Participants: Stan Hudson
Series Code: ITB
Program Code: ITB000001
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00:12 Hello I'm Stan Hudson speaker for In The Beginning.
00:15 Today we begin a series on a subject of the question of 00:19 where we came from. 00:21 The great theories of origin that is out there. 00:23 Today we take a look at In the Beginning. 00:26 God or hydrogen? 00:28 I hope you enjoy the program. 00:32 We are glad that you have come this evening. 00:34 We are going to talk about questions that people 00:36 have long wrestled with. 00:38 And it seems like the atmosphere for talking about 00:42 these things has gotten tense lately, 00:45 Have you noticed? 00:46 We want to be able to talk and a nice clear and easy 00:49 atmosphere this evening. 00:51 Today we are going to talk about, In the Beginning, 00:54 God or hydrogen? 00:58 Some of you made know that it was the astronomer Carl 01:02 Sagan that posed that question for us. 01:05 What he said is what? Harlow Shapley said, 01:21 we are going to be talking about those things this week. 01:24 It is really the age old question, what came first? 01:29 Do you have opinions? I bet you do! 01:33 We all have opinions of what came first. 01:35 The chicken or the egg and we will be getting into a 01:39 deeper level than just that. 01:41 It is the same old issues as to where we came from. 01:44 One of my heroes, George Harrison, said this: 02:03 Those are good questions aren't they? 02:10 In this vast universe. 02:12 These are the kind of questions we will be addressing, 02:14 here in the beginning. 02:16 Now this is a sensitive topic. 02:18 If you months ago I was invited to write an article 02:21 for the local paper. 02:22 And I did, and it had to do with cosmology buttons. 02:26 I suggested in the article that everybody has cosmology. 02:30 Cosmology is simply this, how we view reality. 02:34 The good guys, the bad guys, what's wrong, what's right, 02:38 what's out there, and what isn't out there. 02:41 The forces that are involved in this real world we live in. 02:44 I suggested that when we talk about things, we are talking 02:48 about things very near and dear to each of our hearts. 02:50 It can involve politics, it can involve all these 02:54 different things, your sense of the way things are. 02:58 When I suggested in the article that when science talks 03:03 about these things, also the scientists are expressing the 03:05 way they feel things are as well. 03:07 Sometimes we rub each other the wrong way and push each 03:12 others cosmology buttons, that was the idea. 03:15 Well I got a letter back, a letter to the editor. 03:18 It was a little warm shall we say. 03:31 And then he said this: 03:40 So just a little bit of shock there. 03:42 We want to be able to talk this week in a nice cool, calm, 03:48 and collective manner on these topics. 03:51 We want to be able to respect each other and take a look 03:53 at some things that may be different light than you have 03:56 heard talked about before. 03:58 Let's talk about these things, we do not want to push each 04:02 others cosmetology buttons. 04:04 We all have buttons and we do not want 04:06 to push them too far. 04:08 It is a shame isn't it, that it seems so often today, 04:11 science and religion are found fighting each other. 04:14 Especially in the areas of origin. 04:18 And sometimes it is not exactly clear who is winning. 04:23 It is not to fair of a fight sometimes, is it? 04:26 I love that picture don't you? That's a great picture. 04:28 Why is this such a loaded topic, such a sensitive topic? 04:35 I would like to suggest you that it does have to do with 04:38 our glasses in which we see reality. 04:41 Depending upon your philosophy of how we got here and the 04:46 forces that are involved in the universe and so on. 04:48 It will most definitely affect, for instance, how you view 04:51 how you look at suffering and pain in the world. 04:54 Warfare, how you look at those things. 04:56 It will affect how you look at science and how 04:59 you look at religion. 05:00 Your world view will shape how you consider the planet 05:03 Earth that we are living on, and questions of where 05:06 we came from. 05:07 Because we are also going to be talking about God in this, 05:10 and how God fits in. 05:12 We are most definitely going to suggest that your world 05:14 view colors how the image of God is to you. 05:19 To me that is a significant issue. 05:22 So we have two, shall we say, challenging worldviews in 05:28 terms of the subject of origins and you will notice that 05:31 Darwinist now has this logo and it is a challenge of the 05:35 Christian view of Jesus. 05:38 There is a little bit of a challenge, a tension in the air 05:42 right now on these subjects. 05:44 We do not want to have that tension. 05:45 Let's talk openly, let's talk about what people think. 05:48 Since 1982 there have been a number of Gallup polls taken 05:53 on the subject of where you think we came from? 05:55 How do you think life began? 05:56 How do you think this world came about? 05:59 Let me just ask you as a crowd, you have ideas on this. 06:05 Let's see how good you are at guessing the numbers. 06:08 There has been a little bit of a variation here and it 06:12 is fairly consistent. 06:14 How many of you think, in the American a population, a 06:18 percentage believes in a fairly recent, somewhat Biblical 06:22 view of how we got here? 06:24 A short special creation by a Creator God? 06:27 Take a guess! 06:28 In the United States what you think the number is? 06:30 78%, 50%, 32%, okay we have it all over. 06:39 The range is somewhere between 44 and 47%. 06:44 It's fairly consistent that believes this. 06:47 Now Theistic evolution is the belief, in essence, in a nut 06:52 shell, that Darwin was right but God is doing it somehow. 06:55 That God is driving evolution. 06:57 How many of you think believe that? Percentagewise! 07:01 In the United States, and again there's a little variation. 07:04 Pick a number! 30. 60. 07:09 35 to 40% believe that. 07:12 So please notice the total number is anywhere from 82 to 07:15 87% that somehow there was a God who is involved with us 07:22 being here, either through special creation or evolution. 07:25 Now natural evolution down at the bottom is in essence what 07:28 is taught in the school among scientists. 07:32 Natural Evolution is what we would call material evolution or 07:35 without a Creator or a force with intelligence. 07:40 Natural evolution is somewhere around 9 to 13% of the 07:45 American population. 07:46 That number has not changed in approximately 100 years. 07:50 The number that has changed is the Theistic evolution 07:53 number, and that number has changed. 07:55 It might represent those who are struggling with a high 07:58 view of science, and a high view of religion. 08:01 They're trying to put two things together. 08:03 So theistic and natural evolution are the 08:07 2 at the bottom there. 08:09 Now you are probably going to fall into one of the 7 boxes 08:14 that I'm going to show you right now. 08:15 There is roughly 7 general ways to looking at 08:18 how we got here. 08:19 First of all by Creation, the Biblical story, short age. 08:23 God creates in 6 days. 08:26 The Fossil Record is the record of the Genesis flood. 08:28 That is one group. 08:30 That was the one that was the 44 to 47%. 08:33 The Gap-Theory is that God created in six days, but prior 08:38 to that in ages long ago there were dinosaurs and other 08:42 things that we see in the fossil record. 08:44 That is a way to try to harmonize the Biblical record 08:47 with the popular science view. 08:49 So God created long ages ago, but more recently started 08:53 over again with his six-day creation. 08:56 That is the Gap Theory. 08:58 There are different forms of the Gap Theory and different 09:00 forms of the Progressive Creation Theory were God creates 09:03 but takes long ages to do it. 09:06 That is not quite evolution, that is special creation 09:09 stretched out over millions of years. 09:11 Moving down here to a Theistic Evolution, just as I 09:14 suggested before, basically God is the mover of evolution 09:20 and solves problems in evolution by direct acts. 09:25 That's the Theistic-Evolution 09:28 there is Deistic Evolution, I hope I'm not boring you 09:31 with the technical terms and we will get into quite a few 09:34 technical terms, sorry. 09:35 I don't know how else to do it. 09:37 Deistic Evolution is that God may have started with life, 09:42 may have started something at the very beginning but then let 09:45 natural forces take over and developed through evolution, 09:48 without His involvement whatsoever. 09:50 This is catching on lately. 09:53 That is Space Ancestry. 09:55 This is from people like Francis Crick, a Noble prize 09:59 winner, who believes that perhaps, because there's not 10:03 enough time in the fossil record, maybe on planet Earth 10:06 at a planet somewhere else where it took more billions of 10:09 years life began and somehow got seated on this planet 10:14 and that solves the problem of origin of life on 10:17 this planet and then evolved to what we are now. 10:20 That could be either from some intelligence, a space 10:26 traveler planting something here, or even a planet 10:31 exploding and sending a rock through space that had life 10:33 on it and came here and somehow generated into evolution 10:38 and life as we have it today. 10:40 That is that one and finally simply Material Evolution 10:43 that has simply no God in the picture whatsoever. 10:46 It is all explained by natural causes. 10:48 So I am guessing that most of you fall in one of these 10:50 boxes, most people do. 10:54 Now as we talk about the presence of a God the question 10:57 is, What did God creative if God did create if God is involved in 11:00 the picture at all what did He do? 11:02 And this is very much discussed. 11:04 Did He create matter and let matter takeover? 11:07 Did He create organic molecules or even life and step back 11:13 at let it develop on its own? 11:15 Did God create a one cell amoeba and leave to evolve? 11:20 Did He go a step further and maybe create something from 11:25 monkeys, or create something closer to man? 11:27 Or did He specifically create man, as this Michelangelo 11:32 portrait famously depicts? 11:34 Or has God been uninvolved in the whole process? 11:38 Does He exist at all? 11:39 And trust me there are people who believe there is a God 11:44 but He is not involved and so we will take a look at that. 11:48 Now get let's take a look at the popular belief among scientist. 11:51 This is from a famous Nature article of 11:55 about 10 years ago. 12:02 These are people in the nation that have a lot to do with 12:04 what is taught on the subjects of origins. 12:08 They were asked their own personal beliefs. 12:11 How many of you believe in a personal God? 12:13 This is not a rank and file science professor or scientist 12:17 doing research, these are science leaders. 12:20 I want you to understand and separate that out so you 12:22 have an understanding. 12:23 These are people who direct policy on the subject. 12:26 How many of you believe, what percentage believe 12:28 in a personal God? Take a guess on that one? 12:31 Let's see how you are there. 12:34 Oh, you are quite on this one. 12:36 60% believe in a personal God? How about 7%! 12:40 How many disbelieve, now this is in the Nature magazine, 12:44 so you may write this down for a reference if you want. 12:49 Disbelieve in a personal God, how many of you think it is 12:53 a high number or a low number? 12:54 Disbelieve in a personal God? 12:56 That is the opposite of believe. 12:58 How many disbelieve that there is a God? 12:59 Who would say I do not believe there is a personal God? 13:03 72%, that is a very high view. 13:08 Agnostic or doubt, or simply don't know, 13:12 have doubts about it, it's 21%. 13:14 So if you add the agnostics along with those who do not 13:17 believe in God, you have a very high percentage of 93%. 13:20 And you would struggle to find a higher percent in any 13:25 area in America, I would think. 13:28 In any field and so on. 13:31 So that means, what does that mean to the whole subject? 13:35 That means when their cosmologies, their worldviews 13:38 are challenged they get defensive like you and I do when 13:42 we get ours challenged. 13:44 Science from the Latin word scientia, is knowledge and 13:49 of course a science method is how we do science today. 13:59 They are the lucky ones in our universities. 14:01 The title of their subject science means knowledge. 14:05 That means all of the departments are not, 14:06 isn't that right? 14:10 Oh well, it is pretty cool. 14:11 Here's the challenge, look through glasses, religion, 14:17 as the old saying goes religion is supposed to tell you: 14:24 the idea there is to separate them, let science stay over 14:27 there and religion stay over there. 14:29 Keep them separate, those are separate things. 14:31 Here's the problem: both have an interest in where does 14:35 Heaven come from? How did we get the heavens? 14:39 Religion and science both have a vested interest in trying 14:44 to understand where things came from. 14:46 When they come up from it in a different way, come up with 14:49 different conclusions, there it is going to be some 14:52 conflict and that is a conflict we see today. 14:55 It has not always been that way. 14:57 The German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler 15:00 it's said, when he made discoveries he said: 15:05 many of you know about Sir Isaac Newton who was considered 15:09 by many to be the father of modern science. 15:15 It's another way of saying it used to be that scientists 15:18 had no problem believing in God. 15:20 That God was involved somehow in us getting here. 15:23 It has changed over the years and we will talk about what 15:27 were the things that naturally happened. 15:29 We are going to start with Galileo Galilee, and of course 15:33 the famous Italian astronomer who was very good at 15:37 developing the telescope. 15:39 Here's one of his original works. 15:41 You know some of the stories involving Galileo and the 15:44 medieval Church, and how the church seemed to be slow to 15:48 catch on to good science and actually resisted 15:51 science in his case. 15:52 I just want to give you a couple more facts about Galileo 15:56 story that people do not often hear about. 15:58 Galileo of course, was beginning to believe the Copernican 16:02 Theory of the Earth, excuse me the Sun was the center of 16:07 the solar system and the earth circled around the sun. 16:10 The Earth was no longer, in his opinion, to be considered 16:13 the center of the universe, or the solar system, 16:16 or anything, it was a planet revolving around a Sun. 16:20 You may remember that the medieval Church was unhappy 16:24 with that and resisted him. 16:26 One of the things you don't hear about is that Galileo's own 16:28 personality clashed with some of his colleagues in the 16:33 University and was actually the colleagues in the 16:35 University that were first unhappy with Galileo. 16:38 Animals which move, this is a professor: 16:48 and that was a professor of mathematics, 16:49 Scipio Chiaramonti who had a problem with Galileo. 16:54 It wasn't until Galileo steadfastly stuck to his guns 16:57 that they what over his head and turned him over to the 17:00 church and said he needed to be quieted down on this. 17:04 This was not only bad science, it was bad theology. 17:07 Of course he was called in to the Inquisition and told he 17:11 was not to talk about this. 17:13 Now this is a problem because this has always used as an 17:16 illustration of how the church should stay out of science. 17:19 They should not hinder good scientific effort and 17:25 certainly not condemn people for doing it. 17:28 So this has been used as an example and is a little bit 17:31 more complex than what is usually talk about. 17:33 Washington Irving did not help the matter when he wrote his 17:36 life and voyages of Christopher Columbus in the early 17:39 19th century, it was a very hot selling book. 17:44 It was about Columbus sailing to the west and discovering 17:47 the United States, America and the Western world. 17:49 What he did in his story, it was a novel and wasn't a 17:53 historical writing, it was a historical novel. 17:56 He said that Christians were the ones that were 17:59 telling Columbus, don't go west you will be sailing 18:02 right off the earth, you will go off the edge because 18:05 it is a flat world. 18:06 So that image of Christians supposedly telling people 18:10 that they believe in a flat earth has stuck to this day. 18:14 Even though we know historically that virtually nobody 18:18 in the Middle Ages, and certainly nobody that we know 18:21 about or wrote about particularly actually believed 18:24 in the flat Earth. 18:25 People in those days could see the mast of a ship coming 18:28 before the rest of the ship appeared and the only real 18:31 issues in the discussion of Columbus were we are not 18:35 sure how far Asia is by going west. 18:38 We do not know what is out there and 18:39 those type of concerns. 18:41 It's too expensive, whatever, those type of issues were 18:43 brought up but not sailing off the planet. 18:46 So again, creation as Christians we have a tendency to 18:51 be labeled as flat Earthers, it is pretty much from this 18:55 image that Washington Irving painted. 18:57 Let me go back even further, let me go back beyond 19:01 medieval times always back to the Greeks and Aristotle. 19:05 Right now we are going to show you three figures in 19:07 science that were pretty much critical in moving 19:14 science in a different direction, especially on 19:16 the subject of origins. 19:18 We are going to talk about Aristotle, Newton, 19:20 and of course, Darwin. 19:22 Now let's talk first about Aristotle. 19:24 Aristotle in his day, just like Christians have, had a 19:30 narrative, had a story, had available to him a story on 19:35 how the gods had created the world and had been involved. 19:39 He had this story in front of him, stories plural, on how 19:44 things came about. 19:46 Aristotle was one of the first people that said forget 19:49 narrative, we are going to go with observation. 19:52 Observation, now what do we see? 19:55 That will be the basis of how we will determine 19:57 how we got here. 19:58 The Greeks were great observers, for philosophers were 20:01 great observers of nature. 20:03 Many of their observations are still considered 20:05 to be pretty good. 20:07 The one problem day had with Aristotle and Ptolemy was 20:11 they did come up with, many of them, not all of them, 20:14 but many of them be believed in the earth be in the 20:16 center of things. 20:17 That was accepted by the medieval Church as well 20:19 for many centuries. 20:21 Now when Newton came along, he had also available to him 20:25 a narrative, he had the Bible, and the Bible has the story 20:28 of how we got here. 20:30 People that had lived before transferred their story down 20:33 through the ages with this information. 20:35 He had narrative, but he also had observation. 20:38 He accepted narrative is being a good source of 20:41 information and nevertheless he added to it observation, 20:45 and combined the two. 20:46 When Darwin came along, Darwin and also had narrative the 20:50 Bible was available to him, but he like Aristotle rejected 20:53 narrative and went back to using strictly observation for 20:57 understanding how we got here. 21:00 Rightly or wrongly, I'm not casting any other comments 21:03 other than that, but that is pretty much some of the major 21:06 events on the subject of origin. 21:08 It's very simplified, but there is something there. 21:11 The Greeks also has some ideas about how, we might 21:14 consider, to be evolution. 21:16 Anaximander said: 21:21 it was Aristotle who developed the Scala Natura, which was 21:26 a stair step up of nature. 21:28 A way of classifying things in nature starting with dirt 21:31 and moving up to men and actually moving up to God. 21:35 I think I could classify it this way, dirt doesn't ever 21:41 think, man thinks the most and that is the closest to 21:45 being divine, because the Greeks were big into thinking. 21:47 So if you could think you were really developed. 21:49 They had this hierarchy thing of development. 21:53 Then Lucretius also said: 21:59 What does that sound like? 22:00 Pretty close to Darwin, wouldn't you say? 22:03 The fittest of biological mutations survive, of course 22:06 that is a paraphrase but that is what he believed. 22:09 The Greeks were actually think along the 22:11 lines of evolution. 22:13 What change the scientific world from accepting narrative, 22:17 like Newton did, and moving away from accepting the Bible, 22:22 and the witnesses in the Bible as being a reasonable 22:25 source of information, What moved them away? 22:27 What was going on in Darwin's day? 22:30 The subject can be best illustrated by humanism. 22:35 What is humanism? 22:37 This is straight out of Wikipedia: 23:00 So humanism is truth sought through human investigation 23:03 and it rejects belief in God, or anything like God. 23:08 Texts that supposedly come from God. 23:11 Now that is humanism and humanism was sweeping Europe in 23:14 the time of Darwin. 23:16 It actually predates Darwin by maybe a century. 23:20 in Europe, take a look at the French revolution that 23:21 see humanism. 23:23 Let's talk about Charles Darwin for a minute because we 23:25 are coming up on the 200th anniversary, in just a couple 23:28 months, of Darwin's birth. 23:30 And the hundred and 50th anniversary of the publishing of 23:34 origin of the species. 23:35 So next year is going to be a big year for Darwin. 23:37 So let's talk about Darwin. 23:39 You know that in 1831 through 36 he set sail on the 23:44 HMS Beagle to the Galapagos Island and it was there he 23:47 saw things that led him to his theory of natural selection 23:52 as being the engine for pushing evolution. 23:55 He wrote on the origin of species and published 23:58 it in 1859. 24:00 Here's a few facts about Darwin because I find him an 24:02 interesting fellow. 24:03 Now this is a picture of the Galapagos Islands. 24:07 What he saw there is first of all he was on a map making 24:12 research journey with the Beagle for the British. 24:16 When he got to the marketplace, one of the marketplaces in 24:19 the Galapagos Islands, he noted that the natives could 24:23 tell what island tortoises were from by the shape 24:27 of their shells. 24:30 He thought that was interesting. 24:31 He collected some birds, he thought there were different 24:34 kinds of birds like mockingbirds and blackbirds. 24:36 When he took them back to England a bird expert looked 24:39 at them and said these are all finches. 24:41 These are all finches, are there this much variety? 24:43 Yes they are all finches. 24:45 From that he began to deduce that they had a common 24:49 ancestor and they developed into different kinds of finches 24:52 based on the habitats they were living in. 24:55 They had adapted to it. 24:57 What he really saw, and these are very loaded definitions 25:02 but they are definitions I'm going to use. 25:04 Microevolution, what he saw was a: 25:16 Birds changing in to other birds. 25:19 What he proposed from that: 25:30 Which is basically way different kinds of animals. 25:33 Way different kinds! 25:34 So he assumed that if you go back far enough in time, 25:37 there are animals changing a little bit over time, 25:40 by their habitats helping them to survive 25:42 in different changes. 25:44 If you just wind the clock back, maybe they get simple 25:47 all the way back to the beginnings of life. 25:50 This is what he proposed. 25:54 Now I find Charles Darwin a very fascinating person: 25:57 his grandfather was an evolutionist, his father was a 26:02 big guy named Robert Darwin, a doctor, a physician. 26:07 His mother, who he was very attached to, was a Wedgwood. 26:11 You heard of the Wedgwood China making company? 26:15 That was her father that was in charge of that. 26:19 She died in 1817 and Darwin was barely 8 years old, 26:26 tremendous lost to Darwin personally, when his mother 26:29 died when he was eight. 26:30 He was born in 1809 and trained to be a minister. 26:33 What I tell people is watch out for guys trained to be 26:36 ministers who talk on the subject of science. 26:39 He signed up for mapmaking and science projects on the 26:44 HMS Beagle, that is an interesting story. 26:46 We won't get into a lot about that, but it was basically this, 26:49 the HMS Beagle had a maiden voyage prior to this. 26:53 This was the second voyage. 26:55 The first voyage the captain committed suicide. 26:57 They looked at the history of him and thought the next 27:01 time we said the ship out and it goes for years, 27:03 a long voyage, we need to have a companion for the captain 27:07 so he has a friend that can talk with him and he won't 27:10 he won't get so lonely. 27:11 Then they start working this job description and said 27:15 maybe he ought to be a naturalist that can do some 27:16 research and Darwin was just out of college. 27:19 So he signed up for it and became a gentleman companion 27:22 of Captain Fitz Roy. 27:24 Captain Fitz Roy gave him a book called principles of 27:26 theology by Charles Lyle. 27:28 That suggested a long age and he studied it and started to 27:32 think even more along those lines. 27:34 He came back and wrote the origin of species in 1844. 27:38 It published 15 years later, and the reason he did it 27:40 15 years later, two reasons, 1. He thought it was 27:43 controversial, wasn't sure he had all his science there 27:46 to support it, so he was careful. 27:48 2. Another fellow was about ready to publish a similar 27:51 theory and so he decided, he was urged by his friends to 27:55 publish it, so he did. 27:56 His religion was, he started out as a Christian. 27:58 He became a Deist, believe in God but God wasn't 28:02 involved with the world. 28:03 Finally he became an agnostic later in his life. 28:06 I know there is a legend out there that he recanted, 28:12 or converted on his deathbed and that is actually 28:15 not true, it didn't happen. 28:17 He never did recant although we think we know about the 28:19 story of what was going on there. 28:21 His wife have remained a steadfast Christian 28:23 all of her life. 28:24 He suffer from panic disorders and they were beginning 28:27 to think that it had to do with his mother's death and 28:30 separation anxiety, but he dealt with severe anxiety 28:34 attacks much of his life. 28:35 He died in 1882 and was buried in Westminster Abbey not 28:39 far from Isaac Newton's place. 28:42 This is the cover page, interior page for his book. 28:46 This is the full title: 28:56 There has been few books that have changed the world 28:59 as much as this book. 29:01 Here is something that he proposes in the book, he says: 29:19 He was depended upon their being slight changes over 29:22 time and he felt the fossil record in his day, 29:26 the 1800's was not complete and assumed the fossil record 29:28 would be fleshed out with news discovery's that they would 29:32 find those successive little modifications that would 29:35 support his theory. 29:37 And here's the famous tree of life, Evolutions Tree of 29:41 Life, and you will notice that down at the bottom there is 29:44 a simple single cell, organism of some kind. 29:46 Through that an early on it breaks into plants. 29:49 Then soon after from vertebrate to invertebrate and so on 29:52 and up the scale. 29:54 Some people talk about maybe plants ought to be a separate 29:58 thing, maybe they started by themselves. 30:01 But anyway this is evolutions tree of life. 30:04 The complexity we see in the world today, via all of these 30:07 evolutionary changes and breaking off into taxonomic 30:12 groups, microevolution. 30:14 Something that I propose to people on this subject, and 30:18 yeah you have to think about this. 30:20 Not everybody will except it. 30:21 Here is one way to look at it. 30:23 The humanist of the 19th century, there were three great 30:26 figures, Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin and Karl Marx. 30:30 Sigmund Freud was one who came along and said forget about 30:33 this God business, let me tell you what makes a human 30:36 being tick, what moves and motivates a human being. 30:41 Forget the God part. 30:42 The question I ask people is Sigmund Freud considered as 30:45 influential today as he did back in the day? 30:49 Are his theories still top shelf or are he considered 30:52 somewhat passé in psychology today? 30:55 Interestingly, historically but not necessarily referred 31:01 to a lot today. 31:02 The answer to that is Freud pretty much out in terms of 31:06 being thought of as a source today. 31:13 Karl Marx, let's go over to the right hand side. 31:16 Karl Marx like wise said, forget God and I will tell you 31:22 how human societies act, forget God, let's remove God from 31:26 the picture and talk about how society should be 31:28 formed and operated. 31:30 Once again I asked the same question, Karl Marx's 31:34 been tried, is he up there top shelf now or a 31:38 little bit passé? 31:40 It is a little bit of a passé side, a little bit out not 31:43 as many, father of communism, not a lot of communist going 31:48 on today, at least new nations. 31:51 Darwin is pretty much it for humanism. 31:56 It is like the last Castle of humanism in some ways. 31:59 It is still existing and that is where you go if 32:03 you are humanist. 32:07 One of the things that Darwin had a problem with and that 32:10 is the eye, when he looked at the complexity of the eye he 32:14 admitted that it is hard to explain. 32:17 It is hard to explain from evolution minute changes. 32:20 These are his words: 32:39 He believed it incidentally, He did believed that it evolved. 32:41 but he admitted that the 32:43 complexity of eyes seem hard to imagine what would be 32:46 a halfway eye, or a third of and eye and so on. 32:49 Now if I can make this comment about science, I will give 32:54 my story briefly here in a little bit. 32:56 On my journey in science. 32:58 If I can make this observation for science, I'm speaking 33:03 with good friends here that are scientists and I may 33:06 hear about this later. 33:07 But my observation is that if science has regularly made 33:12 a mistake in its observations, it would be in the area of 33:16 oversimplifying what it looks at. 33:19 Now what I mean is erring on the side of assuming that 33:23 things are more simple than they really are. 33:25 Missing the complexity. 33:27 For instance in alchemy, alchemy being a proto-science of 33:33 Europe in the 12th century, 14th century. 33:38 Alchemy, almost every king had an alchemist on staff. 33:42 Fully paid for and could have his laboratory, why? 33:45 Because alchemist thought among other things it would be a 33:48 simple matter to change lead into gold. 33:51 Wouldn't that be an economically good thing to do? 33:55 Right now you and I would like that very much, to be able 33:57 to take a big bar of lead and turn it into gold. 34:00 So people tried to do that and people were on staff for 34:04 centuries, Royal staffs for centuries and yet it was never 34:08 done, there were no evidence you could do it. 34:10 But they assumed you could because it was simple, 34:12 Lead was soft, heavy and gold was soft and heavy. 34:15 We were just talking about changing the color pretty much. 34:18 Not an awful lot more so they assumed it was simple. 34:21 Of course we know now that it is much more 34:24 complicated than that. 34:25 If science traditionally does that, I would have to say 34:28 that is a consistent problem I think with science. 34:31 Again, if you assume things come by natural law, you are 34:36 going to assume that at some level they should 34:38 be easy to explain. 34:40 Now into this mix came a controversial figure by the name 34:45 of Dr. Thomas Kuhn. 34:46 In the middle of the 20th century, 1960s right in there, 34:50 he wrote a book called the Structure of 34:53 Scientific Revolution. 34:54 He was a Harvard trained physicist. 34:57 In his mind in studying physics, he wanted to study the 35:01 history of physics so he went all the way back to 35:03 Aristotle and made a certain quest in his mind. 35:06 He said, I am going to learn how Aristotle saw his world 35:10 if it kills me, I'm going to get into his head and see 35:13 things like he saw it. 35:14 He had a big quest to try and do that, he spent 35:16 a lot of time and finally figured out that he now sees 35:19 how Aristotle saw. 35:21 Well that led him in another journey which was like, How do 35:25 we change our models through the years in science? 35:29 He came to the conclusion that it is not easy for science 35:32 to change their basic models. 35:35 He finds it operates, in fact he came up with a term that 35:39 if was used in grammar school, for grammar illustrations. 35:43 He used it in a scientific way and called it a paradigm, 35:47 it is now a model. 35:48 He said that science uses paradigm shifts, models to 35:52 explain things, theories are models to 35:56 explain how things work. 35:57 He says, generally speaking, historically it has taken a 36:01 huge, he called them scientific revolutions, to change 36:06 basic models or basic views. 36:08 I can use alchemy is an example and that went on for 36:11 centuries before they figured that 36:13 wasn't a good model. 36:14 So science is slow in changing models and maybe it should 36:18 be, maybe that's the nature science, it takes and over 36:20 whelming amount of evidence to change a model. 36:22 But nevertheless that is the case. 36:24 And Kuhn even went so far to say, and here's where he 36:28 rubbed scientists the wrong way, or a least stirred the 36:31 pot, shall we say on the subject. 36:32 Especially the way scientists think it is not as rational, 36:41 or objective as sciences had a tendency to view itself. 36:46 He said we are not as unemotional creatures as perhaps 36:53 we like to think we are. 36:54 We bring with ourselves presuppositions, models and we 36:59 don't have a tendency to challenge those models as 37:01 rapidly as we think we do. 37:03 We actually look for data, more or less, that supports 37:06 our existing model. 37:08 He says it takes a scientific revolution to change those 37:12 models and of course this has been a controversial thing. 37:15 I read one place where this book is considered, 37:18 his second, or third. 37:19 I would be curious to know what the first one was, 37:21 the second or third most important philosophical book 37:24 of the 20th century because it challenged, and as I read more, 37:27 I think science more or less begrudgingly admits that at 37:31 least something to what he says. 37:33 Paradigm shift, you have heard that term before. 37:37 He is the one that coined that. 37:39 Talk about paradigms, you have a intelligent design or 37:44 undirected forces pushing us, or pushing things 37:47 to were we are today. 37:49 That is really a worldview. 37:51 In the beginning, let's talk about chances. 37:53 Chance in math, it is a known fact among scientists that 37:58 the highest proportion of scientists believe in God are 38:02 mathematicians, I often joke it is because they 38:05 crunch the numbers. 38:06 But anyway, excuse me I just had to say that. 38:08 Let me crunch some numbers with you. 38:11 In the beginning God, what are the chances in front of 38:14 your laptop you type this out perfectly 38:16 without any mistakes. 38:18 Now there are 20 letters, What is a sequence probability? 38:22 There are 20 letters and spaces in "in the beginning God". 38:26 Now if you 26 possible alphabets at a space making it 38:32 the 27th, you have a 1 in 27 chance for the first 38:35 letter to the "I". 38:43 What are the chance to type all of those letters in 38:47 exactly that way with those spaces? 39:04 I will give you another way of illustrating it. 39:06 If you were able to try it one billion times a second, 39:10 to change it every second to another 2nd billion times and 39:14 try to type that out in order, we haven't had enough time 39:18 in the universe in 14 billion years. 39:21 There has not been enough seconds yet to have gotten to 39:23 "in the beginning God". 39:25 That gives you probability chances? 39:27 Now you and I can recognize random forces. 39:31 Your mind in my mind is trained to recognize that this 39:35 Mountain was shaped by random erosion. 39:38 Wind, rain, what ever, it has a random shape there. 39:41 But when we see something like this, can we account for 39:45 this in randomness? 39:47 What are the chances? 39:48 You might say we have a bazillion universes with a 39:51 bazillion Mountains and maybe there is a chance it 39:54 would look like this. 39:55 Our mind automatically recognizes organization and that 39:59 somebody has been here. 40:01 Those are some of the issues. 40:03 Now Francis Crick said this: 40:11 My question would be is why would you have to 40:13 constantly do that? 40:14 Why not go with the evidence? 40:16 Those are some of the things that I asked questions about. 40:19 Let's give another example, another illustration. 40:22 This is in Marble Colorado. 40:25 Have any of you been to Marble Colorado? 40:26 What is the famous for? Marble! 40:31 These big chunks are from a quarry there in 40:34 Marble Colorado and I took a picture there of them. 40:36 I noticed some of the work and thought okay, wait a minute. 40:45 What are the chances that at the base of this hill there 40:48 is a nice rectangular chunk of marble. 40:53 Through time little chunks roll down the hill, 40:56 earthquakes, wind, and whatever, little shakes. 40:59 Little rocks come along and they come down and knock off 41:02 a piece off this rectangle. 41:06 Over time, how many times would you take to get 41:08 something like that? 41:10 Again you might say, it could happen. 41:13 You know maybe, but when we see organization like that 41:17 symmetry and everything, we would suggest, we would guess 41:21 that somebody was behind a hammer and chisel making that 41:25 and not rocks coming down the hill. 41:40 No less than the person of Sherlock Holmes said that. 41:44 Well through time, the last century or so, George McCready 41:49 Price led, I don't know if you heard of George McCready Price, 41:53 a well-known geologist, in the early 20th century 41:57 began to challenge evolution on science basis. 42:01 He wrote some things and a fellow by the name of Henry 42:04 Morris read some of his work and was impressed. 42:07 Henry Morris was a hydrologist, a water expert on the 42:11 forces of what water does. 42:13 He wrote the book entitled The Genesis Flood which became 42:16 something of a standard for what would become a field that 42:20 we call Scientific Creationism. 42:23 A lot of people feel that is an oxymoron, 42:25 and I understand that. 42:27 Michael Denton also wrote, and this fellow was very 42:31 bright, wrote, and he is not a creationist, wrote a book 42:34 entitled, Evolution A Theory in Crisis. 42:36 Others have written books including Philip Johnson, 42:38 Darwin On Trial, there are a lot of books. 42:40 Philip Johnson is the father of Intelligent Design. 42:44 These people are not creationists as such, believing 42:48 in a short age creation, but they do believe that facts and 42:51 numbers and crunching the data seem to suggest there is 42:55 an intelligent designer out there. 42:57 Now you can do good science and accomplish some things 43:02 even in modern eras. 43:03 Werner von Braun and you wonder who Werner von Braun was? 43:08 If there was a man responsible for putting us on the moon, 43:12 it would have been Dr. Werner von Braun. 43:15 He didn't quite have the same worldview as modern 43:19 scientists tends to have. 43:20 I want to tell you a little bit about my journey in 43:22 science, just briefly here. 43:23 I grew up in Los Angeles, California, don't hold that 43:26 against me, but I grew up in Los Angeles, California. 43:29 A place where movies are everything, and I grew up 43:32 as a kid on movies, I loved science movies, science fiction 43:34 movies I can't help it. 43:36 Early science movies, now I don't go back that far! 43:40 Early science fiction movies tended to show scientists 43:45 as what? Mad scientists, a little bit out there. 43:49 This is fairly impertinent to some of our events around. 43:54 Science images in Hollywood is greatly improved, 43:59 Wouldn't you say? Greatly improved, very positive now. 44:04 From a mad scientist days I was carried into a belief that 44:08 science is everything. 44:09 I wanted to be a scientist and let me show you 44:11 now a clip from a movie. 44:14 We are going to show a clip right now from a movie, 44:17 that for me at least, illustrated what I wanted to be 44:20 when I grew up. 44:22 Let's take a look, we are going to take you to a movie, 44:26 to a clip right now from "The Day the World Stood Still". 44:49 So he is walking around with this boy, take a look! 44:51 "That's a man I would like to talk to. " 44:55 "Bobby, who is the greatest man in America today?" 44:57 "Well I don't know, spaceman I guess. " 45:01 "No, I was speaking of earth men, I mean the greatest" 45:04 "philosopher, the greatest thinker. " 45:06 "You mean the smartest man in the whole world?" 45:08 "Yes that would do nicely. " 45:09 "Mr. Barnhart I guess, he's the greatest scientist " 45:12 "in the whole world. " 45:13 "He lives here in Washington, doesn't he?" 45:15 That kid is me, except he has a Yankees hat on and I would 45:21 have had a Dodgers hat on. 45:22 But that kid is me, the smartest man in the world would be 45:25 Professor Barnhart. 45:27 What happens next: 45:42 The problem he's stuck on something, this brightest man. 46:00 And this is what happens next: 46:01 "Oh come in, the professor is in his study. " 46:11 Knock, knock, knock, knock, "this is the man you wanted" 46:16 "to see Professor. " 46:18 "Thank you Captain. " "I'll wait outside. " 46:23 "You wrote this?" 46:25 "It was a clumsy way to introduce myself. " 46:27 "I understand you are a difficult man to see" 46:29 "I thought you would have the solution by this time. " 46:33 "Not yet, that is why I wanted to see you. " 46:35 "All you have to do now is substitute this expression," 46:38 "at this point. " 46:39 "Yes that would reproduce the first term?" 46:41 "But what about the effect of the other terms?" 46:44 "Almost negligible with the a variation of parameters this" 46:47 "is your answer. " 46:48 "How can you be so sure? Have you tested this theory?" 46:51 "I find it works well enough to get me from one" 46:55 "planet to another. " 46:57 "I am Klaatu. " 47:01 "I spent two days at your Walter Reed Hospital room 309." 47:07 "My doctor's name was Major White. " 47:10 "If you are not interested or if you intend to turn me over" 47:14 "to your army, we needn't waste anymore time. " 47:27 "You may go now Captain please thank General Cutter," 47:30 "tell him I know this gentleman. " 47:37 "You have faith Professor Barnhart. " 47:39 "It isn't faith that makes good science Mr. Klaatu," 47:41 "it's curiosity. " 47:43 "Sit down please, there are several thousand questions" 47:47 "I'd like to ask you. " 47:50 Don't you love that? Several thousand questions. 47:53 You can understand a superior being like that 47:56 to be able to ask. 47:58 This idea of I just want answers, this curiosity and 48:02 openness to new sources of information. 48:05 In my minds eye, that is what I wanted to be. 48:08 I wanted to be a scientist. 48:10 So I enrolled at the University of California at Riverside 48:14 way back in the day and into this classroom I went as a 48:18 geology major a lover of scientists and still do. 48:20 For those of you who have seen me I just want to throw 48:24 that picture in. 48:25 I was going for what you would call suburban hippy, nerd 48:30 look, or something like that. 48:32 That also dates the picture. 48:35 I went there and wanted to know, I had questions about 48:38 science, but I also had this image that science would be 48:41 very open and be willing to discuss any theory about 48:44 any subject more or less if there was some 48:47 scientific validity. 48:48 Instead what I found was a very disturbing thing for me. 48:51 Instead I found a very subtle worldview that is 48:55 illustrated by this quotation from Richard Lewontin, 48:58 the Harvard Professor: 49:32 I found this pretty much the subtle thinking on the 49:39 subjects of science. 49:41 I was not a Christian, I wasn't a practicing Christian. 49:44 I think I had a belief that there was probably somebody 49:47 out there, but I had this image that we could talk about 49:49 it and I found out it was difficult to talk about. 49:53 Not impossible, and not in all settings, but difficult. 49:57 I found it discouraging for me frankly. 50:00 When we talk about materialism it is interesting that the 50:04 Bible has totally opposite view of materialism. 50:07 Of how we got here: 50:16 so there is an anti-materialism statement in the Bible. 50:19 What you see is not all that there is. 50:22 Where as materialism believes everything you see comes 50:25 from everything that you see. 50:27 That is materialism. 50:29 To show you how world views have changed, here is a 50:33 famous campus and one of their mission statements. 50:51 Where do you think that mission statement comes from? 50:53 If you know the picture there, that is Harvard. 50:55 That's were Richard Lewontin does his work today. 50:58 So you can see there's been a huge worldview, 51:02 our glasses shift, cosmology shifted over time. 51:05 Now I would like to conclude with a little story I found 51:10 in the Bible where the apostle Paul actually travels to 51:15 Athens, which at the time was the center of scientific 51:19 observation, and I might even say of proto-evolution. 51:23 Some ideas leading to evolution. 51:48 Now Epicureans and Stoics, now Epicureans come from Epicurus. 52:04 That is what Epicurus believed. 52:06 Now the Stoics, that was a belief system founded by Zeno. 52:10 Their belief system was that God is in nature and not 52:15 above it, He is in nature. 52:16 I wouldn't say of force but something like that. 52:30 Now this is where Paul comes into talk about his 52:34 view of origins. 52:49 The Areopagus is the hill next to the Acropolis in Athens 52:53 still there today, and you can go out and walk 52:56 around the same area. 52:57 Now Paul was a brilliant man and in his day he had the 53:01 rough equivalent of a Ph. D. so much so that when he was 53:04 speaking in front of Kings and Governors he will get 53:08 comments like this: 53:13 so students if you ever feel that way you understand that 53:15 there were others that felt that way too. 53:17 This is what Paul said as he addresses group of 53:21 philosophers, he said: 54:19 now what ever your view of a resurrection and how 54:22 scientifically possible it is, can I say one thing? 54:24 I don't think anybody should disagree about it. 54:27 That is there were people that lived in the first century 54:30 that were willing to die for it, they were that sure 54:33 that it happened. 54:35 Whether you take that as evidence or not there 54:37 is no question that the people of that day believed 54:40 it did happen. 54:41 He is sharing this as evidence, a narrative of evidence. 54:46 Now he is suggesting this, and they're thinking about this. 55:13 Like a resurrection, this was difficult so: 55:21 It was too challenging, it was pushing the button of 55:23 their cosmology, their worldview was being challenged. 55:26 They rejected it as insufficient evidence, so some mocked. 55:31 But interestingly some believed, they believe the evidence 55:35 was sufficient and their paradigm experienced a shift. 55:39 It's possible to shift your paradigm. 55:41 Alister McGrath also at Oxford with Richard Dawkins, 55:46 a famous atheist said this: 56:05 And of course this is making news still to this day, 56:08 the famous British atheist Anthony Flew 56:11 He had an experience of a change of his paradigm, 56:14 a change in his worldview. He said: 56:35 He had an experience of shifting his paradigm in his 56:38 worldview into looking at it in a different way. 56:42 I have had that experience in my own life. 56:44 As we present these subjects this week, I want to 56:47 encourage you to keep it as open-minded as you can. 56:50 Look at the evidence pro and con. 56:52 I want you to know that by the end this week, if you are 56:55 still here, and you can still stand me. 56:57 If you are still here I am going to be sharing with you 57:00 what I consider to be a challenges of my worldview. 57:03 I will be very honest with the things we still don't 57:06 know about and have a hard time talking about. 57:09 I will try to do it calmly and we will have a good 57:12 time talking about it. 57:13 Please come and visit us this week and be here for these 57:17 talks and we are going to open up to you some new things, 57:21 both science and narrative on the subjects of origin. 57:25 I hope you will find it interesting. 57:26 I'm going to deal with what I consider to be the very 57:29 best question that anybody ever asked, 57:32 somebody of my persuasion. 57:33 That is if you believe that God really is around, or He 57:40 had something to do with us being here, 57:41 Where did that He go? 57:43 To show you that I'm not scared so much that I won't 57:48 tackle a big one, that is a big one and I will try to 57:53 tackle that with you here. 57:54 Thank you very much for coming and hope you enjoyed what 57:56 we had to share. |
Revised 2014-12-17