StarTalk Radio - A Conversation with God

Episode Date: February 2, 2014

Neil deGrasse Tyson has a one-on-one conversation with… God. It’s an episode filled with divine revelations about everything, from the fossil record and evolution to the Big Bang and string theory. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City, where I also serve as director of the Hayden Planetarium. For this episode of StarTalk, we feature an exclusive, never-before-heard interview with God. Yep, I said it. We got God on StarTalk.

I ran into God's handiwork. Well, of course, it's all around us. But he has a Twitter feed called The Tweet of God. And I said, I got to get this guy on StarTalk. This God is all that you might expect the Old Testament God to be. He smites people who don't obey or don't otherwise follow his word. And I just thought, why not explore the collision of science literacy with God the Almighty? So, God and I begin by talking about life, evolution, and his plans for our future.

God, it's just great having you here on StarTalk. I've been after you for a couple of years to do this. Finally made some time in your busy schedule. Thanks. It's my pleasure. I'm a big fan, Neil. May I call you Neil? Neil is fine.

Yes. Would you be willing to actually kneel? There's no K in my name. The answer is no. Stick to the spelling, are we? Very clever. Very clever. So, I have a million things to ask you.

Don't you all? So, I've wondered my whole life. You're God. Yes. And I read insurance forms, and at the end, it describes horrific acts of nature wreaking havoc on life, property, and civilization. Yes, yes, yes. And they're called acts of God.

Yes. Well, how do you feel about that? That's correct. They are acts of God. They are usually one acts. But in the case of, for example, a earthquake followed by a tsunami, I give you two acts making a whole night at the theater. And you're okay with that? Yes, I'm okay with that. You know, I created the Earth primarily as a vast killing machine. And so it's a pleasure for me to get to see the mechanism used in the way it was intended.

Well, it is true that if you look at the fossil record, 97% or more of all species there ever was are now extinct. The fossil record is probably the single greatest thing I ever created. I put more time and energy into creating an empirically unassailable case for evolution than anything else I have ever done. Do you want to know why, Tyson? Why? Because it's worth it at the end when a scientist dies and goes to heaven. And I talked to him for about half an hour about what a wonderful job he did promoting reason and rationality. And then I opened the trap door and I say, so long sucker.

And I send him to hell. You're an evil man. It's not evil. That's a mischaracterization, Neil. I'm not evil. I'm just misunderstood and occasionally a little bored. Great work on the biodiversity on Earth. Oh, yes. I get that a lot. But you can't argue the fact that some of them look just like humans. You know, we've got some apes out there.

Yes. They sit down. They cross their legs. They scratch when they itch, they smile. So evolution explains that. We're good with that. But what were you thinking? I was thinking I wanted to create creatures just human enough so that when they did things like humans did, it was very funny. And so that's why I created monkeys. Monkey funny. Monkey always funny, Neil. When you see monkey eat banana, monkey funny. This is what I was thinking. That's the basic principle behind the entire line of primates. Monkey funny,

chimpanzee funny, gorilla funny. There's a lot of extinct species in the fossil record. Is there any that you regret that you wish were still walking around now? I do miss the mastodon. I think that was a really good one. He was an amazing creature, kind of elephant-like. So I think if I could do it again, I would keep the mastodon, and I would probably lose humanity. Well, there's some frozen mastodons coming out of glaciers and we might have the DNA

and we could make a new mastodon. I think that's a wonderful thing for people to be doing. That's why I'm not going to get rid of the humans yet. They are helpful in creating the extinct species. A Jurassic Park would be, I would love to see a Jurassic Park for real. And it would be nice to see the dinosaurs get back together again. They were a fun group while they lasted. I worry that we bring the mastodon back, an animal that thrived in an era of the Ice Age. We bring it back just in time for global warming.

No, it wouldn't be fair. So maybe some of the hotter weather extinct creatures should return. Like the fire dragon, for example. We used to have fire dragons. I loved the fire dragons a lot. They used to inhabit the Amazonian jungles, but it didn't work out for them. It's a long story.

Are we ever going to solve this global warming thing? That's on you. That's nothing to do with me. You want your entire race to be able to tan more easily. That's your decision. I have nothing to do with that. What's up with flightless birds? What were you thinking? It's just funny, Neil. Isn't just being funny enough? We got the emu, the ostrich. That's just cruel. I'll tell you what's even worse. None of them survive, so you don't know about them, but there's also fish

that can't swim. I created them as well, but you don't hear about them because they all drown, so you never see them. But there's thousands of fish born in the oceans every day who can't swim, and they are hilarious, I have to say. That is, to see their pathetic struggles to survive that brief period before they drown is, for me, highly amusing. You know my least favorite kind of creature in creation is? Tell me, Neil. Parasites. Oh, that's ironic.

Oh my gosh. Parasites of all kinds. The things that suck your blood, that attach to you, that bite you. Why are you annoying us with this? I don't disagree. I think those are... You know, I have an agent. He gets 10% of everything I do.

And what is he doing for me? I'm God. You're talking about a parasite. So I am reconsidering the whole parasite category. I don't presume humans are going to be here forever. If you look at the fossil record, mammals have a tenure on Earth that lasts maybe 3 million years. Tops. mammals have a tenure on earth that lasts maybe three million years tops so if we're just another mammal on earth i'm not going to think we're going to live much longer than that who's going to rise

up after us i'm thinking it's like the roaches or the rats or what that's correct it's going to be the rats and the roaches and what's wonderful about that i chose them is because they're the two most disgusting animals to human beings. And I want humans to know that not only are they going to die, but they're going to be succeeded by disgusting, disgusting animals, rats and roaches. I don't think you've thought this all the way through because rats thrive where humans thrive. Roaches thrive where humans toss their garbage. If you get rid of humans, what are they going to have to live on? Humans, the bodies of the humans.

Human beings won't eat rats and roaches, but rats and roaches will happily eat human beings. And so that's, you know, game, set, and match, rats, roaches. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. For this episode of StarTalk, we're featuring my exclusive private one-on-one interview with God. In this segment, we talk about God's origin, the creation of the universe, and some of the deepest mysteries of the cosmos. So, when were you born and where were you born?

I was born an infinite number of years ago. It was October 8th, negative infinity. Born to whom? I was my own father. And then I never knew my mom. She left me when I was about 87 trillion. So I was still very young. And has that scarred me?

Some have argued it has. And perhaps it has. I don't really know. But I learned very early on that anything I was going to have in this existence, I would have to create for myself. And so that's what gave me the idea to create the universe. Because I thought if I create the universe, I'll have something that I can call my own. And I think that was important to me. That was a turning point in terms of my own self-esteem. Some say you're female, but you sound pretty male to me. No, I'm all man. In fact, I'll show you later.

So what do you say to the people who pray to you and assume you're female? Or perhaps you're not even an entity that we can identify as having any gender at all. I say, oh, go have fun with your vegan gorp. Go to your commune and live on your kibbutzes and pray to your feminine goddesses. Oh, let's worship the earth mother. Oh, let's worship a star tag. Let's worship all the fertility goddesses please go watch lifetime television for women it's been said you are the alpha and the omega the greeks

said that primarily oh that's their alphabet but it's kind of weird if we say you're the a and the z right so if you're the alpha the omega so you're the beginning and the end yes okay i just want to clarify that i'm the beginning in the end but the good news for you is that I'm not the middle, and that's where you come in. But do we really have free will? I think I do. I think I choose what happens in my life. But some people are saying lately that maybe that's not the case.

You do have free will, but if I do have a regret, looking back, it shouldn't have been free. It should have been a paid service. Will should have been something that cost. Imagine how much money I could have made if will was a paid service instead of making it free. But, you know, I give things to people. And then what do I get? I get nothing. I used to get slaughtered oxen, Neil.

I used to get the fatted heels of black cows, four of them, spotless white, burned at the altar. Now, pumpkins. Sometimes it does make me sad. It took us centuries inventing methods and tools of science, and we finally realized that our five senses are really inadequate to decode the deepest operations of nature. And so we invent telescopes and particle accelerators, and we end up discovering relativity and quantum physics. Those are awesome understandings of the universe, but you had it hidden there. We didn't even know that till the 20th century. What's up with that? I like living surprises. I like the little mystery. I like the process of science and people exploring.

There's so much out there still left to discover, including some things that to me should have been discovered centuries ago. For example, pi. How can you not see the pattern? How do you not see it's right? I'm not going to say it, but it's right there. 3.14159265. How do you not see what the pattern is?

We've tried to find the pattern. We can't find a pattern. In fact, there's so much not a pattern, we have a word for the kind of number that has no pattern that we've ever found. It's called a transcendental number. Yes. No, I'm a transcendental figure, not pi. But like me, it is irrational.

So we look far back in time, we whip out our telescopes, we study galaxies, the universe is expanding, turn the clock back, we get to a beginning. We get to the Big Bang. Now, I assume you caused that, but why not just create the universe as is? Why with the drama and the explosion? Neil, I created the heavens and the earth approximately 6,200 years ago in six days. What are you even talking about? Well, then you put evidence in the sky to tell us differently.

Yes. Oh, how did I do that? Oh, yes. I'm God. I'm omnipotent. That answers everything. Anytime anyone says, oh, that doesn't make logical sense

it's because I'm God do you understand the kind of power I have? I can get a table at Balthazar right now it's no effort for me but wait a minute there are things we used to think were unknowable and had I invoked your well God did it

I would have just stopped there. But I said, no, I think the universe is knowable. And we keep looking and we figure it out. That's like saying, oh, I have a little booboo on my elbow. I could let it heal by myself, but I'm going to scratch it and scratch it. Oh no, it's infected. Oh no, it's gangrenous. Oh no, now my arm's fallen off. Oh no, now I'm dead. All right. We think philosophically that all of our understanding of the universe can be written down in one equation. But we're not there yet.

We're looking for the theory of everything. So we got our top people working on it. We call them string theorists. Are you okay with that? Yes. That means they're ready to figure you out. Without giving too much away, they're not going to discover a theory of everything, because there is no such theory.

They may, by dint of hard work, discover the most they can, which is the theory of most things. There is a theory that covers 87% of things, and that is the best you're ever going to do. So when you reach that point, I hope at that point you'll say, you know what? We have a theory of most things. Isn't that good enough? A theory of most things ought to be sufficient for really any kind of practical purpose you might ever want to invoke. So our best understanding of the future of the universe is that we will expand forever

and the temperature will drop. Right now it's three degrees, which is already pretty cold, but it'll go asymptotically to zero. All the mechanical processes will cease. All stars will finish being born and they'll slowly die and we'll have a universe that ends in the depths of cold. All true. But on the plus side, the boy gets the girl.

In the very end, at the very last minute, the boy will get the girl. So, you have that. Okay. Our best thinking today about the universe tells us that maybe this is not the only universe, that there could be a multiverse, an infinitude of other universes out there. Yet, I've got you sitting next to me in a StarTalk interview in this universe. Do the other universes have their own gods? No, I am the god of all the other universes. Now, how do you even know that? Oh, sorry, your god. Sorry.

There are six different other universes. There's six universes total. But it's not infinite. No, it's just six. The only difference is which of the characters from Friends goes on to be the biggest star after the show. Everything else is exactly the same, but in one universe, Lisa Kudrow is the big star, in one, David Schwimmer is the biggest star,

in another one, Jennifer Aniston is the biggest. So those are the only six universes that there are. How about the laws of physics within those universes? Oh, same, same. Same? Yeah. That's no fun. I settled on these constants for a good reason.

Every mathematical constant in the universe is there for a good reason. Because we're at the speed of light. That's a good one. That one is same everywhere. We've got Planck's constant, the gravitational constant. Yes. Why not experiment with some more? I'm very happy with those. By the way, it's not just mathematical constants. There's also other, well, Murphy's law. That's a constant. That's a constant as much as any of the ones you mentioned. Anything that can go wrong, Will, that is a universal law. So why is it that everyone, when they think of heaven, they look up to the universe and they

think of hell, they look down? What that means to me is when I study the universe and I'm looking up and I talk about what's up there and other people look up and search for their gods, we're searching the same territory. That's interesting to me because to be inspired by looking up has common emotion in both communities. Yes, and you should be inspired by looking up. Creation of the universe and the universe around all human beings is a source of all majesty as it should be. I created 500 million billion trillion billion stars, but I did it all for the purpose of just, you know, picking a nice view for people on Earth. Now, did I go too far? Did I create too many? Perhaps. The argument could be made. I didn't have

to create 500 million billion trillion billion stars just to fill the sky on behalf of one little planet orbiting one of them. But you know what? I like to complete the things I start. So when I put in an order for 500 million billion trillion billion stars, I completed the order. What you're saying is you made them so people looking up feeling your presence, they're perfectly legitimate in that. I'm studying them as astrophysical objects and I'm legitimate in doing that too. Yes, yes, that's right. I also created the stars as a template for Hollywood stars because Hollywood stars are really what I was going for. And so the stars in the sky, people think that Hollywood stars are named in honor of them. It's the reverse.

Hollywood stars are very important to me. Celebrities are. They are my chosen people. And I know you're going to say, I thought the Jews were your chosen people, but the truth is, Neil, there's a lot of overlap. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. For this StarTalk, we've been featuring my exclusive interview with God. In this next segment, we talk about planets, space exploration, and the possibility of alien life. I was implicated a few years back for the demotion of Pluto. I didn't actually do it.

I was an accessory back at the Hayden Planetarium and the Rose Center. We had a whole exhibit that said, look, guys, Pluto is not really hanging, it's not cutting it with the rest of the planets. It's small, it's made of mostly ice. It's a trans-Neptunian dwarf object, clearly, Neil, and we're in agreement on this. There's no question about that. That's not funny. It's not, that's a simple fact.

I don't know why you find that amusing. I created it as one of many, along with Eris and thousands of other things between there and the Oort cloud. This is all basic stuff. Any first grader in any country other than America would know. Pluto is fine.

That's not the issue. The issue is this. I created eight planets, Earth and seven others. Now, there's five of them that have been around and visible for long thousands of years. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. So when those were named for pagan gods, I thought to myself, okay, they're not enlightened yet. They don't understand the great glory of me and my monotheistic reign.

Then in 1781, William Herschel discovers a new planet. You know where this is going, Neil. Not only does he fail to name it for me, he gives it a name that has caused tittering among cosmologists and fifth graders alike ever since. To not name the planet God, but to call it Uranus. I can never forgive William Herschel for that. He's an evil man, Roderick Hill. So, we're here on Earth. We don't know if there's life anywhere else, but I do.

Spoiler alert, I'm not going to tell you. Wait, you know about life somewhere else in the universe and you're not going to tell us? No. Was it more advanced than us or less advanced? Can you at least leak that? What happened to mystery? What happened to wonder? You happened to wonder? You're into wonder. You're into awe. If you had all the answers, don't you agree that you would be unsatisfied? You would have nothing else to live for. You want to know things that you don't

yet know. So I'm not going to speak about whether there are aliens on other planets or galaxies or where they may happen to be or when they may happen to land and what weaponry they might happen to have with them and how they plan on attacking and conquering the earth and in what ways they would enslave you when they come that is not for me to discuss at this particular juncture it took us a long time but we finally figured out how to leave Earth. First went into orbit, then we went to the moon. Yes, and thank goodness, because leaving Earth should be everyone's top priority, because there's so many wonderful other places in the neighborhood to go. We should all leave Earth.

Oh, yes, let us haste away from this only possible place where we can live within a trillion mile radius. Let's hurry up. Let's take a little voyage to the moon. Oh, wow. It's a rock. It's a rock. And you jump on it.

And it's hard. Oh, that's amazing. Let's all go away from the earth. So is that really how you feel? Why explore space? You're not going anywhere. Okay, one day I will show you. We're going to terraform Mars

and turn Mars into a haven just the way Earth is, and then we'll be a two-planet species, not just one. Yes, good luck with that, Neil. Good luck with terraforming Mars. Oh, why don't we just... Oh, and let's terraform Venus, too. We can just get rid of the carbon dioxide there. We're people. We can do anything.

We discovered a fourth meal between lunch and dinner. Look at us. Mmm. Please. What fourth meal? You mean the afternoon snack? I mean the one popularized by Taco Bell. Fourth meal. Look, you made us warm-blooded,

and warm-blooded. And warm-blooded creatures have to consume mass quantities of caloric intake so that we can maintain our body temperature. That's not our fault. That's your fault. If you made us cold-blooded like crocodiles, we could eat once a month and then be fine the rest of the month. So don't be blaming us for that. Okay, we'll put that in the suggestion box and I'll be sure to get right on that, Neil.

You are teaching me so much I didn't know, which is surprising as I am omniscient. Jesus. No, I'm serious. Jesus! Okay. Now, give me a half... I'm still talking.

Give me half an hour. Okay, sorry. Junior sometimes gets an estate. So you only have one kid, I guess still talking, give me half an hour. Okay, sorry. Junior sometimes gets an estate. So you only have one kid, I guess. No, I have three children. And if you read the book that I'm here partly to plug, The Last Testament, a memoir by a guy, you'll learn that I have three children,

Zach, Jesus, and Kathy. And they are my three children. Jesus is my middle child. And this was a lot of what happened with Jesus was he had a middle child thing happening. This is all water under the divine bridge. We've been through this, me and Jesus, and we're tight now. But there was a time when we had some issues. A lot of people say they're prophets and they've come through time.

Do you have a favorite one? I know, except for we know your son. Okay, include him in. Of all the prophets, do you have a favorite one? I think Jesus did a good job. I think Muhammad was very good. David Koresh started out well. He obviously took a turn for the worse. Same with Jim Jones. I was thinking that would go better. You know, things happen. It's not easy, the profit game, you know, things start well, and then they just run amok, be it because of power or mental illness or Kool-Aid or weaponry. It just happens sometimes. We're back on StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson.

If you have God in the studio, you got to ask him everything you possibly can think of. So I had to ask him more than just about space or science. In this part of the interview we spoke about biblical plagues and the possibilities of miracles. How come we don't get biblical disasters anymore? Frogs, locusts, bloody rivers. That's like asking, let's say you go on tour and you see Don McLean and you say, why can't we hear American Pie? Because I've moved on, Neil. I am an artist. I do things and I welcome the creative journey and I welcome if my fans come along on that journey, but I don't dwell in the past. I create new plagues. I'm working on a new plague now that will forever change the way

you think about being buried alive. It is going to blow your mind. That's where I am right now. So you could live in the past all you like with the frogs and the locusts and the bloody rivers. They were great then. This is now. That was a good move, helping Moses park the Red Sea. That was awesome. Thank you. Backstage story about that deal. So I'm parting the Red Sea and I really wanted to say the right thing. I wanted the catchphrase to be the right thing. So I came up with this line, okay? Just before the sea closed on the Egyptians, I was going to say, time to turn the Red Sea into the Dead Sea. That was the line. So the Israelites pass through, the Egyptians are in there, and I open my mouth and I say, time to turn the Red Sea into the Red

Sea. I said the same thing. I said the same thing. I messed up. Yes, obviously, they were all killed. But the point is, I messed up the line. I don't do that very much. And you don't get a second chance to do that. That's probably the biggest regret of the last 50,000 years. I wish I had gotten the line right. So when Hollywood portrayed this, how good a job was that? Great. Charlton Heston is, I think I'm him.

I think he's me. I love Charlton Heston. He's very, very godlike. They did a very, very good job with that. I don't know if it won any Oscars that year, but it certainly should have. The Ten Commandments is a fine, fine film. I believe that says it'll be the middle. What's with the commandments? Why are there only ten? I keep thinking we need more instructions than that. There should only be one commandment, really. And the only commandment that was necessary and i realized it's too late

just quit being a dick that's the one commandment that's really the only essential one for life just quit being a dick and looking back that's the one i would have just and that covers all of them that covers all of them in its way i I believe when loosely interpreted, the quit being a dick rule will cover any moral situation. What's up with miracles? I don't think there are miracles. Because anytime someone, in modern times, miracles are kind of localized to medical miracles because we're not really there yet. No one is stopping the Earth's rotation. No one is suspending the force of gravity.

If you want to give me a miracle, do it in something that we really understand, so that we can say, hey, something happened there. That's a miracle. Yes, there really haven't been any miracles since the Jesus era. The only one I can think of would be Smokey Robinson's backup group, who are very good. I wouldn't call their singing miraculous, per se, but they certainly ably accompanied Mr. Robinson on his many hits in Motown. Is it hard to perform a miracle? No, the problem is it sets a standard expectation.

Once you have somebody walking on water, then everyone says, then the next time it's like, oh, he's walking on water again. Oh, you see? And then you have to raise the stakes. Oh, let's have him walk five feet over the water. And then it creates this whole vicious cycle of ever growing more miracles. You just can't live up to the expectation.

I've decided long ago that rather than playing up the miracles, I would just grind people into despair by a series of just relentless, crushing, day-to-day events that rid them of any hope of any possible improvement for their condition in the future. And then they die. And then they die. But then they meet you, and presumably that's a good thing. Well, that's a spoiler alert. We're not going there. In the Bible, it said you made the sun stop in the sky. So back then, people thought the universe went around the earth. But if you stop the sun in the sky, it means you stop the rotation of the earth. And the rotation of the

earth is carrying everyone at this latitude, 800 miles an hour due east. And if you stop the earth, we keep rolling over 800 miles an hour due east. So I don't believe you actually stopped the earth. I have laws of physics to say that. Four words for you, Neil. Om-ni-po-tent. Those are four syllables, but we won't go there. No, they should be words. They're all words in other contexts, and in this context, I've decided to make them words and not syllables. You tire me, Neil. Actually, just a few more questions, because I see you're getting antsy here, and I don't want to piss off God.

Good, because I'm due in five minutes to appear in a meth addict's hallucination. Who are all the homeless people talking to? Are you talking to them? In some cases, I'm talking to them. In most cases, it's the CIA, but in some cases, it is me. this week. We're back on StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. In this final segment of my interview with God, we speak of superheroes, sports, and of course, intelligent design.

Humans have been around a long time. Earth has been around a long time. I think a lot about, is there another time and place that I might have liked to have been alive rather than the present? And you've been around the whole time. Pick a time. What would you like to relive? Well, for me, they were all good. If I were one of you, I think it would be fun to live in the Roman era again, just because... Ancient Rome.

Ancient Rome. Because there was just so much sex. And from your standpoint, to me, that would be a fun thing. But here's something. Shouldn't I be the last entity in the universe whose name should be called during intercourse? Aren't I the last person you want in the room at that time? I don't understand.

I never understand this, Neil. Why wouldn't you call Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe, or Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt? They called me. Who wants me in the room at that moment? And another thing. I am the Lord thy thy god king of the universe i created everything from nothing i am not your sneeze bitch i don't care no oh some mucus has left my nose i best pray to the great god above that something untoward not happen to me

because mucus has been expelled from my nose. Please. If you must say anything, Gesundheit is sufficient. What's with all the athletes compelling you to have them defeat their opponents? Yes. Don't you have better things to do with your time? No, I don't have better things to do with my time. I love sports.

This is a good chance for me to clarify something for the record. I have never influenced the outcome of a sporting event to affect the winner. I have only on rare occasions affected the outcome of a sporting event to affect the spread. That's one of the revelations in the book, by the way. That's one of many revelations you will learn if you buy the spread. That's one of the revelations in the book, by the way. That's one of many revelations you will learn if you buy the book. It's available now in hardcover and paperback. There's an audio version. You'd think you would just implant in everyone's head the will to buy

the book. Well, that's cheating. I want to come about it honestly. The goal for this one is to get us close to around just 1 billion copies would be fine. My previous books hold an average of 4 billion copies. So I don't need this to be a hotel room book like my last one was. I'm just asking for a little bit of play. Publishers Weekly. We have nice write-ups on the Amazon site, so I appreciate that. We're just trying to bump the sales up. Well, maybe StarTalk Radio will help that.

That would be great. Every little bit helps me. I am working on an old factory version that will tell the story of the book via aromas. And that's going to be a brand new technology that I'm very excited about. It's still in the lab. You're working on that. It's still in the lab. It's a co-collaboration with the Chanel company. You're telling me some corporate interests in the world have access to you? Yes. I work with corporations, obviously. That's how you get power. Chanel company. You're telling me some corporate interest in the world have access to you? Yes, I work with corporations, obviously, and that's how you get power. I mean, I know a lot of people,

Neil, partly because of the job and partly just from schmoozing. Cocktail parties. Cocktail parties, you know. And also being a member of the Illuminati certainly doesn't hurt. I'm not president of the Illuminati. I'm working on it. I'm just social secretary right now. But I am hoping that eventually I will work my way up past the Cook brothers and become the president of the Illuminati. Who's more powerful, you or the superheroes we've created in the comic books? Well, if you're talking about me versus just... It's like Superman. Yes, I'm more powerful than Superman. Now if it's me versus the League of Justice, the entire League of Justice, even Aquaman, that's going to be a hard fight. I'm going to win in the end as I am the Lord by God, King of the Universe, but it's going

to be tight. What do you say about this movement? They call it the intelligent design movement. You confront something in nature and you don't quite know how it works. You assume no one will ever know how it works. And people then said it must be the product of a higher intelligence. Intelligent design, yes. I prefer to call it creation science because I like that phrase very much. It carries the same intellectual heft as the phrase dragon anatomy. But what that presumes

is that no one who will ever be born will be smart enough to figure out what we don't know today. I have a lot of confidence in human intellect going forward. I love this guy. He has a lot of confidence in human intellect going forward. Neil deGrasse Tyson, you are priceless. What of the people who say they're somehow channeling you and that they know what you feel and they know what you want and they're bringing that to bear on their parishioners, their followers. We see them here walking among us. Not your prophets. I'm talking about regular old folk. Yes. And then they go out and they bully in my name and they have, as they have for thousands of years, they kill in my name. And some say, I want this. And some say, I want that. And they

all claim to be on my side. And how do you think I feel about it, Neil? I'm very flattered. It's very nice. It's a nice thing to know all these people care so much and that they're willing to do all these things just to make me happy. It really gives me tremendous pleasure and joy. So, is there some secret of the universe that you can share with me and our listeners? You're twisting my metaphysical arm, but okay. Do you know why bad things happen to good people? No.

That's one of the great mysteries of life. Yes, here's the answer. To even out the good things that happen to bad people. I didn't know you were a karma guy. You were yin-yang. You got some of that in you? It's not fully karma.

You know, what comes around usually is gone for a long time. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio's exclusive interview with God. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, and until next time, I, as always,

bid you to keep looking up.