The Eric Metaxas Show - Melissa Cain Travis

Episode Date: December 12, 2021

Melissa Cain Travis tackles cosmic origins and our role in the grand scheme of things with a few answers from her book "Science and the Mind of the Maker."

to the Eric McTaxe show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxe show. Many of you know that I recently came out with a book called Is Atheism Dead? The first third of which deals with the inevitable conclusion, it seems to me, at this point, that science is pointing to God. It's astonishing, it's extraordinary, it's little known, which is why I wrote about it, but in the course of writing my book and in talking about it, I keep bumping into more and more people who are themselves writing about this and teaching about this and talking about it.

I recently came across Melissa Kane-Travs. She's an assistant professor of Christian apologetics at Houston Baptist University, among other things. And she came out with a book just a couple years ago called Science and the Mind of the Maker, what the conversation between faith and science reveals about God. A lot of the stuff that I'm excited about, she is also excited about. I said, we've got to get her on the program. So Melissa, Kay and Travis, welcome. Thank you.

I'm glad to be with you. Well, so how did you get into this world? Because what I always am amazed by is how many people just don't know anything about this. When I talk to Christians who seem to have a reasonable faith, they seem to, but they themselves have never heard of a lot of this. So I was excited when I saw your book because you've more than just heard about it. You've written about it. How did you find your way into this subject? Let's start there. Well, it's a long and convoluted story that we probably don't have time to tell in its entirety. But to make a very long story short, my background is in biotechnology. My undergraduate

degrees in general biology, and after undergrad, I decided to enter the field of biotech while I figured out what I wanted to do in terms of graduate education. And for five years, I found myself repeatedly sitting up at a lab bench doing my work and having conversations with the scientists that worked alongside me in my lab and finding myself at a loss for answers to big questions that they asked me because they knew that I was a devoted Christian, but I was also deeply interested in the natural sciences. And I call it my embarrassing series of events that eventually led me to start digging deeper and finally discovering this crazy term apologetics that I'd never heard in my entire life. So I started doing self-study and after a few years I found myself in the

graduate program in science and religion at Biola University. And it was there that I was exposed to all the wonderful authors who have become my intellectual heroes. And after that, pursued PhD studies in great books because I wanted to learn a whole lot more about the philosophy, the theology, and the history surrounding the science and faith conversation. Well, there is so much to talk about, but I always feel like the headline is that science points to God. Another similar headline, related headline, is that Christian faith. gave us modern science. These are the opposites of what most people, including many Christians,

believe or at least walk around with. They kind of have this, they've internalized this secularist lie that somehow science and faith are at odds, when not only is that not the case, but exactly the opposite is true. Do you remember when you began to realize this yourself in your own journey? I actually do remember. It was when I was doing my master's degree and I took a course at Biola entitled Historical Perspectives on Science and Faith. And a very large part of the curriculum for that class was debunking all of these historical myths, these false narratives that have bled into public classrooms, into popular literature. And then of course, nowadays we

see it in lots of places like streaming science documentaries. So my eyes were opened and I loved it. And that's what led me to pursue the history philosophy and theology rather than going into the professional sciences because I wanted to explore the intellectual history. That's what really motivated me. I guess in my own journey on this, what I find interesting is the way information travels or doesn't travel. In other words, just because something's true doesn't mean that anyone knows it's true, right? So I remember this kind of happened when the movie The Da Vinci Code came out, right? Which is just loaded with lies, and tons of people saw it.

And it was confusing, it was underscoring a lot of lies about the Christian faith. But what cracked me up was that Christians would, you know, write a book saying where it was wrong. And then I thought to myself, but who even knows that that book exists? I mean, the movie has reached zillions of people. So even though you could have chapter and verse on where something is right or wrong or whatever, the fact is it doesn't matter because unless people see it, unless people bump into it, they're going to continue believing what they were believing. So what you're talking about, how these ideas, you know, bleed into the culture and into streaming science programs and so on and so forth,

that to me is the bigger issue, right? that maybe you know something and I know something, but then the question is, how do we get it out there in the way that it can combat some of these pernicious lies? And so it seems like you're one of these people that you're really thinking about this. You care about that as well as what is true and not true. Yeah, that's right. And that's one of the joys of being an interdisciplinaryian because I can stick my toes in all of these different areas. And it's been wonderful because I cross paths with secular thinkers, with secular scholars at major universities, and I get to have these awesome conversations with them about some of the narratives that they've long

believed to be true. But you're right, we have our work cut out for us. And I'm constantly encouraging colleagues and even the average Bob and Jane in the church pew to do their reading and to be ready to have these kinds of conversations, especially those who have kids that they're about to launch off to university. The ideas, as I said, that we talk about, when you mentioned being an interdisciplinary, and I actually think that you're right, that I myself, because I'm a generalist,

I'm able to speak in a different way. And a lot of times what happens typically is, you know, scientists will write books about science, which we've read by people who do science, but those ideas need to get out beyond the world of academic scientists, and often they don't. And it's the bad ideas, you know, the ideas, whether it's Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson,

they're promulgating these horrible ideas, and they have PBS platforms to do that. And so that's kind of part of what I think we're both involved. And as you probably know, Stephen Meyer of the discovery Institute wrote a book that came out this past year called The Return of the God Hypothesis. And I feel like between your book and his book and my book and a raft of other books, there is something going on. There's a kind of a paradigm shift happening where these ideas are finally getting out there. I would agree. And I've heard repeatedly over just the past couple

years, the whole movement that was known as new atheism has really started to break down. And I've heard Lee Strobel say, we've really entered the golden age of apologetics. And I'm seeing evidence that leads to me to believe that those two things are true. And it's exciting. It's a great time to be in this kind of academic work. I totally agree. I mean, what I argue about in my book is atheism dead is, in In fact, atheism is dead in the sense that you can still say you're an atheist the way you can say I'm a flat earth or you can say whatever you want. But intellectually speaking, it's over. And the new atheists, I really think that they were just amazingly intellectually sloppy and in some cases dishonest. And I really was amazed by that because I think that they maybe they sensed that they didn't have the arguments on their side.

But they had this rage or this emotion or an animus against faith. or something like that that was motivating them. But if you're cold-blooded and you just look at the facts, you think, well, I could be an agnostic, but atheism just doesn't really seem intellectually tenable at this point based on what we now know. We'll be right back, folks. I'm talking to the author of a book, Science and the Mind of the Maker with the Conversation Between Faith and Science Reveals About God. Melissa Kane-Travs, we'll be right back.

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I'm talking to Melissa Kane-Travs. She's the author of Science and the Mind of the Maker, what the conversation between faith and science reveals about God. Let's get specific, Melissa. There are a lot of exciting chapters in here. I never know where to go first because I like it all, right? But the idea of, you know, how life, came into being from non-life. I don't remember if you deal with that in a whole chapter,

if you just touch on that in the book, but what they call abiogenesis, do you talk about that? I do. There's a chapter in there that talks about the problem posed for naturalistic origin of life theories when we consider the specified complexity found in the DNA molecule. And for the listeners who are familiar with Dr. Stephen Meyer, who you mentioned earlier, he's written an entire book on that, right? Signature in the cell. So I just... I drew on Myers' work for that chapter. Well, it's interesting because I came to it a little bit through Stephen Myers, but also through Dr. James Tour, who's also down there in Houston at Rice University.

And what I always find funny is the fact that we never talk about this. Like we, you know, maybe if you're in that world, you talk about it. But if you go up to your average person and say, okay, life appears on Earth, single-celled form four billion years ago, how did that happen? I think most people just go, what? What? What do you mean? How did it? I don't know. How did it happen? It's like you would think that that would be the most basic question. Like science. Okay, science. The most basic questions. There's life. We are life. How did life come into being? And it seems like the more we know about the complexity of DNA, the complexity of single cell, the more we know that we have no idea how life came into being. But that's a pretty big thing to admit. So nobody's really, been very public about it, at least on the non-Christian side of the aisle. You're right. And I think that points to the fact that this is really more about the philosophical

biases that people bring to these kinds of scientific ideas. They haven't done a lot of homework. They just assume naturalism, and therefore some naturalistic explanation must be the case. And often they'll just fall back on things like, oh, well, given enough, time or while given chemistry in the prebiotic world that we don't have access for empirical study, sure, it could have happened. And if you suggest anything other than purely naturalistic processes, you get the side eye and the accusation of God of the Gaps. Yeah, the old God of the Gaps.

Well, let me ask you also, you talk about the fine-tuned universe. When I do public speaking now about my new book is Atheism Dead. I often ask the audience, how many people familiar with the fine-tuned argument? Very few people. And these are intelligent people. At least they tell me they're intelligent because I ask, are you intelligent? But they haven't heard of this. And I think, wow.

So educated Christians have not heard about the fine-tuned argument, which is just tremendously compelling. So tell my audience, what is the fine-tuned argument and give us some specifics, if you would? Yeah, so the fine-tuning argument essentially says that there are parameters of the cosmos that are finely tuned within an infinitesimal tiny, tiny range in order for life to have arisen anywhere in the universe. And then on top of that, there are things about planet Earth that have made our planet incredibly hospitable to the emergence and development of life. And then on top of that, we have this crazy what some might call sheer coincidence, but we know better.

That's such that things are so finely tuned cosmically and on our planet, and they just happen to coincide with the exact same conditions we need to be the case in order for scientific discovery to be possible. So it's this habitability, discoverability coincidence that's so wonderful. I think maybe the reason a lot of people don't know about this is that it sounds complicated, right? And so what are some of these parameters? What examples can we give so that people get what we're talking about? You know, if things weren't, it's the Goldilocks thing.

This is too hot. This is too cold. This is just right. What are some examples that we can throw out there? I mean, I've got a few, but maybe you do. Well, from a cosmic perspective, from the cosmic level, we could point to things like the force of gravity. So the gravitational constant that tells us how strong or weak the gravitational force is. And it turns out that if it were modified in either direction, stronger or weaker, just a tiny, tiny, tiny amount, we could not even have chemistry in the universe.

And one of the illustrations I like to use with my students is imagine you had a cosmic tape measure. You went down to Home Depot, you got a big old tape measure, and you were able to stretch it across the entire observable universe, which is quite a long way. And imagine that one tick mark on your tape measure represented the known gravitational constant in the law of nature that we refer to as the force of gravity. Now imagine you moved that tick mark just one inch in either direction on your tape measure, and that would render the universe life prohibiting. So if you can just wrap your mind around the size of the observable universe compared to an inch on a tape measure. Well, by the way, no one can. You know about this.

Right, right. You're using terms. People don't, they say, what does she mean observable universe? So how big is the observable? We're talking about a tape measure. It's really, really, really, really long. How long is it? From here to the moon is a quarter of a million miles. So from here to the sun is 93 million miles. You're talking about something almost infinitely beyond that. Right. Right. We're talking about trillions of light years. And for those that don't know what a light year is, it's how far you could travel if you were going at the speed of light for a year.

Okay, so, but I'm saying even if it were just from here to the sun, let's say the tape measure is 93 million miles long. Who can imagine a million miles, right? I mean, it's just crazy stuff. It's 3,000 miles across the country. Now try to imagine a million miles. Now try to imagine millions and millions of minutes. So you have a tape measure that long, and you're saying you move one inch in either direction on that tape measure. We can't have chemistry.

We can't have life. Right, right. You can't have gases compressing enough to give you anything resembling a star. And who wants that kind of a universe? Be pretty dark. Okay, so here's my question. Why aren't they teaching this? This is science in like public schools and colleges. This is science. This is not Christian science. This is science. We know. Or am I missing something? Are there people that say this is not true? I don't think there really are people that we can take seriously that would say this is not true. They know this is true, but they don't teach it. Why? Does it just make them uncomfortable? I guess they figure it hedges too closely to philosophy and religion, and so they just avoid it.

But you're exactly right. The fine-tuning of the universe is not a controversial claim by any means. What's controversial is claiming that it points to a transcendent mind. Right. The only problem is that even though that's controversial, it's also true, which is a problem for people who don't like it to be true. So they just call it controversial and ignore it. But if you stick your head in the sand, ultimately, at some point, really, that strategy can't work. So that's the fine-tuned universe.

What about planet Earth? What about, I mean, what are some things that are more tangible that people can say? Because when you talk, for example, about the gravitational force, most of us, just, go like, I'm not sure what that even is. You're right, right? I mean, I know that in physics, therefore, fundamental forces, they each have, you know, a certain value, and that was set in stone a millionth of the second after the Big Bang.

And the more you know, the more it makes sense, the more crazy it is. But what's something more tangible? Like, maybe the size of the earth? Yeah, the distance of the earth from the sun is in that Goldilocks region that you referred to. We're in just the right spot to have liquid water. which is essential for the emergence and flourishing of life. One of my favorite examples that is part of that great coincidence of discoverability and habitability is the existence of fire on our planet.

It did not have to be the case that we are able to have controlled hot fire that enables us to flourish technologically. And the things that are necessary for the kind of fire we have turn out to also be necessary for the existence of life. And one example of that would be the electromagnetic force constant. Another example would be precisely the kind of atmosphere we have on planet Earth. And then another thing for fire specifically are the kinds of raw elements that we have. So we have these parameters that give us both life, specifically higher, flex life and fire that leads to technological advancement, which is necessary to do the natural

sciences. And I think that's wonderful. Even at this simple level, though, you can see how it could be difficult for people because it's, it sounds, the more you get into it, which is why I want people to read and learn about this, is the more you get into it, the more you understand it. But we're, we're dealing with a world where very few people know about this, but they're starting to know about it. We'll be right back talking to Melissa Cain, Travis. The book is, in my hand, science and the mind of the maker. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis, and they have no clue how to fix it. Oil prices have skyrocketed, and when oil prices go up, the cost of transportation and shipping spikes, leading the prices of good. to rise. And when we're already seeing record inflation, that's the last thing we need.

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Hey there, folks. I am talking to the author of Science and the Mind of the Maker, what the conversation between faith and science reveals about God, Melissa Kane-Travice. We were just going to talk about something. You just mentioned it. Lisa, tell us again. So the central thesis of my book, Science in the Mind of the Maker, is something that I call the maker thesis. And this goes beyond the idea that science gives us evidence that points towards an intelligent creator.

What I mean when I say the maker thesis is that when we look at diverse branches of the natural sciences, we actually see marks of rationality in all of these different areas of science. But in addition to that and corresponding to it quite beautifully is the fact that we have inquisitive, higher intelligent life on planet Earth whose rationality is attuned in just the right way to be able to detect the rationality in nature. Okay. Now, I hate to break it to you, but that might make sense to you. And it might even make sense to me. But that's not easy what you just said, because I remember Hugh Ross, who introduced me to a lot of this stuff, when he was talking about this,

I think it was on this program like five years ago or something, I remember thinking like, that's a complex idea. So let's break this down. When you even talk about something like rationality, I think a lot of people go like, what do you mean exactly by rationality? I think it's a deep philosophical issue, isn't it? Like when you're saying that if I look at the world of science,

the idea that it is somehow understandable is itself. so taken for granted, it seems so innate to me that it's hard for me to step outside and marvel at it. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, it totally does. So back in the mid-20th century, a physicist by the name of Eugene Vigner wrote an essay that has since become quite famous. Now, it's important to understand that Vigner was not a theist in any sense of the word. We could probably best describe him as a happy, But he wrote this essay. It's freely available to read online. And the title of the essay is

the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences. And what he did was he explored something that Albert Einstein had remarked about repeatedly, but just had not elaborated on. And that was the mathematical comprehensibility of the universe. And Vigner, over just the course of maybe four pages of an essay, he talks about how crazy this is, how uncanny it is, that the abstract world of mathematics would map onto nature in just the right way that we are able to use advanced mathematics to do things like theoretical physics and particle physics. Okay, but what I was saying earlier, which is that I think, unless you're a really deep thinker who thinks about what you just said,

we sort of take these things for granted because they seem so intuitive, so obvious. I mean, if I'm made by God to long for meaning, the idea that I long for meaning and then find meaning and find reason and find answers, whatever, it seems normal. And it is. So it's hard for me to step outside of it

and try to imagine a world where that weren't true. Imagine a world that wasn't, rationally comprehensible. To try to imagine a world where there are creatures like us who didn't long for reason and meaning. It gets into some deep philosophical waters is what I'm trying to say.

And so whenever I hear somebody talk about it, it's amazing that math, you know, enables us that we can do math and we can study science to do math and stuff like that. There's a part of me just goes like, well, what do you mean? Of course. Of course we can do that.

But what you're saying, which Vigner is saying, Einstein was seeing is like, no, if you really look at it, it's freaky. It's kind of weird that math somehow can be mapped onto this natural world. Math is abstract. The natural world is the opposite of abstract. But this is deep stuff. I'm just letting you know what sounds like very easy to you. This is heavy. It really is. To give a more recent example that I think is rather fun is the great Roger Penrose. And for those who don't know that name, he's a famous living physicist. He rose to fame mostly for his work with the late great Stephen Hawking. And Penrose has something,

it's a triangular model that he refers to as the three worlds, three mysteries problem. Now Penrose, also not a theist, but he sees the great problem here with trying to posit a natural explanation based on what we know right now. And the reason he calls it the three worlds, three mysteries problem is because he says, look, we have this world of abstract mathematics completely immaterial. It maps onto the material world with mind-boggling precision. And then out of that material world, now here's his naturalistic perspective coming out, out of the material world has emerged human rationality. These brains have evolved and now we have this high rationality that can tap into that abstract world of mathematics.

I feel like you just made a hard left. I wasn't expecting it. And I'm still going straight. And I lost you. Where'd she go? Not really. But that's a big, that's a heavy point. What you're making is that somehow we human beings have minds, which I guess Penrose is

saying, arrive naturalistically. Does he believe that? He believes that our brains. he doesn't, I mean, doesn't he come out against consciousness as a thing? I can't remember. But I thought he, he's not, is he a pure naturalist? I just, for some reason, I believe he's not. I feel like he's started to migrate away from that a little bit based on what he's discovering

and marveling at in his own work. He better hurry up. Isn't he in his 80s now? He is. He's in his 80s. Yeah, I'm glad he's migrating. Well, okay, we're going to go to a break. This is very important, beautiful stuff.

We're going to be right back. Melissa King, Travis. Thank you. Oh, night div. Hey, folks, all of you out there know that My Pillow doesn't have box stores or any shopping channels. They've been part of this canceled culture, and they want to pass the savings on directly to you. So you can get the lowest price in the history of My Pillow for the classic standard My Pillow regularly 69. 69.98, now only

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That's MyPillow.com promo code Eric or 1-800-978-3057. Folks, I'm holding in my hand book, Science and the Mind of the Maker, where the conversation between faith and science reveals about God. Melissa Kane-Travice is my guest. Melissa, you were just talking about this is a heavy thing. You said, Roger Penrose, this great mind. He say it again so we so we get that third piece because this is it's heavy. Okay.

So let me just put it in very, very simple terms. I won't be as articulate as Dr. Penrose is on this. We have mathematics. We have matter and we have mind. And those three things relate to one another with what I call a grand cosmic resonance. There is this relationship between the three that is rather spooky. And we need to have an explanation for this. And naturalism doesn't have the tools to give us that explanation.

So he gets that that it doesn't make sense naturalistically. Something's missing. There's a mystery here. So, okay. So we have the world of math, totally abstract. We have the world of nature, material, okay. And then we have, you're saying, he calls it mind. Does he mean mind or does he mean brain? Or is he himself having trouble

figure? I'm getting the impression that he is himself troubled as he tries to figure this out. Oh, he is troubled by it. And it wasn't very long ago that he had a really interesting dialogue with Dr. William Lang Craig. And Dr. Craig tried to pin him down on this and make a suggestion that theism offers a more satisfactory explanation of the three words. world's three mysteries problem that it has so long fascinated Dr. Penrose. And to talk to Bill Craig, it's interesting to hear that he thought Penrose was pretty open-minded to exploring that path. So we'll see. It's just, it's so fascinating because we're living in really exciting times that we're able to see these things and talk about these things. I mean, Einstein 100 years ago

was just sort of sniffing at this mystery. And years and years later, you have a lot of, you have somebody like Roger Penrose really looking at it and saying it doesn't add up. It doesn't add up. Right, right, right. I don't know what to do with this. Yeah, Einstein repeatedly in newspaper interviews and essays and so on and so forth, he repeatedly used the word miracle. He said we should not expect to have a comprehensible universe.

And so that should tell us something. A comprehensible universe. I mean, even like, again, I'm saying it, all of us. have grown up with a comprehensible universe. So we can't even imagine the concept of the comprehensibility of the universe. We have to step outside and, you know, it takes a great mind like an Einstein or Penrose to think about the comprehensibility of the universe. It's not so easy, but it's important.

I want to get before we go, because we don't have a lot of time, but Chapter 6 is called a death knell for design arguments, natural theology, and Darwin's response. Can you talk about that? Because that's just, I love this. Sure. So the whole natural theology movement, for those that don't know what natural theology is, it's this idea that we can use our God-given reason because we're made in the image of God to look at nature and discern an intelligent mind behind all of creation. And natural theology really started enjoying a heyday in the late 18th and early 19th century. Listeners may be familiar with the name at Paisal. William Paley, who was very famous for his clockmaker argument. And we don't have time to go into that.

But the idea being that when we come across a contrivance, a human-made contrivance, we see parts that are put together in a harmonious way in order to serve a functional purpose. And so Paley used the pocket watch as an analogy to point to the complexities that we see in the world around us and how these things seem to be engineered for their specific purposes. Well, this was huge, and his book went into reprint after reprint after reprint. We had this big heyday of natural theology, and then boom, 1859, Charles Darwin publishes his famous book on the origin of species. And the narrative now tends to be, well, when Darwin's work came along, it destroyed the project of natural theology, and Paley looked like a dunce. but that turns out to not be the real story.

Even great supporters of Darwin, scientific supporters of Darwin, like the American Aisa Gray, who thought evolution by natural selection was a theory that was on the right track, still said it was absurd to think that this in any way undermined design argumentation. They said, if anything, it makes design argumentation stronger because now we not only have an artificer that can create these complex things designed for great purposes, but he can create mechanisms that design things that are contrived for a great purpose. Asa Gray said that. That's pretty impressive.

That is actually, first of all, I haven't heard the word artificer recently. But what a concept. That is an extraordinary concept. Science and the Mind of the Maker is the book. Melissa Kane-Travis, you are at Houston Baptist University, and do you teach apologetics? What courses do you teach there before we go here? Well, I do need to offer a correction. Until recently, I was at Houston Baptist University.

I am now teaching at the new Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University. Uh-huh. Yes, and I teach science and faith courses to graduate students as well as undergraduate students. And is there a website where people can find you? Oh, sure. They can go to Melissa canhtravis.com. That's my personal website. And they can also find me through the Society for Women of Letters.com.

Okay. And Melissa canetravis.com. So before we go, I just realized you wanted to correct something, and we actually have a second here. So say what you were, did you, go ahead. Say. Oh, sure. I misspoke earlier when you were asking me about the size of the known universe, and I said trillions and trillions of light years. It's actually 93 billion light years.

When you said that, I was patting myself on the back for thinking, I think she might have just misspoken. And I was right. Because, yes, a light year is pretty big. So you said that the observable universe is billions of light years across, not trillions of light years. Well, isn't it wonderful that we had the time to correct that? very, very important. Okay, all right. Well, I'll say it again. Thank you. The book is science and the mind of the maker with the conversation between faith and science reveals about God. And if you want to find Melissa Cane Travis, all you have to do is spell melissacane Travis.com. Melissa Cane Travis, thanks again. Many of you know the last couple of years we've worked with CSI. CSI is Christian Solidarity International. When you hear what they do, if you don't already know, you're going to want to help. There are people in other of the world whose lives are being threatened. Their very lives are being threatened for believing

in Jesus. They could be enslaved. The kind of things that you think ought not to be happening anymore. So some of them are being enslaved for their faith. You can buy a believer's freedom. You can give, you can contribute toward it, or you can give a whole $250 and free somebody from slavery. Go to metaxis talk.com, please. You'll see the Christian Solidarity banner. Here's a phone number 888-253-3522. 888-253-3522. 888-253-352-2. Or just go to metaxistalk.com.

Thank you. Folks, we have kind of a crazy announcement. Albin, hit it. Yes, yes. If my dad would have lived, he would have been 100 years old today. So he passed away at the age of 78. It's if he could have lived 22 more years. But God bless you, Dad.

You were the best. You really were. This is just a good opportunity to say, we believe if you're a Christian that Jesus defeated death on the cross. So when you die, you don't die. So it's an amazing thing. I love the fact that there are people listening to this thinking, I'm not sure if I believe that. Well, folks, it is true, but you have to put your faith in Jesus. That's the catch.

Wow, this is heavy stuff. Anyway, Albin, it's just, it's moving to me to think my dad is 94 for you to say that. It's moving. God bless you, your family. I want to say. And God bless your dad, he'll make it the 100. Oh, man. Can you imagine?

He went to the emergency room because he took monoclonal antibodies. I don't think I said this on the air. And those, by doing everything. they say you're supposed to. He was fine. He and my mother were fine. They didn't get hit very hard with COVID. But my dad, they thought, oh, we'll give you the monoclonal antibodies, blah, blah, blah, blah, so he did it because of that, he went to the emergency room. And it was actually very short lived. It was not, I mean, it kind of went away quickly. But it was like that this was the big scare because of a side effect from what the doctors tell you you're supposed to do.

It's so bizarre. Can we move to something really positive? I dare you, Eric. Okay, here's what it is. First of all, I got to tell you. Yesterday we had Peter Wood on the program. Ladies and gentlemen, we're getting that video up. We're going to put it on Frankspeech.com. The dude is killer.

Do not miss Peter Wood. Do not miss. Today, we're talking archaeology, biblical archaeology, with Steve Knottley. Huge headlines. This is right out of my book, is atheism dead, except I don't write about this in my book. So if you want to know about the really, really, really new headline,

you've got to listen to today's program. And also then I flip over and we talk about faith and science, which I also talk about in my book is atheism dead with Melissa Kane-Travs. Very exciting day. We have to tell you, we're getting emails every day from the folks at CSI, like really concerned that for some reason this year, we haven't raised nearly as much money as we were raising at this time last year. So we want to reiterate to you if you're inclined to give.

And I say this from the bottom of my heart, folks, this is giving to God's work. You are freeing people literally enslaved today while we are doing this program. Your money given to CSI through this program can help these people. Go to our website metaxis talk.com. Give what you can. I don't know what else we can give you. Albin, I got a boxing glove here. This is an Everlast boxing glove.

I will sign this glove to you or to a loved one. If anybody gives $2,500 and you prefer this to the Trump hat, I'll sign this with the Trump pen. This is an Everlast Boxing glove. I don't need this. It's a brand new Everlast Boxing glove. Who am I going to hit? I've hit all the people that I'm going to hit this past year.

Yeah. And I'll get a new glove next year. Yeah. And let me mention that if you give any amount, Now, $250 will free an actual human being who's in slavery. But if you give any amount, we have three grand prize winners again this year, which we will draw in early January once this conference. You know what you're right?

We haven't mentioned that. That is on me. Folks, we should have mentioned this every single day. No matter what you give. Okay, $250 frees a slave. We've told you all about that. It doesn't matter what, if you give $25, $20, $50, $100, you're entered in a grand prize drawing. the three winners, folks, you get a raft of books signed by me, by Albin, by whoever you want, by everything, by Mike Lindel.

Like, whatever you want, those are the grand prize winners. So seriously, they really said, Eric, your show is really behind. I said, I don't know what to do. I'm just going to tell my audience, please go to Metaxistalks.com and give, doesn't matter what you give, folks. We are just honored to be doing this work with CSI. God bless you.