Marcus : A Stanford Professor Uses Both Faith and Reason

Marcus is a Professor of Bio-Engineering at Stanford University who studies Systems and Synthetic Biology. His faith has been strengthened as he has studied, asked questions, and learned to appreciate what he calls the “interdisciplinarity” of faith and science. He discusses how adopting a perspective of humility and a “growth mindset” as we approach apparent paradoxes and contradictions can help us master fundamental concepts and gain greater maturity even as we struggle. Finally, Marcus gives his take on the significance of the pursuit of DNA evidence in the Book of Mormon as well as the importance of listening and learning through being open minded and wrestling until we have “found the blessing.”

Further reading in Faith Is Not Blind:

“As we search for the right relationship between faith and reason, that process prepares us to reach for a yet higher form of resolution in yonder simplicity.”

(Faith Is Not Blind, Chapter 6, “The Head and Heart Paradox,” p. 46)

Transcript:

Faith Is Not Blind: Welcome to the Faith Is Not Podcast. I’m Bruce Hafen and today we’re in California in the San Francisco area with Marcus Covert. Marcus, thank you for coming across the Bay to see us today. 

 

Marcus: It’s a pleasure and a privilege.

 

Faith Is Not Blind: Why don’t you share with us what you do for work?

 

Marcus: I’m a Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford. I study what’s called Systems and Synthetic Biology. It’s a way of thinking about how cells work–how tissue works and thinking about it as a whole. So it’s a hot, very exciting new field that I love being a part of. 

 

Faith Is Not Blind: Could you give us an example of something that you’ve been working on lately?

 

Marcus: So what our lab is best known for is that we created the first ever computer model of a cell that takes all of the genes into account and uses that to actually predict how that cell can behave. So it’s kind of of a revolution because when you think about it, it’s like the way that we use computers and mathematics is revolutionizing all the sciences right now. It’s how we have things like these new phones and airplanes, but now it needs to happen in Biology.

 

Faith Is Not Blind: What an opportunity for us to talk to someone who is a part of that world with the credentials that you have. What we want to talk about is your personal Journey of faith. Where you were before. You received all the education you could find and you’ve been adding to it with your own research. You must have encountered a few surprises along the way and what has that led to? And where are you now? Why don’t you just start from an early stage with your growing-up years?

 

Marcus: Sure. So I have loved science since forever. And I love it and I consider it–I think particularly important here–a search for truth in almost the same way that I consider my gospel study a search for truth. And I think that I’ve always as a result, been trained to have questions in my scientific training and I’ve been trained to just look for answers for those questions.

 

Faith Is Not Blind: Have you always been put together that way? What were you like when you were young? 

 

Marcus: If my mom were here watching me, I would be forced to say that I was a high-energy, difficult to contain in class, very enthusiastic but very head-strong student. In chemistry in high school I set my final exam on fire. It the first time I heard any bad language from a teacher as she came to try to put out this fire.

 

Faith Is Not Blind: What were you like spiritually at that age? 

 

Marcus: I was lucky enough to be raised in a home that was  relatively young in the Gospel. And I felt like I was raised to question. I was raised to think independently. My parents and my sisters had and have deep and exciting discussions about things. It was a great upbringing in that way. 

 

Faith Is Not Blind: What was your earliest formative experience that helped you create a foundation spiritually for what would happen the rest of your life? 

 

Marcus: I could tell you about my religious upbringing or about my mission but I think maybe what would be the most interesting in this context would be to talk about the first time I realized that I didn’t have to worry about anything I found in science. 

 

Faith Is Not Blind: Yes. Talk about that. 

 

Marcus: So I had finished college and I knew where I was going to go. I was going to go into this new field of Bioengineering. I was really excited about it, but I did perceive that there were potential problems between what science believes and accepts, and what I thought maybe I could accept on a faith level. And the big topic that I still get asked about all the time is about evolution. And so I had wondered about this and thought about it. And one day I went to this talk and it was by a Nobel Laureate, Christian de Duve, and he was speaking about evolution. In particular he was speaking about how we can look at evolution in a new way. And he said something really interesting about how evolution can still reconcile with something that is predictive. And I could go into detail about it, but the key thing that he said was–he looked at the audience and was explaining all of these equations he said, “What we’ve really found is that chance does not preclude inevitability.” And so the “chance” that we think of when we think of randomness in mutations and in evolution happening over time doesn’t mean that you can’t actually predict the outcome.  And he explained this–and I’d be happy to share more about it–but the most important thing to me is that as I watched this and heard him say it I realized that I was feeling the Spirit. And I actually felt moved to tears in this moment listening to this incredible man give this incredible talk in which he was not trying to share religion with me at all. But I realized all of a sudden that there was this interdisciplinarity for me between science and faith, and that I really could use either one to access the other.

 

Faith Is Not Blind: So learning that you could use either one to access the other, I think what you said in your earlier comment is that “you didn’t have to worry.” What were you worried about? 

 

Marcus: I think the worry is that there’s a potential tension. You know,  that I’m reaching out in science, but I’m doing things that maybe we can’t accept if we’re a member of the Church. Of course that turns out  not even to be correct I now know, but at the time this worried me. 

 

Faith Is Not Blind: So you were worried that it might threaten your own faith?

 

Marcus: Yeah, I worried. I think at the time I might have worried more just how some people might see me. For example, right now if I say I believe in the principles of evolution, some people might say, “Well, maybe he’s an ‘edgy Mormon’ or a ‘liberal Mormon’ in some way.” But I think I realized that my job was simply to follow the truth where it led in a positive and a faith-focused way. And that the answers would come, and they might come in a big lecture hall hearing a brilliant scientist share this truth that they had learned. And they might come while I’m sitting in a congregation or visiting somebody who I have been asked to serve. There are many ways it can come, but the truth is the same and that was the important part.

 

Faith Is Not Blind: Yes. And what an interesting context to receive the spiritual assurance that you did. And it was clear that you knew what that was. As you’ve gone on, Marcus, as you’ve become specialized–you’re teaching at Stanford in a field like genetics–the world has become so secular. I wouldn’t want to guess what the threats have been. Since that earlier experience and the talk about evolution, would you say is the biggest challenge to your religious faith that you’ve encountered all along the way?

 

Marcus: That’s a really interesting question. Well, maybe I’ll push back on just that concept for a second. Because I’ve definitely had challenges to my faith, but I think that I think about them differently than maybe people think that you have to think about these challenges. 

 

Faith Is Not Blind: Please explain that.

 

Marcus: I think there’s a real humility in science in the search for truth as a scientist. So for example, as a scientist I’m very well aware that I have only a child’s idea of how the universe works. And it doesn’t bother me to hear a new concept. And I also don’t feel so tied to what I think I know that I couldn’t be convinced of a new idea if the evidence was strong enough to convince me. I think sometimes it’s really interesting to think about what it takes for me to add truth to the world. To get a PhD, for example, it takes 5 years and about 10,000 hours of work. And if you’re lucky you might be able to add a sentence to a textbook one day with all of that work. If you think about one of these students who spends these 10,000 hours, and typically the way that it works, they might spend, you know, many thousand hours just mastering the basics principles. And then they start to reach out and it’s intense. What often happens is someone will come to me at 6000 hours and be like, “You know nothing really seems to work.”  And I’ll be like, “Don’t worry. You’re right on track. Let’s keep going.” And at 7000 hours they start to say, “You know, I’m starting to question the basic fundamentals of this area.” And I’ll say, Yeah. Good. You should be doing that. Let’s see where that goes.” And at 8000 hours, still I’ll say, “You know, you’ve only spent this much time. Just keep going.” And then usually around the last year they start to pull together and they say, “Okay. Here are the big fundamentals that I really feel like I’ve got.” And they have this new humility and they think, “Okay. Of everything I’ve done, this idea is the thing that I think really is something new.” And they pull it together and then they walk out with this PhD. But also with just this glimmer of the new insight that civilization will hold, that civilization will remember. And it’s funny to me  because when I was in the Bishopric in the Stanford Ward, we had these brilliant students, these brilliant young professionals–they’re incredible. A lot of times, though, just given the nature of the internet and given the nature of the way we share information now, someone will come and they will say, “Well, I saw this on the internet.” And I’ll say, “Well, how long have you been thinking about it?” And they’ll respond, “Well, I probably spent about an hour on it.” And as a scientist I would say, “Okay. You’re not even close.”  When I have a concern I don’t think of it as a thing I’m scared of. I think of it as a challenge, but I’m excited to look into it because I know both from science and from faith that it’s going to bring me somewhere really special. 

 

Faith Is Not Blind: You know that from experience. You see it as an opportunity to learn instead of an opportunity to run away, especially after a whole hour. Keep going.

 

Marcus: Well, I think that’s the special thing about it. If you draw the analogy clearly, even in the Gospel, if you’re going the right way, finding more confusion might mean you’re getting closer. Finding more complexity and finding seeming paradoxes might just be the thing that’s going to catalyze the exact insight that you need. 

 

Faith is Not Blind: So are you saying that running into more complexity or more paradoxes is actually an indication that your search is growing, maturing? That it’s going to take you somewhere?

 

Marcus: Yes. That’s exactly right. 

 

Faith Is Not Blind: How does paradox help with that? How do conflict and uncertainty help?

 

Marcus: God loves paradox. Pretty much the first thing we learn in the Bible is that humans are destined to encounter paradox. I mean, that’s the great story of Adam and Eve–to have two seemingly contradictory commandments. I think too often–this is now maybe getting a little bit on the engineering side–too often we think about the commandments as a set of equations that all have to fit exactly in order like equalities as opposed to an optimization problem where we’re trying to make the best decision. And what we have are these guidelines and the Holy Ghost to guide us and then the precious gift of our own choice. And so we’re trying to find the best thing. The beauty of the Atonement is that we don’t have to be perfect. As John Steinbeck said, “We don’t have to be perfect so we can be good.” And as a result of this we know we’re not going to be able to keep every single commandment perfectly because there’s just so much. Instead our job is to find the best.

Faith Is Not Blind: So this is how you have encountered challenges of this kind. They help you thrive. You’ve learned to thirst for challenges.They feed your hunger to learn. And you’ve learned that they will feed you. I have the impression, just from listening to you talk about your experience here and other things you’re talking about, that you’ve made your way through that to a stage where you’re kind of beyond just paradox and uncertainty. You don’t just stay there.There’s a more settled rest in your attitudes about spiritual things. I don’t know if that affects the scientific things. Where are you now and your relationship with the Lord and with the spiritual things that you’ve been interested in all your life? Are your faith and your testimony different now because of this maturing process than it was before you got into it?

 

Marcus: Yes, I would say it’s different. At first I worried. I’m sure as you’re talking to different people, you’ve talked to people who have gone through questions. I don’t want to trivialize those at all. It’s easy for me, for example, as a PhD advisor to say to my student, “You know, you’re going to be great.” They don’t see that. They have not experienced that. What they see is that they’re beating their head against the wall and against this problem. So I don’t want to trivialize that. That’s real and it’s challenging. As I’ve gone through different questions, it can be frustrating. It can be a challenge. And sometimes as I was going through those kinds of questions I wondered if I was going farther away from the answers. I think now I realize that that’s part of a process.

 

At Stanford we have a wonderful, very prominent psychologist named Carol Dweck. And she talks about what’s called a “growth mindset.” This is something they are now trying to raise children with. Like if you tell a child, “You’re so great at math. You’re so great at all these things.” When they come up against their first challenge, when they don’t get the problem right, they’re devastated. So she recommends instead that we teach the children to love a challenge, to go after a problem, to tackle a problem. And I wonder sometimes if it’s like that for me. If what’s happened really is that I’ve done something similar with my testimony. Instead of feeling like I have a great testimony and I know everything and then being devastated, when I hear this, I try to have a growth mindset of testimony. I like a challenge. I’m excited. I run to new insight. And I know that the way to do that is like a valley to a peak. You’re on your way to good things and you can kind of enjoy that even as it’s driving you nuts, the same way that it does when I’m in the lab.

 

Faith Is Not Blind: Do you think the Lord wants us to learn like that?

 

Marcus: Speaking for myself, I definitely feel that way. For me it’s empowering. I mean, the first story we learn in the Restoration, of course, is that that a 14-year-old boy–and really that’s supposed to mean is anyone–can walk into the woods and can come out transformed. They can come out with knowledge that they could not have gotten any other way. 

 

Faith Is Not Blind: But from the way you describe it, it’s not as simple as “I go into the woods. I say my prayer. I take a full fifteen minutes. I come out and then I’m transformed.” You’ve been describing something much more complex and long term than that.

Marcus: You know the story that we love from The Book of Mormon about the Tree of Life? You know, Lehi actually tells this story multiple times. And then Nephi tells it. When Lehi first tells it,  it’s actually exactly what I’m talking about. He says he has this vision and he sees this glorified being. And this being says to him, “Follow me,” And it’s easy to miss because it’s so short, but he says, “I followed him and when I did, I found myself in the middle of this dark wasteland.”  And then the next phrase is so telling to me, because the next phrase is “And after I wandered about for the space of many hours.” I think too often we trivialize how long it really can take to have those experiences. On the internet with its “on demand,” I’m sure a lot of people might even think this is absurd or it’s extreme. Like can I click and just click my way to an experience? Can I click my way to conviction?

 

Once I was walking in the beautiful UCSD campus and it was a quiet morning. It was just me by myself. And actually I was having a question. I was thinking about how we know so much about how to teach people. We know so much about how to get people’s attention and how to kind of compel them to watch more. And I was thinking, “Why doesn’t the Spirit work like that? If Heavenly Father wanted to, he could just brain dump this. And He could really get our attention.” And as I was walking, I was thinking about how the way that it is is so inefficient. And then I felt like, “Well, it depends on what you’re trying to teach.” If you’re only just trying to teach the principles of the Gospel then maybe you should teach them like with a brain dump. But if you’re trying to teach how to listen, if you’re trying to teach how to make your own decisions, there is actually no shortcut to that. 

 

It’s interesting. At Google, where I’ve been consulting for a few years, they often try to parallelize everything. They try to parallelize. And they’ve realized that there are some things you can’t accelerate. And somebody brought it up in a way that’s now been passed down. Somebody brought up kind of sarcastically, “Well, why can’t we just do all this with a baby? Why can’t you have a baby in 10 seconds?” And everybody realizes right away, of course, you can’t have something that precious and meaningful in that much time. No matter how much we parallelize or compress scripture. 

 

Faith Is Not Blind: Before I run out of time, I want to have a specific question. You’re a geneticist. You know a lot about DNA. You know a lot about the Book of Mormon. What would you say to a friend who hears that there’s some question about DNA in the Book of Mormon? Can DNA evidence tell us that everything in the Book of Mormon is true? And if it doesn’t tell us that, does that mean it’s not true? What do you say to people who are running into those issues?

 

Marcus: This is speaking for myself, but I guess the first thing that anyone would need to know is that I have thought a lot about that. I’ve looked at those things and I’m not bothered or troubled by those things. I don’t think it’s wise for someone to go in guns blazing and feel like they can explain the DNA evidence for or against the Book of Mormon. As a scientist, I would just say, “Okay. I’m ready to learn. I realize that there’s so much more to find.” I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but recently they’ve had these incredible studies where they discovered that they might only know a small fraction of the things and even the buildings that currently exist regarding ancient American ancient civilizations. And what that tells me is that there is so much to learn. 

 

Faith Is Not Blind: And so much that we don’t know and can’t prove.

 

Marcus; Right. I think it’s a blessing that I don’t feel like I need to know. Even as much as I know about the way the world works, it’s just the tiniest fraction. And I think if I were able to somehow see exactly how everything works in this world, I’d be astonished at how infantile my current knowledge is. So I’m not troubled by it because I know that there are a million problems and complexities that have to be addressed and it’s just our privilege to go in and start trying to figure them out. 

 

Faith Is Not Blind: You know, some people would think that a person who has the credentials you do, who’s done the research that you do, who has been in the places you have been on the edges of science and life, that you would be pretty proud of knowing all of this stuff. But it’s just the opposite, Marcus. There’s a kind of humility about you. Where does that come from? 

 

Marcus: It’s really interesting that you would say that. I don’t know if people who know me would necessarily call me “humble,” but I appreciate that. You know, it’s almost cliche but Socrates said, “True wisdom lies in knowing that you know nothing. “ Philosophers like Michel de Montaigne have said basically the thing, that the one way not to be able to learn is to think you already know. 

 

What can happen that’s negative is if somebody goes online and finds something and then a switch has been flipped and now they are no longer able to listen to anything about that topic. And it’s sad because the only reason they can’t learn is because they think they know. You’re turned off at that point. So really I think a mark of an open intellect that I would strive for and aspire to is to always be totally open, just open to everything. Let’s hear it and let’s weigh it and talk about it.

 

Faith Is Not Blind: Final question. If you are talking to a young person who’s running into the kind of conflict we’re talking about–they’re really stuck and really kind of uprooted–what would you say?

 

Marcus: The first thing I would say is that I recognize that it’s hard. And the hardest part is that sometimes (and you have this also in your book and other people have remarked on this) other people can make you feel when you’re in this type of situation, like maybe you don’t belong in the Church. Ant this can be people in or out of the Church. They can be like, “Well, you know, if you believe this or if you don’t believe this, then this isn’t the right place for you.” But I would say, “Follow your feelings, ideally in a positive way, in a positive search. Go after the truth and do it in a positive way. And I really feel like guidance will come. Truth will come. You’ll learn it a little bit at a time. You shouldn’t expect it all to come at once. Just don’t let anybody tell you where you do or don’t belong. Just take those things that bring you joy and keep growing.

Faith Is Not Blind: Yes. Interesting. Persist. Persist in the dark and dreary wasteland. It sounds like you and Lehi have both discovered the same thing: that you will be led to the Tree of Life. 

 

Marcus: And maybe one more thing that’s kind of interesting. I’ve always loved this idea of Jacob wrestling this angel. And sometimes when people wrestle with a question it’s almost like they’re wrestling with an angel. You know, they’re wrestling. I like the image of wrestling. And what Jacob says to the angel is so interesting: “I will not let you go until you give me a blessing.” Don’t let those questions go. Just take them and have that wrestle. Tell God. Pray and tell Him that you want to do this and you want the blessings that will come from this. And then you can be like the Children of Israel. Israel means “one who wrestles with God.” And we can really take that on ourselves by rolling up our sleeves and saying, “Let’s work on this.” It’s not just going to be easy. But we can roll up our sleeves. That’s even what is desired. And the blessing came.  

 

Faith Is Not Blind: I love the energy. I love the peace and I love the confidence, Marcus. Thank you.

 

Marcus: It was a pleasure. Truly.