The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 9 – Fazale Rana

Episode 9: 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. Fazale Rana discusses his personal journey from growing up with a Muslim father to embracing Christianity. He explains how his PhD studies in biochemistry led him to reject agnosticism and conclude that the complexity and elegance of cellular systems pointed to an intelligent creator.

Dr. Fazale Rana details his conversion experience, his transition from a corporate research career to full-time ministry, and his arguments for why he believes scientific evidence, particularly from his field, supports the existence of God and is consistent with the Christian worldview. He argues that the perceived conflict between science and faith is rooted in philosophical worldviews rather than the evidence itself.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:02):
Hey gang, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show. This is so much fun to have days like today because on this show I interview major thought leaders who demonstrate that worldview changes everything. And one of the big issues today is science. People say you can’t believe in God because of science. How do you handle that? What if there was somebody who had a PhD in biochemistry who had worked for a Fortune 500 company who had answers to these questions? Wouldn’t that be a great guest?

Well, that’s Dr. Fazale Rana and he’s joining us today to talk about his journey from Islam to Christianity and how his studies in biochemistry led him to recognize that God is the author of the universe. I hope you enjoy the show. Dr. Fazale Rana, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show.

Dr. Fazale Rana (00:57):
Jeff, thanks so much for having me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:59):
I’ve been looking forward to this interview because you defy the odds. You are a PhD in biochemistry who does all of this incredible, intricate research and yet at the same time you are a believing Christian and the world in which we live and the world of higher education especially says those two things are like oil and water. They simply cannot go together. And so I’m really excited to hear how you reconcile that.

And I’m especially thinking about the people who are watching and listening who are in the university right now and maybe facing challenges of their faith. Or intellectually they kind of say, “Well, I could really be more serious about my belief in God, but there is science,” kind of thing. I can’t wait to get into that. But first I want to hear a little bit more about your story. Faz, you grew up as a Muslim.

Dr. Fazale Rana (01:56):
Yeah. Well, yeah, I had a pretty unusual home environment. My father was a devout Muslim and he came to the United States via Canada as a PhD in nuclear physics. And though he was a devout Muslim, he was a little bit more progressive in modern in his views. And so he met my mom who came from a background where she was a Catholic or at least a nonpracticing Catholic. And so when they married, my mom wasn’t asked by my father to convert to Islam again because my father was more progressive.

So I grew up in a home where I had some exposure to Christianity through my mom’s Catholicism when she did occasionally go to church and things like that. Her parents were really devout, my grandparents. But then most of my exposure to any religion was to Islam through my father. And so when I was a high school student, I seriously entertained Islam. I spent about a year and a half learning how to pray reading from the Quran before I kind of gave up on Islam as a young man.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:12):
Tell me what that was like. If you’re entertaining Islam, what were you going through? And was there anybody else in your high school who was on this journey?

Dr. Fazale Rana (03:24):
No. I mean, I was basically flying solo. There was nobody that I knew that was in my age group that was a Muslim, but I really was motivated in large measure because I was looking to probably connect with my father. Also, his faith was very important to him. My father never missed a day praying. He would always lay out in the morning a prayer carpet facing Mecca. He would go through a ritual cleansing in the morning before he would pray. He always carried a prayer booklet with him in his breast pocket right next to his heart.

So his faith was very important. And so it was an opportunity I thought for me to connect with my father. I became curious about this idea of God’s existence, and how do I fit into the grand scheme of things? And so that was part of the motivation for exploring Islam.

(04:23):
And so again, I was learning how to pray. I was reading from, at least, English translations of the Quran. And over time it became really pretty burdensome because one of the things that I think is important to recognize is that prayer in Islam is very different than prayer in Christianity. How so?

In Christianity, when we’re praying to God, we’re really in God’s presence, we’re communing with God. It’s part of our relationship with God where we experience God. Whereas in Islam, it’s essentially an obligation where you’re praying to Allah to essentially satisfy the demands of the faith. It’s a work that you’re performing to try to please Allah as opposed to again, actually, it having any kind of meaningful relationship component to it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (05:19):
Now as you read through the Quran and you began to have those doubts, take us a little bit into that relationship with your dad because I’m sure that was a tension as well. You want to have the kind of connection with him and he connects around his faith, but this is not leading you in the sense of entering your big life questions.

Dr. Fazale Rana (05:49):
No, it’s not. And so I eventually just kind of settled into a position of agnosticism. And one of the things that really struck me in part, reading the Quran it was a very difficult enterprise where the words in the Quran are very esoteric and there’s not a real clear logical progression to much of the thought, at least in my experience in the Quran. And so that was frustrating to me as well.

And one of the things that really had a big impact on me was one of my high school teachers, a world cultures teacher asked if my father would come to class and describe Islam to the class. And so I was really excited to have my father come to class and yet he refused to do that. We were living at that time in West Virginia, which is part of the Bible belt. And I think he felt like if he did that, he would really open himself up to persecution and to some kind of racist response to his faith.

(06:58):
So he was afraid to do that. And as a young man, I thought, well, if you’re not willing to stand up for your faith, then is this really true? That had a profound impact on me. And so I thought maybe God doesn’t even exist. And so I moved from that towards a position of agnosticism as I was entering into college. So that had a huge impact on me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (07:27):
Tell us a little about your scientific journey at that point in your life. Obviously you’re growing up in a family with a brilliant father, a nuclear physicist. Was his interest in science, did that somehow spark your interest?

Dr. Fazale Rana (07:46):
Not really. I mean, growing up, I wasn’t one of these prodigies that loved science. As a young man, the things that interested me were rock music, girls and sports. But I was a really good student and I was really good in math and in the sciences. And so when it was time to go to college, I actually didn’t really have any kind of real idea what I wanted to do.

And so my father, being a domineering Indian father, said, “You need to go to medical school.” That’s what defined success in his mind. And so some cultural stuff there, but so I thought, “Well, why not?” And so I enrolled in a pre-med program, but shortly into that program, really was exposed to the world of the cell to biochemistry and fell in love with biochemistry. And so that really became my passion as a college student.

(08:48):
I didn’t really want to go to medical school. I was just doing it to satisfy my dad, but I was real excited again about just the beauty and the amazing world of molecules inside the cell.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:06):
Did that spark a faith journey for you? I mean, where were you spiritually when you went off to the university?

Dr. Fazale Rana (09:15):
I was an agnostic.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:16):
You were an agnostic at that point. Okay. Okay.

Dr. Fazale Rana (09:18):
Yeah. And so in fact, it actually did the opposite because in the courses I had both in chemistry and biology, primarily in biology, I was learning about the evolutionary paradigm and the grand claim of that paradigm is that everything in biology can be explained through evolutionary processes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:38):
Naturalism.

Dr. Fazale Rana (09:39):
Yes. And I had college professors who were either agnostics or atheists who were really fairly anti-Christian in their perspective. Again, we were in the middle of the Bible belt and so this was a West Virginia State College that I was attending at the time. And so they had a lot of students that were Christians who would be in their classes challenging them.

So they developed a rather anti-Christian posture where they went out of their way to malign the Christian faith. And so as a young man seeing all of this, I really gravitated towards, kind of, a stronger agnosticism where I just reasoned, look, if evolution can do this, then what role is there for God to play?

Dr. Jeff Myers (10:26):
Yeah. Yeah. Sort of the God of the box, there’s a magic box and we use God to explain what’s inside that box because we can’t understand it any other way, but as we come to greater understanding, then we need God less. Is that kind of the way you were headed with it?

Dr. Fazale Rana (10:42):
Yes, that’s right. Yeah. And I meet a lot of people even to this day who again, develop that posture that if we can explain the world through natural process mechanisms, if the origin of life and the design of life is really just the product of mechanism, then why do you even need to appeal to a creator? A creator seems superfluous, right?

Dr. Jeff Myers (11:06):
And if you do appeal to a creator then, I’ve never quite thought about it in this way before. If you do appeal to a creator, then somebody who’s a non-believer looks at you and says, “See, all you’re doing is trying to say that there’s more stuff that should go back in the box, the magic box,” right? You’re not answering any questions, you’re just putting more stuff back in the magic box and saying, “See, it’s a good box.”

Dr. Fazale Rana (11:30):
Right. Yeah, that’s a great way to describe it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (11:35):
So the more you try to talk about the creator, the more resistance could actually come.

Dr. Fazale Rana (11:42):
Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (11:43):
How did you break through it?

Dr. Fazale Rana (11:45):
Well, it was when I was a graduate student studying in detail biochemical systems. And the first thing that became really evident to me is just how absolutely remarkable biochemical systems are. It’s not just that biochemical systems are complex beyond imagination, but there’s an elegance and a sophistication and almost like an ingenuity to these systems and they’re very different than the types of chemical systems that I could create in the laboratory as a chemist.

Dr. Jeff Myers (12:20):
And how are you observing these?

Dr. Fazale Rana (12:22):
Oh, partly it was through advanced coursework. I was beginning to read the scientific literature interacting with professors and students who would describe their research. I was beginning my own research efforts where I was literally handling these molecules in the lab and through that process beginning to understand how they behave, how they’re structured, how they operate. I mean, when you’re a biochemist that says, if you’re transported to this imaginary, well, it’s not imaginary, it’s a real world, but it’s a world of molecules that is just absolutely beautiful and fascinating when you begin to be able to visualize what’s going on.

And so that, to me, begged the question, “Well, where do these molecules come from?” And so as an undergraduate student, it was, well, evolution did it, but now I was a graduate student, I wanted to know the specific details, so I began to, on my own, study the origin of life problem and within a short period of time really came to the conviction, there’s absolutely no way chemistry and physics could produce these kinds of systems.

(13:34):
These are the types of things that only a mind can produce. And so at that point I realized there had to be a mind that was responsible at least for the origin of life and the basic design of biochemical systems. Who was that mind? I didn’t know, but I was convinced there was a mind behind it all.

Dr. Jeff Myers (13:53):
Is there somebody who you asked about that? Did you go to the campus pastor and say, “Okay, so I’ve been exploring the building blocks of life here as a biochemistry student and I’ve run into some questions.” Or was it something, how did it happen?

Dr. Fazale Rana (14:10):
Well, actually I was pretty much on my own because I didn’t really grow up with any kind of real religious training or understanding other than the limited amount of exposure I had to Islam. And so I just began, on my own, to think it through, these questions. Well, who is this creator? And I was actually going down a path of universalism where I thought, well, maybe the different religions of the world were just different ways that God revealed himself to different people at different times.

And that idea actually has significance in Islam because in Islam, Muhammad is viewed as the seal of the prophets, the final prophet, whereas Muslims view Noah and Abraham and David and even Jesus’ prophets to specific people at specific times. So there’s an element of universalism embedded in Islam and I just was exposed to that and so I thought, “Well, this makes a lot of sense to me.”

(15:20):
That was a very naive perspective because I was looking at the moral teachings of the world’s religions, not the more fundamental claims about the nature of God, the nature of Christ. And so I later on in retrospect realized what an incredibly naive view that was, but that’s the path I was going down.

Dr. Jeff Myers (15:44):
What changed?

Dr. Fazale Rana (15:47):
Well, I was engaged to a woman who eventually became my wife and she grew up in a Christian home, drifted away from her faith and then rededicated her life to Christ. She began to share her faith with me. And my first reaction was, “Look, if that’s something you want to do, I’m all for it, but I’m just simply not interested in Christianity.”

And so as we were getting closer and closer to being married and she was beginning to grow in her faith, she realized that she would be in a position where she would be unequally yoked. And so she began to ask her pastor in the church that she was attending, which was a really small little Pentecostal church in downtown Charleston, West Virginia. She began to ask her pastor to pray for me.

So the whole church was praying for me. And I can remember meeting with Johnny Withrow and to his credit, and he was my wife’s pastor, to his credit, he just simply said, “Well, have you ever read the Bible?” And my answer was, “No.” And he said, “Well, then how do you know it’s not true?” He goes, “If you’re a scientist, shouldn’t you be open to at least evaluating whether or not it’s true?” That’s a godlet. “You’ve got a point there,” right? And I should at least understand Christianity if this is what my wife is going to pursue.

(17:12):
And so I sat down with the gospel of Matthew and I began to read through the gospel of Matthew and it’s like, “Oh, this is where the Christmas story comes from.” I thought that was pretty cool, but that carried me into the sermon on the mount, which was just a profound passage of scripture for me at that time and still is to this day because here Jesus is laying out for his disciples a way to live a righteous life.

And I agreed with what Jesus was teaching and I wanted to live a life like that, but yet at the same time there was no way that I could do that. And so I realized, okay, I am falling far short of Jesus. I recognized my sin and it was at that moment I had what I would call a religious experience where it felt like there was a real presence of a real person in the room with me.

(18:10):
I was by myself in the evening in a chemistry lab, reading the Bible at a lab bench and I just felt like there was a real presence in the room with me. At that point, I just had this overwhelming conviction that this is true, that Jesus is who Christians claim him to be. And that was really the point of my conversion was realizing that it was through Jesus, that I would be able to be in a relationship with the creator whose designs and biology I was marveling at as a graduate student.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:44):
How perfect for God’s presence to come to you sitting in that lab.

Dr. Fazale Rana (18:54):
Well, scripture tells us that God reveals himself to us. This to me is something that I think as Christians, we take for granted because God as a transcendent creator is inherently hidden from us. It’s by virtue of the nature of his transcendence, but God is chosen to make himself known to us through nature scripture teaches us through the words that we have in scripture, and also through the person of Christ.

And so God is not an unknown God, which is very different than Islam. In Islam, of course, God is viewed as being transcendent, but he’s unknowable. And to say that you could somehow know God is blasphemy. It’s like the ultimate statement of blasphemy because it’s saying that you somehow are elevating yourself to the level of God to say that you can know God. And so God is unknowable in Islam, but yet in Christianity, not only is God knowable, but he wants us to know him through the person of Christ.

(19:54):
And so yeah, God was revealing himself and making himself known to me through nature, through scripture and through a divine encounter with the person of Christ.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:07):
How did you tell your girlfriend then wife about what happened?

Dr. Fazale Rana (20:13):
Well, I don’t remember telling her. I just remember going to the church service with her after I had converted and Johnny Withrow coming up to me saying, “Well, you need to tell everybody in the congregation what has happened.” And that was a really awkward moment for me, but I realized, again, in retrospect that I was standing there as an answered prayer to the dedication that the church had prayed for me. And I’m sure my wife viewed it as being a miracle because she was really struggling with, should she marry me as a non-Christian? So it was a lot of rejoicing for her as well, but God was definitely faithful to her and to Johnny and his church.

Dr. Jeff Myers (21:07):
I just love it. Thank you for sharing that story with us. Now in the next phase of your career though, I mean, you were on this trajectory, somebody who understands the building blocks of life is going to be in high demand and you went to work for one of the biggest companies in the world and that was your trajectory. I mean, you were set.

Dr. Fazale Rana (21:33):
Yeah. Well, after finishing up graduate school, I did a couple of postdocs and worked, as you said, for a Fortune 500 company in research and development and enjoyed being there, loved the people that I worked with, loved the projects that I was working on, but through that time that I was there really began to grow enormously in my faith. And yet interestingly enough, evangelism wasn’t really very important to me in the first decade or so of my walk as a Christian. It just wasn’t important to me.

And towards the end of that time, that first decade of being a Christian, my father died and he and I, our relationship was fractured as a result of my conversion as you can imagine. And so he and I would constantly argue about whether Christianity was true and I really had not much way of really presenting a case to him.

(22:40):
And so he died as far as I could tell as a Muslim. And that to me was really, it felt like a failure because here my father died and I was simply unable to reach him. And it was at that point I realized that evangelism was really something that I had to dedicate myself to for the sake of other people and I wasn’t really sure how to even begin or how God could even use me in that capacity. I can remember praying to God saying, “Look, all I am is a scientist, but I’m willing to be used by you.” I remember reading Isaiah 6, “Go ahead and send me.”

And it was about that time that I discovered the ministry of reasons to believe and some of the works that Hugh Ross had written and to me that was like, “Oh, now I see how it all fits together and how what I know as a scientist can then be used to show people that God exists and that scripture is reliable, helping them over that barrier that science may create to faith.”

(23:53):
And then I began to see in my own discipline, because Hugh Ross is an astronomer, I began to see in my own discipline, places where obviously God’s fingerprints were evident and that really excited me about the prospects of using science as really a tool for evangelism.

Dr. Jeff Myers (24:14):
And eventually you went full time to work for Reasons to Believe.

Dr. Fazale Rana (24:20):
Yeah. Well, I started off volunteering with the organization and then through a number of circumstances, the path was made available to me to join reasons to believe on a full-time basis. And so that was, gosh, 21, almost 22 years ago now. It felt like just yesterday.

Dr. Jeff Myers (24:41):
I know how that works in the world of ministry. It’s like, “Hey, we got this guy, he’s hanging around, might as well buy him some groceries.” But I can imagine there was a moment where, I mean, you’re now realizing you want to evangelize, you’ve got this great career.

I remember when my wife came to faith in Christ, she was working in Paris and she went in and said, “I have to go home. I have to go home to Texas.” And they said, “But why? God is here too. Why did you have to go into full-time ministry to carry out this work?” There’s something in your heart that burns for this.

Dr. Fazale Rana (25:23):
Yeah. Well, I came to the conviction that there was nothing more important that I could do as a scientist.

Dr. Jeff Myers (25:35):
Sorry, there’s another. Sorry, there was another glitch there. There’s nothing better. There’s nothing better. I could do that. Nothing better I can do than. And it cut out right there.

Dr. Fazale Rana (25:49):
Okay. I soon realized that for me as a scientist, there was really nothing better that I could do than to actually show people how scientific discoveries point to the reality of God and the truth of the Christian worldview. It’s all well and good to make discoveries about the world around us and to use that insight to develop nifty products that people will use and derive benefit from. Those are noble things to do to be certain, but for me, it just felt like there was nothing more important that I could do than to really dedicate my life to that. And I just really felt, again, God drew me into that work. That became my passion.

Dr. Jeff Myers (26:39):
Yeah. Now take us into that lab a little bit and how you express that passion. So as a biochemist, you’re studying the building blocks of life. When you are making your observations, some of which are theoretical, some of which are physical through microscopes and other measuring instruments, draw us a picture of what you’re seeing, that is, this beautiful complexity that appears designed.

Dr. Fazale Rana (27:08):
Well, one of the things that I find mind boggling is that the way biochemical systems are structured and organized the way they operate is in many instances eerie in terms of its similarity to manmade machines and devices and systems.

So for example, and this observation keeps me awake at night, one of the recognitions in recent years is that the cells machinery that manipulates DNA, which is an information storage molecule, it’s digital information, that the machinery that manipulates DNA is literally operating like a computer operation, that you have these many biochemical turing machines that are interacting with each other to carry out these complex operations like DNA replication and transcription and DNA repair so much so that there are now computer scientists that are designing computers built out of DNA.

(28:12):
And these computers that are built from DNA and the proteins that manipulate DNA in the cell are more powerful than the most powerful supercomputer system that we’ve built to date. And so this is going to be a revolution I think in computer science where we’ll have DNA computers, but the fact that they’re able to build computers from DNA utilizing in a sense the same systems that are inside the cell just highlights the fact that in the cell, you’ve got this very elaborate sophisticated computer operation going on that’s far more sophisticated than anything that we could ever do.

So it’s observations like that, that to me only convinced me further that there’s a mind behind everything. The cell is just this incredibly remarkable environment that is just almost impossible to truly describe or truly communicate unless you really roll up your sleeves and you’re immersed in that world.

Dr. Jeff Myers (29:15):
Somehow as you were making those observations, it must have occurred to you. There is a plan behind this and if there is a plan, then this does not match what I had been told in college, that this is all just kind of an evolutionary mashup of survival of the fittest. How did you grapple with that?

Dr. Fazale Rana (29:38):
Well, initially when I came to faith in Christ, I thought, well, the very first cells came into existence through divine action and I kind of held to a view that we would call today theistic evolution that at that point evolution kicked in and that explained life, but the more that I progressed in my faith as a Christian, the more and more I realized that that view was really incompatible with what I was learning about God’s nature and about what I was learning that was taught in scripture about the way God worked as creator and sustainer and provider.

I really began to become skeptical about even whether evolution could account for the history and the diversity of life itself and began to really dig into evolutionary theory in detail and through that process began to discover that it’s not just the origin of life where you’ve got these intractable problems.

(30:39):
It’s also, how do we explain the origin of the very first what are called eukaryotic cells? Or how do we explain where body plans come from in animals? How do we explain consciousness? How do we explain our exceptional nature as human beings? Every place in life’s history where there are these key transitions, this is where evolutionary theory very clearly breaks down where experts working in these areas are very quick to acknowledge we have no real clue how these transitions happened. As I began to see that, I realized that these are at least at minimum places where you would need a mind to intervene, a creator to intervene just like with the origin of life.

Dr. Jeff Myers (31:28):
I remember at the university when I would ask about evolution, a lot of my professors would say, “Look, whether you believe it or not is not really all that important. It’s a model and it works. It helps lead to discovery.” And what you’re saying is that in your field at least that got to the place where that was no longer the case, where the mechanisms of evolution were no longer even helpful instruments to yield understanding.

Dr. Fazale Rana (32:00):
Yeah. I do think that there are some aspects of nature that could be explained through the mechanisms that we understand that comprise current evolutionary theory, but those mechanisms can’t explain genuine innovation, how biological innovation they can’t explain how life goes from one regime of complexity to a higher level of complexity. Those are just areas where the evolutionary theory just doesn’t have the resources available.

And what’s interesting to me is that when you look at the history of life, every time you see those kinds of transitions, they happen explosively without any, kind of out of nowhere. They happen suddenly and there’s no intermediary grades documenting that transition. It just happens out of nowhere. These are called oftentimes radiation events and that to me is almost like a signature for creation where, what would it look like if God was intervening as creator? Wouldn’t it look like suddenly out of nowhere something happens in the history of life that is clearly again the introduction of novelty and innovation.

(33:20):
So I clearly see God’s fingerprints. It’s not just simply evolution can’t explain it, but it looks like a signature for creation.

Dr. Jeff Myers (33:30):
Wow. Signature. I love that. I love that idea. Love that analogy. I’ve got another question for you. I mean, there’s so many questions. We’ve got to have you come back. And by the way, there are going to be some specific issues. Before the show began, we were talking about vaccinations and things like that. So we got to come back and talk about that some more. But I’m sensing, I was on a run, I saw a sign in somebody’s front yard and it listed out a lot of their beliefs on one sign. Have you seen these? The people stick them in their front yard.

(34:10):
It’s like a huge bumper sticker, but one of them says, “We believe in science.” And then you look at the other things on the list and you realize none of them are scientific beliefs. In fact, some of them are, I don’t know, I don’t want to be too controversial about that, but some of them are counter scientific and yet they say they believe in science.

And I started to wonder if maybe science is kind of the talisman that people hold up to ward off unwanted thoughts like away with you kind of a thing. It’s science. It’s like when you’re looking at a new app and saying, “Man, that app is amazing. How does it work?” And somebody says, “Math.” That it’s not even an explanation anymore. It’s more of an excuse. Am I on the right track on that?

Dr. Fazale Rana (35:04):
I think so. I think that’s really, Jeff, very insightful because I see that quite often where people will just point to certain scientific discoveries and again, just say these discoveries make the idea of God unreasonable, right? Without ever giving any kind of real thought to what it is they actually are saying, it just becomes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (35:42):
Sorry. Yeah. I think it glitched at, it just becomes, when you said it just becomes.

Dr. Fazale Rana (35:51):
Yeah. Okay. Here it goes here. Okay. It just becomes an excuse to, okay. It just becomes an excuse to sidestep the real issues that I think that are keeping people from truly entertaining the gospel.

Dr. Jeff Myers (36:19):
I think it stopped there after you said truly entertaining the gospel.

Dr. Fazale Rana (36:27):
Yeah, I think that’s where I was ending the thought.

Dr. Jeff Myers (36:32):
Oh, okay. Okay. Sorry. All right. Yeah, perfect. So I can imagine somebody saying, “Well, Dr. Rana, surely in today’s advanced age, you cannot expect me to take a superstitious belief in God coming from an ancient near Eastern cult. Seriously, you’re a scientist. You should know better. I’m sure that happens to you. What do you say in those moments?

Dr. Fazale Rana (37:08):
It does happen quite a bit. And to me, my belief in God initially was driven by the evidence at hand. I was following the evidence where it led and the fact of the matter is nobody disputes that we don’t have an explanation for how life originates through chemical evolution. Even the scientists working in that area will readily admit nobody knows how chemical evolution could have generated the very first cells. Nobody disputes the strong appearance of design in biochemistry and in biology. Everybody agrees it looks designed. Yes.

And so in light of that, to argue that there isn’t a designer, there isn’t a mind behind it all to me is actually refusing to follow the evidence where it naturally leads. I mean, if things appear to be designed for a purpose, then maybe indeed they have been. And so to me, my conviction that there is a creator first and foremost is based on the evidence that I see around me.

(38:21):
And it’s also, of course, as a Christian, because I’ve experienced God as well, but that experience of God is fully consistent with what I see reflected in nature and the type of God you would expect who would produce the designs we see in biology is exactly how God is described in scripture. So to me, my belief in God is following the evidence where it leads, though the idea that there was a mind behind everything in life is an idea that is considered anti-scientific or non-scientific simply because of the nature of science itself.

Today, science operates according to a framework called methodological naturalism and that’s a $25 word that just simply means that when you engage in science, you operate as if God doesn’t exist. You pretend that God doesn’t exist whether you believe in God or not and you only pursue mechanistic explanations. So even if all the evidence is pointing you to design and to a mind behind it all, as a scientist, you’re taught that you can’t go down that path because you’re now exiting science and you’re engaging in philosophy or theology.

(39:40):
But to me, the evidence from science is pointing you in that direction and that conclusion to me is just as scientific as to say that there was a mechanism that explains this.

Dr. Jeff Myers (39:53):
Yeah. I love how you tie it back into the Bible as well, because I know a lot of people who say, “Sure, okay. Yes, there’s a creative force, but it is just a force. It is a higher consciousness, or how do you know it’s the God of the Bible?” But as you’ve tied all of these pieces together, you just see the consistency of what is going on in the natural world with God as he has revealed himself in scripture to be.

And as we draw our show to a close, I’m just curious if you would speak to the young adults or even the young at heart, those who are studying and learning, those who are around intelligent people who are not believers, just give them a word of encouragement about how to stand strong.

Dr. Fazale Rana (40:41):
Yeah. Well, to me, I think the one bit of advice would be, keep in mind that at the end of the day, this whole perceived conflict between science and faith is actually not due to the scientific evidence at hand, but really it’s due to worldview considerations. How are you viewing that evidence?

And if you view that evidence through the lens of the Christian faith or through a worldview that allows for agency to account for certain features in nature, the evidence just screams that there’s a mind behind everything. So to me, at the end of the day, it’s more worldview considerations and philosophy than it is really scientific evidence.

Dr. Jeff Myers (41:26):
Wow, man, that’s great. We’ve got to keep that in mind. Dr. Fazale Rana, thank you for being on the Dr. Jeff Show today. I’m betting that after today’s show, you’re going to want to know more about the work of Dr. Fazale Rana. So I encourage you to go to his website. It’s called reasons.org, the organization’s called Reasons to Believe. You’ll find that he’s written a lot of books there, Who Was Adam, Creating Life in the Lab, The Cells Design, Humans 2.0. And you’ll also find that he is on Twitter and on Facebook and puts a lot of cool stuff on there as well. Thanks for joining us on the Dr. Jeff Show today.

Ryan Dobson (42:05):
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 Ministry’s Worldview Conference today. Find out more by clicking the link in the show notes.