Joe Rogan Experience #2008 - Stephen C Meyer

Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day first of all thank you for being here appreciate it it is great to be here Joe thanks for having me I've really enjoyed uh watching some of your videos online and and listening to these arguments this this idea of intelligent design my question to you like right off the bat was is this an idea that you did you have pre did you have a notion in your mind already that you were trying to prove or was

this something that you sort of started to believe upon the preponderance of evidence it was more the latter but I had a by the time I first encountered it a philosophical framework that made me open to it um I had a long protracted uh religious conversion from late High school all the way through college it took it was the last thing from a Damascus Road experience and uh how did it happen it was a process of philosophical deliberation it was not really based on science initially I started having weird existential questions when I was 14

years old after I'd broken my leg in a skiing accident and questions like well what's it going to matter in a 100 years uh I I was there's this great quote from Bertrand Russell where he says you know that all the the Noonday genius of human achievement is destined for extinction in the vast heat death of the solar system who I had never encountered burand Russell as a 14-year-old but I later encountered that quote and I thought that was what was bothering me you know that dude was a scorcher yeah yeah well I you know

I read in the hospital after I had this accident I was reading a a book about the history of baseball and I was totally into baseball at the time I couldn't think of a a better a higher form of human achievement than to play for the newor Yankees and yet all the stories of the great baseball guys ended the same you know they they were recruited by uh Scouts who saw their talent they came up to the big leagues they uh amassed Records they won certain number of World Series and then you know if they

were really great uh they go to the Hall of Fame and retire at 38 and then what and then I got to thinking well but then what for any of us you know and and so I was I was this question of of of meaning kind of haunted me what what what could I possibly do that would have any lasting or enduring meaning and um I ended up taking I I did a physics major and a geology major u in college but I took as many philosophy classes as I could along the way and I

encountered these existentialist writers who were asking these same types of questions and realized oh uh as a 14-year-old I thought I must be insane to be having these questions and I worried that I was insane it was a real I mean it was a it was a real funk I was in for six or eight months uh and then later I realized no these were philosophical questions and for me uh the religious conversion I had started to address and answer those questions so I was I was by the time I got out of college I

was a convinced theist for philosophical reasons but it but I had at that point I was completely comfortable with the evolutionary explanation of everything and then at a conference in my that I tend did um while I was working as a geophysicist uh it was a conference about the origin of the universe the origin of life and the origin and nature of human consciousness and it was divided on each panel between theists and philosophical materialists who were debating these these big questions at the intersection of Science and philosophy and I was kind of stunned to

learn or to to perceive at least that the theists seem to have the int intellectual initiative in each of these big discussions that materialism was a philosophy that was a spent force it was not explaining where life first came from or the universe came from let alone Consciousness and so I began in a sense on a kind of intellectual journey to see where these new evidences the evidence for the beginning of the universe or the fine-tuning of the universe or the the thing that really intrigued me was the discovery that at the foundation of life

and even the very simplest cells we have this amazingly complex code that DNA we all learn about about in high school we think that you we all learned about the double helix structure of the DNA molecule but that's not the most important thing about it it's that within that double helix there is literally a code uh digital information that is directing the construction of the important proteins and protein machines that every cells every cell needs to stay alive Bill Gates has said it's like a software program but much more complex than any we've ever created

and I was doing at the time um for the the work as a GF business for an oil company I was doing uh seismic Digital Signal processing which was an early form of Information Technology and I got fascinated with the idea that that there was this first of all an impass in evolutionary explanations of the origin of Life nobody how we got knew how we got from the chemistry in the Prebiotic soup to the code in an actual living cell uh but it was fascinated that the the impass was created by the mystery surrounding the

origin of information where did that come from and so a year later I was off to to uh grad school in England I ended up doing a PhD in origin of Life biology within a uh history and philosophy of science um Department in in Cambridge and um so that's kind of my a sketch of my journey and how I got interested in this I saw one of your previous interviews you said that you were very interested in Origins stories and yeah me too you know that was the Well's always interesting when you see someone who's

kind of dedicated their life to a very specific thing like where what's the root of this where did it come from so for you you you went through this funk and did you find comfort in religion is is that what helped you did you find structure in it I found answers to basic worldview questions that I thought were as a 14-year-old I thought nobody you know there must be something wrong with me nobody else is having these questions I'm not talking to anyone at school who's worried about I think you're just smart it was I

remember one day I'm in just uh total re well okay for example I was in this big leg cast and I would crutch my way up to the to the uh up our driveway get the newspaper bring back the box scores to read you know about the baseball games the night before and every day it's a new date and I do this and a new date and a new date and I started to think time is a really freaky thing I can imagine an event you know I'm going to lift this cup I'm going to

drop it put it over there now that event just took place but it's already gone we're not experiencing it anymore we have a memory of it but what does that actually mean where did there was this flow of sensory experience but there didn't seem to be anything rooting it that gave it a a um an enduring reality and I had this sense there must be something that doesn't change or else everything else that does change um is passing ephemeral and and ultimately of no account and so you know you read I I ended up reading

the big fat Family Bible that I'd never cracked and uh found that when God revealed his name to Moses it was the I am that I am this Timeless Eternal person and you found the same thing in the New Testament the way Jesus Christ was referred to uh and so I thought I I wonder if there is something that doesn't change and so the kind of philosophical questions I was having made me wonder explore whether or not revealed religion might in fact be true can I ask you expand on that what do you mean by

something that does not change um some Eternal self-existent reality I guess I you know it was not something as a 14-year-old I had worked out it was a kind of an intuition that there um all I it was the experience of having uh the the the the the constant flux of changing sense perception left me with a sense that uh there was nothing solid to to hold on to in reality and um and so this was this is not a great you know this is not the argument for the existence of God that I would

Repose in in which I would Repose great trust I'm not trying to persuade anyone by this I'm just telling what my experience was at this point I later found what I think are very very persuasive arguments both philosophically and S scientifically the thing that really convinced me as a as a university student doing uh studying philosophy was an argument known as the the argument from epistemological necessity the fundamental question in modern philosophy that has really just been a stumper and has led to this whole postmodern turn where people don't think there's no objective basis for

any reality is the the question of the reliability of the human mind on what basis can we trust the way our minds process all that sensory information this goes back to to to Hume and Kant and some of the philosophers in the uh Enlightenment period and from that point forward there was a great doubt maybe we can't trust our minds maybe we can't trust uh we have all these things we assume about reality in order to make sense about reality that every cause has an effect for example um but we can't prove those things we

have to use those assumptions in order to know anything at all and the the encountered this argument that suggested well if if we try to justify our ability to know the the world around us by um by empirical data by things we observe this was hum's argument can't do it uh if we we uh he was a radical empiricist and found that in order to make any sense of the of the sense in presence he had he had to presuppose the uniformity of nature but to prove the uniformity of nature he had to make reference

to sensory observations and so he was arguing in a circle and so it came down you couldn't justify the reliability of assumptions we the we make in our minds by observing the world you had to use those assumptions to make sense of the observations but if you presupposed that our minds were made by a benevolent Creator who gave us those assumptions in order to make sense of the world that he also made then there was a principle of Correspondence between the way the Mind worked and the way the world worked in which case we could

trust the the basic reliability of the mind and this turns out to be one of the key foundational assumptions that gave rise to modern science it was called the idea of intelligibility Newton Bole Kepler the great founders of modern science thought that they that nature had secrets to reveal there were patterns there to be revealed that we could understand because our minds had been made in the image of the same rational Creator who had built rationality and design and pattern and lawful order into the world do do you believe in evolution I believe in uh

well that that's so I believe in microevolution I believe that there are real evolutionary processes I'm skeptical about what's called Universal common descent the idea that all living forms have evolved from one single common ancestor I'm profoundly skeptical skeptical about chemical Evolution the idea that the um non-living chemicals in a Prebiotic Ocean or Prebiotic soup arrang themselves to form the first living cell and I'm also skeptical about the creative power of the mutation select ction mechanism which as it happens uh so are many leading evolutionary biologists today I attended a conference in 2016 at the

Royal convened by the Royal Society uh in London Royal Society being the oldest and most August scientific body in the world and it was con convened by a group of evolutionary biologists who were essentially dissatisfied with Neo Darwinism the standard textbook theory that we learn in um in all high school and college Tex books and many of them were saying we need a new theory of evolution the first talk at that conference was given by gerd Muer a prominent Austrian evolutionary biologist and he simply enumerated the five major uh what he called explanatory deficits of

neod Darwinism and his basic perspective was the mutation selection mechanism does a good job of of uh optimizing or modifying pre-existing forms um it can generate small scale variation but it does a very poor job of explaining the origin of those forms think about for example the DAR Darwin's Finch paks great job of explaining how variations in weather patterns result in changes in the shape and structure of the finch paks but that mechanism turns out not to do a good job of explaining the origin of birds or ma other major animal groups in the first

place so um modification yes innovation no so modification over massive amounts of time don't you think that would eventually lead to new groups CU a lot of new groups have they have similar origins or at least Origins from uh one ancestor well time yeah time was always the hero of the plot but let me there C let me just run a couple of arguments by you and let's see see what you think okay and I I developed these in a lot of detail in my book Darwin's doubt um uh if we we uh we now

know thanks to the genetic Revolution ution the the molecular biological Revolution that if you want to build a new form of life you have at least you have to have new code because all all new forms of life depend upon uh new anatomical fundamentally new type type of animal for example um so you need new anatomical structures from but the new anatomical structures require new cell types new types so if you got animals that first come on the line and they have they have a digestive system they have a gut well you got to have

enzymes that can service a gut that can process food so enzymes are types of proteins proteins are built from the informational code in DNA so anytime you want to get a new it's just like in the computer world if you want to give a computer new function you've got to provide new code so um we have these long string these long digital bit strings of AC's G's and T's not zeros and ones but AC's G's and T's in a in a in a in a digital string and we call that a gene and if you

have a section of DNA for building a protein that's great all works now but if you want to build a fundament any new form of life you got to have you got to have new proteins to service the new cell types to build the new anatomical structures um in our computer world we know that if you start randomly changing the zeros and ones in a section of gene in a section of digital code you're going to degrade the function of that code long before you come up with a new string for making a new program

or operating system that the the functional sequences are what are they're called they're highly isolated in what's called sequence space you you you can change a few things and still retain function but after ver a very few number of changes you're going to degrade the function and long before you come up with a new function now the darwinian mechanism um starts with the idea that there are random changes in those in those dig bit strings those sequences of a c's G's and T's and based on our experience in the computer world we would expect that

random changes are going to again degrade those strings long before they're capable of building a new protein and there's now very compelling experimental evidence that that's true there's a Israeli um molecular biologist Dan Tok unfortunately he died fairly recently in a tragic accident but he was doing uh mutagenesis experiments on sequences of the on sequences of code for building specific proteins that fold it into stable structures they're actually called protein folds and he found that between three and 15 mutations was enough uh to degrade the thermodynamic stability of the protein structure that that the gene

was making and once you lose that thermodynamic stability you there's no you have no uh functional possibilities is there possibly an Undiscovered mechanism for protecting against that that we're not aware of yet possibly but there's numerous lines of evidence suggesting that that mutations are are within limits they're going you can modify again you can optimize an existing protein structure called a fold but if you if you allow too many of those mutations you're going to degrade and long before you would get a fundamentally new protein structure another protein fold so that's that's just one of

many I want to run one other argument by you that I think is very intuitive um the if you want to build it turns out that there are are um there are structures or systems for building that are uh very important for building new animal body plants and they're called developmental Gene regul regulatory networks they were de they were discovered at Caltech uh by Eric Davidson and colleagues Eric Davidson has also unfortunately recently passed away in the last few years but what these are what they discovered is that you not only have genes for building

proteins you have genes that are building that for for uh constructing molecules that send signals that tell the genome when to express other parts of itself so you've got s they're signaling molecules that are telling the genome when when to turn this part or that part on in order to build the right proteins at the right time as new cells are going through cell division in the process of animal development so if you go from one cell to two to four to eight to 16 Etc you've got to and as so you have a developing

animal form there there are points in that trajectory where where it's important to differentiate one type of cell from another and for certain types of cells muscle cells as opposed to nerve cells or or uh bone cells to be to start to be constructed and all of this is under is closely choreographed by these signaling molecules so you get a DNA that builds a regulatory RNA that turns on another part of the DNA that then turns on uh that that builds a protein for servicing a particular type of cell at the right time and not

at another time and as Davidson and his colleagues mapped this out they discovered that the functional relationships that were involved looked like an integrated circuit it was and and they they call them developmental Gene regulatory networks and the point is you can't build a completely uh developed animal form unless you have this choreography taking place that is expressed through these developmental Gene regulatory networks but they discovered something else about them and that is that they cannot be altered significantly if you alter any of the core elements of these development Gene regulatory networks animal development shuts

down and this makes perfect sense to anyone with a background and say electrical engineering because there's a principle of engineering that says the more tightly integrated a functional system the more difficult it is to perturb any part of the system without defect or the whole it's a constraints principle and this turned out to be true in Spades of these effectively integrated circuits now they weren't controlling the flow of of um electricity but more the flow of information in in the developing organism so here's the here's the argument you need a developmental genee regulatory Network to

make an animal body plan but if you want to turn one animal body plan into another animal body plan you're going to have to change developmental Gene regulatory Network a into developmental a completely novel developmental Gene regulatory Network to build that novel animal form but the one thing we know experimentally is these things cannot be altered without the destruction of the first of the initial form and once that form is is destroyed there's no more evolutionary development possible now it turns out that not only Neo Darwinism the kind of standard textbook form of evolutionary theory

has has no answer for this and Davidson was quite explicit about this he was by the way no friend of creationism or intelligent design but he said very explicitly that Neo Darwinism is a commits a catastrophic error in thinking because it is not addressing this this fundamental problem there's no uh um but it's and it's not just Neo Darwinism there really there there's also newer models of of evolutionary theory and they don't address this either this is so so there are these sort of fundamental challenges to the creative power of mutation and selection and other

similar similarly undirected M uh materialistic processes that have are just not have not been answered and they seem pretty fundamental what what it looks like when you look at I've got a picture of both in two of my books these networks they look like circuits and circuits in our experience are the product of Engineers of intelligence I mean we're looking at distinctive Hallmarks of intelligent agency when we look at circuitry and code and information processing systems I mean this is what we're finding inside life it's not what Darwin thought in the 19th century or his

colleagues Huxley who said the cell was a simple homogeneous globule of undifferentiated protoplasm like it it's a new day in biology things are much more complex than people thought when they formulated these evolutionary ideas there's a lot to talk about here sorry that was a long answer it was very long it's very hard to keep up with you but when you're you're talking about this this process and this very first of all I want to go back one step further you were saying something about and I'm paraphrasing but whatever this intelligent thing is creating us

somehow or another in its image or somehow or another thinking the way it thinks how did how did you say that again yeah this was this was the idea of the early scientists who got science going was the way they've talked about it was the intelligibility of the universe it was intelligible it could be understood by us because our minds had been made in the image or likeness of the creator of the universe itself isn't it just possible that our minds are complex and curious and so we're trying to figure out what all these things

are and what DNA is and what molecules and that we're trying to figure out the very fiber of existence itself what what what is it made out of wouldn't any curious self-aware creature start to contemplate these things and if it's if it really is an intelligent force that made us to think the way it thinks why would it have War why would it have murder why would it have all the horrific crimes that we see drug addictions why would it create us in a form like that yeah I mean there was uh I mean the

background of this let's start with the first question I'll get to the second question it's a equally profound and good question the um the the the historian historians of science have asked a question it's the why why then why they question we've had all these great civilizations Egyptians made the pyramids as you and I were talking about we had the um uh the Chinese had Gunpowder the Romans built aqueducts but for some reason in Western Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries and I think I think the antecedants for that for that go back a

little further uh you get these very systematic methods for stud studying nature arising and you get this concern to use mathematics to describe the order in nature and you get this incredibly productive uh historians of science call it they call the Scientific Revolution something really dramatic changes mhm and and it's different than other civilizations and as they they've examined what happened they well the material you know the the material substrate or the things you would need to do science were in all the other cultures and there were many great cultures but this this systematic method

of studying nature uniquely arose in Western Europe in a particular time in a particular context and many many historians of science have come to the conclusion that the the thing that was the difference that made the difference was the worldview was the philosophical assumptions of those Western European scientists who were almost entirely coming out of a judeo-christian worldview and one of the key assumptions that they had was that that systematic study of nature was actually possible it would it's it's actually very hard to do science it's very hard to see a pattern in what can

initially seem to be a chaotic jumble of of of sense data and these these thinkers had the conviction that there were such patterns there was rationality there was order behind things because there was a God who had made the universe to be orderly and to be understood so that was just one of those thought differences or differences in thinking that historians have identified as a as a as a key feature that explains why the Scientific Revolution happened where it did um and that's that's not to say that uh the only people that can do science

once it gets going are people of religious Faith but it is to say that the people with a particular religious Faith had a reason to pursue science that apparently uh other cultures did not have to the same degree do we know that for a fact though because there there's a lot of evidence that we've lost some civilizations we've lost a lot of their knowledge the burning of the Library of Alexandria we we don't really know that much about what they knew obviously they had some incredibly complex mathematics if they built the pyramids we know that

we we know there had to be measurement we know there had to be like some very complex geometry in order for them to figure out how to do it correctly well certainly there may have been other things that have gone on that we didn't know about and that were lost the the thing that the only point I was making was that the people who got science going in the 16th and Century 17th century did so for a discernable uh religious reason if you will and that's that is just a a fact of history and but

that doesn't necessarily mean they were correct well it did does mean that they they generated a very fruitful way of investigating nature it certainly aided them and it it it it probably motivated them in a lot of ways and guided them in a lot of ways but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're correct in that assumption no it it no I and I wouldn't argue for the the um the correctness of a theistic worldview simply on the basis of the fruitfulness of science but it is a fact of history I think that a theistic worldview

was a very important motivator for those early scientists who did get science going and that science did turn out to be very fruitful so which is probably a very good point to have other Arguments for theism that's okay but for people that are atheists you know that widely dismiss religion as being silly like or or anti-science right anti-science but literally probably the birth of science as far as we know in the western world yeah I I know you've had you know uh Neil Tyson on your show you know and he he makes this claim that

Newton science uh was a dead end or Newton's religious beliefs led to didn't lead to any good questions they were a dead end uh he had great scientific insights but his religion was was bad news for science but um uh it turns out Newton didn't make the god of the gaps argument that Tyson accused of a making and many other people have accused and uh it was his greatest work the the principia the his work on gravitation was meant to dis to display it was part a religious project he was trying to to demonstrate the

principles the mathematical Harmony that had been built into creation by the Creator and he later writes a theological epilogue to the book called The General scholium where he makes the the religious motivation for his scientific work completely explicit and ends up making design arguments right in the in the context of that work so um this is I I just think it's um it's something that persuaded me that about theism initially before I encountered any scientific Arguments for it was this whole question of the reliability of the mind on what basis can we trust in the

reliability of the Mind One very good answer to that is the mind was created by the same God who created the world and that God created structures of the mind that allow us to know the world around us that so why again back to the other question why did God create War why does God create murder why does God create all the the horrific things we see in the news school shootings why would God create a mind that acts in that way well I think the the traditional theistic answer to that is the Free Will

defense it's not that God created those things he created free agents knowing that it was better to create free agents who had the ability to choose and therefore to choose uh to love him or not or love each other or not than it was to create puppets but with that ision to create free moral agents there was also the risk that people would use that freedom for uh uh to exploit others others sorry but how do you react to the argument of determinism then in the the face of this uh argument that God created free

will uh unpack that a little for determinism the the the concept that the like when you see someone who's in jail say he made a bad decision he went to jail right but if you go back through that person's life you go through their their the oh right right yeah their life the childhood the horrific traumas all the abuse they've suffered in and out of the justice system at a very young age surrounded by it's not a free will issue entirely there's a lot of variables uh understood um the philosophical way of thinking about that

is the distin to make a distinction between a set of necessary conditions and sufficient conditions um the many of those but actually Let Me Go a different direction um the there there's two different views of human nature one is that we are moral agents free moral agents and one is that we're completely determined by genes environment or evolutionary past and uh I'm convinced that even in the face of terrible environmental uh conditions in our background we are still free to choose um I think there are certain types of backgrounds that incline people towards um a

tendency to harm others and to do things that we would regard as crimes but I think we still are free I think that's a a fundamental there's some real clear Research into trauma and the developmental cycle of children how it leads to psychopathy and all sorts of other real serious problems Free Will comes into question and determinism makes a better argument I I would uh there's a great philosopher of uh how do you but how do you respond to that I would say that those are uh those are predisposing inclinations that are probably necessary to

explain the behavior but not sufficient that I think even in the face of of things that incline us towards certain courses of action we still have we still have Choice um and I think the the there's a lot of brain physiological research that shows that um that supports the idea that the mind is not completely determined by the the neuro neurophysiological correlates or the under underlying right you know brain chemistry are are we isolating for any reason what's that are we isolating these two variables for any reason whether it's determinism or free will like why

why does it have why what does one have to win out are we not I I would agree I think there there but if you allow any free will at all then we're not completely determined in which well but no one's saying completely I mean determinism the determinism uh yeah proponents are then we're then we're agreeing Joe um I once heard an excellent lecture from um uh Berkeley uh philosopher of mine John surl and he was the guy who did that famous Chin Chinese room Paradox and uh what is that um not that well okay

let's Brack it and I'll get to the main point uh the main thing is um and he showed that that uh with all the the research we've had on in in brain science neuros Neuroscience there are we've shown that there are lots of things that are necessary conditions of certain brain States and necessary concern uh conditions physiological necessary phys physi so to have a certain brain State there must be some under there are underlying physiological correlates that must be in place to uh have there to use that brain state to make a certain course of

action to accomplish a certain C course of action also there are necessary neuro Coral necessary conditions necessary corelates but he showed that but we've never in the research showed that that have closed the gap between necessary and sufficient that uh that that just because those states are there doesn't mean we will all that someone will is forced to make to make that that choice or to to undertake that course of action and so I think you have you're aware of that as a person though right I'm aware of that person all the time I have

I you know I I wake up Grumpy in the morning because I didn't get enough sleep it doesn't mean I have to slap one my kids of course yeah so um but that's why it's kind of a combination of the things it is a combination but in saying it's a combination you and I are saying the same thing there's there's a there's an element of agency that is retained uh I would say for almost all people I do think there are people who have um H have um lost it if you will in the sense

I mean I think there is a legitimate Insanity plea sure but it's it's been way way overused because we have an underlying commitment to materialism and determinism here let me let me tell you a story that but but let me step in that we also have psych drugs you know there there's there's a real issue with that as well there's there's a lot of people that are on medications and medications have horrible side effects and unintended effects and there's a lot of that as well yeah I I agree I'm a big fan of the work

of uh Jeffrey Schwarz the uh uh UCLA psychiatrist has written the book um you are not your brain and um he shows that those those um um psychotherapeutic drugs can be helpful in stabilizing uh people but that for many anxiety disorders it's also really important to retrain the the thinking patterns that lead to anxiety that the think that that there's a a mind over matter aspect as well as the material substrate aspect and I think you and I are saying the same thing effectively that that if you say there's a combination of factors involved and

one of them is our own human agency then we're saying that we retain free will even in the in the face of of predisposing materialistic factors um if I could a story okay we're getting pretty hey and pH philosophical good so good stuff um 1925 is the famous Scopes trial with h Clarence Daryl the year or two before that I can't remember the exact year there's a famous Leopold and lobe case in Chicago two young uh college students uh commit a horrific murder they're taking philosophy courses from a professor who is an advocate or a

proponent of nitian uh the nitian uberm Mitch you know the idea of the Overman and that saying that you know that uh we need to that the really enlightened person uh extricates themselves from bgea morality and chooses their own morality and so these two young college students end up killing a 12-year-old boy for the thrill of it was the was the justification their convicted uh they're tried they're convicted they're awaiting sentencing and the ACLU sends out Clarence Darrow to argue for leniency for clemency or for leniency in in the con in the uh in the

case and he makes the first diminished responsibility plea in American jurus Prudence history he says he says um uh was Dicky L to blame because of the infinite forces that were at work in him through the evolutionary Pro millions of years before and so he he appeals to evolutionary determinism to say that these two young guys were not responsible for what they had done um and that basically our M our you know our genes our environment and The evolutionary process that programmed these inclinations into these young men is the real culprit is what uh was

responsible and so this is the this is the first time we get the diminished responsibility plea in in our legal system there was a little Tune In The Wall Street Journal a few years ago with it this hapless guy standing before the judge and he says Not Guilty by reason of millions of years of evolutionary selection for aggressive behavior you're honor so that's what I reject I'm I'm a Critic of that form of determinism I don't deny that there are factors that influence uh Behavior or U or our thoughts or influences but but ultimately I

want the Mind Over Matter approach I want to say what's let's let's we are responsible ultimately for what we think and what we do with those thoughts and you think that I mean if I'm paraphrasing but I'm the the thought process at our best is what the Creator is looking for right this is the idea that what we all gravitate towards what we all inherently recognize as being good regardless of culture regardless of geopolitical boundaries and all all the the very various different things that make us unique all across the globe we all know what's

good family love community that all these things are somehow or another in US exactly the great Christian apologist CS Lewis argued that there was a universally understood morality that he called the Dao or the TOA and we all know it's wrong to kick old ladies in The Shins for pleasure uh you do these you know kind of case studies in ethical philosophy but there might be a case where you need to kill someone in order for a higher good but you can easily construct things that reveal these deep moral intuitions we have it's it's not

okay to kick old ladies in The Shins for pleasure that's wrong and and that's wrong in a Christian culture it's wrong in an Asian culture that in a pre-christian Asian culture it's wrong in a you know it doesn't matter we all we all have those that that awareness of of a of sort of objective moral principles and I think that's that the way you put it was beautiful I think that the Creator wants us to live in accord with those things we know to be the good but these objective moral principles they do vary with

the environment and the amount of resources and stress and the dangers like like for instance I think it's pinker's work where he talks about uh hunter gatherer tribes that relatively frequently kill the older women because they just can't keep up anymore and they're nomadic and they they get in the way and so they try to catch them when they're not looking it's a great example because it actually illustrates the the the deeper uh universality of the moral the the deeper moral principles right even even cultures that were involved in child sacrifice they had they had

belief systems that suggested that if they sacrificed the children then the crops would come in and it would benefit the the tribe as a whole so the underlying value was the preservation of life even though they had a they had a moral there there's a difference between a moral judgment and a moral principle they made a moral judgment that this is what was necessary to affirm the underlying moral principle now I would argue they had a false worldview that suggested that this was necessary but because they believe that that idea about the need to sacrifice

children to the Gods they made a moral judgment that differed from one that I would make or you would make but they did in the process actually affirm a deeper moral principle that that is the the value of human life right but the question is where did that idea even come from to sacrifice a child well that came from I you know that came from their their mythological you know religious belief where did that come from the more I think the more question more important question is where did the underlying Moral Moral principle come from

and why is that Universal on what basis can we justify it as a universal ought rather than just a statement of fact but does it exist in a person who's sacrificing a child that Universal moral principle seems to have been completely abandoned if you're sacrificing a child for some reason that you cannot prove that it's somehow or another going to influence something according to whatever your beliefs are that's going to make the crops come back oh I agree with you I think I think something very deep and profound has to be overwritten but I think

that is the the role that um uh I say a religious belief system can can play not in that situation their religious belief system allowed them to do it and in fact probably encouraged them to do it well that's what that's exactly what I'm saying that that religious belief system overrode the intuition that they would normally have based on the underlying moral principle why do they have that religious belief system if God is going to present religious beliefs if God is going to somehow or another come down and give wisdom to men why why do

some have this very [ __ ] up version of it yeah I can't answer that there are M there's a multiplicity of systems of belief what I what I have tried to do is argue for a theistic belief system that I think makes sense I think I think it gives a good account of this objective morality but also I think there's scientific evidence for it and that's what my work has been about I I mean I I'm not a sociologist of religion so I don't know exactly how all these different variants arose but some of

them have had these destructive sort of consequences where people have against their deeper intuitions overridden them because they have this belief that they've got to do this to make the crops come in or to right you know I I know that's not necessarily your field of study but it's still somehow or another these things are all intertwined in this idea sure yeah so yeah in making the argument that I'm making I'm not I'm not claiming to have answered all the other imponderables of of course of course no look it's a fascinating ation it's a fascinating

already it is yeah but I mean even the just the thought of something that is either intelligent or is code that is interwoven into the entire universe itself I have a question when we think of human beings we always think of human beings that's an awesome thing you just said actually I mean that's I was talking to my my colleague David berinsky about that very issue this morning you know how the it's not just the biology ologist but the the the physicists are now thinking of the foundational reality as being informational you know and I

mean we found we we we've located we know the locus of or the the place where the code is stored in in a living organism that's an unbelievable Discovery for 2,000 4,000 years however long humans have thought about these things at least back to the time of Aristotle we've had this mystery why does like beg get like why are children discernably like their parents why uh and in 1953 through 65 we have this amazing flurry of scientific activity that elucidates the source of the signal that ensures that that transmission of hereditary information and we discover

there actually is a code that is responsible for that phenomenon for we now talk about DNA replication and and and gene expression two different things the DNA molecule does so there's so to me that's a stop press moment in the history of Science and the history of biology but in the history of humankind to you know this this suddenly we have an inkling of how this how this happens you know so what I was going to say is that a human being we think of them as an individual but really they're a host for a

lot of organisms the the human being does not exist without the bacteria in its gut the human being does not exist without the Flor on it skin and the the human being is filled with billions of other living things right right when we think of the earth we think of the Earth as a host for you know billions of life forms insects and amibas and plants and animals and all that when we look at the planet itself we think of the planet as an individual but when we look at a Galaxy a spiral galaxy we

look at that as an individual we look at that as a thing when we look at the universe when we look at God are we making a mistake by thinking that it's something that created the universe that maybe the universe itself is this living thing the universe itself is god well that's an absolutely great question there are three basic views about this um one is that the universe is is itself the physical universe is eternal and self-existent and some people think of it as a kind of organism there was this guia hypothesis Lin margulis um

most most standard materialists just think of it as the product of matter and eternally existent or self-existent matter in energy or the physical fields that uh are expressed in material particles they think of those as Eternal and self-existent um the other view is a more pantheistic view that there's a kind of there is a kind of God but it's not an agent or a conscious mind that is that to whom you could pray or with whom you could communicate or who has communicated or created but rather it's sort of pervades the physical universe and it

is also Eternal and self-existent and then the third view is that there was there is a Transcendent Creator beyond the universe who brought the physical Universe into existence and who brought him into existence or her or it or they um just to finish the other thought and then I'll come back to that uh the the the the the third view is the view that I hold I'm I'm a classical theist and I think the scientific evidence is pointing in that direction fairly strongly in part because we now have evidence from multiple lines of evidence suggesting

that the Universe did in fact have a beginning the material Universe does not look to have been Eternal and self-existent and so then to answer your second question um I would say that every philosophical system uh sometimes philosophers talk about worldviews whether they're um formal philosophical systems are just sort of the the informal set of assumptions that we all need to make about reality but every worldview needs to answer the question what is the thing or the process or the entity from which everything else came what's what's the ground of being the starting point and

up until the 20th century I think the materialist naturalist view was very credible because it affirmed that that matter and energy were Eternal and self-existent in the same way that theists thought God was eternal and self-existent but in both systems or in all systems something is the is what philosophers call the Primitive the thing from which everything else comes I think in the in as a consequence or in the wake of our modern cosmological astrophysical discoveries that the material universe itself had a beginning that matter and energy is now a poor candidate to be that

Eternal self-existent thing and therefore I think that the theistic view that u a Transcendent Creator is the thing from which everything else came without itself being created is is the the the best place to start our philosophical thinking it's it's the be it provides the best explanation for what we see when you say that there's direct evidence that the Universe has a beginning what do you mean by that well it's a it's a fascinating story and when I tell in the in the the new book Return of the god hypothesis it starts there are basically

three different lines of evidence um there well there's three different classes of evidence if you will there's the evidence from observational astronomy um maybe we should just start there and then I'll tell you about that the stuff from theoretical physics uh I'm sorry they keep flopping off my head sorry you can adjust them they push in yeah want there we go Brian Simpson was here he's got a big head okay that's awesome um well it's it's an unbeliev it's another one of these I think maybe part of my story is that I was always fascinated

with these uh issues at the intersection of Science and philosophy where the scientific evidence leads you to a big philosophical uh question or or possibly conclusion so back to the ancient Greeks we've had this dis this debate is the universe Eternal and self-existent has it always been here or is it finite did it come into existence at a point in time in which case was there possibly an external creator that brought it into existence in the 1920s we get the first scientific evidence that helps us to answer that question um coming into the 20th century

most physicists assume that the universe is eternal uh it's infinite in in it's it's past Eternal you can go back as far as you want there's always matter there's always energy there's always space there's always always time in the 1920s uh Edwin Hubble is looking is at Mount Wilson in Southern California the big Observatory there he's a lawyer who's come into astronomy at a very pricious time because they've the astronomers have just started building these great Dome telescopes and they've also been developing photographic technology that allows them to collect a lot more light over a

long period of time and he starts looking at the distant galaxies no actually well they were they were nebula they didn't know whether they were galaxies or not and there was a debate right up to 1920 whether or not the Milky Way in which we live is the only uh Galaxy or whether these little smudges that they were detecting on the photographic plates with little dot of light with smudges whether that those were other galaxies or just a star with gas around it and Hubble was able to use some new techniques for measuring distances to

astronomical to distant astronomical objects in particular to these nebula and he found that the distance to the Andromeda nebula was measured at 900,000 Lighty years but the accepted uh measurement for the distance across the Milky Way was only 300,000 Lighty years so clearly the Milky Way could not contain the Andromeda nebula so therefore the Andromeda nebula wasn't just a nebula it was another galaxy and in the ensuing years then as he uses the the big telescopes and these new techniques he establishes that they galaxies Galore spiral galaxies spindle nebula galaxies it's it's so we now

know I think I put in the book I use the number 200 billion galaxies I think I've been since corrected that it's another order of magnitude that astronomers now think there's two trillion galaxies in the observable universe it's it's just unbelievable how much our aw awareness of the the vastness of the universe has expanded in really 100 years it's amazing right but the second thing that Hubble discovered is the light coming from those distant galaxies is being stretched out it's it's um if if you shine light through a prism it separates into the colors red

to Violet and the red light it corresponds to a light with longer wavelengths and what he's detecting is light that has shifted in these spectral uh analyses that they do in the red Direction suggesting that it's it's wavelengths are longer as you would expect if those Galactic objects are receding away from us if they're moving away so it's like the the Doppler effect with the train whistle you know if the Train's moving away the pitch of the sound goes down and that's because the sound waves are being stretched out well the same thing happens with

light and so very early on as he's studying the galaxies he's realizing that there's not just a lot of them and they're not just separate from our galaxy but they're moving away from us and in fact the further out they are the faster they're moving away and so that gives rise to the idea of an expanding Universe because to explain that observation the that you have to posit something like a roughly spherical expansion of the whole to account for that What's called the Hubble relationship that the further out the faster they're going and so that's

big Discovery number two for Hubble first there are other galaxies secondly they're moving away from us and that s is is suggesting that the universe as a whole is expanding now as you wind that that picture of the universe backwards in time if in your mind's eye you think of uh they call it back extrapolating what the universe would have been like a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago or a million or a billion however old the universe ends up being eventually all that Galactic material would have converged to a common Point past

which you cannot back extrapolate so that point then marks the beginning of the expansion of the universe but arguably arguably the beginning of the universe itself and so that's that's arguably arguably now there I think are other other developments both can oh yeah that's again another long explanation but that's okay so we're talking about 1920 right right now imagine the detection ability that we might have 500 years from now maybe this information is not the big picture maybe there's a lot more to be discovered with the advancement of Science and astronomy as as they can

develop methods to look deeper and deeper into the Galaxy I mean aren't we finding some things with the James web telescope that are leading some scientists to question the actual age of the universe itself um the J it's very I was gonna talk about James web after you started the question but it's um the James web I think has provide first of all the there is some debate though now about the the time timeline well uh the debate as I understand it let me answer the first part of your question and that is of course

you know all the arguments that I make in the book are provisional based on the best science that we have right and that's all we can do as scientists and philosophers of science okay um we're not um but we're looking at a very limited amount of data that we can acquire from things that are 13.9 billion light years away right sure but is striking uh how decisive the indicators are of a beginning based on what we we're discovering and James Webb has only reinforced that uh and there's kind of kind of a long story there

I'll try to make it short can we pause you here I'm sorry I have to pee we'll come back James web James web got awesome condense my thought so I give you a shorter sorry sorry we're back I didn't even make it for an hour so um James web James web telescope and James we yeah there's been a lot of media uh reports suggesting that the findings of the James Webb Telescope have undermined the case for The Big Bang or the Big Bang Theory uh but there's an interesting backstory on this most of these media

reports were based on the writings of a single uh physics researcher named Eric larner who's been since 1990 kind of carrying a torch uh to refute the big bang and um learner um in one of his his article quoted a University of Kansas astrophysicist uh saying that she stays up late at night wondering if based on the on the the James web that everything that we know is turning out to be false turns out that that researcher uh that that astrophysicist disclaimed his use of the quote explaining that he took it completely out of context

that she was talking about theories of Galaxy formation not about whether or not there had been a big bang and not about whether or not the universe as expanding as we would expect so he's confirmation bias yeah conf and and in a sense also taking somebody way out of context to make a point of his own you know he he he misused the quotation on purpose apparently apparently um so here's here's uh and there have been a number of leading astrophysicists in fact people who would like you know to know more about this I'd recommend

the uh what Brian keing from University of California San Diego great astrophysicist has been writing about this and but here here's the short story I wrote a an oped in the daily wired distilling some of this stuff um what the what the James web telescope is able to do is to in fact was what it was constructed to do was to detect extremely long wavelength radiation stuff that's outside the visible range I call it Uber red shifted the te it's actually in the infrared range is the more uh accurate physics uh term so it's looking

for very long wavelength uh radiation coming from from galaxies that are very very far out there now why would it be looking for that well because if the universe is expanding as we would expect based on The Big Bang Theory then the the radiation coming from things very very far out in space and therefore very far back in time should be very stretched out more stretched out than stuff that's closer at hand uh so the James web was constructed in hopes of detecting that type of radiation if it existed it's not assuming that it necessarily

would but it would be a way of confirming the expansion of the universe has been going on for a very long time and in order to do that the uh NASA people created some amazing technology they super cooled the detection techn or the detection apparatus to I think five six seven degrees above absolute zero so that the heat coming off of the instrument itself was not creating infrared that would that would uh interfere and what they were in fact able to detect from these very ancient very distant galaxies was super redshifted radiation Uber red shifted

stuff out in the infrared and we're able on the basis of that to synthesize images of these very very distant remote galaxies now the very fact that they were able to do that confirms that you have that what you would expect on the basis of the Big Bang Fury that you would that the amount of red shift that you would expect to be present if in fact the Galaxy it been expanding throughout that vast stretch of time was in fact present and was detected now that didn't get reported there were what the whole Focus was

on the fact that there were galaxies that were more mature there were more of them early on than we would have have expected based on our theories of Galaxy formation and so those are anomalies that need to be addressed and have not yet been explained as I understand it maybe the astrophysicists have made more progress on that in even recent recent days but the base picture of an expanding Universe outward from the beginning has not been undermined but rather confirmed in a very dramatic way at very great distance and with the and for Galaxies that

are um very far Look Back Time way way back in time so I think it's a rather dramatic confirmation there have been many others the cosmic background radiation that was discovered in 1965 the Kobe radiation of George that George smot discovered in the 90s so there's been this pattern of confirming evidence of this basic picture of an expanding Universe out from the beginning in in observational astronomy from the 20s right up till now and so that I think gives us good reason to think best we can tell the universe at a beginning can I pause

you on that what is the the when she was discussing the the formation of galaxies what what had thrown that into question like what what was about the formation of galaxies that undermined previous ideas I I'm going to answer tentatively because I I don't know this as well as the other that I just described but as I understand it it's that there were are more galaxies that formed earlier and are more mature than we would have expected because they were able to do look back to 13.5 13.6 billion years ago they think the origin of

the universe is about 13.8 billion years ago so apparently galaxies were forming faster than we would have expected and I think that's the anomaly that is on the table does that just push the timeline further back but still come up with the data that points to the idea of a beginning I that I I've wondered that I that seems to me a logical possibility maybe maybe the origin of the universe was further back but it's still you're still getting this picture of a of a of a collapsing sphere in the reverse direction of time back

to a point but is it possible that with further further detection we can with new data have a better understanding of what is actually going on rather than just saying it all points to this thing because it seems like there's there's data but it's what you what you're describing seems like it's possible at least in the future to have better detection methods yeah it's always possible that we can change our minds on things because science is always provisional but there are many stable um uh theories that have persisted because of a preponderance of evidence that

points to and continues to point to the same conclusion and I think we've had a hundred years now where we've had repeated new types of observations that point towards the beginning and there were there two other classes of of um two other developments in theoretical physics that also I think reinforce this that I also wrote about in the book um one is um the one one is the the the singularity theorems that Hawking and Penrose and George Ellis uh proved in the 1960s and70s and then there's something called the uh Bor Guth vinken theorem which

I think is even a tighter physics proof of a beginning I think there is a loophole with the Hawking Penrose um uh Ellis Singularity theorem although it's it's I think very suggestive and and highly indicative of a beginning I let me run it just briefly because it's it's it's a fun thing to think about so Hawking is U doing black hole physics for his PhD in the 1960s and he's at Cambridge and he's having these neurological symptoms and he's he's diagnosed with ALS he gets very very discouraged he thinks he's going to quit and he's

encouraged to press on by uh close friends and he does and he ends up uh writing This brilliant thesis where he has one chapter where he's thinking about what the cosmologists are talking about is that we've got this expanding universe and if universe is ex expanding in the forward direction of time then matter is getting more and more diffuse over time now um General he part of his thesis involves general relativity Einstein's theory of gravity and according to Einstein uh the a massive body actually curves the fabric of space or SpaceTime so if you're going

in the forward direction of time space is getting less and less curved uh and matter more and more diffus but if you're going in the reverse direction of time the matter is getting more and more densely concentrated at every successive point in the finite past until again you reach a limiting case where the Mattery gets so densely concentrated that space gets so tightly curved that it can't get any more tightly curve it can't get any more densely concentrated and you move towards a point of infinite density and infinite curvature you get to a limied case

now infinite curvature corresponds to zero spatial volume and so the picture of the origin of the universe that sort of intuitively flows from this is one where you get not just matter and energy arising but space and time come into existence at that at that zero point and um he presents this in his PhD thesis uh it's the story of this is told really nicely in the little film the the the the um U Theory of Everything and he's fear in trepidation getting examined but one of his ex examiner they're nitpicking all these different things

but then they say hey the idea of a of of a black hole at the beginning of the universe A Spacetime Singularity this is brilliant congratulations Dr Hawking and they shove the the thesis book back over to him and he's passed but one of them says now go work out the maths and he ends up working out the math of this intuitive proof that he develops with uh sir Roger Penrose with whom you have done a wonderful interview and and George Ellis who I've had the occasion to meet and and so they end up producing

several of these Singularity theorems suggesting that if general relativity is true then there must have been a beginning this is on indep on grounds independent of all the things from observational astronomy now there's a loophole with that and that is that in the very tiniest smidgens of SpaceTime um inside 10 the minus 43rd of a second or what they call plon time Quantum effects might have been such that we would have to alter our ideas of how gravity worked and so out of that has come something called an Impulse or are different theories of what

are called quantum gravity or Quantum cosmology and um I think had some conversations on the show about that as well sure um in my book I show that that's that is a possible another possible cosmological model but like the conclusion that the Universe had a definite beginning I think those models also have theistic implications and I can explain why okay um maybe we bracket that okay then the third there's yet a third proof though of a beginning that come by um three physicists Bor Guth and Alexander vinin and it's it's not based on general relativity

it's not based on ideas of what gravity was like in the early universe but based on ideas of special relativity it's a little tricky to explain easily but basically they show that there again a limiting case and therefore a definite beginning uh to to time and uh and therefore and that it does not have the same loophole that the The Singularity theorems of Hawking and penr so what I've said in my I what I argue in the book is that a body of evidence from observational astronomy a strong indicator from theoretical physics namely The Singularity

theorems of Hawking at all and then a very compelling proof from Borg and volinkin all point to the same conclusion that as best we can tell the universe had a beginning and I think that's the best we can do in science but that is a pretty weighty um range of testimony uh supporting the same conclusion did you ever read any Terrence McKenna I haven't Terrence McKenna had a very funny thing that he said about science he said science wants you to believe that it's all about measurement in reason if you allow them one miracle that

one Miracle is the Big Bang Yes that all things come from the most Preposterous idea ever yeah that everything came from nothing in one big miracle that's right I completely toally paraphrased he probably said it far more eloquently this was this was for Fred Ho's object ction to the Big Bang he was he said he was a a democrati he didn't believe he said nothing comes from nothing and I I simply refused to believe that that the physical Universe came from nothing physical and moreover he said it smacks of the Genesis account which he detested

and so he rejected the big bang and formulated this steady state model um that was later I think decisively refuted by um the discovery of the cosmic background radiation his it happens i' I've had funny coincidental meetings with Hoy Herman Bondi and Thomas gold all three of the The Architects of the steady state mod model I met Bondi and hoil when I was a PhD Student in Cambridge and Hoy held on to his dying day for the the steady state but uh Bondi uh actually we had a conversation about it and he said that that

well it turned out that it was a brilliant idea it was a beautiful idea just that turned out that everything about it was wrong and he he rejected it so uh but uh later Hy had his own conversion to a kind of Quasi theistic worldview because of his Discovery the fine-tuning parameters but the the the point is that the materialists did not expect to have this evidence for the beginning Hil thought that you know the laws of physics were s the first law of U conservation of matter and energy uh matter and energy are neither

created nor destroyed except at the Big Bang so and he didn't like that but eventually I think the physics Community came around there was so many indicators of that beginning event now again as we're discussing detection methods and our ability to understand things is so radically different from 1920 100 years ago what is it going to be like 100 years now is this they're going to be I mean are we making assumptions based on very limited data it's a lot of data for us but it seems fairly limited given the scope of not just this

universe but then the concept of multiverses like what is what are your thoughts of this concept of multiple universes I love to talk about the multivers infite univers glad you I'm glad you raised it uh and this also this also connects to uh the the uh the the Fred Hoy story which is fascinating um again with the Proviso science is necessarily provisional and we always have to be open to to new data right um but um the trend lines I think are are the things that are really interesting um so there's this hoil oil's let's

start with hoil and then we'll get to Multiverse okay so hoil is um great astrophysicist he's thinking about carbon and he realizes that carbon has this unique property of being able to make long chain-like molecules and longchain like molecules therefore are capable of storing information and we need information to build specified structures in particular living systems so he's trying to explain the abundance of carbon in the universe and he thinks of four or five different ways that won't work and finally he comes up with a way that would work and long story short it turns

out for that that um way of building carbon chemically to work it has to do with combining um simpler um uh what I call nucleons U smaller atoms to get the carbon molecule there has to be a special resonance level for the carbon molecule special way it sings it has a certain energy level that that causes it to uh uh sing at a certain frequency turns out the frequency he predicts which would be necessary to explain the origin of carbon in the universe uh exists within a particular form of carbon and they determine this at

Caltech but then that turns out to be the the the the the tip of an of a deeper Iceberg of a whole series of other things in the universe that would have to be just right to make this formation of carbon possible the gravitational force would have to inside Stars you the gravity couldn't be too strong too weak it's electromagnetic force couldn't be too strong or too weak the ratio between them couldn't be too strong or too weak everything fell in this sweet spot this kind of goldilock Zone where um and we now we now

call this the phenomenon of fine tuning that there are multiple parameters in the universe that fall Within These very narrow top tolerances outside of which not only life would be impossible but stable galaxies and even basic chemistry would be impossible and so that is to say even to get the evolutionary process going you would have to have all these beautifully finely tuned parameters in place and so Hy starts having a rethink about this and he's a staunch atheist scientific atheist materialist but he ends up concluding that fine-tuning points to some kind of a fine tuner

and he's quoted as saying that uh the best data we have suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics and chemistry in order to make life possible and so he moves to this sort of rudimentary theistic position in his in his philosophy or his worldview now a lot of other physicists have come to the same conclusion uh Sir John pking Horn great Cambridge physicist had a late in life conversion religious conversion it was partially predicated on his awareness as a physicist of the evidence for the universe as a setup job the Goldilocks universe as

some physicists have called it um so that's kind of as Hil said a kind of Common Sense interpretation uh when we see other systems that are finely tuned like a French recipe or an internal combustion engine what we mean by fine-tuning is an ensemble of improbable parameters that work together to accomplish some remarkable outcome or functional functional or remarkable outcome that's what if you see a internal combustion engine you think it was engineered because it's finely tuned so common sense the contrary argument to that the main one there have been others but not even most

secular physicists regard them as compelling anymore the main contrary argument has been the idea of the Multiverse that yes our universe has this array of jointly improbable par improbable parameters that are in that sweet spot but we just happen to be the lucky one because there's a gabillion other universes out there and with different combinations of the laws and constants of physics and different initial conditions at the beginning of those universes so all those things that were just right in our universe are yes extremely improbable but there's so many other universes that that that that

that the probability of a universe with that set of life-friendly conditions arising somewhere had to arise somewhere inevitably and we just happen to be in that lucky universe and then we are stunned by that and they call that this Observer selection effect so that's superficially uh an equally plausible explanation to the Fine tuner argument and a lot of physicists have told me that they regard the two as a wash you can believe in a fine tuner or you could believe in a Multiverse I think the fine tuner the we call it theistic design argument provides

a better overall explanation and here's why for the fine-tuning argument to actually work there has to be some sort of causal connection between the universes if all those other universes are just causally disconnected from our own then nothing that happens in those other universes affects anything that happens in this universe including whatever events were responsible for setting up the fine-tuning in the first place and in virtue of that proponents of the Multiverse hypothesis have proposed what they call Universe generating mechanisms and some are based on um uh something called inflationary cosmology and others are based

on something called String Theory but the idea is that there are mechanisms that would according to the physics of those two cosmological models spit out new universes such that we could portray our universe as the lucky winner of a giant Cosmic Lottery that was produced by a common underlying common cause okay fair enough but it turns out that the cosmological models that give us these Universe generating mechanisms imply that the Universe generating mechanisms themselves must be finely tuned in order to generate new universes so and that fine tuning is ultimately unexplained there's no underlying physics

that explains why that fine tuning so you so in order to explain the the fine-tuning you invoke the Multiverse in order to make the Multiverse credible you invoke Universe generating mechanisms in order to make the universe generating mechanisms credible or plausible you have to presuppose Prior unexplained fine tuning and you're right back to where you started and given that fine-tuning in our experience our uniform and repeated experience when we find it with a French recipe or an internal combustion engine or a a hardware software combination that works when we find fine tuning it always results

from a mind and since the Multiverse hasn't provided a better explanation for that I think the conclusion of design or an ultimate fine tuner stands say that last sentence again okay just the last sentence about the the given that fine-tuning in our experience yes is always the product of intelligence right think of any any system we would describe as finely tuned right then and given that the Multiverse has not provided an explanation for ultimate fine-tuning yet the best explanation remains intelligent design H and if you want to say yet that's fine because again all all

such all scientific arguments whether whether they have theistic implications or not are provisional is it fine-tuning based on our our interpretations of what's happening I mean is Hawaii f fine-tuning is the the volcanic eruption underneath the ocean that creates the island is that fine-tuning by intelligent design or is that a process of things that happen and then other living things take advantage of this process and use it as home um I think and is thatan is that thought process possible in that particular like that example and then extrapolate that through the whole universe yeah I

mean that's a good thought and um the there are there are processes that are at work and that I wouldn't want to make a design argument about but I think there are deep and fundamental uh parameters of the universe and and I think of our our planetary system that uh that have these joint properties of of extreme improbability that are working jointly to achieve some discernable functional end and what do you think that discernable functional end is and what what role do we play in that it's I think it's life I think we play the

role of perceiving life as having a significance that non-life does not have you could then argue well that's very subjective maybe life doesn't have that significance but I think we uh come again and again to to affirm that life has significance we we it the the the contrary view would be to say life has no significance there's nothing significant in that outcome and I don't think we actually believe that so why does it have to be no significance I mean it's significant it's like a thing right just like water significant there's a lot of significant

things well in the I mean it is finite it comes and goes and and there's a lot of different forms of life but no I don't think anyone's s suggesting that it's not significant I mean that that word is a weird word it's a weird weird use it's it's a it's a functional it's a discernible functional outcome that can be separated from all the other events in the universe on some qualitative criteria let let me give you an illustration that might might help uh explain the underlying um rationale of the inference to design in this

case um let's imagine your um you're on the security duty at a bank and you've suddenly been told that there's um a robbery and the and the a bank vault has been been opened um so you go back and you look at the security footage and there there are two possibilities you got some robber got in and there are two possibilities either it was an inside job and the robber had the the co the code to to to to open the vault or it was just lucky random random fiddling now if you freeze that the

footage right before the robber puts his hand on the on the dial on the ex If You're expect in if the what what would you expect if it was an inside job well you would expect that the robber would go directly to the combination that would pop open the vault okay um now it might be that he got incredibly lucky but your overwhelming expectation based on your knowledge of the improbability of finding that combination is that the the the the robber will will will crack the code and open the vault um on the random fiddling

hypothesis you'd expect that uh there would be a lot of tries um and and actually you'd expect that the Vault would never get opened okay so instead what you see when you run the footage is the robber went right to the combination it popped open um now that combination of an incredibly improbable event that results in a remarkable or functional or significant outcome triggers an awareness that there was design and that is a a probabilistically it's a calcula more probable Theory than the idea of random fiddling because we know the odds against against finding the

combination so the odds um because it's so incredibly improbable that the robber would find it it's also incredibly unlikely that that's how it happened Okay so so um now we can say well why is it significant that the Vault opened or not we can say well but we know that there's something different about that event than the Vault being closed and it's the same thing we know that there's something very different about life than a lifeless universe and we know that finding our overwhelming expectation based on the improbability of getting all those parameters right is

that if only natural processes had been at work we would find one of those other combinations that would not open the lock or AKA not result in life so the the our expectation based on naturalism is a lifeless Universe in light of what we know about the fine-tuning parameters our expectation based on theism the Inside Job hypothesis is that we would get something we would we would get life there would be something it's certainly more probable on theism that we'd get life given the fine tuning than it would be given naturalism or overwhelming expectation as

we' find one of those life unfriendly combinations so there's some kind of second order prob istic reasoning involved in this but I think it it's very it's very common sensical but it can be unpacked with these sort of deeper is this an entric perspective because we are alive is our perspective of life being far more significant than other things in the universe like the creation of suns is is this this thing that we have where we're attaching intelligent design to something that may just be a property of the universe itself um we could say that

except that we know that fine-tuning in our experience does result from mind it's not just that we're interested in in our experience Yeah in our experience but limited experience right right but that again that is the basis of all scientific reasoning right I understand but it's not a conclusion based on all the data that could possibly be available no that would be that would be to to have that would be a certain proof right okay and there's do you have in your mind are you certain am I certain I have had experiences of God that

make me um more confident can you tell me those experiences yeah but but can I make an an earlier point because you're raising um you know it's awesome the amount of good philosophy you do on this show because of the way you ask questions you know and this is the questions you just asked have uh lead to an answer that is right at the heart of deep philosophical discussions have been going on for about 500 years and there were was in the in the Middle Ages there was um there were these attempts to prove God's

existence with absolute certainty and they failed and in the enlightenment period philosophers like Hume and Kant came along Khan was actually sympathetic to theistic arguments but he didn't think you could provide absolute proof and but there were because you couldn't get proof what came a trend came in religious thought that was was called fism you you believed um for no reason at all you believe in belief alone you you have I have faith and faith alone uh and you got figures like kirkgard who believe that you could know God but you knew it entirely sub

you knew God entirely subjectively and you just had to take a leap of faith there was no rational basis for it I think there's a a middle way between those those two extremes even in science maybe especially in science we don't get absolute proof of the kind that we get in mathematics or you can get in mathematics where you start with a a a a a a certain Axiom and then you make a series of deductive deductions from that using deductive logic you don't get that kind of argument science isn't built on that type of

logical structure so science is always provisional uh but we can have very good reasons for thinking things or believing Things based on scientific evidence that we find and I think the the proofs for God or the arguments rather for God's existence are of that kind they have strong provisional weight they're like in a courtroom where you're beyond Reasonable Doubt based on what we know so the two extremes are fism where we have no rational basis for Faith or rationalism with the claim that we can have absolute certainty about belief in God and the middle way

I think is this idea of of what I call we can make an inference to the best explanation we have strong provisional evidence and arguments in support of belief in God and so I think from a rational standpoint from as an intellectual when I say when I am asked does belief in God make sense I would say yes it makes sense in that sense you know I think we have strong reasons for Faith but not absolute proof um so yeah that's the first part then just experientially yeah well um I I don't think this is

unique to uh people who have religious belief but one of the things that um the the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament talk about is the role of the spirit of God or the holy spirit that what is objectively real in history is made subjectively real or confirmed subjectively by the testimony of the Holy Spirit that's something I have experienced in different ways and and so I have an inner confidence about my faith in God how how have you experienced it though um uh I have heard non audible voices um the things I don't hear

audibly but uh words that come into my head that I am immediately aware are not generated by my own thought processes how can you be sure can't be sure except why do you believe that well I cuz the imagination is so fertile it is fertile Joe um and so you have to test these things but I've had spec this only happened to me a few times but they've been words of guidance about the direction that my life is going to take or needs to take and they have guided choices that I've made and then and

they were very distinct very strong and when I when I I developed almost a sense of humor about it I've learned over time I mean I overthought everything as a young person going back like everybody yeah and so I used to be really annoyed at these Christians who would say God told me you know what on Earth are you talking about I mean I can look at the the the biblical witness I can compare it to the historical evidence I can look at these things we've been talking about in science um but what are you

saying God told me um but I think there is a uh an experience that many people have over time walking in faith where they begin to recognize the voice of God in their own life in a in a more personal way and for me sometimes it's been uh with a sort of double on Tandra where there's a passage of the Bible to which I've been drawn for some you know maybe something completely random reason but at a particular time where I realize oh oh that's kind of funny that hasn't a direct application to this ex

situation that I'm in and then I find that sure enough that was actually Insight or guidance into what I was about to experience but people have gotten that from philosophy as well they've gotten ancient philosophy in yeah and and again I'm not making any argument on the basis but you were talking about an experience with God I've had yeah you think that qualifies as an experience with God isn't that just a human moment relating to Revelations and things that other human beings have discovered and as a human we we are constantly absorbing the ideas and

the revelations and the the the the just the the observations of all of us of what we've learned about The Human Experience what we've learned about how our own unique biology interacts with the world around us how we can relate to that it's not that alone in itself is not an experience with God I agree with all that and because this is what I'm relating are subjective experiences I would not place any weight on them in trying to persuade anyone else of the existence or reality of God that's why I wrot the book I did

in a different completely different Vein on evidential objective on the basis of objective evidence um what religion do you study if you don't mind me asking it's not so I I I'm a Christian you're Christian I'm a Christian right um here here I'll give you the thing that I first experienced upon um my Christian conversion was an experience of peace that I'd never had before and an experience of outward focused love and concern for other people that was completely and is completely contrary to all my natural inclinations why I would suddenly feel love for a

stranger on the street or be concerned about a friend in a way that I had never experienced before um I could not explain that on the basis of my own selfish inclinations can I pause you yeah yeah isn't that a part of the philosophy of Christianity and when people go into an ideology when they adopt a predis like a predetermined pattern of thinking and behavior that that's very common to do and that is one of the beautiful aspects of Christianity those thoughts that that philosophy that this would be something that you would adopt because now

you have meaning you have guidance you have purpose you are now a part of a group and being a part of this group this group has a very beautiful philosophy on other human beings and you would adopt that and that would give you great pleasure from that but that's not necessarily an experience with God not necessarily I agree but there is a difference between uh knowing what you should do based on Christian moral teaching and actually have an for the first time ever in your life having an inclination to do it yes but you're a

young I understand but you're young impressionable person looking for guidance and your life is not so good before this you're not so at all good so happy so then you find something that gives you meaning and gives you you focus and gives you this beautiful philosophy to change the way you think and you adopt it wholeheartedly like young people are inclined to do or like anybody that's looking for change in their life anybody that's looking for something better is inclined to do it's a natural pattern of growth it's a natural pattern of recognize there's a

better way and you seek out that way sure I mean that that would be an alternative explanation I experienced it in a way that convinced me that something more than my myself and my thinking was responsible um isn't it beneficial to think that way though it's beneficial in adopting that philosophy to think that way and if you think that way you're rewarded and you are inside of this philosophy that does have this these beautiful tenants to it that does have these beautiful ideas sure I I mean I I again I would not place any weight

on my experience in trying to persuade someone else of the truth of of theism or Christianity I have a lot of other arguments that I would place weight on because I think we all have internal experiences but this was such a dramatic thing and you know persistent concern for a given friend that I am aware uh is hurting not what is in my natural in I mean my natural inclinations uh towards selfishness are still very much in evidence every day right but is that part of human survival mechanism I mean there's a lot of natural

inclinations that people have towards selfishness if they're not treated correctly when they're young or if they encounter bad experiences and then when you encounter good experiences and now you can relax and you can be a part of something that's bigger and better yeah don't know I mean I'm prompted to pray for someone then learn later that that person is experiencing some extreme difficulty don't know why I suddenly felt that I mean there are I care about them but I know that they were in any case I think this is could be somewhat unproductive because I'm

completely willing to concede your point that that um it's definitely not unproductive it's interesting well good good I I just mean that in the sense that I don't think you that I could persuade you to be a theist or a Christian on the basis of my personal experience I would concede that you know because there's always well I'm not asking you to do that though or anyone else I'm I'm asking to find the underpinnings of yours yeah yeah I'm I want to find your origin story right that's so I'm trying to figure out like what

and I could see why adopting that thought would be very comforting and I could see why adopting that I mean there's that happens in Cults like this is like I bought a building that I was going to convert to a comedy club and it was owned by a cult before I by before I had it and uh this cult there's a documentary on it it's called holy hell and the the cult was called the Buddha field they existed in West Hollywood and they made their way out out to Austin and the the guy who ran

it was a very charismatic guy who was also a hypnotherapist and a gay porn star and this guy um had these people convinced that they had extreme meaning being with him and it meant so much to them that they were willing to sacrifice the rest of their lives and they were they were going to travel with him no matter where he went and he would do these things to them where we'd have them and he would impart upon him what he called The Knowing and it was a very difficult thing to get he had to

choose you for it and people waited years but when they did have that experience it was one of the most overwhelming things they had ever experienced in their life it was like a days long psychedelic experience where there was no drugs involved it was merely him with this ritual this thing that he would do he's put his hands on their head and there's videos of these people like in orgasmic ecstasy experiencing love in God in a way that they had never before this was real to them but it was a cult it was a guy

who was a scam artist who was a con man who was a hypnotist and knew how to manipulate people and ultimately the the the result was terrible these people lost 20 plus years of their lives and you know probably a lot of money in the process yeah so but they believed that because of that personal experience because they were God Ed they did not have a good life they did not they were not happy now all of a sudden they found purpose they were part of this group and there was this guy and he had

the answers to everything is he this deity type figure and he said that he was he was God and they were all God and it was all this beautiful experience but it wasn't it was manipulative it was him figuring out a way to hijack the human brain manipulate things in the human brain bra experience whether it it or not that's what hypnotism is all if a young and you're looking for some meaning to life you can work yourself into a frenzy where you believe you have this experience with God yeah I well a couple things

to say about that one is that I think it's one of the beautiful things about Christianity is that there is an interplay between the subjective experience of the individual believer and the objective witne witness of God's actions in time space and history and that there is a that people are enjoined to check their experience against objective criteria so that um um and I Think Jesus famously said you will know you will know the tree by its fruit if in the case of the cult it had a horrible outcome but not for the first few years

they were having a good time yeah so I think I think these things do have to be tested over time in my own experience because I tended to overthink things because I was annoyed at Christians who talked about their personal experience without being able to explain to me in any kind of on on any kind of objective basis why I should consider their faith I tended to be very um either uh distrustful or skeptical about subjective experience or um or overthinking in a way that would almost crowd the possibility of such experiences out so I

didn't really have many of them as a young convert I had very I I don't I didn't have a lot of that these things sort of crept up on me over the years and I I have I have uh become more confident that in some cases um in addition to the sort of General guidance of Christianity as a religious philosophy there have been occasions in my life where I've experienced what I thought were pretty clear instances of specific guidance to towards specific courses of action or choices I needed to make um and again I wouldn't

put any weight on that for anyone else but it has been part of my experience in that sense well I I could say the same about my own life of course you could of course you could I've have many many moments where I felt like I was guided many moments cool I mean that's yeah I I mean that that's why I I I I I didn't mean that as a a a critique of our conversation to say I don't think it's productive I just say I mean I I I mean that in a philosophical sense

that if you want to talk across a worldview divide and say hey here's my philosophy here's my worldview here and you have a different worldview if we want to have that great conversation either one of us just appealing to our personal experience is not going to move the discussion towards greater uh understanding well you're assuming I have a different world view I'm not assuming that I'm just saying that in general I'm interested in your experience I just want to know how thoroughly you've thought them through yeah well I tend to overthink things but yeah but

uh with a particular goal in mind perhaps yeah I want to know the truth you know right that's what I like about your show yeah but also you want a very particular truth that you seem to have experienced to be true like this this experience with God this experience with this sort of this frequency that you feel that if you achieve and you are on the world Works in a more harmonious way harmonious way yeah I don't I would say uh I'm not trying to conjure up something it's just been something that has no one's

accusing you of that yeah yeah um uh it it's taken me by surprise sometimes that there's a subjective aspect of my faith that has seemed as real as the objective things that the scientist philosopher in me also regards as very weighty well I'm very H very glad that you have the courage to talk about that because I think sometimes when people do deal in science they these things that are not you can't weigh and measure they seem like uh it's a complicated thing to discuss that's why I wanted to know like how it's part of

The Human Experience though right and we all have that you know and it's part of what I think is so unsatisfying about materialism is a philosophy is that people do not actually in their own personal experience of Consciousness if nothing else believe that we're nothing but matter and motion you know I think I think people tend to join groups and if you're a materialist and if you are a you know there there's a lot of people that adopt philosophies that mimic religions whether or not they're religions or not they like even some social philosophy some

some social trends they they mimic cult-like behavior and I think these These are patterns that human beings are inclined to take and I think there's very productive patterns that human beings have are inclined to take I think those are the ones that have succeeded over time either because they are the most ruthless uh and the most controlling and the people can't escape them or because they're the most productive and people find that those things benefit them greatly yeah and I I think one of the things there is group think in all groups right and that's

I think one of the things things that um you you like to challenge on your program well I to challenge in my own mind too yeah yeah exactly exactly um I have a I have a darwinian debating partner who's a very good-natured Soul uh Michael ruse British philosopher of biology I think he's at Florida State still he and I have over the years done a number of debates he's written a very important book uh in which he says that uh that evolutionary biology has functioned is a kind of secular religion for many of his colleagues

in that it answers a very important deep worldview question what is the process through which everything else came where how where did life get here yeah it answers a worldview question that religions also answer and so we have in our network of scientists who have been challenging the uh comprehensive Neo darwinian account of things I already alluded to I think that the darwinian process is a real process they just don't explain everything right um but in in challenging Neo Darwinism we have found that often times the discussions get very very hot and the um and

and there many of our top scientists have been cancelled or censored at prestigious places like the Smithsonian or Cambridge University or the stutgart Museum of Natural History there's been the and it's people outside the Sciences often say well I can't make sense of that I mean isn't science the place where people are supposed to discuss competing ideas and theories openly how do you explain this impulse to cancel somebody with an alternative view who's at that rank of science um and I think ruse ruse's uh uh book helps to explain that a bit you know that

it's not just religious people who have religious beliefs there can be beliefs that are functioning in a quasi religious way for people that have a secular or materialistic or naturalistic worldview as well yeah and I think we all have to guide guard against the group think that comes from having a closed system of thought and not being aware of the kinds of challenges that could be brought or alternative points of view I think one of the things that I advocate in all my work is a method of reasoning that is used in The Sciences but

also in philosophy also in detective work it's called the method of multiple competing hypotheses or the method of inference to the best explanation and it functions it only functions well if you're open to considering the competing hypothesis and um and so I just think that there's a philosopher of science that I really like from Italy named marchello Pera who says that science advances as scientists argue about how to interpret the evidence and so I think that openness to competing ideas is is crucial to coming to to conclusions that you can put some weight down on

have you ever had someone debate you that you feel like had a very good argument against the things that you believe um I have been in debates with more and less skilled uh people on the other side um I have had a general exper surprising and somewhat gen an experience a common experience that has been somewhat surprising that many of the people who have debated me about for example the theory of intelligent design have come somewhat unprepared to debate the merits of what I actually have proposed or affirm or argue for they have in their

mind typically a kind of stereotypical carish yeah cartoonish version of a young Earth creationist in White Shoes thumping the Bible from the American South or something you know yeah um not that I have anything against the American South it's just you know there's the stere there's the Scopes trial stereotypes and I I once had a debate on the BBC with Peter Atkins an Oxford chemist one of the most prominent scientific atheists and it's still up online people can go listen to it but almost everyone that has told me they've listened to it said he was

he was debating a cartoon caricature of you and was not at all prepared to debate your actual arguments yeah so I've had that happen a lot people just like to win yeah of course I have you know without but there there you know there's good people on the other side I think you know I recently had a good conversation with Michael shurmer who's you know the well-known editor of skeptic Magazine on um on your friend Brian Ken show it was was a very good discussion um there was U I've had good discussions with with ruse

um um a terrific astronomer at University of Washington Peter Ward uh I my own approach to this is I love these deep Origins questions you know where did we come from the philosophical questions and I feel sort a kind of kinship with anybody who loves those kinds of questions even if they're they've come to a different conclusion about the answer to those questions than I have so I I tend not to view th people willing to have those discussions call them debates as adversaries but rather as a sort of co-belligerent in a in an exploration

that's great way to put it um and so I don't I don't really I I tend not to think afterwards about who won and who lost if if if the host gets good comments because it was a good discussion I feel that's a win what I mean is has anybody ever presented you with an argument that made you reconsider um I've become progressively more confident in the position the longer I've examined it I didn't start when I started out examining it I wasn't fully convinced so there's been a for me a trend line of Greater

confidence there are you know there are more and less challenging arguments on the other side the one that we hear most is intelligent design is not science and I say okay well that must presuppose a definition of science what's your definition of Science and at that point we usually get crickets because this type of argument is used mainly to shut people up rather than to engage the merits of the argument on the basis of the evidence and the structure of the argument presented they're called the in the field they're called demarcation arguments the idea that

there are you know and and this one is based on the assumption that if you're invoking a cause which is not materialistic then it's by definition not science um okay well then let's call it something different what I found in my PhD research was that when people investigate questions of Origins they are in they're investigating questions that have both a scientific and a philosophical Dimension there's evidence that bears on the question but whatever conclusion they draw is going to have larger implications for philosophy and worldview if you can show that life arose by an UND

completely undirected chemical evolutionary process um you're going to be more inclined toward a more materialistic worldview you're going to say matter and energy are sufficient to explain how everything got here if as I think the evidence of digital code code in the DNA molecule and a complex information storage and processing system and those Nifty developmental Gene regulatory circuits I was telling you about if if if those kinds of phenomena in life Point as I think they do to a mind a pre-existing mind after all takes a program to make a a programmer it takes a

programmer to make a program and if we've got something like software programing in DNA we're looking at a strong indicator of a mind if if that's a good argument then that has different metaphysical implications that's going to point more in a theistic Direction so these Origins questions have an incourage philosophical Dimension you you can't get away from that and that's what makes them interesting and exciting that's not M something that makes them inherently off limits to discussion but too many scientists on the materialist Side Of The Ledger have wanted to say unless it's a materialistic

answer I'm not going to consider it I'm not going to talk to you and I'm going to use a pejorative term to stigmatize your point of view and I I in the end I don't think it works because what we care about is not how you classify the idea we don't care whether in the evidence whether intelligent design is science or philosophy or metaphysics or what I think it is which is a form of historical science it's an it's a conclusion that comes from historical scientific reasoning that has metaphysical implications but that's not what's important

how we classify it what's important is whether or not it's true and when we say whether the evidence supports it yeah sorry are we when we're talking about metaphysical we're we're just talking about things we can't measure but it might be because we don't have the capacity to measure them it might not be because they don't exist it's we just we're very limited so which brings me to this question if if we are the product of design if the universe is the product of design are we the ultimate expression of that design can I come

back to that by but but first make one more point about the metaphysical science divide sure because I think it's really important um the me metaphysics is the subject of in philosophy of being what is the case science is concerned about what is the case and so that there would be an overlap between those two concerns is not unexpected to to separate them entirely and um and when when people say well I'm not going to consider that because it's not scientific they might be making an a deep intellectual error because let's let's illustration if I

go into the British Museum and I look at the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone and I study them for bit and realize oh okay three different languages with the same message when the archaeologist figured out what's going on they realize oh these are inscriptions these were produced by a scribe by an intelligence they did not Ariz by wind and erosion or some materialistic forces um in other words they were looking at evidence that compelled the conclusion of of an intelligent designer now if I hold strictly to the rule it's only s I'm only going to

look at what I regard as science and what is what I regard as science limits itself to strictly materialistic explanations I may encounter evidence that's pointing towards the reality of a mind and I'm not going to be able to see it because I've put philosophical blinders on my inquiry I've limited the range of hypotheses that I'm willing to consider before I've even looked at the evidence and I think that's what's go been going on the main objection we get to intelligent design is this claim it's not science because it's not materialistic and sometimes people will

justify that by saying well it's not science because the thing you postulate is unobservable and that's the connection to the comment you made a minute ago but science is full of unobservable elements we science works by inferring it has an indirect method of inference we often infer unobservable things quarks uh physical Fields sub uh Subterranean geological structures states of Mind from evidence that we can observe or see we infer from the unobservable to the observable well if you can do that in other branches of in evolutionary biology we infer past transitional intermed immediate forms and

past mutational events based on things we can see so the fact that that a designing that we're positing an unobservable designing intelligence having acted in the past should not disqualify that as being a scientific theory or a legitimate theory of a metaphysical kind because science and metaphysics often does that very thing we we we can't get around that well I think human beings get very arrogant when they're the disseminators of information and people listen listen to them on a regular basis and there's this appeal appeal to Authority I'm the the person who explains science I'm

the and anything that confuses that or questions that or is an alternative Theory gets dismissed because if you're right and then I'm wrong and I'm not willing to do and I can just shut you up man we we've experienced that in Spades and and some very taught people uh are when it's more common than not oh it's super common it's a it's just a human inclination I think especially when you're encountering a very difficult thing like this like instead of having a long form discussion or you know years of debate and a years of examination

they it's easier to just to dismiss and to not have a conversation with that person and I think that's foolish I really do because I think that that it's an opportunity first of all if you really truly believe what you're saying it's an opportunity for you to State your point more clearly ex than the other person iron sharpens iron yeah which is what it's all about and if you just shut that down I usually think that you're vulnerable I generally think that people who shut that down their their ideas are vulnerable I agree with that

I I've seen that a lot I want go back to the other part C supervisor you know High Oxford accent he said to me he said uh uh Beware of the sound of one hand clapping he said if there's an argument on one side there bound to be an argument on the other and if there's only one hand clapping often it's because the person clapping that hand is afraid of what the other other hand is going to say interesting yeah yeah um the other question I had do you think that human beings are the ultimate

expression of of this intelligent design in this Cosmos I think there is a sense that humans are qualitatively uh unique in in the creation that we were made as sort of a crowning of the create the process of creation when you say Cosmos how are you defining what are you defining well I I'm speak I'll speak as a a Christian who also believes that there may be other beings besides human beings that have Consciousness the Bible speaks of angelic beings for example I have no direct experience of those but I have other reasons to believe

that the Bible is true so I take things like that on the authority of the Bible no experience of them but I of of the creatures we know I think there are qualitatively there are qualitative differences between humans and all other forms of animals that make us special our ability to use language for example our ability to experience humor our ability to use mathematics our ability to have conversations like this one can I stop you right there we know orcas have a very complex language we know dolphins have very complex language we know monkeys experience

humor um do they tell jokes don't no um they joke with each other yeah there there's there's communicate with sounds we we know that they have sounds for different animals and sounds for Predators I I think that the studies of of human language show that you know you you just you a three-year-old human uh can do things that the the best um chimp just there there's qualitative difference in the way we used language in the complexity of the the language forms and chomsky's Universal grammar idea um so I but you know that chimpanzees are in

fact even better at solving some puzzles with rewards for food than humans sure sure than young humans I I think there's a skinnerian account of of of animal behavior that's pretty good I think there's a not good I think the schenian account of human language was pretty much refuted by Chomsky in the 60s I I think there's something much deeper going on with human language it's not an area of particular expertise uh but um uh my colleague uh David berlinsky is very interested in this and has corresponded with Chomsky over the years um and he

told us he told a um a story about about Chomsky at a conference that I attended where he said that um you know Chomsky was at at one point very openly skeptical about darwinian accounts of the origin of language and then was later sort of pressured to to to walk some of those um some of that skepticism back and um then but he said okay we well language could have evolved but there would have had to have been sort of a a a pre-existing Universal grammar that allowed people to make sense of um all the

um to develop a symbol convention that would allow allow Comm communication and this would have had to have have Arisen very very abruptly it couldn't have gradually emerged why um uh I'm just telling the story for now you because I'm not an expert on the origin of language but berlinsky finished the story and and said uh well that that's that's great known but why not then call that what it sounds like which is a miracle you know you have this here here's the problem I think as I understand it um if we've got just tapping

and scratching and and and and pointing MH okay so I say red red red and you say Okay red red red so we're going to develop symbol convention with u here's the problem to get a symbol convention going in order to communicate you need a symbol convention that's that's the circularity of it and the the behaviorist idea is well maybe we could do that with with with pointing and grunting okay and and rewards that might work for nouns okay red tree ball shirt whatever but how do you express something like the subjunctive tense with pointing

and grunting and rewards what I would have done is or the imperative what I should do is that all human languages have these multiple tenses it's something really striking they're in all languages and it's very hard to imagine how you could express that subtlety conveyed by those tenses without already having the universal grammar or the the that those language structures built into the brain how well I don't understand that at all if you're if you're learning how to describe things around you with sound and if you have a sound that you associate for different objects

a sound that you associate for different feelings a sound that you associate for with love and it's universally agreed upon and we know that that varies so widely along the world if you go to some cultures like like a good example is uh Australia the uh the what what they call mobs of these uh indigenous people when they call themselves mobs when they could travel just a few hundred kilometers and they experience a language they have no understanding of at all another you know 50 km that way same thing they don't know how many languages

they have they don't know how many of them are lost these people develop these languages like in isolation in these small groups and within the people that were indigenous to Australia there's like I I God my friend Adam greenry explained this to me I don't want to say I don't I don't want to misstate how many different languages there are but I believe it's hundreds of different languages and they don't understand each other but they developed these in isolation yeah well I mean we're we're both talking somewhat derivatively based on uh this isn't my area

of expertise not mine either but you imagine a world don't you couldn't could you imagine where over time cultures who existed in the same sort of harmonious groups and learn to till the soil together and hunt and gather and do things together and raise their children together they would develop sounds that they all agreed upon which mean certain things but but I think chomsky's argument was that is only possible because there are innate language structures that where people already intuitively understand these differences intense could you get from I mean in in a way the thing

is to turn it back on the the person who thinks the pointing and grunting is going to be enough how do you get I can get to Red I may even be able to get to run okay but how do I get to what I would have done don't you do that over time don't you do that over time of adjusting sound developing IDE what do you point at to get it something thought you don't have to point to it you just have to develop a whole structure of language over time where it's agreed upon

and that's why the thing about but that was tomsky's point is the agreement is innate we already have the language structures for those different tents that's why they're Universal across across languages and so um he did not think that they evolved in a gradual d Ian way and I I I I can't see it I mean maybe I mean maybe you could unpack that sequence but I so Chomsky himself believed that they were innate to the human animal I think that's right that was his idea of the universal grammar and what did he think it

came from at one point he said he was a Jeffersonian creationist meaning not a religious creationist and other point he said he was skeptical about Darwinism and then later I think he said well it could have evolved but the conditions he put on a successful evolutionary process were ones that were not not strictly speaking Neo darwinian they were certainly not gradualistic and I and and I I do think it's just something for consideration it's something I've thought about a lot that makes sense to me how do you get a a a a communication system started

without a communication system to define the terms on a mutually agreeable basis don't you think that can just evolve over time I it's adjusting and the language itself during our lifetime is evolving think the burden of proof is on on the evolutionist to provide an account of how that happened I I I don't think that that's been done back to the original question do you think that human beings are the ultimate expression I I think we were a um I guess I would just say yes I think I think we were the Pinnacle of creation

you think this is it this is as good as it gets or do you think we evolve past this um well the the the um um I think that there will be a new creation that's part of the biblical view a new creation yeah what do you mean by that well I think there there's there is in the human uh our Human Experience there's both evidence of our great capacity for creativity and nobility but also the idea that something's not as it was initially intended in our our nature as well and so um the Jude

Christian one story is one of a long Arc of redemption and so I think that we will be improved but not by an evolutionary means but by by by God's Own action so you believe that there will be some sort of a miracle that improves human beings yeah but um let me say a few words about Miracle a miracle is strictly speaking an act of God and so just as I see evidence of divine action or intelligent agency in the past or because I see evidence of such things in the past um I don't find

the idea of uh miraculous acts of God in the future as uh something that are in inherently implausible but as a person who believes in science and you uh your degree is in philosophy of science yeah I did PhD in philosophy of science right and Science is based on measurement it's based on measurement it's based on uh reasoning it's based on observation it's based on argumentation uh this is I think one of the things that you've objected to the idea that there are people on various issues that speak for the science and shut down the

rhetorical dimension of science that's why this Italian philosopher of science I mentioned uh marchelo peris says that science advances as scientists argue with emphasis on the word argue about how to interpret the evidence Darwin's Origin of Species was he presented as one long argument Newton started the principia with um the theory of vortices is beset by difficulties on many sides and then he argued against this the standard theory of gravity in presenting a case for a better view of how gravitation works so science has this rhetorical Dimension that has been written out of science as

we've Advanced more of a authoritarian view of science that portrays to the public the idea of a uh of an indubitable consensus on numerous issues right and there we get the group think so you consider even I mean you consider intelligent design to be science and your your Pursuit is a scientific Pursuit I I I think it is a scientific Pursuit I also think it's a philosophical Pursuit and I don't think the two are necessarily mutually exclusive you there are domains of science where we're raising questions that have ke incourage or incorrigible philosophical Dimensions go

repair back to our early disc determinism same kind of thing we got social science data Neuroscience data that bears on this huge philosophical question of Free Will V determinism so as a person of science what in science leads you to believe that God will create a miracle that changes human beings uh nothing in uh science leads me to believe that I believe in the possibility of miracles in part because we saw one at the very beginning of the universe I mean we have evidence of that I mean if the God if God can bring the

universe into existence from a spatial temporal material Singularity um then perhaps he can raise someone from the dead or give us life after this life is over um the power is certainly uh there's nothing implausible about believing that my my belief in in a new creation as it were is based on on the on the biblical witness that such a thing will happen and my independent reasons for believing the Bible so I wouldn't make a scientific case for that how does the bible describe it um it describes a new heavens and a new Earth and

uh a place where every tear will be wiped away and pain will be a thing of the past um a restoration of of all things how do you reconcile with the reality that the Bible is written down at least by human beings and that human beings are generally unrel relable um at least in terms of 100% accuracy and also inclined to manipulate each other especially when they're in control of large groups of people and also inclined to appease the instincts and the desires and needs of their followers so they create texts that resonate with the

people and develop a philosophy that resonates with the people and if they say that it comes from God itself who especially if it resonates especially if it makes sense and maybe perhaps it is in some way from God because it is coming from this divine inspiration but how do we know when something's written down and also we're We're translating it right We're translating it from you know Aramaic from ancient Hebrew and it goes into Latin and Greek and there's a lot going on there and then eventually to English and there's a lot of room for

interpretation um let me give a general answer and then come back to the specific challenge okay um maybe even a caveat first uh the books that I've written have been advancing the theory of intelligent design first was signatures in the cell about the origin of Life Second was about the question of the origin of the first animals called Darwin's doubt the third was about the worldview implications of the theory of intelligent design um I happen to be a believing biblical Christian I believe the Bible's witness not I just need to say that not all proponents

of intelligent design hold my viewpoint about religious matters and it' be unfair to them for me to answer the question without making that Proviso because I'm also here representing those books and those arguments so understand yeah so I just want to uh we actually have some uh agnostic performance of intelligent design and even an atheistic philosopher who's inclined towards thinking there must be some intelligent design so um uh um so and then secondly your question about motivation your your question embedded an interesting insight about motivation that we have confirmation bias we have all these these

things and in this basic discussion about God between say the the new atheists who aren't so new anymore and and people are on our side of the worldview Divide there's a tendency to point fingers about motivations oh you religious people believe this stuff because it gives you comfort and the religious argument to The Atheist is so you atheist materialists you disbelieve because it gives you moral Freedom you don't have to be accountable to a a moral judge and I think in each person there's that Push Pull there's motivations to believe there's motivations not to believe

and one of the benefits of philosophical training is the uh attempt at least to extricate debates from that those motivations you know that's essentially they're essentially ad hominum arguments and try to avoid those as much as possible on both sides um so um that's why I've developed the case for God in the last book based on key evidences that are public and commonly accepted across the worldview division you know the universe had a beginning it was finally tuned from the beginning and there is information and an information processing system and even the simplest living cells

those three key pieces of evidence I think support a robust case for God as an inference to the best explanation now people when so I tend to take a an evidentialist and and philosophical approach to the kinds of questions you're asking including the question about why I believe the other parts of the Bible not just about the creation of the universe but about um the historical witness of uh Jesus about Jesus Christ or The Exodus or things like that and there I would say my general answer is that I have um a strong avocational interest

in the historicity of the Bible as one can test it based on external sources of historical evidence from documentary historical sources and archaeological sources so just a quick thumbnail and uh in a way i' prefer not to go too deeply into this because I again um I'd rather talk about the ID and the the god stuff and I have I have Jewish colleagues Muslim colleagues agnostic non-religious theists who all agree with me about the the scientific evidence and what it points to and then we have different discussions about I want to know your thought process

okay so my thought process so crucial event in for example the New Testament is the trial and death of Jesus of Nazareth and subsequent Resurrection um one key really striking thing that I've discovered in my avocational interest in Archaeology is that the five or six leading figures most important figures in that trial narrative would take which take up about a quarter to a third of the the four gospels have all been independently attested by archaeological inscriptions in the last 50 or 60 years there were some there were some uh Construction workers working in cesaria maritima

in Israel in 1960 is turned over a big slab of rock and on the back was an inscription from Pontius Pilate uh listing himself as the governor of Judea with a tribute to tiberious Caesar um significant because in the gospels the ministry of Jesus is reported to have occurred when tiberias was the the uh Roman Emperor pilot was the governor and we know all about in the trial that the key role that pilot played uh recently the and what what year was this attributed to well it it's it's it's uh attributed to the period of

time in which Tiberius was Emperor so um I think that was 15 through uh I 15 through to 30 I can't remember the end of his emperorship but it's ex it's the time mentioned in the New Testament as to when Jesus did his thing and um you have recently in Jerusalem under the traditional sight of the high priest was discovered the stone uary bearing the name of Caiaphas and Caiaphas Ben Joseph on two sides of an ornately decorated osar containing the bones of someone who was reburied by this practice that the Jews undertook during that

unique period of time from about 20 BC to the dest of the temple so you have multiple figures from that key event who have been independently attested and established in that time period um Herod Antipas we know from his coins and his building projects uh Jesus himself uh Peter uh uh Annis the other high priest so you have these multiple lines of external corroboration for this really important account and then you have external sources like Josephus and tacitus so there's there's a weight of external corroborating evidence supporting the historicity of these narratives and that gives

you I think a good reason to take the narrative seriously and to evaluate their other claims it's in fact a level of corroboration that I think is almost unprecedented for any document that old so that's corroboration in terms of The Narrative of the stories or corroboration in terms of the historical figures being real both in just cus The Narrative of the stor is being the resurrection of Jesus uh reports of same you find reports of the U in in there's two different texts of Josephus one that was likely doctored by uh medieval Christians that historians

rightly um regard as too affirmative in his uh expression of belief in Jesus of Nazareth and one that came to us through the Arabic world where the the the the Josephus Texas much more credible where he records the basic facts of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth including being crucified under Pontius Pilate um and then that there were reports that he had been that he had appeared to many after being resurrected so there's a whole right but there's reports of Bigfoot well right but uh we have a we have you know I human

particularly back then where there's no real access to Universal like the internet there's no real I mean there's no libraries like where where are you getting all your information from right so you have one of the best formats in all of of talk anything because you have these long form discussions but I think even this format will not lend itself to being able to wrestle the question of the I don't think we're going to wrestle it I just want to know why you right so I think there are three great Scholars who have addressed the

question of whether or not the actually Four four um one is wolfart pannenberg the great German Theologian historian one is William Lane Craig one is NT Wright with his maerial Tome the resurrection of the Son of God and the other is Gary habas and there are numerous questions that come up in evaluating all this different type of historical testimony regarding that seminal event if true in human history right and I've done a deep dive on that stuff and I'm convinced that the resurrection of Jesus Christ happened as a real event in history because people said

it did well because of the various forms of testimony that we have the historical evidence we have coming down to us from this day now I may be wrong in that I'm not as a scholar arguing on that about that myself but it is your personal belief but it is my personal belief and I have I would tell you I have reasons to believe that that are well considered and they are reasons not of subjective experience or subjective experience alone but the reasons that have are derived from having examined very detailed historical analyses of the

relevant data and that's probably as far as we could take something in a discussion like this but um I I do affirm that belief in such an extraordinary event should be well grounded in historical evidence and not something that we just believe because we want it to be true well is it historical evidence or is it historical statements of people who were were discussing a thing that may or may not have happened that might have been Legend well much historical evidence is also historical statement it's it's testimony eyewitness or otherwise right but this is an

extraordinary event right you're talking about a resurrection of a person who died and came back and was the son of God it's this is a big claim yeah it is a big claim um the the what historians must do is evaluate the reliability of historical testimony if what's coming is is historical testimony M um one piece of historical testimony that's always been extremely compelling to to me is the historic is the testimony of James who is um mentioned in the New Testament as one of the um uh the the the witnesses to whom Jesus appeared

after the alleged Resurrection event um he was also mentioned earlier in the New Testament as one of his brothers or half Brothers depending on whether you're a Protestant or a Catholic Christian um how you view that uh but he was mentioned as one of his own family members who did not accept his crazy Messianic claims and he he did not believe in him but something changed James's mind we later find that he's becomes the leader of the Jerusalem um uh Christian Church the early Jewish Believers in Jesus and there's um uh but we also then

know from Josephus that James was was stoned to death and martyred for his witness to to the resurrection now there's a kind of very simple argument but it's it goes back to one of the early Christian writers uus saying that that um people will lie to uh get out of trouble they do it all the time we see it in our politics but people don't lie to get into trouble we're just assuming that they would let him lie or do anything to get out of trouble there were there were many many uh early Christians who

died claiming to have seen the resurrected Jesus but in the case of James we know that he expressed that testimony and we know it from an an external to the Bible Source namely Josephus what do you think of so I think this is an example of okay here's an historical claim what how can we evaluate the the Rel liability of that W witness people will give their lives for an abstract philosophy that they believe to be true people do not give their lives for a factual claim that they know to be false that's lying to

get into trouble that's true but we don't know what James mental state was we don't know if James was schizophrenic we we there's so many variables that could be taken into consideration it's it's a question of weighing the preponderance of the evidence and deliberating deliberating on it over time I agree I'm not not uh claiming that in in sharing these things that I will no I'm happy you are sharing them I'm happy you are sharing them you're just getting an insight into my thought processes I'm very much concerned to I'm a philosopher okay uh uh

Alvin planning's great work was warrant in proper function we say that knowledge philosophers say knowledge is Justified true belief for my religious beliefs as much as for my scientific beliefs I want to know what the justifications are I want to have justifications for those beliefs what what do you make of more ancient uh scriptures what do you make of like the Old Testament what what do you make of the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls like what what do you think of that um I I actually have taught college classes that included uh an evaluation

of the historical reliability of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament and in many many periods of Biblical history there is just extensive same kind of extensive extra biblical corroboration of um the uh the the history that is provided in the Old Testament so I think the same types of um evidences can be brought to bear to provide external support one one example it was a favorite lecture of mine was the story of the Assyrian invasion of Judah in 701 BC it's recorded in in Kings and Chronicles and U Hezekiah is the king

and there are multiple points of agreement between the biblical record and the account of that same event in the Assyrian records many of which are now stored in the British museum there's a fantastic tour you can take of the Assyrian room there where the the absolutely the same basic story is told where the Assyrians come they lay Siege to ancient Judah uh the 46 strong walled cities of Judah are put under siege they're conquered only Jerusalem remains uh the city is put under siege which is a death sentence in the ancient world when a dominant

World Empire like Assyria comes and for some reason one the reason recorded in the Bible and implied in the Assyrian records The Siege was broken the Assyrians returned to Assyria and sarab was killed by his own son when I do a lecture like this I list the biblical claims and then I list the the claims from the secular archaeological records and I point out the multiple points of convergence and agreement that is a way of providing warrant or support or justification for the historical reliability of the Bible and I think you can do that with

the Old Testament as well as the new but these are historical representations of things that are plausible like sieges things that happened all the time this is a it's a part of human history well right there's something kind of mysterious about this Siege and why it was broken because the Assyrian power was overwhelming in comparison to what was left and there is a there is a the biblical account is that that uh God himself created confusion in the ranks of the Assyrian soldiers uh is that really how God would handle it well we don't know

why didn't God do that for one reason or another yeah why didn't God stop Hiroshima and Nagasaki why did why did God allow the H Holocaust to take place why did he allow the fog to descend at Normandy I mean I mean you know I don't know um I I don't know all the answers to these questions I'm just saying that there are I am I am unpersuaded by by hum's skeptical argument against Miracles I think it's a very weak uh philosophical argument against the possibility of Miracles he says Miracles violate the laws of nature

the laws of nature cannot be violated therefore Miracles are impossible but yet the big Bang's a miracle well the big Bang's a miracle or um I I don't think a miracle is actually a violation of the laws of nature maybe the word miracle is a bad word an extraordinary event yeah well an extraordinary unique event a completely novel event if God exists then Miracles are possible because Miracles are nothing more than an act of God I don't think this is a fun philosophical point though to share I don't think a miracle is a violation of

the law of n of the law laws of nature let me give you an example let's imagine this is a a pool table instead of this cool you play pool not well at all but so I'm about to hit the the ball you know yeah thank you CU ball I know the law the physical law of momentum exchange because I'm a physics geek even though I'm not a pool player and so I can calculate where the where the second ball ought to go based on the the momentum and the initial condition or position of that

first ball so I make that calculation I I know laws of physics are cause me to expect this given an outcome and I can do that a hundred times and it's all going to be the same especially if I hit the ball in the exact same place with the exact same Force but what if right as I make the shot someone comes along shakes the table now all bets are off the ball will not end up where I expected it to end because all the laws of physics have a cedus parabus clause all things other

things being equal which includes no interfering conditions from an outside agent but if an outside agent disrupts the system I'm going to get a completely unexpected event but the law of moment momentum exchange was not violated right a new set of of events was fed into the Matrix of natural law into the that Concourse of the law that the regular system of of cause and effect and that describable that's what a miracle is in the Bible it's an act of God The Exodus Miracle it says and the Lord caused an East Wind to blow it

represents God as an actor within the Matrix of natural law which he otherwise sustains and upholds so I think for that and other reasons I think hume's argument against Miracles his in principle argument fails which means that we have to be open to evaluating claims of the miraculous on the basis of the evidence that pertains to them most of them may be bunk but the the the there is a consistent pattern of of of corroboration of biblical witness where we can check the biblical witness the historical reliability that I think needs that means that we

ought to be open to evaluating those more extraordinary events as possibly true as well and that's that's was my reference to the the scholars who have done the Deep dive on the the case of pro and con about the resurrection so as uh a Christian and as a person who believes in God you believe that currently human beings are the the greatest expression of life I believe the most complex certainly we're the most complex certainly we have qualitative capabilities that other animals don't have I think the the biblical way of phrasing that was talking about

being made in the image of God having this conscious awareness and creative capabilities that reflected but uh the the capabilities of our creator and I and so I I believe that for biblical reasons I think but I also see the evidence of the qualitative differences as well in in some of the things we were talking about before what do you make of all this UAP UFO stuff this all these whistleblowers that are coming out and saying there's Advanced crafts that can move in ways that defy physics that they seem to be off-world origin that the

United States has been studying them that they is a pro a project that retrieves crashed vehicles and that these things are far more advanc been some of this stuff has been suppressed and not coming out I really don't know I mean have you you looked into that yeah a lot yeah yeah what's your take it's hard to know if it's a scop it's hard to know the government often times will lie or create a narrative to obscure reality or to give people some sort of confusion while something else is going on to distract you there's

there's always the Poss possibility of that I mean that's uh that would be what I would do if I wanted to freak people out or if I was trying to obscure some sort of a very Advanced project that we have where we have capabilities far beyond what's conventionally thought of as our um you know our our Supreme method of propulsion or travel or drones or or even the our understanding of gravity and space time like if there is some s sort of monumental breakthrough that was made and made in secrecy and made through some sort

of uh project that involved the US government and top physicists and they kept this all under wraps what better way to keep it under wraps than to say that it's something from another planet I mean I I just I don't know the I have only one point of intersection with this issue okay I'll tell you what it is um I wrote an oped for the New York Post two summers ago when a lot of this stuff first broke you know with the Navy stuff and it happens that there are a number of scientists who upon

being confronted with the difficulty of explaining the origin of the first life from simple chemistry and upon being confronted with the digital code that's stored in the DNA molecule I mean it's really striking you know not just the amount of information but the way in which it's stored and processed and expressed it's very much like a um CAD cam system where we got computer assisted design and Engineering if you're up at Boeing you've got a engineer that writes code code goes down a wire it's translated into another machine code that can be used to direct

the construction of an airplane wing or some other mechanical part and then the the at the manufacturing apparatus the code will be used to direct the placement of the rivets in just the right place that's the kind of complexive information processing that's going on inside the cell it's unbelievably cool so um Dawkins himself seeing an animation of what's called gene expression said he was knocked sideways with Wonder at the complexity of the digital information processing in cells there have been leading scientists who have actually proposed well maybe that is evidence of intelligent design but it's

intelligent design that is coming from an extraterrestrial source so this is actually has a name in science it's called panspermia okay and sure and um and have I am not a a supporter of the panspermia hypothesis though I am completely agnostic as to whether or not there is extraterrestrial life it's a big universe maybe maybe not I don't know but I don't think it helps us with the problem of explaining the origin of life for reasons that are similar to The critique of the Multiverse I offered even if you posit that a super intelligence evolved

on some other planet and then designed life or designed the genetic code and parted it in cells and send it to our planet you've still got to explain the origin of that evolutionary process on some other planet and that takes you right back to the problem of the origin of information if you want to build any kind of system that has a high degree of specificity you need information to say I want this structure not that I want this way of configuring matter not that information is crucial to specificity of form I understand what you're

saying yeah well and just just to complete the thought and I I'm very interested in what you have to say about this other thing because I don't know much about it um the other thing is that the panspermia hypothesis doesn't do a good job of explaining the ultimate fine-tuning of the universe or the universe itself upon which any future intelligent aliens Evolution would depend you have to have the universe fine-tuned in the first place to get any kind of evolutionary process going and therefore if you want to explain the big three things that I've put

out as a challenge to Scientific material is M panspermia doesn't cut it because it it might explain the origin of the first life but only by kicking the problem into outer space without answering the question of the ultimate origin of information it definitely doesn't explain the origin of the fine-tuning of the universe because that precedes any possible subsequent evolution of any alien being that would be getting the the cause and effect relationship reversed but if there are alien beings on another planet what does that do with your biblical interpretation of life if there are far

superior beings that in fact did come here and did manipulate human DNA and did create what we now think of as modern humans if that becomes fact and you still have to account for how did they were they created you still have to account for the code you still have to account for all these things you're saying about intelligent design but right what does that do for your your interpretation of the biblical version of History if in fact there are are some Untold numbers of advanced civilizations yeah again I'm completely agnostic because the Bible tells

us that we were made in the image of God with capacities that reflect those of our creator it doesn't tell us that he didn't make other such beings on other planets CS Lewis the great Christian apologist wrote that wonderful space Trilogy in which he speculates about other planets with with um with other forms of life with other forms of higher conscious life yeah okay so I I don't think there is a biblical Doctrine on that so I'm completely agnostic and open on biblical grounds and as a scientist of course I'm interested um the there there

been there's been two different lines of thinking about that one that there's so many universes and therefore likely solar systems that it's inevitable that we would have life someplace else um uh the other uh strain of thought that's a bit more recent is um the idea that yes there's lots and lots of places where it could happen but the number of parameters that would have to be the number of things that would have to be just right and the probability of getting each of those parameters is so small that even that two trillion universe or

two trillion galaxy universe is not enough to render the probability of getting life somewhere else can I stop you there probable unless there is intelligent design okay unless there is intelligent design but if it exists here we have proof that it exists here we're talking right now you and I are here we know intelligent life at least in our own right personal experience exists here yeah which and the the universe could be of a size and a scope that we can't even possibly comprehend we're talking about infinity and this is this is a it's this

is not an uncommon thought about the universe that the universe is in fact infinite and that it is so big that not only does this Earth exist but a version of this Earth where all the events exactly as they've taken place on Earth have taken place in space on other planets an infinite number of times because all the very because you were talking about something that's so large it's so hu every possible version exists an insane huge number of views are out there in the world and infinite numbers of views preventing presenting this exact same

discussion aru what I'm saying is maybe it's more it's even more complex than just simple intelligent design but intelligent design on a scale that's so large that is happening simultaneously in so many places so so Ubi in the universe that it's impossible for us to even quantify well let me let me come back to at you on this just a little bit um the this is where the idea of the Multiverse comes in because it happens that our universe actually has a a quantifiable number of Elementary particles and and a limited number of interactions that

could take place between the elementary particles and therefore an upperbound number of events that might have taken place from The Big Bang till now right and that's why the Multiverse gets proposed because the Multiverse proponents realize that what are called the probabilistic resources of this universe are not actually sufficient to render even the origin of life and I have argued in signature in the cell even the origin of a single protein probable given those probabilistic resources that's if there's not a Multiverse and we need a we need a Multiverse and if the theory that each

Galaxy which contains a super massive black hole that inside that super massive black hole if you could somehow get through the Event Horizon you will go to another universe that has hundreds of billions of not trillions of galaxies as well and that that this is the that is the portal and this is the process that they all have that there is just an infinite number of universes it is possible right right but as I mentioned before the plausible accounts that have been to to render the the Multiverse concept plausible one needs a universe generating mechanism

and which also means something intelligence it means something some prior fine tuning but that could be also the case right this Universal intelligent thing I'm not against the Multiverse infinite number of universes it might be true it might be false but it's only plausible if there's prior design that's the argument that I make in the book you think is that the universe itself has Grand Design to it and that it it's ultimately moving towards a goal I would say that the designer has a goal what do you think that is to restore relationship between himself

and human beings but just human beings what about alien life forms maybe I mean again General don't know maybe intelligent life in general like what is it is it the soul like what what do we have that's particularly unique in in the biblical ontology um it is it is um being made in the image of God means we not only have a mind but also a soul and a spirit there's a Biblical word for Animals the nefesh the Hebrew word and they have a mind of A Sort and anyone who's a dog owner knows this

there's a lot of smart creatures but there is something special about us and we know we all I think understand that intuitively well we understand it to us so it it it may be it may be that there are other creatures that have those unique endowments in other other planetary systems but not on not on Earth not orcas not dolphins I think they're super intelligent I think they are super intelligent animals yeah they can't well they can't manipulate their environment like we can but they do have a cerebral cartex it's 40% larger than a human

beings yeah I mean mere brain capacity is not the whole story as we know from paleoanthropology we so um and dumb people with big heads yeah yeah who do things like boxing and MMA right yeah yeah there you go um well that yeah so well anyway I mean you're you're I uh I work the other end of the time scale the cosmology the origin of Life the origin of animals you're asking me about anthropology issues I'm just asking you about your thoughts on me compation have to imagine that you've considered a lot of these I

think about all this stuff of course but how much have you looked into psychedelics and the origins of religious experiences your your driver was telling me about it on the way here sounds like you haven't looked into that other than that I well I have a I have a i a former student who had an experience of God on a a psychedelic me too you know so I I I I'm aware of those experiences you haven't had them I have not would you want to um I'm sort of happy with the experiences of God I've

had in the sort of uh wouldn't you like to actually say hi uh what say stay hi say hi say hi say hi like say hello to God yeah well um I found other ways to do it but you know I'm I'm not and again this is the thing we were saying about personal experience before it's not dispositive of these big dis these big discussions are you aware of John Marco Alro no John marro algro who was a uh a scholar a Biblical scholar and he was also an ordained minister who became agnostic when he

started studying theology he was one of the people that deciphered the Dead Sea Scrolls and he worked with it over a period of uh 14 years deciphering it and is very controversial but his interpretation of Christianity after reading these Scrolls was that it was initially about psychedelic mushroom rituals and fertility rituals and that this was what they were documenting in these ancient Scrolls and that what he believed is that these psychedelic mushrooms were what we thought of as Mana or the host that that the body of Christ that these these experiences were directly attributed to

people taking these psychedelic mushrooms in these these rituals and many people have had psychedelic experiences especially on COC cybin and on other like very potent psychedelic drugs is that the acting agent within uh mushrooms that creates the Psychedelic that's in one type of mushroom the one that John Marco algro uh alleges is a little bit more complex it's called the Amon muscaria and it's more more complex in that uh the belief is that it is seasonably variable genetically variable and that it must be uh cultivated in a specific way and many people who have tried

to achieve these states with ammonita mcar have failed where others have succeeded and it's because of obviously because it's illegal and frowned upon it's it's very complex you know John Hopkins has done they've done a lot of work on cell sibin and so have maps and so of there's a lot of maps has done a lot of work with various psychedelic drugs but but the the idea is that these ancient rituals were how they connected to God and that they hid these from the Conquering Romans and from all these different religions that wanted to impose

their philosophies on them when the when the people were conquered but they kept these Parables and they kept these stories and they kept these these Legends of these experiences and John Mar Marco algro wrote this book called The Sacred Mushroom in the cross it's a very interesting book book and then he wrote another book called um I think that was it God this the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian myth is his his other book that he wrote about it but it's interesting and I Joe what was your experience of God in in in uh

as you were you know using those substances I I mean I I kind of joking around when I said it's God what what it seems like is the root of of everything like when when you have these experiences they're so they're so profound and so transformatory they're so transformational they they have this impact on you where you enter into a realm of the impossible and it's so easy to get to it just doesn't take that long and all of a sudden you're there especially through things like uh dimethyl tryptamine which is also endogenous in the

human brain If you can take that you will be transported into a realm of impossible beauty of geometric patterns that move and dance in front of you and you're confronted with some sort of intelligence some sort of intelligence that's beyond anything you could possibly comprehend in our material realm I don't know what it is no one knows what it is people have a they think it's a Well of Souls they think it's an encounter with God they think it's alien they think it's so many different things but there's um there's a a a university in

I believe it's in London that Graham Hancock was talking about where they're doing a they're they're they're putting these people on an IV drip of dimethyl tryptamine dimethyl tryptamine is a is a very very potent psychedelic but the body brings it back to Baseline very quickly because it's endogenous in the human body it's one of the the the quickest drugs from the initial breakthrough experiences which is insanely profound to 15 minutes later you're completely sober it's very very quick and these people that are having these experiences they're mapping out these experiences in this very new

and profound way where they're saying there there might be some sort of chemical portal in the mind that can be activated through these psychedelic chemicals and then you exper experience or perceive uh sort of transcendent beauty or uh overwhelming in in a way that it's not this is not like you know sitting in a field and feeling love this is just an an overwhelming thing that feels more real than reality itself and it seems like you're kind of dipping your toe also into this infinite realm and when when you exper you you almost feel like

you're in the waiting room like you can't really handle the whole thing and so having had an experience like that you're not inclined to uh a simplistic materialism as a there's something you're saying there's something more well anybody who hasn't had that experience that wants to U diminish it or wants to um somehow or another have a reductionist take yeah of what it means to be a human being I think you've had a limited amount of experiences if you want to say that like I I don't know I don't know how you could dismiss that

without having it yeah and a lot of people like Dawkins has not have not had that and I think and he spoke openly about perhaps maybe one day uh taking LSD under the right clinical settings and he probably should do that and it would be pretty profound but I would I would actually recommend a go ahead well I was just going to say Dawkins was one of the scientists that actually proposed the pan spermia idea that um later regretted it he was kind of in a film with Ben Stein he was Ben Stein got him

to admit that he that no one had any idea how life had how the first life had evolved from the chemical Prebiotic soup yeah and then and then Stein asked him well what do you think about the possibility that intelligent design could be part of the answer and then Dawkins uh speculated uh maybe somewhat imprudently from his point of view about well it could it might be but it would have had to been another alien being who have by a purely explicable process on some other planet and then later he I think he came to

wish he had not said that but in any case even cybin is thought to perhaps have come here through prin bermia because uh psilocybin is it's like a very unique compound are there are there downsides of these experiences that people have are there bad trips as it were sure uhhuh yeah sure people have bad trips and I think uh some of that bad trip is trying to control the trip because your ego sort of takes over and you try to like stop it cuz it's so overwhelming and scary may a little afraid it's very terrifying

it's terrifying CU it's it's a complete loss of control and reality melts down in front of you reminds me a little bit of uh the British philosopher AJ a one of the great scientific uh athe was a more of an atheistic philosopher the founder of something called logical positivism in 1986 87 something like that he had a near-death experience and um felt himself being drawn inexorably towards this malevolent red light and then a kind of a sense of being drawn down into a malstrom or a Vortex and then he was revived and wrote the whole

thing up for I think it was the National Review of all places and uh at first he was sort of really affected by it but then later he did a he he gave a reductionist account of it and said it was you know uh loss of oxygen to the brain or something like that you know so um so there are um and I I I know I I I I know a very dear friend in England who's had a an experience while under the knife of of um not a near-death experience but one where he

felt an encounter with the deity in a in a probably drug altered state of consciousness because he was being deeply anesthetized so um I think these experiences are rather pervasive in Human Experience are you aware of um these uh Brazilian churches that um they they practice Christianity but they practice Christianity uh while consuming this psychedelic Brew I have not heard of that yeah they actually have um protection religious protection in the United States there's two see if you can find them uh Central daim I can't remember the names of the two churches hey there uh

Santo d That's it Santo D is a Brazilian religion that makes elaborate use of ordering principles techniques and symbology to shape and direct the effects of the hallucinogenic Brew iasa so iasa is an orally active version of DMT DMT um is uh broken down in the gut by monoamine oxidase and iasa combines the leaves of one plant which um there's there's they do it in different ways in different parts of the world but one part of the Brew contains uh dimethyltryptamine and the other part of the Brew contains a natural MAO inhibitor called harine and

the two of them combine to this very elaborate Brewing process converts it to an orally active version of DMT so with the MAO inhibitor and with the DMT you take it now it's orally active and it's a slow relase trip of dimethyl tryptamine that that instead of lasting for 15 minutes it lasts for hours and so this church combines Christianity with this psychedelic ritual and um I I know people that have done it there they they said it's extraordinary it's just this wild thing you see these people you know singing hymns and and and and

and and and talking about Jesus and they're tripping balls and they're they're doing it collectively as a group taking the charismatic movement and putting it on steroids yeah but I don't think they're do I don't I don't hear any abuse I don't I don't hear any stories of I I I just hear I mean it's very anecdotal but I I don't necessarily think you can put them into like this uh dangerous cult thing like uh the Buddha field people that I was talking about earlier I think this is a it's a more I don't I

don't is honest the word honest Pursuit it's a more accurate Pursuit it's a a more Earnest Pursuit I think they're really trying to connect with God and they believe they're doing that through this and I'm just speaking for them and I probably shouldn't be but I believe from my friends who have done it and had these experiences with this this church and there's I think there's two churches in the United States that are allowed to do this and I think they again they originated from Brazil where in the Amazon this is where um they first

discover discovered this uh iasa well you are definitely broadening my horizons because I had not heard of that but um but I think anybody who's really truly religious and if you do go into the ancient history of mushroom symbolism and religious uh texts and how much connection there is to psychedelic rituals and ancient religious art um you know Brian M rescu who uh wrote this fantastic book called The immortality key on the ucini mysteries in ancient Greece they they because of his work because of this amazing book and because of more than a decade of

research they've now determined that there's actual physical proof that during the ucan Mysteries when they were uh when they were involved in these rituals and they were drinking wine that the wine they were drinking was laced with Urgot which is a very potent psychedelic drug and they think it was laced with other psychedelics as well and that their beer was as well and these people that were creating democracy as we know it they they were psyence and this was a this was a very persecuted thing where they were they they were banned by the the

Romans from doing it there and so they left Greece and they went to other they went to Spain they there's evidence that this went to a bunch of other different places so is this like the first or 2 Century or earlier or uh you'd have to Google that um but the book is fantastic and it's actually opened up a field a field of study at Harvard um because of Brian M rescue's work that's Shakespeare quote uh there are more things under Heaven and Earth htio than are yeah uh acknowledged in your philosophy I think the

one you know I don't know anything about this but the one thing I do know is that the default philosophy or worldview that we inherited from the late 19th century called scientific materialism is failing on multiple fronts and uh stuff I've written is arguing that it can't explain the science it was supposedly based on science but it's not explaining the the cuttingedge scientific discoveries Dawkins has this wonderful way of framing the issue he says that the Universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if at bottom there is no purpose no design Nothing

But Blind pitiless indifference and blind pitiless is indifference is is hand or his way of of talking about purely undirected material processes matter and motion the molecules and the energy and that's it and The evolutionary process that ensues from it but what is striking to me is that the big discoveries that we've made about where the universe came from about the structure of the universe the fine tuning of the universe the the fact that the Universe had a beginning the complexity of Life the the information stored in life the information processing system in life all

of of these things have turned out to be deeply surprising and unexpected from that perspective of the 19th century scientific materialism that we that we inherited and which has been popularized by people like Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss and uh even Stephen Hawking got into it in the end they the the sort of so-called new atheism that was so popular around 07 through 2015 but I think is now waning that that nobody no materialistic expected the universe to have a beginning every one of them resisted at Einstein initially before he adopted a less materialistic worldview bent

over backwards to try to circumvent the conclusion that there had been a big bang hoil hated the Big Bang um the the people confronted with the the fine tuning of invented the Multiverse concept but that hasn't actually solved the problem and in the in the origin of Life problem they've punted the problem to outer space so it's actually now the scientific atheism that's getting exotic and and invoking um extra ad hoc or auxiliary hypotheses to try to save the evidence where the the the theistic design view has a sort of parsimony and elegance and simplicity

to it as an explanation so there's been that that kind of a shift but in any case you know I don't discount experiences of the kind you you are describing I haven't had them um I don't discount count near-death experiences my worldview is open to things Beyond just the the the molecules and the and the atoms in front of me and I think there have been big shifts in science and philosophy that are putting materialism on the defensive and are opening people to u to spiritual realities that were not uh even considered uh in the

late 19th century among Elite intellectuals or among most elite intellectuals through the last 100 years but I think shifting I think there's a real danger of being an elite intellectual and all agreeing upon a very specific thing that gives you social credit to sort of uh espouse we've seen that in a lot of things yeah yeah we certainly have and it just there's so many Mysteries and the the mystery of design the possibility of design is so intriguing to so many people and and it means so many different things to so many different people like

what what does that mean is the universe alive is it is it is it a part of something that's even bigger than that is is the universe itself just an atom and some in infinite being that is also a part of a universe that's an atom and another infinite being I mean this is why I wrote return of a god hypothesis the first in the first two books um the first book was signature in the cell about the origin of the first life and I argued that the information bearing properties of DNA and the information

processing system that's present in even the very simplest cell pref presents a profound challenge to the idea of undirected evolutionary processes a mind had to be involved because what we know from our uniform and repeated experience is that whenever we see information and we trace it back to its source whether we're talking about computer code or a hieroglyphic inscription or a paragraph in a book or information inem embedded in a radio signal we always come to a mind not an undirected material process the people looking for extraterrestrial intelligence with SEI were looking for information Rich

sequences embedded modulated in a radio signal and had they found them they would have concluded yes there is definitely an extraterrestrial intelligence no one has found such a signal yet but the presumption that information is a decisive indicator of Prior intelligence is shared not just by theists or Christians it was shared by the steady people you know uh or ID people um but having made that argument my readers then wanted to know well who do you think the designing intelligence is and what can science tell us about that and what I do in the new

book is look at competing metaphysical hypothesis theism deism pantheism panentheism space alienism um and good oldfashioned materialism and and then compare their explanatory power with respect to these big three things that science has discovered that the Universe had a beginning that it's been finely tuned from the beginning and that since the beginning we've had these big infusions of new code into our biosphere that make new new forms of life possible I think theism provides the best overall explanation of that but I do think it is a completely new day that that it's it's the scientific

materialism of the 19th century that's getting weird and exotic and and I think that's a way of saying that there's must be something more than just these simple simplistic materialistic explanations that we have defined as coextensive with science in such that we will not consider anything outside that box thank you very much I really enjoyed this conversation I did too it thank you appreciate it oh tell everybody about your book so oh sorry well I was just I'm sorry I may have been giving a little plug there please uh latest book is Return of the

god hypothesis three scientific discoveries that reveal the Mind behind the universe the previous book was Darwin's doubt um uh uh the explosive origin of animal life and the case for intelligent design subtitle and the first book was signature in the cell DNA and the evidence for intelligence do you have a website as well I do uh the best one is return ofthe God hypothesis. okay all right thank you very much abely bye everybody [Applause] [Music]