4 Burst results for "Dr Steven Maier"
Cross Examined Official Podcast
"dr steven maier" Discussed on Cross Examined Official Podcast
"Of ideas. His name is dr. Peter goes e and now that name may be familiar to you because peter is an atheist who wrote a book called a manual for creating eight the number of years ago. It's sort of like the atheist equivalent to greg coco's tactics book you know. How can we ask people questions to get them to become atheists but burgos ian in recent years has become so frustrated with leftism on his campus that he actually started going to campuses with the head of ratio christie which is a christian group on campus. That does apologetic headed by corey. Miller so peter and corey would go around to these universities and really talk about freedom of speech and academic freedom. Well it just bubbled over to such a point this past week that he resigned from portland state university and you need to read his resignation letter. We don't have time to read it all here but if you type in peter goes and resignation letter you will be able to find all this letter and you ought to read it. I just wanna read too quick paragraphs and get a commentary from dr steven maier on this. Because there's implications not only for academic freedom and peer review. But there's also an implication or something going on here that a new religion is being formed as the old atheism is dying. there's a new religion being formed. Anyway here is what he says in the middle of his letter. I never once believe. Nor do i now nor nor do i do now that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion rather i sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought to help them gain the tools to get to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions. This is why. I became a teacher. And why i love teaching but brick by brick the university and here. He's talking about portland. State university oregon. The university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible it has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a social justice factory whose only inputs were race gender and victimhood. And who's only output get this. I think this is brilliant. Whose only outputs were grievance and division. That's peter goes ian and his name if you want to spell it and you ought to spell it and a find this letter. Peter goes in b. o. G. h. o. s. s. i. a. n. b. o. g. h. o. s. s. i. a. n. Dr steven maier. How do you react to this. Well we we certainly have lost sympathy for people who have been bitten by. This academic cancelled culture. I think you. And i were talking before we started the program It scientists advocating. Intelligent design were Were cancelled before. Getting cancelled was cool. And so we we know something about this This albeit somewhat indirectly in two thousand and four. I wrote a peer reviewed article for the proceedings of the biological society of washington. The oldest reviewed biology journal in america. It was edited by one of the smithsonian senior scientists. Richard sternberg sternberg sent the paper out for peer review. It was eventually approved after the process of some revisions and once it was published. It was advocating the theory of intelligent design as an explanation for the what i call the cambridge information explosion. The information that was necessary to build the cambridge which emerge so abruptly in the fossil record. It was one of the first. Peer reviewed articles advancing intelligent design. And about a week after it was published in the lid came off at the smithsonian and There were there were calls for stern bricks resignation. There were emergency meetings of the council. That oversaw the publication of the journal. Starting he was the editor was totally should not come to the meetings because tempers were running so high that the The chairman of the society that oversaw the journal told me couldn't guarantee his personal safety. Starnberg was transferred away from the supervision of friendly older scientists that worked with for years to to an office next door to museum administrator so they can keep an eye on enemy was denied access to a scientific samples. You couldn't get into his office eventually. He was demoted and and people tried to get him fired from the national institutes of health. We're headed joint appointment. It took a senator to intervene to save his job. So this is just one example. We had numerous examples in this sort of thing of scientists challenging the dominant darwinian narrative in the natural sciences and and scientists who go as far as at that point sternberg was not a proponent of intelligent design. He was kind of an open minded skeptic. He was a structural biologist. He was advocate of something called structuralism which is a non darwinian. Take on biology. So he was interested in airing out this discussion. I think now he is quite sympathetic to intelligent design and But this is one of many cases that we've that art team of scientists have experienced Of the same type of phenomenon so we sympathize very much professor goes in and you had mentioned. Also we're talking before that there's got to be something that's gonna fill the vacuum if atheism isn't going to be the predominant campus religion or at least cultural. There's something else going to what's what's filled the vacuum now. What does this cultural morales. Let's go non-staff yeah. I actually think that the big vacuum has been created by the loss of theistic belief in that in the academic culture and in place of that all sorts of different Secular atheistic materialistic ideologies are rushing in to fill it and one form of One of those ideological thought forms if you will is. What's called cultural marxism and there's a really interesting history about this. Goes back to the nineteen thirties when leading marxist intellectuals realized that they couldn't get the standard form of marxism to sell. It wasn't taking root in western countries that were even by that time had wide a middle class to adopt the sense that the working class where permanent victims and they were being oppressed by the bourgeois so the bourgeois proletariat sort of narrative where People who are property owners. Were pressing those who weren't wasn't taking root. And so what. Many of the marxist intellectuals did was reformulate marxist doctrine and as part of that they wanted to look for new victim groups and new oppressor groups and the multiplication of oppressor groups as part of the ideology was part of what. What cultural marxism was all about. And so that's why there's this tremendous emphasis on identity. There's there's one overriding oppressor group. And then all the other groups of can claim. I can claim victim status on the basis of not being part of that that That presser group assumed to be oppressing and of course there's a history of oppression of African americans in this country nineteen-thirties. We still had jim crow so some of these claims were were quite plausible when they were first created. But now it now..
Cross Examined Official Podcast
"dr steven maier" Discussed on Cross Examined Official Podcast
"Or some other protein. You very often get other trees and so you've got these conflicting trees based on which proteins you choose and that and all the trees can't be they can't all be bright because there's only one history of life and the conflicting trees is actually a mark of design systems. Which we we could explain in more detail and you get the same type of conflict between When when you do an analysis of anatomical characters as opposed to two protein molecules those conflicts between molecules conflicts between ma when you compare molecules in anatomical characters and you even get conflicts when you compare different anatomical characters and i document all of this in the sixth chapter of my book darwin's doubt and i'd recommend the people who really want to dive into a Do a deeper dive there as to your second question. I'll take it out of your mouth. Because i know what you're gonna ask. What's the strongest argument for for Universal common ancestry sometimes also called macro evolution. It is in fact this argument. We've been talking about. It is the strongest argument for large-scale macro evolutionary. Change and a universal tree of life is not from the fossil record. The fossil record shows profound discontinuities especially at the level of what are called the higher. Taxonomic categories the big divisions of life at filo class and order show dramatic and abrupt. They showed dramatic discontinuity the abrupt appearance of major groups of animals and plants without discernible ancestors in the lower strata beneath their first appearance so the fossil record has is not actually providing strong evidence. What modern new darwinist repair to is precisely the argument. The docklands just made that. Well we can't see the connections in the fossil record but we see it in these These gra- this gradual morphing. And and we we see it in these close similarity between different Between the same jeans in different organisms and we can see the gradual morphing in the in the in the gene sequences. But in fact we do not see that we. We actually see now. Very dramatic evidence of discontinuity in genomics as we're discovering what are called orphan genes genes that lacks sequence similarity to into other genes in other presumably related organisms so the picture is not nearly as clear as doctrines and colleagues make out and instead i think we see profound evidence of discontinuity both in the fossil record and in genome analyses friends. We've talked about this concept before. In fact i talk about it in our book stealing from god. That science doesn't say anything scientists do because all data needs to be gathered data needs to be interpreted. And yes you could interpret the data in a macaluso. Mary way steve has been saying the problem is if you do that. You're going to run into other problems that don't add up to this universal tree of common. Ancestry steve you have also addressed the question and let me ask you this question. Because i've heard this as another reason to maybe suggest mak revolution is and that is the idea that there are broken genes in the same spot in different animals and we would have to say that their ancestor ancestrally related. Otherwise are we going to say that an intelligent designer put those broken genes in the same spot in species that were related. How would you respond to that. Maybe maybe i'm giving you the wrong characterization of the you've described it really accurately and it would be a good argument if it were known to be true. Okay but many of the genes that were allegedly pseudo genes that this idea of a broken genes that are no longer functional and darkens alluded to that in his answer in his in his clip. But it turns out that Many of the claims about non functionality associated with these quote unquote pseudo genes are now obsolete that the the these genes like many other sections of the genome which were dubbed junk turned out to be importantly functional and so it would be very surprising to find broken genes that exhibited the kind of sequence similarity that indicated common ancestry. Because in that case you couldn't argue that the sequence similarity was the product of a of a common designer. Why would the designer make two similar things that were not functional that it would be a good argument. If the factual predicate were solid but it's increasingly looking not to be solid and that that sudha genes that have been cited as examples of this kind of Non genes that have been cited as examples of pseudo genes are turning out to be functional just as much or perhaps the overwhelming preponderance of the the the so called junk. Dna has done so it was. It was an argument that seemed to have force. About the time francis collins used it in his book The language language. To ask you that because my question was the question was going to be. Steve francis collins not know this when he wrote language. God that that these that these so-called broken genes or junk dna wasn't really junked was areas of the genome. That did something. I don't know about the timing of that. But collins us had his name on papers that have come out since then establishing the functionality of of of of of junk dna okay so he should now know he should know now. This is a bad argument. So i remember reading that book language of god and that was one of his biggest arguments that these broken genes wouldn't have been put there by an intelligent designer. Of course he's making it theological point there too. Wouldn't have been put there by an intelligent designer. But what you're saying now is we no longer think that those were actually broken. Genes they actually have functioned correct. More and more and more of them are shown to have functioned so this this is a case where it's a kind of materialism of the gaps or a a darwinism the gaps. We're gonna we're gonna assume that they don't have function and then we've got it. We got a pretty good argument against the creation or the or in my case. The intelligent design proponent who is skeptical of universal common descent and not all people are skeptical of universal common descent. But i am and and the point is that that one by one. We're finding evidence of these pseudo genes these these these alleged sooner jeans pseudo at all they're performing important functions. So would it be fair to say that for people. Like dawkins and other evolutionist. The reason they're not open to any sort of intelligent design. Argument is because they philosophically ruled out that possibility before they even look at the evidence. Do you think that's what's going on here. A many of the evolutionary biologist will say yeah. Our view is based on evidence but they will also at some other time or out of the other side of their mouths insists that it's not scientific to consider anything but a purely undirected materialistic explanation and they will affirm principle known as methodological naturalism. Which says that. If you're going to be a scientist you have to limit your possible theories to theories that affirm strictly materialistic processes or theoretical postulates are entities. That means in other words. You can't consider intelligent design as an explanation however much he might see evidence of design. And here's another good example of that darkens recently. He tweeted that he was knocked sideways with wonder at the intricacies of the data processing machinery inside the living cell. Now dawkins is also said that biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for purpose. I would submit. This isn't a an example of him not listening or seeing what the evidence most clearly says. He's knocked sideways with wonder at the intricacies of the data processing machinery inside the living cell. He's also said the gene. The gene is uncannily like a machine code. It's uncannily computer like and well. We know from experience that that digital code machine code comes from programmers and the basis of all scientific reasoning is our uniform and repeated experience. So why shouldn't we consider the possibility at least consider the possibility that that digital information and the digital information processing capability inside living cells is actually the product of a master programmer. That's what our uniform repeated. Experience would most naturally lead us to consider even to conclude and but that's out of bounds for the contemporary evolutionary biologists. Who have adopted the principle methodological naturalism. So i do think there is an op. Priori assumption about what kind of answer scientists must come to that that governs and controls. The th the debate steve right after the break. I'm going to ask you the question. That dawkins was asked but from a different angle. What would be the one sentence that you think or the one piece of evidence that you think an evolutionist or an atheist ought to consider that intelligent design is true. But we're going to do that right after the break you're listening to. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. Name is frank turk. my guest is dr stephen. C meyer author of several seminal books including signature in the cell darwin's doubt and the newest book which came out just a few months ago called return of the god hypothesis three scientific discoveries revealing the mind behind the universe. In fact we're gonna talk about two more than right after the break. A stevens had some recent articles in both the jerusalem. Post and the new york post dealing with this issue. So don't go anywhere. We've got two more segments with dr steven maier and we'll be back with him in just two minutes. So cnn don't go anywhere. Is there really a tree of life. You covered that in the first two segments and we're going to look at what could be behind the incredibly at least it appears to be designed thing we call life and also the fine tuning of the universe. My friend dr. Steven maier steve question that dr atkins was asked is. What's the one sentence that should cause someone who's a creationist or an intelligent design people are person to To actually believe in mac revolution. Let me reverse the question and ask you. What is the one piece of evidence. You would present to. Someone like dr dawkins to say no. It really appears. Intelligent design is true. I would quote They'll gate saying the dna like a software program but much more complex than any we've ever created or doc in saying that the machine code of the gene is unkind. An kennedy computer like we know from our uniform and repeated experience that information especially in a digital or alphabetic form always comes from an intelligence source so the discovery of digital information at the foundation of life in even the very simplest living cells is powerful evidence of the activity of designing intelligence and the origin and history now steve. You have had several high profile debates many of which you can see on youtube ladies and gentlemen with atheists who you challenge them on this very point about the the digital code that we find in life. I know you've debated peter ward. You've debated peter ward it's peter atkins hitter atkins. Yeah that was on. Abc's and go ruse. Peter ward peter ward. Michael ruse lawrence krauss How did you decide. What was the most cogent response to us saying. Look in all our repeated experience whenever you see a code comes from a code or whenever you see a program always comes from a program or whenever you see digital. Code comes from a mind. How did they respond to that well. Interestingly especially if If you make this argument as it pertains to the question of the origin of the first life Interestingly leading evolutionary biologists including dockets himself will look knowledge that we have no explanation from materialistic evolutionary point of view for the origin of life and they may even acknowledge that the main reason for that is that we have been able to explain the origin of the information. That's indiana in our new that makes life possible In the film expelled That was released. Two thousand eight. I think several years ago in concluding interview dawkins acknowledged to ben stein. That that quote. No one knows how i began and he even acknowledged that we may be looking at a signature of intelligence inside the living cell but of course darkens did not attribute that I if if indeed that wouldn't be The the product of of any kind of transcendent designing it must have been it might have been designed however by some alien intelligence that seated Some simple form of life to earth After that intelligence evolved but he said by purely natural processes somewhere else so he basically kick the problem of the origin of life. Not down the road but out into space and without answering where the information would have come from. Get life going on that planet which would have been produced in evolutionary process then kicked off in evolutionary process that would have produced an advanced form of intelligence capable of designing the life. That was ceded to this. The this planet so you cover that actually in a new york post of all places article that you did back on july seventeenth of this year. Twenty twenty one. The title of it is why god is still the best scientific theory to explain our life on earth now. I know it's hard to summarize the whole article. But why is god's still the best. We've already sort of alluded to part of the answer. And that is that that positing the all the if you're looking at evidence of intelligence and statements such as the ones that i cited in the last segment from docklands that he's knocked sideways with wonder and the intricacy of the data processing machinery inside the living cells and he actually linked to an animation of this incredible process. By which the the digital coding dna is replicated and and also used to direct protein synthesis. It's it's extraordinary. We have an animation on my one of my websites called journey inside the cell which shows this process. So it's not just that we've got code inside life. It's the code is doing something it's being. It's stored transmitted and processed in order to produce the protein structures that are necessary to keep all cells alive. It's extraordinary so a lot of people. So it happens in my. I was writing in july. We were getting these new news reports about the The the unidentified aerial phenomena coming out of the navy released its report. And i pointed out that it's not just a ufo enthusiasts. Been talking about extraterrestrial intelligence. It's actually scientists and they've been doing it for now almost with francis crick back to the early one thousand nine hundred s and. They've been doing that because they've recognized this signature of intelligence inside life but they don't attribute it to a diviner transcendent intelligence. And so they've postulated an alien intelligence as the explanation. For these design features. We see in living cells even the simplest living cells. Here's the two problems with that. I it the positing an alien a designer just ends up pushing the the the ultimate question of the origin of life and the origin of the information necessary to produce it out into space without answering the question if chemistry and physics. Don't explain code that they don't explain where code comes from and to say that they would be like saying that. The bonding between incan paper explains the arrangement of the of the characters in a newspaper headline clearly. Something else is at work. It's not just chemistry. That's responsible for the information. And the headline there was an editor a writer but if that doesn't work on planet earth there's no reason to suspect that explaining the origin of information by underlying chemical processes of evolution. Will explain it anywhere else so it doesn't actually solve this problem that most need solving which is what explains the origin of information. But secondly there's something else you've got two competing design hypotheses now. The transcendent intelligence aka god hypothesis or the alien designer hypothesis. There's another whole class of evidence that the that the alien designer hypothesis definitely can't explain and that is the evidence of the fine tuning of the universe this present from the very beginning soon after and which is necessary to the fine that's necessary for life to exist in the universe at all clearly no being within the cosmos that arose long after the beginning of the universe could explain the how those fine tuning parameters were set. No being within the cosmos could explain the fine tuning of the physical universe. That's built into the very fabric of the universe. From the beginning to explain that you need an intelligence that transcends the universe that can affect the universe as a whole from the beginning and therefore a transcendent intelligence aka the god hypothesis. I think provides a much better explanation for the fine tuning than any alien designer any imminent designer within the cosmos alien or otherwise by the way friends. this is not a god of the gaps. Argument is often charge. Because stephen here is not arguing from what he doesn't know he's argon from what he does. No it's not just that we lack a natural explanation for the digital code living thing we know that digital code always comes from a mind and steve just pointed out. There's no way that you can get a natural cause for all of nature. If the universe itself came into existence out of nothing than whatever did that and whatever fine tuned it to be so has to be outside of space matter in time. So you're getting to a bean like god but we don't know if it's the christian god biology and fine tuning doesn't get you to the christian. God it might be the christian. God it could be allah or some other theistic but or maybe a da bean. You have to look at the resurrection to see if the being created. The universe is really the christian god or not when you do look at the resurrection and you realize just jesus did rise from the dead then you can say that the same being the created the universe and the fine tune the universe designed. Life is the christian god by the way i need to say this because it is the week of nine. Eleven on eleven was twenty years ago today. I can remember where i was and what was doing that day. And if you're old enough you can too. Which should tell you something about the testimony. We see in the new testament. The new testament testimony was written down within twenty to twenty five years. Particularly first corinthians fifteen of the event eye-witnesses water remembered a resurrection. They would've had no trouble remembering that. If you can remember building coming down on a traumatic day you can also remember that. Jesus rose from the dead. You would never forget that if he really did rise from the dead and these people had no reason to make that up they actually believe jesus roasting their dead from the dead and they paid with their lives for that. Aren't we go back to steve's you also have a article in the jerusalem post about steven weinberg tell us about weinberg and what you said in this article which dated august fourteenth of twenty twenty one. Well weinberg was A great physicist One of the founders of What's called the standard model of particle physics. And he for which he received the nobel prize weinberg was also one of the most outspoken scientific atheist and is famous for saying that the more the universe is comprehensible meaning to our science. The more also seems pointless and his scientific atheism therefore tended towards almost a kind of nihilism. And i think it's an interesting aspect of the modern debate. Now that this form of of aggressive scientific atheism. I think is on the wane. So the title of my article. The jerusalem post was the steven weinberg and the twilight of godless universe. I think more and more the kinds of arguments that we've been talking about the evidence. I cited three big scientific discoveries. the universe had a beginning. The universe has been finely tuned from the beginning or soon thereafter and then long after the beginning we have seen big explosions of digital information arising in our earth's biosphere making new forms of life possible which by the way i think precludes. ds to interpretation God only acts at the beginning not long after So i think neither the space alien hypothesis nor the dick designer hypothesis. Explains the evidence as well as classical theism. And you're right The kind of arguments making in the book provide basis for a for the they provide support for basic theism. but not they. Don't help adjudicate. The question of which form of theism is most likely to be true but weinberg thought all forms of theism were wrong and and was committed. Scientific atheists in irony is that he used anthropic reasoning to help define one of the most the the degree of fine tuning associated with one of the most exquisitely finely tuned parameters. Something called the cosmological constant. He also wrote a book called the first three minutes which was all about the evidence of that we have that helps us reconstruct what was going on just after the big bang but as i pointed out in the jerusalem post article the one thing that why weinberg dead despite his brilliant exposition of the first three minutes of the universe was he the one thing he couldn't do was explained what had caused the universe to begin because if matter space time and energy come into existence at a finite time ago prior to that or independent of that there is no matter to do the causing so materialistic explanations are out and yet. He was a staunch materialistic. Exactly you can't have a natural 'cause when nature itself is the effect so We're going to have another segment with dr steven. Maier talked about a little bit about academic freedom right after the break. You'll see why here in just a second so don't go away. I'm frank turk back into you may have seen in the news this week. Ladies and gentlemen eight professor from portland state university resigned his position the cause of the intolerance of what was going on in the university and from the university faculty and even the students when he tried to teach the free exchange.
Cross Examined Official Podcast
"dr steven maier" Discussed on Cross Examined Official Podcast
"And so i think there is a metaphysical or philosophical simpson for holding the well. Even if they've got the multi-diverse they still can't answer yet. Because as you just mentioned you need some sort of fine tuned universe generator to make it work. Anyway you're listening to have enough faith to be an atheist with frank. Turk dr steve. Meyer his brand new book. The god hypothesis a lot. More right after the break don't go anywhere. Welcome back to be an atheist with. Frank turk on the american family radio network by guest. Today is dr steven maier. Second week in a row and the reason we're doing two shows on this is because this seminal work needs to have a lot of attention given to it because you're gonna learn quite a bit about the evidence for god from three scientific discoveries that that steve says reveals the mind of god or reveals the mind behind the universe as you probably already know steve as his phd and philosophy of science and cambridge university. And he's written other great books like signature in the cell darwin's doubt and this is sort of his magnum opus. Nestea prior to the break. We were talking about the fine tuning argument and the atheist. Don't really have a good argument. Counterargument for that. In fact christopher hitchens so i had the opportunity debate a couple of times said yeah the fine tuning. Argument is the hardest problem to answer. But it also seems that there's information and fine tuning in the third discovery that you sort of made famous With your signature in the cell book. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that. The information we find in biology right. In fact i would argue that. The fine tuning in biology as represented by that information is even more compelling evidence for a prior intelligence as finely tuned as the universe is in its basic physics the the complexity and the informational complexity of biological organisms exceeds that life is in a sense the culmination of of of the whole process Yeah well the. The story really starts in. Nineteen fifty. Three watson and crick elucidate the structure of dna in their famous paper that they published in nature magazine nature the british science publication Nine nine hundred word article at a hugely important idea and elucidate the structure of dna in one thousand nine hundred seven fifty eight creek formulates. Something called the sequence hypothesis where he suggests that the chemical stub units that run along the interior of the dna molecule. You've got the double helix but then there are these these these sub units called basis or nuclear tied basis that run along the interior of the helix and they form a long a linear array of these these these chemicals. He proposes that these faces are functioning. Alphabetic characters written language or the digital characters like zeros and ones that we would use in software which is to say that they do not perform function in biologically virtue of their physical properties their shapes their molecular weights or anything else but instead because of their arrangement in accord with an independent symbol convention and he suggests that the arrangement of these bases are providing instructions for directing the The construction of proteins now by nineteen sixty five his sequence prothesis confirmed and what is revealed that yes indeed. There is a symbol convention. We now call called the genetic code net code so we have a code and we also have a text and the information and dna being translated by. The code is directing the construction of protein. So we have what's been what is discovered something akin to what we now use in modern manufacturing where computers are running. The show called cad cam. Computer systems design engineering. Where the. For example the boeing plant here in seattle might have engineer sitting at a console writing code for building an airplane wing. The code go down a wire. We translated into machine code. That could be read at the manufacturing center. And then that information would be used in the boeing case to put rivets on the airplane wing and in exactly the right specifications in accord with with the engineers specifications That's precisely the kind of technology that's at work in the tiniest recesses of even the simplest cells we have digital information directing the construction of mechanical parts or mechanical systems proteins and protein machines that are necessary to maintain cellular life so we have a we have digital information in a complex information transmission storage and processing system at the foundation of every living cell. Now that is a mind blowing level of integrative complexity that no anticipated and based on our experience our uniform repeated experience we know of only one caused for the origin of information build a local hero here in seattle says dna like a software program but much more complex than any we've ever devised. Richard dawkins himself acknowledges that the na contains machine code leroy hood the great biotech pioneer. Also here in. Our area simply describes dna as containing digital code will wear where does such digital information always come from in our experience programs always come for programmers and in fact whenever information especially in a digital alphabetic format we trace it back to its source. We always come to mind not material process whether we're talking about a computer program or a section of text in a book or a hieroglyphic inscriptions or information radio signal information. The hallmark of mind always comes from intelligence fact one of the early pioneers in the application of information theory to molecular biology said That creation new information is habitually associated with conscious activity so the discovery of information at the foundation of life. These great bio macromolecules is evidence. I argue in person. Signature in the cell. Is that argument in this book. it's evidence of the activity of a designing intelligence in the origin. And in the history of life. As steve i can hear the atheists and skeptics already saying you're just engaged in a god of the gaps argument dr mayer. That does it work now. You have a whole chapter in return of the god hypothesis about the god of the gaps. Argument give us a couple of minutes on why that charge.
Cross Examined Official Podcast
"dr steven maier" Discussed on Cross Examined Official Podcast
"Have to have something that is responsible for those choices if you will and the the physicists themselves model that choosing they make the choices that mathematical apparatus they choose certain sorts of constraints that gives them the outcome they want in order to model a universe like ours but that suggests that even if they could explain the origin of matter and energy out of math alone which is quite a trick because math doesn't have those causal powers. They can't explain the origin of the information necessary to give a year to produce a universe like ours to explain our universe and it seems like they think that math can somehow costings. And i think your point is as you point out and again. We're talking to stephen meyer. His brand new book. Return to the god hypothesis. You need to get friends for covering less than one percent of. What's in the book in these interviews. So you need to get the book. It's about five hundred pages. Well written easy to understand. He goes into some depth on some of these issues. So you can track with him as we go. We can't cover it all here in the interview so i highly recommend you get the book but steve. I want to ask you one of the things. I need point clarification on the singularity because i've heard the singularity described this way a point of infinite density. That would seem to me to be a category mistake if we're talking about a physical thing because you can't have an infinitely dense physical thing. So does this mean that literally when we're talking about a singularity we say infinite density that literally were talking about the creation out of nothing of all to facetime and matter. Well if we assume general relativity as the as the operative physics and the earliest part of the universe. Yes this is. What stephen hawking sh i showed in his nineteen sixty six. Phd dissertation cambridge university. And then later proved with more mathematical rigor with i. Roger penrose the oxford oxford physicist. And then george ellis the great south african physicist who was a student at cambridge at the same time talking and They show that if you go back and this is actually quite conceptual p. The math is difficult but understand concepts and the math is not difficult different expanding universe before forward direction. I'm an collecting material is stretching is getting further and further. I loot if you will if you go back in time. The material the materials Steps all those alexy's the closer closer together and eventually you'll get to the point where matter becomes infinitely compressed infinitely compress material Substance corresponds general relativity to an infinite curvature of space an infinite curvature corresponds to zero spatial volume. So you're in universities where coming up on a hard break so hold. We're gonna come back with dr steven maier. The brand new book is returned to the god. Hypothesis don't go anywhere. welcome back to. I don't have enough faith to be. Ats with frank turk in the american family radio network. Our website is cross examined dot org cross-examining with a d. On the end of it dot. Org i wanna mention them. It'd be in fort worth texas this weekend. Go to our website for details. I'm speaking at a conference on saturday. And then on sunday at a church there in fort worth all the details on our website cross examined dot org click on events fracture a calendar. You'll see it there a hope to see you there in fort worth. I'm talking to my friend. Dr steven maier. Whose brand new book is sort of his magnum. Opus return to the god hypothesis. Three scientific discoveries revealing the mind behind the universe and steve just before the break we were talking about the fact that a singularity seems to indicate that the universe came literally from nothing. And you were describing how that could be so from general relativity. Could you pick it up right there. Yeah yeah we were trying to explain general relativity and the solution to the field equations before the bumper music tried again Conceptually in einstein's theory of general relativity theory of gravity dense concentrations of matter actually curve the fabric of space or what he called space time space and time are connected and relativity so you could think of a bowling ball on a trampoline causing that the surface of the trampoline to create a kind of depression. If you put a tennis ball on the edge of the trampoline it will. It will roll towards the bowling ball. That's roughly the kind of concept. Einstein has in mind except there's no there's no trampoline surface it's space itself that is curved. Now that means in this is stephen. Hawking was thinking about during his phd sortation as a as a young student nineteen sixties. He's thinking about black holes how they curve space so tightly that nothing even like and get out of them but if you think about the expanding universe with the galaxies moving outward in the forward direction of time and then back extrapolate in your mind's eye the galaxies would be getting closer and closer and closer together and eventually the matter would all conceal causing space to curb extremely tightly. And you keep going back. Further in time you too limiting case where the curvature of goes to an infinite and infinite curvature an infinitely tight curves space corresponds to zero spatial volume and at that point that marks the beginning of time but it also marks the beginning of space. Because if there's an end to the itself. Because i as i used to ask my students if if there's no space if if there's no spatial volume how much. How much stuff can you put. Isn't that how much stuff can you put in. No space answer is none. So is a picture of of essentially creo knee. Hello the creation out of nothing. Physical the British physicist paul davies. Said that before the singularity the singularity marks the beginning of the universe before which there's no possibility of physical reasoning because there's no physics there there's no matter space time or energy that could cause that origin. Now that's the picture of the origin of the universe based on general relativity. What we were talking about in the last segment. it's another model of cosmology. Cosmological origins called quantum cosmology which was devised in has been devised in a sense to circumvent this problem. The ultimate beginning by and there's a there's a physical justification for this because we can't be absolutely sure that general relativity applies all the way back to the beginning when because when things are so small then affects would kick in quantum fluctuations and the like but then even on that other model of of of origins of cosmological origins there. Are these implicit Are there are these tacit theistic implications that that you have a universe coming out of math alone which is very weird because math is conceptual and exists in the realm of minds. Nowhere else and to solve the math that you need to solve to model the origin of the universe. There needs to be an input of information which is always coming from the theoretical physicists. The model is coming from intelligent design whether you strict general relativistic view of the origin of the universe or quantum cosmological view in both cases. You have first of all in both cases you have a beginning and secondly you have to complications either way yes and this is why as you point out in the book steve that space time and matter how to beginning the cause must be space less timeless and immaterial because space time and matter didn't exist so you must have some calls beyond the universe beyond nature and yet capable of initiating event of a a change of states from in this case nothing physical to everything physical Also that's.