Robert Hunt on the relationship between religion and science

Theologian Robert Hunt explores the relationship between religion and science in this episode, identifying the role each one plays in addressing the global ecological crisis. He explains that all people of faith have the imperative to care for the earth. Hunt is the Director of Global Theological Education and the Director of the Center for Evangelism at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology.

Watch the video, here.

[00:00:00] George: Welcome to Good God, Conversations that matter about faith and public Life. I'm your host, George Mason. And today on Good God, we're gonna be talking about the relationship between religion, spirituality, and science in conversation about the global ecological crisis that we are facing. [00:01:00] And I think this is an important topic because it seems that scientists and religious leaders don't often talk with each other.

[00:01:10] George: They talk about each other, sometimes they ignore each other. But each of us, whether we're coming at this matter from a faith perspective or from a scientific perspective, are experiencing the changing climate. That is causing havoc with our way of life on this planet. The very language of an existential crisis is often overdone because we seem to make everything into an existential crisis, whether this bill passes or that whether our party wins or loses, whether democracy is preserved or not, and there's arguments to be made about that, but the future of human life on this planet is [00:02:00] dependent upon whether there's a planet to have life on.

[00:02:03] George: And increasingly what we find is that the planet's climate change, which sometimes is referred 

[00:02:10] George: to as global warming, 

[00:02:13] George: but better as climate change, where what we have is a greater volatility of climate increasing cold and storms and the like, and increasing heat and the conflict between the two that gives us storms.

[00:02:29] George: This is creating an existential crisis that is, has economic implications and has all sorts of implications about immigration migration. And so what, we find is this is a matter that is underneath every other matter it seems, but how do we talk about it? How do we think about it? And certainly how do we solve it?

[00:02:56] George: When religion speaks one language and science speaks another, [00:03:00] sometimes it's hard for us to hear one another, and there has to be a growing fluency between religion and science that will allow us to hear from one another and to engage together in solutions on this matter. I'm gonna be talking now in this podcast with Dr.

[00:03:18] George: Robert Hunt, who is. The Director of Global Theological Education and the Director of the Center for Evangelism at SMUs Perkins School of Theology. He is a real voice of understanding in both science and religion, and has lived on all corners of this planet and has bumped up against people of different faith traditions and embraced them and engaged them.

[00:03:51] George: And he is the perfect person to talk about this matter with today. And he will also be moderating the conference [00:04:00] coming up on November 1st, but I'll tell you about at the end of the program. So without further ado let's have our conversation with Dr. Robert Hunt.

[00:04:14] George: Well, we're here now with Dr. Robert Hunt. Again, we're grateful that you are back on. Good God with us, Robert, and this time to have a conversation about religion and science, particularly maybe addressing the role of religion and science and its application to our global ecological crisis. So thanks for joining me for this conversation.

[00:04:36] Robert: Very happy to be with you, George. Thank you. So 

[00:04:40] George: tell us a little bit about the, conference itself and why it came about. You'll be moderating the, panelists, the speakers and, how did you get involved in, and who's sponsoring it and all those sorts of 

[00:04:55] Robert: things. Okay. Well the, sponsors of this conference are the Museum of [00:05:00] World Religions and through one of their one of their leaders, Dr.

[00:05:06] Robert: Maria Hato. I've had quite a long relationship with Shifu, who is their spiritual leader and the organization itself going well, actually all the way back to 2008 when they sponsored a were one of the sponsors or participants in an interfaith dialogue conference in Madrid. So the, Museum of World Religions is a Buddhist effort to develop respect among all the world's religions and to apply that respect to contemporary social issues.

[00:05:42] Robert: And I was approached to moderate this symposium to host it physically on the Perkins campus, although a good deal of it will be virtual by the Museum of World Religions, so that they could bring to bear different faith perspectives on the current ecological [00:06:00] crisis that we're facing. And that's, basically how it got.

[00:06:04] George: Well, and in full disclosure Maria Hato is a member of the Board of Faith Commons, the group that is sponsoring good God in one of our programs. So in any case, it's a pleasure to be able to talk about that and to support what Maria is up to. We should mention that Maria is actually a Roman Catholic.

[00:06:32] George: But as many people probably aren't fully aware to be Catholic does not mean that you can't also be a practicing Buddhist meditation. The liken she has been a real leader in the confluence of those 

[00:06:51] Robert: traditions, right? Yes, you can be a Buddhist practitioner, which does not have to do with your faith commitments.[00:07:00] 

[00:07:00] Robert: Right. 

[00:07:01] George: So Robert, you are particularly interested in the relationship between 

[00:07:09] Robert: Religion and culture. This 

[00:07:10] George: is a special interest of yours having been a missionary for one thing, and being a director of global theological center and whatnot. So you, have developed a, particular role and voice, I would say in the academy, and among Christians in particular, about the importance of paying attention to culture, not just cultures when you go across seas and find yourself in other places.

[00:07:43] George: But even the fact that in the United States, we have various cultures too that we need to pay attention to. But there's a, kind of fluency that is probably called for also between the cultures of religion and science, and that's [00:08:00] really what's taking place in this conference. So could you talk to me about those two cultures a little bit and how their history has worked and how important it is to learn the languages of each 

[00:08:13] Robert: in order for them to relate to one another?

[00:08:16] Robert: Yes. Well, thank, Thanks. I think that's a really good question and I'm, I'll start with, what I think we all know, which is the culture of science as we know it today, really begins with the enlightenment and, the developing new human understandings of how you grasp reality. And part of that grasp of reality was to set aside religious revelation and focus on what could be studied directly, what could be measured, what could be rationally operated on with not only one person's mind but all minds.

[00:08:54] Robert: And so, science begins to carve out a place for itself in the understanding of [00:09:00] nature and reality that rather intentionally excludes religious revelation. It, it hopes to free itself in that way to pursue a different kind of understanding. That doesn't mean of course, that religious culture disappears within the west, within Europe and, the United States, not at all.

[00:09:20] Robert: But it does mean that the, cultures of the West and any culture that is touched by science and modernity now needs to begin to adjust to the fact that there is this alternative culture of knowing we could say an alternative way of knowing the world and how it's going to relate to that. I have to say at the same time, science as a culture eventually is going to have to figure out how it's going to deal with religious ways of knowing the world.

[00:09:53] Robert: Now that's really only developed in the last 30 years. We can talk about that a bit, but I think the key thing here is that [00:10:00] yes, science and modernity do develop in, a kind of a secular social situation as an alternative way of knowing and understanding our world. And equally important then that our religious cultures and we have more than one in the United States in some way, have all developed in response to that rise of scientific knowing.

[00:10:23] Robert: Sometimes antagonistically, sometimes acceptingly, but always having to think. Yeah. Right. 

[00:10:31] George: So Steven Jay Gould, the famous scientist and academician used the phrase non overlapping MAs, hysteria to describe these two ways of knowing. And, really I think a lot of people at one stage of this conversation bought into that, that there's a way of knowing that it's religious and a way of knowing that it's scientific and they have no correspondence [00:11:00] to one another.

[00:11:00] George: Right. That's been challenged, I think recently. It, Michael Palam and others have, talked about how there is a sense in which ev everything starts from a kind of apprehension of something and a, further testing of it whether it's a by observation or revelation you might say, and that they all proceed in, that way.

[00:11:27] George: In your experience, Robert, is there is there a place in these conversations where people are learning to find commonality instead of just state the differences? 

[00:11:42] Robert: Well I, think there, there is a place, and in some sense there has always been a place, there was never a bright line between these supposedly non overlapping domains.

[00:11:56] Robert: We could go back a long way, but maybe we'll take it only back about 50 [00:12:00] years or so when there was the discovery of the Big Bang. And I could go into great depth on this, but I won't. Let's just say that the evidence became overwhelming in the late 1960s that the universe began with a big bang, and that the nature of what we knew about that demonstrated that as scientists try to understand the period of the beginning or right before the beginning, they lose their tools.

[00:12:31] Robert: That is to the, tools that science has to try to observe the beginning are gone. And and therefore there's multiple kinds of speculation, but they are not strictly speaking scientific. Right. So even at that time, Robert Gerou head of astronomy department, which I was studying in at the University of Texas is quoted as saying that we astrophysicists, people, cosmologists [00:13:00] are like a group of mountain climbers who thought that we had just reached the peak and we were going to pull ourselves over and see everything.

[00:13:08] Robert: And when we pulled ourselves over, we discovered that we've just come to a ledge, not the top of the mountain. And sitting on the ledge are a group of theologians and philosophers who have been there for a thousand. Right, right now, this begins to be the first kind of nod from, cosmologists that there's a problem with the non overlapping domains.

[00:13:30] Robert: Right. So just more recently, if I can say then philosophers like Marcel Go Eisner have pointed out that these, domains are, may be encompassing of one another in some way. And so I think if I'm not quoting exactly, but Glasner says I'm happy to work within the Island of Knowledge, which is a title of one of his books.

[00:13:56] Robert: But I recognize that the island of knowledge, even as it [00:14:00] grows, never encompasses all there is to be known. Right? Right. 

[00:14:06] George: So I think, you know there's, always been some dangers in this way of reckoning this. For example, you know, J's comment could lead to a kind of god of the gaps approach to things, right?

[00:14:24] George: So we, we, now have a scientific way of understanding things. We recognize that religion has been maybe has something to offer where science falls off and doesn't have an answer. And so God is found in the gaps of our scientific knowledge. But once you do that, then you open yourself to. The player when science reorients itself around a different model and that gap no longer exists, where has your religion gone?

[00:14:56] George: You know you're, sort of in, in danger of that. [00:15:00] And then you also have a matter of for those who would say, Well, there are different ways of knowing, but there's an objective way for science and there's a subjective way for for faith. And so religion ends up being privatized in such a way that it can't really contribute to the question.

[00:15:18] George: It can only talk about human meaning perhaps, but it can't really talk about possible contributions to the way of knowing the world. Which in a sense is is also part of religion's claim, is that it, is a way of knowing the world too. So we're still working all of this out, and I think that's part of what this kind of symposium is about.

[00:15:41] George: Right? 

[00:15:42] Robert: Well, I think that's exactly right. I mean your, comment about God of the gaps is, very much to point. The gaps either get smaller and disappear, or they move, which leads theologians running around chasing one or the other places to insert themselves into the conversation, which is not very helpful and doesn't do [00:16:00] justice to what religion and revelation claim to be.

[00:16:04] Robert: Right. I think the one approach to this is to look to Pollyana. Himself who points out that communities of knowing have their legitimate ways of knowing reality. They don't, they sometimes don't speak the same language, but that doesn't mean that one has to squeeze itself into the other.

[00:16:26] Robert: So science doesn't need to squeeze itself into religious knowing anymore than religious knowing needs to squeeze itself into science. The, term that I would prefer, and I draw a little bit of this from Glasner, is that between the kind of knowledge that religious people have and the kind of knowledge that scientific people have is an infinite fractal boundary.

[00:16:51] Robert: And so each one grows into the other at points and informs the other at points. But neither one can [00:17:00] exclude the other from itself if it's gonna have a full knowledge of reality. And I think that's a, maybe a helpful metaphor, but this does get us to the, point of this symposium, which is to look for the ways in which science and these religions can inform each other about what is an easily recognizable crisis, which is the ecological crisis.

[00:17:24] Robert: Yeah. And a lot of that crisis has been exacerbated by the fact that religious people or people in general who are suspicious of science have not wanted to see the evidence before their. And so the, and by the way, the extent to which scientists have chosen to not communicate this crisis, but rather to dismiss religious concerns as irrelevant.

[00:17:56] Robert: If I can use an anecdote Adam Frank, who visited our [00:18:00] campus a few years ago, pointed out that it for scientists to say, to show a picture of a polar bear and say that because the arctic is warming the polar bears may disappear, isn't an effective way of communicating the people who live in Texas and whose only knowledge of polar bears is that they're there somewhere where, you know, scientists have not always communicated that there's an existential and indeed religious and spiritual reason.

[00:18:31] Robert: For caring about climate change. Yes. Maybe the last who really did that was Carl Sagan. Interesting. Yeah. 

[00:18:40] George: So let's look at it from the religious side for a moment. And when we're talking about the ecological crisis I, think it's it's probably important. And I speak as a Christian now not for other religions, but [00:19:00] we, have a.

[00:19:02] George: An important work to do. It seems to me to be self-critical about our faith based upon our biblical tradition and the like in that we, haven't always been honest about how much we have assumed the findings of science while claiming biblical authority. For example we might have a situation like what is presented in the Psalms where it seems clear that, David as a psalmist, for instance, thought of the world as a three-tiered universe, and that the the, world was in the middle and that the heavens were moving the, was moving across the heavens.

[00:19:51] George: And that above that was a sea being held in place by the firmament. Thus it's blue up there and that sort of thing. So [00:20:00] what we have is an ancient world cosmology that most people today, people of faith would. No we, understand that they didn't under what we know now in a post Copernican world about it being a heliocentric universe.

[00:20:18] George: And yet we haven't really necessarily then engaged science on this matter as having a real moral voice to speak to faith today about the ecological crisis. And so I think it's important for us to be honest that when we say we have a biblical view, well, we've been adapting our biblical view across time, sometimes reluctantly.

[00:20:44] George: But it's important for us to continue to do that in engaging with science isn. 

[00:20:49] Robert: Well I, agree. It, completely is, and it's, interesting where we try to draw our lines as, people of, faith. So yes, we've accepted that the earth [00:21:00] revolves around the sun. At least most of us have. We don't think it's flat anymore, at least most of us don't.

[00:21:06] Robert: We've begun to think that germs are real. That, you know, that these, all of these, things that modern science has brought us are real things. But when it threatens what we think of as key to our religious imagination, then we get very antsy. And so this, happens with issues about sex and sexuality where modern biological science is deeply threatening to some religiously held viewpoints.

[00:21:33] Robert: And it happens with regard, I think, to ecology and the earth where we, still somehow believe that this is a God built system that humans really can't mess up. And so, Right. You know, God and God's providence will make things right, or alternatively and there's surprising number of people here in Dallas, Texas who believe this [00:22:00] God will come rescue us at the last minute and take us up to heaven before the world earns to fire.

[00:22:08] Robert: So that now I have to say the same at the same time. I'm a avid reader of Scientific American scientists have some of the same problems with the idea that as bad as this crisis is we, the scientists and the engineers will fix it. Yes, we have the techniques and we just, we, you know, we have to fix it or we will fix it.

[00:22:31] Robert: And neither of these viewpoints, I think, really can hold water. Right. We need to be in conversation with each other and about this. And realistically in conversation. Let me give an example from Martin Luther. Luther was asked about the end of times, which in Luther's time must have been, seemed near.

[00:22:53] Robert: The Turks were knocking at the door of Europe with the Islamic faith. And in the same period of time, of [00:23:00] course, European Christianity's breaking up and dissolving. And Luther's answer was, and this gets echoed later by CS Lewis Luther's answer was on the world's last night. If my job is to plant trees, I want to be found planting trees.

[00:23:18] Robert: Nice. Whatever you believe about God's providence or the end of the world, if it's our job to care for the earth. And that is quite clearly stated in scripture. And we need to be caring for. That's our responsibility not to quote Christian scripture, figuring out the day in the hour when it will end. 

[00:23:41] George: Well, you say that, and yet it's not, I think, universally agreed upon that is a Christian's duty in that there are forms of Christianity that have a vision of the end times that says that the Earth will be destroyed in a ball of [00:24:00] fire and that is the future that God has planned for the Earth, right?

[00:24:04] George: And hum certain humans will be saved from it because of their faith in Jesus Christ. But how do we, help those who have this apocalyptic view? Of the end times that is not friendly to Earth care and to our, global environment. I mean 

[00:24:25] Robert: These, 

[00:24:26] George: are fellow persons of faith and I think obviously dismissing them out of hand right.

[00:24:33] George: Is certainly not an appropriate way to do so. It is an interpretation of scripture, a view of Christian responsibility. How do we engage them in a way that helps this existential crisis not to that theology. 

[00:24:53] Robert: Right. Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna add, this is a, you know I, grew up in Dallas. This is a distinctly Christian problem, but it's also a [00:25:00] distinctly Muslim problem.

[00:25:01] Robert: There's an apocalyptic view in Islam that's quite popular right now. It's, it can become a distinctly Jewish problem, surprisingly. A lot of Christian apocalypse is rooted in Jewish teaching. And by the way it can be a Buddhist problem from a slightly different perspective, right. If the world is an illusion, then who cares What happens?

[00:25:22] Robert: There you go. You know? Right, Right. So now the, question of communication I, tend to want to take this from two perspectives, and both of them are more one, one is rational and one is emotional. Right? And we have to choose the means of communication. The rational one would be to say, Can you take a longer.

[00:25:44] Robert: Right. The longer view for me would be to say that I was first exposed to the idea of a pre tribulation rapture back when I was in high school. So that would've been in the 1970s. That was an extremely popular view here in Dallas, among many Christians. [00:26:00] Absolutely. And and so we were pretty much assured that our lifetimes would not go growing very much longer before Jesus came again.

[00:26:10] Robert: I met this again when I was a missionary in the Philippines where there were Christian groups teaching this sort of pret tribulation, rapture doctrine that Filipinos could expect that this would happen in the, in, within years, actually within days. It didn't happen. It didn't happen in the 1990s.

[00:26:33] Robert: It didn't happen when the EU expanded and now we're in 22. 22. And if I had made my decisions based on the idea that the world will end, then they might have been foolish. I might never have married. Right? Yes. And I think so as if I would reason with my fellow Christians, I would say, Isn't this why Jesus tells us you will not know the day or the hour [00:27:00] so that we can get on with our work? That's a very clear message for Jesus. It's coming, but you don't know the day or the hour, so get on with your work. Right. Now the more emotional thing I would say is if, my if my parents' generation had acted in that way and had, for example, not been socially responsible with regard to pollution and the Environmental Protection Act then the, then the world in which I would be raising my children would be a horror show. Yes. So, can we not think about our grandchildren since we don't know the day or the hour? ? Can we not say, let's try to take care of the next generation of the generation after that as just responsible decent parents and grandparents.

[00:27:57] Robert: And if God comes again. Okay. [00:28:00] 

[00:28:00] George: But, Well I, agree with both sides of that, both the rational and the emotional. I think I struggle with the, fact that when you take this apocalyptic view that is by its very nature. Not friendly to preservation of, the earth and, whatnot.

[00:28:24] George: In fact, to some degree, some actually in this theology believe that they may be agents of helping God 

[00:28:33] Robert: to accomplish that. 

[00:28:35] George: In that matter we, end up with now a increasingly people in with this religious perspective in the quarters of power making decisions. So it, this goes back to my remembrance of the Secretary of the Interior during the Reagan administration.

[00:28:57] George: James Wat Yes. Who held [00:29:00] this theological perspective and thought that clear cutting the forests and open pit coal mines were all fine. Cause, you know, Christ was coming back and the we are to have dominion over the earth by which he meant or believed God meant in the scripture that the earth is simply raw materials for the happiness of human beings as long as we are here.

[00:29:25] George: And it was religiously validated. I guess I'm still struggling with whether there's any hope for that kind of care for the environment until we have some breakthrough about the religious perspective in, in that worldview that is now becoming more and more prominent 

[00:29:50] Robert: in our politics. Yeah, I, you know, I think that's a really good question and, but I'm gonna parse a little bit.

[00:29:56] Robert: I think Christians, by and large at [00:30:00] least all those I've met and I teach in a lot of different churches are quite receptive to talking about what the scripture teaches. If you know the scripture well enough to do it and I taught in evangelical schools for 15 years. I'll go mono, I mono on the Bible anytime.

[00:30:17] Robert: So I think Christians are very receptive to that. I think we're going to find that almost no matter what we do, politicians are not, and the, I don't mean to dis them entirely, but politicians use these views as a means of garnering a certain kind of voter that they want to get or creating a certain emotional state.

[00:30:37] Robert: And they're not going to relinquish the they're not going to relinquish their views so long as it's politically useful. Right? And there we, come to simply the hardcore political fact that politicians will change when they get voted out or when they think they will. That's what they understand.

[00:30:58] Robert: So there's a twofold thing [00:31:00] here. I think we need to talk lovingly and convincingly to our Christian brothers and sisters about what it says in the book of Genesis, what Jesus actually teaches, right. About creation care. And at the same time, I think we need to be political realists and and bring to bear the power of voting against people whose political positions are antithetical to the flourishing of our humanity.

[00:31:26] George: Okay. And flourishing of our humanity really depends also upon our habitat of humanity. And that's what this ecological exactly right about. And so here we are now I think as we wind down our time together, Robert I, wanna say that during the Obama administration, it was interesting to me that he made the case that the most important political issue of our time is climate change is the, global environmental [00:32:00] crisis.

[00:32:00] George: And yet it was difficult for him to get much traction during his administration about that, as it still is, of course. And I think for the general voting public, It's hard to get people's attention about how to prioritize this matter in the long list of things that people attend to with regard to voting.

[00:32:25] George: So you and I both know that time after time, it's the economy, stupid as we, we learned back at Clinton administration. So people really wanna vote their pocket book and write. Now, inflation and things like that are high on people's level of concern. But then there, there are matters of social justice.

[00:32:44] George: There are matters of reproductive rights, There are matters of education and what's taught in the schools and these sorts of things. And, generally whose view of America will fail right now? How do we get this matter [00:33:00] that is a concern for every human being on this planet to rise up the list of concerns for people so that it we can attend to other things afterward if we have a planet we can live on.

[00:33:14] George: Right? Yeah. 

[00:33:16] Robert: Well, yeah, I agree that it's a problem. I will say this. We're in one sense, this will only happen when we as individual voters experience in our own lives the result of this crisis. And as long as we're insulated from it or insulate ourselves from. Then then it's going to be hard to, get us to respond.

[00:33:43] Robert: Let's that doesn't mean however, that we can't be educated a little bit. We're currently worried about inflation. Okay? As we certainly should be worried about inflation. I think there's an educational task involved [00:34:00] in pointing out that if we have a series of category in four or five hurricanes that hit populated parts of the United States, that we will bankrupt ourselves on insurance.

[00:34:10] Robert: Yes. But you know, yeah, I know by federal government standards, $500 billion doesn't seem like a lot, but it actually is , right? 

[00:34:19] George: Yes. And then the supply chain is interrupted and then prices go up and we have also, inflation is a global factor. Now, why is it a global factor? Well, a lot of reasons, but among them, climate, 

[00:34:33] Robert: right?

[00:34:34] Robert: Well we saw the spikes in, gas prices when we had hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast and destroyed a significant part of the refining capability. Yes. So these become unfortunate but teachable moments. But there's a, bigger thing too, where people of faith need to speak of these things. Importantly, speak of these things from the pulpit in [00:35:00] the synagogue from the min bar in the mosque to remind right people of what's going.

[00:35:09] Robert: Right. So to, 

[00:35:11] George: to the last question that I, think this is something that we like in Faith Commons to ask all of our guests as we conclude, you know what, are you as a person of faith from your faith tradition, Robert, what do you discovering lately or learning right now that is helping you promote the common good dur in this current climate we find ourselves in?

[00:35:41] Robert: You know, I think in the academic world that I've lived in for the last 40 or more years echo theology or theology related down to the spirituality of creation care is really not new. This has been going on for 30 years plus. So I have to say [00:36:00] that there's not a great deal new that I'm learning about that.

[00:36:03] Robert: I think what's, what I'm learning that's new is, and especially since I've been back in the United States now for 17 years, is that there are in fact people of faith who are more and more concerned and more and more attentive to this and that building the coalitions of these people of faith, many of whom are in conservative churches many of whom are, you know, have not otherwise been particularly involved in what they would see as liberal causes are beginning to see.

[00:36:35] Robert: And so to animate them rather than to reject them Good is, critical. I think the second thing is we know now from studies of Gen Z and I'll, promote my own podcast on interfaith encounters That Gen Z is deeply concerned about this issue. Yes. And Gen Z is also deeply spiritual, but not [00:37:00] religious.

[00:37:00] Robert: Yes. And so this suggests a confluence that religious people who have the resources to build communities and to help with education really need to reach out to Gen Z and capture that energy and effectiveness, which is looking for a place to go in relationship to precise precisely this issue. Yes. Leaves me quite hopeful.

[00:37:26] Robert: Yes. And I think that's where we can, go with this. There are good people of faith that are interested. We're gonna see some of them in the seminar. And we have a huge generation that's intensely interested. We just need to capture their imagination and be partners with them.

[00:37:42] Robert: Wonderful. 

[00:37:43] George: Well, as always, so much more like than heat that you have given us on a challenging subject that is sometimes controversial and sometimes just not talked about enough. And so we hope to remedy that partly through this podcast, but always through your work [00:38:00] and everywhere you go. Robert Hunt, thank you for being again on Good.

[00:38:04] Robert: Thank you very much, George.

[00:38:09] George: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Good God about religion and science and the ecological crisis that we are facing. I wanna invite you to follow up about this by attending if you are in Dallas, or can make it here. This, conference call The Globe Confronting our global ecological crisis, Religion, Spirituality, and Science in Conversation.

[00:38:34] George: It will be seven to 9:00 PM on Tuesday night, November the first, and it will be at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Prothro. Great Hall that's just off of Bishop Boulevard right sort of next to Highland Park, United Methodist Church and parking is available in the Meadows Museum across the street at, on Bishop Boulevard.

[00:38:59] George: [00:39:00] So I hope that you'll be able to attend. There will be numerous speakers from different religious traditions. This program is being sponsored by the Museum of World Religions, and we will have its founder who will be with us as well as speakers from the Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Jewish and and, other religious tradit.

[00:39:28] George: And so we hope that you'll be with us for that and interested. It will also be available to log on to online, and we hope that you'll follow up with that too. So thank you for your interest in all these varying subjects that we bring to. Good God. If you haven't subscribed to Good God before, I hope that you will do so wherever you get your podcasts.

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