Steve: Amos, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me today. I’m excited about chatting to you because you have so much passion about what we’re speaking about today – it’s contagious. Tell me a bit more about yourself. Where are you based? What line of work are you in? I know you’re a man who’s busy, a lot on your plate, so tell us a bit about that.
Amos Tarfa: Well, my name is Amos Tarfa. I am from Nigeria originally, but I’ve been in the US for about 20 years. Married to my wife Stephanie, and we have seven children running around. We are blessed. We live in Texas, outside of Austin. I actually live an equidistance, as they say in mathematics, between Austin and San Antonio. So, about a halfway point between the two cities.
I’m a medical physicist as far as my day job, but I’m also a math and science curriculum writer and an education entrepreneur. So, I help people start schools. I help people revise their curriculum. And my vision is pretty clear. By God’s grace, I want to raise the next Isaac Newton. That’s part of my goal. He’s not my favourite scientist, let me note, but he’s probably one of the most unique scientists ever. But I want to raise top mathematicians and scientists who also know the history and philosophy of science. So that’s Amos Tarfa!
Steve: In a nutshell, anyway! What is, excuse my ignorance, a medical physicist? What does that look like?
Amos Tarfa: So, the crazy thing is that when I got into physics, medical physics, I didn’t know it was connected to someone who would end up being my favourite scientist – James Clerk Maxwell. Back in the 1800s, Maxwell showed that light was electromagnetic radiation. It has different aspects to it other than just visible light. There’s X-rays, gamma rays, and so on. A medical physicist is a physicist that specializes in the use of physics for human medicine applications. So, we basically are the ones behind understanding of x-rays and how they’re used for treating cancer, as well as for diagnostic radiology. We are concerned about how much radiation you give to get the appropriate image quality. We work with radiologists, we work with cardiologists, we work with urologists, we work with different professionals on how you can use x-rays safely or how we use sound waves for MRI and ultrasound. If you’ve ever been to an imaging facility or anything with diagnostic imaging, that is where medical physicists shine. We help make sure radiation is used properly when there’s ionizing radiation. And when it’s non-ionizing radiation, such as MRI, we also want to make sure it’s used properly. So that’s what medical physicists do. We are physicists, but we specialize in the medical applications of physics.
Steve: All right. I get you. I’m glad that you’re doing that. Cause if that was up to me, we’d all be in a lot of trouble – that’s way above my pay grade. What led you to that? What was the road that got you there?
Amos Tarfa: You know, by God’s grace, I was good in many subjects. But I think that my mind loves patterns and numbers more than it loves nomenclature. So even though I did okay in the biological sciences, I was probably more on the mathematical sciences side. I got my bachelor’s in chemistry, and I was thinking about being a paediatrician, however, when I graduated from my bachelor’s in chemistry, I realized that I wanted to teach.
So, I decided to teach high school for two years and one child’s dad was a medical physicist, and I was like “what is that?” So, I job-shadowed somebody for a day, and I ended up working with them for a little bit, and I began to realize this is pretty cool. It gives me the flexibility to work in my math field while working in medical departments. So, it allows me to have the best of both worlds.
Medical physicists, especially consultants like me, are rarely in the same situation twice in the same week. We’re always looking at different types of machines in different types of clinics. It allows for travel and a variety of different kinds of studies. And that’s why I like it. I got my master’s in medical physics and medical health physics, and then have done a year of my PhD in physical chemistry. So, I love studying physics, chemistry, mathematics, and where they come together. That is my sweet spot.
Steve: That is really, really interesting. I’ve never met anyone who’s in this field. So, this is all new to me. It’s some very specialized scientific work. So, you’ve got that going on. That’s your day job. But you’re also a person of faith. You’re a Bible-believing Christian – and that’s part of why I’m interviewing you in this series of articles! What does that look like for you day to day? What does your faith mean to you?
Amos Tarfa: Yeah, you know, I grew up in Nigeria. My dad was an elder in the church, and I had the opportunity to learn about the truth of Christianity. And I joined a Good News club when I was young, and I became a Christian at a young age. And I thank God for keeping me out of certain things that would have caused me heartache and trouble. Just because of that. So, I came to the U.S. with that backing in my faith side of things. But I had never been challenged on the science and faith side until I came to the U.S. And then I began to meet people who were agnostics and didn’t believe in God at all. And I’m like, I’ve never seen this. Everybody I grew up with believed something and was very firm about what they believed. And now I’m meeting people who tell me that, you know, what you believe might not be true.
And therefore, I actually took philosophy just because I thought it would be great to have a conversation with philosophy professors. So that was when, during that philosophy time, I pivoted and left the medical school track.
So, I didn’t end up starting in medical school because I realized that the mind was something I wanted to focus on. Around that time, I started listening to Dr. John Lennox, who’s a great mathematician, and also someone who is great in philosophy, and is also a Christian.
And so that has helped me a great deal. By God’s grace, I’ll call myself a disciple from afar of Dr. Lennox because that’s the kind of work I want to continue.
But as far as the faith side, that’s part of the faith side of things, I was wondering how I could lovingly share my faith with people that disagree with me? And that’s part of what I began to learn at that stage. But ultimately, I will be honest with you, the more I study physics, the more I feel that it points to God. Some things are just a mystery, some things – like quantum physics – you just have to be okay with the fact that there’s mystery to some of this stuff. And so I bring that up to say that physics actually makes me want to know God more, not less. Where else do you find mystery? Sometimes when you read the Bible, there are things you can’t fully grasp as far as the nature of God and so on. It’s the same in science: it reminds you that if reality is looking not as precise as you would like on certain things, maybe there are some things you just can’t fully know and you have to just believe and act upon what you can’t see. And that is part of how people like the great scientist James Clerk Maxwell operated.
They didn’t see everything to believe it. They believed in the unseen and look what it did to us. It allowed us to have communication like what we are having right now because Maxwell is the father of electrical engineering. So that just tells you a little bit of how the unseen can open your doors to new realms of understanding science and mathematics.
Steve: You’re definitely someone who’s thought about your faith. You’ve thought about the science, obviously, and then the integration of these. And, you’re someone who wants to take all of that and use it for the good of educating young people. As you say, we want to be raising up the next Newtons, the next Maxwells for the next generations.
So let me ask you a couple of questions around that idea of faith, science, and the integration of those. Are science and God or science and faith mutually exclusive domains?
Amos Tarfa: No, they are not!
Steve: Simple! Why not?
Amos Tarfa: Because science can give you an explanation for certain things, but it doesn’t give you the basis for why those things are the way they are in the first place. Science doesn’t give you the basis for why those things might even be predictable.
I’ll give you a quick example. On your computer keyboard – I wrote this in one of my books in 2009 – if you push ‘control A’, it highlights all. If you push ‘control S’, it saves. But why? Because a computer programmer programmed it. Without the computer programmer, you don’t have a basis for that explanation you’ve given, right? There is the agent and the mechanism. So, we can study the car, but we need to understand that Mr. Ford, or Mr. Benz was behind the car being what it is. That’s why Johannes Kepler and Galileo and Copernicus understood that they were only studying an aspect of reality. They did not explain how it came to be. And Isaac Newton talked about it in his Principia as well. So, if the giants of the scientific era and the scientific revolution have shown us that, why should we think otherwise? As a matter of fact, I’ll just say this quickly, Isaac Newton, back in 1687, when he published his book, he already had that basis. Imagine if he understood what we now understand about physics today. There is no way he’s going to look at it and say, oh, we need less of God now. Not at all. Instead, he’s going to say, this is amazing. That’s why I believe, again, that science and faith go together as far as science explains certain things, but it doesn’t give a reason for why those things even work in the first place.
Steve: Related to that then, what difference does faith make to actually doing science?
Amos Tarfa: I think that, as one of our friends, Lee Pretorius, puts it, we need to think about the universe being a closed system and an open system. When you remove God and faith and so on, you’re almost limiting how well your mind can make sense of the universe. Literally, you’re limiting yourself. I’m not saying that the person might not find certain things. They might, here and there. But imagine someone like Maxwell: how can you describe light the way he did? How can he describe atoms the way he did? If he wasn’t also open to the idea that there are certain things that can be described that are not seen.
You see, there’s something about faith for me as a Christian, that, as the Bible describes it in the book of Hebrews, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I am open to the fact that there are certain things that I don’t see, right? But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. For the materialists, you are literally limiting yourself in and aspects of understanding reality. I also think that reality ultimately also involves philosophy and not just science itself. But scientists who don’t know philosophy are putting themselves in a problematic position. Because in mathematics, for example, we do things and describe things about reality that don’t even exist in some cases, but that also sharpens our minds.
There’s something about allowing our minds to really get to know reality beyond the physical world that is hard to explain if you’re a materialist. There is more to the physical world. So anyway, that’s part of it. So, I think as a medical physicist, I expect precision. I expect certain things to make sense and work because I believe God made the world. So, it makes sense to me. There is an author that wrote something called The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, Eugene Wigner. Why would you use the word ‘unreasonable effectiveness’? Except if you also don’t believe that the universe has one who designed it. I believe there’s one who designed it. So, I see it reasonable that the laws of physics even hold. And therefore, some of those laws are what allow you and I to enjoy some of the technologies we have today.
Steve: Thanks, I think that’s very helpful to help people think about the integration of faith and science. Let me ask about the education side of things a little. You mentioned you’re from Nigeria. That’s where you had your primary education before going to the States. But you’ve now observed the Western world for a good many years from the inside. What do you think has gone wrong with education in the Western world, broadly speaking?
Amos Tarfa: Yeah, I think that there are several layers to it, but one of them quickly is the value the family puts on education. I read somewhere yesterday that in some Asian communities, they will spend 40% of their income on educating their child. 50% of their income. That’s how much they value education. But I think with the West, I think of Deuteronomy chapter 8, when you’ve eaten and are full, don’t forget God. I think there’s parts of the West that got full and have forgotten God and have forgotten about studying His world for its own sake, not for any state standards, but just to know God and know the world that He has made. So, I think the West partly has that as a problem. And there’s a practical side, too. If you want to learn mathematics, you need to be disciplined and committed. And the problem is that we treat mathematics just as another subject. No, mathematics doesn’t care who you are or your bank account. You need to give it commitment.
And that is why China is leading in many aspects of mathematics. And I’m not saying I support some of the rigor we see in some parts of the world, but I’m just saying at least can we be serious and not take months off from doing mathematics, which tends to happen in the West in many schools. This just doesn’t happen in Nigeria. And so I would say Nigeria has a better case for rigor for its mathematics and expectations. And the parents are more committed. Parents, we need to put in the time and really support our children to be the best they can be in mathematics, because it is so important. Put in more of that time than we put into sports. We have to be disciplined with math and science and just learning, and valuing learning. That’s part of our challenge. So I hope that if we go back to the drawing board and look at the people that gave us the framework for mathematics and science and the rigor they put in, and give our children the tools to be able to attain to those heights, that’s where I think the West can begin to get back on track.
Steve: How can we get people the tools to do that well, because maybe that’s quite daunting to think about, and people don’t know where to begin? And, you know, from a Christian perspective, how can the church get on board and help in those areas, do you think?
Amos Tarfa: Well, I think that philosophy needs to be brought back into discussions. You have to teach the history of philosophy of science and theology, and that needs to be brought into schools to give an accurate picture of the past. And if a church has a church school, make sure your students understand that there is a connection there too, don’t be afraid of science and philosophy. Don’t separate them. The fragmentation is part of the problem.
Breaking subjects down, such as chemistry and physics, they used to be buddies and we broke them apart and you keep breaking things out. Imagine we try teaching calculus sometimes without physics. That makes no sense. Calculus was born next to physics. The same guy, Isaac Newton, we’ve broken him apart. We need to put things back together and allow for that. And especially with AI tools, by the way, they can do this pretty well. You should teach chemistry, physics, and math together. We need to start building curriculum differently. My goal is that we have to go back and train students to be like Isaac Newton in order for them to thrive in the AI revolution. So that’s part of what we need to do. teaching integrated subjects, interdisciplinary subjects, philosophy and the history of science, and go beyond any state standards and focus on just learning for learning’s sake. That is what we need to aspire to.
Steve: Yeah. I know you’re really enthusiastic about that and we will share the link to your website where people can come find you and see how you’re doing this.
I wish we had a lot more time here so that I could pick your brain on that more because I think it’s so crucial, especially the AI side of things. You know, I have two young daughters and I’m thinking about the future a lot, haha. So, you’re saying a lot that’s really resonating with me. But, before we run out of time, you’ve alluded to your favourite scientists. Who are they? And who’s your one favourite?
Amos Tarfa: Haha, yes. I think James Clerk Maxwell, and Michael Faraday is a close second, but I would say they’re my favourite scientists and my favourite mathematician is Leonard Euler. And then let me add one more name, William Wilberforce. He wasn’t a scientist, but those four names I told you are four people that I really cherish.
And I cherish their work because for William Wilberforce, it’s the fact that we can use education to liberate people to think more clearly, just like he liberated people from trying to end the slave trade. So that’s why Wilberforce made the list there.
But now back to my favourite scientists. It’s between Maxwell and Faraday. It’s a close one because of their humility and their work with electricity and magnetism. They helped us understand the world much better. James Clark Maxwell, who died at the age of 48, changed the world. Maxwell really changed the world. And I don’t think people will understand that enough, but they can go listen to an interview I did recently with Discovery Institute on Maxwell’s life .
And that’s definitely somebody I think people should study. And then lastly, as I said, their humility. These guys were exceptional at what they did. But when Michael Faraday died, or before he died, they wanted him to be buried at Westminster Abbey. I don’t know if you knew that. That’s the kind of scientist he ended up being, but he wanted to be left alone, buried iin his small hometown. But Michael Faraday’s humility is amazing. So, I want to raise the top mathematicians and scientists, but ultimately, I want them to walk in humility as well. That’s the key. Because it’s not enough to know. You have to then be kind and gentle in how you use your knowledge to help other people.
Steve: Brilliant. That humility is so important, especially in the sciences where it is so quickly forgotten – well, that’s been my experience in the scientific world many times, sadly. One last question: what encouragement would you give to a younger person who is thinking about what path to follow in terms of vocation and what to do with their life. Why would you encourage them to consider the sciences a career path? And also, as a side note, why do we need more good Christian scientists?
Amos Tarfa: Well, my encouragement to them is this. The world needs, more than ever before, people like Maxwell. And we stopped getting a lot of those people when our education system removed philosophy from science. When natural philosophy stopped being the case of what science was, it caused problems. We need more people to be trained in that way of thinking. And funny enough, that is the only type of student that the world needs in an age of ‘automatic intelligence’, because knowledge is everywhere.
What makes you stand out is being exceptional. So why don’t you just go be like those who came before us – they were exceptional! So, I would say let’s go learn from them so please read books by guys like Dr John Lennox, like ‘Has Science Buried God?’ and ‘Cosmic Chemistry’. Read those books to help you get a solid foundation, but in reality, if you want to talk about practical ROI, the top 20 jobs in the next frontier are all in the STEM fields. A lot of them, anyway. But if you’re going to go into those fields go in with philosophy as well. I mean, quantum computing is coming very soon. So, when all these things are growing and taking the stage, how cool would it be for Christians to be the ones that are coming out and also talking about how their faith helps them do the work they do? So that’s my encouragement.
Steve: That’s great. I think we definitely need to have another interview where I pick your brain on AI and some of the really cool doors that opens, but also some of the things to be cautious of.
But where can people go to see some of the stuff you’ve done, find some of the books you’ve written, get in touch and even support you?
Amos Tarfa: So, they can go to www.amosthemathguy.com, it’s a simple website. But my math curriculum is called Counting to Calculus, www.countingtocalculus.org, that’s where you can see that. It’s a global math curriculum that takes you from no knowledge of mathematics all the way to calculus five with a clear roadmap.
And we want to do that because remember, we want to raise the next Newton. So, we’ve given the whole world a math plan to take you from wherever you are to getting a math degree. Why does that matter? Because the whole society literally rests on mathematics right now. Everything, even AI, is a mathematical tool. That’s all math.
We want to give everyone those tools. And so, yes, you can find me there. We want to help as many schools as possible to really help their students love math and flourish in it.
And then the other site is www.livingsensibly.org, where I do some of my other Christian-focussed content.
Steve: Amos, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts about faith and science. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, and I look forward to when we chat again soon.
Amos Tarfa: Thank you.
Amos Tarfa is a Medical Physicist and Math & Science Curriculum Writer. He is married to Stephanie and they have been blessed with 7 children. He is originally from Nigeria but is now based in Texas in the US. His desire is to see every child flourish and therefore he writes and teaches on the topic of redeeming education. He has written several books and has a YouTube Channel called Living Sensibly with Amos Tarfa, and an online academy called LIFE Academy where he connects experts in different fields to students in Nigeria, Africa and around the world. Long term he wants to see schools go back to the drawing board to rethink what they are doing in education to make sure it makes sense in this moment in history. His website is LivingSensibly.org
