Steve: Prof. Andy McIntosh, thank you for taking the time to speak to me today. To kick us off, tell me a little bit about yourself, and what is your area of expertise?
Prof Andy McIntosh: Well, I’m an emeritus professor at the University of Leeds. That means that they don’t pay me anymore, basically, ha-ha. But I’m also an adjunct professor at Liberty University in Lynchburg in Virginia.
So, I’ve got a double hat, as it were. I’m not often in the University of Leeds much nowadays, but I am doing some further research at the Liberty University in America.
So that’s who I am. How did I get there? Well, I did various degrees, first of all, at the University of Wales in mathematics, and I did a PhD a bit later on. Having done some teaching, I did a PhD at Cranfield, which is now a university. It was then the Institute of Technology. And that was in aerodynamics and combustion. Before that, after my first degree, I did four years at what was then the royal aircraft establishment based in Bedford. But my PhD was not so much on the practicalities, it was much more on the theory of combustion and the mathematics of it – looking at acoustics and quite complicated things with acoustic waves and burning, and looking at the way flames can be affected by acoustics. Things like the safety of engines would be relevant, the safety of anything burning really.
Then I moved on and got a got a lectureship at the University of Leeds in what was then the fuel and energy department and eventually I became a professor of thermodynamics and combustion at Leeds.
Steve: My background is more on the biological sciences side of things – I was never any good on the physics side. So, I’m very glad that we have people like you who can actually delve into that and do good work.
What drew you into that field initially? And what have some of your favourite projects been?
Prof Andy McIntosh: I think I’ve always had an interest in fluid flow, and I suppose that really developed from my interest in aviation. I’ve always loved flight.
And then looking at fluid flow with the complications of burning going on leads to a lot of very complicated mathematics to try to model it and eventually a lot of computing. I find that all very interesting.
One of the things that really fascinated me and really drew my attention was the fact that there is a beetle which sprays out of its backside – it’s called the bombardier beetle. I started doing some work on sprays as seen with the bombardier beetle and actually did some initial modelling work with a postdoc that I had working with me trying to model this from a mathematical point of view.
A company got interested in this, called Swedish Biomimetics 3000. And they actually gave us quite a lot of money to build a rig to copy what the bombardier beetle was doing. We didn’t copy the chemistry. It’s got quite complicated chemistry going on. But what we did copy, and that’s what interested our industrialist friends, were the inlet valve and the exhaust valve because the beetle’s got an inlet valve and an exhaust valve and it shuts off the inlet valve momentarily. The chemical mixture then has nowhere to go until it eventually opens up an exhaust valve and you get what’s called a vapor explosion coming out of its backside and with a turret as well to direct it. And it’s to the order of 400 to 500 explosions per second. So it actually makes a distinct sound too.
Steve: Wow. That’s amazing!
Prof Andy McIntosh: It’s obviously quite amusing when you actually see it doing it. I’ve got various videos on my website, www.bombardierbeetle.org
But I had people with me who knew what they were doing. We modelled a sort of blown-up version of the one millimetre combustion chamber of the beetle, about two centimetres long, which is about 200 times the actual size of the beetle’s chamber. We had an inlet valve, which we controlled electrically, that heated the water. We had an electronic system where we opened and closed the inlet valve and then had a closed exhaust valve, which we opened at a particular point. And it was quite complicated. You have to have a computer program to control these valves. But we got it working. And we had quite a good demonstration model of this.
It’s very useful technology and I’m thinking of applying it to fire sprinklers such that you could get a jet of water, droplets and steam directed to an area which may be in danger of causing a fire. For example, it could be a waste paper basket somewhere that somebody’s put a cigarette in, or whatever, and a bit of a heat source is detected by an infrared camera, and immediately it directs a spray to that point to suppress any danger of a fire emerging. Lots of potential applications.
Steve: Thanks for sharing that, it’s absolutely fascinating. I love how you’ve looked at nature and the engineering marvels we see there and then brought that into your engineering and industrial applications.
So, as well as being a very accomplished scientist, you’re also a person of faith, and particularly a Christian.
The reason I bring that up is that often you get this idea that faith and science are just incompatible. But here you are a qualified professional scientist with over 40 years of experience, and you are a Christian. Tell me a little about what that Christian belief means for you, and how did you come to believe in God, and in particular become a Christian?
Prof Andy McIntosh: I came from a religious home, but I didn’t always have a Christian faith myself at all. In fact, it wasn’t until I was quite late on in my teens, about mid-teens, 16 coming 17, that I began to realise that although I was going to church, I hadn’t understood what the real issue was. Somebody who really believed the Bible was leading the young people in this church that I was going to in South Manchester. But I was asked by this gentleman: Andy, are you a Christian? And I said “I think I am”. And because I wasn’t definite, this gentleman said to me, “Andy, you need to personally understand what Jesus has done for you”.
He took time to explain to me that you need to admit that you’re a sinner. You need to believe that Jesus died on the cross in your place. And thirdly, you need to commit your life to Christ. And that was put so simply, and yet actually in a very profound way, because it goes very deep and it went right deep to my soul. It was like a bullet to the centre of my being.
He was saying admit, believe, commit. Suddenly this made me realise that, yes, I haven’t done that. I haven’t admitted my sin. And I haven’t committed my life to the one who died for me. Theologically you’d call it repentance. I hadn’t done that 180 degree turn away from living for myself to live for God. And I knew that he was right. And I went to my room that evening and I quietly admitted my sin to God in prayer. It’s just that I hadn’t understood it, I guess, quite like that before.
The next morning, I felt as though I’d had a bath on the inside. And I knew a sense of being clean.
I wanted to pray. I wanted to read my Bible, which I never managed to understand before. And I wanted to be with real Christians who I could speak to about it. And that was my beginning as a Christian in 1969. And it altered my perspective on everything, including my science, eventually.
Steve: Thank you so much for sharing that. It does kind of raise a question, that we find so often in popular media. On the one side, you have the sciences. On the other hand, it seems, you then have belief in God. We’re told the two are incompatible.
I could ask so many questions, but maybe just two things. Have you ever experienced antagonism in your years in the world of the sciences because of your Christian faith?
And secondly, are we not fooling ourselves to thinking that God exists? Isn’t that just something you believe by faith, but actually science points us in the other direction? What are your thoughts?
Prof Andy McIntosh: The science points very much, in my view, towards the creator straight away. I think Psalm 19 talks about this. There’s David – the writer of the Psalm – looking at the night sky and he says the heavens declare the glory of God. I think it would be foolish for anybody to say that the science points to atheism. A child can see that the universe and it’s its glory declares the nature of a Creator – a God. But even the little beetle that I was talking about, which is only a centimetre or two long, that is declaring God’s glory. Romans 1 talks about the invisible things of God that are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.
The great scientist, Michael Faraday, declared his faith publicly years ago when he was setting up his royal institution children’s lectures. He’d say that the wonder of the things that he was presenting declares something even greater, which is the one who’s made all these things. I’m summarizing what he said, obviously. What I’m getting at is that some of the greatest scientists have acknowledged that God exists and is the one who’s put everything there.
And I think when atheists like Richard Dawkins, whom I, in answer to your question, have been lambasted by personally because he didn’t like the fact that I believed in a Creator.
I’d also take the view that the Bible obviously tells me things that science can’t immediately tell us. And I honestly think there are some big assumptions that are made in classical evolutionary theory and geology, which I would say are not actually very well established, that actually there is a lot based on presuppositions which can readily be challenged scientifically.
A little while after becoming a Christian I began to realise that I needed to think these things through. And I think it was probably during my degree course at Bangor University that I became aware of a creation perspective which seemed to fit very much with the world around me, and spoke of design, which is more what I obviously was coming up against in my later work, particularly on the bombardier beetle.
Now, not everybody will agree with me, particularly when it comes to the age of the earth. I know people disagree. We have to learn to get on with each other and not be unkind and listen to what one another might think on these issues.
But the more important consideration is that science doesn’t deal with all the big issues of life. For instance, it tells me what I’m looking at and as I make experiments, it can tell me the how of how things work, but it can never tell me the why. Science can’t answer the question why I’m here. It can’t answer the question to do with relationships with others. It cannot answer the question of death in the world – why it’s so hard to deal with, which is a very real struggle. We’re only here for a little while and we leave this world.
But you get people like Brian Cox, who’s well known for his programs, and David Attenborough, of course, but these are people who have no time for God in their thinking, and because of that they have to give the impression that science has all the answers – because that’s all they have. But it’s not true. I’ve got a little booklet that I’ve written titled ‘Are You Really an Atheist?’, and in that I make this point that science can’t answer those deeper issues.
To my mind, there is a robust position whereby a scientist can believe in God and can have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and still do his science – it actually makes much more sense of things
Steve: We’ve interviewed several scientists, and you’ve also said that you know there are different perspectives on science and faith out there. But you have written quite a bit on this. So, if people want to read up a little more on why you take that position you do, and how you got there, then they can read a bit more – we’ll link your books below.
One last question. What would you say to a young person who does believe in God and is thinking about going into the sciences. Maybe they’re a little apprehensive because of this idea of warfare between God and science they’ve heard about in popular media.
Prof Andy McIntosh: I would ask ‘are you keen on the science?’ Because I wouldn’t want somebody to go into science who is not keen.
If he or she is not really enthusiastic about science, then don’t go into it because the only thing that will keep you going is a fascination. See, you’ve got to have a desire to do it. But secondly, then, OK, what about the Christian aspect and the fact that you’ll hit atheism and some fairly strongly held views in the sciences. You’ve got to have a keen desire to work things through. The science of itself does not stop you believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. You need to be strong in your faith though. For example, there’s a whole argument in the book of Romans which is based on the historicity of Genesis. So you do need to be prepared to stand for your faith and ‘dare to be a Daniel’. And be prepared to do it graciously, and I do stress that.
I personally take a quite literal reading of the early chapters of the book of Genesis, which I know this interview isn’t really about, but I knew I was going to hit issues where people might say, how can you be a Christian and even be doing this type of science? I would just quietly say, I am a Christian. I do believe the Bible. And if others disagreed with me, I’d just say, well, you know, that’s your prerogative. But as for me, that is the position I’ve come to – and I always try my very best to be gracious.
So, I think young people should not expect necessarily an easy ride, but neither should they make problems where there aren’t problems.
Steve: I’d love to get more of your thoughts, but sadly we’ve run out of time. Those are some good insights for us there, so thank you very much. And thanks again for taking time out of your busy schedule to chat with me.
Prof Andy McIntosh: My pleasure, thanks very much for the invitation.
For more info and publications by Prof. McIntosh:
- https://andymcintosh.org/
- Genesis for Today, 6th Ed., Leominster, England, Day One, 2018
- Genesis 1–11: A Verse by Verse commentary, Leominster, England, Day One, 2016
- Wonders of Creation-Design in a Fallen World (with Stuart Burgess and Brian Edwards), Leominster, England, Day One, 2nd reprint 2018
