StarTalk Radio - Real Science with Bill Maher (Part 1)

Episode Date: March 28, 2013

Neil deGrasse Tyson has often been a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher. Find out what happens when the outspoken comedian returns the favor. With guest host Dr. David Grinspoon. 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, where I also serve as director of the Hayden Planetarium. In the studio this week, my co-host is a friend and colleague. He's Dr. David Grinspoon. I think of him as an astrophysicist, but his title takes him to another place. He's curator of astrobiology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. David, welcome to StarTalk Radio.

Thanks a lot. It's great to be here. Yeah, thanks. I'm glad we were able to nab you while you were in town. And you're based in Denver, Colorado, right? We got you here in our studios in New York. And I just noticed you were awarded the Baruch Bloomberg NASA Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology. First, what is that? What's the Library of Congress have to do with astrobiology? What's up with that?

Well, every great nation should have a chair of astrobiology, don't you think? And in their wisdom— I concur 100%. Go on. In their wisdom, NASA and the Library of Congress have established a new position that's going to rotate between different people, and I'm the first one. So I'm our nation's first chair of astrobiology. Is this like the old days where a nation would have the court astronomer, the court astrologer, the court artist? Yeah, yeah. I hope so.

What I would like even better is if we went back to having astronomer priests, you know, because that was powerful. I don't think this is like that. But no, they're – Priests who can control budgets, yes. Yeah, but I get to sit for a year in this amazing building in the Library of Congress and sort of think about the societal implications of the search for life and write a book about it. And they're supporting me to do that. Okay, but astrobiology is not specifically the search for life. That's right.

There's more to it. So what is it? That's right. Yeah, astrobiology is the scientific consideration of life in the universe and with the goal of trying to understand where else there might be life or how widely distributed life might be. But normally when you have a field of science, there's a data set that people appeal to to conduct their research. And last I checked, you have a field of science, there's a data set that people appeal to to conduct their research. And last I checked, you have no data. Well, that's –

There is no life somewhere other than Earth that you can – You could say that. We've been accused of being a science without a subject, but it depends what you mean. I'm saying you're a science without data. Yeah, well, but our data is the history of life on Earth and the requirements of life on Earth and what we know about the environments on other planets and trying to map that in and trying to understand the possibilities for life in those environments. Okay, so Earth is your proxy for now. It has to be.

And the moment you get a microbe, you're good to go. Oh, yeah, that'll considerably increase the legitimacy of our field once we have some other examples. I would agree with that. Well, that's great. And it's a one-year tour of duty. It's a one-year tour of duty, and I'm going to try to not be too distracted by the surroundings. The Library of Congress is a pretty amazing place. So I want to be inspired by that,

but I also want to not just gawk. I want to try to get some work done. You know, I've never actually been to the Library of Congress, but I've seen what I think were accurate footage inside of it from the sequel to the movie. What's the name of that movie? Oh, yeah. There was National Treasure and then National Treasure. National Treasure 2. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's the building I'm going to be in. And next time you're in Washington, come visit me. I'll take you around. I'll show you. You know, they've got like Jefferson's Koran and some crazy – yeah. You know, one of the first books in the Library of Congress was Thomas Jefferson's Koran. Wow.

I would have thought that he would have kept that for his own library at Monticello. Well, he gave his entire library. That was the start. I learned this yesterday. That was the start of the Library of Congress was Jefferson's library. He basically needed the money and Congress took it off his hands. Oh, excellent. Good to know. Jefferson, man about town. Yes. The rest is history. So the subject of this show is we're going to orbit an interview that I conducted with Bill Maher, the one and only, the outspoken, the inimitable Bill Maher. That's awesome.

When I was in L.A. doing his show, he agreed to submit to a StarTalk interview. Wow. And his show, Real Time with Bill Maher, airs on HBO, and it's nominated for many awards, and it's in its 10th season. And as you know, he uses his show to talk about the state of the nation and politics. It's, of course, in a comedic format. And there's also the intersection of politics and science. So I thought, let me sort of explore what his views on this relationship would be. So let's hear my first clip with the wolf.

First of all, as you know, I'm not a science person. I don't have bad memories of science class. I remember taking and somewhat enjoying biology sophomore year of high school. Chemistry, I think, was junior year. I think I got away with no science in my senior year because i think so no physics no physics i took physics for poets my freshman year at cornell and i did enjoy that i do remember working up to the einstein's theory of relativity and there was one bright shining moment one day in my life when I had been obviously paying attention the whole semester. And we got up to that point and he derived it.

And I remember, oh, wow, I actually understand this. And of course, I'm sure it leaked right out of my head two days later. And I certainly, 30 years from now, here it is 30 years later. I'm not going to ask you to re-derive it. No, no, no. I remember the end. E equals mz squared. Okay, I can cut right to there. But I remember being so proud. I mean, that was a real intellectual epiphany for me.

And that was the great thing about Cornell. By the way, the only great thing about Cornell. So you're the age where Carl Sagan would have overlapped with you. Had him. You had him for intro astronomy. He was almost never there. Why? It was his course, but he was almost never there it was his course but he was off doing the tonight show and yes intro astronomy he had he did not give a damn about

this class i'll tell you that but you turned out okay i think so yeah i used to love him on the tonight show so what'd you major in in college? I majored first in history, and then I graduated as an English major. Okay. So I love history. That's good. I love stories about people. So David, you've got overlap with Carl. What is that?

Well, actually, I originally knew him when I was a kid. My dad and Carl Sagan were both Harvard professors, and they were buddies. And your father, professor of what? He was in the medical school, psychiatry. And actually, they first got together because of politics in the 60s. At one point, they were basically the only two Harvard professors that were opposed to the Vietnam War. Wow. And so they were kind of cornered.

Well, that would have been in the early 60s probably because by the late 60s, everyone opposed the war. Yeah, exactly. And so I actually knew him first as a kid. He was this guy around the house. He was Uncle Carl. And this guy that, this was kind of before he was famous, but he would show up with this new picture of Mars from one of the Mariner missions. And it was pretty cool. So Bill Maher, who would have thought that Bill Maher had this intersection in world lines with Carl Sagan? And also, he liked the derivation of equals mc squared. Actually, I didn't think you could derive that. I thought that was kind of asserted.

You can make a plausibility argument for it. You can show it's consistent with other things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so that sort of baptism in science with Bill Maher I think has revealed itself in other places in his career, which we'll get back to in a moment. So we're here on StarTalk Radio with my in-studio guest, David Grinspoon. We'll be back in a moment. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio.

I'm your host, Neil Gratis-Tyson. My co-host this week is a friend and colleague, David Grinspoon. He's actually an astrobiologist, although I still think of him as a sort of planetary scientist astrophysicist. It's a latter-day title. I think he's been benighted. And we're commenting on my interview with Bill Maher. I interviewed him when I was last out doing his show several months back. And as you know, surely he's a comedian, he's a political commentator, controversial in many ways, always open to listen to what

you have to say though. And of course, he's host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. And before we went to break, Bill Maher mentioned that he had Astro 101 at Cornell with Carl Sagan. And you had some overlap with Carl Sagan yourself as a kid. He was Uncle Carl to you. But that's back when Carl was in Boston, not in Cornell University, which is in upstate New York. So remind me what Carl was doing in Boston? Well, he was a professor of astronomy at Harvard. And then believe it or not, he was denied tenure, which led to him getting this great position at Cornell that he had for the rest of his career. Right. So most of us associate him with Cornell, but he had these other humble origins at Harvard. Yeah, exactly. And I remember going to Star Talks

at the Harvard Observatory that he led. Star Talk, that's the name of our show, Star Talk. Yeah, true. But it's also something people do, StarTalks at observatories. Just trying to plug the show. Just give me a little space there to plug the show. Yeah. All right. And so you go to his talks and he was good, I presume. Oh, he was great.

I mean, you know, there's a reason why he became such a phenomenon because he was just a sparkling explainer going way back. You think that was too much for Harvard? Harvard doesn't like explainers. Yeah, maybe. Well, I think actually going back to the subject of the show, it was a little bit about politics, why he maybe didn't get tenure. He was the student advisor to the – or the faculty advisor to the SDS at Harvard. Remind everybody.

Students for a Democratic Society, which was this sort of – That's the polite phrase. Quasi-radical anti-war student group, and he was their faculty advisor. And I don't think anybody really knows for sure, but there's a theory that that's why he was denied tenure at Harvard. Yeah. So he was politically active then and throughout his life. Absolutely. Even to the point of getting arrested on a few points of demonstration.

Yeah. At the nuclear test site, he of demonstration. Yeah, at the nuclear test site he was arrested. Yeah, so Carl was an exponent of space exploration that entire time, not only robotic. I think initially he was a little tepid to manned spaceflight, but nonetheless he was a champion of space exploration. And it's one thing to be an academic, but if you are a political comedian

and you either oppose it or support it, that brings on a whole other cultural dimension to what the nation might end up doing. And so in my interview with Bill Maher, I asked him about his views on space exploration. Let's see what those are. There's too much space junk up there. I remember we did a list of it once and among the things, you know, golf clubs and everything else that's up there was a glove, a single space glove from astronaut Ed White. And people want to know why is there a space glove up there? And all we could tell you is that in space, it gets very lonely. But I'm not sure that this is the best use of our money,

considering all the suffering here on Earth. And, you know, how soon are we really going to get to another planet? My view is we need to wait here on Earth until we have better technology and more knowledge because I just don't think we're ready to do it. We're like a baby who wants to walk and we're going to fall down. But, okay, people fall down, right? And that's how you do something that's hard. But if you wait, you don't fall down. If you wait a couple of years, then you can actually walk.

But then another country does it before you, so there you go. Right. I am so worried that Albania is going to beat us to Mars. That is paramount in my concerns right now about, now, what other country? China? Yeah, well, yeah, China. about, now, what other country? China? Yeah, well, yeah, China. Well, yeah, they wanted to put a man in orbit, and they did that. And they want to put a base on the moon, and why should I doubt it?

They've got a booming economy. Well, you know, we got to the moon first. What did that get us? I mean, do you really think that they're going to get up there and then use it as the high ground militarily, that we're going to have to worry about them pointing space lasers at us. I mean, we can already wipe each other out with the nuclear weapons we have here on Earth. Without having to go to the moon to do it. Yeah, I don't

understand what the big problem there is. I'm not really that worried about China. Everybody talks about China as if it's this country that is eclipsing us in leaps and bounds. Everybody I know who's been to China says, are you kidding? Outside of the big cities, it is still a very backward nation. My favorite statistic is that the top fourth in any metric in China outnumbers the entire

population of the United States. I agree with that. I'm not sure what it means, but I agree with it completely. So you don't mind space exploration, you just think it's the wrong priority right now. Right. I mean, who's against the idea of it? Not I. And if we had gotten back perhaps more from the exploration we've already done, maybe it would have colored my thinking on that in a more positive way. But anytime I've heard people discuss what we've gotten out of space, you know, the joke is Tang. Velcro, I think, shows up. Yeah, Velcro. what we've gotten out of space. You know, the joke is Tang. And then...

Velcro, I think, shows up. Yeah, Velcro. Well, this is a good one. Lasik surgery was perfected because of the techniques used to dock the space shuttle to the space station. And now you can get Lasik surgery

for less money, and it's accurate, and they don't mess up. So have you ever had Lasik surgery? I had it in... Well, there you go. We're done. Okay, next topic. I had it in 99, and they did mess up. So have you ever had laser surgery? I had it in. Well, there you go. We're done. Okay, next topic.

I had it in 99 and they did mess up. They did mess up. Well, I wouldn't say they messed up, but I had it done, I think, three times. Oh, okay. I wonder if the full algorithms were in place by then. Yeah, they didn't blind me. And I shouldn't have had it done in the mall. That's the other thing.

It didn't blind me. And I shouldn't have had it done in the mall. That's the other thing. So, David, I've got you on the show not just because you're a scientist extraordinaire, but, I mean, you've done a lot of public things in your life. And you, as have I, have seen public sentiment in many ways, especially for you based in Colorado, which has very different political views than here in New York, especially different from here in Manhattan where we're in studio.

So what's been your experience with the public's reaction to space? Of course, Colorado has space industry there. So maybe that's even biased. Yeah. Well, I think space is one of those things that actually kind of spans the political spectrum. I think everyone's for it, really. I mean, people will respond differently when you talk about prioritizing it compared to other things.

No one is saying never do space. Yeah, I mean, you know, and I probably have a slightly filtered view because people come to the museum where I work and they're the ones that love this stuff. This is the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Yeah, I work at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. And Colorado is kind of a red state,

and Denver's a pale blue dot on the map inside the red state. But no, I think that, yeah, there's a lot of kind of sort of more maybe, I don't know what you call it, you know, there's a lot of military industrial complex in the Denver area because of Lockheed Martin and all this stuff. And those guys are pro-space. But I think also people on the other side of the spectrum that – I don't know what words you want to use that call themselves more progressive or whatever or maybe a little more suspicious of the military industrial complex. But they love space too because it's exploration and it's this sort of part of the highest aspiration of humankind. Well, then, but none of this bears out in budget.

So you're saying everybody loves space, but NASA is going hat in hand to Congress every year for budget money. So what gives? Yeah, well, it's an interesting question whether we're spending enough or not on space. I think you and I agree that it would be nice to increase that budget. And we're always complaining and fighting for money. Nonetheless, we're continuing to do great things. We just landed this best spacecraft ever, really, on Mars. Ever. Best ever.

Yeah. Well, there's an argument to be made there. We'll see. We'll see how it plays out. But I'm pretty excited about that. What do you think of Bill Maher's comment that he wants to wait until we can do it right and not trip up and fail? I mean, I think there's an argument there. I don't agree with it, but I see where he's coming from. Yeah, but you can't wait because if you stop, then, I mean, you've got to keep people working on this stuff. You've got to have people coming on getting PhDs and learning how to do this stuff. You have to keep the industry and the academic departments humming and turning out people and turning out expertise.

So you can't just stop and say, well, in 20 years we'll know how to do it better. Then nobody will know how to do it because they won't have been doing it. So you've got to keep going to – that's how we get better. Or he's somehow thinking that the cost is just the time of the launch. But in fact, it's the persistent investment from year to year with the intellectual capital. That's really what you're saying. Yeah, and it costs more if you stop and then 20 years later say, well, how did we do that? Does anybody know how to build these things anymore? You start from scratch.

Yeah, we forgot how to build the Saturn V rocket that took us to the moon. Yeah. You know, people say if we can put a man on the moon, then why can't we feed our people? Well, right now, we can't put a man on the moon. Yeah, and we can't feed all our people. So, you know, we obviously have to do better at both, but it's not an either or. In fact, there's a lot of common ground. You know, if we have a scientifically literate public,

then we can do better at both. Yeah. Well, with my interview with Bill Maher, I didn't just only ask him about space. We talked about other topics of science, including climate change. When we come back, more StarTalk Radio. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio.

Joining me this week is David Grinspoon as my guest. He's an astrobiologist, and we've been listening to my interview with Bill Maher in his office, actually, in Los Angeles. I did his show three times, and this was the third of those times he agreed to a StarTalk interview. Bill Maher, as you know, is a comedian and political commentator, host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. He's an opinionated guy in a funny, humorous, entertaining way, and that's why he's got a hit show where we hear his comments and how he interacts with others. A topic that comes up often, of course, is climate change. And it's so politically controversial, if not scientifically controversial. And I asked him about just what his own views were on climate change. Let's see what those are. You're also an environmentalist, is that right?

Well, I hope so. Aren't we all? I mean, if you're not a... Is that your electric car I saw parked out front? That is my Tesla. That's right. I don't fit in that car. Otherwise, I would so be like't we all? Is that your electric car I saw parked out front? That is my Tesla. That's right. I don't fit in that car. Otherwise, I would so be wanting to drive it.

Yeah, that's the one thing about that car. It is a bit of a sacrifice. It's the Tesla Roadster. Yeah, I mean, it's so low to the ground. I mean, I cannot fit in this car, you're right, if I have an erection. And it's just, if you hit a pothole, it's tough because it's about this far from the ground. I'm holding my hand by my foot. But you know what? It's a great little car and it feels so good to just plug it in at the end of the day and never have to go to the gas station.

So again, your philosophically driven outlook is because you just want a better world, I guess. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that's what... I see trees of green, gold, blah, blah, blah. Yes, I think to myself, what a wonderful world it could be. Who doesn't want a better world? I think everyone is just scratching and clawing at how to, in their view, get there. If you listen to almost every Republican senator nowadays, they will tell you that global warming is a hoax

invented by some Swedish scientist to enrich Al Gore. But I don't see it that way. And, you know, I see a bad moon rising as far as what's... Good line. I like that. As far as what... I'm humming the tune now. As far as what is... I mean, already we've seen so many weather disasters on a level we never have seen. And, you know, I just don't see good things in the next 30 years on this planet. I live in New York City.

Every week since November, there's been a day that's been 50 degrees. Yeah. In the week. Yeah, I mean, every time I see a headline in the paper, it says something like, worse than the worst predictions four years ago. You know, whatever climate scientists were predicting four years ago, somehow it got worse than they could have foreseen. Now, you have a huge pulpit to get people to laugh and think, right? You're one of those kind of comedians.

You're not just the one-liner. Are you happy with your success trying to change the world? Well, if you mean, have I changed the world? Of course not. Comedians don't change the world. I think you do. But you can change people's thinking to a degree. I mean, politically, it's a little harder. I mean, people are, I think, born with a chip in their brain that's branded right away Republican or Democrat, I have a feeling. And then they do whatever they can to sort of find the evidence to back up their team. Otherwise, I don't even know how people could support some of the ideas of the Republican Party nowadays, because they have been disproven. Well, so he went exactly all the places we'd

expect him to. Oh, by the way, my comment in that interview about every week there was a day in New York above 50 degrees, that's in the dead of winter. So we were not getting the cold days that I'd remembered growing up. Yeah, you have to be a little careful about weather trends because there's always been weird weather. There always will be weird weather. And yet when you start getting more and more of it, you have to wonder if there's a trend. And the hard part is you won't be able to say for sure that there's a trend until it's too late. So we have to partly rely on our predictive abilities. Now, one of your favorite places in the solar system is Venus.

You even wrote a book on it called, what, Venus Revealed? Yeah, Venus Revealed. Venus Revealed. And Venus, last I checked, had a runaway greenhouse effect. So does that give you pause when you look here on Earth? Venus, last I checked, had a runaway greenhouse effect. So does that give you pause when you look here on Earth? Well, it really strengthens our confidence that we know how to do climate modeling when we run our climate models on a planet like Venus, and they basically work.

We haven't got all the details right, but the greenhouse effect, the physics of it, is verified by the fact that we can predict how hot Venus ought to be based on the way its atmosphere is. And its atmosphere is carbon dioxide. Yeah, Venus is all carbon dioxide, and it's 900 degrees out. Don't let this happen to your planet. So you're in a unique position to alert people, not only of what's happening on Earth, but offering evidence of other places in the solar system.

I can't think of a better reason to explore space than that. Yeah, this is one of the great motivations for space exploration. It's not just satisfying our curiosity. It's telling us how planets work in a deeper way, getting us more perspective on how Earth works.

And we need that right now. That's how we know we're going to be able to predict the future of climate on Earth. We can test our climate models on other atmospheres. A quick question. We've only got climate models on other atmospheres. A quick question. We've only got a little more than a half a minute left in this segment.

Mars is also primarily a carbon dioxide atmosphere, but it's not suffering from a greenhouse effect. Why? Well, it's a very, very thin carbon dioxide atmosphere. It doesn't have much atmosphere at all, and it's much farther from the sun. And for both those reasons... Venus has like 100 times Earth's air pressure. Yeah, exactly. Venus is, the surface pressure is as if you went a kilometer below the ocean on Earth. And Mars, the surface pressure is as if you went way up in an airplane. Okay, so it's just simply not enough to make that work. When we come back to StarTalk Radio,

more with my in-studio guest, David Grinspoon, and my interview with Bill Maher. See you in a moment. We're back on StarTalk Radio. I'm with David Grinspoon, an astrobiologist, and we've been commenting on my interview with the comedian and political commentator Bill Maher. He's an advocate of science literacy in general. And we ended up talking about science versus religion. And it almost always goes there with Bill Maher and, of course, with many others. wrote and starred in the comedic documentary called Religious, where he sort of examines and mocks organized religion and religious belief. Let's see what he says about this trajectory.

You're a big advocate, whether you know it or not, on education and science literacy. Oh, yes. And what compels you to do that? You just fear for the country? Yeah, of course. I mean, just because I'm not knowledgeable about science myself doesn't mean I can't at least understand. I mean, you're on the board of Project Reason. Right. So what? What is that?

Well, I mean, that's probably a bunch of atheists. I mean, like I say, I personally cannot derive the theory of relativity or the E equals MC squared, but I do understand that that's right. I just intuitively seem to know that the person who is for that is smarter than Rick Santoro. And there is an opposition now

between science and faith. So is that what's driving you? So if there were no opposition and if the people were not trying to put non-science into life, would you be more quiet on the issue? or is that what's really pumping your blood? I mean, that's part of it. Absolutely.

I mean, there are elements at work in this country who would like to replace science with faith. For many years, we sort of had a truce between these two areas. Centuries, even, yeah. I philosophically don't believe that either. I don't think they can really be reconciled. I don't think you can square that circle and believe in both. But it was better than we have now, which is a war where in this dumb country, faith could win. But no, I absolutely philosophically don't believe there's room for both.

I mean, either you believe in Santa Claus or you don't. You can't have it both ways. Bill Maher being Bill Maher. So David, you're based in Colorado and some of the great mega churches are there and some of the more colorful characters who famous for their religiosity and famous for falling from grace. So how does your work at the Denver museum of nature and science fold in with this? Do you have picketers and protesters outside? Yeah,

not only that inside, you said, you said, you just said, yes, we're publicly funded. So we have to allow whoever to do whatever in our museum. I mean,

within reason, but so there are creationist tours of our museum that we have to allow where they come in and they reinterpret everything in light of the universe being only 6,000 years old. But do they influence your exhibit or do you just – of course, I mean anyone could come in no matter what their belief system is. So that itself shouldn't matter. The question is whether – do those forces influence your design of exhibits? No, our messaging is pretty consistent. We don't shy away from saying that the universe is 13 billion years old and that life on earth, that evolution

occurred. But people do come in with other interpretations and we can't exclude them. No, of course. No, no. It's a free country, so I wouldn't expect that. But it's Colorado. Do people picket outside your museum or not? We haven't had picketers. Okay. So it's a peaceful coexistence. I would say it's a peaceful coexistence, yeah. All right.

So now we have a state which is highly religious. Normally, we don't think of Colorado as the Bible Belt. Typically, that's sort of further east of there, like Texas and Oklahoma, Amarillo, you know, these kinds of places. Here we have a state which is highly industrialized, right? It's got no end of engineers making aerospace product and military product. So if they can successfully do engineering things, then the coexistence of religion and science-trained people is not a problem in Colorado, apparently. Would you agree or not?

Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, you know, Bill here is talking about this, you know, what if they take over and impose, you know, some kind of Taliban rule on the U.S. Or, you know, that sort of scary scenario. But I would say as it is now, I mean, you know, there is some debate about what we teach in the schools, and that, you know, isn't entirely peaceful. And I'd say that's where, if anything, it gets a little bit worrisome. So, but you're at the, you're, forgive the term, ground zero of those debates, right? So has it been successful to teach non-science in the science classroom? Not really. There have been efforts, but we still teach science. Okay. So what I wonder is what the future of this will be. And he made reference to

Rick Santorum. That was back when the Republican candidates were still vying for who would represent the party. And so it's just interesting to watch a spate of candidates talk about their belief systems. Were you worried at that time? Yeah. You know, it's funny, the polarization here, because I think that I understand the concerns that Bill's expressing, but I also think there's kind of a simple-minded, the atheist fundamentalist can be pretty simple-minded too. Let's get back to that.

Let's get back to that in the next segment. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. You can find us on the web at startalkradio.net. And we also tweet, what else, at StarTalk Radio. I got David Grinspoon in studio with me. He's a friend and colleague, and lately he's been benighted astrobiologist for the Library of Congress of all places.

Very cool title. And we've been orbiting an interview that I had with Bill Maher in his office in Los Angeles. He's a comedian, political commentator, host of Real Time with Bill Maher, and, of course, the conversation ultimately led to science and religion. I alerted him about the fraction of scientists that are actually religious, just to explore what his reaction to that would be, because he's pretty sure that the two pretty much need to be at war. Let's find out what that interview said. 40% of American scientists pray to a personal God. They're not atheists. 40% of them. Obviously,

there's a split there. American, you said? American, certainly not European. That's funny because I read a statistic once that said 94% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences were atheists. That's correct. That's an elite set. So here's my point. My question is, there's still 7% of them, right? So why isn't that zero? And if that can't go to zero, what hope do you have of changing the public back to zero look i have no false hope that by the time i kick the bucket i'm gonna turn the whole world out and become a globe of atheists that's not gonna happen for religious we interviewed francis collins who's head of the National Institute of Health. That's a pretty major

job for a guy who believes that 2,000 years ago, a Palestinian woman gave birth because she was visited by a dove or whatever that story is. This was the question I was asking in Religious. A lot of people who've never seen the movie think if I had a question, it was, gosh, I'm on a spiritual quest. Which will I find? The truth that there is a God? No, that wasn't my question. I already knew the answer to that question when I was 10. The question I was asking was, how can otherwise intelligent people believe in a talking snake? That how do people build this wall in their mind between what they must know in part of their mind is untrue,

and yet they maintain this belief. That, to me, is the most fascinating. Did you answer that question? You still couldn't answer it. No one will ever really answer it, but it's fun to try to find out, and it made for great comedy. If it was as simple as saying all the smart people are atheists and all the stupid people are religious, it would be very simple, but it's not that simple because we all know very intelligent people who somehow put that wall up in their mind. That doesn't mean I respect it intellectually. And it doesn't mean that if you do hold that belief, if you believe in Santa Claus, a God, Jesus, whatever you want, that I really have

to disqualify you from the highest rank of thinkers. I'm sorry, I just do. And I don't even put myself in the highest rank of thinkers. I'm not saying, oh, I'm up there in the pantheon and you're not. I'm just saying, I can't quite go there with you. If you believe in something that is obviously ridiculous and anachronistic, something that some desert dweller had as a brain fart 3,000 years ago and wrote down and somehow it got passed along in a game of telephone and now you're still following it i'm sorry you can't be in the highest rank of thinkers amen bill maher being bill maher once again so uh david like i said you're those just joining us, David Grinspoon is based in Colorado, although his recent appointment will put him in Washington for a year. And apparently

people are perfectly fine coexisting with their scientific knowledge and their religious belief. So do you share the same fears and concerns that Bill Maher does? Not really. Personally, I call myself a lapsed atheist. I was brought up as an atheist, and I lapsed from that. I'm certainly not a religious believer in any kind of conventional sense, but I realized when I was 13 that the talking snakes didn't make sense. But I've learned that some people who, some pretty smart people talk about God, like Darwin and Newton and Einstein, and they can mean more subtle things than talking snakes. And I think Bill Maher is setting up a bit of a straw man here. He's mocking the most ridiculous kind of God that people talk about. And I've known some very smart

and very wise and very rational thinkers who consider themselves religious believers. So I think there's a bit more subtlety here. All right. So would you say that those people have a sort of a line in the mental sand between their capacity for rational thought and the capacity for spiritual thought? Or do you think it's actually blended? Because those same people that you're referencing in the face of data would not deny a 13.7 billion year old universe, right? Francis Collins, even though he prays to Jesus, is not saying that evolution didn't happen. And he's not saying the universe is 6,000 years old. So there are different kinds of religious folks out there. Yeah, well, I think, you know, the kind of person I'm sort of referring to,

and I was very influenced, by the way, my PhD advisor is one of the most brilliant people I've known was a strong religious believer. Where was this? University of Arizona. And I think you can say that, yes, I'm going to accept scientific evidence for how old the universe is. It's more than 13 billion years old. And yet, I still have these questions about ultimate meaning and what we're doing here and where morality comes from and how we are to live as human beings, questions that aren't necessarily all addressed by science, at least science today. And that leaves room for mystery and what some people use religious thought for. Now, of course, even though there's some ragged edges on this, the Catholic Church basically endorses evolution as a path of nature.

So it's not impossible for religion to come meet science, even on its own grounds. So, David, we've got to wrap up this hour. You can hang around for another hour? I'd love to. Excellent. So you've been listening to StarTalk Radio, brought to you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. And as I close every hour, keep looking up. And as I close every hour, keep looking up.