The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 214 | Christian Scientist DESTROYS Darwin, Provides PROOF of God | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: March 23, 2024

Astrophysicist Hugh Ross came to his Christian faith in a unique way — through the Big Bang. In this episode of "The Glenn Beck Podcast," Glenn and Hugh discuss the creation of the world, from the... dinosaurs to what Darwin got wrong in his theory of evolution. As it turns out, “birdbrain” is actually a compliment, but there's still no creature as exceptional as the human being. AI isn't smart enough to pass ninth-grade math, and Hugh argues that even the advent of quantum computing will never make the Homo sapiens obsolete. Mankind's impact is so expansive that it even reaches the dark side of the moon, where, according to Hugh, NASA has the possibility of conducting research that could resolve the debate about the origin of human life once and for all. After a discussion about the scientific method, fossils, and bringing back the woolly mammoth, the conversation goes interstellar, as Hugh and Glenn talk about aliens and that one time Hugh told Carl Sagan that the Bible was the “Encyclopedia Galactica” he was looking for.     Sponsors:  Lear Capital: With over $3 billion in trusted transactions, thousands of five-star reviews, and a 24-hour risk-free purchase guarantee, Lear Capital is the precious metals leader you can trust. Call today for your free wealth protection guide and a $250 credit toward your first purchase at 800-957-GOLD.    Byrna: Not every emergency situation calls for lethal force. Sometimes, non-lethal is the right answer. That’s where the Byrna Launcher comes in. Visit https://byrna.com/glenn for an exclusive 10% discount. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 It's something else here now. Something new. From. Exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls Scary as Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi Vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules.
Starting point is 00:00:19 Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. And now, a Blaze Media podcast. Let me paint you a picture. You're alone. It's a night, clear sky, wide open field. You look up.
Starting point is 00:00:44 You see all of the stars. What are you thinking about? Staring into space has a way of reminding all of us just how little we know about the universe and how small we each are. It makes us ask questions like, Where are we? What is our purpose? This planet is so amazing, just floating in space.
Starting point is 00:01:13 How did this all happen? Now, imagine you're an astrophysicist, and starry nights are your business. Don't you think all of that time looking at the cosmos may just make you ask a question? question or two about how we all ended up on this big rock. Today, my guest is an astrophysicist who has spent his whole life looking at the sky. Not so surprising, that's where he found God, looking right back down on him.
Starting point is 00:01:50 Since then, he's been on a mission to rebuild the bridge between faith and reason, faith and science. We're together to gate today because of a potentially, explosive topic. I just want to find out how the Earth was created. No big deal. Welcome astrophysicist
Starting point is 00:02:12 Dr. Hugh Ross. 60% of the Vance on Amazon come to vendor independent like sack magic. Hello, here Camille, of Sac Magic. Our compresses, chode, fraud, are fabriced here even,
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Starting point is 00:02:42 website before we get to Hugh let me tell you about Burna
Starting point is 00:02:49 the founders of this country understood that freedom is never more than a
Starting point is 00:02:52 moment away from vanishing from an unarmed population that's why they
Starting point is 00:02:58 crafted the Second Amendment you know we hired police to protect us
Starting point is 00:03:04 because we were busy. We have our rights to protect and defend ourselves, and we loan that to the police. But we are the first responder. And I believe in freedom. I believe in responsibility. I'm sure you do too. But not every emergency situation calls for lethal force. Sometimes non-lethal is the right answer. That's why there's the burner launcher. I have it. It's a great compliment to my firearms. My wife carries one. My kids over 18. all have one, carry it with them. Burna is the best alternative to deadly force.
Starting point is 00:03:40 It fires powerful deterrence like tear gas and kinetic rounds. Government agencies, police all over the country are starting to use Burna as their go-to-less-than-lethal option. Sometimes you have to choose between life and death, but that is in every situation. Once that bullet leaves your gun, you can't take it back, but with Burna, your safety comes at a much lower price. in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Visit Burnah right now. B-Y-R-N-A dot com slash glen. Get a 10% discount. Welcome, Dr. Ross. How are you? Doing well, thank you. May I call you Hugh? Oh, yeah, definitely. So I'm fascinated by you because you found God through science. Yes. Explain. Well, I was one of these nerdy kids. When I was seven years of age, our school teacher took us to
Starting point is 00:04:48 at Vancouver Public Library. I wound up getting a card. I brought home five books on physics and astronomy that day. Wow. And every weekend, that's what I would do. I would go to the library and get another five books. So, and every year I would study a different sub-discipline of astronomy. So one year was stellar atmospheres, another one was stellar interiors, galaxy formation.
Starting point is 00:05:10 At age 16, I devoted that year to studying cosmology, the science of the origin and history of the universe. and that's when there is a major debate. Is it an oscillating universe or reincarnating universe, hesitating universe, or Big Bang? But I could see that the observations are heavily favoring the Big Bang. So hang on just a secke. That is Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan as well.
Starting point is 00:05:37 Then they, weren't they cosmologists? They were theoretical cosmologists. Okay. What's the difference between theoretical and what you were doing? What I was doing was actually doing the observations of the distant universe that the theoreticians had used to develop their models. Okay, okay. And I did a little bit of theory work myself.
Starting point is 00:05:55 Okay. So when you started studying this, what happened? Well, when I realized that the evidence was heavily favoring the Big Bang, I said that means the universe has a beginning. If the universe has a beginning, there must be a cosmic beginner. I want to find that cosmic beginner. I had no idea where to look. I mean, I wasn't raised in a Christian home. There weren't Christians in our neighborhood.
Starting point is 00:06:19 They're hard to find in Canada. Yeah. I tell you, my father, when I asked my dad, I was young, Dan, I want to talk about God with you. And he said, okay, but first thing we have to do is get rid of the word God because it means too many things, has too many traps around it. I can talk about God and you'll have a different view than me. So let's agree on terms.
Starting point is 00:06:42 he said, I think we should call him first cause. Well, that's what's interesting. I spoke at a government lab, and the director says, look, this is the U.S. government. He can't use the word God here. And I said, I don't see that in the Constitution. Yeah. But I said, how about this?
Starting point is 00:07:00 How about if I talk about the causal agent beyond space and time? Correct. That created the universe and designed it for human beings. Right. He says, yeah, you can do that. Well, but it's true because his first question was, Do you believe in the Big Bang? And I said, I think so.
Starting point is 00:07:16 And he said, does that disagree with God or help prove God? And I said, I don't know. I mean, I was a teenager. I'm not sure. And he said, what was it before? And what lit the match? Yes. And so I started looking in the great philosophers,
Starting point is 00:07:40 Emmanuel Kant's critique of pure reason. I left to René de Karte, discovered that they didn't have the correct concepts of the universe or space and time. And I went to a high school that was filled with refugees from all over the world. And so they were saying, hey, you need to read these books, Hindu Vedas, the Quran, the Buddhist commentaries.
Starting point is 00:08:00 So I began to go through them. And when I read the Vedas says, oh, this is where the oscillating universe model comes from. You know, Hinduism is based on reincarnation that the universe reincarnates. but I knew that their time scale was incorrect. They said you get a new birth every 4.32 billion years, and that number of clarity was wrong.
Starting point is 00:08:20 I also realized the universe had way too high of an interview measure to allow for any kind of restart. And the Buddhist said essentially the same thing. When I looked at the Quran, I said there's three accounts of creation, but they contradict one another, one of them claiming that the planets are more distant than the stars. you don't need a telescope or realize that's incorrect.
Starting point is 00:08:43 Now, I didn't meet Christians or get to know them until I showed up at Caltech to do post-altral research, but I did see two Christians from 30 feet away when I was 11 years old. These were two businessmen
Starting point is 00:08:56 that came into our public school and made available Gideon Bibles. This is the Gideon Bible that I started reading at age 17. So the cover's gone because our dog chewed it off. but I started reading that Gideon Bible at age 17 and that was also the same time that physicists in South Africa and Britain
Starting point is 00:09:19 were developing the first of the space-time theorems which basically proved that space and time have a beginning space and time are created and what I notice about the Bible is that it stood alone in making the claim that space and time are created entities what I saw in the Eastern religions, space and time are eternal, and God are God's creet within space and time that always exists. So seeing that the Bible said something different that was being affirmed by the space-time theorems, said, maybe this book really is from the one who created the universe.
Starting point is 00:09:54 So can you take me through Genesis and the creation and show me the science? Well, I was taught the scientific method in grade one, grade two, grade two, grade. we got it all 12 years. And so, and I picked up this book, the Bible, and looked at the first page, Genesis 1. I said, this perfectly follows the scientific method. It took me nine years to discover why it's so perfectly followed the scientific method.
Starting point is 00:10:22 That's where it comes from. It comes from the creation texts in the Bible and Reformation theology. But I looked at Genesis 1, 2. The Spirit of God is hovering over the surface of the water is. planet Earth. And it gives you four initial conditions. As dark everywhere on the surface, the water is everywhere, and the planet Earth is unfit for life and empty of life.
Starting point is 00:10:48 Well, steps one and two, the scientific method are, do not interpret until you establish the frame of reference. The point of view is the surface of Earth's waters. And don't interpret to also establish the starting conditions. Well, it's all laid out in Genesis 1, too. I keep running into scientists who say, Genesis teaches scientific nonsense. I say, well, Galileo said, the biggest mistake you can make in Bible interpretation is to get the wrong point of view.
Starting point is 00:11:18 And when they say it's scientific nonsense, they think God is above the earth, looking down on the earth and telling us what he did. Instead, it's God on the surface of the earth, looking up at the clouds and telling us what he did. Makes a huge difference in how you interpret the six days of creation. And so, but, you know, nobody was helping me on this.
Starting point is 00:11:41 I just saw this in the text and said, okay. At 18. 17. 17. Yeah. So I said, okay. Creation day one, let there be light. And I said, well, that's when the atmosphere goes from opaque to translucent.
Starting point is 00:11:57 I knew enough about astronomy to realize Earth had to begin with an atmosphere 200 times thicker than it has today. An atmosphere that thick will not let any visible light through. The sun and stars existed, but there was no light on the surface of the waters of planet Earth. Day one is when the atmosphere was thinned out sufficiently that light could come through. And it says the Spirit of God was brooding over the surface of the waters. That implies the origin of life. So I saw life being originated at the beginning of creation day one. and then you go into Creation Day 2,
Starting point is 00:12:34 water above and water below. I really didn't have an idea what that meant, but when I got to the book of Job, it devotes one and a half chapters to Creation Day 2 and basically describes it as God's cycling water in the atmosphere above to the streams and lakes and oceans below and then back again. Oh my gosh.
Starting point is 00:12:56 And actually describes six distinct forms of precipitation in Job 3.3. 37 and 38. It mentions, for example, that there will be dew and mist and rain, and then snow and frost and hail. And again, I had enough science under my belt to realize that's the only way you can have billions of people living on the surface of the earth.
Starting point is 00:13:21 Because the Earth's water cycle is designed to ensure, no matter where you are, there's both frozen forms of precipitation and liquid forms so we can have rivers and structures. that full all year's round, and we have abundant food that can be growing everywhere. You need all six to make that possible. Then you get into creation day three, and this is when land masses show up for the first time, when God transforms the earth from a water world to one with continents and oceans.
Starting point is 00:13:53 And at 19, I got to take a course on plate tectonics. As far as I know, it was the first course in the world that was taught. on plate tectonics at a university. That's because two of the three physicists who launched the discipline were at the University of British Columbia. Somehow I managed to get into that class as an undergraduate, and that's when they said,
Starting point is 00:14:16 oh, the continents haven't always been here. It's plate tectonics that builds up the continents. And they thought it was a linear relationship from zero to where it is today. Today, we know that it takes deep oxygen cycle events to really accelerate the growth of the condo land masses.
Starting point is 00:14:35 And so in 2018, they basically showed, yeah, for about the first billion years, you've got nothing but water, and then plate tectonics kicks in. But at the first great oxygenation event, two and a billion years ago, about 90% of the continental landmass forms. Wow.
Starting point is 00:14:54 And so basically it shows that the more we learn about the past history of the earth, the tighter and tighter fit, we give with what the Bible taught about these land masses thousands of years ago. And then it talks about vegetation on the land masses. And I've debated the executive director of the Skeptic Society four times in university campuses.
Starting point is 00:15:17 He always jumped on Genesis, no matter what we were talking about. Because he saw that as the Achilles heel of the Christian faith. So he would always say, well, the fossil record shows us, got animals before we got vegetation on the continents. I said, well, obviously, animals have skeletons and shelves. That's going to be easily preserved.
Starting point is 00:15:40 That's not the case for vegetation. It's going to decay. But what happened in 2009 and 2011, two papers were published in nature saying, we now have the isotope evidence. And in 2011, the fossil evidence, that vegetation was abundant on the continental land masses, 600 million years before the first animals show up.
Starting point is 00:16:02 So again, it shows, hey, as we learn more, it basically gives you a tighter and tighter fit. What would they have eaten if there was no vegetation, if there was no... Well, I think Michael Sherman was saying, yeah, there would have been vegetation in the oceans, but the biblical text is vegetation on the land masses. He said, we have no fossil evidence of that.
Starting point is 00:16:22 Well, we didn't during my first debate, but we do now. We do have that evidence. And then creation day four is when creatures on the surface of the earth for the first time can see the sun, moon, and stars. And we now know the second great oxygenation event turned Earth's atmosphere from a dense haze to transparent. It's oxygen that determines how transparent the atmosphere is. And so experiment was done where they took the atmosphere of the earth, started with less than 1% oxygen and pushed it up. While the second great oxygenation event, the oxygen level suddenly goes from 2% to 8% for the first time in Earth's history.
Starting point is 00:17:05 That's enough to make the atmosphere transparent. Unbelievable. That's exactly the same time that the first animals appear. Animals can't function if they don't know where the sun, moon, and stars are in the sky. They need a transparent sky. But we see in the fossil record, the very moment oxygen hit that minimum level for animals, animals suddenly appear. You go from nothing but microbial life
Starting point is 00:17:30 to animals as big as two meters across. And then in creation day five, you also have God creating the sea mammals and the birds. Only the second time it uses the word create. The word create in Hebrew, Baraz for something brand new at God's hand. And it was brand new as animals that are not just physical but soulish
Starting point is 00:17:52 and that they have mind, will and emotions, a capacity to form your relationships with one another, their offspring, they sacrifice for the offspring. They also endow the capacity to form relationships with a higher species, namely us human beings, and to serve and please us. Then you get into creation day six. It doesn't talk about the first land mammals. It talks about the three categories of land mammals that are essential for launching human civilization. And Job 38 and 3.3.3 and 3.5. 39 goes into that in great detail. And so short-legged land mammals,
Starting point is 00:18:29 the rodents that we need for the clothing that humans were critically dependent upon when they first appeared. Because we humans, unlike the Neanderthals, are not adapted for a cold climate. We're fine in a warm climate, but not a cold climate. The rodents enabled us to go into cold climate zones.
Starting point is 00:18:47 And two different kinds of long-legged land mammals, those that are easy to tame, the herbivores we use for agriculture, culture, those that are difficult to tame, the carnivores that we use for household companions. And last of all, God creates human beings, and only the third time does it use the word create. Because what's brand new about us, we're not just physical and solish, we're spiritual. As these birds and mammals were designed to relate to a higher species, we are designed to relate to a higher being, the one that created everything.
Starting point is 00:19:19 first of all, that's the best explanation of Genesis I've ever heard. I love that. Let me go back. Where would the dinosaurs come in? Well, the Bible is written for all generations, so it avoids vocabulary that only modern generations would understand. So it doesn't mention dinosaurs because they weren't discovered until the 1850s. It doesn't mention protons or neutrinos either. But, yeah, it doesn't mean that they didn't exist. They would have fit in in the middle of Creation Day 5, and where you see them implied as Psalm 104,
Starting point is 00:19:55 the longest of the creation Psalms. And Psalm 104's theme is that God is packing our planet with as much life as possible and as diverse as possible. And so when our planet has conditions suitable for dinosaurs, he creates the dinosaurs. They're not suitable now, because we don't have shallow seas to provide the water buoyancy that these huge creatures need.
Starting point is 00:20:20 But when the cond of the land masses were filled with vast, shallow seas, there you got the water buoyancy to make possible animals as big as T-Rex and Brontosaurus. I mean, I laughed at the Jurassic Park movies because it shows this T-Rex on land chasing a Jeep at 45 miles an hour.
Starting point is 00:20:41 It wouldn't have happened. The T-Rex would have injured itself. One little trip and it's gone. It has no hands to do this. Well, the biggest land animal you can have without water support is an elephant. Anything bigger than an elephant is going to injure itself because of the law of gravity. It's the same law you see in the NBA. The really tall basketball players, when they trip and fall,
Starting point is 00:21:07 they do themselves a lot more injury than someone is only five feet tall. Gravity always wins. I've never seen that even pretty. betrayed with dinosaurs, that they're always around water? Well, the ones that are waiting 80 tons, they need water buoyancy to support that huge body mass. T-Rex was probably, I mean, it was long-legged. T-Rex was probably swimming around in shallow seas and preying on, you know, huge herbivores. Wow.
Starting point is 00:21:36 With those giant jaws, it wasn't eating small creatures like lawyers. Right. It was eating something bigger than a lawyer. So the other thing, and I just, I want to say this because there's a lot of people that have different views of creation and everything else. Sure. I personally don't think how God created the universe is essential to my salvation. So, and I don't know, you don't know, but we're. That's who creates that's essential.
Starting point is 00:22:04 Yes, right. So when and how, that's less important. Because I have some friends who claim, no, the earth is all. only, you know, five or 10,000 years old. And you're like, dude, that doesn't, I mean, no, why couldn't God's creation happen? I don't want to say in an evolution. Well, you say it's a progressive creationism, right? Well, I claim that God performs creation miracles.
Starting point is 00:22:34 It uses the word barah and a saw in the Hebrew. That means that God is supernaturally intervening. Sometimes it uses the word ha, yah, which means that it could be through. natural process. So it's not either or it's both and. Right. Right. So, but it is over a significant passage of time. In fact, just reading the Bible on my own at age 17, I immediately recognize these days have to be long time periods. Sure. For the simple reason that you see the word day being used with three different definitions. Creation day one, it uses the word day for the daylight hours. Creation day four is contrasting seasons, days, and years. That's day as 24 hours,
Starting point is 00:23:16 but Genesis 2-4 uses the same word day for the entirety of creation history. The other thing I noted is that the first six days end with an evening morning phrase. Evening was, morning was day X, which told me each day has a definite start time and a definite end time. You get to day seven, there's no evening morning phrase, implying we're still in God's seventh day. And both Psalm 95 and Hebrews 4 explicitly declare were still in God's seventh day. And for me, at age 17,
Starting point is 00:23:52 it answered the fossil record in enigma. For some reason, my parents thought I was being obsessive about physics and astronomy. I didn't know why, but they were worried. Did you kiss a lot of girls at all? No. No, what a surprise. I mean, I was saving up pop bottles and cash him in to build a telescope.
Starting point is 00:24:13 That's amazing. I began doing research on T. Tari Stars, wound up entering the B.C. Science Fair and winning the fair. So I was a real nerd growing up. I really enjoyed my astronomical research. But my family was worried that I was being too narrowly focused. When I was 11, my parents bought us a big, thick book on heavily. evolutionary biology. I was the only one in the family that read it. But I remember telling my parents that numbers don't work.
Starting point is 00:24:42 You have all these new families and orders and classes and phyla showing up before humanity, and none of that happens after humanity. They said, go ask your science teachers. They had no clue. They told me to talk to the professors I knew. And I didn't get an answer for them either. But the first time I picked up the Bible, read Genesis 1,
Starting point is 00:25:03 said, this answers the false. record enigma. For six days God creates, on the seventh day, he ceases from his work of creation to focus on his work of redemption. And I also realize that's the principle of the Sabbath. For six days we work, on the seventh day, we focus on the most important issues of life. And as I read through the creation text, I was surprised to discover, God begins his works of redemption before he creates anything at all, which implies everything that God creates, is for the purpose of redemption, and it made sense of this seventh day
Starting point is 00:25:39 when God stops creating and redeems. It also explained to me why so many astronomers believe in God and so few field biologists believe in God. Their research is on different days of creation. In astronomy, our data comes from the past because it takes light time to reach our telescopes. The field biologists are doing their research in the present era. So the field biologists say,
Starting point is 00:26:05 we see no evidence for the miraculous handiwork of God. Well, they're looking on the wrong day. Day seven, God stops at. But before humanity, he got the six days when God is... Where do you say he tips his hand that he is worried about salvation or redemption before he creates? Well, you've got passages like 2 Timothy 1-9. The grace of God that we now experience was put into effect before the,
Starting point is 00:26:33 the beginning of time, or Titus 1-2. The hope that we share in Jesus Christ was granted to us before the beginning of time. Then you get Hebrews 113, the universe that we can detect did not come from that which we can detect. We can detect matter, energy, space, and time. So, and that's unique to the Bible.
Starting point is 00:26:55 You won't find that in the other holy books. So I says, this book gets all the cosmology right. I mean, what astounded me, and going through the creation text, not only talks about a space-time beginning, it talks about how the universe expands from that space-time beginning, the stretching out of the heavens, how it happens under laws of physics that never change.
Starting point is 00:27:17 And Ecclesiastes and Romans speak about one of those laws as a pervasive law decay. And hey, if you know high school physics, that implies that the universe gets colder and colder in a highly predictable way. and astronomers have actually got measurements of the past temperature of the universe, and they perfectly fit what the Bible predicted thousands of years ago. Unbelievable.
Starting point is 00:27:41 Yeah, so it gets all the science right. It predicts future science. Can you help me out with something? Because I've said this, and I don't do what you do, so probably very in eloquently. But I've said this to people who believe in evolution. Everything in our world decay. Yes. It becomes more chaotic. Right. Nothing in our world starts as chaos and ends up like this.
Starting point is 00:28:09 There's no example, is there? Well, my colleague Fazal Rana, who's our staffed biochemist and I, we regularly attend Origin of Life Research conferences. And it's interesting. Each successive meeting is more depressing than the previous meeting because they keep running into these intractable roadblocks. However, I think what, you know, motivates a, they do these experiments in the lab and say, hey, we're able to put some amino acids together
Starting point is 00:28:36 and get a short, you know, sequence of amino acids. Maybe we're on the way to making a real protein or they're able to come up with some way to make RNA. The problem is it takes a highly skilled team of biochemists well-funded with real technical equipment where they make sure we're going to ensure that there is no contaminant chemicals that would degrade the reaction.
Starting point is 00:29:02 So they're using pure samples. And there's one... That would imply there's a creator. It implies you need something smarter, more intelligent, more knowledgeable, and better funded than those biochemists to do it in the first place. But they think they're making progress.
Starting point is 00:29:20 And I say, yes, what you're doing in the lab is remarkable. But notice, it's only the baby steps. You can't solve the fundamental problems. Like, how do you get all? all the amino acids left-handed. How do you get all the ribo sugars right-handed? That's an easy thing, that there's no naturalistic process that does that.
Starting point is 00:29:39 And so, and if you go to these conferences, they admit that their naturalistic explanations don't work. None of them work. Well, that would imply that there's someone, again, more intelligent than us that did it in the first place. And then you look at the fossil record. I mean, evolutionists will claim, well, how it all works?
Starting point is 00:30:00 you've got natural selection, mutations, gene exchange, and epigenetics. And that's going to cause species to differentiate and produce more species if you wait long enough. If you wait longer, you might get a new genus. If you wait longer, the new genera might produce a new family, and on all the way up to the phylum. The problem is, when you look at things like the Avalon and Cambron explosions of life, or the mass speciation events, it's the opposite. the phylus show up first, the species show up last. It's the exact opposite of what you expect from a naturalistic perspective.
Starting point is 00:30:37 And the leading paleontologists, who are agnostics or atheists, can see that in their papers. They can see that they're seeing the opposite of what their models would predict. First of all, talk about the Cambrian explosion for anybody who doesn't know what that is. Well, it's an event where the oxygen level suddenly jumped from 8%. to 10%. What would cause that in nature? Again, the deep oxygen cycle, something called the Great Unconformity,
Starting point is 00:31:09 which is basically an event where you've got huge landslides coming off the continental land masses being deposit in the oceans. It forms a continental shelves, which is an ideal environment, shallow continental shelves for sea life. And so the Avalon explosion
Starting point is 00:31:26 is where you got 8% oxygen. Not enough. for a circulatory system or digestive track, but enough for filter feeders. But when it hits 10%, and again, you get another geological event that suddenly jumps up to 10%, now you've got enough oxygen
Starting point is 00:31:42 that you can have digestive tracts, you can have a brain, you can have a heart, you can have various kinds of organs, hearing, eyesight, all that's possible, but it all shows up immediately and simultaneously. So you get about 50 phyla. a phylum is a basic body plan. So, for example, we humans are part of the chordate phylum,
Starting point is 00:32:04 which means we have a long neural cord. It includes all the vertebrates, and a lot of the invertebrates are in that phylam. And I remember when I was first reading this in my teenage years, they were saying, well, the chordates show up at the end of the Canberraint event. We now know that they're at the beginning of the Camberrae event. Even the vertebrates show up at the beginning of the Camberon event. 50 phyla showing up simultaneously and immediately when the oxygen permits them to exist.
Starting point is 00:32:34 And when you say simultaneously and immediately, how many years is that over? Well, that's been a problem trying to measure that precision. Two years ago, they were saying within a five million year window because that's what the air bars are, now the air bars are down to 410,000 years. So we know what happens in less than 410,000 years. Wow. So that would, and it goes kind of for and against evolution, right? Because some animals do kind of evolve, right?
Starting point is 00:33:09 Well, for example, we humans are significantly taller than we were 2,000 years ago. Right. What's our appendix for? Well, the appendix does serve a useful purpose. There are no useless organs in the human body. Okay. The problem was they thought the appendix, is part of the digestive tract.
Starting point is 00:33:27 It's part of the immune system. So we now know it serves a purpose. They used to think the tonsils and adenoids are useless organs. We know they serve a useful purpose. We're looking in the wrong area for the purpose. So the human body is marvelously designed. In fact, I just participated in a book
Starting point is 00:33:48 with about a dozen medical researchers who are just, the book's going to come out soon, basically talking about how human body is a most amazingly designed animal we see on the face of the planet. I sat and it was just, my father just passed away and I sat in the hospital room. And he was hooked to a, oh, what do you call it when you have the kidney failure and dialysis? He was hooked to this amazing machine that slowly over 24 hours, clean, all the blood.
Starting point is 00:34:26 Yeah. It was remarkable, but it was almost the size of a, like a small refrigerator. Yeah. And I sat there and I looked at that and I thought, that's the best we can do for an organ that doesn't have any wires or any. We don't even know. It's only the size of a human fist. And it's a size of a fist.
Starting point is 00:34:48 How do you, I mean, how do people dismiss the miraculous machine? that we are. That we can't even get close. We don't even understand it yet. Well, for example, we humans have about four times as many heartbeats in our lifespan as any other mammal. I mean, turtles are longer than us, but they don't do much. We get to have high activity for seven, eight, nine decades. I mean, we're unique amongst the life forms.
Starting point is 00:35:18 Our brain is as big as it can possibly be. Make the human brain any bigger that would cook itself to death. and so, I mean, nothing in the animal world matches the capability of the human brain. Okay, so tell me the, because I believe Lucy exists. Sure. You know, I believe in Neanderthal man, but I don't think they're connected. We've never come up with a link. We've never, doesn't mean that we won't someday, but I don't think, if I believe in God, God created everything.
Starting point is 00:35:53 books we've written as Who is Adam, where we basically meet the point, yes, there are, but a dozen species of bipedal primates have preceded human beings. But we see no evidence that they are revolving towards us because what we notice is the brain size goes up and down as you go over the fast six million years. The bipedal capability goes up and down. We don't see a linear progression. And the human brain structure is different. We have a much higher density of neurons. It is true.
Starting point is 00:36:21 our brain is about the same weight as a Neanderthal brain, but the Neanderthal had to manage a much larger body. So we have a higher encephalization ratio. We also have a much higher density of neurons, and then the way the brain is structured is different. The Neanderthal brain is basically like a cylinder. Ours is like a basketball, it's globular, and we have a huge parietal lobe.
Starting point is 00:36:47 That's a lobe that allows us to have this show, and allows us to do mathematics, philosophy, theology, you know, symbolic capability. You know, we alone invent symbols and use symbols that do amazing things. No other animal does that. At best they make some claw marks on a tree maybe
Starting point is 00:37:06 or a piece of rock, but we actually invent symbols. I mean, in mathematics, we keep inventing symbols to help us do our calculations. Alphabets. I mean, that's what's unique about human beings. That is our anatomy that makes it possible.
Starting point is 00:37:22 In fact, one of the talks I give is how God designed us all to be thinkaholics. We're all capable of thinking nonstop throughout our whole life. No other animal can do that. And Neanderthals couldn't do that. Only humans were capable of doing that. So let me play devil's advocate here and say, everybody says that dolphins are wildly intelligent animals. And they don't do the alphabet because they don't have hands.
Starting point is 00:37:47 Well, they are intelligent, but they're not the most intelligent non-human animal. Darwin claimed that the most intelligent non-human animal is a chimpanzee, because it looks the closest like us. And he also said to his colleagues, prove me wrong by doing field experiments. It took 150 years before any scientists actually did what Darwin recommended. Wow. But the paper that was published had an interesting title, Darwin's Mistake, because experiments show that the smartest non-human animals are Caledonian crows and ravens. They far outperform the intellectual capability of any of the apes.
Starting point is 00:38:28 I mean, chimpanzees can do a one-step tool use. These birds can do eight steps, and they do it without any training. You can go on YouTube and watch a video clip, so what these... They're Caledonian... Caledonian crows and ravens, incredibly smart animals. But we now notice is they have a brain structure that's similar to the human brain structure. And very different of what you see in chimpanzees and gorillas and orangutans. So when you call somebody a bird brain, you're actually giving them a compliment.
Starting point is 00:39:03 Let me go back to the Big Bang for a second. Sure. Because the Big Bang was originally something that was meant as an insult, right? Well, it was Fred Hoyle that coined the term Big Bang as a wave. after writing the Big Bang, he was promoting the steady state theory. He didn't like Big Bang cosmology. He didn't like the theology behind it. He was well aware that it had a biblical connection.
Starting point is 00:39:29 So he said, we got to get rid of this. So wait, say that again, because I don't think anybody knows that, that it had a biblical. Well, the very first time the Big Bang was proposed in the 1920s, You had people like Sir Arthur Eddington saying, this is philosophically repugnant. We have a beginning to the universe. I don't like that.
Starting point is 00:39:54 And so what you saw in the early part of the 20th century. It goes back to the first cause. It goes back to the first cause, and it talks about space and time having a beginning, just like the Bible teaches. And so because it spoke of this being beyond the universe, they said, we've got to get rid of this. But over the course of the 20th century,
Starting point is 00:40:14 the evidence just got stronger and stronger and stronger that the Big Bang model indeed describes the origin and history of the universe. So how was it taken as proof from the original people saying, I reject this scientist, I reject this because it's a God model to, no, I prove that. One thing they didn't like is that it made the universe too young. It made the universe only billions of years old. And the astronomers in the early part of the 20th century recognize of a,
Starting point is 00:40:44 it's only billions, we can't save Charles Darwin's theory. That theory needs a lot more time than just billions of years. In fact, in the early part of the 20th century, you had astronomers like Sir James Jean saying, the stars are able to burn for trillions of years. So the universe must be quadrillions of years old. Emma's quadrillions, maybe we can save Charles Darwin. But what happened in in 1956, his astronomers actually figured out how elements are fused inside stars. And that's when they realize, oh, it's only billions. It's not quadrillions. The universe is a lot younger than we thought.
Starting point is 00:41:22 And yes, that's bad news for evolutionary biology. But hey, that's what the universe tells us. And yet, there are now people who believe the Bible who say, I guess, that it's wrong that it's only five or however many thousand years old. I know a lot of young Earth creationists. I debate them frequently on podcasts like this. And I point out, notice how frequently the Bible says the laws of physics don't change. And every Young Earth Creationist model critically depends on altering the laws of physics
Starting point is 00:42:00 by factors of millions or billions of times at the fall of Adam and the flood of Noah. The Bible explicitly rules that out. Moreover, as an astronomer, every time I look at the spectrum of a star or a galaxy, I'm measuring the laws of physics. And from zero all the way out to 13.5 billion light years, we see no change in the laws of physics. Right. I mean, the Bible got it right. I'm sure you are, and I know this guy got a lot wrong, but ever heard of Velikovsky?
Starting point is 00:42:33 Oh yes. Okay. I met him personally, actually. Did you really? At the University of Toronto. I had this gigantic office because my research was highly voluminous. And he said, can I borrow your office for a day? So he used my office at the University of Toronto to do his stuff.
Starting point is 00:42:49 But I said, yeah. So I got to talk to him. But even before I met him, I knew what he was saying about the history of the solar system was provably incorrect. So, but his world's in collision. Right. I was so fascinated by, because he was the first scientist that said, that I know of, let's not throw the Bible out. Let's look for things that are natural that would explain what they were trying to document. Well, that's where I think he was on to something.
Starting point is 00:43:25 You got the parting of the Red Sea. You got Noah's flood. So he said, we should expect to find some evidence of this. but the evidence he was citing doesn't work. I mean, he was claiming, for example, that there was a comet that swung by the Earth and became Venus. Well, Venus is not a comet. And if that had happened, all life on planet Earth had been wiped out.
Starting point is 00:43:50 But is there anything to his theory, not his facts, but his theory? He is correct that there are statements in the Bible that need explanation. I guess what I'm really asking you is scientists should get along with God because he had to be the greatest mathematician ever and he created physics and everything is so tight and precise he set up a system where he wouldn't violate
Starting point is 00:44:23 physics he did it through whatever system Well something you see in Psalm 19 God gave us two reliable books, the book of nature and the book of scripture, which implies that two books will always agree. Right. And that's how we figure out where we misinterpreted things. If we see what looks like a disagreement between understanding the book of nature or the book of scripture, we know we've misinterpreted one or both. And the fact that we see the book of nature corroborating the book of scripture and the book of scripture corroborating the book of nature tells us,
Starting point is 00:45:02 is given us two faithful witnesses. That's the core of the organization I've found in Reasons to Believe, is basically showing how the two books do corroborate one another, and basically we use emerging discoveries in the book of nature to bring people to the book of scripture. So show me some of those examples. You showed creation. Well, I put out a blog called Today's New Reason to Believe,
Starting point is 00:45:26 and by the time I could write a dozen such articles every day just because of what's being published in the scientific literature. But basically I picked the highlights and say, look, the principle we see in Job and Psalms is demonstrable. The more we learn about nature, the more evidence will uncover
Starting point is 00:45:46 for the supernatural handiwork of God. And the fact that we can document that on a daily basis from the scientific literature. And so I tell skeptics on university campuses, if you're not persuaded today, wait one month. see how much stronger the evidence becomes. And as you see it mounting at that dramatic of a rate, perhaps you need to seriously consider what the Bible says you need to do about your life.
Starting point is 00:46:11 More with you in just a second. I mean, he's fascinating. And obviously, science is something that I love, but he understands it. And it's all math. And math is really all you need to understand a lot of things. You know, how the earth was created or how the government is destroying our dollar. It's all math. When you print money like it's going out of style to the tune of $1 trillion every 100 days,
Starting point is 00:46:44 that's what we're borrowing and printing right now. There comes a time when it all breaks down because the numbers are too big and nobody wants to loan you that money and now you have to pay it back. may I suggest that before it all goes to hell in a hand basket, you start saving and protect some of your hard-earned savings with an asset you can trust, and that's gold. Gold from Lear Financial. Lear Financial will help you. You can call them today and say, look, I just want some information on how to protect
Starting point is 00:47:24 my investment that I have. maybe I have a 401k or something. You just, you want to make sure that it's there. Lear Capital will help you. Call them now at 800-957 gold. 800-9-57 gold. Ask them for their booklet,
Starting point is 00:47:45 their guide on wealth protection. It's free. Get it now, Lear Capital. So what do you think of quantum mechanics? Oh, I love quantum mechanics. You can't have life without quantum mechanics. I mean, your body is filled with proteins that act like transistors. And what's interesting is the uncertainty in quantum mechanics must be fine-tuned for life to exist.
Starting point is 00:48:13 So make the uncertainty bigger, those proteins will fail to operate. Make it smaller, they will fail to operate. I mean, it was a big debate between Neil's Bohr and Albert Einstein. does God play with dice? Right. We now know that God does play with dice, but he carefully designs the dice to get exactly what he wants.
Starting point is 00:48:33 So uncertainty is a crucial factor, not just in quantum mechanics, but in statistical mechanics. You also need the uncertainty to get the brownian motion to work. Again, there's engines inside, molecules inside yourselves that operate in brownie in motion.
Starting point is 00:48:51 So the statistical uncertainty you get in thought, thermodynamics is crucial for life to exist. So tell me, and again, I am sorry, you're talking way down here, but the idea of like quantum computing is that it takes everything all at once, right? Takes all of the possibilities at once, which leads you to fiction of parallel universe and and everything else. Is any of that real? Well, the thing about quantum computing
Starting point is 00:49:28 is you have to deal with the quantum uncertainties that are involved. And so how they make quantum computing viable is you have tens of thousands of quantum computers all working in parallel, which reduces the uncertainty you get from the quantum effects.
Starting point is 00:49:45 So yeah, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, we have to take that into account. And our human brain basically is a huge parallel processor. And so, yeah, there's a goal. Can we make quantum computing able to launch the next advance and computer capability? Where we know we can make good progress is getting better storage. And so there's actually a serious effort.
Starting point is 00:50:11 DNA stores information at the smallest possible level within the laws of physics. And so they're actually saying maybe the next flash drive is going to be a bunch of DNA that stores information for us. So maybe we can get another factor of a thousand or a million times storage capability in small devices.
Starting point is 00:50:34 Quantum computing is going to be a little more challenging. What do you think about AI? I just gave a talk on AI last week at a University, Marshall University in West Virginia. basically making the point that AI can do things far more rapidly than we human beings but is totally dependent on the diet that we feed it.
Starting point is 00:50:56 It can't produce new databases. It can't reason. But, is it ever effective at going through huge databases and spitting out the answers we want quickly? However, if you ever use chat GVET, you need to guide it. If you let it loose on its own, it's like letting a toddler loose in a toy store.
Starting point is 00:51:17 Things will happen that you don't want to happen. But if you appropriately guide it, you can get really good results. I mean, it can write a 40-page review paper in 15 seconds. No humans capable of that. Chat Chief B can do that, but you really need to be careful what it's analyzing. And so I love what that chat chief BT does right now.
Starting point is 00:51:39 Do you like the answer I gave you? And if you say no, it'll take a different algorithm. Right. try to give you what you want. But it works even better if you say, narrow your search to hear. And what you need to do is help the AI system not to go off on tangents. So what do you think, though, that, I mean, the AI scientists and creators are now saying that, well, that's because it's young, it's like a child, and it will start to learn.
Starting point is 00:52:11 It will get better. Right. But it's always going to be dependent on the databases you feed it. It cannot produce brand new databases, and it can't reason. It can copy your reasoning steps. There's a much bigger AI system called Minerva, and all they feed it is math textbooks and math papers and examples of the solutions of math problems.
Starting point is 00:52:35 But here's how well it does in grade 9 algebra problems. It gets 50% correct. This system is three times bigger than chat cheap. Why? Well, because it can't reason. Now what they've done to try to see, chat GPT gets 26% on freshman algebra tests. Minerva, it does much better, 50%. The reason why it does much better, it's not distracted.
Starting point is 00:53:00 It's only analyzing mathematical databases. And basically it's being fed, hey, here's some sample algebra problems, here are all the reasoning steps. So it's basically copying these reasoning steps and integrating to see what typically works best on these problems. That's why it gets 50%. But you know, grade 9 algebra student gets 50%. That's a failure. Right. So. So have you ever read Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kerr as well? No, I haven't. Okay. Yeah. So you wouldn't agree. You wouldn't agree on a lot. I'm familiar with this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. So he wrote this back in the 90s, and it fascinated me because I think we are playing God.
Starting point is 00:53:50 I think we're God and we're playing God. And we have no idea what we're doing. Well, one of the problems with AI is you've got people thinking we can duplicate human consciousness. That's because they think human consciousness is purity physical. I got 50 books in my library written by people trying to, come up with the origin of human consciousness. What they all have in common is they end up by saying,
Starting point is 00:54:16 we don't have a clue. Right. So, it's because of looking in the wrong area, the Bible tells us our mind and our consciousness is not physics, it's not chemistry, it's not biology. There's something non-physical that controls our brain. I like to think of our brain
Starting point is 00:54:33 as like a computer interface. It's something our consciousness uses to be able to communicate with a physical world. You know, I've watched people undergoing severe dementia in the latter years of their life. You can see the conscious person
Starting point is 00:54:50 struggling to communicate and frustrated that they can't. Yes. The interface is not working. The physical interface is failing them, but it doesn't mean the consciousness is gone. It's there. Ray believes that, I mean,
Starting point is 00:55:06 he's collected all the information on his father, everything he can. I really believe he's kind of a modern-day Frankenstein in a way. He believes he can recreate his father, at least the intelligence and the intellect, he believes, of his father. And he told me one time, there won't be any death after 2030, because we'll be able to download you. And I've said to him, but that's not life, Ray. That's a copy of how I think and what I know, but that's not me. You can download the information storage that you've accumulated in your brain.
Starting point is 00:55:46 That's feasible. The conscious, no. Right. Because a conscious isn't physical. And part of that is I've been pondering that ever since we had this conversation of what one of the things that makes me nervous about AI is if we start treating it as, alive, it doesn't have, my life changed because of a spiritual connection. Right. I would have gone off the path.
Starting point is 00:56:16 What keeps me on the path of positive growth and everything else is a spiritual connection, a healthy fear of God, an understanding that we are all connected on things that science can't prove. So if he collects everything that I am and then puts me up and says, well, here's your grandpa and grandpa never died, I feel like grandpa would become a monster after a while because it wouldn't take in any of the spiritual guidance that you get. Does that make sense to you? It does. And I would say science has a way of actually proving that because the space time theorems tell us. there's a causal agent beyond space, time, matter, and energy. So yes, there is something that does transcend physics, chemistry, and biology. So if God is in that spirit realm, why can't we be in that spirit realm, especially when the Bible explicitly tells us so?
Starting point is 00:57:18 I mean, you've got the proof of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. You have people coming back from the dead. You've got near-death experiences. I mean, there's a lot of evidence that there is something beyond this physical realm and it tells us in the Bible and Ecclesiastes eternity is written on the heart of every human being you know I debate atheist physicists on university campuses and yet they all claim they've got ultimate purpose and destiny and I say well if the world is purely materialistic you don't you know I debated the particle physicist Victor Stinger at Caltech at the international skeptic society
Starting point is 00:57:57 I talked to them afterwards because they gave them the last word at the debate, and when he told the audience, remember one thing, you are all cold nothing. So I talked to him afterwards and said, you're the only honest atheist scientist has been at this conference. The rest of them are claiming they got purpose, they got destiny, they got meaning. You're saying all that is untrue. And he says, yes, I agree with you. If there is no God, then indeed we're no better off than a rock or a piece of dust. But nobody really believes that.
Starting point is 00:58:30 And the fact that we see this, even in the hearts of, you know, very intelligent atheists, that there is some ultimate purpose and destiny tells us there is a realm beyond the physical. This is what, I think this is, you know, darkness has always been in the heart of man and man's inhumanity man is not new. But Darwin codified the follow the science. not science, follow the science. Right. And he codified subspecies of humans.
Starting point is 00:59:11 You know, we had racism. But then he said, science, there is the preservation of favored races. And with that is born eugenics. And when you don't have, a god and your god is science and you think that there's no meaning for people you know that we can make better people and there's no real you you you end up doing horrific horrific things there's no value there's no value yeah so i mean even if that were right it's extraordinarily dangerous well we see that the personages of Adolf Hitler and Joe Stalin,
Starting point is 01:00:05 they didn't value human life. So, and look at the consequences. Are we, are we repeating, um, the same old, I mean, the same story over and over again,
Starting point is 01:00:22 because you look at what we went through in the turn of the 20th century with science. Now I feel like, we have all the tools that they were trying, they were hoping they could find. We have all of these tools now at our disposal to do all kinds of things to make the perfect species in their mind.
Starting point is 01:00:44 Well, we actually have the technology today to, you know, we can make artificial limbs. Correct. That the bind can control. It's like having a real limb. So I'm in favor of those kinds of advances. Where I'm basically drawing a line is saying, the attempt to build a superhuman is a mistake.
Starting point is 01:01:05 There will be unintended consequences. I mean, it is true, for example, our backbone is not optimized for sitting at a desk 12 hours a day. But our backbone was designed so that we could run, we could walk, we could stand, we could sit, we can sleep, all for long periods of time, which means the backbone has to be compromised to some extent for one of those activities because God designed it for multiple activities. It'd be easy for people to say, hey, we can improve the human body here
Starting point is 01:01:35 and ignore the fact that it damages a human body in other areas. You see that. You take drugs. You take any kind of drug that will help you. Right. It's a chain of events that destroy elsewhere. Well, what's happening at university campuses,
Starting point is 01:01:50 they now have what are called intellectual steroids. There are pills that you can take that really enhance your memory and allow you to do phenomenally well on college exams. Wow, I'd like some of those. Well, there are consequences. It works well for people who have a damaged memory.
Starting point is 01:02:08 It'll help them recover their memory, but if you give it to a healthy person, now they're no longer able to forget. And not being able to forget is damaging. They're not able to forget. Moreover, they lose their ability to emotionally connect. And so as people say, hey, look, how much better I do on this test at the college.
Starting point is 01:02:31 And then they discover for the next 10 years, they have significant social handicaps. So we're trying to improve on what God did. And whenever we do that, we find out, hey. Yeah, I got to tell you, I feel bad for the people who have perfect recollection. I think that's what hell is. Perfect recollection of everything you've done wrong. Oh, there is a genetic disorder where people can't forget. They don't do well.
Starting point is 01:02:57 They don't do well. I mean, they're always thinking concretely, never abstractly. They have a hard time analyzing figures of speech. They come back. You give them a date. They come back and they're reliving the emotion of that day as if it's happening because it's perfect. But you know what? They make phenomenal journalists because they don't have to take notes.
Starting point is 01:03:20 So let's let me let me go on AI. what happens to us? How do we judge? Because there are already people are saying this. Judge E.P.T., I mean, it's a sentient being. No, it's not. It's not.
Starting point is 01:03:39 But we're getting so good at tricking humans. I see a time where... Well, they're actually thinking of passing a law that when you engage in AI system, the AI system has to tell you in advance that it's AI and not a human being. And it's all based on the fact that they've designed an AI system to do Rogarian therapy. And a Rogarian therapist basically asks you questions so that you come up with the answer on your own.
Starting point is 01:04:08 And so it's very easy to program an AI system to ask you, you know, meaningful questions what was going on in your life. The problem is there are records of showing that people thought they were engaging a real human being rather than a computer system. And the most dramatic case, one guy divorced his wife and tried to marry his computer therapist. And then found out, oh, it wasn't a real human being. And so they're saying, hey, this has happened more than once. We need to tell the human that's being interviewed, you're talking to a computer. But I believe that there will come a time probably not too far away, where once you're, once everyone has access to an AIS.
Starting point is 01:04:53 assistant who listens to everything, can write your emails, can think like you, is programmed to watch for your needs and your wants and to protect you or to suggest, you know, I'm really, man,
Starting point is 01:05:12 I'm having a bad day, blah, blah, it will remember that your favorite spot in the world is some beach in Hawaii. And it will say, you know, But I cleared your schedule and you're going. And people will bond with that.
Starting point is 01:05:33 And they will claim that that is their best friend because they know everything about them. And they never have to listen about how bad their day is. They don't. But it also means they disengage with real human beings. Yes. And, you know, because of AI, notice today, we have a loneliness epidemic.
Starting point is 01:05:52 You know, we got a relationship deficit epidemic and anxiety epidemic. I mean, we now know the one reason why COVID hit America so hard. One of the factors that really exacerbates COVID is anxiety. Americans are credibly anxious. But our AI technology today basically spawns that. But I think one thing that's going to protect people, we all realize these systems need to make money. and so we see online is yes, AI basically figures out what you want,
Starting point is 01:06:26 but its motivation is get you to buy more stuff. Correct. And hopefully people are smart enough to realize, hey, I'm being tricked into spending money I don't need to spend. Oh, the father of propaganda, Bernay said, we just have, you know what the problem with this country is, is it's a nation of needs, not of wants. Right.
Starting point is 01:06:49 Our goal is to change that to a nation of wants and not needs, and they were pretty darn effective. They were. You know, and we didn't know. What do you think about bringing things like the woolly mammoth back? Well, I wrote an article years ago saying that, you know, we benefited from the extinction of the woolly mammoths. Because just before they went extinct, they were basically destroying all the Siberian-Canadian forest. and if that had happened, it would have been devastating to the ecosystems. Fortunately, they went extinct and maybe we humans had a big hand in that
Starting point is 01:07:28 because that's a really easy meal. Kill one mammoth. You got food for 4,000 people for several days. Jeez. But I think there is the possibility of bringing the woolly mammoth back. Why would we do that? Well, he can put him in a zoo. I talked to the guy who's working on it, and he said,
Starting point is 01:07:50 He's bringing it back for global warming reasons that they will have a positive impact on global warming. And I'm like, I'm sure their farts are enormous, all that methane gas. And they were destroying forest. Don't things go extinct for a reason? Yes, but I think you've got people saying, hey, if there is no God, we have to do everything. to preserve the species. The thermodynamics is going to cause species to go extinct. Although I do agree we humans certainly are hastening it.
Starting point is 01:08:28 So we're a big reason why species are going extinct. So I think that's motivating people. Hey, maybe we can bring some species back that we drove to extinction. The technology is basically looking at, okay, we've mapped the genome of the woolly mammoth. Maybe we can alter the egg of an elephant so that basically it has. has the embryo of a woolly mammoth and have the elephant give birth to the woolly mammoth. That's basically the technological path they're seeking.
Starting point is 01:08:58 So it will be a woolly mammoth. It will be a woolly mammoth. Everything works like the way they think it is. And within a decade, we may have woolly mammoths and zoos. That's a possibility. But yeah, I would recommend we don't turn them loose in the tundra or the taiga. I mean, it just, I mean, I hate to bring it to this,
Starting point is 01:09:19 but does anybody watch giraffe? Park? There's there's the that will completely change everything. It will. I mean, Jurassic Park is a bit of a stretch. Right, right. I mean,
Starting point is 01:09:31 the woolly mammoth, they were running around just 3,000 years ago. So they haven't been extinct that long. And because they've been flash frozen in various ice regions of Canada, we've been able to recover that the genome and get an accurate picture of that. That's hard to do once you get into the millions of years ago. How were they flash frozen? I mean, they had buttercups in their stomachs.
Starting point is 01:09:55 Yes. Well, my father grew up in Alberta, and they have these Chinooks. Within one or two hours, the temperature rises by 80 to 100 degrees. You also got the reverse Chinook, where the temperature drops by 80 to 100 degrees in an hour or two. Oh, my gosh. And when it drops that fast, you're basically flash freezing live animals in place. to such a degree that there are occasions when the Canadian government serves a mammoth meat at their state dinners, because the meat is still good to eat. You've got to be kidding.
Starting point is 01:10:30 I mean, it takes a special invitation to get to one of those days. I'm sure it does, and I don't know if I would want to. Wonder what it tastes like, probably chicken. Do you believe in extraterrestrial life? Well, that's something that Christians have been debating for 2,000 years. Because you look at Psalm 104, it's like, God seems to really enjoy creating. Why would you stop on one planet? What a waste of space, as Sagan said.
Starting point is 01:10:57 Yeah, what a waste of space. And I had Sagan as a professor and I was at the university. Did you really? Well, you know, it was fun about that. He kept saying, the only hope for humanity is we tune our telescopes towards these distant planets. Maybe we can find an intelligent civilization. and surely they've written a book that will solve all the problems
Starting point is 01:11:20 that we humans face. He called it the Encyclopedia Galatica. Well, I think I was the only Christian in the room, but I said, don't we already have an encyclopedia Galatica and isn't Carl's problem that he's not willing to read it? He overheard me. Oh, boy. And he says, I know about that book.
Starting point is 01:11:39 Nobody can live up to its moral standard. It's like, but that's the point of the book. No one can live up to its moral standard. We need God's help to be able to pull that off. That's what's unique about the Christian faith. Wow. But, yeah, so there's a major effort. Let's see if we can find, I mean, even today, SETI,
Starting point is 01:11:58 the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life. And there are passages in the Bible that say we're probably alone because we notice in the gospels, Jesus frequently refused to perform miracles, which implies he only performs those miracles that are necessary to achieve its purpose. And their theologians who argue, God only needs one planet.
Starting point is 01:12:22 As an astronomer, I can tell you, unless you have a universe with two trillion galaxies, where that makes up only a quarter percent with the totality of the universe, that's what it takes to get one planet. So if God wanted one planet, if he does play dice. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:12:39 We're really talking about God having to create a universe of a huge size. So it's not a waste of space. The universe's mass must be exactly what it is to get the periodic table of elements. And without all those elements, you can't have life and you can't have advanced civilization. So we're here because of how precisely tuned
Starting point is 01:13:00 the mass of the universe was and its age was to make all this possible. But I can share this with you from an astronomical perspective. Everywhere we look beyond Earth, we see conditions that are very hostile to the existence of advanced life, and maybe any life at all. However, having said that, I've been on public record since the 1980s. We will find the remains of life on almost every solar system body.
Starting point is 01:13:28 Because it started and died out. No, because Earth has been exporting microbes for billions of years. Every time a meteorite strikes the Earth is sufficient size, you give microbes traveling through interpolation. planetary space. Wow. But I have friends who've calculated how much Earth soil exists on the surface of the Moon. 20,000 kilograms for every 100 square kilometers.
Starting point is 01:13:56 There's a lot of Earth soil on the Moon. One ton of Earth soil has 100 quadrillion microbes in it. And I actually spoke at NASA Houston saying, we got to go back to the Moon. We don't need to send people. We can do it machines, but we need to go with a different mission. Not to recover pristine lunar rocks, but to recover that Earth transported soil. Because we'll be able to solve the origin of life problem. Because Earth's geology has destroyed the fossils of Earth's first life.
Starting point is 01:14:27 But the moon is geologically inactive. The fossils of Earth's first life are in pristine form on the surface of the moon. We can go there and figure out who got the origin of life model right. Theus or the atheist. And I'll close that message. says, this is a no-brainer. Last time I checked, atheists and theists made up 100% of the U.S. taxpayer bills. Wow.
Starting point is 01:14:53 So, yeah, NASA could actually determine, hey, did the theists get it right or did the atheists get it right? We can find out. Why is the dark side of the moon so important? It's very important, especially, I'm a radio astronomer. It's especially important because radio pollution on the earth is huge. silence. It's like a giant hole of silence. So if we go to the backside of the moon, it blocks out all the radio noise from the earth. In fact, there's a mission in 2026 to put four radio telescopes in the back side of the moon.
Starting point is 01:15:27 Like the setty-sized telescopes? No, no. These would be small ones because what they're realizing is the ionosphere and the atmosphere of the earth permits extremely low-frequency radio observations. But if we go to the backside of the moon, there's no ionosphere, there's no atmosphere, so we can actually make measurements of 100 meters of wavelength. And that wavelength is crucial to understand the physics of the first-born stars in the universe.
Starting point is 01:15:56 So that mission is scheduled for 2026, and they're going to robotically assemble the radio telescopes on the backside of the moon. And I wrote an article basically saying, we need to protect the backside of the moon. because there's people who want to send up hundreds of satellites orbiting the moon, they do that. You wreck it. They wreck it, yeah.
Starting point is 01:16:17 So, if you get the Sierra Club on that one. Yeah. That's a good mission for the Sierra Club. It wouldn't be. Protect the Moon. I can't thank you enough for coming in and talking to me and giving a different look at, faith. I've never understood why science, reason, and faith are at war with each other. Well, the war isn't as intense as people think. I mean, there's a lot of believers in God
Starting point is 01:16:57 on university campuses and research facilities. I mean, there was a philosopher back in 1916 who said, with the advance of science, they're going to see an exponential decline in scientists who believe in God and an afterlife. Well, they redid the survey 80 years later. They got the same percentages. Really? About 45% of research scientists believe in God on an afterlife. That's higher than I thought it was.
Starting point is 01:17:23 Well, it's especially high amongst research mathematicians. There it's over 80%. What you see in math, there's an elegance and a beauty and a symmetry of math that tells us the one who set up all that math, likewise, must really enjoy beauty and symmetry. and elegance. Right. So, and a lot of astronomers are believers in God.
Starting point is 01:17:46 Now, where you do see a very low percentage is in the social sciences. So sociologists, you know, cultural anthropologists. Yeah. But it's because the data doesn't constrain them like it does in chemistry
Starting point is 01:17:59 and physics and astronomy. I mean, if you've got enormous error bars, you've got lots of room to speculate. But if the air bars are tiny, it basically forces you to certain conclusions. Love talking to you. Will you come back sometime?
Starting point is 01:18:13 Oh yeah. Thank you. Yeah, this is great. Thank you. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

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