Episode Transcript
Welcome to faith and science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
At times I wonder when I hear people being critical of the Bible and renegading the Bible to just sort of some myths that were recorded in the past, rather than look at the Bible as an inspired book, where God revealed much about himself, about the history and origin of the world to people who really wanted to have a relationship and know wanted to be in contact with the creator, with the amazing mind that created our universe. And the evidence that the Bible is an inspired book, of course, comes in many ways, particularly from the prophecies that are recorded in the Bible, where God impressed the minds of people or spoke to people directly, or sent angels to speak to people, to give them messages about the future or warnings. And, of course, the historical evidence that these came true.
And of course, there's the very spectacular prophecy in Daniel chapter two of Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Nebuchadnezzar, the famous king of Babylon that built the hanging gardens of Babylon that were considered by the greek historian Herodotus as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, these amazing gardens. And of course, the Book of Daniel describes this, and particularly chapter two describes the dream and the amazing prophecy that was fulfilled over hundreds to over 1000 years afterwards.
So we have this evidence as well as the historical accuracy of the historical aspects that are recorded. But the other things that impress me is that the way the Bible, for example, describes God as being a nonphysical being. And when you think about it, the physical universe had to be created by something outside of itself.
In other words, a being, a super intelligence, as we describe it, in terms of a mind outside of the physical world, outside and uninfluenced by the force fields that exist in nature. And of course, that's how the Bible describes it, describes God as a self existent one. And so he's always existed, he's outside time.
And also the Bible talks about how God spoke the universe and so forth into existence. And that makes a lot of scientific sense, too, because we know, for example, that our thoughts, which are non material in our brain, can affect electrical impulses and so forth. And the Bible talks about how we're made in the image of God.
And with our minds, we've been able to learn and discover and understand much about this physical world. Of course, the other view is that it all came about by some blind, random forces creating the amazing complexity of dna and living cells and the amazing structures and force fields we find in the universe, et cetera. But there still really is no scientific explanation how these conform naturally.
And as I said, the Bible, in the way it describes things, although in many ways it's quite simple. And people argue, well, it's not meant to be a science textbook and indeed it isn't. The way it describes things are still very factual.
In other words, even though things might be described very simply and not meant to be a scientific treat us to understand different things, nonetheless, they're presented in a way that is quite scientifically accurate. Now, of course, some people talk about, well, what about the Bible talks about the pillars of the earth and the earth can't be moved and all this sort of thing, but we understand. I think common sense tells us when certain things are poetical and we have a person such as writing the psalms, writing poetries, expressing feelings and so forth.
And so I don't have an issue with that. And it seems to me quite clearly that where we are, we observe things and we talk about a sunrise and a sunset. That's part of our language.
Even an astronomer sitting with a friend or spouse, watching a beautiful sunset or sunrise, would talk about, oh, look at the sunrise, look at the sunset. It wouldn't talk about, look at the amazing development of the colour as the earth rotates. So it's caused by the rotation of the earth, not the sunrise.
So for me, that it's. It's quite clear the difference between these poetic expressions. But when we come to the Genesis account, beginning of Genesis, one of the things, again, that just a little snippet that I quite find interesting is that it talks about God placing the first humans, Adam and Eve, in a garden.
And we read in Genesis, chapter two, verse eight and onwards. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden. And there he put the man whom he had formed and out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
The tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And then it goes on a little bit further, verse 15. And the Lord God took man and put him in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
I find this quite interesting. Of course, God previously talked about how he made all the trees and the animals and the green fields. And so here we see that God planted a garden that was especially filled with trees that were very pleasant to look at and good for food.
And this was the environment and man was put there to dress it and to keep it. And of course, we can see that God put man in this particular environment and there's really, really good reasons for this. And it's quite fascinating that in the last ten years or so, there's been a very significant increase in research looking at the benefits of living in a garden.
And I think this is quite, very interesting, the amount of research papers that are now coming out in this area describing these benefits. And, of course, one of the problems that we have is that we're moving away from living in gardens to living in high density housing. And often these are painted grail.
They're just unpainted concrete colours. I was driving through part of Sydney recently that I hadn't driven through for many years, and I was appalled at the change in the landscape. And that had occurred with the building of large numbers of high rise concrete unit blocks.
And they were just grey concrete, very little trees, no colours. And it was most depressing. And I can remember a similar effect travelling on the bus from the airport just outside Koshitsa in Slovakia and coming in and all these grey concrete unit blocks.
It was just a really depressing environment. Then we got into the old city itself, with the gardens and parks and so forth and lovely buildings. And it's interesting.
This study was published in Preventative Medicine Reports, volume five, in March 2017, to pages 92 to 99. And it was a metaanalysis of the beneficial health effects of gardening. It was called gardening is beneficial for health, a metaanalysis.
And this was really the first metaanalysis of the different studies that have been done. In other words, what these researchers have done is they've looked in the scientific literature of people that have published research related to the health benefits of gardening and then combined the results of all these studies. And there were 22 case studies that had been published after 2001, which involved 76 comparisons between a control group and a group that had been in gardens and working in gardens, as opposed to people that didn't.
And most studies came from the United States, but they were also from Europe, Asia and the Middle east. And the studies reported a wide range of health outcomes, such as reductions in depression. And, I mean, that immediately was very obvious to me, walking through a garden and park, as opposed to walking down streets just filled with big concrete towers.
I can certainly understand, at least from my perspective, the increase in depression, unfortunately, in those areas, but also reduced anxiety. It also reduced bmi, body mass index, and they measured increases in life satisfaction, increases in quality of life and sense of community. And so the metaanalysis results showed significant positive effects of gardening on health outcomes.
And, of course, gardening. There's a number of ways Adam was put there to keep the garden, to tend to it and keep it and having a garden myself, I know if you leave it for any length of time, boy, things can overgrow and you've got to prune things back. Plants grow in the wrong places, whether you call them weeds and they have to be removed and so forth or other, because some plants, typically weeds, can smother other plants.
And so we need to preserve the balance. It provides ongoing work, but also I found there's a sense of achievement after working in the garden and seeing it's all tidied up and the weeds removed. There's this sense of satisfaction of achieving something, as well as enjoying the plants themselves that are now still healthier.
And again, so as they further looked at these studies, it was quite important. And one of the important things was that a number of studies were done on the persistent effect of being in a garden, and people who worked in gardens for a while, and then three months later, after they'd even stopped, there were still beneficial effects. Of the 22 studies that were done, seven studies focused on daily gardening and found that those who participate in daily gardening had better health than did non gardeners.
They had a lot less stress, they had lower bmis, they had generally increased general health and life satisfaction. And one of the other things that is really coming out, and they pointed out, and they say the first and most direct one is the added benefit of direct experience with nature. And this is a very important one.
A number of studies have been published in this Hatig and others in 2014 and Kennega and others in 2013. And they really looked at when we spend time in a natural environment, that is, where there's natural trees, flowers, rocks, waterfalls, paths, lakes, birds, natural birds, natural wildlife, it has a significant effect on our health. And indeed, attention restoration theory proposes that the natural world is cognitively restorative, and exposure to nature has the potential to allow restoration from attention fatigue.
And I'll talk about that in a bit, a little bit more. And this especially comes from work by Kaplan, published back in 1995. The other benefits of gardening, of course, is that to encourage people to undertake physical exercise, and of course, that affects both our physical and psychological health.
And a us study pointed out in two eight that if elderly people participated in daily gardening, they could achieve the recommended physical activity levels of at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity. And of course, one of the other obvious things is engagement in gardening is likely to encourage people to grow fruit and vegetables and as a result, have a healthier diet. So this was a really interesting study that was published.
As I said, it was the first metaanalysis published back in 2017. Just following that, in 2018, in June 2018, in critical medicine, that's a London based journal, there was an article on gardening for health, and the author there points out that there's increasing evidence that exposure to plants and green space, and particularly to gardening, is beneficial for mental and physical health. And so he argues that that could reduce the pressure on the National Health Service in the UK.
And he went on to say, so why does gardening seem to be so beneficial for health? Because it combines physical activity with social interaction, particularly in community gardens, and exposure to nature and sunlight, and goes on to point out that sunlight lowers blood pressure, as well as increasing vitamin D in summer. And the fruit and vegetables that are produced have positive impact on the diet. And working in the garden restores dexterity and strength and aerobic exercise that is involved, particularly things like digging, raking, mowing, quite calorie, intense.
And the other thing is you're bending over, reaching for different weeds, moving around. You will tend to use a lot of muscles that you wouldn't otherwise use, particularly if you were just sitting, reading a book or watching television or something. And they also point out that whether a community gardens, or where people engage together in community projects, can improve learning, improve poor mental health, and can delay the symptoms of dementia.
I can remember when my wife and I were first married, we lived in a little village of Glen Hewen in Tasmania, and this was an area where there are a lot of small fruit and apple and pear orchards, small fruit grown. And so you had the black currants, Logan berries, raspberries were grown there. And you would hear particularly the harvesting time, the people working together.
And of course it was a strong christian community with a number of different faith groups there. And at times you'd hear wim folk singing hymns whilst they were working together in the fields. And of course, there was that sense of community.
And of course, trees and bushes remove quantities of toxins and particulates from the air through their leaves. And the author goes on to the benefits of that. So obviously, when we have a lot of plants and trees around us, this really helps not only produce more oxygen for us to breathe, but removes many of the toxins and toxic vapours and particulates that are in the air from our civilization.
Richard Luv Louv was originally back in looked at published Nature Deficit disorder. And nature deficit disorder was first coined in two five when he published an article called last Child in the woods, saving our Children from nature deficit disorder. And there was an article published online in October 2019, and he goes on to discuss that the proliferation of electronic communication, all our mobile phones are little screens we look at all the time.
Poor urban planning and the disappearing of open space. And I noticed with a lot of the new housing subdivisions, the houses are really crammed in on small blocks. There's not big leafy streets anymore with trees down the centre of the streets.
They're so narrow, with two cars parked, you can hardly get a car down the middle. Would definitely be a worry for a truck driver and very little open space. Maybe there's the occasional park with a little playground.
But this poor urban planning, I think, in my view, is really a worry. And he goes on to talk about the diminished importance of the natural world in public and private education. And then, of course, parental fear magnified by news and entertainment media.
So people worried about their children playing outside, stranger danger. And of course, that's real, unfortunately. But it's interesting, he says, that since two, five, the number of studies on the impact of nature experience on human development has grown from a handful to nearly 1000.
So over a thousand studies now. And this expanding body of scientific evidence suggests that nature deficit disorder contributes to a diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, conditions of obesity, higher rates of emotional and physical illness. And research also suggests that nature deficit weakens ecological literacy and stewardship of the natural world.
And these problems are linked more broadly to what health care experts called the epidemic of inactivity. So there was quite an interesting article that was published there in October 2019 on Richardlove spelt louv.com. Another research paper that was published, Environmental Research public Health in 2020, September issue 2020.
The article is titled Community Gardening Stress Wellbeing and Resilience Potential. And there was an article in there on the effects of natural environments and gardening activities on mental health. And the researchers went on to point out that humans depend both physically, emotionally on nature, and both spending time in nature and connecting to nature were observed to offer a number of cognitive effects and physiological benefits.
And so this, again is spending time. And so again, we can see all this scientific evidence that's backing the Bible account of why God put man in nature. And of course, today, I guess if you took that account to an urban planner and this sort of thing, I'd probably laugh at you.
But here we have this evidence that the Bible account, the things that are written in the Bible, we really should take notice of. And now, of course, in many ways, even now, thousands of years after the Bible was written, we're finding and discovering scientific evidence that is supporting the immense health benefits of what the Bible talks about and the ideal that the Bible set up for us. I mean, the original biblical diet was a plant based diet.
And now, of course, we have all the growing amount of evidence on the benefits of plant based diets on human health. But it's interesting that exposure and connection to natural environments not only has direct benefits through stress recovery and mental fatigue restoration, it also has implicit benefits by serving as a buffer against stressful life events. And it said that the research has found that regular contact with nature is found to lead to long lasting positive impacts on mental health, including a reduction in depressive and anxiety symptoms.
And landscapes consisting of natural elements like groves of pot trees have been found to evoke feelings of pleasure and calmness and are conductive to the restoration from stress. And green spaces in urban environments are associated with stress relief and also increased longevity of senior citizens. And so here we see these amazing benefits.
And of course, we also have the Sabbath. The Sabbath. Has God had this programme? Every 7th day we're to rest from our work, not do work again.
Provides this opportunity to get out in nature and see the handiworks of God. Recently, of course, there was Kaplan's research many years ago on the benefits of horticultural therapy and so forth, improvement of mental health. And also just in June 2023, a University of Ohio in the United States published that gardening can be a great form of exercise, of course.
And they published a whole article on the health benefits of gardening. The growing, consuming the fresh vegetables and keeping, particularly in older people, keeping hands strong and nimble. But again, they found also that gardening isn't just good for your body, that it's good for your mind.
Gardening stimulates the brain and reduces risk of cognitive decline. And some studies have shown that regularly gardening may help reduce the risk of dementia by 50%. And also other studies show that cytokine levels rise, which in turn activate the feel good hormone serotonin when working in the soil.
And also specific bacteria in the soil can also stimulate our serotonin levels. And so there's these amazing studies in so many ways that contact with nature improves our health. And that's exactly what the Bible recommends.
A Bible is an amazing book, but it also tells us of the connection that we have with God, our creator, who loves us, who came to our planet as the person Jesus Christ, to live and to teach us, and to offer a way of salvation for us, so that when we die, we will be resurrected to live with God in an earth made new. The Bible gives the amazing details of this and I would encourage you to read particularly the New Testament books of the Bible that describe this in detail. You've been listening to faith and science.
I'm Dr. John Ashton. If you want to re listen to this programme, you can remember to Google 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the radio and listen button.
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