33. Science & Faith Part 1 - Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray (Science Educator & Christian) - Science Asks How & When. Faith Asks Who & Why.

33. Science & Faith Part 1 - Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray (Science Educator & Christian) - Science Asks How & When. Faith Asks Who & Why

Alexis Rice sits down with Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray, science educator, university lecturer, Christian, and author of Fish with Feet: Human Evolution and the Image of God, for a deeply honest conversation about evolution, evangelicalism, scientific literacy, and the false choice so many Christians were handed between faith and science.

Raised in conservative Christianity and young earth creationist culture herself, Janet shares how studying biology transformed her understanding of both science and God - not by destroying her faith, but by expanding it.

Together, Alexis and Janet unpack the deep distrust of science embedded in many American evangelical spaces, why evolution was framed as spiritually dangerous, and how generations of Christians were taught that accepting evolution, climate science, vaccines, or scientific expertise itself could somehow threaten their relationship with God.

At the center of this conversation is one of Janet’s most powerful insights:

“Science asks questions of how and when. Faith asks questions of who and why.”

Science cannot answer every meaningful question in human life. And faith and science are not enemies competing for the same territory - they are often answering entirely different kinds of questions.

💬 In This Episode

• Growing up in young earth creationism
• Why evolution became linked to “moral decline” in evangelical culture
• The rise of anti-evolution apologetics in America
• How churches built alternative Christian media and education ecosystems
• Why many Christians distrust scientists and experts
• COVID, vaccines, public health, and evangelical fear of science
• What scientists actually mean by “theory”
• Adam and Eve, Genesis, and the tension between theology and biology
• The Big Bang, the Cambrian explosion, and misconceptions about evolution
• Why curiosity should not be treated as rebellion against God
• Galileo, science denial, and refusing to “look through the telescope”
• Authority vs expertise and the danger of scientific illiteracy
• Why science and faith can coexist without conflict
• How asking questions can actually deepen faith rather than destroy it

Janet offers a compassionate invitation for Christians who feel trapped between intellectual honesty and spiritual belonging: 
you do not have to reject science to love God.

📚 Books & Resources Mentioned

• Fish with Feet: Human Evolution and the Image of God (@Eerdmans)
• The God of Monkey Science (@Eerdmans)
• Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark

👥 People & Accounts Mentioned

• Janet Kellogg Ray: @janetkelloggray
 • Neil deGrasse Tyson: @neildegrassetyson
 • Hasan Minhaj - IG: @hasanminhaj @hmdk
 • Francis Collins
 • Kenneth Miller

Transcript

Janet (00:00)
think if there is an understanding at a very basic level that faith and science answering two different questions. That science asks questions of how, how did it happen, when did it happen? And faith or religion answers questions of who and why.

Science cannot answer those questions. Those things are not falsifiable. Therefore, they are not questions for science. But that doesn't mean that they are not important questions. Some of the most important things in my life are things that I cannot prove using the scientific method. So I think if there was a basic understanding that it's not this one or the other,

and religion or science and faith are answering two different kinds of questions,

There is a dearth of science literacy in our country. Across the board, there is big problem with simply understanding how science

a culture, we don't distinguish between someone who is an authority and someone who is an expert. And we tend to value authority over expertise.

Alexis Rice (01:19)
Wow.

Janet (01:19)
And that's

what we are currently seeing in our country. We have people making science decisions. We have people canceling scientific research who are in positions of authority. They have positions of leadership. Therefore, they are in positions of authority to make decisions. But they are not experts in their field.

Ideally, those in authority would be speaking from positions of not always. And we have to understand when someone is making decisions from authority versus those making decisions position of expertise. the last thing I would say about scientific literacy,

in our modern times is that if you truly believe that there's this secret cabal of scientists worldwide who are conspiring to hide the truth from you about evolution or disease or COVID or climate or anything else, then you don't know how science works because scientists love to prove each other wrong.

Alexis Rice (02:28)
Hi everyone. Welcome to the sacred slope where the slippery slope becomes sacred ground. I'm Alexis

And if you're new here, the sacred slope.

is a global podcast exploring Christianity far outside the narrow lens many of us were shown through white American evangelicalism, fundamentalism, and Christian nationalism. On this show, we talk to pastors, priests, activists, artists, Bible scholars, authors, influencers, and leaders from all over the world across many different traditions. Queer pastors and straight pastors, progressive evangelicals and Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians,

from different countries, cultures, races, and perspectives. Because Christianity is not a monolith. No one denomination, no one political party, no one country, and no person gets to define what Christianity means for two billion Christians around the world. At the center of

our faith is a brown-skinned Palestinian Jewish rabbi who lived empire 2,000 years ago and taught radical love, nonviolence, compassion, for the vulnerable, and love for both neighbor and enemy alike. recognize people who follow him by the fruit of our spirits, love, joy, peace.

patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. be known by our love. And if those things are absent, something has gone wrong. And that brings us to today's special 2-part series on science and the Christian faith. Christian nationalism uses different tools, power, fear, violence,

For many of us raised in conservative American Christianity, science was often presented as something threatening to faith. fear is used. Evolution was made to feel dangerous. The Big Bang felt dangerous. Climate science, vaccines, expertise itself, spiritually suspect because of what a lot church spaces are teaching.

Not because we hated science, but because many of us were just taught that accepting certain scientific realities somehow meant rejecting God, rejecting our Christian faith. I know that world because I grew up in it, but through deconstruction and conversations with scientists, clergy, and Christians from around the world, I have realized over time that millions of faithful Christians fully embrace both science and faith. They do not see them as enemies. Science asks questions like how

and when faith asks questions like who and why. And this conversation matters far beyond church debates. Distrust of science and expertise affects public health, education, climate policy, politics, and the way we live together as a society. So wherever you're listening from today, whether you're skeptical, curious, deconstructing, deeply faithful, anxious, or somewhere in between, I want to invite you to breathe.

You are allowed to ask questions. That does not mean you have doubts. You are allowed to learn and being curious about science does not mean you are betraying God or your faith. Today, we have a special two-part series on faith and science. And today you're going to be hearing from Dr. Janet science educator and university lecturer.

who is also a Christian and the author of her new book, Coming Soon, Fish with Feet, Human Evolution and the Image of God. And in part two, you'll hear from Pastor Will Rose. He's a progressive Lutheran pastor and creator of Your Matter Matters, a limited series on faith and science. I'm really excited for you to hear both of these conversations. Don't forget to follow Rate Review. It helps the algorithm gods be merciful to

Alexis Rice (06:47)
Welcome back to the Sacred Slope, friends, where the slippery slope becomes sacred ground. I'm Alexis Rice, and today I am so excited to have guest, Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray. Hi, Janet.

Janet (07:00)
Hi Alexis, thank you for having me.

Alexis Rice (07:02)
⁓ I'm so happy to have you here. And guess why, everybody? Because Janet is an enthusiastic science educator, explainer and communicator. She holds a PhD in curriculum and instruction and is in her 21st year of teaching at the University of North Texas. She was raised a creationist like so many of us were. And Janet is now a science educator and devoted follower of Jesus who fully accepts evolution.

Janet loves to explain evolution to questioners, doubters, deniers, and those who just want to know more about the science of origins. And she has a new book that is available for pre-order. It's great. I highly recommend this. It is called Fish with Feet, Human Evolution and the Image of God. Janet has also written Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark and the God of Monkey Science. thank you so much for being here today.

Janet (07:53)
Thank you for inviting me.

Alexis Rice (07:55)
your story and your What was your faith like when you were young? And how did you get to where you are today?

Janet (08:03)
I was raised going to church three times a week and every day of the week when it was gospel meeting time, ⁓ church was by and large a very positive experience for me. Our family social life just focused on our friendships from church. And so in that aspect, it was a great upbringing. But

in my church, in my tradition,

we would no more have doubted the historical and literal nature of Genesis than we would have doubted the existence of Jesus. It was just a given. So I actually don't remember hearing evolution or science discussed much in our Bible classes or from the pulpit because it was a given that that was wrong and Genesis was literal and correct.

And then I went to middle school. That's what I credit with a absolute watershed event in my life. Looking back on it, I see that. My middle school was quite progressive for the day in the 70s. I got an excellent education there. in the seventh grade, believe it or not, science was not required for students in that time.

Alexis Rice (09:24)
What?

Janet (09:25)
It was an elective. And so, yes, it was required from then on, but not in seventh grade. And so I thought taking choir sounded fun, but my dad was a teacher in my school and the choir room was right by his room. And my very triple type A dad did not approve of the...

in organization, shall we say, that he saw in the choir room. And so I was volun-told that I was going to take the science elective. And I absolutely credit that decision for changing the trajectory of my life. Now, did we study evolution overtly? Absolutely not. But it was a great biology class for seventh grade. And what we did was we worked our way through each of the major animal groups, major phyla.

of animal groups. did dissections that a lot of high school kids don't do these days. And I did not have the vocabulary for it at the time. Absolutely did not have the vocabulary. But I definitely remember thinking, there's a connection between these animal groups. It appears that some of these systems are just modifications and reworkings of the same system that you see throughout

all of the animals. And I just remember having that distinct feeling that something was going on here. But I fell in love with science, particularly biology at that point. I went to university. I was a biology major at a Christian university where my very favorite biology professor told us in our Intro to Biology class that here's the section in the textbook on evolution. You need to know about it.

And that was it. That was the extent of our evolution education as biology majors. And so I went on, I taught school for a while, but another changing point in my life, change of trajectory of my life happened about 10 years after my husband and I, were both biology majors, graduated.

And apparently a young earth creationist who had no connection to our school decided to take on the biology faculty, which by this time was overtly teaching evolution as the underlying and principal foundation of all modern biology, which they should. But this young earth creationist went in in the nineties, I believe it was, and tried to take down the careers of two professors, one of whom was

my favorite professor. taught labs for him. I adored that man. And it destroyed him because this person presented him as an atheist, destroying the faith of these poor little young people who are coming to this Christian school to be built up. And he ended up retiring and unfortunately passed away fairly early. And that was devastating to me

that teaching this topic could destroy this man's career in so many ways. And so it was about that point in the 90s that I began to study and read on my own in earnest. My husband and I both did. We read everything we could get our hands on. Young Earth was not ever a big problem for me. I remember distinctly, even when it was taught, thinking, that's just not true.

Now, I tried to make it work by like saying, can we just close one eye and squint and make the fossil record equal the days of creation somehow? But I just couldn't buy the younger. So that wasn't a problem. But having background and I started reading the evidence, I started reading people of faith who completely accept biology and it was not a hard sell. And so from that point on, I accepted.

the evidence for evolution. Like I tell my students on the first day of class, we don't believe biology, we don't believe science, because the fact is true whether you believe it or not. So when I talk about science, I say I accept the evidence.

Alexis Rice (13:42)
⁓ I had some visceral moments hearing you talk about this. One is thinking about our listeners. So the United States is one of 90 countries of where people are listening. And so for a lot of people, I assume what you just said is blowing their minds, like kind of freaking them out. What is even young earth creationism? What are you talking about?

you or there's a lot of people in the United States who were raised in mainline Christianity, who like didn't have to deal with all this Young Earth creationism, doctrine in their church experiences. what is Young Earth creationism?

Janet (14:23)
The current iteration of Young Earth Creationism really had its beginning in the 70s with a book titled The Genesis Flood written by a couple of guys, not scientists, one I think had a geology background. But the Genesis Flood in the 1970s is pretty much the starting point of the modern Young Earth Creationist movement. Now it's important to understand

that this book was heavily influenced by, and I'm drawing a blank on her name, White was her last name, but she was the founder of the Seventh Day Adventist Church and movement. And according to this founder of the movement, she had visions, God sent her visions of the actual creation week, and it was from her visions that these authors of the Genesis flood drew their material. And

The Genesis flood is very adamant on the earth being around 7,000 years old, maybe as much as eight or nine or 10,000 years old. But the 70s really gave birth to the Young Earth Creationist movement. And it is also during this time that we see the rise of what was called creation science, where those who accepted Young Earth Creationism

set out to prove that creationism could be demonstrated scientifically. So they hired scientists, they formed these organizations, and they set out to prove creation science as a legitimate alternative to evolution and modern geology. But the problem is it didn't take long before they realized they just couldn't do it. It could not be demonstrated scientifically.

So the movement switched gears and instead of presenting creation as a science, the new approach was to attack evolution. Attack evolution as the source of all evil in the world. Evolution was blamed for abortion, for disobedient children, it was blamed for any number of social ills.

And so from that point in the 80s, the Young Earth Creationist Movement and the Intelligent Design Movement that it spawned have advocated for this seven to 10,000 year old Earth and the evils of evolution and not trying to present creationism as a science, but just the attack now is more...

evidence for intelligent design as proof of creationism.

Alexis Rice (17:09)
I'm going to be sighing a lot through this I'm kind of, this sounds kind of ridiculous. I've always been proud to have been a curious person and have been wanting to seek the truth of, know, what is science? What is faith? Like what happened? And I feel like as a young person, I was really trying to do that.

and in my church experiences, and I was in California you it's not like the most conservative state. I was still in California and evangelical mega church culture. And this was absolutely in the ether. You, exactly what you said, like you are a Christian if you believe in the evils of, you know, evolution that is linked to all these other things. And this is also partly where the slippery slope comes into place. this is why, people say, you can't even consider

Janet (17:36)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Alexis Rice (17:57)
evolution actually being real because that's just one tick down that slippery slope into atheism, liberalism, and everything that's wrong with society, that was what I believed. And in high school, I can remember my poor biology teacher, I thought I was being a good Christian to somehow publicly show my distress that I was having to learn about evolution as a Christian. And I was frustrated. I was like, but there's another way. This is not Christian.

Can you believe this? So, ⁓ yeah.

Janet (18:25)
believe it because

some of the major Young Earth Creationist organizations publish lists of questions for students to ask their teachers in class. They give them scripts to ask their teachers in class. So absolutely, absolutely. not only did it spawn this

blaming of evolution for all of society's ills. Even if you go back as far as the 20s with the Scopes trial before it became a big deal in the schools, the Scopes trial was basically a coming together, a perfect storm if you will, of two big movements. Darwin had been

academy with academics, but had not made its way into the public schools. That's what Scope was about. It was beginning to come into the public schools. And in this perfect storm, about that same time, historical biblical criticism was coming out of Germany, where people were looking at the Bible as literature and looking at the cultural context of the book.

And so all of a sudden you've got Darwin telling us that we came from monkeys and we're telling us that the theologians in their ivory towers are telling us that we can't take the Bible literally, the Bible has human marks on it and the world was about to collapse. And so what evangelicals in particular did is they began to wall themselves off and we made our own colleges, our own preschools.

our own seminaries, we read our own books in our own publishing houses, we listened to our own radio. And so what another fallout of this is you have this isolation and unfortunately an anti-intellectual bent in American evangelicalism because we walled ourselves off and only listened to ourselves, wrote for ourselves and read our own.

And so you have a couple of these things coming together in the mid to late 20th century that bring us to where we are today, not a whole lot further down the road in the 21st century.

Alexis Rice (20:41)
Ugh.

Janet (20:41)
especially

in American evangelicalism.

Alexis Rice (20:44)
Are you telling me that this is not how the vast majority of Christians, about the two billion Christians on the planet, see our faith and see science?

Janet (20:51)
No,

American evangelicals are particularly adverse to many things in science and unfortunately the United States has been pretty good at exporting that to other places, Canada, Australia, to some extent. But it is more of a problem with evangelicals. There's a fairly recent Gallup

survey out, was 2024, that found half the people, 50 % of the people who attend religious services weekly or monthly, half of those people believe that humans have always existed in their present form. And 37 % of Americans in general believe that God created humans in their present form.

But when you go beyond just Americans in general and you look specifically at evangelicals, you see that percentage go even higher.

Alexis Rice (21:54)
Yeah, absolutely, because like you said, we walled ourselves off, but we didn't see it that way. We saw it as this is secular and this is Christian. So we, you know, that the secular world doesn't understand us and, you know, doesn't care about the fact that our faith is central to who we are. And so, you know, they're going to be talking about evolution on TV and gay people on TV and, you know, God forbid, just anything else that's not within our evangelical Christian worldview.

Janet (22:03)
Right, right.

Alexis Rice (22:23)
And so we took it as a sign of disrespect. I think that, we are fighting for our faith. But wow, the way you explain that to me actually, it makes me realize even more why a lot of people I think are leaving public schools and, you know, wanting to put their kids into private schools. I think it's led all the way up to, you know, the response from a lot of evangelicals during the pandemic.

and being anti-vaccine. I think it comes so much from this,

Janet (22:54)
Right, and that was a big theme in my second book, The God of Monkey Science, because we saw American evangelicals resisting anything to do to stop the They were the ones that went court to keep their churches open and to keep assembling masks free. They were by far

the greatest demographic that was resisting vaccination. And why should we be surprised, Alexis? We spent decades telling evangelicals that scientists are lying to us, that they're lying to us about evolution, they're lying to us about climate change, and why wouldn't they be lying to us about this infectious disease issue? It's the scientists are telling us and we have been conditioned.

to disbelieve and to distrust scientists. We've been actually told that they're lying to us, that we need to put faith over fear and that God is going to be the answer and not science. And if you're looking to science to solve these problems, climate, COVID, whatever, then you're looking to the wrong place to solve your problems.

Alexis Rice (23:56)
Yes.

Yes. And it makes me think about how saw a clip recently of Neil deGrasse Tyson. I've seen him speak. My husband's got a master's in physics. so science has always been extremely important to him. And that's been the most frustrating thing to him is to come to America from Europe and see this anti-intellectual, anti-science worldview presented as truth and Christianity and all that.

someone asked him, what scares you the most? And he said,

I am the most afraid of people in the United States with scientific illiteracy who are in positions of power making decisions about all of us. and he's talking about exactly what you're talking about, what we understand.

Janet (25:52)
Yes.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Alexis Rice (26:03)
I think this is where like, let's just say scientists who happen to be not Christians and Christians who happen to distrust science, the United States at least, are missing each other on this, like when Neil says that, I don't think It's a willful ignorance out of loyalty to our faith, out of a perceived,

Janet (26:19)
Mm-hmm.

Alexis Rice (26:22)
disregard for miracles and God that we are somehow not being adherent to our Christian faith if we were to go down this road of science. I don't know how much scientists understand who are not in the Christian world, how much that like when you say like trust science, believe science, that that is not the effective message.

when you've been raised and conditioned in this kind of attitude. I was just curious about your thoughts on that and what you see.

Janet (26:53)
absolutely agree.

There is a dearth of science literacy in our country. Across the board, there is a big problem with simply understanding how science works. Just a couple of brief things that come to my mind almost immediately, especially with things like evolution, is not understanding what scientists mean when they talk about a theory.

A theory is not just somebody's best guess on things. Theories are the underlying foundational principles of an area of science about which scientists are most certain. Now, will theories be tweaked at some point? Yes, but the underlying foundations of these theories are not going to change. So, when you hear often that science is theory and not fact,

It's a of what a theory is. And so you know, I always say, are you going to jump out of an airplane without a parachute? Because gravity is just a theory. If your surgeon's running late and says that she didn't wash her hands or sterilize her instruments, but that's okay because germ theory is just a theory. Everybody understands that. But when you talk about climate science and you talk about evolution, then all of a sudden it's just

theory. So there is a bit of a disconnect between what a vernacular use of the word theory is and how scientists use theories. And then here's a biggie. As a culture, we don't distinguish between someone who is an authority and someone who is an expert. And we tend to value authority over expertise.

Alexis Rice (28:44)
Wow.

Janet (28:44)
And that's

what we are currently seeing in our country. We have people making science decisions. We have people canceling scientific research who are in positions of authority. They have positions of leadership. Therefore, they are in positions of authority to make decisions. But they are not experts in their field.

Ideally, those in authority would be speaking from positions of not always. And we have to understand when someone is making decisions from authority versus those making decisions position of expertise. And then the last thing I would say about scientific literacy,

in our modern times is that if you truly believe that there's this secret cabal of scientists worldwide who are conspiring to hide the truth from you about evolution or disease or COVID or climate or anything else, then you don't know how science works because scientists love to prove each other wrong.

Alexis Rice (29:50)
Yes, they do. I can definitely attest to that. And they're willing to change over time. Can you talk about that too as part process? Because I think that evangelicals can often be really confused about that by saying, well, like you used to say this, but now you say this. And so see, you were wrong. And our framework of our

Christian faith in this particular lens was like, it's all unchanging. And so if you change your mind about anything, like that's not faithful or that means it was incorrect.

Janet (30:21)
And that's why pseudoscience is so popular. Because pseudoscience promises certainty. Drink this supplement and you will feel better. You will lose 50 pounds. You will have more energy. Pseudoscience offers certainty. Scientists talk about the best evidence at hand. The best evidence we have.

Alexis Rice (30:26)
⁓

Janet (30:47)
And with new evidence, science changes its mind. And so many people are uncomfortable with that. Many people are uncomfortable with not having a definitive solution right here, right now, in my hands. But only pseudoscience offers that. Scientists will actually, in papers, and your husband would know this, don't talk about proving anything. They'll talk about supporting

hypothesis. They will talk about failing to reject a hypothesis, but they don't talk about proving because then what happens when you get more evidence? So science is always in the position of what is the best evidence at hand? What do we have? And what looks like to people maybe outside the world is changing your mind or flip-flopping. That's the big one. Flip-flopping is just with more evidence.

scientist switches gears, changes to what the best evidence at the time is telling us.

Alexis Rice (31:53)
we are going to go into myth busting, but before we do that, we've set the stage really well. I think people understand a little bit about what's going on. I feel like the evangelical fundamentalism, Young Earth Creation is not even

getting bigger and bigger with more and more power with the people, as you said, who every single person I was thinking who's in our government right now or who was appointed are literally not experts, but they're in places of authority and using the psychology somehow Christians to keep them feeling like they need to adhere to, that kind of structure.

You happen to be in a place that you are both a scientist and a Christian. And we have a lot of scientists over here who may not be Christians and a lot of evangelical Christians over here who are distrusting of science. And it seems to be getting worse. What

ideas do you feel like to happen so that we don't continue to polarize? How can there be a better understanding both of these sides?

Janet (32:52)
think if there is an understanding at a very basic level that faith and science answering two different questions. That science asks questions of how, how did it happen, when did it happen? And faith or religion answers questions of who and why.

Science cannot answer those questions. Those things are not falsifiable. Therefore, they are not questions for science. But that doesn't mean that they are not important questions. Some of the most important things in my life are things that I cannot prove using the scientific method. So I think if there was a basic understanding that it's not this one or the other,

and religion or science and faith are answering two different kinds of questions, both

and be complementary, but it's not this competition, not this one or the other. And when I came to understand that back on my journey a few decades ago, that was the turning point for me, is to understand that science and my faith

were not answering the same questions. Therefore, they can't be in conflict.

Alexis Rice (34:16)
Chills, Janet. Yes, I love it. Thank you.

All right, some myth busting. Okay. Let's start with myth number one. Christians must choose between evolution and our Christian faith.

Janet (34:26)
Okay?

Well, of course, I'm going to say that's a myth as I just said, evolution is answering completely different questions than my faith addresses. Evolution talks about how universe came into being, how life diversified and spread over our planet and when all of that happened.

but it's my faith to me about care for that creation and love for my fellow humans and caring for the planet that I live on and knowing that I should care that the planet that I leave for my children and everybody else's children is going to be safe and healthy for them. Those are two different kinds of questions. And so as a

follower of Christ, it becomes part of what motivates me because science tells me how I can do those things.

Alexis Rice (35:37)
What percentage you know of would you say evolution?

Janet (35:43)
Well.

I tend to spend most of my time reading and following men and women of science are also believers, religious, in some sort of a faith tradition. And I am honestly frustrated a lot by some of the

output by scientists in some of the creationist or intelligent design publishing houses because what I've recognized is that there is no one touting design, no one touting creationism, absolutely no one touting Young Earth unless they are coming from a religious background. And so

What you see is just a tiny, tiny minority of working, publishing biologists, climate scientists, geologists. Only a tiny percentage of those people are going to be opposed to what the evidence says. And I cannot think of a single exception. To my knowledge, without exception,

All of that tiny comes from a religious perspective for their positions.

Alexis Rice (37:02)
Okay, so as a Christian and a scientist, I am open-minded and with new ears. So the Big Bang happened, correct? The Cambrian explosion happened, right? And that is not something that in my body viscerally I have to feel that is anti-Christian.

Janet (37:14)
Hmm?

Absolutely not. if anyone is interested in reading more about a Big Bang or the Cambrian, there is a lot of misconceptions around both of those ideas. It's the beginning of the universe as we have it today, the universe that we have. That could be a whole other topic about before and after, not my wheelhouse, but the beginning of

the universe that we have began as an expansion from point. It wasn't really so much of a bang or an explosion as it was an expansion from a singularity. And, you know, to the Google, to the perplexity to read more about that. But this idea of a bang or explosion really is a bit outdated.

And as far as the Cambrian explosion goes, I've got an entire chapter in Fish with Feet on the Cambrian explosion. And I believe the chapter is called The Explosion That Wasn't. The Cambrian was a big problem for Darwin because when Darwin wrote back in the mid 1800s, the Cambrian was the oldest geological layer that had been discovered and had been described.

And so Darwin admitted that the Cambrian was a problem for him because so many forms of animals appear in the Cambrian that don't seem to have any precursors. But it didn't take long, not too long after Darwin, we discovered the pre Cambrian layers and we found that animal life dips deep into history and that those Cambrian animals

had precursors that there were animals and precursors were on our planet and living on our planet long before the Cambrian. So most people will call the Cambrian more of a slow fuse. We do see relatively speaking a relatively speaking faster expansion of animal diversity.

However, we're still talking about millions and billions of years. We're not talking about the blink of an eye. And in the book, I talk about different possible reasons for this. Was there an oxygen level increase? Because in modern times, modern environments, when there is an in oxygen, we rapid diversity of animal life. So things like that and other things about erosion and things like that were happening.

that were setting up the environment and giving those animals pieces that were needed to diversify and to spread. And even so in the Cambrian, although we see this wide diversity of animal life, we still don't see things like fish and mammals starfish We see some early groups, but we don't see

all of

Alexis Rice (40:20)
What is the accepted scientific age of the earth?

Janet (40:25)
I it's about 4.8 billion.

Alexis Rice (40:28)
Yeah. So that's far off from the around 6,000 years old from young earth creation theory, right?

Janet (40:34)
Yup. Yup.

Right. Yup.

Alexis Rice (40:38)
It's so

vastly different, It's hard because it's almost believing in that one to me feels like this is where you're being forced to let go of science because it's such a discrepancy that you're like, don't know, but being told this one is right. So this must be all wrong these billions of years,

Janet (40:41)
Right.

Right? And you know, if you hold to a young Earth or a young universe, because the universe is ⁓ nearly 13 billion years, you know, we are kind of the new kids on the block here in our solar system. It was around for many billions of years before we came along. But to reject the evidence for age of our solar system, age of the universe,

And to reject evidence for evolution requires us to believe in a deceptive creation. Why would God create an earth or a universe or stars or planets that look for all the world like they are billions of years old if in fact they are not?

Why would our bodies, our human bodies, be filled with so much evidence that we share ancestry with all life if we truly were specially and uniquely and on our own created? Why would God create creatures that look for all the world like they evolved? A universe that looks for all the world like it's billions of years old if it is

in fact not. So you really have to address that deception concept if you are going to reject age of the earth and biological evolution.

Alexis Rice (42:28)
Cool. All right. So let's talk about the monkeys and the Adam and Eve part.

Janet (42:33)
Okay.

Alexis Rice (42:35)
I was in my 20s, so not young, and I was in a car with two of my friends. neither of them believed in the creationist point of view. And I told them, well, if I accept that we evolved from monkeys, then I am saying that my faith is not a real faith.

because that's what I was told in my church spaces. Can you help us reframe that and tell us where we came from and tell us how you see God in that process?

Janet (43:09)
Well, first of all, I would like to start with an explanation that I give my classes, my intro biology classes every year. We did not come from monkeys and a monkey did not turn into a human. And that's a good way to set a biologist's hair on fire is to throw out the, if we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? That's the argument, the throw down.

Alexis Rice (43:37)
Yep.

Yep.

Janet (43:38)
there.

To which I would say, did not come from, well not monkeys but actually apes is more biologically correct, we did not come from a monkey or from apes but we share a common ancestor with the apes about six million years ago. About six million years ago there was a common ancestor.

That lineage split like family trees do and one side of the family tree led to the modern chimpanzees and bonobos and the other split from that lineage led to modern humans. We didn't come from one another. We didn't turn into one another but we share a common ancestor. We share a common ancestor most recently about six million years ago. So

You if you wouldn't say that did, if you have a cousin, a first cousin, you wouldn't say that you came from your grandmother or you came from your cousin. No, your cousin and you share a common ancestor, your grandmother. And your cousin went on in your cousin's lineage and you went on in your lineage. You share a common ancestor, but you didn't come from your cousin.

and your cousins didn't disappear once you were born or vice versa. And so you've got idea of common ancestry that leads to a lot of angst for people that, you know, we came from is not an understanding of biological evolution.

Alexis Rice (45:25)
Well, that's helpful. All Adam and Eve in there. I'm just talking about like, where are all the hair triggers? Because I was taught, not only was I taught like this is the way like you said, you were taught the rebuttals. You were taught like, no, because. And so the rebuttal is, well, if that was true, then how are Adam and Eve the first people? And I have to believe that Adam and Eve were real people.

Janet (45:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, right, right.

Alexis Rice (45:50)
that were the first two people and that we all came from these people, even though they had two sons and then somehow there were all these other people for them to marry and all the things. So as a Christian and a scientist, can you help us understand how you see this?

Janet (46:06)
Well.

I'm gonna just start out by saying this, just come right out with the science. We know the mutation rate in human DNA, and we know by what percentage humans differ from each other. It's about 0.1%. And so using methods used commonly in population genetics with...

modern herds of buffalo or whales or whatever. These are specifically for human evolution. They're used across the board. So using population genetics, knowing the mutation rate in DNA, knowing the percentage we differ from each other. Modern humans emerged from a population no smaller than 15 to 20 thousand.

individuals more than a million years ago.

It's been said that modern humans emerged from the muddle in the middle. There wasn't a time that we could point to and say, here is a human, homo sapiens go on from there. You we may could point to a time before there were modern homo sapiens and a time after, but that definitive moment

when we can say this is Homo sapiens, this is modern humans, it's just not going to be found. We evolved in a population. And that's another thing about evolution that most people outside of science don't understand is that populations evolve, individuals don't evolve, species evolve as a population. So are Adam and Eve historical?

There's lots of conjecture about that. And again, there's a chapter in the book where I look at all the different permutations and backflips and contortions that people have gone through trying to make Adam and Eve literal people. And there's a couple of reasons for that. And they're all theological. Generally, it's a need to have a literal, inerrant Bible or

a need pin a theology of original sin on. And quite often, it's those two together. The need for a literal Bible and the need to have a theology of original sin. So in the chapter in Fish with Feet, there is a chapter in which I delve into the different permutations, the different contortions, the different mental gymnastics that people have gone through to try to find a way to have

and Adam and Eve that are either progenitors of all humans or in one case of one particular rider, at least in the family tree of all humans. So my answer to that is usually this.

If you need a historical Adam and Eve for your theology, so be it.

There are a lot of Concordist explanations. And by Concordist, mean these permutations, these mental gymnastics where you try to make the Bible and the science be the same thing. For example, a textbook Concordist argument is that the sentence, in the beginning God created, that's the Big Bang.

And so you try to find science in the Bible or the Bible in science. So if you need a literal historical Adam and Eve for your theology, so be it. There are a lot of Concordist explanations for how that

could be explained. I'm not going to say how it could be so. But what you have to understand is that they cannot be the progenitors of all humanity. And there's lots of reasons why, primarily in our DNA, that we did not arise from two progenitors.

common Concordist explanations is that God somehow prepackaged Adam and Eve with this encyclopedia of DNA. And so that's why humanity looks so diverse. But there's problems with that. There's problems with populations beginning with only two. And the book goes in more detail scientifically why that is so. So, taking a deep breath.

I will just say is that if you need an Adam and Eve for your theology, just understand it is a belief and it's theology and it is not science and there is no science evidence that supports it.

Alexis Rice (51:15)
Take a breath, everyone. I know this is tough stuff. We're doing the work though. We're going back into our early childhoods. Even, you know, some of you have put your faith away on a shelf completely, but you haven't actually tackled what you believe and you don't know why you believe certain things. So this is important to reanalyze. you're coming from a place as a Christian. You are not trying to say these things to tear down our faith, correct?

Janet (51:41)
Correct. Correct. And I can speak for myself and I know I've heard other people who accept the science and are people of faith have said the same thing. It's for me, it made my view of God so much bigger because I didn't have to excuse what appeared to be deceptive things in creation any longer. I didn't have to put God in this

Alexis Rice (51:43)
Yeah.

Janet (52:11)
vacation Bible school box that kept God limited to what I could understand or to a literal interpretation of a very ancient book. It made it bigger for me, not smaller.

Alexis Rice (52:29)
Okay, so I together with Pastor Paul Drees and Reverend Gerlyn did the very first pastor's lab. We trained progressive pastors from 23 countries There is a place for science and faith to be talked about in Christian spaces, because Lord knows there's plenty of churches that are talking about creationism as science. What do you think the role of churches can be to help increase literacy amongst Christians

Janet (52:54)
question, one I've thought a lot about recently. What I have found over the couple of decades of writing about evolution science in different aspects, is that what most people who reject evolution know about evolution comes from anti-evolution apologetic resources.

Alexis Rice (53:17)
Yep, I was in those classes.

Janet (53:21)
And so the vast majority of those who say that evolution is incorrect, is wrong, is not conducive with faith, have not actually studied the science from any source other than a oppositional apologetics source. So what churches, what pastors could do is to make resources available.

books, speakers, seminars, videos, reading lists explain the science, the evidence for evolution from those who accept the evidence and not just from those who reject the evidence anti-evolution apologetics sources and there are myriad of those. But to actually go to a scientist

to read the scientists who are people of faith who write about evolution. Francis Collins, Ken Miller, off the top of my head, two of my favorites. And so...

expose congregation, expose your faith communities to actual evidence and not to simply anti-evolution apologetics.

Alexis Rice (54:37)
beautiful. All right. I would love to close if you wouldn't mind to read a little bit from your book. I'm so excited because I feel like now this is a great segue into people wanting to read your book, relearn with fresh eyes. And this education is so crucial. So I'd love to talk about Fish in the Family Tree and That's Okay,

page 195.

Janet (55:00)
didn't invent the telescope, but he had the best one of his day. Galileo turned his fancy telescope toward Jupiter. And what do you know? He saw four moons orbiting the giant planet. We now know that there are at least 95 moons orbiting Jupiter. So why the excitement over four? the 17th century,

Most people thought that the earth was the center of it all, and everything literally revolved around us. Moons orbiting Jupiter made headlines. Some folks, however, were harder to convince. Most had theological reasons for placing the earth at the center of the universe. If the earth isn't the center of it all, then mankind is not the center of God's attention, and just like that, Christianity falls apart.

Galileo set his telescope up in public and invited skeptics to look for themselves. Some looked, but denied what they saw. The spyglass is obviously bewitched. Others, however, simply refused to look through the telescope. Hard pass. Nothing to see here. I write,

Two American astronauts have just splashed down after being stranded for more than nine months aboard the International Space Station. From his bully pulpit 250 miles above Earth, Wilmore recorded a Christian message. The sermon was short and standard fare. Sin, Jesus, salvation. Wilmore closed his mini sermon with a reflection on space.

galaxies and stars, then segwayed to DNA and various aspects of the human body. It's unbelievable, concluded Wilmore, the thought that people can believe in evolution. I'm sorry, but that's faith right there to believe that all of this came by happenstance. Wilmore is not the first person to suggest that evolution is a matter of faith and not facts.

but he's probably the first to say so while in low Earth orbit. In other words, there is no empirical evidence for evolution. In other words, the decades of research and the volumes of data are fiction. Human origins can be explained by physical and material processes. It does us no good to pretend otherwise. The Earth isn't flat.

Gravity is real and humans evolved. The evidence is irrefutable, but will we look?

Alexis Rice (57:46)
What would you like folks to take away from this chapter? And what would you want to make sure that they know as we continue moving through this phase in history?

Janet (57:58)
I would hope that the evidence that I presented in the previous 11 chapters before this were hitting the target, that they were making sense, I would hope that by the time they got to this chapter, the last chapter in the book, they would be able to take a breath and breathe.

and understand that they don't have to live in denial. They don't have to be those that would not look through Galileo's telescope, just as if they didn't look, then the evidence would just go away. The book is there to present in a user-friendly way the evidence for humans from Darwin's warm little pond all the way to modern homo sapiens. So I would hope.

that by the time a reader got to this chapter, they would be able to see the case made for human evolution and be okay. Not have it be a faith crisis, not have it be a faith ending thing, but just, ⁓ well, that's how it happened. Just like we know how the water cycle happens the soil cycle happens. Now we know how humans got here. All right, on with my life.

Alexis Rice (59:20)
Janet Kellogg-Ray, the book is Fish with Feet, Human Evolution and the Image of God available for pre-order everywhere now. And I have one final question. What do you like to do for fun?

Janet (59:36)
My husband and I are big science nerds. We say it's a good thing we found each other because we would not be able to vacation with anyone else. We don't go on vacations, we go on trips. And if we're not learning something there, then the day has not been successful. So what I can do is probably give you the name of my favorite natural history museums or science museums.

Alexis Rice (59:53)
Uh-huh.

Yes,

Janet (1:00:05)
cities across the world. here's one was so proud of myself for finding it. It's a niche museum, but it's in London, so it's easy to find. It's on the campus of the University College of London. It's free. It's called the Grant Museum of Zoology. And it's small, one large area.

several, really stories, but of zoological displays for probably 100 or 200 years or so that have been just collected. And so if you ever want to see a jar, a large jar just filled with moles, M-O-L-E-S, moles, that is one of their hallmark displays. It's a jar of moles.

And then you will see skeletons and dissected animals of every kind. I taught zoology lab, so I'm a big zoology nerd at heart. So what we like to do is go to museums, go to places where we can learn something. It's really great. That's what we do for fun. We're going again this summer, traveling to Spain to see a solar eclipse. And my son, lives there.

Alexis Rice (1:01:21)
He does. My husband and I met in Madrid. We lived there. We've been to all the museums, and they are phenomenal. You'll have a blast. Janet Kellogg Ray, Dr. Ray, thank you so much for being on the Sacred Slope today. Your students are so lucky to have you.

Janet (1:01:24)
Really? Oh yeah, yep, yep.

thank you. I love conversations like this. I could talk about it all day.

Alexis Rice (1:01:43)
Thank you for joining us today on The Sacred Slope. If you'd like to nominate a pastor, priest, or clergy member anywhere in the world, send me an email at Alexis @ thesacredslope.com. Music was by Brett Rutledge, Eddie Irvin, and Sean Spence. May the fruit of the spirit guide you this week. I'm Alexis Rice. Go in peace, friends.