Full Transcript for Stephen Meyer, John Lennox, and James Tour: Three Scientists on the Origins of Everything | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution

00:02:15,210 --> 00:02:19,590 Which of those two better reflects, not perfectly perhaps, 44 00:02:19,590 --> 00:02:21,255 but better reflects 45 00:02:21,255 --> 00:02:26,255 the most recent developments in science, Steve. 46 00:02:27,600 --> 00:02:29,620 - I think the Psalmist has got it right 47 00:02:30,483 --> 00:02:33,084 and the good Professor Dawkins, who has a talent 48 00:02:33,084 --> 00:02:35,760 for framing issues beautifully, nevertheless gets it wrong 49 00:02:35,760 --> 00:02:37,860 that the new developments in science, 50 00:02:37,860 --> 00:02:39,780 especially having to do with biological 51 00:02:39,780 --> 00:02:42,900 and cosmological origins are pointing to the reality 52 00:02:42,900 --> 00:02:45,330 of a transcendent designing creator. 53 00:02:45,330 --> 00:02:46,380 - Jim. 54 00:02:46,380 --> 00:02:49,560 - I would think the Psalmist has it much, much closer. 55 00:02:49,560 --> 00:02:51,840 - Much closer, John, are you 56 00:02:51,840 --> 00:02:55,560 please stick up for rationalism, and which of those two? 57 00:02:55,560 --> 00:02:57,300 - I stick up for rationalism 58 00:02:57,300 --> 00:03:01,410 and say the Psalmist has it exactly right, 59 00:03:01,410 --> 00:03:04,140 that this is a word based universe. 60 00:03:04,140 --> 00:03:06,723 The fact that we can describe it in mathematics, 61 00:03:07,639 --> 00:03:09,360 the fact that biology uses language 62 00:03:09,360 --> 00:03:11,560 to describe its central features 63 00:03:12,644 --> 00:03:15,177 of DNA and Richard Dawkins' statement 64 00:03:15,177 --> 00:03:17,970 is contradicted by his own life 65 00:03:17,970 --> 00:03:19,530 because he does believe actually 66 00:03:19,530 --> 00:03:21,183 in good and evil, apparently. 67 00:03:23,310 --> 00:03:24,153 - The big bang. 68 00:03:25,741 --> 00:03:27,120 Let's begin everything with an excerpt. 69 00:03:27,120 --> 00:03:28,530 There's a forthcoming documentary 70 00:03:28,530 --> 00:03:30,574 in which all three of you appear. 71 00:03:30,574 --> 00:03:31,407 It's called "The Story of Everything". 72 00:03:31,407 --> 00:03:32,610 I believe it will be in theaters 73 00:03:32,610 --> 00:03:35,200 in the United States in April, is that right? 74 00:03:35,200 --> 00:03:36,090 - [Speaker] The film will open in theaters 75 00:03:36,090 --> 00:03:38,530 across the country on April 30th. 76 00:03:38,530 --> 00:03:41,467 - All right, so, and it's based on your book, 77 00:03:41,467 --> 00:03:43,832 "The Return of the God Hypothesis" 78 00:03:43,832 --> 00:03:48,810 and the documentary, as we will hear ourselves to date 79 00:03:48,810 --> 00:03:50,160 describes three 80 00:03:50,160 --> 00:03:54,993 of the most important recent ish innovations in science. 81 00:03:56,152 --> 00:03:57,990 And we'll begin with a big bang. 82 00:03:57,990 --> 00:04:00,270 - If the universe was always here, 83 00:04:00,270 --> 00:04:02,850 if the universe was infinitely old, 84 00:04:02,850 --> 00:04:06,000 then there's nothing for a creator

to do. 85 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:08,610 - Steve, if the universe was always here, 86 00:04:08,610 --> 00:04:13,170 there's nothing for a creator to do, says Carl Sagan. 87 00:04:13,170 --> 00:04:17,730 During a scientific conference in 1927, a Belgian priest 88 00:04:17,730 --> 00:04:20,250 and astronomer named Georges Lamaitre 89 00:04:20,250 --> 00:04:23,220 shared a taxi with Albert Einstein. 90 00:04:23,220 --> 00:04:24,600 What happened during that taxi? 91 00:04:24,600 --> 00:04:25,710 - A fascinating story. 92 00:04:25,710 --> 00:04:29,790 Einstein's own theory of general relativity 93 00:04:29,790 --> 00:04:32,640 implied a dynamic expanding universe 94 00:04:32,640 --> 00:04:34,500 outward from the beginning. 95 00:04:34,500 --> 00:04:37,080 He was unhappy with that conclusion. 96 00:04:37,080 --> 00:04:38,641 - Einstein himself. 97 00:04:38,641 --> 00:04:40,860 - Einstein himself, so he fiddled 98 00:04:40,860 --> 00:04:42,810 with his own equations to make sure that 99 00:04:42,810 --> 00:04:47,810 the term in the equation that described the outward push 100 00:04:48,600 --> 00:04:51,270 perfectly balanced with the gravitational pull 101 00:04:51,270 --> 00:04:54,422 so he could depict the universe as static. 102 00:04:54,422 --> 00:04:58,560 Lamaitre worked with his equations 103 00:04:58,560 --> 00:05:00,060 and showed that even on his own terms, 104 00:05:00,060 --> 00:05:02,010 the universe was not static, 105 00:05:02,010 --> 00:05:04,740 and that it was a dynamic universe. 106 00:05:04,740 --> 00:05:06,180 But he also was well aware 107 00:05:06,180 --> 00:05:10,033 of the astronomical data coming from Mount Wilson 108 00:05:10,033 --> 00:05:12,480 in California showing what is called red shift, 109 00:05:12,480 --> 00:05:15,570 that the galaxies are moving away from us. 110 00:05:15,570 --> 00:05:17,481 And we can tell that because of the way 111 00:05:17,481 --> 00:05:20,220 in which the light has shifted in the red direction 112 00:05:20,220 --> 00:05:21,843 of the electromagnetic spectrum. 113 00:05:22,768 --> 00:05:24,180 And so in the taxi cab on the way 114 00:05:24,180 --> 00:05:27,750 to this famous conference in Belgium in 1927, 115 00:05:28,987 --> 00:05:33,600 Lara confronts Einstein with this astronomical evidence 116 00:05:33,600 --> 00:05:36,540 and with his own depiction 117 00:05:36,540 --> 00:05:39,000 and relays his own work 118 00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:41,682 on his famous field equations. 119 00:05:41,682 --> 00:05:44,370 And Einstein has reported to have responded. 120 00:05:44,370 --> 00:05:46,830 He said, "Well, your mathematics is impeccable, 121 00:05:46,830 --> 00:05:49,620 but your physical intuition is abominable." 122 00:05:49,620 --> 00:05:52,510 And so he rejects out of hand the idea 123 00:05:52,510 --> 00:05:54,120 that the universe is dynamic and expanding. 124 00:05:54,120 --> 00:05:56,770 But two years later, Arthur Eddington at Cambridge 125 00:05:58,048 --> 00:06:00,759 urges him again to go out to Mount Wilson 126 00:06:00,759 --> 00:06:01,592 to see what Hubble 127 00:06:01,592 --> 00:06:03,540 has been seeing through the telescope. 128 00:06:03,540 --> 00:06:05,790 And there's some famous news. 129 00:06:05,790 --> 00:06:07,230 - Take a second to explain the red shift. 130 00:06:07,230 --> 00:06:08,220 - Yeah, exactly, okay. 131 00:06:08,220 --> 00:06:10,239 - that's important to understand. 132 00:06:10,239 --> 00:06:12,900 - Yeah, so the light coming from distant galaxies is, 133 00:06:12,900 --> 00:06:15,300 as the physicists say, shifted in the red direction 134 00:06:15,300 --> 00:06:17,554 of electromagnetic spectrum. 135 00:06:17,554 --> 00:06:18,630 If you shine light through a prism, 136 00:06:18,630 --> 00:06:20,880 the light will separate into different colors, 137 00:06:20,880 --> 00:06:22,740 red to violet, the red light 138 00:06:22,740 --> 00:06:25,740 corresponds to longer wavelengths. 139 00:06:25,740 --> 00:06:28,110 So if an object is moving away 140 00:06:28,110 --> 00:06:31,440 and is emitting any kind of a wavelength, 141 00:06:31,440 --> 00:06:33,510 that wavelength will be stretched out. 142 00:06:33,510 --> 00:06:35,539 So if the object is moving away, it's going to stretch out 143 00:06:35,539 --> 00:06:39,000 and the color of the light 144 00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:41,463 will shift towards the red direction. 145 00:06:41,463 --> 00:06:43,768 It will be redder than it would otherwise be. 146 00:06:43,768 --> 00:06:44,601 And so as Edwin. 147 00:06:44,601 --> 00:06:45,434 - the ship's horn 148 00:06:46,295 --> 00:06:48,289 as the ship pulls away from us to go off to sea. 149 00:06:48,289 --> 00:06:49,800 - Exactly, or think of the train whistle, you know, 150 00:06:49,800 --> 00:06:52,860 with the doppler effect from high school chemistry. 151 00:06:52,860 --> 00:06:54,969 As the pitch drops, 152 00:06:54,969 --> 00:06:57,567 the wavelength is also stretching out. 153 00:06:57,567 --> 00:07:01,660 So as Hubble began to survey the night sky 154 00:07:02,710 --> 00:07:03,780 with these new dome telescopes 155 00:07:03,780 --> 00:07:05,940 that were just being built in the 1920s, 156 00:07:05,940 --> 00:07:07,950 his photographic plates 157 00:07:07,950 --> 00:07:10,060 and his spectral analysis was showing 158 00:07:11,017 --> 00:07:12,946 that the galaxies in every quadrant 159 00:07:12,946 --> 00:07:14,250 that he investigated were redshift. 160 00:07:14,250 --> 00:07:17,060 The light coming was being stretched, 161 00:07:17,060 --> 00:07:18,367 which successive to the universe 162 00:07:18,367 --> 00:07:19,440 was actually expanding outward 163 00:07:19,440 --> 00:07:21,420 as if from a beginning point. 164 00:07:21,420 --> 00:07:25,060 And this was the great discovery 165 00:07:25,060 --> 00:07:26,010 that led to people thinking about, well, 166 00:07:26,010 --> 00:07:30,390 what would happen if you ran that sequence in reverse? 167 00:07:30,390 --> 00:07:33,060 If you back extrapolate, if you think about,

well, 168 00:07:33,060 --> 00:07:35,800 what would the, if the universe is expanding outward 169 00:07:35,800 --> 00:07:36,660 in the forward direction of time, 170 00:07:36,660 --> 00:07:38,880 what would've been like 1,000 years ago 171 00:07:38,880 --> 00:07:41,220 or a million years ago, or a billion years ago. 172 00:07:41,220 --> 00:07:44,790 However far back you go, you will eventually reach a point 173 00:07:44,790 --> 00:07:47,880 where all of that galactic material would've converged 174 00:07:47,880 --> 00:07:51,540 in the reverse direction of time to one point, 175 00:07:51,540 --> 00:07:54,480 which would mark the start of the expansion. 176 00:07:54,480 --> 00:07:56,910 But arguably, the beginning of the universe itself. 177 00:07:56,910 --> 00:07:59,220 - So a young student at Cambridge, 178 00:07:59,220 --> 00:08:04,217 the physicist Stephen Hawking in 1966, 179 00:08:04,217 --> 00:08:07,470 presented a mathematical demonstration of the singularity. 180 00:08:07,470 --> 00:08:08,610 I'm reading these words 181 00:08:08,610 --> 00:08:10,170 but I don't understand them, John, 182 00:08:10,170 --> 00:08:13,170 which is where you're gonna come in here, the singularity, 183 00:08:13,170 --> 00:08:18,120 the moment when all matter and light were infinitely tight. 184 00:08:18,120 --> 00:08:23,120 So as I understand it, the singularity exists somehow, 185 00:08:23,593 --> 00:08:24,426 I don't even know how to describe it, 186 00:08:24,426 --> 00:08:26,970 but it exists outside time and space 187 00:08:26,970 --> 00:08:30,491 because time and space haven't come into a being yet. 188 00:08:30,491 --> 00:08:34,410 So explain what this means, the singularity. 189 00:08:34,410 --> 00:08:36,240 - They're very difficult concepts, 190 00:08:36,240 --> 00:08:41,040 but what Hawking did was to confirm 191 00:08:41,040 --> 00:08:46,040 what Lemaître predicted and what the Redshift showed 192 00:08:46,174 --> 00:08:48,420 and the Hubble telescope and all the rest of it, 193 00:08:48,420 --> 00:08:50,515 and gave a stronger, 194 00:08:50,515 --> 00:08:54,150 more mathematical confirmation of it. 195 00:08:54,150 --> 00:08:56,340 And in more recent times, 196 00:08:56,340 --> 00:08:58,620 there are three brilliant mathematicians, 197 00:08:58,620 --> 00:09:01,800 Vilenkin, Borde and Alan Guth. 198 00:09:01,800 --> 00:09:04,230 And they worked out mathematically 199 00:09:04,230 --> 00:09:07,950 that you just cannot have an infinite sequence 200 00:09:07,950 --> 00:09:10,384 going backwards in time. 201 00:09:10,384 --> 00:09:13,530 It's reminiscent of the old philosophical argument 202 00:09:13,530 --> 00:09:15,540 that you can't have an infinite sequence 203 00:09:15,540 --> 00:09:17,370 of steps backward in time. 204 00:09:17,370 --> 00:09:22,370 So from their perspective, it's established 205 00:09:22,650 --> 00:09:25,980 that there was a beginning, whether you think 206 00:09:25,980 --> 00:09:28,020 in terms of multiverses or not, 207 00:09:28,020

--> 00:09:30,210 there was an absolute beginning. 208 00:09:30,210 --> 00:09:34,680 And that of course confirms the statement of Genesis, 209 00:09:34,680 --> 00:09:38,550 which states there was a beginning. 210 00:09:38,550 --> 00:09:40,800 And to my mind, 211 00:09:40,800 --> 00:09:43,710 it is absolutely fascinating 212 00:09:43,710 --> 00:09:46,230 because I was at a conference 213 00:09:46,230 --> 00:09:48,750 of some very high powered physicists 214 00:09:48,750 --> 00:09:52,080 not far from here a few years ago. 215 00:09:52,080 --> 00:09:54,360 And I made the claim 216 00:09:54,360 --> 00:09:59,360 that Genesis, in the beginning God created, was relevant. 217 00:09:59,660 --> 00:10:01,990 And I was interrupted by a heckler 218 00:10:02,836 --> 00:10:04,020 who is a famous physicist, 219 00:10:04,020 --> 00:10:06,030 and he said, look, professor Lennox, 220 00:10:06,030 --> 00:10:08,460 you are not saying to us, 221 00:10:08,460 --> 00:10:13,170 are you, that you believe that the first statement 222 00:10:13,170 --> 00:10:17,040 of Genesis has any relevance for us today. 223 00:10:17,040 --> 00:10:18,810 I said, "I am." 224 00:10:18,810 --> 00:10:22,470 I said, of course the Bible is not a textbook of science, 225 00:10:22,470 --> 00:10:25,350 but when it says "In the beginning, God created the heavens 226 00:10:25,350 --> 00:10:27,900 and the earth", it's talking about the same heavens 227 00:10:27,900 --> 00:10:30,690 and earth that you study as a cosmologist. 228 00:10:30,690 --> 00:10:34,875 Now he said, the interesting thing is that for centuries, 229 00:10:34,875 --> 00:10:39,240 what we now call science was dominated 230 00:10:39,240 --> 00:10:43,710 by the idea that matter, space was eternal 231 00:10:43,710 --> 00:10:46,590 because Aristotle held sway. 232 00:10:46,590 --> 00:10:49,530 And it was only in the 1960s 233 00:10:49,530 --> 00:10:52,110 that the evidence started coming in 234 00:10:52,110 --> 00:10:54,120 that there was a beginning. 235 00:10:54,120 --> 00:10:56,820 Now said, in my country of the UK, 236 00:10:56,820 --> 00:10:59,970 it was resisted by the scientific establishment. 237 00:10:59,970 --> 00:11:01,380 - And by Einstein himself. 238 00:11:01,380 --> 00:11:03,426 - Einstein himself, who did later 239 00:11:03,426 --> 00:11:04,641 change his mind though, which was. 240 00:11:04,641 --> 00:11:06,312 - So the notion of a big bang, 241 00:11:06,312 --> 00:11:09,266 the proper way to understand it, 242 00:11:09,266 --> 00:11:11,493 even though there's a lot of math involved, 243 00:11:12,678 --> 00:11:14,340 this is strictly speaking a scientific finding. 244 00:11:14,340 --> 00:11:17,340 This is an empirical finding, no philosopher, 245 00:11:17,340 --> 00:11:20,640 on the contrary, Aristotle didn't predict it, 246 00:11:20,640 --> 00:11:22,473 we discovered it, is that fair? 247 00:11:22,473 --> 00:11:25,890 - Yeah, I think we discovered evidence for it, 248 00:11:25,890 --> 00:11:29,520 in the 1950s, most scientists didn't believe it. 249 00:11:29,520 --> 00:11:32,370 It wasn't until 1964 with this discovery 250 00:11:32,370 --> 00:11:34,140 of the microwave background radiation. 251 00:11:34,140 --> 00:11:35,937 - [Peter] Okay, that's another point, 252 00:11:35,937 --> 00:11:36,960 the microwave background radiation. 253 00:11:36,960 --> 00:11:38,671 Tell me what that means. 254 00:11:38,671 --> 00:11:40,437 - That was the convincing argument. 255 00:11:40,437 --> 00:11:42,870 This same thing that Steve talked about. 256 00:11:42,870 --> 00:11:45,243 - It's different from the Redshift, is it? 257 00:11:45,243 --> 00:11:46,830 - It's a separate line of evidence. 258 00:11:46,830 --> 00:11:49,672 It provides additional confirmation at the beginning. 259 00:11:49,672 --> 00:11:51,810 - Yeah, so there was further confirmation 260 00:11:51,810 --> 00:11:55,770 and so the scientific community was not there 261 00:11:55,770 --> 00:11:57,210 and then all of a sudden, 262 00:11:57,210 --> 00:12:00,240 it started changing in the early '60s. 263 00:12:00,240 --> 00:12:01,995 - Peter, can I take just another quick 264 00:12:01,995 --> 00:12:06,995 cut at the Stephen Hawking result, 265 00:12:07,140 --> 00:12:08,550 because what Hawking is doing. 266 00:12:08,550 --> 00:12:09,900 - He resisted it himself, didn't he? 267 00:12:09,900 --> 00:12:12,930 - Later, after he proved this singularity theorem, 268 00:12:12,930 --> 00:12:15,210 then he wasn't quite sure he liked his own result. 269 00:12:15,210 --> 00:12:18,240 Yes, but the basic idea is actually quite intuitive 270 00:12:18,240 --> 00:12:21,580 according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, 271 00:12:21,580 --> 00:12:24,000 which is just a theory of gravity, 272 00:12:24,000 --> 00:12:27,812 massive bodies curve the fabric of space 273 00:12:27,812 --> 00:12:28,890 or what's called space time. 274 00:12:28,890 --> 00:12:32,331 And Hawking realized, he was studying black hole physics 275 00:12:32,331 --> 00:12:33,240 in the 1960s, 276 00:12:33,240 --> 00:12:35,670 and he realized that in the forward direction 277 00:12:35,670 --> 00:12:38,580 of time, matter, according to the astronomers, 278 00:12:38,580 --> 00:12:39,780 was getting more and more diffuse 279 00:12:39,780 --> 00:12:42,780 as the universe expanded, which meant 280 00:12:42,780 --> 00:12:44,220 that the curvature 281 00:12:44,220 --> 00:12:46,560 of the universe was getting less and less pronounced. 282 00:12:46,560 --> 00:12:49,080 But in the reverse direction of time, 283 00:12:49,080 --> 00:12:51,540 the matter would've been more and more densely concentrated. 284 00:12:51,540 --> 00:12:54,201 And so as you go back further and further 285 00:12:54,201 --> 00:12:57,750 and further, that more densely concentrated matter 286 00:12:57,750 --> 00:13:00,540 of the universe is causing the space of the universe 287 00:13:00,540 --> 00:13:03,126 to become more and more tightly curved. 288 00:13:03,126 --> 00:13:03,959 And if you go back

far enough, 289 00:13:03,959 --> 00:13:05,693 you eventually reach a limiting case 290 00:13:05,693 --> 00:13:07,980 where you can't go back any further 291 00:13:07,980 --> 00:13:10,230 because the matter is so densely concentrated, 292 00:13:10,230 --> 00:13:11,610 it becomes infinitely dense 293 00:13:11,610 --> 00:13:13,290 and the curvature goes to an infinite. 294 00:13:13,290 --> 00:13:15,150 And at that point, the laws of physics breakdown 295 00:13:15,150 --> 00:13:17,750 and that's what marks the beginning of the universe. 296 00:13:18,853 --> 00:13:21,330 - All right, so we have here, 297 00:13:21,330 --> 00:13:22,950 I said we're going to go work our way 298 00:13:22,950 --> 00:13:25,350 through three of these scientific developments. 299 00:13:25,350 --> 00:13:27,829 But John has already touched on this, 300 00:13:27,829 --> 00:13:29,880 the challenge to a purely materialist view 301 00:13:29,880 --> 00:13:33,750 of the universe from the big bang, if I have it right, 302 00:13:33,750 --> 00:13:38,750 is that there must have been a first mover, 303 00:13:38,820 --> 00:13:40,530 where if there was a beginning, 304 00:13:40,530 --> 00:13:42,587 something had to begin it. 305 00:13:42,587 --> 00:13:43,869 That's the question, at least, it raises. 306 00:13:43,869 --> 00:13:46,590 - Matter, space, time and energy begin at a finite time ago 307 00:13:46,590 --> 00:13:48,900 then before that or independent of that, 308 00:13:48,900 --> 00:13:50,750 there is no matter to do the causing. 309 00:13:51,641 --> 00:13:52,890 So you can't have a materialistic explanation 310 00:13:52,890 --> 00:13:54,510 for the origin of matter itself. 311 00:13:54,510 --> 00:13:56,490 - Got it, all right, fine tuning. 312 00:13:56,490 --> 00:13:58,740 This is the second of the three developments, once again, 313 00:13:58,740 --> 00:14:01,773 we'll begin with an excerpt from The Story of Everything. 314 00:14:03,061 --> 00:14:05,310 - The basic idea of fine tuning is that the universe 315 00:14:05,310 --> 00:14:09,240 is just so that its properties, the initial conditions, 316 00:14:09,240 --> 00:14:11,580 the so-called constants of physics, 317 00:14:11,580 --> 00:14:14,940 the laws of nature rest on a razor's edge. 318 00:14:14,940 --> 00:14:16,680 So that if they were slightly different 319 00:14:16,680 --> 00:14:18,661 than they are in the actual universe, 320 00:14:18,661 --> 00:14:21,587 the universe would not be habitable. 321 00:14:21,587 --> 00:14:22,920 That is, it would not be compatible with life. 322 00:14:22,920 --> 00:14:24,600 - What's he talking about? 323 00:14:24,600 --> 00:14:27,400 Give give us some sense of the kinds of parameters. 324 00:14:27,400 --> 00:14:30,533 - Well, the fine tuning idea is just the idea 325 00:14:30,533 --> 00:14:32,220 that the basic parameters of physics 326 00:14:32,220 --> 00:14:34,200 fall within very narrow ranges 327 00:14:34,200 --> 00:14:38,193 outside of which life, even stable galaxies, 328 00:14:39,083 -->

00:14:40,803 even basic chemistry would be impossible. 329 00:14:40,803 --> 00:14:43,389 So we've been talking about the expansion of the universe. 330 00:14:43,389 --> 00:14:44,940 It turns out that the force that is responsible 331 00:14:44,940 --> 00:14:48,240 for that expansion called the cosmological constant, 332 00:14:48,240 --> 00:14:50,640 is fine tuned to something like one part 333 00:14:50,640 --> 00:14:52,440 in 10 to the 90th power, 334 00:14:52,440 --> 00:14:54,630 little smidge this way, little smidge that way, 335 00:14:54,630 --> 00:14:56,130 you'll get either a heat death 336 00:14:56,130 --> 00:14:59,070 or a collapse of the universe, the force of gravity, 337 00:14:59,070 --> 00:15:00,420 the strength of the force 338 00:15:00,420 --> 00:15:02,127 depicted by something 339 00:15:02,127 --> 00:15:03,328 called the gravitational force constant. 340 00:15:03,328 --> 00:15:05,820 The mass of the quarks, 341 00:15:05,820 --> 00:15:08,700 the elementary particles, all of these different parameters, 342 00:15:08,700 --> 00:15:12,414 the speed of light, they all fall within these sweet spots. 343 00:15:12,414 --> 00:15:13,290 So physicists are now talking about, 344 00:15:13,290 --> 00:15:15,540 are living in a Goldilocks universe, not too hot, 345 00:15:15,540 --> 00:15:17,070 not too cold, not too strong, 346 00:15:17,070 --> 00:15:19,555 not too weak, everything just right. 347 00:15:19,555 --> 00:15:23,040 - So if I picture myself in a control room with knobs, 348 00:15:23,040 --> 00:15:25,710 any one of which, if some child walked in 349 00:15:25,710 --> 00:15:29,190 and bumped into any one of these knobs, the universe 350 00:15:29,190 --> 00:15:30,690 as we know it, and certainly human life 351 00:15:30,690 --> 00:15:33,750 as we know it on this planet, could no longer continue. 352 00:15:33,750 --> 00:15:35,640 How many knobs are there? 353 00:15:35,640 --> 00:15:38,910 - Several dozen, depending on which physicist you ask. 354 00:15:38,910 --> 00:15:40,620 The illustration that you cite 355 00:15:40,620 --> 00:15:43,140 is actually an illustration of one of John's teachers 356 00:15:43,140 --> 00:15:45,870 at the University of Cambridge, 357 00:15:45,870 --> 00:15:48,757 Sir John Polkinghorne, the famous physicist. 358 00:15:48,757 --> 00:15:50,430 He used to ask his students to imagine, 359 00:15:50,430 --> 00:15:52,170 to depict the fine tuning. 360 00:15:52,170 --> 00:15:55,380 He asked them to imagine a universe creating machine 361 00:15:55,380 --> 00:15:56,970 with a knob for the strength of gravity. 362 00:15:56,970 --> 00:15:59,973 One for electromagnetism, one for the cosmological constant, 363 00:16:00,855 --> 00:16:03,735 a slider for the speed of light and so on. 364 00:16:03,735 --> 00:16:05,638 And the point was that each one 365 00:16:05,638 --> 00:16:07,800 of those parameters are precisely set 366 00:16:07,800 --> 00:16:11,040 and a little bit off this way or that way. 367 00:16:11,040 --> 00:16:13,560 And the consequences to the possibility 368 00:16:13,560 --> 00:16:16,140 of life in the universe would be catastrophic. 369 00:16:16,140 --> 00:16:17,070 - Life in the universe, 370 00:16:17,070 --> 00:16:19,140 but also the ability to do chemistry. 371 00:16:19,140 --> 00:16:21,030 Do you run into these in your life? 372 00:16:21,030 --> 00:16:24,150 - Well actually Steve was underestimating 373 00:16:24,150 --> 00:16:27,510 the number of fine tuning parameters there are, 374 00:16:27,510 --> 00:16:30,600 if you just change the dipole moment of water, 375 00:16:30,600 --> 00:16:31,470 one tiny. 376 00:16:31,470 --> 00:16:32,303 - Say that word again. 377 00:16:32,303 --> 00:16:33,912 - The dipole moment of water. 378 00:16:33,912 --> 00:16:38,460 So just how much electron density there is 379 00:16:38,460 --> 00:16:41,588 on one side of the water molecule versus the other. 380 00:16:41,588 --> 00:16:43,920 Just slightly a fraction of a percent, 381 00:16:43,920 --> 00:16:45,810 very small, life becomes impossible. 382 00:16:45,810 --> 00:16:48,720 Everything in chemistry is balanced perfectly 383 00:16:48,720 --> 00:16:50,338 for us to have life. 384 00:16:50,338 --> 00:16:52,440 - Fantastic, all right, you're a mathematician. 385 00:16:52,440 --> 00:16:53,973 How improbable is life? 386 00:16:54,927 --> 00:16:56,691 Is there a way of quantifying this? 387 00:16:56,691 --> 00:16:57,840 - Well, it's extremely improbable. 388 00:16:57,840 --> 00:17:01,950 I think a very good example of a reaction 389 00:17:01,950 --> 00:17:06,420 to an early former fine tuning was Sir Fred Hoyle, 390 00:17:06,420 --> 00:17:09,813 who was an atheist and who was my examiner at Cambridge. 391 00:17:10,883 --> 00:17:13,650 And he predicted a resonance in carbon, 392 00:17:13,650 --> 00:17:15,690 which was later discovered. 393 00:17:15,690 --> 00:17:18,510 And when it was discovered, his reaction was, 394 00:17:18,510 --> 00:17:23,010 nothing shook my atheism like that discovery. 395 00:17:23,010 --> 00:17:25,380 Now, Sir Roger Penrose is one 396 00:17:25,380 --> 00:17:27,870 of the most brilliant mathematicians in the world, 397 00:17:27,870 --> 00:17:30,300 worked with Stephen Hawking and so on, 398 00:17:30,300 --> 00:17:34,620 and he has an analogy in his book where he says, 399 00:17:34,620 --> 00:17:37,170 if you want the universe with the second law 400 00:17:37,170 --> 00:17:40,353 of thermodynamics, where even your Cadillac will rust, 401 00:17:41,230 --> 00:17:42,450 everything is running down. 402 00:17:42,450 --> 00:17:45,180 The creator's aim, and those are his words. 403 00:17:45,180 --> 00:17:47,040 He's not a believer in God. 404 00:17:47,040 --> 00:17:52,040 The creator's aim must be accurate to one part in 10, 405 00:17:52,200 --> 00:17:56,580 to the power 10 to the power 123 406 00:17:56,580 --> 00:17:58,590 in order to get our universe. 407 00:17:58,590 --> 00:18:02,416 And many people have pointed out that if you put a one here 408 00:18:02,416 -->

00:18:06,510 and a zero on every elementary particle in the universe, 409 00:18:06,510 --> 00:18:08,850 you still can't write that number out. 410 00:18:08,850 --> 00:18:13,850 In other words, the improbability is beyond our imagining. 411 00:18:14,130 --> 00:18:18,480 So the idea of a creator is extremely close 412 00:18:18,480 --> 00:18:20,370 when you see these kind of figures. 413 00:18:20,370 --> 00:18:23,910 And the important thing is, the fine tuning is something 414 00:18:23,910 --> 00:18:26,910 that has been scientifically established. 415 00:18:26,910 --> 00:18:29,670 They've got to explain it, 416 00:18:29,670 --> 00:18:33,180 and they don't have an explanation 417 00:18:33,180 --> 00:18:36,900 that actually works apart from the God hypothesis. 418 00:18:36,900 --> 00:18:38,610 - Everything filmed does a really nice job 419 00:18:38,610 --> 00:18:41,430 of telling the story of Hoyle's discovery 420 00:18:41,430 --> 00:18:44,580 of these very particular parameters 421 00:18:44,580 --> 00:18:46,800 associated with building carbon 422 00:18:46,800 --> 00:18:48,510 that led him to have this change of view. 423 00:18:48,510 --> 00:18:50,310 And he's later quoted as saying, 424 00:18:50,310 --> 00:18:51,990 a common sense interpretation 425 00:18:51,990 --> 00:18:53,400 of the evidence suggests 426 00:18:53,400 --> 00:18:57,030 that a super intellect is monkeyed with physics. 427 00:18:57,030 --> 00:19:01,290 So famous in our fields, yeah. 428 00:19:01,290 --> 00:19:05,880 - All right, the information enigma, I think I stole 429 00:19:05,880 --> 00:19:10,880 that term from your book, again, the documentary. 430 00:19:10,890 --> 00:19:15,890 - Here we are like mites on a plum, 431 00:19:17,581 --> 00:19:19,140 and the plum is this little planet 432 00:19:19,140 --> 00:19:20,694 and it goes around 433 00:19:20,694 --> 00:19:24,903 an insignificant local star, the sun. 434 00:19:26,190 --> 00:19:31,190 And that star is on the obscure outskirts 435 00:19:31,620 --> 00:19:34,050 of an ordinary galaxy, 436 00:19:34,050 --> 00:19:35,656 the Milky Way, 437 00:19:35,656 --> 00:19:40,170 which contains 400 billion other stars. 438 00:19:40,170 --> 00:19:42,780 And this galaxy is just one 439 00:19:42,780 --> 00:19:46,380 of something like 100 billion other galaxies 440 00:19:46,380 --> 00:19:48,480 that make up the universe. 441 00:19:48,480 --> 00:19:50,610 And it is now beginning to look, 442 00:19:50,610 --> 00:19:54,546 this universe is one of an enormous number, 443 00:19:54,546 --> 00:19:57,341 maybe even an infinite number 444 00:19:57,341 --> 00:20:02,341 of other closed off universes. 445 00:20:02,490 --> 00:20:06,243 So the idea that we are central, 446 00:20:07,290 --> 00:20:10,810 that we are the reason there is a universe 447 00:20:12,538 --> 00:20:14,253 is pathetic. 448 00:20:15,210 --> 00:20:19,380 - Jim, I'm gonna begin my line of questioning for you 449 00:20:19,380 --> 00:20:22,410 with my memory of what I think was a ninth 450 00:20:22,410 --> 00:20:25,050 or 10th grade science textbook, 451 00:20:25,050 --> 00:20:28,260 which described the Urey Miller experiment. 452 00:20:28,260 --> 00:20:32,601 1952, couple of professors at the University of Chicago 453 00:20:32,601 --> 00:20:36,300 develop a closed system of glass tubes 454 00:20:36,300 --> 00:20:40,560 and they insert water to represent the ancient ocean, 455 00:20:40,560 --> 00:20:44,850 methane ammonia and hydrogen to mimic the early atmosphere. 456 00:20:44,850 --> 00:20:47,760 And then they subjected it to electrical sparks 457 00:20:47,760 --> 00:20:49,290 to simulate lightning, 458 00:20:49,290 --> 00:20:51,360 and they produced amino acids. 459 00:20:51,360 --> 00:20:55,620 And what I remember dimly, because it was a while ago, 460 00:20:55,620 --> 00:20:57,060 but what I remember was, oh, 461 00:20:57,060 --> 00:20:59,910 the strong implication was we figured out 462 00:20:59,910 --> 00:21:02,138 how to do the origins of life. 463 00:21:02,138 --> 00:21:02,971 They came up with amino acids. 464 00:21:02,971 --> 00:21:05,580 Scientists will be working on this, sooner or later 465 00:21:05,580 --> 00:21:08,550 they'll come up with a living cell. 466 00:21:08,550 --> 00:21:10,589 Has that happened? 467 00:21:10,589 --> 00:21:12,204 - Watch out, you're gonna provoke him. 468 00:21:12,204 --> 00:21:13,439 (person laughing) 469 00:21:13,439 --> 00:21:14,696 - No, that hasn't happened. 470 00:21:14,696 --> 00:21:17,076 That experiment, 471 00:21:17,076 --> 00:21:19,260 there's no doubt they made amino acids, 472 00:21:19,260 --> 00:21:21,330 but the amino acids were just a very small amount 473 00:21:21,330 --> 00:21:22,413 of what was in there. 474 00:21:23,374 --> 00:21:24,660 There were many other things, 475 00:21:24,660 --> 00:21:27,480 and you have to stop the reaction pretty early on, 476 00:21:27,480 --> 00:21:29,940 or the amino acids all get consumed. 477 00:21:29,940 --> 00:21:32,130 They undergoes something called the Millard reaction 478 00:21:32,130 --> 00:21:35,550 where the amin groups reacts with an aldehyde 479 00:21:35,550 --> 00:21:37,860 that forms and it decomposes, 480 00:21:37,860 --> 00:21:40,149 The Millard reaction is the reason 481 00:21:40,149 --> 00:21:42,182 that you put bread in the oven and it starts to turn brown. 482 00:21:42,182 --> 00:21:45,930 and this crusty part over the top. 483 00:21:45,930 --> 00:21:48,673 This is what happens during that reaction. 484 00:21:48,673 --> 00:21:51,420 Everything decomposes, so if you stop it early, 485 00:21:51,420 --> 00:21:53,160 then you can find some amino acids. 486 00:21:53,160 --> 00:21:56,680 But there's many other carboxylic acids, 487 00:21:56,680 --> 00:21:57,513 many other amins. 488 00:21:57,513 --> 00:22:00,392 So you have many other components in there. 489 00:22:00,392 --> 00:22:02,880 It's just a very small quantity. 490 00:22:02,880 --> 00:22:07,410 And of the amino acids, you get the simplest of amino acids 491

00:22:07,410 --> 00:22:11,910 in a large amount, the glycine and the alanine 492 00:22:11,910 --> 00:22:15,238 and the other ones in a very small amount. 493 00:22:15,238 --> 00:22:17,200 And so of the 12 or so or 10 494 00:22:18,053 --> 00:22:19,500 or so that they did isolate, 495 00:22:19,500 --> 00:22:22,530 one greatly predominates 496 00:22:22,530 --> 00:22:24,680 and none of that would be useful in nature. 497 00:22:25,548 --> 00:22:27,337 Plus it didn't have ality. 498 00:22:27,337 --> 00:22:30,416 And so that's why it never led to life. 499 00:22:30,416 --> 00:22:31,560 - Jim, this is more than 70 years ago. 500 00:22:31,560 --> 00:22:33,000 What have you chemists been doing? 501 00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:33,833 - That's right. 502 00:22:34,765 --> 00:22:35,817 - How come nobody has, 503 00:22:35,817 --> 00:22:36,650 how come nobody's produced a living cell yet? 504 00:22:36,650 --> 00:22:37,863 What's going on? 505 00:22:37,863 --> 00:22:38,696 - What's going on? 506 00:22:38,696 --> 00:22:39,529 Because it was really premature 507 00:22:39,529 --> 00:22:41,670 to think that life would come from that. 508 00:22:41,670 --> 00:22:43,320 The more we learn about the cell, 509 00:22:43,320 --> 00:22:46,053 the harder this target gets. 510 00:22:46,053 --> 00:22:48,095 So every year it gets harder 511 00:22:48,095 --> 00:22:49,262 because the cell is more. 512 00:22:49,262 --> 00:22:50,790 - We know, the farther the target escapes us. 513 00:22:50,790 --> 00:22:52,860 - Right, and so even if we move 514 00:22:52,860 --> 00:22:55,380 what we think would be a little bit closer, 515 00:22:55,380 --> 00:22:58,650 the target has moved miles away versus millimeters 516 00:22:58,650 --> 00:23:00,300 that we might think we're getting closer. 517 00:23:00,300 --> 00:23:03,878 And that's how we know we're not even close. 518 00:23:03,878 --> 00:23:06,450 So you can track, are we approaching a target? 519 00:23:06,450 --> 00:23:08,160 When will we have a solution? 520 00:23:08,160 --> 00:23:11,460 You track the distance to the target 521 00:23:11,460 --> 00:23:13,500 and when the target is getting further away, 522 00:23:13,500 --> 00:23:15,390 much faster than we're approaching, 523 00:23:15,390 --> 00:23:17,760 it's not going to be next year that we find this, 524 00:23:17,760 --> 00:23:20,670 it's not going to be for many, many years. 525 00:23:20,670 --> 00:23:24,330 This is why I say all the origin of life researchers 526 00:23:24,330 --> 00:23:27,600 will die of old age before this is discovered. 527 00:23:27,600 --> 00:23:30,150 Their children will, their students will die 528 00:23:30,150 --> 00:23:33,300 of old age and their students' students will die of old age. 529 00:23:33,300 --> 00:23:35,790 So when you join one of these research groups, 530 00:23:35,790 --> 00:23:39,330 be prepared to die of old age without solving this. 531 00:23:39,330 --> 00:23:42,330 - So what you mean to say is that 70 years 532 00:23:42,330 --> 00:23:45,840 after the

Urey Miller experiment and a good many years 533 00:23:45,840 --> 00:23:48,175 after I, and who knows 534 00:23:48,175 --> 00:23:50,760 how many other Americans read about it in science textbooks, 535 00:23:50,760 --> 00:23:54,870 the leaves on those trees, the fish in that lake, 536 00:23:54,870 --> 00:23:56,730 the four of us at this table, 537 00:23:56,730 --> 00:23:59,550 we have no idea where life comes from. 538 00:23:59,550 --> 00:24:02,460 - We have absolutely no idea where life comes from. 539 00:24:02,460 --> 00:24:05,910 None whatsoever, and when people will say. 540 00:24:05,910 --> 00:24:08,380 - And you say that as a man who is a full professor 541 00:24:08,380 --> 00:24:11,160 at Rice University with 130 patents. 542 00:24:11,160 --> 00:24:14,160 In other words, this is not some snake handling 543 00:24:14,160 --> 00:24:15,630 crazy person from the. 544 00:24:15,630 --> 00:24:18,334 - 850 peer reviewed publications. 545 00:24:18,334 --> 00:24:20,670 He's one of the top organic synthesis chemists in the world. 546 00:24:20,670 --> 00:24:22,230 He knows the chemistry. 547 00:24:22,230 --> 00:24:24,330 - So the chemistry just doesn't work, 548 00:24:24,330 --> 00:24:27,030 and we're nowhere close. 549 00:24:27,030 --> 00:24:30,480 That's just one problem of 1,000 problems 550 00:24:30,480 --> 00:24:32,880 that have to be solved in order to get life. 551 00:24:32,880 --> 00:24:35,310 So we're very far from understanding 552 00:24:35,310 --> 00:24:36,808 where life comes from 553 00:24:36,808 --> 00:24:39,330 and so there's other questions 554 00:24:39,330 --> 00:24:41,340 about why they would keep suggesting 555 00:24:41,340 --> 00:24:43,020 that we're close when we're not. 556 00:24:43,020 --> 00:24:47,130 But as far as where we are, nowhere close, 557 00:24:47,130 --> 00:24:49,950 absolutely clueless on the origin of life. 558 00:24:49,950 --> 00:24:53,670 - Got it, may I take a cut at the idea 559 00:24:53,670 --> 00:24:55,500 of that the target receiving, 560 00:24:55,500 --> 00:24:58,200 unpack that metaphor because the target receding 561 00:24:58,200 --> 00:25:01,260 corresponds not just something changing in the cell, 562 00:25:01,260 --> 00:25:03,780 but rather are getting more 563 00:25:03,780 --> 00:25:06,570 and more understanding of the complexity of the cell. 564 00:25:06,570 --> 00:25:08,010 And one of the huge ironies 565 00:25:08,010 --> 00:25:12,514 of the 1952, 1953 experiment with Miller 566 00:25:12,514 --> 00:25:15,120 and Urey is that in 1953, 567 00:25:15,120 --> 00:25:17,100 the same year when their publication comes out 568 00:25:17,100 --> 00:25:18,240 about the experiment, 569 00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:20,340 we also have the first elucidation 570 00:25:20,340 --> 00:25:22,590 of the DNA molecule with Watson and Crick. 571 00:25:22,590 --> 00:25:24,390 And what they discovered, 572 00:25:24,390 --> 00:25:25,710 and subsequent to that 573 00:25:25,710 --> 00:25:29,460 was that the DNA contains information in a digital form 574 00:25:29,460 --> 00:25:33,420 and it's part of a complex information processing system 575 00:25:33,420 --> 00:25:34,890 that makes life possible. 576 00:25:34,890 --> 00:25:36,480 So amino acids 577 00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:39,056 are just building blocks of proteins. 578 00:25:39,056 --> 00:25:40,260 Proteins are important components 579 00:25:40,260 --> 00:25:42,480 in an information processing system 580 00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:44,190 that's reading the information 581 00:25:44,190 --> 00:25:47,340 from the DNA to make the important molecular machines. 582 00:25:47,340 --> 00:25:50,010 - How long is a typical strand of DNA? 583 00:25:50,010 --> 00:25:52,170 - Well, it depends on the organism. 584 00:25:52,170 --> 00:25:53,040 - A simple cell. 585 00:25:53,040 --> 00:25:55,451 - Simple cell, yeah. 586 00:25:55,451 --> 00:25:59,310 - I mean a human being, it'll be two meters long. 587 00:25:59,310 --> 00:26:01,440 - In each cell? 588 00:26:01,440 --> 00:26:02,273 - Yes. 589 00:26:02,273 --> 00:26:04,320 - Okay, so what you're saying is we now know. 590 00:26:04,320 --> 00:26:06,022 - Three billion characters. 591 00:26:06,022 --> 00:26:07,890 - Yeah, but in the simplest of cells, 592 00:26:07,890 --> 00:26:11,245 it's going to be at least thousands of units long. 593 00:26:11,245 --> 00:26:13,830 But the DNA is not a protein, 594 00:26:13,830 --> 00:26:15,840 every one of these molecules, 595 00:26:15,840 --> 00:26:19,800 I mean the amino acids make proteins. 596 00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:22,801 DNA is an oligonucleotide. 597 00:26:22,801 --> 00:26:27,000 And so you need to solve the sugar problem 598 00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:28,800 and you need to to solve it. 599 00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:30,510 - If we were to create this on our own. 600 00:26:30,510 --> 00:26:32,760 - Yeah, I mean DNA is a whole different 601 00:26:32,760 --> 00:26:34,140 class of compounds. 602 00:26:34,140 --> 00:26:35,760 So there are four different classes 603 00:26:35,760 --> 00:26:37,560 of compounds that were made out of. 604 00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:39,420 None of these have been solved. 605 00:26:39,420 --> 00:26:42,300 Miller Urey just looked at the building blocks 606 00:26:42,300 --> 00:26:45,120 of the building blocks and that was a mess. 607 00:26:45,120 --> 00:26:46,920 - And then you gotta link the building blocks 608 00:26:46,920 --> 00:26:48,660 and then you gotta sequence them properly. 609 00:26:48,660 --> 00:26:50,070 - And they don't want to link. 610 00:26:50,070 --> 00:26:53,790 - Hold on, so grant every bit of that, 611 00:26:53,790 --> 00:26:55,590 but here's what's in my head is, 612 00:26:55,590 --> 00:26:58,320 if I understand it correctly, way, way back 613 00:26:58,320 --> 00:27:00,060 in the days of Charles Darwin, 614 00:27:00,060 --> 00:27:03,810 the general assumption about the single cell 615 00:27:03,810 --> 00:27:06,000 that was that it was a simple form of life. 616 00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:08,430 There was some sort of vague notion

617 00:27:08,430 --> 00:27:12,840 that it was like a little blot of gel, that it was simple. 618 00:27:12,840 --> 00:27:17,840 And now we look inside every single one of cells, 619 00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:21,150 and it's as though we find a code 620 00:27:21,150 --> 00:27:24,840 or written instructions two meters long 621 00:27:24,840 --> 00:27:27,077 in every single cell, is that correct? 622 00:27:27,077 --> 00:27:28,050 - Well, in a human cell, it'll be that long. 623 00:27:28,050 --> 00:27:30,270 In a simple cell cell, it'll be shorter. 624 00:27:30,270 --> 00:27:35,250 But you still have all these levels of molecules 625 00:27:35,250 --> 00:27:36,750 that you have to deal with, 626 00:27:36,750 --> 00:27:38,430 it's so much more complex 627 00:27:38,430 --> 00:27:41,130 than what you're thinking, so much more. 628 00:27:41,130 --> 00:27:42,300 - It's more complex than my little brain. 629 00:27:42,300 --> 00:27:44,981 - So you're just looking at one little thing. 630 00:27:44,981 --> 00:27:47,040 And so now when you look into the cell next year, 631 00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:49,590 you see more than you'd have to solve 632 00:27:49,590 --> 00:27:52,140 in order to get the simplest of cells to work. 633 00:27:52,140 --> 00:27:56,310 So we wanna look at the simplest of cells, 634 00:27:56,310 --> 00:28:00,180 something like a bacterium, something very simple. 635 00:28:00,180 --> 00:28:02,580 Even with that, there's so many layers 636 00:28:02,580 --> 00:28:04,590 of communication that you have to have. 637 00:28:04,590 --> 00:28:07,410 It's not just taking all these classes of compounds 638 00:28:07,410 --> 00:28:12,300 and throwing them into the lipid membrane. 639 00:28:12,300 --> 00:28:15,780 That would be like saying, I could take all the parts 640 00:28:15,780 --> 00:28:18,720 of the engine of my car, take them all apart 641 00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:21,330 and throw them into the passenger compartment. 642 00:28:21,330 --> 00:28:23,040 And if I just wait long enough 643 00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:24,570 and shake it long enough, 644 00:28:24,570 --> 00:28:27,750 that engine would assemble, mount itself 645 00:28:27,750 --> 00:28:30,288 and everything would start working again. 646 00:28:30,288 --> 00:28:33,120 Nobody would think that, that's exactly what you're saying 647 00:28:33,120 --> 00:28:34,560 if you had all the pieces. 648 00:28:34,560 --> 00:28:36,171 - These are crazy men. 649 00:28:36,171 --> 00:28:37,260 I wanna talk to somebody reasonable. 650 00:28:37,260 --> 00:28:40,020 So John, 651 00:28:40,020 --> 00:28:43,348 it's just a question of time. 652 00:28:43,348 --> 00:28:46,110 The universe is X billion years old, 653 00:28:46,110 --> 00:28:48,210 even if it did have a beginning. 654 00:28:48,210 --> 00:28:49,110 - 13.8. 655 00:28:49,110 --> 00:28:51,090 - 13.8 billion years old. 656 00:28:51,090 --> 00:28:54,030 13.8 billion years is a long time. 657 00:28:54,030 --> 00:28:56,160 - But it's not a long time 658 00:28:56,160 --> 00:28:59,310 when you think of the improbability 659 00:28:59,310 --> 00:29:01,680 of this kind of thing happening. 660 00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:05,400 I think the thing that really gets to me 661 00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:07,500 is you talk about this thing 662 00:29:07,500 --> 00:29:11,100 couple of meters long, but it's information 663 00:29:11,100 --> 00:29:16,100 of an extendedly complex linguistic kind 664 00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:21,200 and language does not get generated by natural processes. 665 00:29:21,795 --> 00:29:22,628 - It's language. 666 00:29:22,628 --> 00:29:23,461 - It's language. 667 00:29:23,461 --> 00:29:25,019 - It's code. 668 00:29:25,019 --> 00:29:27,120 - It is language, information, code. 669 00:29:27,120 --> 00:29:30,793 And what Miller and Urey discovered was a couple of letters. 670 00:29:30,793 --> 00:29:35,793 And then once they elucidated the decoding 671 00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:40,140 the DNA, they realized that the letters are valueless 672 00:29:40,140 --> 00:29:42,357 unless they're in the right order. 673 00:29:42,357 --> 00:29:43,190 But it's worse than that. 674 00:29:43,190 --> 00:29:45,300 You mentioned the living cell, 675 00:29:45,300 --> 00:29:49,320 but you see, you need a living cell to get DNA 676 00:29:49,320 --> 00:29:52,140 and you need DNA to get a living cell. 677 00:29:52,140 --> 00:29:56,100 So you are in the biggest of all chicken and egg problems. 678 00:29:56,100 --> 00:29:59,430 And the biologists will correct me, 679 00:29:59,430 --> 00:30:01,650 in systems biology now, 680 00:30:01,650 --> 00:30:03,870 they're concentrating on the fact 681 00:30:03,870 --> 00:30:05,120 that there's a great deal 682 00:30:06,080 --> 00:30:08,220 of top-down causation in this whole field. 683 00:30:08,220 --> 00:30:09,801 And there are levels in. 684 00:30:09,801 --> 00:30:11,299 - Top down causation, what do you mean? 685 00:30:11,299 --> 00:30:12,360 - Well, that you need to cell first 686 00:30:12,360 --> 00:30:15,210 to manufacture all the things that create it. 687 00:30:15,210 --> 00:30:19,560 And you have levels of complexity 688 00:30:19,560 --> 00:30:23,703 going from the basic DNA 689 00:30:23,703 --> 00:30:27,300 to epigenetics above it, the folding of the proteins, 690 00:30:27,300 --> 00:30:28,800 all this kind of thing. 691 00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:31,620 And in Darwin's day and even later, 692 00:30:31,620 --> 00:30:35,010 Miller, Urey, they hadn't the faintest clue 693 00:30:35,010 --> 00:30:37,500 of the nature of what they're dealing with. 694 00:30:37,500 --> 00:30:40,342 You can have 13.8 billion years, 695 00:30:40,342 --> 00:30:43,657 you're gonna have 138 billion years, 696 00:30:43,657 --> 00:30:46,800 you're gonna have 1,380 billion years, 697 00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:47,910 you're not coming close 698 00:30:47,910 --> 00:30:50,940 because it's in the nature of the thing 699 00:30:50,940 --> 00:30:54,480 that you do not get language like complexity 700 00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:56,313 through

natural processes. 701 00:30:57,596 --> 00:30:58,500 - So we're stuck. 702 00:30:58,500 --> 00:31:00,211 If there's a code there. 703 00:31:00,211 --> 00:31:01,050 - Well could point in a different direction. 704 00:31:01,050 --> 00:31:02,310 - Exactly. 705 00:31:02,310 --> 00:31:04,710 - Because whenever we see information 706 00:31:04,710 --> 00:31:06,483 and we trace it back to its source, 707 00:31:07,543 --> 00:31:08,670 we always come to a mind. 708 00:31:08,670 --> 00:31:11,460 Bill Gates has said DNA a is like a software program, 709 00:31:11,460 --> 00:31:12,990 Richard Dawkins has acknowledged 710 00:31:12,990 --> 00:31:14,490 that it's machine code. 711 00:31:14,490 --> 00:31:17,640 Well, when we see a software program, 712 00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:19,350 we always know that it came from a programmer. 713 00:31:19,350 --> 00:31:21,450 In fact, whenever we see information, 714 00:31:21,450 --> 00:31:24,780 whether it's in software or a hieroglyphic inscription 715 00:31:24,780 --> 00:31:26,430 or a paragraph in a book 716 00:31:26,430 --> 00:31:29,100 or information embedded in a radio signal, 717 00:31:29,100 --> 00:31:30,780 you trace it back to its ultimate source, 718 00:31:30,780 --> 00:31:33,866 you always come to a mind, not a material process. 719 00:31:33,866 --> 00:31:35,430 So Jim has brilliantly shown 720 00:31:35,430 --> 00:31:37,865 how inadequate these undirected 721 00:31:37,865 --> 00:31:39,390 chemical evolutionary theories are. 722 00:31:39,390 --> 00:31:41,820 The flip side of that is that there's a positive case 723 00:31:41,820 --> 00:31:43,230 for a designing mind 724 00:31:43,230 --> 00:31:46,358 having played a decisive role in the origin of life. 725 00:31:46,358 --> 00:31:49,606 Because as John has said, information is a mind product. 726 00:31:49,606 --> 00:31:51,270 - But science, the natural sciences, 727 00:31:51,270 --> 00:31:53,163 as Jim has said, can't give us that. 728 00:31:54,210 --> 00:31:55,343 That's what you're saying. 729 00:31:55,343 --> 00:31:56,422 - So's what the Jim is. 730 00:31:56,422 --> 00:31:58,384 - So I mean, I sit here listening to the three of you, 731 00:31:58,384 --> 00:32:03,090 and my little mind is struggling with all of this 732 00:32:03,090 --> 00:32:05,603 because the answer, I mean, 733 00:32:05,603 --> 00:32:09,813 it sounds like a loophole now, an intellectual loophole. 734 00:32:09,813 --> 00:32:11,312 But the answer was all, oh yeah, yeah. 735 00:32:11,312 --> 00:32:12,720 But okay, just more time. 736 00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:15,240 All we need is more time for these processes, 737 00:32:15,240 --> 00:32:19,110 for random accident to happen, but of course. 738 00:32:19,110 --> 00:32:21,180 - That's not chemically plausible for. 739 00:32:21,180 --> 00:32:22,680 - Time is the enemy actually. 740 00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:23,940 Time is the enemy. 741 00:32:23,940 --> 00:32:27,330 As soon as you have these molecules, they start to degrade. 742 00:32:27,330 --> 00:32:30,060 Just like if you have something 743 00:32:30,060 --> 00:32:32,970 that's valuable to you and you put it outside 744 00:32:32,970 --> 00:32:35,700 and it starts to rust, these molecules, 745 00:32:35,700 --> 00:32:38,430 if you just had one molecule of RNA, 746 00:32:38,430 --> 00:32:41,040 one molecule, it only lasts hours. 747 00:32:41,040 --> 00:32:43,261 Hours, and it's degraded. 748 00:32:43,261 --> 00:32:45,210 So you say, well, if you waited billions of years, 749 00:32:45,210 --> 00:32:46,233 it's degraded. 750 00:32:47,246 --> 00:32:49,770 Proteins will last on the order of days, that's it. 751 00:32:49,770 --> 00:32:53,970 so this element of time is actually the enemy 752 00:32:53,970 --> 00:32:56,483 and not the savior of this process. 753 00:32:56,483 --> 00:33:00,431 - Okay, so the idea that the universe came about 754 00:33:00,431 --> 00:33:05,431 by means of totally undirected, impersonal forces, 755 00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:08,040 all three of you would consider that. 756 00:33:08,040 --> 00:33:09,870 - Implausible. - Preposterous. 757 00:33:09,870 --> 00:33:11,460 - Implausible in the extreme. 758 00:33:11,460 --> 00:33:14,943 - All right, okay, so now let me ask you this. 759 00:33:15,932 --> 00:33:18,360 Why do all three of you get roughed up 760 00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:19,710 by your colleagues? 761 00:33:19,710 --> 00:33:22,890 Here I've got Jim Tour, I looked on YouTube, 762 00:33:22,890 --> 00:33:26,100 you got in a debate with some YouTuber called Dave Farina 763 00:33:26,100 --> 00:33:29,763 who considers himself a science influencer, explainer. 764 00:33:30,611 --> 00:33:32,079 - Three five, which is what you need to have life. 765 00:33:32,079 --> 00:33:33,157 - Do you wanna do me a favor here? 766 00:33:33,157 --> 00:33:34,500 I want you to read the title of that paper there. 767 00:33:34,500 --> 00:33:36,330 It's by your buddy, Jack Shostak. 768 00:33:36,330 --> 00:33:37,650 He's done some research on this. 769 00:33:37,650 --> 00:33:38,640 - Yeah, I know. 770 00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:41,130 And Jack Shostak even says he cannot get it. 771 00:33:41,130 --> 00:33:44,888 - And here's what he said in a recent YouTube, 772 00:33:44,888 --> 00:33:47,452 he claimed your work, quote, "Only serves 773 00:33:47,452 --> 00:33:49,957 to keep indoctrinated buffoons in their blind faith." 774 00:33:49,957 --> 00:33:51,750 Close quote, that's not a very nice thing to say. 775 00:33:51,750 --> 00:33:53,585 Which brings us to Steve. 776 00:33:53,585 --> 00:33:55,020 Here's from Charles Marshall's review 777 00:33:55,020 --> 00:33:57,974 of your book "Darwin's Doubt". 778 00:33:57,974 --> 00:34:00,724 This precedes your book, "The Return of the God Hypothesis". 779 00:34:00,724 --> 00:34:03,090 And by the way, this review appears in Science, 780 00:34:03,090 --> 00:34:05,142 which has gotta be one of the two 781 00:34:05,142 --> 00:34:06,870 or three most esteemed scientific journals, 782 00:34:06,870 --> 00:34:10,980 quote, "The book's

subtext is to provide solace 783 00:34:10,980 --> 00:34:15,000 to those who feel their faith undermined by secular society 784 00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:17,010 and by science in particular. 785 00:34:17,010 --> 00:34:19,810 Meyer's selective scholarship appears driven 786 00:34:20,902 --> 00:34:22,802 by his deep belief in an explicit role 787 00:34:23,736 --> 00:34:26,371 of an intelligent designer in the history of life." 788 00:34:26,371 --> 00:34:27,213 Close quote. 789 00:34:28,676 --> 00:34:29,725 - How come? 790 00:34:29,725 --> 00:34:30,750 - The reason for those quotes. 791 00:34:30,750 --> 00:34:32,313 - Yes. 792 00:34:32,313 --> 00:34:34,113 - Is that the people that wrote them 793 00:34:35,075 --> 00:34:38,460 do not take the scientific arguments seriously. 794 00:34:38,460 --> 00:34:41,060 And they are actually exemplifying 795 00:34:41,060 --> 00:34:43,650 what they're accusing Jim and Stephen of. 796 00:34:43,650 --> 00:34:46,740 And that was what I've seen all the time. 797 00:34:46,740 --> 00:34:48,380 They will not get down. 798 00:34:48,380 --> 00:34:51,270 - Of the faith, these are the materialists. 799 00:34:51,270 --> 00:34:53,430 - Yes, I know, but they're not able 800 00:34:53,430 --> 00:34:55,110 to defend it intellectually. 801 00:34:55,110 --> 00:34:57,780 So they give these kind of ad hominem, 802 00:34:57,780 --> 00:35:00,120 Jim, and he will speak for himself, 803 00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:03,880 and Stephen have issued challenges to these materialists 804 00:35:05,129 --> 00:35:07,890 to come up with evidence, real argument, and do they, Jim? 805 00:35:07,890 --> 00:35:11,700 - Well, the YouTuber doesn't have the capacity 806 00:35:11,700 --> 00:35:13,821 to understand the science. 807 00:35:13,821 --> 00:35:16,530 So what I've done is I've challenged PhD chemists 808 00:35:16,530 --> 00:35:19,410 or biochemists to engage with me. 809 00:35:19,410 --> 00:35:23,640 I've challenged them openly on my YouTube channel. 810 00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:26,103 Others have reached out to them to meet with me. 811 00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:29,121 We'll go on a neutral channel, I'll go on their channel 812 00:35:29,121 --> 00:35:31,440 and we'll have this discussion 813 00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:35,460 because the chemists can understand what I'm talking about. 814 00:35:35,460 --> 00:35:39,240 YouTubers can't, and so when I go to the people 815 00:35:39,240 --> 00:35:41,400 that understand what they're talking, 816 00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:44,073 what I'm talking about, they won't engage. 817 00:35:45,093 --> 00:35:47,370 So their silence says it all 818 00:35:47,370 --> 00:35:50,430 because no answer is an answer in itself. 819 00:35:50,430 --> 00:35:53,610 They will not respond to the arguments 820 00:35:53,610 --> 00:35:57,130 because they see exactly what I see. 821 00:35:57,130 --> 00:35:59,220 This is not a mystery. 822 00:35:59,220 --> 00:36:03,240 What I'm bringing forth is quite obvious 823 00:36:03,240 --> 00:36:04,590 to the scientist. 824 00:36:04,590 --> 00:36:06,520 It's really quite obvious to. 825 00:36:06,520 --> 00:36:07,980 - Any working chemist knows what you're talking about. 826 00:36:07,980 --> 00:36:09,810 - Any working synthetic chemist, 827 00:36:09,810 --> 00:36:12,120 organic chemist knows what I'm talking about. 828 00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:14,250 Anybody who's worked with molecules, 829 00:36:14,250 --> 00:36:16,530 they know exactly what I'm talking about. 830 00:36:16,530 --> 00:36:18,762 So they don't touch it. 831 00:36:18,762 --> 00:36:22,800 The more fundamental question is why, why, 832 00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:25,290 but as far as the science goes, 833 00:36:25,290 --> 00:36:29,130 nobody's going to contest with what I say. 834 00:36:29,130 --> 00:36:32,940 - And this information problem is very fundamental 835 00:36:32,940 --> 00:36:35,970 because what we now know in 21st century biology 836 00:36:35,970 --> 00:36:38,340 is that we want new biological form, 837 00:36:38,340 --> 00:36:39,300 you have to provide 838 00:36:39,300 --> 00:36:41,760 or something has to provide new information. 839 00:36:41,760 --> 00:36:44,755 Charles Marshall, my critic there to his credit, 840 00:36:44,755 --> 00:36:47,670 did do a debate with me, a rather extensive debate. 841 00:36:47,670 --> 00:36:50,040 It's up online, and he was proposing, 842 00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:52,050 we were discussing the problem of the origin 843 00:36:52,050 --> 00:36:54,810 of the Cambrian animals, the so-called Cambrian explosion, 844 00:36:54,810 --> 00:36:56,940 which is an explosion of biological form. 845 00:36:56,940 --> 00:36:57,773 - In the fossil record. 846 00:36:57,773 --> 00:36:58,860 - In the fossil record. 847 00:36:58,860 --> 00:37:01,788 But before that, it would be required 848 00:37:01,788 --> 00:37:02,760 an explosion of information. 849 00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:04,643 And he had simply proposed, 850 00:37:04,643 --> 00:37:05,476 well, maybe before the Cambrian animals, 851 00:37:05,476 --> 00:37:08,209 there were some pre-Cambrian organisms 852 00:37:08,209 --> 00:37:09,450 that didn't show up in the fossil record. 853 00:37:09,450 --> 00:37:12,267 And I said, yes, but still to build them, 854 00:37:12,267 --> 00:37:13,461 you would still require information. 855 00:37:13,461 --> 00:37:15,360 The information problem is still fundamental. 856 00:37:15,360 --> 00:37:16,800 His comment in the debate 857 00:37:16,800 --> 00:37:18,900 at that point was, fair comment. 858 00:37:18,900 --> 00:37:21,330 So this has not been solved by evolutionary theory, 859 00:37:21,330 --> 00:37:23,430 either biological evolutionary theory 860 00:37:23,430 --> 00:37:25,200 or a chemical evolutionary theory. 861 00:37:25,200 --> 00:37:27,390 But again, to reiterate John's point, 862 00:37:27,390 --> 00:37:30,090 information is something that is produced 863 00:37:30,090 --> 00:37:33,480 by a particular type of cause of which we all know. 864 00:37:33,480 --> 00:37:35,070 And that is an

intelligent mind. 865 00:37:35,070 --> 00:37:37,410 And we're finding at the foundation of life, 866 00:37:37,410 --> 00:37:39,660 information encoded in DNA 867 00:37:39,660 --> 00:37:42,810 expressed in complex information processing systems, 868 00:37:42,810 --> 00:37:44,915 it's absolutely exquisite. 869 00:37:44,915 --> 00:37:49,466 - So if information precedes the new biological form, 870 00:37:49,466 --> 00:37:51,780 I'm sure this is metaphorical 871 00:37:51,780 --> 00:37:54,001 or I'm sure I'm getting this wrong, 872 00:37:54,001 --> 00:37:59,001 but is it something like the new species 873 00:37:59,250 --> 00:38:02,463 must be imagined before it comes into being? 874 00:38:03,553 --> 00:38:05,820 - Well, species is a bit of a. 875 00:38:05,820 --> 00:38:07,474 - [Peter] Or new form. 876 00:38:07,474 --> 00:38:08,519 - New form. 877 00:38:08,519 --> 00:38:09,352 Fundamental new forms of life require, 878 00:38:09,352 --> 00:38:10,642 we know that. 879 00:38:10,642 --> 00:38:11,712 - Require information. 880 00:38:11,712 --> 00:38:12,897 - We know that information is required to build them. 881 00:38:12,897 --> 00:38:13,730 - Okay, okay. 882 00:38:13,730 --> 00:38:15,060 - And we know that information comes from a mind. 883 00:38:15,060 --> 00:38:17,940 So when we see these explosions of new form, 884 00:38:17,940 --> 00:38:21,690 I think we are seeing evidence of the activity 885 00:38:21,690 --> 00:38:24,570 of a designing mind, yeah. 886 00:38:24,570 --> 00:38:29,220 - By the way, so back in 2019, I recorded a show with you 887 00:38:29,220 --> 00:38:31,914 and David Berlin and David Lerner and that was on. 888 00:38:31,914 --> 00:38:35,160 - The Mathematical Challenges to Neo Darwinism. 889 00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:37,410 - To Darwin, to Darwin, and the comments 890 00:38:37,410 --> 00:38:40,898 on this show on YouTube were scathing. 891 00:38:40,898 --> 00:38:41,731 Why are you wasting, to me, 892 00:38:41,731 --> 00:38:43,080 why are you wasting your time with these cranks? 893 00:38:43,080 --> 00:38:47,760 And so 2023, we recorded another show with you and John 894 00:38:47,760 --> 00:38:51,630 and Michael Behe not the same topic, but similar topic 895 00:38:51,630 --> 00:38:54,930 and the tone of the comments was completely different. 896 00:38:54,930 --> 00:38:59,930 Do you feel a change in the way you're being received? 897 00:39:00,210 --> 00:39:01,530 Is it generational? 898 00:39:01,530 --> 00:39:02,790 - Yeah, I don't know if it's generational, 899 00:39:02,790 --> 00:39:04,140 but something's shifting very fast. 900 00:39:04,140 --> 00:39:04,973 - Particularly of science, 901 00:39:04,973 --> 00:39:07,380 at my University of Oxford 902 00:39:07,380 --> 00:39:10,470 and all three of us know this person. 903 00:39:10,470 --> 00:39:14,490 There's a brilliant scientist, Dennis Noble, 904 00:39:14,490 --> 00:39:16,140 he's a fellow of royal society, 905 00:39:16,140 --> 00:39:18,150 is regarded widely as the father 906 00:39:18,150 --> 00:39:20,130 of systems biology. 907 00:39:20,130 --> 00:39:24,600 And he is on record as a scientist to say 908 00:39:24,600 --> 00:39:29,600 that neo Darwinism doesn't need to be refined. 909 00:39:30,300 --> 00:39:33,750 It now needs to be completely replaced. 910 00:39:33,750 --> 00:39:34,860 Now the interesting thing 911 00:39:34,860 --> 00:39:39,060 is that there are some leading biologists in the world 912 00:39:39,060 --> 00:39:40,766 saying similar things. 913 00:39:40,766 --> 00:39:43,950 Many of them are still quite materialistic, 914 00:39:43,950 --> 00:39:45,870 but they've given up on this. 915 00:39:45,870 --> 00:39:47,910 Whereas the general public 916 00:39:47,910 --> 00:39:49,950 tends to hang in with the old stuff. 917 00:39:49,950 --> 00:39:51,150 They've never heard this. 918 00:39:51,150 --> 00:39:52,620 - Oh, I see, that's all right. 919 00:39:52,620 --> 00:39:55,008 You experienced the same sort of change, 920 00:39:55,008 --> 00:39:57,480 more openness. 921 00:39:57,480 --> 00:39:59,220 - Yeah, I think the papers 922 00:39:59,220 --> 00:40:02,310 are certainly being written differently. 923 00:40:02,310 --> 00:40:04,410 So the origin of life researchers 924 00:40:04,410 --> 00:40:09,150 are not making the gross extrapolations 925 00:40:09,150 --> 00:40:11,280 from a very small piece of data 926 00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:12,878 that they used to make. 927 00:40:12,878 --> 00:40:15,030 I see the press still hypes it up 928 00:40:15,030 --> 00:40:18,728 and the origin of life scientists are responsible 929 00:40:18,728 --> 00:40:20,970 for allowing a lot of that to go forth 930 00:40:20,970 --> 00:40:23,040 because a lot of times the press will ask you, 931 00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:24,898 did we get this right? 932 00:40:24,898 --> 00:40:26,610 And so they will have extrapolations there. 933 00:40:26,610 --> 00:40:28,650 So it's still in our textbooks. 934 00:40:28,650 --> 00:40:30,120 It still is there, 935 00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:33,360 but the conversation is beginning to change. 936 00:40:33,360 --> 00:40:36,480 - All right, Peter, we're talking somewhat descriptively 937 00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:38,370 and maybe even a bit abstractly 938 00:40:38,370 --> 00:40:40,440 about the complexity of the cell. 939 00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:42,840 And I think one of the things that can be very helpful 940 00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:45,750 is to actually see an animation of what's going on 941 00:40:45,750 --> 00:40:48,000 and the way that digital code in the DNA 942 00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:50,130 is directing the construction of the proteins 943 00:40:50,130 --> 00:40:52,320 and the protein machines that we need to stay alive. 944 00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:54,170 In that little clip you showed of Jim 945 00:40:55,134 --> 00:40:56,640 from The Story of Everything film 946 00:40:56,640 --> 00:41:00,180 comes right after an animation that shows that. 947 00:41:00,180 --> 00:41:02,710 And so that's one way, without having 948

00:41:02,710 --> 00:41:05,202 to do a PhD in molecular biology, 949 00:41:05,202 --> 00:41:06,035 people can get a little bit of a handle 950 00:41:06,035 --> 00:41:07,392 on what we're talking about. 951 00:41:07,392 --> 00:41:09,252 - But that animation is just one of a million 952 00:41:09,252 --> 00:41:13,470 different animated things that are happening in a cell. 953 00:41:13,470 --> 00:41:15,600 So you can't just solve that. 954 00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:17,910 There's so many other pieces that need 955 00:41:17,910 --> 00:41:19,620 to be solved in order to have life. 956 00:41:19,620 --> 00:41:22,836 - Wheels within wheels, within wheels of complexity. 957 00:41:22,836 --> 00:41:24,330 - And it's a matter of perception. 958 00:41:24,330 --> 00:41:27,360 You quoted the Psalm at the beginning, 959 00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:28,590 the heavens declare. 960 00:41:28,590 --> 00:41:30,540 That's perception. 961 00:41:30,540 --> 00:41:33,270 And one of the impressive things 962 00:41:33,270 --> 00:41:38,270 to my mind is the response that a mind is behind this 963 00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:42,060 is usually a matter of perception. 964 00:41:42,060 --> 00:41:46,500 If you see the word exit above a door, 965 00:41:46,500 --> 00:41:47,340 it's just four letters. 966 00:41:47,340 --> 00:41:49,167 Very simple, but you immediately know 967 00:41:49,167 --> 00:41:54,150 that whatever processes have been used to create that sign, 968 00:41:54,150 --> 00:41:55,380 there's a mind behind it. 969 00:41:55,380 --> 00:41:56,981 Why? 970 00:41:56,981 --> 00:41:59,340 Because it conveys meaning, it's got four letters. 971 00:41:59,340 --> 00:42:03,150 You take the three point whatever billion letters 972 00:42:03,150 --> 00:42:05,310 in a DNA strand. 973 00:42:05,310 --> 00:42:07,980 And many of my scientific colleagues 974 00:42:07,980 --> 00:42:11,010 just look at it and say, chance and necessity. 975 00:42:11,010 --> 00:42:14,550 They'd never dream of doing that with the word exit. 976 00:42:14,550 --> 00:42:18,480 - Okay, one more clip from this documentary 977 00:42:18,480 --> 00:42:20,588 or The Story of Everything. 978 00:42:20,588 --> 00:42:21,742 - This is actually a big problem 979 00:42:21,742 --> 00:42:22,575 in evolutionary biology, 980 00:42:22,575 --> 00:42:25,308 it's called the problem of gratuitous beauty. 981 00:42:25,308 --> 00:42:29,490 Many organisms have beauty beyond anything that's relevant 982 00:42:29,490 --> 00:42:31,586 for their survival value. 983 00:42:31,586 --> 00:42:35,250 - Gratuitous beauty, explain that. 984 00:42:35,250 --> 00:42:39,270 - Well, it's the idea that that organisms have a beauty 985 00:42:39,270 --> 00:42:42,870 that doesn't in any way convey anything 986 00:42:42,870 --> 00:42:46,620 that helps them in the Darwinian competition for survival. 987 00:42:46,620 --> 00:42:50,665 It's unnecessary to help account 988 00:42:50,665 --> 00:42:51,660 for why they have survived. 989 00:42:51,660 --> 00:42:54,330 It's just there, I

love tropical fish, 990 00:42:54,330 --> 00:42:56,880 I love to snorkel in Hawaii. 991 00:42:56,880 --> 00:42:59,730 And when you look at the patterns on the fish, 992 00:42:59,730 --> 00:43:02,970 it's really hard to believe that, well, 993 00:43:02,970 --> 00:43:06,000 the Hawaiian trigger fish as exactly, 994 00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:09,126 there's one even called the Picasso trigger fish. 995 00:43:09,126 --> 00:43:10,622 It's so beautifully painted. 996 00:43:10,622 --> 00:43:12,273 There's all these different patterns 997 00:43:12,273 --> 00:43:15,810 and designs that really seem to have absolutely nothing 998 00:43:15,810 --> 00:43:18,480 to do with whether they're going to survive or not. 999 00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:20,615 Some of them are so brightly colored 1000 00:43:20,615 --> 00:43:21,960 that they're almost saying, come eat me, eat me. 1001 00:43:21,960 --> 00:43:23,370 They're not really helping 1002 00:43:23,370 --> 00:43:24,720 in the process of survival. 1003 00:43:24,720 --> 00:43:26,670 They seem to suggest that perhaps the creator 1004 00:43:26,670 --> 00:43:30,000 was not only a good software programmer, 1005 00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:31,590 but also a great artist. 1006 00:43:31,590 --> 00:43:33,690 - And you can say the same about mathematics 1007 00:43:33,690 --> 00:43:36,030 and art and music. 1008 00:43:36,030 --> 00:43:37,830 They're not necessary for survival. 1009 00:43:37,830 --> 00:43:39,000 - So let me ask you, let me ask you, 1010 00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:41,940 here we are sitting in Salzburg, the hometown of Mozart. 1011 00:43:41,940 --> 00:43:43,380 - [Speaker] Yeah. 1012 00:43:43,380 --> 00:43:45,480 - If you were an evolutionist, 1013 00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:49,517 whatever the term is, Darwinist, how do you explain 1014 00:43:49,517 --> 00:43:54,517 the evolutionary process that produces Mozart? 1015 00:43:55,110 --> 00:43:56,133 - Very badly. 1016 00:43:57,549 --> 00:43:58,800 - No, come on, do your best. 1017 00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:01,261 If you were forced to argue 1018 00:44:01,261 --> 00:44:03,233 for the other side, what would you say? 1019 00:44:03,233 --> 00:44:06,450 - Well, you must say, if there is no God 1020 00:44:06,450 --> 00:44:11,020 behind this universe, you are forced by your worldview 1021 00:44:11,942 --> 00:44:14,648 to say it must have happened gradually 1022 00:44:14,648 --> 00:44:18,030 through infinitesimal steps over a long period of time. 1023 00:44:18,030 --> 00:44:20,850 And you must say that driven by your world fears, 1024 00:44:20,850 --> 00:44:22,260 nothing to do with science 1025 00:44:22,260 --> 00:44:24,060 or observation or anything else. 1026 00:44:24,060 --> 00:44:26,760 It's the only logical solution. 1027 00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:29,460 And that has always been a big problem for me. 1028 00:44:29,460 --> 00:44:32,850 That if you are sitting with an atheist hat on, 1029 00:44:32,850 --> 00:44:34,830 you are forced into this. 1030 00:44:34,830 --> 00:44:36,213 And so therefore

a lot of. 1031 00:44:37,089 --> 00:44:38,374 - And that's not scientific. 1032 00:44:38,374 --> 00:44:41,370 - Yes, it's not scientific, it's simply your belief system. 1033 00:44:41,370 --> 00:44:46,370 - I see, so could I, thank you very much 1034 00:44:46,893 --> 00:44:49,113 for the seminar, but I'm just wondering, 1035 00:44:50,940 --> 00:44:52,690 this may get a little bit, I wanted 1036 00:44:53,729 --> 00:44:55,170 to ask you about your personal reflections, 1037 00:44:55,170 --> 00:44:58,241 your personal responses to all of this. 1038 00:44:58,241 --> 00:45:03,095 Well here, here's Isaac Newton in the General Scho, 1039 00:45:03,095 --> 00:45:05,698 and it concludes the Principia, quote. 1040 00:45:05,698 --> 00:45:07,290 "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets 1041 00:45:07,290 --> 00:45:10,680 and comets could only proceed from the council 1042 00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:14,550 and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. 1043 00:45:14,550 --> 00:45:15,991 - [Speaker 2] Yes. 1044 00:45:15,991 --> 00:45:19,680 - All right, intelligence, powerful, got it. 1045 00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:21,810 Can we get from the science to a being 1046 00:45:21,810 --> 00:45:26,810 that is in some way or another, loving merciful, 1047 00:45:27,030 --> 00:45:32,030 can the science get us to God 1048 00:45:32,350 --> 00:45:36,580 as many religions suggest he is? 1049 00:45:36,580 --> 00:45:37,641 Is there any, 1050 00:45:37,641 --> 00:45:38,880 or do we need to just say, no, no, no, no, no, 1051 00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:40,290 we're not going there. 1052 00:45:40,290 --> 00:45:44,490 Intelligent design is simply a very limited finding. 1053 00:45:44,490 --> 00:45:48,300 That information is necessary 1054 00:45:48,300 --> 00:45:49,680 for certain scientific, 1055 00:45:49,680 --> 00:45:52,170 for certain processes that we observe. 1056 00:45:52,170 --> 00:45:55,590 Information comes from minds, that's as far as we're going. 1057 00:45:55,590 --> 00:45:57,820 How do you handle this problem? 1058 00:45:57,820 --> 00:45:59,640 - Well, my initial reaction is the one 1059 00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:03,540 that the Christian apostle Paul mentions, 1060 00:46:03,540 --> 00:46:07,500 that looking at the world, the universe, 1061 00:46:07,500 --> 00:46:10,110 we can reasonably conclude 1062 00:46:10,110 --> 00:46:12,630 that there is an intelligent mind behind it. 1063 00:46:12,630 --> 00:46:15,240 We have intelligent minds after all, 1064 00:46:15,240 --> 00:46:17,537 and that it shows a beauty, 1065 00:46:17,537 --> 00:46:18,720 it points beyond itself. 1066 00:46:18,720 --> 00:46:19,830 But then you come 1067 00:46:19,830 --> 00:46:23,580 to a completely different source of knowledge. 1068 00:46:23,580 --> 00:46:25,710 If you go back to Francis Bacon, 1069 00:46:25,710 --> 00:46:28,230 who's often called the father of science, 1070 00:46:28,230 --> 00:46:30,600 he talked about two books. 1071 00:46:30,600 --> 00:46:33,390 God has given us the Book of Nature 1072 00:46:33,390 --> 00:46:35,940 and the Book of Revelation in the Bible. 1073 00:46:35,940 --> 00:46:38,640 And it seems perfectly logical to me, 1074 00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:41,940 if the science is pointing towards an intelligence, 1075 00:46:41,940 --> 00:46:43,920 the logical question to ask, 1076 00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:48,840 has God revealed himself? 1077 00:46:48,840 --> 00:46:52,987 Now, you see, when it comes to me getting to know you, 1078 00:46:52,987 --> 00:46:54,180 Peter, I could put you 1079 00:46:54,180 --> 00:46:58,440 and analyze your brain waves, I could MRI scan you. 1080 00:46:58,440 --> 00:47:02,130 I'll never get to know you unless you reveal yourself to me. 1081 00:47:02,130 --> 00:47:05,310 Now, if you reveal yourself, usually in speech, 1082 00:47:05,310 --> 00:47:07,290 of course my mind keeps working. 1083 00:47:07,290 --> 00:47:10,710 I reason and see that what you're saying makes sense. 1084 00:47:10,710 --> 00:47:14,130 And it seems to me the analogy is perfectly justified. 1085 00:47:14,130 --> 00:47:16,750 God claims to have revealed himself 1086 00:47:17,625 --> 00:47:19,020 in his Word and in Christ. 1087 00:47:19,020 --> 00:47:21,930 And we don't stop our rational processes 1088 00:47:21,930 --> 00:47:25,020 when we see that revelation, we need our minds 1089 00:47:25,020 --> 00:47:27,090 to read it and understand it. 1090 00:47:27,090 --> 00:47:30,090 And it's when those two worlds come together, 1091 00:47:30,090 --> 00:47:34,890 our observation of the world getting us as far as a God, 1092 00:47:34,890 --> 00:47:39,690 a creator, but now at the level of revelation 1093 00:47:39,690 --> 00:47:42,720 and another thing, our own personal experience 1094 00:47:42,720 --> 00:47:46,860 as persons reacting to all of this 1095 00:47:46,860 --> 00:47:49,560 and to scripture, all of that goes together 1096 00:47:49,560 --> 00:47:51,570 and focuses on one thing. 1097 00:47:51,570 --> 00:47:55,116 And it's the cumulative effect of that 1098 00:47:55,116 --> 00:47:58,436 that means I'm sitting talking to you 1099 00:47:58,436 --> 00:47:59,685 as a convinced Christian 1100 00:47:59,685 --> 00:48:02,910 and a person convinced of the value of science. 1101 00:48:02,910 --> 00:48:04,892 - Jim, how do you handle, 1102 00:48:04,892 --> 00:48:09,892 I'll put it another way, you say, in this documentary, 1103 00:48:10,920 --> 00:48:12,988 I think it's your voice that's quoted 1104 00:48:12,988 --> 00:48:16,680 that in the earlier times, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, 1105 00:48:16,680 --> 00:48:20,880 all these men of science took for granted 1106 00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:23,940 as all of humankind seems to have done for millennia, 1107 00:48:23,940 --> 00:48:25,380 that there was a creator. 1108 00:48:25,380 --> 00:48:30,380 All right, can a scientist in the year 2025 talk that way? 1109 00:48:30,840 --> 00:48:32,400 Or do you personally have 1110 00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:34,170 to be very careful about saying, 1111 00:48:34,170 -->

00:48:37,980 here's the evidence, and I stop there? 1112 00:48:37,980 --> 00:48:40,440 - Well, when I write scientific papers, 1113 00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:44,520 I look at the evidence and I write certain things. 1114 00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:45,450 There's other things 1115 00:48:45,450 --> 00:48:48,810 that we're excluded from being able to write. 1116 00:48:48,810 --> 00:48:50,040 We just look at the evidence 1117 00:48:50,040 --> 00:48:54,150 and we report upon it, we might make extrapolations. 1118 00:48:54,150 --> 00:48:58,560 But no, I don't bring God into the scientific papers, but. 1119 00:48:58,560 --> 00:48:59,970 - And that's the way it should be. 1120 00:48:59,970 --> 00:49:01,800 - That's the way it should be. 1121 00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:03,150 I'm fine with that. 1122 00:49:03,150 --> 00:49:07,050 But what you see is you see irregularity in nature. 1123 00:49:07,050 --> 00:49:11,400 It doesn't have to be this way, but it is this way. 1124 00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:13,470 And this is how we know that we have a God 1125 00:49:13,470 --> 00:49:16,740 who has a consistency and a purpose. 1126 00:49:16,740 --> 00:49:18,330 Parents who are consistent 1127 00:49:18,330 --> 00:49:21,991 with their children are usually much better parents. 1128 00:49:21,991 --> 00:49:22,830 And that's what children long for. 1129 00:49:22,830 --> 00:49:24,540 They love for consistency. 1130 00:49:24,540 --> 00:49:27,450 It's not that Poseidon is angry today. 1131 00:49:27,450 --> 00:49:29,490 And that's why we have the winds. 1132 00:49:29,490 --> 00:49:32,310 I mean it, he's not a capricious God. 1133 00:49:32,310 --> 00:49:36,450 And this regularity is what drives us to say, hey, 1134 00:49:36,450 --> 00:49:39,750 I can study something that would be in a plant 1135 00:49:39,750 --> 00:49:43,890 and I can expect to see similar behavior in an animal. 1136 00:49:43,890 --> 00:49:45,750 I can see this type of behavior, 1137 00:49:45,750 --> 00:49:49,110 I can see the consistency of how molecules work. 1138 00:49:49,110 --> 00:49:51,270 I can do the experiment in Austria, 1139 00:49:51,270 --> 00:49:53,940 I can do the experiment in Houston, Texas. 1140 00:49:53,940 --> 00:49:55,500 It's going to be the same way. 1141 00:49:55,500 --> 00:49:59,010 It didn't have to be, but it is the same way. 1142 00:49:59,010 --> 00:50:01,320 So what we can perceive by that 1143 00:50:01,320 --> 00:50:04,050 is that we have a consistent God 1144 00:50:04,050 --> 00:50:08,400 and he is magnificent in what he shows to us. 1145 00:50:08,400 --> 00:50:11,910 I mean, I see so much more than what you can see. 1146 00:50:11,910 --> 00:50:15,330 So if I look at a leaf, I know in that leaf 1147 00:50:15,330 --> 00:50:18,240 there's this magnesium Adam sitting in the middle 1148 00:50:18,240 --> 00:50:22,243 of a porphyrin, which is four nitrogen atoms sitting there. 1149 00:50:22,243 --> 00:50:25,140 And there is a funnel where light can come in 1150 00:50:25,140 --> 00:50:27,270 and that

light hits the magnesium atom 1151 00:50:27,270 --> 00:50:29,553 and that will eject an electron. 1152 00:50:30,981 --> 00:50:33,210 And that then starts a photosynthesis process. 1153 00:50:33,210 --> 00:50:35,790 And that's what causes this plant to be able 1154 00:50:35,790 --> 00:50:40,740 to take up CO2 and to release oxygen, take that carbon 1155 00:50:40,740 --> 00:50:42,570 and make it a part of that tree now. 1156 00:50:42,570 --> 00:50:46,200 And I know why the colors are changing here. 1157 00:50:46,200 --> 00:50:47,400 Why are the colors changing? 1158 00:50:47,400 --> 00:50:48,870 Because you have this chlorophyll 1159 00:50:48,870 --> 00:50:51,030 and you have the number of double bonds 1160 00:50:51,030 --> 00:50:54,030 are beginning to get oxidized and they're changing. 1161 00:50:54,030 --> 00:50:56,760 And so you see this beauty to God 1162 00:50:56,760 --> 00:50:58,380 when you get into the sciences 1163 00:50:58,380 --> 00:51:01,560 that the common person cannot see. 1164 00:51:01,560 --> 00:51:03,630 And I see all of this as soon as I look 1165 00:51:03,630 --> 00:51:05,896 at that leaf in my mind's eye. 1166 00:51:05,896 --> 00:51:06,947 - Right? 1167 00:51:06,947 --> 00:51:08,520 - Because I've studied it at the molecular level. 1168 00:51:08,520 --> 00:51:11,970 And then that gives me a greater appreciation. 1169 00:51:11,970 --> 00:51:13,530 - And it's an appreciation of design. 1170 00:51:13,530 --> 00:51:15,660 Can I go back to the quote from Newton? 1171 00:51:15,660 --> 00:51:16,493 - Oh, sure, but. 1172 00:51:16,493 --> 00:51:17,550 - Oh, go ahead. 1173 00:51:17,550 --> 00:51:19,260 - You go back to that, 1174 00:51:19,260 --> 00:51:20,340 but I wanted to ask you 1175 00:51:20,340 --> 00:51:22,632 because as I understand it, 1176 00:51:22,632 --> 00:51:25,475 you are working in intelligent design. 1177 00:51:25,475 --> 00:51:28,770 You are attempting, you are willing 1178 00:51:28,770 --> 00:51:30,130 to go a little farther 1179 00:51:31,259 --> 00:51:33,828 and say, actually, we can bring the notion 1180 00:51:33,828 --> 00:51:37,473 of an intelligent mind into science, into work, go ahead. 1181 00:51:38,417 --> 00:51:39,250 - Into the question of origins. 1182 00:51:39,250 --> 00:51:40,530 Okay, there are different types of science. 1183 00:51:40,530 --> 00:51:43,530 The type of science that Jim does is he's studying things, 1184 00:51:43,530 --> 00:51:46,590 the regularities of nature at the bench. 1185 00:51:46,590 --> 00:51:48,870 He's doing experiments chemically 1186 00:51:48,870 --> 00:51:51,360 with nanotechnology and various things. 1187 00:51:51,360 --> 00:51:54,393 if you ask the question, what does nature ordinarily do, 1188 00:51:55,443 --> 00:51:57,300 the answer to that question will necessarily be rendered 1189 00:51:57,300 --> 00:51:59,953 in terms of material processes, 1190 00:51:59,953 --> 00:52:01,920 because we're describing what nature ordinarily does. 1191 00:52:01,920 --> 00:52:04,890 If however you ask the question, where did this 1192 00:52:04,890 --> 00:52:07,920 or that feature of the universe 1193 00:52:07,920 --> 00:52:11,880 or life come from in the first place, it might be that life 1194 00:52:11,880 --> 00:52:13,770 or the digital code within it is the product 1195 00:52:13,770 --> 00:52:15,960 of undirected material processes. 1196 00:52:15,960 --> 00:52:19,410 But another possibility is that the information in the cell 1197 00:52:19,410 --> 00:52:21,840 or the machinery in the cell 1198 00:52:21,840 --> 00:52:24,930 or the information processing system in the cell 1199 00:52:24,930 --> 00:52:27,150 resulted from the activity of a designing mind. 1200 00:52:27,150 --> 00:52:29,970 And there we need to do a different kind of science 1201 00:52:29,970 --> 00:52:31,650 where we bring in our knowledge of cause 1202 00:52:31,650 --> 00:52:33,990 and effect in the present to reconstruct 1203 00:52:33,990 --> 00:52:35,820 what most likely happened in the past. 1204 00:52:35,820 --> 00:52:38,100 And because we know from our knowledge of cause 1205 00:52:38,100 --> 00:52:39,990 and effect that it takes a mind 1206 00:52:39,990 --> 00:52:44,850 to generate specified or functional information, 1207 00:52:44,850 --> 00:52:48,780 when we find functional information embedded in a molecule 1208 00:52:48,780 --> 00:52:51,210 and we know that that's necessary to produce life, 1209 00:52:51,210 --> 00:52:52,420 we can infer that a mind 1210 00:52:53,636 --> 00:52:54,469 played a role in the origin of life. 1211 00:52:55,350 --> 00:52:56,183 So that's a different, 1212 00:52:56,183 --> 00:52:58,620 it's a reasoning about the question of design 1213 00:52:58,620 --> 00:53:03,027 or no design within what are called the historical sciences. 1214 00:53:03,027 --> 00:53:04,560 And that's a perfectly legitimate thing to do. 1215 00:53:04,560 --> 00:53:07,233 The opposite would be to say, well, 1216 00:53:07,233 --> 00:53:10,412 I have all this information about what life is made of. 1217 00:53:10,412 --> 00:53:12,780 Now I'm gonna ask the question, how did it originate? 1218 00:53:12,780 --> 00:53:16,221 Well, I could, since I'm a scientist, I'm gonna say 1219 00:53:16,221 --> 00:53:17,610 I have to limit myself to strictly materialistic 1220 00:53:17,610 --> 00:53:19,260 explanations for everything. 1221 00:53:19,260 --> 00:53:21,795 But then I might miss the right answer 1222 00:53:21,795 --> 00:53:23,670 because it might be that I'm looking at something 1223 00:53:24,934 --> 00:53:26,520 that cannot be or is not produced by material processes, 1224 00:53:26,520 --> 00:53:29,400 but which instead is always produced in our experience 1225 00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:31,170 as a result of a designing mind. 1226 00:53:31,170 --> 00:53:33,900 And that's what we're saying is absolutely the case 1227 00:53:33,900 --> 00:53:37,083 about the presence of information in a living system. 1228 00:53:38,105 --> 00:53:40,305 - And there's a little thing to add

to that. 1229 00:53:41,460 --> 00:53:44,643 What kills materialism for me 1230 00:53:44,643 --> 00:53:48,693 is that information itself is not material. 1231 00:53:49,920 --> 00:53:53,680 And that's the end of it, that science itself 1232 00:53:54,724 --> 00:53:56,301 has shown us in this information age 1233 00:53:56,301 --> 00:54:01,301 that information is an immaterial quantity 1234 00:54:01,762 --> 00:54:04,511 that's not reduceable to physics and chemistry. 1235 00:54:04,511 --> 00:54:07,410 So that if we are going to study it at all, 1236 00:54:07,410 --> 00:54:11,251 we've got to widen our definition of. 1237 00:54:11,251 --> 00:54:12,303 - Of reality. 1238 00:54:12,303 --> 00:54:14,128 - What is science leading to? 1239 00:54:14,128 --> 00:54:18,270 - Information is not material. 1240 00:54:18,270 --> 00:54:21,660 And we even see this in the scriptures. 1241 00:54:21,660 --> 00:54:25,029 It says "In the beginning was the Word" that is information, 1242 00:54:25,029 --> 00:54:29,850 "And the Word was with God, and the Word was God." 1243 00:54:29,850 --> 00:54:33,300 This starts with information right here. 1244 00:54:33,300 --> 00:54:35,777 And then it was that Word, 1245 00:54:35,777 --> 00:54:38,970 the Word became flesh 1246 00:54:38,970 --> 00:54:43,429 and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, 1247 00:54:43,429 --> 00:54:44,262 glories are the only begotten 1248 00:54:44,262 --> 00:54:45,870 from the Father full of grace and truth. 1249 00:54:45,870 --> 00:54:48,450 That word then took on the material. 1250 00:54:48,450 --> 00:54:52,320 It starts with information, always starts with information, 1251 00:54:52,320 --> 00:54:54,930 which itself is immaterial. 1252 00:54:54,930 --> 00:54:56,550 - In the film, in The Story of Everything, 1253 00:54:56,550 --> 00:54:59,310 Jim's got a great riff where he says, if we could, 1254 00:54:59,310 --> 00:55:00,840 we're asking the wrong question. 1255 00:55:00,840 --> 00:55:03,876 We need to start asking about the origin of the code. 1256 00:55:03,876 --> 00:55:04,740 Not just the origin of the molecules, 1257 00:55:04,740 --> 00:55:08,400 but the origin of the code that is stored in the molecules. 1258 00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:10,476 That's the real question. 1259 00:55:10,476 --> 00:55:13,260 - And the real contrast here is very vivid 1260 00:55:13,260 --> 00:55:16,020 because the materialistic understanding 1261 00:55:16,020 --> 00:55:21,020 of the universe starts with mass energy or nothing actually, 1262 00:55:21,180 --> 00:55:23,340 and builds up by unguided, 1263 00:55:23,340 --> 00:55:26,430 materialist processes 1264 00:55:26,430 --> 00:55:30,090 to produce information as an end product. 1265 00:55:30,090 --> 00:55:32,520 Whereas the worldview we are talking about 1266 00:55:32,520 --> 00:55:34,350 is the exact opposite. 1267 00:55:34,350 --> 00:55:36,480 That mind is primary 1268 00:55:36,480 --> 00:55:39,810 and mass energy of the universe are derivative. 1269 00:55:39,810 --> 00:55:42,180 There's a colossal clash. 1270 00:55:42,180 --> 00:55:45,660 And I think that's where we can begin to understand 1271 00:55:45,660 --> 00:55:50,160 the so-called clash between science and religion. 1272 00:55:50,160 --> 00:55:55,160 It is not a clash between science and God. 1273 00:55:56,010 --> 00:55:58,410 It is that we're coming up 1274 00:55:58,410 --> 00:56:03,410 with two diametrically opposed worldviews. 1275 00:56:03,870 --> 00:56:08,730 And you can see that the issue is a worldview problem. 1276 00:56:08,730 --> 00:56:12,600 Take the Nobel Prize for physics, very simply, 1277 00:56:12,600 --> 00:56:16,157 there many atheists have won it, Christians have won it. 1278 00:56:16,157 --> 00:56:19,410 Their science doesn't divide them, but their worldview does. 1279 00:56:19,410 --> 00:56:23,498 - All right, gentlemen, we could talk about this for ages, 1280 00:56:23,498 --> 00:56:26,760 but last question. 1281 00:56:26,760 --> 00:56:30,420 I began with Dawkins and Psalm 19, 1282 00:56:30,420 --> 00:56:32,790 which deal with the nature of the universe. 1283 00:56:32,790 --> 00:56:37,410 Let me close with a question on the nature of man, 1284 00:56:37,410 --> 00:56:41,343 the here's a quotation that sums up the materials worldview. 1285 00:56:42,990 --> 00:56:46,840 It comes from a year 1907 when I think 1286 00:56:47,710 --> 00:56:50,600 it probably still seemed brave and new 1287 00:56:50,600 --> 00:56:52,600 and fresh to express this point of view. 1288 00:56:54,441 --> 00:56:56,218 The newness is gone, 1289 00:56:56,218 --> 00:56:59,775 but in my judgment, the worldview lingers, 1290 00:56:59,775 --> 00:57:00,842 it remains present, 1291 00:57:00,842 --> 00:57:02,032 if not in the American Academy, dominant. 1292 00:57:02,032 --> 00:57:06,997 And so I'm going to read you this quotation from 1907, 1293 00:57:06,997 --> 00:57:09,870 Bertrand Russell, you knew where I was going with it. 1294 00:57:09,870 --> 00:57:10,703 - Afraid so. 1295 00:57:10,703 --> 00:57:14,623 - And then I'd like to hear not so much 1296 00:57:14,623 --> 00:57:15,456 how you would reply to Bertrand Russell, 1297 00:57:15,456 --> 00:57:17,880 who's been dead since 1970 something or other, 1298 00:57:17,880 --> 00:57:22,080 but how you would reply to some student, 1299 00:57:22,080 --> 00:57:24,623 a kid at Rice, a kid at Oxford who reads this 1300 00:57:24,623 --> 00:57:28,500 and say, yeah, I think that that seems to me 1301 00:57:28,500 --> 00:57:29,450 to be the worldview 1302 00:57:30,406 --> 00:57:32,010 that all the really cool professors have. 1303 00:57:32,010 --> 00:57:33,630 How do you reply? 1304 00:57:33,630 --> 00:57:36,251 How do you speak to a student 1305 00:57:36,251 --> 00:57:37,730 who finds this impressive? 1306 00:57:37,730 --> 00:57:38,737 And here it is, here's the quotation. 1307 00:57:38,737 --> 00:57:41,366 "That man is the product 1308 00:57:41,366 --> 00:57:42,960 of causes which had no provision of the end 1309 00:57:42,960 -->

00:57:46,980 they were achieving, that his origin, his growth, 1310 00:57:46,980 --> 00:57:50,160 his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs 1311 00:57:50,160 --> 00:57:55,160 are but the outcome of accidental co-locations of atoms 1312 00:57:55,350 --> 00:57:58,440 and that the whole temple of man's achievement 1313 00:57:58,440 --> 00:58:01,980 must inevitably be buried beneath the debris 1314 00:58:01,980 --> 00:58:03,663 of a universe in ruins. 1315 00:58:04,822 --> 00:58:08,160 All these things, if not quite beyond dispute, 1316 00:58:08,160 --> 00:58:10,440 are yet so nearly certain 1317 00:58:10,440 --> 00:58:13,412 that no philosophy which rejects them 1318 00:58:13,412 --> 00:58:16,560 can hope to stand." 1319 00:58:16,560 --> 00:58:19,770 Jim Tour, how do you respond to to that? 1320 00:58:19,770 --> 00:58:22,228 - I would just say, how do you know that? 1321 00:58:22,228 --> 00:58:23,250 How can you know that? 1322 00:58:23,250 --> 00:58:24,583 Tell me, 1323 00:58:24,583 --> 00:58:26,760 what's the measurement that allows you to know that? 1324 00:58:26,760 --> 00:58:29,670 And it would wither immediately. 1325 00:58:29,670 --> 00:58:31,720 There's no evidence that could show that. 1326 00:58:32,842 --> 00:58:34,181 - John. 1327 00:58:34,181 --> 00:58:37,630 - Well, I would say that's staple as my teacher 1328 00:58:38,512 --> 00:58:40,712 of quantum mechanics, Sir John Polkinghorne, 1329 00:58:41,594 --> 00:58:43,440 pointed out, is self-refuting. 1330 00:58:43,440 --> 00:58:46,950 That if it was true, we couldn't possibly know it. 1331 00:58:46,950 --> 00:58:50,940 And he points out that that kind of explanation 1332 00:58:50,940 --> 00:58:54,993 reduces thought to the random motions of atoms. 1333 00:58:55,974 --> 00:58:57,570 And so it dissolves thought 1334 00:58:57,570 --> 00:58:59,879 so that what he is talking 1335 00:58:59,879 --> 00:59:02,168 is sheer self-contradictory nonsense. 1336 00:59:02,168 --> 00:59:06,697 When I was in Cambridge, I saw the window a book, 1337 00:59:06,697 --> 00:59:10,050 "Why I Am Not a Christian" by Bertrand Russell. 1338 00:59:10,050 --> 00:59:12,881 I walked up and down, dare I read it? 1339 00:59:12,881 --> 00:59:15,070 I read it and it confirmed my Christianity 1340 00:59:16,200 --> 00:59:19,410 because it seemed to me he had never begun 1341 00:59:19,410 --> 00:59:23,220 to understand what the message of Christianity 1342 00:59:23,220 --> 00:59:25,470 or biblical theism was. 1343 00:59:25,470 --> 00:59:26,953 - Steve. 1344 00:59:26,953 --> 00:59:28,020 - May I segue from Russell 1345 00:59:29,180 --> 00:59:30,487 back to the original quote from Dawkins 1346 00:59:30,487 --> 00:59:31,350 because they're very similar. 1347 00:59:31,350 --> 00:59:32,600 - Oh, sure, sure, yes, yes. 1348 00:59:32,600 --> 00:59:33,433 - Remember his framing was. 1349 00:59:33,433 --> 00:59:35,123 - Nothing but piddle is in difference. 1350 00:59:35,123 --> 00:59:36,462 - Yeah, "The universe we observe 1351 00:59:36,462 --> 00:59:38,280 has exactly the properties we should expect. 1352 00:59:38,280 --> 00:59:40,890 If at bottom, there's no design, no purpose, 1353 00:59:40,890 --> 00:59:43,050 nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." 1354 00:59:43,050 --> 00:59:46,016 It's a wonderful quote in that it suggests 1355 00:59:46,016 --> 00:59:47,835 that metaphysical systems of thought, 1356 00:59:47,835 --> 00:59:50,670 worldviews are as testable by looking at the world 1357 00:59:50,670 --> 00:59:52,740 as scientific hypotheses are. 1358 00:59:52,740 --> 00:59:54,897 And the argument that we've been making 1359 00:59:54,897 --> 00:59:58,144 and the argument that comes through in the film 1360 00:59:58,144 --> 01:00:00,750 you've highlighted is that the big discoveries 1361 01:00:00,750 --> 01:00:03,330 of 20th and 21st century of science 1362 01:00:03,330 --> 01:00:05,010 are not at all what you would expect 1363 01:00:05,010 --> 01:00:06,780 from a materialistic point of view. 1364 01:00:06,780 --> 01:00:08,280 The materialists did not expect, 1365 01:00:08,280 --> 01:00:10,770 they expected an infinitely old universe 1366 01:00:10,770 --> 01:00:12,090 that never had a beginning, 1367 01:00:12,090 --> 01:00:14,760 but what we discovered is that the universe had a beginning. 1368 01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:17,700 They didn't expect that the universe would be finely tuned 1369 01:00:17,700 --> 01:00:20,910 against all odds to allow for the possibility of life. 1370 01:00:20,910 --> 01:00:22,890 When Hoyle discovered that, he was shocked 1371 01:00:22,890 --> 01:00:24,810 and it shocked him out of his atheism, 1372 01:00:24,810 --> 01:00:27,840 nobody expected the digital nanotechnology 1373 01:00:27,840 --> 01:00:30,295 that's been found inside cells. 1374 01:00:30,295 --> 01:00:31,680 And in fact, Dawkins recently was quoted 1375 01:00:31,680 --> 01:00:35,250 as saying he was knocked sideways with wonder 1376 01:00:35,250 --> 01:00:38,379 upon seeing an animation of the DNA 1377 01:00:38,379 --> 01:00:41,201 information processing system 1378 01:00:41,201 --> 01:00:43,248 that an Australian group rendered. 1379 01:00:43,248 --> 01:00:45,666 So all of these things, the complexity of the cell, 1380 01:00:45,666 --> 01:00:46,923 the fine tuning of the universe 1381 01:00:46,923 --> 01:00:48,810 and its origin a finite time ago, 1382 01:00:48,810 --> 01:00:50,820 are all completely unexpected 1383 01:00:50,820 --> 01:00:52,500 from a materialistic point of view. 1384 01:00:52,500 --> 01:00:54,300 But they're exactly what you would expect 1385 01:00:54,300 --> 01:00:55,530 from a theistic point of view. 1386 01:00:55,530 --> 01:00:58,590 That is to say the worldview that affirms the reality 1387 01:00:58,590 --> 01:01:01,230 of a transcendent and intelligent creator. 1388 01:01:01,230 --> 01:01:04,770 - Steve Meyer, Jim Tour, and John Lennox. 1389 01:01:04,770 --> 01:01:06,450 Thank you gentlemen. 1390 01:01:06,450 --> 01:01:07,740 For "Uncommon Knowledge", 1391 01:01:07,740 --> 01:01:10,080 the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation. 1392 01:01:10,080 --> 01:01:11,845 I'm Peter Robinson. 1393 01:01:11,845 --> 01:01:14,428 (upbeat music)