Faith & Physics Uncovered with Rodger Price

Is God a bully? Learning to Doubt your Doubts with Dr. Jeff Myers of Summit Ministries

Rodger Price opens season two of the Faith & Physics podcast with guest Dr. Jeff Myers, president of Summit Ministries, which equips tens of thousands of young adults to embrace and champion a biblical worldview through intensive programs and courses. 

Myers shares how a Summit two-week program helped him bring big questions about God, Scripture, and authority into the open, leading to his long-term involvement and eventual leadership of the ministry.

He defines biblical faith as believing what you have good reason to think is true—not blind faith—highlighting evidences such as manuscript reliability and fulfilled prophecy, and emphasizing that ideas have consequences across every sphere of life. Dr. Myers also discusses seasons of doubt, learning to “doubt your doubts,” a pivotal prayer during personal hardship, and how undergoing cancer treatment became a period of focused spiritual growth and ministry to others. He also recounts Summit’s COVID response—refusing to “shrink back,” developing a widely praised virtual program—and closes with reflections from Acts 17 on nations, public faith, and letting one’s light shine.

We hope you enjoy the episode, and for more information about Jeff’s books and work visit: https://www.summit.org/about/dr-jeff-myers/

00:00 Season Two Kickoff

01:38 What Summit Ministries Does

03:11 Jeff’s Story and Big Questions

06:04 Defining Biblical Faith

10:20 Worldviews and Hidden Assumptions

13:31 Doubt and God’s Nearness

19:10 Cancer and Strong Faith

22:17 Uncertainty, Fear and Focus

25:17 Leading Through COVID

28:12 Acts 17 and Public Faith

33:13 Closing and Subscribe

Faith is not a Christian phenomenon. It's not even a particularly religious phenomenon. Faith, by which I mean a belief in things we can't actually prove to be true, is a human phenomenon.

Whether you're aware of it or not, our lives are built on faith. You can't prove that that chair you're about to sit in will hold you, but it doesn't stop you from sitting in it without even thinking about it.

So the pressing question isn't if you'll have faith. You're going to place your faith in things and people whether you intend to or not. The pressing question is what is real, and what will you, through faith, consciously base your life on?

In season two of Faith & Physics, we're pressing into the very human side of the faith journey.

I'll be talking with a new friend who has stood at the abyss of unbelief, an old friend who's preached to millions, and another who leads a significant national ministry and is intrigued by the intersection of science and faith. My guests have incredible stories that show how belief in God and believing God happen to be two different things.

Our hope for you is that hearing these stories will provide you with a sense that there is ground sturdy enough to build your life on. Your faith, which is inescapable at the deepest level, can be, in fact, well-founded.

Learn more and subscribe to my newsletter at https://rodger-price.com.

Everyone lives by faith, whether that faith is in scientific theories that can’t be proven or faith in the supernatural.

In this episode of Faith and Physics Uncovered, Rodger Price offers his bottom line, and considers whether the scientific evidence for everything around us points to a designer, or just time and chance. In Rodger’s view, the statistical probability of something coming from nothing, and life just randomly developing from non-life requires too MUCH faith.

Rodger also looks at the case for the Bible’s reliability, citing its 1,500-year authorship by around 40 writers, its consistent overarching story, accepted methods of textual reliability, and archaeological artifacts. He highlights unusual gospel details like the disciples’ abandonment of Jesus and later willingness to suffer for him, the claims of Jesus’ resurrection appearances, and early non-biblical references (notably Josephus) about the life and death of Jesus.

All these factors led Rodger to accept Jesus, and he describes how faith brings its own experiential “evidence,” citing the wisdom of St. Augustine from the fifth Century A.D. If you’ve enjoyed the Faith and Physics Uncovered podcast and this exploration of the intersection of scientific discovery and faith, we let us know in the comments or by getting in touch at https://www.rodger-price.com/contact.

00:00 We All Live by Faith
00:32 Recap Faith and Physics
01:42 Why Trust the Bible
03:28 Did Jesus Really Rise
05:15 My Journey to Belief
05:55 Faith That Becomes Sight
06:46 Miracles and Improbability
08:46 My Bottom Line to Live
12:10 Choosing Your Belief
12:45 Resources and Farewell

#faithandphysics #christianity #quantumphysics

Do miracles actually break the laws of physics?

This episode is the first one to come with a warning: if you reject a creator as unreasonable or unnecessary to cosmology, this episode is going to really challenge you.

In this installment of Faith and Physics Uncovered, Rodger Price considers whether biblical miracles actually break quantum or astrophysical laws, or whether they instead involve astronomically unlikely events. If something has an infinitesimally small likelihood of happening, and it happens anyway, is that a miracle?

Rodger looks at how the big bang defies the laws of thermodynamics by creating matter and energy from nothing, and how the universe’s move from disorder to order conflicts with another law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy. Rodger also explores questions about life and consciousness arising naturally. He presents five fine-tuning examples: the precise amount of matter at the Big Bang, the gravity–electromagnetism ratio, the cosmological constant’s precision, water’s anomalous freezing behavior, and the extreme improbability of one-celled life forming. Each of these events has overwhelmingly low probabilities of happening.

All of this raises serious problems for atheism's viability as a sufficient philosophical system. For Rodger, it simply takes too much faith to believe that something arises from nothing, that life comes from non-life, and that the universe's fine tuning is all a matter of chance. These realities point to a creator's involvement. Next time, Rodger will explain where all his physics exploration led him in his faith, and how he's seeking to live that out on a daily basis. Leave us a review or a comment if something from this episode stands out to you.

Pick up a copy of Faith and Physics Uncovered, and learn more at rodger-price.com.

#FaithandPhysics

In this episode, Rodger Price delves into the intriguing questions about the nature of our physical reality and how it intersects with our perceptions.

The discussion begins with the seemingly simple question of whether the refrigerator light stays on when the door is closed, and expands into deep reflections on quantum theory, including the behavior of photons and electrons, the concept of multiple dimensions, and the puzzling phenomenon of entanglement.

This episode also explores thought experiments like Schrödinger's cat and how these scientific mysteries echo scriptural ideas about the nature of God and the universe dating back thousands of years. Rodger integrates passages from the Bible, and points out how modern physics might surprisingly align with this ancient wisdom.

00:00 Is Your Refrigerator Light Off?
00:24 The Nature of Physical Reality
02:05 The Mystery of Dimensions
03:06 God and Higher Dimensions
06:53 Quantum Entanglement
10:06 Schrodinger's Cat Explained
22:20 What's in Store For the Podcast and How to Subscribe

Pick up a copy of Faith and Physics Uncovered, and learn more at rodger-price.com.

#FaithandPhysics

In this episode of Faith and Physics, Roger Price delves into the perplexing nature of light as uncovered by the dual slit experiment. The discussion covers light's wave-particle duality and its seemingly predictive behavior based on how we observe it.

Rodger draws parallels between these scientific observations and ancient biblical passages, suggesting a deeper, divine connection. The episode also explores how electrons, which govern chemistry and material properties, exhibit similar dual behaviors and awareness, adding another layer to the mystery.

This episode intertwines scientific insights with theological reflections, and challenges us to consider what we really believe is true and if we can accept the science and the theological arguments that seem to dovetail with it. If you've ever questioned the nature of reality and divine omniscience, this episode is for you.

Pick up a copy of Faith and Physics Uncovered, and learn more at rodger-price.com.

#FaithandPhysics

In this episode, Roger Price continues to explore the fascinating dual nature of light, explaining how it sometimes behaves like a wave and other times like a particle. Through a discussion of wave interference patterns and the famous double-slit experiment, Roger draws parallels between these scientific phenomena and the paradoxes encountered in the Bible.

He explores how light exhibiting two behaviors simultaneously mirrors the dualities found in biblical teachings, such as the concept of Jesus being both with God and being God. Roger encourages listeners, especially those in their twenties, to engage with these profound ideas that intertwine science and faith. He also teases a future podcast that will examine how light's behavior changes based on our observation.

Learn more at https://rodger-price.com.

To light, time has no meaning. Einstein's theory of relativity proves that time is not constant, and for light time has no meaning at all.

Light is truly mysterious. It's omnipresent in a way that only God claims to be. And if you believe this science, and you can't prove it, that's a kind of faith.

In this episode of Faith & Physics Uncovered, Rodger Price looks at the unique properties of light and how our experience of time as a constant breaks down when we consider the speed of light.

If you've heard about Einstein's theory of relativity, but want to dive a bit deeper and make connections to both faith and the claims of the God of the Bible, this episode is for you, but it's going to get strange.

Learn more at https://rodger-price.com.

#faithandphysics #Einstein #relativity 

What is faith? Not a Sunday school pat answer, but what is it really?

"Faith is a belief in anything you can't prove." And so at some level, we're all people of faith.

In this episode Rodger Price explores the nature of faith, distinguishing belief in God, from believing God. And we also explore the vastness of the universe, and the infinitesimal smallness of the subatomic. Could all this vastness have happened by chance? And if the universe is mostly empty space, what is it that holds matter together at all? Astrophysics, classical physics, and quantum physics all converge in our exploration of faith.

Pick up a copy of Faith and Physics Uncovered, and learn more at https://rodger-price.com.

#FaithandPhysics

Light is way more bizarre than you think.

Reality isn't quite as real as you may believe.

And miracles? Maybe they don't break the laws of reality as we know them.

Welcome to the Faith and Physics Uncovered podcast. Over the next 8 episodes we'll unpack my book Faith and Physics Uncovered with the goal of helping you to look at your faith in new ways, and ultimately to place your trust in the only One worthy of it. To pick up a copy of my book or to get in touch, visit https://rodger-price.com.