0:01

Hey

0:15

everyone, it's Andrew Klaven with this week's

0:17

interview with Stephen Meyer. When

0:19

people who believe in Jesus Christ, who believe in

0:21

God at all, talk about science, there are generally

0:24

three positions they can take. One you could call

0:26

the literalist position, which is that if they read

0:28

the Bible to say a certain thing and science

0:30

says that thing isn't so, then they just say,

0:32

well, the science has to be wrong and they

0:35

dismiss it. And I don't believe that that is

0:37

actually a tenable position, a position

0:39

you can continue to hold because scripture and

0:41

nature and reason and science are all gifts

0:43

of God. And I think they're meant to

0:45

speak to one another and be reconciled with one another.

0:47

And we have to keep our minds open to the

0:50

information coming in from all of them. Then

0:52

there's the weak position, which is the position I

0:54

used to hold, which is that there's nothing in

0:56

science that contradicts the notion of God. There's nothing

0:58

here that's going to take away from

1:00

your faith. And like I said, I used to

1:02

hold that position, but I don't anymore. Now I

1:04

hold what I would call the strong position, which

1:06

is that science in fact is increasingly pointing

1:09

toward the reality of God and making

1:11

it almost impossible not to have faith.

1:13

It's almost against the science

1:15

not to have faith. And that position,

1:18

I think one of the most eloquent spokesmen

1:20

for that position is Stephen Meyer, who has

1:22

been saying for quite a long time that

1:24

the science, to not believe

1:26

in God because of science, is actually to be

1:28

stuck about a hundred years ago into a way

1:31

of looking at science that simply does not hold

1:34

true anymore. Stephen is

1:36

the director of the Discovery Institute Center for

1:38

Science and Culture, which is in Seattle. He

1:41

always has a lot to say on this subject,

1:43

and I'm always happy to see him. Steve, thank you

1:45

for being here. It's great to see you. I'm

1:47

delighted to be back in conversation with you, Andrew.

1:49

That was great. And I

1:51

think this introduction, that's the three models

1:54

of science-faith interaction that I present, and

1:56

I used to present when I was

1:58

teaching philosophy of science. The

2:00

second model being still the most popular among a

2:02

lot of people of faith that Stephen

2:05

J. Gould called it Noma

2:07

non-overlapping Magisteria, yeah, but your

2:09

science speaks about the facts

2:11

religion speaks about values and

2:13

and Metaphysics, but there's

2:15

no there's no possible connection between the

2:17

two So it's a it's

2:20

a defensive position that leaves people of

2:22

faith feeling safe But there's

2:24

no positive evidence for their belief and

2:26

yet I think there is very strong

2:28

positive evidence in in in cosmology and

2:30

physics biology the major subjects of science

2:32

are now revealing things that I think

2:35

Not only comport with the is to believe

2:37

but actually point to it Yeah,

2:40

I you know I've moved over to that position

2:43

Not only because I was moving over to

2:45

that position But when I read your book

2:47

the return of the God hypothesis that definitely

2:50

solidified my my feeling that way For

2:52

those who didn't watch our interview over the

2:54

return of the God hypothesis Maybe you could

2:56

sum up why you feel this is

2:59

true just so we know the basis of what we're

3:01

talking about Right and just to put

3:03

it in a little historical context I'm here in Cambridge,

3:05

England right now and this is

3:07

the city of Sir Isaac Newton for example

3:09

in his tutor Isaac Barrow and before him

3:11

John Ray and the scholars

3:14

call this this tradition

3:17

of thought British natural

3:19

theology and that science actually

3:21

came out of this idea that that

3:23

the natural world was Revealing something about

3:25

the reality of God It was the

3:27

two books metaphor coming out of the

3:29

Middle Ages that God reveals himself as

3:32

you mentioned through scripture but

3:34

he also reveals himself through nature and

3:36

the conviction of the early scientists was

3:38

that the the witness of those two

3:40

books was Ultimately in agreement and

3:43

that moreover because God had made our

3:45

minds in his image We

3:47

could understand the natural world that

3:49

he also made as a revelation

3:52

So this was the idea of intelligibility that

3:54

God made our minds a rational

3:57

creator made the universe and

3:59

he gave

4:01

evidence of his design in the universe, and

4:04

he built it in an orderly way. And

4:06

we could understand that order and design because

4:08

he also made our minds to function as

4:11

a reflection of the way he thought.

4:13

So that, as Kepler put it, we

4:15

have the high calling as natural philosophers

4:17

to think God's thoughts after him. So

4:19

science started in this theistic Judeo-Christian milieu,

4:23

and many of the scientists

4:25

working at that period of time also

4:27

were finding evidence of design in nature.

4:29

Newton most dramatically and

4:32

writing about it in

4:34

the general scolium, his theological epilogue to

4:36

the Principia. But that sort of

4:39

approach to science was lost in the late

4:42

19th century. You have figures like Darwin who

4:44

had a great origin story, Marx who

4:47

had a utopian vision of

4:49

the future, and Freud and other figures

4:51

who were operating out of a materialistic

4:53

framework. And between them they answered the

4:55

great questions that Judeo-Christian

4:57

religion had answered before. Where

5:00

did we come from? That was Darwin's theory. Where are

5:02

we going? What is our eschatology? That was Freud. And

5:06

then, or sorry, Marx and then Freud had

5:09

an account of what we should do about

5:11

the human condition and our guilt. So you

5:13

get this kind of comprehensive materialistic worldview supported

5:17

allegedly by our best science, and

5:19

the 19th century people thought it was. And so

5:21

you come into the 20th century and

5:24

you have a kind of sense where most elite

5:26

intellectuals, especially scientifically informed people,

5:30

are thinking that science and faith are in

5:32

conflict, and science and faith and God are

5:34

in conflict. And the story of the book,

5:37

Return to the God Hypothesis, is the story

5:39

of three great scientific discoveries that

5:41

are returning that theistic perspective,

5:43

or bringing that theistic perspective

5:46

back to many scientists, or should

5:48

be, I think if people haven't quite gotten

5:50

the memo yet. So, and those three discoveries

5:52

are that the universe had a beginning, that

5:55

the universe has been finely tuned against

5:57

all odds from the beginning to make...

6:00

it possible for life to exist. And

6:02

that within even the simplest

6:05

living cells, we have an

6:07

exquisite realm of digital nanotechnology,

6:10

digital code that's directing the construction

6:13

of sophisticated proteins

6:15

and protein machines that

6:17

bears all the hallmarks of

6:20

an intelligently designed system that we would recognize from

6:22

our own world of high tech digital technology.

6:25

And so we have evidence of

6:28

a creation event, evidence of design from the

6:30

beginning of the universe, and evidence of

6:32

design down the timeline when

6:34

you see the first life arising. And even

6:37

in Darwin's time, people thought of a very, the first

6:39

cell was very simple and thought that

6:41

therefore it would be easy to explain how

6:43

you could evolve the complex starting from the

6:46

simple. We now know that even the very

6:48

simplest thing is extraordinarily complex

6:51

and it contains information in a digital

6:53

form, which is an indicator in our

6:55

experience of the activity of a mind.

6:58

That's the argument. All right, well, I have

7:00

some questions I wanna ask that have occurred

7:02

to me since reading your book. But

7:05

before I do, in the

7:07

arts, which is my field, I see

7:10

Jesus being edited out of

7:13

places where he would normally

7:15

occur. So in biographies of

7:17

men who believed like Dostoevsky,

7:20

he's kind of minimized in movies

7:23

of Johnny Cash who dedicated

7:25

his life to Christ. There's

7:28

a seven second scene where he sort of looks

7:30

at a church longingly, and that's it. And

7:32

I see this happen again and again. Is

7:35

the same kind of thing happening in the

7:37

scientific world is the idea of God being

7:39

edited out of

7:41

science? Well, this was a major

7:43

shift that took place in the late 19th century because

7:45

science, as I said, started in this Judeo-Christian

7:48

milieu in Western Europe. And historians

7:51

wonder about, this was something that

7:53

in barely recent scholarship in

7:55

the history of science, people finally tumbled to. They

7:57

were asking a question, the why then why

7:59

they are... question. What was different in

8:01

Western Europe that accounted for the rise of modern

8:04

science and this with this systematic

8:06

ways of investigating and interrogating

8:09

nature and the Herbert

8:11

Butterfield and A.C. Crombie and leading

8:13

historians of science finally came

8:16

to the conclusion that the thing

8:18

that was different was the the

8:20

presuppositional context of Western Christianity and

8:23

that the assumption that nature was

8:25

intelligible this assumption that there was an order there

8:27

to find. But

8:29

then in the late 19th century the

8:32

the framework for doing scientists science shifted

8:34

and part of the argument that Darwin

8:36

made was not only an argument for

8:40

the causal power of an

8:42

undirected, unguided purposeless creation process

8:45

which he called natural selection

8:47

acting on random variations but

8:50

also the idea that science must

8:52

by definition limit itself to strictly

8:54

materialistic explanations for everything. And

8:57

philosophy of science have a term for

8:59

this this canon of method is called

9:01

methodological naturalism. It's

9:04

a mouthful but all it means is that

9:06

if you're going to be a scientist you

9:08

must explain everything by reference to undirected

9:10

material processes. And

9:12

that means you cannot see evidence

9:15

of design, you cannot talk about evidence of

9:17

design as an explanation for why things are

9:19

the way they are. Now that was a

9:21

departure from the way science had been done

9:24

up to that point in the 19th century.

9:26

Newton made design arguments, Kepler made design arguments,

9:28

Robert Boyle made design arguments, this was part

9:30

of the warp and woof of science. And

9:33

that late 19th century coming

9:35

into the 20th century there was

9:37

a methodological prohibition against considering

9:39

creative intelligence as an explanation even for

9:41

the origin of the universe or for

9:43

the origin of life. So and

9:47

that just meant it didn't matter what the

9:49

evidence said, scientists

9:52

increasingly thought it was their duty to

9:54

explain everything by reference to these

9:57

undirected processes. Fast forward and you get

9:59

the molecular biological revolution in the

10:01

1960s. You get the discovery of

10:03

fine tuning and physics. And scientists

10:05

start discovering things that on their

10:07

face look as though they

10:10

are the product of intelligence. Bill

10:12

Gates has said that DNA is

10:14

like a software program, but much

10:16

more complex than any we've ever

10:18

created. Richard Dawkins has acknowledged that

10:20

DNA contains machine code. Well, what

10:22

do we know about what it takes to generate software?

10:24

It takes a program. And so people

10:26

have been trying for 50 years to explain the

10:28

origin of the information necessary to build life by

10:31

reference to undirected material processes as

10:34

the principle of methodological nationalism

10:36

requires. And they've come to

10:38

a complete impasse, because what we're looking at

10:41

is the kind of the information in the

10:43

cell is of a kind that

10:46

we know from our uniform and repeated experience

10:48

always arises from a mind. And

10:50

so there's kind of it's a kind of a barking

10:52

up the wrong tree sort of phenomenon. And

10:54

yes, in many ways, it's analogous to

10:56

what you're describing in the arts where

10:58

it's here, no design, see no design,

11:01

we're not going to consider that as

11:03

a possibility, even though we're now looking

11:05

at attributes of life, attributes

11:08

of the universe, which in any other

11:10

realm of experience would immediately trigger

11:12

an awareness that a creative intelligence enacted.

11:14

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So, all right, now this raises real questions for me,

12:44

even though what you're saying makes perfect,

12:46

it makes so much more sense than

12:48

the materialist science, when

12:51

guys like Dawkins, who really seems like a

12:53

lovely fellow, but is obviously

12:55

talking nonsense when he starts to talk about theology,

12:58

which he knows nothing about. But

13:00

now my question is this, first

13:03

let me ask you this, do you believe

13:06

in evolution as a process that creates species?

13:08

That nevermind, I know Jim

13:10

Torr is always talking about the fact that no one has

13:13

come close to understanding how life begins, but

13:15

once life begins, do you believe that evolution

13:17

is a process that creates more and more

13:19

species out of other species? It

13:22

generates small scale variation, and

13:26

variation sufficiently different enough from

13:28

the original form that we

13:31

sometimes will identify the new

13:33

groups as separate species. But

13:36

you may remember from high school biology

13:39

that species are at the lowest

13:41

level of the biological hierarchy and

13:43

classification. And the higher taxonomic

13:45

ranks, there's

13:48

an old acronym about, where you

13:50

have phyla and classes and orders

13:53

and families and genus and down to

13:55

species. So small scale variation enough to

13:57

create differences in species, yes. enough

14:00

to create differences in the genus,

14:02

maybe up to the family level. But the

14:04

higher order differences,

14:06

the larger differences in biological

14:08

classification, which represent differences in

14:11

body plan, fundamentally different ways

14:13

of arranging body parts and

14:15

tissues, the evolutionary process

14:17

does not explain well. And

14:19

increasingly, even people in evolutionary biology

14:22

are acknowledging this.

14:24

It's the problem of the

14:26

origin of body plans or the origin of the

14:29

higher taxonomic categories. So to

14:31

make that more concrete, we probably

14:34

remember the, your

14:36

viewers will probably remember the example from

14:38

biology of the Darwin's finches or the

14:40

peppered moths. These are the classic examples

14:43

of natural selection and action changing things

14:45

over time in discernible ways

14:47

that represent, you know, you've got two

14:49

different colored moths or inches with different

14:52

shapes and sizes of beaks. But

14:54

the mutation selection mechanism does

14:57

a good job of explaining that level

14:59

of variation. It does not do a

15:01

good job of explaining the origin of

15:03

birds and mammals and animals in the

15:05

first place. And there's

15:07

a number of reasons for that that have

15:10

to do with the way things work at

15:12

a mechanistic level in biology. But I go

15:14

into that in my book Darwin's Doubt and

15:16

show that there's a real problem with explaining

15:19

large scale, what they call morphological innovation. Small

15:21

scale variation, yes, large scale morphological innovation,

15:23

no. And we have many instances

15:25

in the fossil record of big

15:27

jumps in form that would be

15:29

morphological innovation that

15:31

occur abruptly without ancestral

15:34

intermediates or precursors in the lower

15:36

strata beneath the place where those

15:38

new forms arise. And so the

15:40

picture of life in the fossil

15:42

record is one of, yes, small

15:44

scale variation, but big jumps or

15:47

discontinuity when you get to those higher levels

15:49

of classification. And

15:51

that's the problem. Where do the

15:53

big new things come from? So

15:56

this may seem like a silly question, but I am going somewhere

15:58

with it. If I had a camera that

16:01

could take pictures of the past, what

16:03

do you think we would see when birds

16:05

come into existence? What

16:09

do you think would be in front of us when that

16:11

happened? Yeah, that's

16:13

a one I don't think we can really answer. What

16:16

we see in the fossil record is this

16:18

abrupt appearance. I wrote a whole book about

16:20

maybe the most dramatic such instance. It's called,

16:23

it's about the Cambrian explosion, which is where

16:25

most of the major animal groups first

16:28

arise. The

16:30

first fishes, the first arthropods,

16:32

trilobites, for example, the

16:34

first echinoderms, I mean these major

16:37

differences. And they arise very abruptly.

16:39

And there's just, you go in the

16:41

lower pre-Cambrian sedimentary strata, and there's just

16:44

nothing like most of these major groups. So

16:48

if those of us who are God

16:50

believers can imagine that God

16:52

created something de novo, completely

16:55

new, there's just simply no

16:57

evidence of a gradual transformation.

16:59

So if you have a camera there,

17:01

I mean, is it a proof event? I mean, we

17:03

really don't know. The way I

17:05

argue the case is not prospectively trying to

17:07

get people to imagine what would

17:10

it have looked like happening, but rather look

17:12

at the evidence we have and then

17:14

retrodict to the kind of cause that

17:16

would be necessary to produce the effects

17:18

in question. And here's where the

17:20

information thing comes into play again. If

17:22

you think about just in

17:24

our own modern high-tech digital world, if

17:27

you ask someone, what does it take to build a new

17:29

program or operating system? You want to give your computer a

17:31

new function? What do you have to give it? Well

17:33

we now know you have to give it code. And

17:36

the same thing turns out to be true in biology.

17:38

This was the great discovery of modern, late

17:40

20th century biology following the Watson and

17:42

Crick revolution is that inside even the

17:45

simplest living cells, but in all living

17:47

organisms, there is information. And if you

17:49

want to build a new form of life from

17:51

a pre-existing form, you need new

17:53

code to build the new parts, the new

17:55

proteins that would service the new cell types

17:57

that would service the new anatomical structures. So

18:00

you got to have new code.

18:02

So biological form requires new biological

18:04

information. What we see in the history

18:06

of life and the fossil record are

18:08

repeated instances of new biological forms

18:11

entering the biosphere as preserved in

18:13

that fossil record. That

18:15

means there needed to be new information

18:17

infused into the biosphere to generate those

18:19

forms. And it's at that point, I

18:22

think we can safely say that we

18:24

see evidence of intelligent design. How

18:26

the intelligent designer did it in

18:29

some ways as mysterious, biologically

18:31

speaking, as the mind-body problem

18:33

in our own, that

18:36

we encounter just in encountering another mind.

18:38

You and I are communicating, but

18:40

we really don't know how we go from

18:42

the mind-brain interface so that, I

18:45

have a thought and I communicate it, and

18:47

eventually there's some airwaves that are modulated in

18:49

a way that you can then interpret and

18:51

understand in your mind, but we don't understand

18:54

how the human mind interfaces with the brain

18:56

to generate information in

18:59

our own experience, but we know that minds

19:01

do have that capability. So when we see

19:03

information, we can infer back to a mind,

19:05

even if we don't know exactly what the

19:07

mechanism was of transference of information

19:10

from the mental realm to the physical. So then

19:12

my question is this, I mean, I know what

19:14

it looks like when you're talking to me and

19:16

I know you have a body and a brain

19:18

and certain things go on in there that cause

19:20

all these things. And I understand that still what's

19:22

being transferred has absolutely no physical being whatsoever. The

19:24

idea that you're speaking to me is

19:27

not made of anything. It's not made of the words you speak.

19:29

It's not made of the light in your head. It's not made of

19:31

any of those things. But at least I

19:33

understand what a scientist could do to sort

19:35

of search for this answer. If

19:37

you're talking about a puff event of where

19:39

suddenly puff, there's birds, would

19:43

that be the end of science? Would that be where science

19:45

would just say like, it's God

19:47

and we don't understand? Or is there,

19:49

is your point of view potentially leading to

19:54

a science of God, a way of

19:57

doing theology in a new way where

19:59

science informs? Or what used

20:01

to be called natural theology. Yes. And

20:04

here it's important to understand, give a

20:06

little more nuance in the philosophy of

20:08

science and understanding that we always talk

20:10

about the scientific method. But

20:12

it turns out that there are many more than

20:14

just one, there's

20:17

more than one scientific method. And the

20:19

scientific method that Darwin used was

20:21

a distinctively historical way of reasoning.

20:23

He was reasoning from effects back

20:26

to causes. He wasn't and

20:28

so and there are many sciences that

20:31

do this. There's archaeology and cosmology and

20:35

forensic science. And what

20:38

I did in my PC thesis

20:40

was study Darwin's method of historical

20:42

scientific reasoning. And also how

20:44

origin of life researchers, the people that Jim

20:46

Tour is talking about, how

20:48

they reason about the past. And

20:51

it turns out that the case that

20:53

we've developed for intelligent design uses

20:56

that same historical method of scientific

20:58

reasoning. And the key, the

21:00

method has a name, it's sometimes called the

21:03

method of multiple competing hypotheses. Sometimes it's called

21:05

the method of inferring to the best explanation,

21:07

where the best explanation posits a cause

21:10

which we know from our uniform

21:12

and repeated experience, giving you a little

21:14

jargon that is

21:17

capable of generating the effect in question.

21:19

So when I came across this principle of

21:22

reasoning, it's in Darwin, it's in the great

21:24

geologist Lyle, I asked myself the question, well,

21:26

what is the cause that we know of

21:28

from our uniform and repeated experience that's capable

21:31

of generating information, generating

21:33

digital code? And I came

21:35

across a passage from

21:37

an early scientist who was analyzing

21:40

the informational properties of DNA and he

21:42

said, well, you know, it's interesting because

21:45

the creation of new information is habitually

21:48

associated with

21:50

conscious activity. In our uniform and

21:52

repeated experience, we know of only one cause that

21:55

generates information and that's a mind. So

21:57

if we do the historical scientific thing, from

22:00

the effect back to the cause based on what we

22:02

know about cause and effect, we now

22:04

have an historical science of intelligent design. Because

22:07

we have reason, we have uniform, we

22:09

have wide experience of minds generating information.

22:12

We find information in an artifact,

22:14

a cell absent any

22:16

knowledge of what actually produced it. We

22:19

don't have observational knowledge of that. So we have to

22:21

make an inference backwards in time to

22:23

the most plausible causal entity.

22:27

What cause do we know can

22:29

produce that information? And there's really only

22:32

one, it's a mind. So there's an

22:34

historical scientific inference backwards

22:36

in time to a

22:38

causal origin story. But then

22:40

once you've inferred design, the science

22:42

that you do going forward can look very different.

22:45

If the cell is a design entity, then

22:48

that should lead us to see things

22:50

inside living systems that we

22:52

know intelligent agents produce.

22:55

So there was a big debate a number of years ago

22:57

about the so-called junk DNA. And all

22:59

the Darwinists jumped to the conclusion that the

23:01

non-coding regions of the DNA that don't code

23:03

for proteins were the random,

23:06

the products of the leftover

23:08

product of random mutation and

23:10

natural selection. It was

23:12

the kind of flopsome and

23:14

jetsome of the evolutionary process

23:16

accumulating over time. We

23:18

thought, well, no, wait a minute. We accept

23:21

that evolution, natural selection is a real process,

23:23

that mutations occur. But on our

23:25

point of view, we wouldn't have thought that 98% of

23:27

the genome would be junk and

23:30

only 2% would be signal. We

23:33

didn't think that the signal should be dwarfed by the

23:35

noise. So we predicted, based on our conviction

23:38

of intelligent design, that

23:40

the non-coding regions of the DNA should

23:43

be importantly functional. Whereas the

23:45

Darwinists were content to assume that

23:48

those regions were the product

23:50

of random mutations and

23:53

non-functional. Well, lo and behold, 2011,

23:55

2012, you get the incredible data. project

24:00

starts publishing

24:02

all the results of the studies of the non-coding

24:05

regions of DNA and the intelligent

24:07

design prediction turns out to have been the correct

24:09

one. That all that non-coding

24:11

DNA was importantly functional. So one of

24:14

the things that we're suggesting is that

24:16

we can go out and look for

24:18

known design patterns that we know from

24:20

computer science, from computer

24:23

engineering, and look for

24:25

those sorts of things in living

24:27

systems. If life is designed, it

24:29

should look differently than

24:31

it would look if it were the product of a bottom-up,

24:34

undirected material process. And we can give you

24:36

a lot of examples of where that design

24:38

framework is leading to better science. It's helping

24:40

us make discoveries that wouldn't have been made

24:42

otherwise. That is actually like

24:45

a shattering statement because the idea

24:48

of scientists in a conversation with

24:50

the creator is so different than

24:52

what you were describing before, this

24:54

kind of methodological materialism. It

24:57

would actually be sort of a

24:59

revolution. Does

25:02

it bother you as we enter the age

25:04

of AI and possibly human enhancers? I mean,

25:06

Elon Musk has already got a guy hooked

25:08

up to a computer. Does it

25:10

bother you that that's not the way science is

25:12

being done? I mean, it seems to me... Well,

25:14

sure. Yeah, I mean,

25:17

we're not only making an argument against

25:19

Darwinian evolution or against chemical evolutionary theory.

25:21

And just again, to be clear, there's

25:23

two contexts of science here. There's the

25:25

science of what happened in the past,

25:28

and we have a different causal origins

25:31

theory. So that's a form of science, and

25:33

it's not a science stopper. It's just an

25:35

alternative scientific theory about what happened. But

25:38

then going forward and examining how

25:40

life works, our framework,

25:42

because of our design framework, we

25:45

have different expectations about the sorts of things we ought

25:47

to find in living systems. And

25:49

we're making predictions about the presence of those

25:51

things, and we're going and looking and we're finding them.

25:54

So it does lead to a more, we think, a

25:56

more fruitful science. The term for that in the philosophy

25:58

of science is that our theory has heuristic

26:00

value is a guide to discovery. And

26:03

so we think that that is a very exciting and

26:05

new way, it leads to exciting

26:07

new things. But it does bother

26:09

us that, in fact, the way

26:11

to say it is that we're not only making an argument for

26:13

intelligent design, we're challenging the way science

26:15

has been done for the last 150 years

26:17

and trying to take it back, it's actually taking

26:19

it back to the way science started. No

26:22

one has, people will say that Newton, because he

26:25

believed in God and he believed that God was

26:27

the ultimate cause of gravity and things like that,

26:29

they'll say, well, he was guilty of a God

26:31

of the gaps argument, and therefore that was his

26:33

theistic views were a science stopper, except

26:35

that Newton was the most productive scientist in the

26:38

science. He

26:40

developed the theory of gravity, he

26:42

invented the calculus, he developed

26:45

the binomial theorem, he made fundamental advances

26:47

in optics. I mean, so a belief

26:49

in God can lead to a very

26:51

productive science where the motivation, in fact,

26:54

the title of his great book, the

26:56

Principia, or Principia, depending on how you

26:58

like your Latin pronounced, it

27:03

had a subtle theological implication. What

27:05

was he discovering? He was discovering the

27:07

principles, the mathematical principles that govern the

27:09

universe. Where did those mathematical principles come

27:11

from? They were an expression of

27:14

the ordering power of the

27:17

creator. And so he had,

27:20

Newton's tutor was a man named Isaac

27:22

Barrow, a great mathematician, whose tutor

27:24

was John Ray, who was the founder of

27:26

British National Theology, and Ray wrote a book

27:28

called The Wisdom of God Manifested in the

27:31

Works of Creation. And Newton was very much

27:33

working in that train of thought. He was

27:36

expressing that natural theological idea that

27:38

nature reveals the handiwork and intelligence,

27:41

the mind of the creator. So

27:44

this brings me back elegantly enough since we're running out

27:46

of time, it brings me back sort of to the

27:48

beginning. You are actually proposing

27:50

a revolution in the way science is done,

27:52

the way science is thought about, and this

27:54

revolution seems to me to make absolute sense.

27:58

If you have this... Institutional

28:00

hostility to the idea of god this

28:02

fear i think it's a

28:04

fear that you will basically be saying to

28:07

them there's a place where science and. Is

28:10

anybody listening to this are you making

28:12

inroads yeah i think very much

28:14

so it's the. We

28:17

had a number of high ranking scientists either

28:21

quietly or publicly announce

28:24

there a change of a significant change of view,

28:26

some rejecting darwin is in the main scene the

28:29

essay in the claremont review books a few years

28:31

ago just a few years ago by a david

28:34

galler enter wrote the chairman

28:36

of the computer science department

28:38

who encountered our mathematical critique

28:40

of neo of the mutation

28:42

selection mechanism wrote an

28:44

essay called darwin darwin

28:46

a fun farewell. It's

28:48

a beautiful theory it just can't account

28:50

for the origin of the information that's

28:52

necessary to explain the work explain the

28:55

forms of life. Gunter

28:57

bekely very prominent german paleontologist

28:59

was curating the two hundred

29:02

year bicentennial celebration for darwin

29:04

in the largest natural history

29:07

museum in stukart germany.

29:10

He created a display that that

29:14

suddenly mocks the idea of intelligent

29:16

design vis-a-vis darwin. And

29:18

his colleagues said well if you're going to make fun

29:21

of the intelligent design people going through you better read

29:23

their books and now he says that was

29:25

my mistake. And several years

29:27

later he announced publicly that he

29:29

had come to he that he affirmed the theory

29:31

of intelligent design and was now doing his

29:33

work as a paleontologist within that that framework of

29:36

understanding. So we had a number of cases

29:38

like that but what to us is most

29:41

exciting is the young talent for attracting our

29:43

summer programs are busting out with young scientists

29:45

who are ready to look at life in

29:47

a new way and they're finding it

29:50

incredibly fruitful in their research or they're interested

29:52

in finding out about how to apply it

29:54

in their research. We also have an engineering

29:56

research group that's working closely with biologists because

29:59

it turns out. out that engineering

30:01

principles are essential to explicating

30:03

what's happening in biological systems. Well, what

30:05

does that tell you about their origin

30:07

and what framework are those people working

30:09

out of? It's a design framework. And

30:12

so there's this whole revolution in biology that sometimes

30:14

is called systems biology. We don't just look at

30:16

the molecules, we look at the logic of the

30:19

systems and how they were put together to understand

30:21

them best. So yeah, and

30:23

that way of looking at life is attracting a lot

30:25

of young talent. And so I think,

30:27

you know, sometimes I think Thomas Kuhn said that

30:30

scientific revolutions happen one funeral at a

30:32

time. We don't wish anyone

30:34

ill, but it is simply a fact of the

30:37

matter that as a younger generation comes into science

30:39

and they're finding, they're getting, they're connecting to

30:41

people like Jim Tour on the internet or

30:44

Gunter Beckley or many others, they're saying, hey, maybe there

30:46

is a different way to look at, look at living

30:48

systems and maybe it's going to be more fruitful. And

30:50

I'd like to, I'd like to pursue my science within

30:52

that framework. Well, this has been

30:54

one of my favorite interviews, which is only what I

30:57

expect from Stephen Myers. Steve, thanks

30:59

so much. It's great to see you and really

31:01

fascinating. I know people can find your work

31:03

at the Discovery Institute. I know there are

31:05

videos there that are just terrific. It's

31:08

always great to talk to you. Thank you

31:10

very much for coming on. Fantastic. And best

31:12

website for our content or my content right

31:14

now is one for the new book, Return

31:16

to the God hypothesis.com. We've got animations and

31:19

debates and then you can navigate to the

31:21

work of other people on our network from

31:23

there. So that's a good site for people.

31:25

Thank you. Thanks.

31:27

Great to see you. Thanks.

31:29

Excellent. Okay. Thank

31:31

you. Really fascinating. Absolutely great

31:33

talk. Go

31:36

find him. Return to the God hypothesis

31:39

is his site. And my site

31:41

is The Daily Wire where you can see

31:43

the Andrew Clavin show on Friday. I'm Andrew

31:45

Clavin. Thank

31:52

you.