Happy New Year everyone. My first post of 2026 reaches back to the Genesis of this show, addressing a question that sits quietly behind almost every episode:
What does it mean to be “created in the image of God” in a world where science can measure galaxies, manipulate genes, and model the beginning of time?
When I sat down with Alan Lightman—a theoretical physicist, novelist, essayist, and professor of the practice of the humanities at MIT—that question was front and center. Here is a man who has spent his life doing advanced mathematics on black holes and cosmology, and who also writes about transcendence, meaning, and the limits of knowing.
The conversation traced five threads:
- The clear limits of science
- The strange symmetry between God and the multiverse
- The ethical questions science cannot answer
- The crisis of trust around Covid and “following the science”
- What actually makes a life matter
Each of these, in its own way, circles back to wonder—and to humility.
1. Where Science Ends and Meaning Begins
Alan’s path to physics ran through Memphis, Tennessee, a father who ran movie theaters and drew cartoons, and a mother who taught dance and painstakingly brailled manuscripts for blind readers “just because she felt called to do it.”
He grew up, as he put it, with one foot in the arts and one in the sciences—writing poetry and building rockets, reading short stories and tinkering with remote-control devices. That duality shows up in his whole career: black holes in the journals, novels and essays on the bookshelf.
It also shows up in how he talks about the limits of science.
Science, he is quick to say, has been one of the greatest forces in human history:
- It has given us antibiotics, microchips, images of black holes, gravitational waves.
- It proceeds by careful observation, experiment, and the willingness to revise theories in the light of new data.
But there are experiences and questions that science is simply not built to handle.
He told a story from a quiet night in Casco Bay, Maine. Alone on a small boat after midnight, he turned off the engine, then the running lights, and lay on his back looking up at the sky. The stars were sharp points of light. The water was still. The world fell silent.
After a while, he said, he began to feel he was falling into infinity. He lost track of his ego, of time. He felt himself merging with something far beyond himself. Call it mystical, call it transcendent—he knew simply that it was real.
And then he said something important:
“Even if you had a giant computer recording every neuron in my brain and measuring every electrical impulse, you still would not have captured that experience.”
You could, at best, describe the correlates. But you would not have described what it was like.
That’s one limit. There are others:
- Is it ethical to kill an enemy soldier in war?
- Would we be happier if we lived to be 1,000 years old?
- What is beauty?
Those are not questions physics can answer. They are not even the kind of questions physics is designed to ask.
Which leads to his next point: sometimes, even at the frontiers of physics, we find ourselves looking a lot like theologians.
2. Multiverse or Maker? Faith at the Edge of Cosmology
Physicists have noticed for decades that our universe seems finely tuned for life:
- The strengths of fundamental forces,
- The speed of expansion after the Big Bang,
- The delicate balance needed to form stars, planets, and complex atoms…
Tweak those parameters slightly and, as far as we can tell, no stars, no chemistry, no life.
Why?
Alan laid out the two main explanations physicists consider:
- The Theological Explanation.
God created the universe, and God wanted life. So God set the dials in such a way that life could emerge. In that view, questions about “why these constants” become questions about the Creator’s will. - The Multiverse Explanation.
There are countless universes, each with different physical laws and parameters. Most are sterile; some permit stars but not life; a few permit life. We, by definition, find ourselves in one of the “life‑friendly” pockets. It’s not special design; it’s selection bias.
The trouble with option two, as Alan notes, is causal contact. If these other universes exist, they are by definition beyond our experimental reach. No signal, no telescope, no experiment can reach across and sample them. Certain theories of inflationary cosmology predict them, but predictions are not detections.
So the belief that these universes exist rests on… what?
“We have to accept their existence purely as a matter of faith,” he said. “Which is sort of like our faith in God.”
That doesn’t mean the multiverse is wrong. It does mean that, at the edge of cosmology, physics slides into metaphysics. We are no longer just extrapolating from data; we are trusting in elegant equations and theoretical fertility to point us beyond the observable.
Which underscores something important: both science and religion ask, in their own ways, “Why are we here?” At some point, both step onto ground that cannot be proven in the usual sense. That is not a flaw; it’s a recognition of where measurement ends and meaning begins.
3. The Ethics Science Cannot Decide
Even where science is at its strongest, telling us what is, it cannot tell us what ought to be.
Alan used some simple but potent examples:
- Is it right or wrong to kill an enemy soldier in time of war?
- Was the U.S. morally justified in dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima?
- Is it good or bad to radically extend human lifespan?
You can bring all kinds of facts to bear:
- Historical context, casualty counts, projected scenarios, psychological impacts, economic costs.
- You can model outcomes.
But at some point, you run into values:
- How do we weigh one life against another?
- Is it worse to lose 100,000 civilians quickly, or 500,000 more slowly?
- What does “victory” even mean, and at what cost?
Science cannot answer those questions for us. It can inform moral deliberation, but it cannot substitute for it.
And yet, in our time, the language of science is often invoked as if it should be able to decide:
- “The science says we must…”
- “If you care about facts, you will…”
Religion, historically, has often overreached in the other direction: claiming divine sanction for wars, plagues as punishments, famine as prophecies fulfilled. Now “big science” sometimes plays the role of apocalyptic priesthood: predicting climate cataclysm, pandemic collapse, AI doom.
There is real danger in both overreaches:
- When religion stops listening to facts, it descends into fanaticism.
- When science stops acknowledging its limits, it drifts into technocratic dogma.
Alan didn’t put it in theological language, but the implication is the same: we need humility on both sides.
4. Covid, Changing Definitions, and the Crisis of Trust
Nothing tested that humility, or our trust, quite like Covid.
Alan defended the core scientific move: you change recommendations when you get new data. That’s how science works. Early in the pandemic, the CDC and WHO simply didn’t have much data. As more came in, guidance evolved.
But we both acknowledged something else was happening.
I raised the issue of changing definitions—specifically, the way “vaccine” was reworded on official sites over time. Traditionally, people assumed a vaccine meant you would not get the disease (think polio). With Covid, it gradually shifted: vaccination might not prevent infection, but would reduce severity and death.
Whether or not the science behind that shift is sound, the perception of moving goalposts—and the feeling that this was being done quietly, or even deceptively—eroded trust.
Alan’s response was revealing. He didn’t dodge it. He agreed that:
- Scientific institutions must understand not only data, but also public psychology.
- They must be careful about how they communicate what is known, unknown, and in flux.
- They must respect the intelligence of the public, rather than assuming people are too simple to handle uncertainty.
Where I see the religious world’s failures—churches that refused to admit error, pastors that doubled down on predictions that never came to pass—Alan sees similar failures in the scientific world: a lack of humility, clarity, and repentance when guidance has to change.
The solution is not to abandon either science or faith, but to insist that both:
- Say “we don’t know” when we don’t.
- Explain why we’re changing our minds.
- And avoid turning every question into a loyalty test.
5. What Makes a Life Matter?
Near the end of our conversation, Alan mentioned a book he’d been reading by philosopher Rebecca Goldstein, The Mattering Instinct. She asks: Why do we long for our lives to matter?
The question hung in the air for a moment. Then Alan answered it for himself.
He grew up, as he put it, with a certain amount of privilege:
- Educated parents.
- A stable, middle-class home.
- Access to good schools and opportunities.
“What makes my life matter,” he said, “is using that privilege to help people who didn’t have the same advantages.”
A few examples:
- About 20 years ago, he founded the Harpswell Foundation in Southeast Asia, which identifies and supports young women from poor rural families to become leaders.
- He continues to teach and write, not just about abstract physics, but about wonder, humility, and responsibility.
- As a father, he sees passing on values to his children as at least as important as passing on knowledge.
I shared my own complicated feelings about privilege. I did not grow up in a stable, middle-class home; my childhood included kidnapping, an orphanage, and a tent in Alaska. My children did not experience that. In some ways, I’ve given them the security I never had. In other ways, I worry: have I made it too easy? How do I help them care deeply about others without demanding that they suffer what I did?
Alan’s answer is simple and demanding:
Those who have been given much—whether that’s wealth, education, stability, or talent—have a responsibility to use it for others.
That echoes, in a different key, something Jesus said long ago:
- “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded.” (Luke 12:48)
Different metaphysics, perhaps. Same ethical trajectory.
The Shape of Wonder
Alan’s latest book is called The Shape of Wonder: How Scientists Think, Live, and Work. The title captures something I felt throughout our conversation.
Science, at its best, is not a cold machine grinding out certainties. It is a disciplined form of wonder:
- at the behavior of light,
- at the dance of galaxies,
- at the emergence of life in a universe that didn’t have to allow it.
Religion, at its best, is not a rigid system of control. It is a disciplined form of wonder:
- at the depth of consciousness,
- at love strong enough to lay down its life,
- at a Creator who might be more interested in reconciliation than in being right.
Both, at their worst, forget their limits and their callings.
Alan put it simply:
“Whatever this strange universe we find ourselves in, we’re part of it. We’re connected. That’s meaning for me.”
For me, as someone who believes we are created in the image of God, that connection is not just horizontal (to each other) but vertical (to the One in whose image we’re made). Either way, the questions Alan lives with are questions all of us must face:
- Where does my knowledge stop—and my responsibility begin?
- What am I doing with whatever privilege or light I’ve been given?
- And in this brief, astonishing moment in a vast universe, what will make my life matter?
Those are not questions any equation can solve. But they are questions worth a lifetime of wonder.
And they are questions that, in their own ways, both science and faith—when they’re at their best—are still helping us ask.
…
Coming Up Next Week
If Alan Lightman’s work sits at the intersection of science and wonder, next week’s guest comes at wonder from a different angle: the hard work of living what you believe, one small choice at a time.
On January 6th, I’ll be joined by Audrey Rindlisbacher, founder of The Mission Driven Mom and author of The Mission Driven Life. After being deeply moved by The Hiding Place—Corrie ten Boom’s story of an ordinary Dutch family who saved over 800 Jews during WWII—Audrey went on a long search:
How do ordinary people become extraordinary?
What laws and principles shape that kind of life?
Studying dozens of men and women across history, she distilled a set of “Seven Laws of Life” that, she argues, any of us can begin to practice—right where we are.
You don’t start by announcing a grand “mission.”
You start by practicing principles in your marriage, your parenting, your work.
The mission, she says, grows out of that.
We’ll talk about:
- How to cultivate character in a culture obsessed with comfort.
- Why you don’t need a perfect vision on day one—just the next right step.
- And how an ordinary family can quietly become a force for good in a very broken world.
If tonight’s episode was about how we know, next week is about how we live.
I hope you’ll join us.
