[Music] Welcome to Christ-like thinking. A podcast dedicated to discussing how Christians can live out Romans 12-2, which tells us, "Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God." In today's inaugural episode, I'm speaking with Dr. Dorothy Bourse, Associate Professor Biology at Gordon College, an Evangelical Christian College in Massachusetts. Good morning. Thanks for joining me. Today's to me here. Thank you. Well, Dr. Bourse, I wanted to begin by just asking you a little bit about what worldview means to you. Well, I think worldview is the assumptions that we make that or the framework in which we think that answer very fundamental, large questions about the world. So, for example, where does the world originate? What is the role of humans? Why does life have meaning? Or does it have meaning? And that kind of question. Traditionally, I think there have been about five questions that people have suggested and I couldn't list them all off the top of my head, so that's the nature of them. Okay, well, I think you've listed quite a few there, three, four, five. I don't know. But yeah, there were in Gordon College, you've had experience teaching a class called Christianity, character, and culture, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, so you have. Can you tell me something about that? Well, it was a class that was both an introduction to the liberal arts and also in the introduction to worldview and Christian worldview. And let me just say that while Christians have a lot of commonality, some of these worldview questions, we don't just come up with answers by ourselves. It's in a matrix of thousands, two thousand years of Christian thinking. And so we would often do readings from earlier Christians or even some of the creeds, for example. And we would use some readings on that. And then we would pair them with having to look at things that you might lead in literature or you might see in the news and ask, "How would a Christian worldview apply to this?" So we would read a wide range of things from secular books like White Noise by Don Delilo to Christians of a wide range of backgrounds like we used to read Silence by Susako Endo and we read Gilead by Marilyn Robinson one year. And then we'd read things that were not necessarily literature, things like Delbert Milenders working its meaning and limits or standing on the promises by Louis Meade. And we would talk about them and sometimes we would contrast them with a worldview we knew was a foil, something like many years we read the Humanist Manifesto from 1933 and we would look at what were the things that Christians could agree with or what would Christians disagree with in that document. Obviously that there were a number that a very significant things people would disagree with. That sounds like it's the Christian liberal arts and the greatest tradition. Yeah, I mean it was really a privilege I'm a scientist but I do think if you're going to if you are at a liberal arts college the center of the concept is that you are to be broadly educated and able to make connections between ideas in one field and ideas in another field and that's just as valuable for scientists to be able to do with anybody else. I think it goes the other way as well. I think Christians who have the privilege of getting an education ought to be conversant in science and have a basic science literacy so that they can be better citizens for example and better thinkers about the world. I would definitely agree. So this is a freshman course correct? That was a freshman course. From your experience teaching that Christianity, character and culture with freshmen and such you know such a broad range of you know ideas being discussed how did you find 18, 19 year old Christian students prepared for that type of discussion? Well you know freshmen are just lovely human beings. I've always liked them. I like every stage I think but but they often come in with a freshness and excitement that is really enjoyable. However they often come in without having thought through some of the things that they were raised with and some of them have really already been taught how to think very critically and compare ideas and some of them have not. And one of the nice parts about being at Gordon is that because we are not denominational we have students and we have faculty from many Christian denominations. We all agree to a statement of faith and behavior that is a pretty basic possible creed kind of statement but it's foundational principles of Christianity and so we say at Gordon that we're doing a freedom within the framework of faith. We have a freedom to explore ideas but we have a framework of a basic Christian faith that's very solidly held. So that means that our conversation can be fairly rich because we're not back at the start asking to why would we even think there's a god which you might be if you were not at a Christian school. But it also does mean that you have to navigate a lot of discussion with people who might disagree with you who are still Christians. And let me just say it's a journey. Freshmen are rarely well prepared for that. And that's part of our job is to both models at respectful dialogue, model the ability to think and love people with whom we disagree and train people how to do that because that's the nature of our lives together. Right and of course I think that would be true for all parents and even local churches. Yeah churches should be investing in younger people developing these things. So you had mentioned that there were some who came very well prepared which makes me think did you notice any commonalities that you know take away is that parents or churches could think about and say well if we want to prepare students to go off to college and and be thinkers what should they be doing. Okay I think there's a couple of things that come to mind and one of them is that the parents that are most successful have been parents that have engaged with other Christians about issues about which they disagree without being rancorous about it. Like that have modeled that where students have had people at their table. And I'm talking about Christians here because it's also something you need to learn how to model respectful dialogue with people outside of Christianity but for the freshmen you these are all conversations within our class and so even that is very difficult. I mean so I think it's very helpful to know how to do this and I think one thing that makes it harder is when people have been so afraid that their children will lose their faith. If they encounter an idea that they don't want their students to meet credible people who have those ideas. And I guess I guess there's a balance between exposing your children to things you think are really not true because you know the Bible does say think whatever is true is what we should spend our time on. But I think when people understand that wow my kids should be able to engage with ideas and the ideas God will protect them from a false idea. You know God will keep their faith. Christians have a range of views on things and they're all able to go to heaven here. That's really really helpful and when people feel like wow my my my Christian beliefs are very narrowly defined and I'm pretty sure that anybody that doesn't really agree with me on a laundry list of points is not really saved. That's a difficult position because then the minute the student runs into somebody who convinces them otherwise sometimes their faith is actually much more fragile and the brittle faith. And one of our goals at Gordon is that people would have a robust faith that can face challenging ideas and not falter and that robust faith is not best served by a Brit on this if that makes any sense. It does and again you're highlighting what I believe is the greatest reason for liberalism.
arts education. Everything you're saying is basically the purpose of liberal arts education to be a well-rounded thinker, to be able to engage ideas, to have your own ideas that you can particularly defend, but also consider other ideas without losing your own faith and whatever you believe, but also without attacking the other person. And not having to live in a world and which you only surround yourself with people who agree with you. I think that's one thing that leads to a lot of church splits. And the Bible explicitly says, "Skism is a bad thing." And I feel like we as Christians haven't always taken those scriptures seriously. I think we took the scriptures about schism in the church. As seriously as we take the scriptures about some other things, we would really be working very hard to promote the tools people need to be able to talk well with each other. I think one of the hardest things in the world to do is to really respectfully engage with ideas that you don't agree with when you think it matters. It's very easy to engage with people on things you don't agree with if you don't think it matters. Or it's very easy to separate yourself on issues if you think they matter. It's very hard to stay engaged on things when you really think it matters. And you don't agree and to live in that space of tension. I wanted to talk of course about your experiences and research and work and science. So you are ecologists? I'm an aquatic ecologist. Acquatic ecologist? So fresh water? Yeah. Well, you know, one of my degrees is in oceanography and limonology. So I always took, I have two thirds of a water cycle. I've got the fresh water, salt water, and not the atmospheric competitiveness. How did you get interested in that area? Well, I always like to outdoors my dad loves plants. We always had a big garden and we lived on a little farm at and had animals. So I was always interested in outdoor things, always interested in biology. I thought like many people that I was going to be a missionary doctor when I went to college. But that was largely because I thought that you, you know, if you loved God and loved people and cared about the poor and oppressed and were scientific, that that was what you would do. And at some point I got an internship in a salt marsh and I identified plants and insects and mapped things. There was a reason for it. But anyway, you don't need to know that at all. But I really enjoyed that. And I took courses at El Sable Institute of Environmental Studies, which is a function as a Christian field station for about 60 Christian colleges. There's a lot of colleges, Gordon is one of them, that send students to there. And while they're, I just really connected to the idea that there were a lot of good things you could do with an interest in biology that didn't necessarily involve medicine. And I think I could have really happily been a doctor maybe, but I really, really liked that outdoors. My passion is really the interface between where people care for the environment and the effective environmental degradation on the poorest and most vulnerable and helping people make a link between what decisions we make about resource use and care of the environment and care of our neighbor, love of our neighbor. If you're going to love your neighbor, you have to care about pollution, you have to care about loss of species, you have to care about loss of soil because that's a part of that picture. And those are all very controversial issues within the church. I don't think that they ought to be, or at least the concept, should not be kind of a deal at all. And we'll leave you say that I think there's a couple of key points. And one is that a lot of Christians really like a status quo. I mean, a status quo has worked very well for us in America. Humans tend to like the status quo. We like what has worked for us. And so it's easy to justify something from scripture that is for you personally, right? And so I think that's part of it. I think American Christians have a strong view of American exceptionalism. And so the idea that in America we are wealthier than the rest of the world, much as the rest of the world, because we've done something right. I mean, it's thinking that people have, and that this is a clear sign of God's blessing. And I think that God has really blessed America. But I think sometimes God has blessed America in spite of some of the decisions we made. And I think sometimes, you know, God just allows you to live out with the natural consequences of your actions. And so when you look around the world, you say, "How is God providing for the poor of Haiti?" Well, he gave America a great deal, and he's asking American Christians to figure out how best to live a justly in the world. Like, I think, so I'm not sure that God's blessing is entirely supposed to stay here with America. But that's, you know, that's not from my field of expertise. That's my own Christian world view placing itself on why people have difficulty. I think there's, I think one of the issues that's very hard for American Christians right now is a general distrust of science. And some of that comes out of human, secular humanism. And I think that there has been some legitimate concern about the things that some scientists have said, some have allowed, been allowed to be spokespeople for science. But many of them have to agree with them. And also say that. So people are selective about who they listen to, right? I wrote a review of the Truth Projects section on science in faith. And I, in you and I, I've had a little bit of conversation about that via email. But one of my criticisms was there were quite a number of voices that were in a moderate position, including secular scientists who do not think that science is apistic and are not making those strong seemers. And their voices were not heard in that. And I think had they been, the conversation might have been richer. And people would have less of their hapless reason about what scientists say. But I think the difficulties people have between science and faith, some of them are promoted by who we quote. If we chose to know and quote, people who were trying to build bridges, then we would have less of a reaction against what scientists are finding. There are very adamant apioccientists. There are moderate scientists who are not religious, but are not opposed to religion. And there are scientists who are deeply religious. Let's look at all three. Now I think the difficult thing is when you read a phrase like God created, and somebody like me says, and God created, and he used a tool that he also created to do it, and involved a process. I'm completely consistent with that being called a creative act of God. And somebody else will say, I think that means you don't think he created. And I'll just say, I'm sorry, you know, I think you'd be wrong about that. But I think it's in the defining of what those doctrines, how they play themselves out in the interface with science that people stuck. You know, when you go to say an ecologist conference, with all these ecologists, how do they receive you as a scientist who's also a Christian and teaches at an evangelical college? Well, you know, it really depends. And I have to say that my own research, I have not done a great publication in part, in part because I teach them much. And in part because I've spent a lot of time talking to the church, that is, I've spent so much time talking to the church about questions that people have, you know, speaking in churches or writing or dealing with these very difficult issues that I am not as productive as a scientist as some scientist. And for the most part, if you're a very productive scientist, people will just look at your track record in science. If you walk in and you say, most of the time I spend talking to the church about how to deal with scientific, you know, issues of science in faith, they will be very lovely about that. But they may be uninterested. They may be hungry for you, that's lovely. But because we're there to talk about science, right? And I think if you just are unapologetic about it, people are generally very respectful. And realize that some of the other people are going to feel the same way. You know, there is a Christian's in ecology meeting at the ecological society of America meeting every year. And there's that kind
of things in many of the guilds in the sciences, there's Christians in the different guilds that meet and have get-togethers at these big professional meetings. And I think one of the things that I have found is a growing awareness among scientists that somehow there is a miscommunication between the scientific community as a group and some groups, especially American evangelicals. And there's somewhat grateful for our person willing to be a voice in that conversation and bridge that gap. Of course, there are people who are scientists who believe that religions are just all wrong and they get to be loud and I'm not just you, you know. Everybody gets to, in America everybody gets to be loud. So, I've been so certain around about that but I don't think it's the dominant voice. >> Okay, so when you speak to churches, what is usually your goal? >> Well usually it's whatever they've asked of me, you know. They, I don't say let me come and tell you what I think you need to know. I will get asked, could you come and talk to us about something that we're curious about. And I will say I do writing and I most recently wrote was the lead author on a multi-author work that was sponsored by the National Association of the Evangelicals called Loving the Least of These, addressing poverty and a changing environment. And that was specifically about poverty and climate change, which is probably my most pressing interest. On the issue of climate change, do you see it as largely human created or not? >> I think there is a significant human component. And if you can picture that there's what are called forcing factors and some of them occur whether humans do anything or not, those are called natural forcing factors. And then there's human activities and those are called anthropogenic forcing factors. And the anthropogenic forcing factors overlay over the natural forcing factors. So, for example, right now natural forcing factors would make it cooler than it was if humans were not active. So it should be cooler right now. But in fact, we're seeing about the same. And when the natural forcing factors come back up, human activity will lay on top of that. And in the coming decades, it's likely to be much, much hotter than we are now. And so if you look at, wow, things go up and down all the time. Of course they do and they always have the real issue with climate change. So is that humans can make it go so fast. And because they can make it go so fast, they can make it difficult for other humans. In other words, people can't just move, if you buy property, and you can't just, we can't just adjust on a dime. And a ship with 7 billion people on it cannot turn on a dime. So trying to look farther out at the horizon and make decisions that will allow us to make the team's we need in a timely fashion to have the least pain and suffering is what we ought to be doing. But some people want to wait until that wall is right in front of you and every single person recognizes that it's true before we make any forward decisions. And I don't think that's lies. Kind of focus there on climate change as effects on people in the least. I did. And that's because that argument is as compelling. But obviously climate change will affect other creatures as well. However, other creatures are so important to humans. The loss of species generally is so alarming right now. And that effect affects poor people the most. And there's a huge study in Europe that was done a number of years ago that showed that the very poor people could lose. I think it was up to 50% of their household income if a great deal more species loss occurred because the very poor people are more likely to be reliant on wild species. And so you can't separate that either. You know, you can't just say, well, I care about humans and not trees. Something like that. It's a workout. It's very interconnected. Right. Okay. So when you're talking to a church about this or if you were just in a conversation with you know, some Christian and they said, okay, so we get that there's an issue with the climate and we get that it's affecting humans and all of God's creation. So what do I do now? Well, one of the things I would say would just be to inform yourself because people have very strong opinions without necessarily knowing very much. And then I think the other thing. And one specific thing that I would recommend would be looking at. The material is called America's Climate Choices, put out by the National Academies of Sciences. And the reasons that those are valuable is that these are the top scientists in America. And they are asked by Congress. Can you produce something that's readable? You know, because of science and sort of gelat. So for an American Christian, it's helpful because it's focused on America. But it's also going to talk about the science that we'll talk about what adaptations people could make to climate change that's already occurring. And then what? Mitigations, which are to prevent further climate change, we could have. And we're at a crossroads in some decision making. Obviously America doesn't just make decisions in a vacuum. And I think the world is looking for some leadership that we've been lacking because we are per capita the biggest producers of greenhouse gases. But I think that's true even without climate change in the picture. That's true on other resources. And that's true on some other things that have sort of global justice issue implications. I mean, climate change is not one issue that stands separate from the entire discussion on. How do we live together justly in an entire world? Outside of the creation, care, the sociological or social implications of your research, how has your faith integrated with your actual scientific research? Well, yeah, I think the big ones are, but it drives the kind of questions that you ask. So I am motivated to know things because I believe that we are not really doing well with what God gave us to be in charge of. And so I think that's one thing. I think another is I'm extremely ethical view of the process of research. And you know, all the time you'll hear people who are trying to get ahead in science and they make up data or they throw out data points or they have complex interest with their funding. And then of course they crash and burn when they get caught your career is over. So there's some internal punishment for that in the science, harsh punishment for that in scientific community. But there's also in the scientific community that without a discussion of God, there's sometimes a sense of, well, if it can be done, let's try it. You know about new technologies. And I think one of the things that Christians bring is sometimes a question of, what should we be doing, everything that we possibly can humanly do? Like is that a reasonable thing to pursue? And I think bringing a thoughtfulness to that conversation is one of the things that Christians can do. One of the biggest single things that I think Christians bring to the table is hope. And an environmental discussion, sometimes Christians are harshly critical of people who are working in environmental fields because they say you worship the environment. And I don't think that's true at all. I think maybe that's true for a very small subset of people. But I think when you work with the environment, we need a very Christian voice in there because Christians do not give up easily. Christians believe at the end of the day the battle is the Lord. So if we're dealing with a very hard issue to deal with, then we are trying to save sections of the world. They're going extinct and we're trying to protect the poorest among us. And it looks like a bleak picture. That's not the end of the story in the view of a Christian. So I think right now the biggest thing that Christians bring to the table that they should be joyfully running to be involved in in science is that we bring hope. And hopefully that brings a drive in motivation that to succeed because of that. And so I think it's a great time for Christians to be engaging with the scientists to be really happy.
active with the sciences. But if you're asking, you know, does an experiment go differently if you're a Christian? It doesn't. I can't say Christian carbons don't use a hammer differently than other people could do. You know, the same kind of concept. Okay, well, you mentioned the idea of faith in forming the questions though. That makes me think about it. This might be somewhat outside your scientific expertise, but, you know, what about researchers who study things like, is there a God gene? Those sorts of questions. What do you think about that? Well, you know, I think the question about that God gene is sort of an interesting one, because I think what you would interpret if there was a gene that was more likely to occur in people that believed in God, you could interpret that, wow, God doesn't exist. It's just in the mind for people with the God gene, right? Or you could interpret that being able to detect God is similar to being able to detect any other real thing. We have eyes because there is light to detect. If, you know what I'm saying? So, if we, so I think the thing that Christians would bring to the table would be an unpacking of that finding. But I think that people are going to ask that question, is there something different about people with a belief in God? Regardless of whether Christians do the work. The question of whether prayer is effective, I think it's a different kind of question. And I think that that is a question more focused on trying to study something that maybe doesn't follow natural laws. And so a foundational assumption of science is that when you are studying something, it is subject to natural laws. So that if I do it now, I will get the same result if I do exactly the same thing again and again, right? So, you really by nature cannot study something that isn't subject to natural laws. Right. And if you were to approach it from a different world, you would say, well, God doesn't exist. So prayer can't be effective unless it's a psychological factor or something like that. Then you could say, well, then we can study it because it's really psychological, not spiritual. Yes, I guess you could do that. And I don't, what I think as a Christian, I think that's not the way to go because I think it's testing God. Because I'm not a performing donkey. You can just ask, I mean, this is my interpretation of the way that testing God is. But I think God is saying I'm not a performing for you on demand. And that comes up, you know, Jesus says numerous times I will not do a miracle for you. You know, because you want one. And so I think for a Christian, that's really not the approach to take. But for a Christian, of course, they're going to affect kind of question sometimes cynically. And I think you would want to ask, well, suppose you did find a finding would you accept that that did mean? It was effective. You know, saying like, right. Are you able to actually test your mean assumption, which is that this isn't real? You know, would there be any evidence that would show you it was? I will say that I don't see that as a fruitful direction. Right. Yeah. And what you were saying about the God gene sort of relates to some of my own research background. I don't know if you're familiar with Myers-Briggs type indicator, personally. I've done some research with that. And one of the personality types NTs are analytical thinkers. And part of that is they tend to hold off on making judgments for a while. And if you think of a scientist, that would analytical and, you know, not committing to one idea too soon. Now, NTs also happen to be underrepresented for among religious people. Yeah. And you can picture that. Right. It makes perfect sense. But the interesting thing then is that NTs are overrepresented among Jesuit priests. So you could see how someone who was analytical and religious, I mean, Catholic, would then, if you're looking for a Catholic order to be a priest in, the Jesuits would be attractive. So I think of that, you know, and I would. That's interesting. Yeah. I've always thought of that because the idea that God creates personality types, and it happens to be some personality types are more inclined toward religious commitment. But that doesn't mean that there are no NTs who are religious. And yeah, that's it. That is interesting, isn't it? Because I was going to say earlier when you were talking about different freshmen and whether they, you know, where they're coming from, there are people who can live with messiness and tension. And there are people who cannot. They just want to get to an answer. They want it to be very clear. Then they want to go on to the next thing. Yeah. And I will say that in my field, especially ecology and evolution and Christian faith, you have to live with sort of a level of dynamic tension and messiness. And I don't have the answer for that right now and may not in my lifetime that some people cannot get there. They can't allow that in their lives. And sometimes they're just better suited in a different field. So while my own goal, of course, would be that people could be widely educated. The OSVs would not have a fragile faith at all those things. There's a certain element of your basic personality that's included there. And I think that that same group of people when they are religious, they like religion was a set of rules, which I don't think is necessarily helpful. However, it's appealing. So there's, you know, at least I know where I'm standing here, right? And there's some careers that lend themselves to that. And sometimes you just have to look at a person and you have to love them and you have to say, obviously, you know, your personality is informing the way, but even just the level at which you can leave things not be completely known. Right. Yeah. And I think that's very true. You know, in my own experiences with say, older high school or college students and talking with them about careers, you know, I try to emphasize finding, you know, your personality and how it fits into a career because so often, you know, people choose a career because, you know, family members wanted that or they thought it was going to make a lot of money and they ended up miserable. Because as you said, you know, somebody likes, you know, a clear answer and cut and dry. And then they go into an extremely complex interdisciplinary field like ecology and everything's a mess because everything you look at has a thousand factors going into it. Yeah. And obviously, I mean, like something like climate change is a very multifactorial, but people are still doing straight science on it. And so you can approach messy, complicated things. But when you add in the faith part, people are just like, oh, I just wanted to be clear. Sometimes they don't want to, they don't want to be in the sections of the science where those issues are coming up all the time and they're constantly having to talk about them or craft it, craft it, it's monstrous. Yeah. Well, in terms of the faith aspect of that, how interested are your students in discussing that? Oh, very interesting. I mean, one of the big things that we have as a great value is being whole human beings and being able to talk about things that matter. I think students are very interested in that there. And it's not unique to the sciences to have to struggle with how your faith works. So, psychologists have to deal with, you know, if I pray, why didn't my mental illness go away? They talk about that all the time. And social workers deal with, if I have beliefs about morality, how do I serve people who have or not behave in the way I thought they would and still clearly have needs that I'm supposed to be helping me. You know, I mean, obviously all of us deal with all these questions on some level, but some of them, the field is really about these, tend to artists have dramatic, you know, what art is often pushing the envelope and sometimes in our modern society, pushing the envelope means rejecting the lintin. What do I do with the vibrant? In religions that highlight viewed in the art world right now, yeah? Those kinds of things, the nature of working at a place like Gordon is that you, I, after always come back to it, you know, because I have a new group to serve. I have a new group of people who need to be helped to think about things.
After speaking with Dr. Bors, I can say that she represents the idea of Christ-like thinking. She's a Christian who understands that her faith is part of who she is, and her faith informs how she lives in the world. While she is, as she said, comfortable with a certain amount of messiness and ambiguity, that messiness and ambiguity never leads her to give up on the tough issues. She wrestles with the tensions of the Christian life, and she serves the people around her as an example of a Christian who thinks and acts. In high school seniors choose to attend a Christian college, they do so with the hopes of having a professor like Dr. Bors, and I'm thankful that she took the time to talk with me. Thank you for listening to Christ-like thinking. We always welcome listener feedback, so feel free to send an email to
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