Science Is Pointing Back to God...Here’s Why

I mean, you got an amazing pedigree to discuss all this. You got a PhD in the philosophy of science from Cambridge.

You're a former geoysicist. You now

direct the Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture in Seattle.

You've had New York Times bestsellers, Signature in Mel, Darwin's Doubt, Return of the God Hypothesis, and you've been on all the biggest podcasts in the world, Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, and now

I'm glad to say uh Uncensored.

This all blew up last week because Tucker Carson went on Joe Rogan and I don't know if you saw this but he said this about this very issue.

Take a look.

If evolution is real and if there is this constant I don't know but it's it's it's visible like you can measure it in certain animals you can measure adaptation. Yeah.

But there's no evidence that evol in fact I think we've kind of given up on the idea evolution the theory of evolution as articulated by Darwin is like kind of not true. In what in what sense?

Well, in the most basic sense, the idea that, you know, all life emerged from a single cell organism and over time and there would be a fossil record of that and there's not

your response. Well, uh I don't know

your response. Well, uh I don't know what Tucker knows about all this, but uh probably not as qualified as you, but he's he's you know, he likes to start with something that happened here in London a few years ago, 2016, major

conference convened by the Royal Society, arguably the world's most august and prestigious scientific body was convened by a group of evolutionary

biologists who uh are dissatisfied with the standard neodyarwinian theory of evolution. And many of the the conveners

evolution. And many of the the conveners are calling for a new theory because the primary mechanism of biological change articulated by Darwin and his subsequent

followers now called the neodyarwinists, the idea of natural selection acting on random mutations and variations is now understood to lack the creative power to generate major changes in the history of

life. And is is the at the crux of this

life. And is is the at the crux of this debate is it as Tucker was getting at there is it that if you actually start from where Darwin's theory begins the

creation of the human being was so complicated the body the way we exist is so complicated it doesn't make any rational sense.

There's two issues really. There's how

do you get to the first life from the simpler non-living chemicals that's sometimes called chemical evolutionary theory and that's a complete mess. It's

in it's in a state of impass and almost everyone even your recent guest Richard Dawkins acknowledges we have no chemical evolutionary theory that accounts for the origin of the first life and many people don't know that Darwin didn't

attempt to explain the origin of the first life rather it he presumed one or very few simple organisms which we now know are not were not simple and then proposed a mechanism by which

you could generate all the new forms of life we see on the planet today. Even

that now is being challenged because the main mechanism of evolutionary change does a nice job of explaining smallcale variation. What Tucker was referring to

variation. What Tucker was referring to I think is adaptation. This would be examples like Darwin's finches where the beaks get a little bigger, a little smaller in response to varying weather patterns. But it does a very poor job of

patterns. But it does a very poor job of explaining the major innovations in the history of life such as the origin of birds or mammals or animals in the first place. And there in the fossil record we

place. And there in the fossil record we do see very abrupt many uh instances of very abrupt appearance without the transition transitional intermediates that you'd expect on the basis of the

Darwinian picture of the the tree of life.

So is your belief that the Darwin theory actually fails then?

I think it does fail. U I think it it captures an element of the truth.

There's a the the small-cale microeolutionary variation is certainly a real process and no one uh disputes that natural selection is a real process but what's it what's at issue now is the

degree to which it has genuine creative power and I think at this 2016 conference the opening talk was given by a prominent Austrian evolutionary biologist not an American talk show host

and uh uh he enumerated five major explanatory deficits of neodyarwinism many of them surrounding this problem that the mechanism lacks the the generative or creative power necessary

to account for the major innovations in the history of life.

Well, your bestselling book uh new book, Return of the God Hypothesis, you argue there are three big scientific discoveries that point to the existence of God. I want to go through these one,

of God. I want to go through these one, the Big Bang theory. So, why would that lend support to a theory of a god?

Right. Maybe just a little framing uh before I dive into the evidence. Um uh

professor Dawkins at Oxford has said that the universe has precisely the properties that we should expect if at bottom there is no purpose, no design, nothing but blind, pitiles indifference.

And though I'm on the opposite side of this science vGO issue with with the good professor, I think he does a marvelous job of framing key issues. And

this is one of those great framing quotations because what he's saying is that that whether we think of it as a scientific question or a philosophical question or both. If we have a hypothesis about reality, the way we

test that is by looking at the world around us and seeing if what we see comports with what we would expect to see if our hypothesis were true. And his

hypothesis is that of blind pitiles indifference, which is a a shorthand way of saying that everything came about by strictly undirected material processes.

And what the materialists expected coming into the early 20th century was evidence of an eternal self-existent universe, one that had been here for an infinitely long time and therefore did

not need an external creator. What in

fact the astrophysicists, the cosmologists, the astronomers found was evidence of a universe that had a definite beginning and therefore one that could not have created itself because before the matter of the

universe came into existence, there was no matter there to do the causing. And

so the the picture of the universe that has emerged starting from the 1920s all the way to the present both from observational astronomy and from theoretical physics is a universe that

had a definite beginning and therefore requires some sort of external creator or cause.

Dawkins is obviously one of the world's most famous atheists. Are you a believer in God yourself?

I do believe in God. Yes.

Okay. So let's play a clip from Dawkins on this show.

So why is it not possible that there is a superior being power which many people believe in in different ways?

It's possible there are fairies at the bottom of the garden and all sorts of things are possible that you you can't deny that.

Well, except I've never seen fairies at the end of the garden. Have you?

No, you never seen God either.

No, but you don't know for sure that either doesn't exist.

No, I don't know that fairies don't exist. Fairies may well maybe

exist. Fairies may well maybe leprechaorns for all I know.

You know, my big question for all atheists well is okay, you don't believe in God. Well, what was there before the

in God. Well, what was there before the big bang? Before this all started, what

big bang? Before this all started, what was, in other words, what was there before supposedly nothing? What is

nothing? Nothing to me seems to be a totally inongruous word. What is

nothingness? And if you can't explain it, it to me, and I believe in God, but to me it suggests there must be a a power bigger than the human mind at the

start of all this that was able to comprehend what may have happened because we can't, right? Dawkins wants to portray theistic

right? Dawkins wants to portray theistic belief as if it's uh equivalent to belief in fairies and and he'll concede that well, it's possible. But I think there's a stronger argument for the the

the theistic case. And that is that when scientists and philosophers reason from evidence, they typically use a method of reasoning that has a technical name.

It's called inferring to the best explanation. Where the best explanation

explanation. Where the best explanation is one where you're invoking a cause which has the kind of powers that would be required to explain the phenomenon of

interest. And you correctly pointed out

interest. And you correctly pointed out in your conversation with him that when you get back to that what physicists often call the singularity, the point where matter, space, time, and energy begin to exist,

the materialist is really up against a huge conundrum because prior to the origin of matter, there is no matter to do the causing. That's what we mean by the origin of matter. That that's where

it starts, right? And so if you want to invoke a cause which is sufficient to explain the origin of matter, you can't invoke matter. It's in principle.

invoke matter. It's in principle.

Materialistic explanations are in principle insufficient. So you need to

principle insufficient. So you need to invoke something which is external to the material universe and is not bounded by time and space as well. And that

starts to paint a picture of the kind of cause you would need that has the the sort of attributes that traditional theists have traditionally associated with God. God is a a timeless uh God is

with God. God is a a timeless uh God is outside of time and space, has causal powers, is is an agent with valition and therefore can initiate a change of state from in this case nothing to

and do you believe that God uh created this original single cell that from which everything flows to us or the single cell as opposed to the universe. Well, I guess you go you go

universe. Well, I guess you go you go back to the universe and then you go back to the creation of a single cell that has this incredible complexity that eventually through the process of evolution leads to human beings. I do

think you believe that's really the most likely scenario.

Yeah, I do think there's incredible evidence of intelligent design at the point of the origin of life because that first simple cell um in the 19th century Thomas Huxley said that the cell is a

simple homogeneous globule of undifferentiated protoplasm.

Brilliant phrase, wonderful. He was one of the great scientists of the 19th century. But we know so much more now

century. But we know so much more now that he didn't know. And that what we now know that is that inside even the simplest cell we have digital nanotechnology. We have the information

nanotechnology. We have the information stored in the DNA. We have an exquisite uh system of information trans uh storage transmission and processing and

and that information is being used to build protein machines and and other even more complex nano machinery inside the cell. So, it's a sort of automated

the cell. So, it's a sort of automated factory run by digital information.

People didn't know about that in the early 19th century.

But do you believe, like I said, originally there's just one single solitary cell that's created.

Well, right. Presumably that's where So, what do you think?

I I I do think there was a an original cell that was created because the theory of evolution says the journey from single cell to the full complexity of life on Earth and so on happened by random trial and error. But

your position, I think, is that it's so complicated this original single cell.

so complex for all the reasons you just articulated that that's just simply not feasible that it would be just random trial and error. It had to be the creation of some superior entity, right?

Am I is that right?

Well, again, there's two contexts.

There's the how do you get to the first cell and then how do you get from the first cell to everything else? Let's

just take the origin of the first.

You think the creator of the universe is God?

I do.

And then out of the universe comes a creation of a single cell which again is God.

Right? Here's the evidence though that when when we see information in a digital or alphabetic or typographic form and this is what we actually see in the DNA. When Francis Crick elucidated

the DNA. When Francis Crick elucidated what he called the sequence hypothesis in the late 1950s, he realized that the four subunits along the interior of the DNA um are functioning like alphabetic

characters in a written text or or digital characters in a section of software. What we know from experience

software. What we know from experience is that whenever we say information of that sort, it always comes from a mind.

Bill Gates, our local hero, has said that DNA is like a software program, but much more complex than any we've ever devised. Richard Dawkins has

devised. Richard Dawkins has acknowledged that it functions like a machine code. Well, what we know is that

machine code. Well, what we know is that software comes from a programmer. And in

fact, whenever we see information of that kind, whether it's in a software program or a hieroglyphic inscription or paragraph in a book, it always arises from a mind, not a material process. So

the the discovery of information at the foundation of life and even the simplest living cell I argue is decisive evidence of the activity of a designing mind in the origin of life.

What is the Goldilock zone?

Another of your big bedrocks of your book.

Well, this is something this one way that the physicists refer to something that they call the finetuning of of the universe or sometimes they talk about it the anthropic finetuning. The idea is

that the most fundamental parameters of physics uh fall within very narrow ranges or tolerances outside of which we have discovered life would not be

possible. Even basic chemistry would not

possible. Even basic chemistry would not be possible. So the force responsible

be possible. So the force responsible for the expansion of the universe uh called the cosmological constant is uh fine-tuned and accepted value is to one

part and 10 to the 90th power. So a

smidge faster or slower in that expansion and you either get a heat death of the universe or you get a big crunch, a great black hole. In either

case, life is not possible. That's just

one of many parameters that fall within that kind of a sweet spot. So sometimes

the the physicists do talk about are living in a Goldilocks universe. Uh Luke

Barnes has written a wonderful book about the finetuning. A physicist who also did his PhD at Cambridge has written a book called the fortunate universe. So these types of terms are

universe. So these types of terms are now making their way into physics because physicists did not expect that life would depend upon such an exquisitly and and improbably arranged

set of of basic parameters. But there we have it. They did. This is what they

have it. They did. This is what they found.

But again that comes back to the idea of a designer of all this.

Well, one of the one of the scientists who first discovered these fine-tuning parameters was uh Fred Hy. And Hy was a a pretty aggressive scientific atheist.

He opposed the big bang and even gave the big bang its name the big bang as a kind of pjorative to to to uh to make fun of the the concept. But after he discovered some of these fine-tuning

parameters, he had a shift in in his philosophical perspective in his worldview. And he was later quoted as

worldview. And he was later quoted as saying that um a common sense interpretation of the data, the fine-tuning data suggests that a super intellect has monkeyied with physics and chemistry to make life possible. I

always say I love the way the monkeys always make it into the origins discussion. Even if it's in physics,

discussion. Even if it's in physics, always goes back to monkeys.

Always monkeys either at a typewriter or something.