Meet the Prof

From High School geek to neuroscientist



I was a High School geek!

In high school, we had an intelligensia—a group of self-declared intellectuals (geeks). We all played chess. We all wore our calculators on our belts. We read every thing possible. It was explosive. It was in my senior year of high school, that many of my friends declared themselves atheists or agnostics. However, I remained a committed Christian. I pondered why, but I never really questioned the rationality of my faith.



I became a college nerd.

We were the future scientists and practitioners. We were smart and played games to see who could get the lowest possible 'A' grade in a class. Socks were for boring people. Lab coats were in. One of the most important periods of my life was my college freshman year. I was dead set on becoming a scientist and therefore I had to question everything. One thing that I had never seriously questioned was my faith. Two inescapable conclusions from my freshman year: 1) you can neither prove or disprove the existence of God, and 2) the substance of my Christianity rested on whether or not I believed that Jesus Christ is who he claims to be!



In graduate school I was a hermit.

Graduate school was amazing. I was surrounded by all of these really really smart people. It was my second year in graduate school that I was tempted by my research professors to choose one but not the other. They asked me to choose science over my religious commitments. However, I remained steadfast and chose both and won!



I am a neuroscientist, professor and Christian!

As a neuroscientist, I am keenly aware of precision, design, and universal order. Although randomness and chance seem to be everywhere, there are no accidental occurrences in nature, every thing has a purpose, every action has a consequence, and all nature appears to follow a basic set of universal rules. My job as a scientist is simply to discover how nature works.



People ask me how can I be a scientist and also be a devout Christian. My response is that nature is too ordered, too precise, and simply too amazing not to believe in a God. However, I worship the God of the Bible because of his singular revelation in Jesus Christ and because of his amazing revelation through nature.