engaged in theology.” And it’s way too much fun to leave it just up to your pastor or your seminary professor. Get involved and likewise, do not leave it up to us professional scientists to look at the book of nature.

(41:19):
We all need to be studying the book of nature and it’s fun. And the last thing I’ll share is this is that in many respects, we who live in the 21st century are more ignorant about the book of nature than people who lived at the time of Abraham. Why? Because we live in a world where there’s light pollution, that heavens do not declare what they declared 3000 years ago.

I mean, where I live, you can see maybe 30 stars in the sky at night if it’s a good, clear night Abraham could see 15,000. So the heavens declare the glory of God, not in the way that they used to. And also you see in the book of Job, look to the wild birds they’ll teach you. Look to the wild beasts of the field, they’ll instruct you. And I wrote a book on this, hidden treasures in the book of Job and saying Job is not talking biology.

(42:14):
He’s talking the critical spiritual lessons we need to learn to come into relationship with God and people today are cut off from wild birds and wild mammals, especially from wild birds and wild mammals that have never been abused by humans. When you come into contact with those animals, you can see they want a relationship with us. They want to serve and please us. It’s our sin that makes them run away from us instead of towards us. They were designed for relationship with a higher being. Likewise, we were designed for relationship with a higher being.

(42:54):
As our sin causes these animals to run away from us, likewise our sin causes us to run away from the creator that loves us. And likewise, as these creatures come into a relationship with us and serve and please us, we notice their potential is greatly enhanced compared to their wild cousins. Same thing’s true of human beings. Once we’re in a bonded relationship with a creator, our potential to serve and please to be productive is greatly enhanced. And just like it takes a higher being to tame these birds and mammals, it takes a higher being to tame a human being.

Dr. Jeff Myers (43:35):
Yes.

Dr. Hugh Ross (43:35):
That’s how the book of Job ends. God says to Job and his friends, “You’ve been able to tame all these creatures, but there’s one preacher you cannot tame. You cannot bring humility to a proud human heart. It takes me to do that. Job came to me for that humility. The rest of you did not.”

Dr. Jeff Myers (43:56):
And that’s the tie in between the Book of Nature and the Book of Special Revelations.

Dr. Hugh Ross (44:01):
I saw the two books tied together.

Dr. Jeff Myers (44:02):
Yeah. Dr. Hugh Ross, thank you so much for being on the Dr. Jeff Show today.

Dr. Hugh Ross (44:08):
Oh, you’re very welcome. It’s been my pleasure.

Dr. Jeff Myers (44:10):
Thank you for joining us on the Dr. Jeff Show with today’s interview with Dr. Hugh Ross. I don’t know about you. There’s so much to think about there, but we of course encourage you to come to summit.org to get more information about Christianity and all the issues you’re facing with your faith and also check out reasons.org, especially if you have a scientific inclination or you’re hanging around scientists who have questions about God.

Ryan Dobson (44:38):
Hi, everyone. I’m Ryan Dobson from the Rebel Parenting Podcast. When my parents, Jim and Shirley Dobson sent me to the Summit Ministries Worldview Conference when I was 17, we had no idea the impact it would have on my life. It changed me so much in two short weeks, I’ve returned every summer for 34 years. This summer, your student can attend an in- person conference. That’s right, in person.

Summit Ministry’s Worldview Conference challenges students ages 16 to 24 to think deeper about their convictions and their faith by engaging with today’s top worldview thinkers and apologists. Can you imagine in person with other students learning about the Christian worldview? If not, they can attend Summit’s virtual experience and it’s amazing. Change your students’ life forever by partnering with Summit Ministries Worldview Conference today. Find out more by clicking the link in the show notes.