![[Photo: Bill and Connie Walker]](walkers.gif)
An advertisement that ran in the Duke University Chronicle last Easter emphasized the religious meaning behind the commercialized holiday and invited anyone interested in talking about the questions raised by the ad to contact one of the University faculty who sponsored it. Among those whose names and numbers were listed were William and Constance Walker of the Duke University Department of Physics.
Amidst University-wide debate over the supposed lack of student-faculty interaction, Bill and Connie Walker stand as examples of the many faculty who value contact with students outside of the classroom: they are as enthusiastic to talk about their work in theoretical physics as they are to discuss the intimacies of their faith. Trinity senior Marc Borkan spoke with Bill and Connie about the theoretical and practical issues raised by an embrace of both science and religion.
Marc: Perhaps the two of you could first introduce yourselves.
Bill: I am a James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of physics at Duke. I came here in 1971 from the University of Wisconsin, where I was Max Mason Distinguished Professor of physics. I have been chairman of the physics departments at the University of Wisconsin and at Duke University, and so I have had a modest amount of experience both at working in physics and in administering physics. I have been interested in a particular variety of physics -- namely, the study of elementary particles: protons, neutrons, pi mesons, etc. -- for almost all of my professional life. I have worked with large accelerators and am currently working with the Tevatron accelerator at Fermilab, outside of Chicago, which is the largest particle accelerator in the world. We have a program here at Duke which is actively engaged in using that accelerator. I have also done, in addition to work with accelerators, a modest amount of work on cosmic rays, which are a natural source of high-energy radiation. So I have worked on mountaintops as well as at accelerators.
Connie: My position at Duke right now is as a senior research scientist. I work in nuclear physics, and I only work part-time. I came to the area in 1975 when Bill and I were married; I was at that time on the faculty of the physics department of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I started out doing nuclear chemistry -- my degrees are in chemistry and nuclear chemistry from the University of Rochester -- but most universities don't do nuclear chemistry, so I have gradually made the transition into nuclear physics. I've also made the transition from mostly experimental work to largely theoretical work. The other big thing I'm doing with my time is that for nearly seven years I have been serving on the state's Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Authority, and I've been the vice-chairman there for over five years. We are charged with siting, designing, constructing, operating, and eventually closing a radioactive-waste facility that will serve the eight-state Southeastern region. That has taken a considerable amount of my time.
Marc: And as far as religious and philosophical convictions go, how would each of you characterize yourselves?
Bill: I am first and, I always hope, foremost a Christian. My philosophy has been shaped by my work as a physicist. I see the Lord's actions in my own life and in the world and then I believe. I am constantly amazed by the beauty and complexity of the Lord's creation.
Connie: Until the summer of 1975, I would probably have characterized myself as a religious agnostic. In fact, I found it rather amusing when I moved to the "Bible Belt" in 1974. But God had the last laugh, because one year later I had a life-changing encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. From that day on, I have never doubted God's existence or His love for me or His forgiveness of my sins through Jesus' atoning death and resurrection. I love God passionately. My primary identity, then, is as a Christian - even before my identity as Bill's wife or as a scientist.
Marc: Has your scientific training been a hindrance to your Christian belief; in other words, were you scientists first or Christian believers first?
Bill: In a practical sense, I was a scientist first. I was raised nominally as a Christian as a child, but I guess I would have to say that it really didn't take. Through a series of personally difficult situations in the middle of my scientific career, though, I started going to church again. I heard the Gospel and was fascinated by it, so that it did begin to take. Now at about that time I was engaged in a project to try to stop the construction of a certain accelerator. An accelerator is generally a large, complex device which costs a lot of money. At that time there was a proposal to build an accelerator at Palo Alto, California -- the Stanford linear accelerator -- and I felt that it wasn't a wise use of our national resources. And so a colleague of mine at the University of Wisconsin and I began to work to explain our point of view - that it wasn't a very good use of resources. Well, in the process of that work, which was very intense and carried out over a period of about six months, I began to pray about my work: that I would be guided and that the Lord would show me what I needed to know. And, in the process of this intensive work coupled with pretty intensive prayer, things began to happen: I began to understand a lot of physics, and I began to understand why this device should be built, rather than why it shouldn't be built. As it happened, I think the reasons given by the proponents of the device were not correct, and I think we got to real reasons why in fact it should be built. The device was built, fortunately, and looking back on it I think that it was probably the most successful accelerator project ever undertaken in the United States; as an indication of its success, at least three or four Nobel prizes have been awarded for work done at the accelerator.
And so, in the process, the Lord both turned me around and taught me lots of physics. You can see that the Lord used this in my life, and in the process of doing the work and praying, I really was "born again" in the truest sense, and I really established a strong and lasting relationship with the Lord. There was one night when the Lord just came to me as I was lying in bed and said "OK, give up your life to me." I thought "Hmm...," but he said "Look, this is it." And so after tussling for probably half an hour or so, I said "OK, that's it."
Marc: I'm a little curious what exactly you mean when you say the Lord taught you a lot of physics. What exactly was the interaction between your prayer life and your professional work - they both seemed to be growing at the same time?
Bill: You know, you do physics by thinking intensively about the subject over long periods of time. If I look at successful physicists, both that I've known personally and that I've known by studying them - Newton, for example, had the ability to hold a thought in his mind for days. He would turn it over in his mind, and think, and turn, and think, and turn, and well, I certainly haven't had that ability. The other person that I knew who comes to mind is the physicist R. P. Feynman. I knew Feynman when he was a young man, and the thing that really impressed me about him was that -- of course he was a brilliant and charismatic guy -- but he would sit in his office at night and think and think. And it was clear that he was just out of it in that he was thinking completely about the physics he was doing. That was at Cornell University, just at the beginning of his career, and I was enormously impressed with his ability. I mean I'm sure it's clearly a mark of the way you do any intellectual exercise, but certainly physics and theoretical physics. Well, in this particular case I really was able to think about this subject alone for extended periods of time, and in the process I was drawn in to the particular physics that we uncovered at that time.
Connie: But a lot of your insights were due to the fact that you were praying about it.
Bill: Oh yes, absolutely. And the insights helped keep me praying.
Connie: I think it's interesting that both of us were physicists -- scientists -- before we were Christians in a real sense. And I certainly feel in my case, as well as in Bill's, that my science actually helped in my coming to faith. I was not raised in a Christian environment - my parents were humanists - and I had only minimal exposure to Christianity - at a summer camp that I attended for four or five years. But the Lord really used my teaching at the University of Tennessee to prepare me to consider Christianity and ultimately to come to faith. I think there were two things in particular that He used.
The first was a very general sort of consideration, not specifically Christian, but dealing with faith and the limits of science. I think, like many people in our era and society, I had come to consider science as the ultimate arbiter of physical reality; that, somehow given an infinite amount of time and money, we could figure out everything. When I got to the University of Tennessee, I was teaching a physical science course which covered elements of physics, chemistry, geology (which I had never studied,) and astronomy and cosmology (which I had also never studied.) Now if you really want to learn something, a good way is to teach it! So I started looking into cosmology, and as I did so, I really was struck by the fact that science never can have all the answers - that science's job is to push back frontiers. The dominant scientific theories now state that the universe began with what's called the big bang. There is a question which has been much debated regarding whether we have an open or a closed universe; that is, how much matter there is in it. If the amount of matter is below a certain cutoff, the universe will go on expanding forever, while if there is enough mass there will eventually be a gravitational collapse and you'll come back to something that looks like the big bang, and it'll start over and you could have a cyclical sort of phenomenon. And as I started to think about this, I thought "Well that's fine but that doesn't answer all the questions." There's the question of, if it's a one-shot deal and the universe will continue to expand, where did that super-dense blob of matter that gave rise to the big bang come from? And if it's cyclical, who or what started the cycle? And it was coming to grips with those questions that made me realize that science cannot have all the answers. Even if we answered those questions, there would be something else further back. Thus you're never totally free from suppositions, postulates, and, if you will, to some extent, faith. And I think recognizing the limits of science was very important for me.
The other thing that helped me to at least consider Christianity was that I had, in my brief exposure to Christian doctrine, come in contact with the concept of the Trinity, which always seemed very strange to me. On the one hand, it says we have one God, but on the other hand it says yes, but he's really three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I had great difficulty in understanding that. Yet when I moved to Tennessee and was teaching this course, I was looking for a way to explain to my students, in the middle of the Bible Belt, the phenomenon which we call the wave-particle duality, where we believe that there is not a fundamental difference between waves and particles: that something like an electron, which we normally think of as a particle, with a given mass and a given position, will in many cases behave as if it were a wave. For instance, we can construct an electron microscope. Or in the case of a gamma ray, which we would think of primarily as a wave, we can nevertheless measure discrete gamma rays and their energy content. So I was looking for some way to explain this to my students, and I suddenly saw the analogy to the Trinity. Here we have a particular object, like an electron, and we say "yes, but it has two natures - sometimes it looks like a particle and sometimes it looks like a wave." In the case of the Trinity we have one God who can manifest himself as one of three persons. And somehow in that process I realized that the doctrine of the Trinity was not as strange as I had once thought it to be.
Now I would have to say that although these things helped prepare me to become a Christian (that is, they helped bring me to the point where I was willing to read the Bible and consider Christianity,) they did not make a Christian out of me. The deciding factor in coming to faith was a personal encounter with the Lord, as it was for Bill. So I'm always -- well, maybe not surprised anymore -- but I'm always struck when people seem to assume that there is an inherent conflict between science and faith, science and Christianity. Because for me, there is a real harmony; they're almost complementary but still harmonious. And I would say that Bill and I probably know, in our own experience, more committed Christians -- people for whom their faith is a vital and dominant factor in their lives -- among natural scientists and physicians than we do among people like philosophers, or ...
Bill: We don't know many philosophers ...
Connie: Yes, of course, our perspective might be somewhat atypical.
Marc: And if one looks at those historically great scientists, especially those involved in the post-Renaissance revolution in the physical sciences, there seems to be a disproportionate number of devout Christians. The most obvious figure is of course Newton, who wrote more on theology than he did on mathematics and physics combined.
Bill: Absolutely. In physics, there have been lots of very well-known scientists - we'd now call them physicists - who were strong Christians. The person who is often mentioned as a victim of the Christian Church, namely Galileo, was in fact a strong Christian as far as I can tell. He tried, desperately, to keep the Roman Catholic Church from making serious doctrinal errors. They had gotten hung up on the notion of a geocentric universe, and Galileo - essentially by direct observation - realized that this was wrong. The Church, however, claimed that Galileo's heliocentric solar system contradicted the Bible, and they gave certain misunderstood references. But Galileo said "no, look - the Bible tells you how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." Well he did run into difficulty and was persecuted, but he was really concerned with the truth and with the future of the Church.
Connie: Let me add something about that. One of the key difficulties that people run into is that either they try to make the Bible into a textbook on science or they try to make science into their god. As I mentioned earlier, to me and to Bill science and Christianity are actually complementary. They address different questions about the world around us, and they use different methods. We really need both of them if we are going to have a complete view of life. It is wrong to try to make science your god in seeking therein the meaning of life or the answer to sin, but it is equally wrong to try to make the Bible into a treatise on science, which is what, in some ways, I think the Roman Catholic Church was trying to do in Galileo's time. The Bible is telling us who did it and, to a certain extent, why. Science is telling us more the what and the how. Thus there really is a complementarity there, and I think that Galileo understood that - I think that was the thrust of his comment about how the heavens go.
Bill: But Galileo was certainly not the only believer among famous scientists. I think probably one of the most important physicists after Newton was Michael Faraday, who was a very strong Christian. A large part of our electrical technology is a consequence -- both direct and indirect -- of Faraday's work on the law of induction. Now he was a most remarkable man in that he had almost no formal education whatsoever; and I think the Lord taught him what he needed to know. He had great geometric insights into physical phenomenon. He was a member and an elder of the Sandeman sect - a Christian sect that was important in London and in England in the 19th century. Faraday had his problems with his denomination too, but there was no question about his Christian commitment. Another extremely important physicist of the 19th century was Maxwell, whose foundational work in electromagnetism has led to the developments of radio, television, etc. And Maxwell was an extremely strong Christian believer as well.
Connie: I guess that maybe I'm a little bit biased from my own experience, but I suspect that scientists have an easier time coming to faith, if they approach their work with any degree of openness, because when you're doing scientific research, you really are face to face with God's creation. And as you study it and see the complexities and the intricacies - and yet really strong underlying simplicities behind this beautiful richness that we see - if you can get past looking at yourself and thinking how clever you are to have uncovered some of this detail and think instead of the wonder of what was made and what you are studying, it can humble you and it can at least point you to an intelligent, powerful Creator. Now that still doesn't get you to Christianity, but it opens the door. Someone who is working in a field that deals instead with the product of man's mind and man's fancy might not be exposed to this kind of perspective. One of the really amazing things about our universe is that it's filled with a real simplicity -- a mathematical simplicity -- that underlies the world around us.
For example, there is the fact that certain physical constants keep reappearing in the most unlikely places - ¼ and e, among others. Or the fact that so many basic laws of physics have a very, very simple mathematical form - the gravitational force and the electrostatic force both have very similar and extremely simple mathematical forms. Why should they depend on one over the distance squared, a nice even power? There are so many things in creation that we don't even think about; we're so used to the idea that we live in an ordered universe. But ab initio, why should that be, other than for the fact that we have a Creator?
Bill: I think the other thing is that, for me at least, and I'm sure for many others, the study of God's creation -- though when I began I didn't think of it in that way -- just draws you into thinking about God. I think it is almost an act of worship to do research in the physical sciences, because you are intimately involved with God's creation. The person who I think of -- or the scientist or physicist I think of -- is a man named Johannes Kepler, who was a contemporary of Galileo. If you read his writings, which are very rambling (and I would not undertake to read an entire work as they are so rambling,) you find that all through his description of the solar system he keeps saying things like, "God, it's so wonderful; I'm thinking your thoughts, albeit long after you thought them." That was his picture of what he was doing, and although his writings have problems, there's still truth in that.
Marc: Now certainly religion has been an important force in the lives of many scientists, but what about ways in which science might have contributed to the development of the Christian faith? For example, it seems that twentieth century studies in cosmology involve more metaphysics than they do physics. How might certain philosophical implications of modern science come to bear on one's Christian understanding of the universe?
Bill: I think one of the biggest physics breakthroughs or insights of the twentieth century was Einstein's, and Minkowski's, view of space and time. The fact that space and time were unified in Einstein's theory of relativity -- initially in his special theory of relativity -- is just a tremendous insight. It's an insight into the universe, which is one of both space and time, and also into God's view of His creation. One would almost have to believe that God sees things outside of this manifold of, in our case, four dimensions. There have been books written by theologians on this subject. There is a book written by Oscar Cullman, who was a twentieth century theologian, entitled Christ and Time, and the subject is really the Christian - in particular, the early Christian, the biblical - view of time, and I think that those sorts of studies are given considerable insight by Einstein's theory of relativity.
Connie: Yes, and I think that Christians and people in general have tended to think of eternity as an infinitely long period of time, but the insight that seems to come from this theory of relativity is that it is really probably a dimension which is outside of space and time. It is outside of time -- a whole other realm of existence -- and not simply a long time. And this might have some bearing on that traditional question in the church of trying to reconcile man's free will with God's foreknowledge and predestination and sovereignty. Because if God is outside of time, then all times to him are now, in a certain sense. So I think that there are insights that work both ways; it's that principle of complementarity that I was talking about earlier.
Marc: And on a personal level, how does your scientific background contribute to your Christian worship?
Bill: In the intricacy of the physical universe, its great complexity, you see in a sense something about the mind of the maker, and that's always an exciting concept - that you really do see some facet of reality as you study science and also as you worship the Lord. There's a unity there which is often hidden but truly exists. For example, the remarkable nature of the structure of matter. If some of these basic constants of nature, which govern for example the force of attraction between two charges and the strength of that coupling, were slightly stronger or weaker, we couldn't have what we have; that is, we couldn't exist. So there are these rules of existence which have to do with the laws of nature and the laws involved in elementary particle considerations, and the Lord made it all.
Connie: But on a daily basis it's that ...
Bill: ...you're attracted to this, at least I am; I feel pulled into the work by -- it may not be a religious motivation -- but there is a sense of awe involved.
Connie: You're aware daily that we are very small compared to the scope of the universe, and that even for all the amazing things that we have discovered through science, there is still so much more that is still there, that is still a mystery - that God is so far beyond our ability to comprehend, and yet there is a lot that we have comprehended already. And yet with all this vastness and power under His authority, God is still interested in us as individuals. He is concerned with the smallest details of our lives. This is a stunning fact for me.
Marc: What would you say it means for someone to serve the Lord, or to be a Christian, in this environment: at a university, in an academic setting, in a skeptical age, and in a secular country?
Connie: I guess for me one of the things it means is trying to be competent at what I'm doing professionally and at the same time open about my faith; bringing my faith to bear on my work but also being open about it, and (particularly, I think in a university environment) being accessible to students. I'm not teaching now, but when Bill and I have had opportunities to interact with students, it's been important. It's been important to me and I hope it's been important to them. Particularly I think for Christian students -- either those who have come into the university as Christians or who have become Christians while at Duke -- I would think it would be an encouragement to them to know that there are people on the faculty who have a strong religious faith and who take it seriously. So I think that openness and accessibility is key.
Bill: Being a Christian means following and being open to directions from Jesus Christ. I mean, that's where it's at: you develop a relationship with the Lord and you develop it in a number of ways. I have never had an angel stand beside me (that I knew of) and say "Do this." On the other hand, the Lord does speak to you from time to time and perhaps not in an audible voice but He does speak to you. But I think one of the main ways that one gets to know the Lord and become more of Christian is by reading the Bible. The Bible is the revealed Word. It's a story and yet it's a revelation - of God's nature. And so, simply, Christianity is following Jesus and His Word. But how that works itself out in an academic setting, that's a hard question. I think that one tries to serve "mankind" in part by teaching, in part by research, but the relationship with the Lord will get lost in that link sometimes, so that you almost have to go on by faith, to say "OK, the Lord has put me here to do the best I can in this particular area, and He may be able to use it." Unless you do that, you almost run the risk of not being able to see the woods for the trees.
Connie: Well, I would certainly agree with all that. When I first met the Lord, I met Him through reading the Word. And I knew at that time that He knew everything about me, and yet loved me anyhow. I told Him then that if He would accept me as I was that I would try to live my life His way. To me, Christianity really means that - it means having a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, and really leaving my life in His hands. That relationship with Him is nurtured through reading the Bible, through prayer, on a daily basis. I think one of the real strengths of my relationship with Bill and of our marriage is that we read the Word and we pray together twice a day. We've done that for over eighteen years now, and it makes a difference. And so, what being a Christian means to me personally is that I look to Christ for guidance, I look to Him for direction, I look to Him for strength, in really every aspect of my life. Whether I am in a worship service or doing scientific research, Jesus is the central fact, the central feature of my life.
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