[00:00:04] Speaker A: Id the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to ID the future. I'm Andrew McDermott. Today we're sharing a recent interview with Dr. Jonathan Witt conducted by the Denison Forum podcast. Dr. Witt is executive editor of Discovery Institute Press and a senior fellow and senior project manager with Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture. In this interview, Dr. Witt and host Dr. Mark Turman discuss the central question and main points of Witt's 2006 book, a meaningful World how the arts and sciences reveal the genius of nature. Co written with Benjamin Weiker, the book tackles the question of whether the world is meaningful or meaningless, purposeful or pointless. Witt argues that the cosmos is charged with both meaning and purpose, from the works of Shakespeare to Euclid's geometry, from everyday substances like water to the intricacy of biological organisms. Today you'll hear the first half of the conversation. Dr. Witt shares some of his own journey to faith and why he develops skepticism about darwinian evolution. He discusses the materialistic thinking that has dominated the last 150 years and explains why a meaningful world functions as an antidote to such thinking. Here now is Dr. Mark Turman in conversation with Dr. Jonathan Witt.
[00:01:31] Speaker C: Welcome back to the Denison Forum podcast. I'm Dr. Mark Turman, your host and executive director of Denison Forum. We appreciate you joining us for this conversation, for every conversation that we have here on the Denison Forum podcast about truth, about culture, about the intersection of faith and what's going on in our world today, answering, hopefully, questions that you have here in the fall. We're dealing with some of those issues that maybe you and your family may be encountering as kids go back to school, as college students start off into a new semester.
Those things about where faith intersect with education, where they intersect with things like.
[00:02:11] Speaker D: Science and math and history, we're having.
[00:02:14] Speaker C: Those kinds of conversations today. And our guest today will be Dr.
[00:02:19] Speaker D: Jonathan Witt, who is the executive editor of Discovery Institute Press and a senior fellow and a senior project manager with.
[00:02:28] Speaker C: Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture.
[00:02:32] Speaker D: He is the author of a number of books, including the Hobit Party, the Vision of Freedom that Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot. That was written with Jay Richards is also the lead writer and associate producer.
[00:02:45] Speaker C: Of a documentary called Poverty, Inc. Which was the $100,000 Templeton Freedom Award.
[00:02:51] Speaker D: Recipient and has also been viewed and awarded 50 international festival honors.
[00:02:59] Speaker C: He additionally scripted three other documentaries that.
[00:03:02] Speaker D: Have aired widely on PBS and have been translated into multiple languages airing around the world.
[00:03:09] Speaker C: Witt's academic essays have appeared in various.
[00:03:11] Speaker D: Periodicals, and he's been interviewed numerous times in both regional and national radio programs.
[00:03:18] Speaker C: He's a regular speaker for Discovery Institute's summer seminar on science and culture and has spoken at a number of universities on a range of topics connected to.
[00:03:28] Speaker D: Political and economic freedom, cultural renewal, and the arts.
[00:03:32] Speaker C: Witt previously served as a tenured professor of literature and writing at Lubbock Christian University. He holds a PhD with honors in.
[00:03:41] Speaker D: English and literary theory from the University of Kansas.
[00:03:45] Speaker C: Today we're going to be talking with Dr. Witt about his book a Meaningful.
[00:03:49] Speaker D: World, how the arts and sciences revealed.
[00:03:53] Speaker C: The genius of nature.
[00:03:55] Speaker D: This book was written with Benjamin Whitaker.
[00:03:57] Speaker C: Or Benjamin Wyker and gives an incredible.
[00:04:01] Speaker D: Insight into how the magnificence of our world and our pursuits academically point to.
[00:04:12] Speaker C: This reality of genius, which ultimately points.
[00:04:15] Speaker D: Back to the ultimate genius of God. So we're excited for you to be.
[00:04:20] Speaker C: A part of this conversation today.
[00:04:22] Speaker E: Thanks for joining us.
[00:04:23] Speaker D: Dr. Jonathan Witt, welcome to the Dennison Forum podcast.
[00:04:27] Speaker C: We're glad you're here.
[00:04:28] Speaker E: I'm glad to be here.
[00:04:30] Speaker C: Well, we got a lot of ground to cover.
[00:04:32] Speaker D: And just to remind our audience, we've.
[00:04:35] Speaker C: Been focused on educational type topics here in this season of the year as.
[00:04:41] Speaker D: People go back to school, as college.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: Students, high school students, all across the ages, getting back into their classrooms, getting.
[00:04:48] Speaker D: Their textbooks, getting their assignments, firing up their computers, getting ready for what all.
[00:04:54] Speaker C: Of this school year is going to mean, both academically and socially. And so we wanted to talk to.
[00:05:01] Speaker D: Dr. Witt and some others about how.
[00:05:04] Speaker C: Things like science and faith and today.
[00:05:06] Speaker D: Science, art and faith, how those things.
[00:05:10] Speaker C: Are intertwined and how they intersect.
[00:05:12] Speaker D: And so as we get into that.
[00:05:14] Speaker C: Dr. Witt wanted to see if you just tell us a little bit about.
[00:05:17] Speaker D: Your own journey of faith and how.
[00:05:20] Speaker C: That worked out and then how you ended up doing what you do now at the Discovery Institute.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Great question. I sometimes joke that I can get testimony envy because there are these beautiful, dramatic Paul on the road to Damascus testimonials.
[00:05:39] Speaker E: I was raised in the church, and.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: As a kid there was never some moment when I thought, I'm an atheist or I'm going to run away from God.
[00:05:50] Speaker E: I did have a period where I.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Became acutely aware of my sinfulness. I would say, as I grew, for.
[00:05:59] Speaker E: Me it was more getting a stronger.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Sense of God's grace.
[00:06:03] Speaker E: That was key for me in terms of intellect, the intellectual part of the journey.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: One thing I didn't struggle with was as I began to see some of.
[00:06:16] Speaker E: The evidence in nature and the history.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: Of biology that certain things that maybe didn't fit as obviously into certain ways of interpreting genesis. That wasn't a huge faith struggle for.
[00:06:31] Speaker E: Me because by that time I was.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: In college, I was taking a lot of literature courses. I was at a christian university.
[00:06:40] Speaker E: I actually had some good.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: Nowadays you talk about going to a.
[00:06:43] Speaker E: Christian university doesn't necessarily mean that your.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Professors are going to be helpful for your faith, unfortunately.
But one of the things that I found helpful is I was taking what I was learning about literature and how poetry and that sort of thing worked.
[00:07:01] Speaker E: And seeing some things in the Bible, realizing that the Bible uses poetry and.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: That sort of thing.
[00:07:09] Speaker E: And I wasn't one of these people.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: That oh, Genesis is poetry, so none of it's literal.
[00:07:15] Speaker E: I didn't go down that path because.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: So much of Genesis really strikes me as God's really giving us some facts about life.
[00:07:25] Speaker E: But there was a flexibility as I.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Came to some of the particulars in Genesis.
[00:07:30] Speaker E: So for me it wasn't a make.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Or break faith issue.
[00:07:34] Speaker E: For instance, whether the earth was 6000.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Years old or much longer, I could see how particular reading of Genesis might account for either possibility.
[00:07:45] Speaker E: So it wasn't a real concern of mine.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: And even the possibility that evolution was true wasn't a big concern of mine.
[00:07:52] Speaker E: One of the reasons for that was.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: I had a brother in law who.
[00:07:56] Speaker E: Was a medical, he was in med school.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: He was really committed to mission work. He's very faithful Christian.
[00:08:02] Speaker E: And he himself, as he was exploring and wrestling with evolutionary theory, he had.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Some professors that said, you know what? God wanted to do it that way. He could have done it that way. And so he actually started exploring evolution with a pretty open mind. He's like, I believe God did it.
[00:08:20] Speaker E: But maybe he used evolution. Well, as he dug further and further.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Into it with an open mind, he didn't really have an axe to grind.
[00:08:26] Speaker E: He wasn't going to try to go.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Into being a PhD in biology where there would have been enormous pressure for.
[00:08:32] Speaker E: Him to accept the kind of full darwinian story.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: He was going into med school, there might have been a little pressure, but.
[00:08:38] Speaker E: He just kind of went in with an open mind.
But as he explored it, he came to realize that the case for blind.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Unguided evolution of all life was extraordinarily weak and that there was a lot of bluffing involved. And so he recommended a couple of books to me and I read those and that started my journey of being.
[00:09:02] Speaker E: Quite skeptical of modern evolutionary theory, even.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: If there are certain elements of it. Yeah, polar bears probably did evolve from brown bears microevolution. But the big picture of mindless, unguided evolution, micro demand, for me, it fell.
[00:09:21] Speaker E: Apart on the evidence. So while that wasn't a make or break issue for my faith, once I saw that evolution had failed, it actually.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Became another source of strength for my.
[00:09:34] Speaker E: Faith, because if evolutionary theory fails, you're.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Out of luck as an atheist. Richard Dawkins, the famous evolutionary biologist, public.
[00:09:44] Speaker E: Atheist, he put it this way once Darwin and his theory of evolution made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: I think he was exaggerating.
[00:09:55] Speaker E: But his point is you need evolutionary theory to be an atheist that can.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: In any way kind of have a leg to stand on, because you've got.
[00:10:04] Speaker E: To explain the extraordinary intricacy of the living world of animals and plants, of.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: The molecular machinery we're discovering in cells. You've got to have some other explanation than a designer.
[00:10:17] Speaker E: And if that fails, there's really no.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: Other game in town other than a.
So anyway, so I was a professor for a while. I eventually started working for the Discovery Institute, where it's kind of the hub of the intelligent design movement. And so that's allowed me to bring both kind of a literary aesthetic, because.
[00:10:36] Speaker E: My focus was literature, aesthetics, that sort of thing.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: And then, of course, working at Discovery Institute in intelligent design, helping edit books, co author some books, I'm rubbing shoulders with some brilliant scientists. So I had this rare opportunity to be very cross disciplinary.
[00:10:53] Speaker E: So that's been really exciting.
Yeah.
[00:10:56] Speaker C: And that's really one of the uniquenesses of this conversation and of the book.
[00:11:00] Speaker D: That we want to talk about is just how close and how intertwined those worlds are, particularly the world of literature, the world of the humanities, the world.
[00:11:13] Speaker C: Of history, the world of theology, and.
[00:11:16] Speaker D: How those and the natural sciences are actually deeply, deeply woven together.
[00:11:22] Speaker C: And that's one of the things that drew me for this conversation and to this particular work of yours. But before we get into that, well.
[00:11:31] Speaker D: Maybe it's related to that.
[00:11:33] Speaker C: One of the things you say early.
[00:11:34] Speaker D: On in the book is that this book that you've written, a meaningful world.
[00:11:39] Speaker C: And we'll get to the subtitle in just a second, but you describe it as an antidote. And you mentioned a couple of the.
[00:11:46] Speaker D: Big names in science that really seem.
[00:11:48] Speaker C: To have dominated the conversation for somewhere around 100 to 150 years, starting with.
[00:11:55] Speaker D: Darwin and then the presence of Sigmund.
[00:11:59] Speaker C: Freud in the early part of the 20th century.
[00:12:02] Speaker D: And now this group, represented by Richard.
[00:12:06] Speaker C: Dawkins, sometimes referred to, oftentimes referred to as the new atheists who really came into prominence, triggered in some way, possibly by the events of 911 in 2001.
[00:12:17] Speaker D: And then you had the kind of meteoric rise of the voices of these.
[00:12:24] Speaker C: Atheistic scientists of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens.
[00:12:28] Speaker D: Peter Singer, a number of others who.
[00:12:32] Speaker C: Became very aggressive, very militant in their approach of atheistic materialism, naturalism.
I think it was Christopher Hitchens who went so far as to say that.
[00:12:44] Speaker D: Religion is a virus on the hardware of humanity and that needs to be eradicated.
[00:12:51] Speaker C: We've talked about that some here at.
[00:12:52] Speaker D: The Denison forum, but it really does.
[00:12:56] Speaker C: You can see it in popular culture, you can see it in movies, you can see it in other aspects of.
[00:13:02] Speaker D: Culture that it's almost a given that from Darwin to Dawkins, they've been largely unquestioned in a lot of ways for around 100 or so years in our culture. Why do you think that is?
[00:13:17] Speaker C: How do you think we got to.
[00:13:19] Speaker D: That kind of milieu that we're operating in today?
[00:13:24] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. It's a very complex question. I think there are a lot of threads. I would say that Darwin's theory of.
[00:13:31] Speaker E: Evolution, while it falls apart on close scrutiny, it was maybe the first to offer at least a superficially plausible explanation for the origin of all these amazing.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Plants and animals we have around us that didn't invoke a creator. And there were forces already in place in western society that were eager to.
[00:13:54] Speaker E: Move toward atheistic, or at least agnostic.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Point of view, culturally.
Huxley, he formed the X Club, friend of Darwin's. He wasn't even fully convinced by Darwin's theory. He thought natural selection was too restrictive. If you had to build things using natural selection, he didn't see how it worked, but he didn't see any other game in town. And he had this program of wanting to move culture away from Judeo christian religion, kind of free know the shackles of religion. And so he glommed on to Darwin's theory even though he didn't see it as completely credible and became a very.
[00:14:30] Speaker E: Effective proponent of it. He was called Darwin's bulldog, famously, who is a pretty effective debater.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: And so I think there were just a lot of forces that wanted something.
[00:14:41] Speaker E: Like then, you know, how did they.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: Kind of march through the institutions? I think it was Tony Ogromski. I may be misremembering his name, but he was a Frankfurt school Marxist who.
[00:14:54] Speaker E: Talked about the need to move through.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: The institutions of western culture rather than just say, oh, let's try to take over the government, he said, you need to move through the universities.
[00:15:05] Speaker E: You need to move through the.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Even if you can get into the seminaries, do that. And so that's been there, a very aggressive program.
And to some degree, maybe Christians were kind of asleep at the wheel. We wanted to baptize people, we wanted to convert people. We wanted to tell people about Jesus, which is absolutely crucial, important.
[00:15:23] Speaker E: But I think too many of us forgot that.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: I think it was Kuiper, Abraham Kuiper.
[00:15:29] Speaker E: That said, there's not one square inch.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Of all of creation about which God.
[00:15:34] Speaker E: Does not cry mine. And so I think there's been a wake up call for Christians and other.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Theists of goodwill that we need to.
[00:15:45] Speaker E: Be more proactive about culture generally.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Do we have Christians in Hollywood? Do we have Christians writing novels? Do we have Christians that aren't just running for office, but are.
[00:15:59] Speaker E: Trying to.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Shape how we think about politics and political economy?
[00:16:05] Speaker E: And so I think that's the good news.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: I think there's kind of a wake.
[00:16:08] Speaker E: Up call that we need to be proactive across culture.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: We need to be salt and light.
[00:16:14] Speaker E: In many areas, and not just inside the church building.
[00:16:19] Speaker D: Even just yesterday, I sat down after work with my wife, and she started.
[00:16:24] Speaker C: Reading to me the testimony of a popular Hollywood figure, someone that everybody would.
[00:16:30] Speaker D: Recognize, and started sharing the story of.
[00:16:34] Speaker C: His faith that was published in a recent magazine.
[00:16:36] Speaker D: And just becoming aware that there is.
[00:16:40] Speaker C: No environment where Christians are excluded or should be excluded.
[00:16:45] Speaker D: And as you said, a great wake up call.
I'd like to also ask you to.
[00:16:50] Speaker C: Comment, just reframing history a little bit.
[00:16:54] Speaker D: Like I said, if you know, Dawkins coming in the latter half, particularly in.
[00:16:58] Speaker C: His influence in the latter part of the 19th century.
[00:17:01] Speaker D: But if you take a longer look, I had a part of my conversation.
[00:17:06] Speaker C: With your colleague Stephen Meyer about this.
[00:17:08] Speaker D: That really, the modern scientific movement, even.
[00:17:12] Speaker C: The scientific method that is so predominant.
[00:17:15] Speaker D: In the fields of science today, if.
[00:17:18] Speaker C: You go back 500 years, you find.
[00:17:20] Speaker D: Out that the modern scientific movement that started around the 15 hundreds was actually initiated by very dedicated christian people who were wanting to discover more about the.
[00:17:34] Speaker C: Majesty of God through what God has.
[00:17:37] Speaker D: Created and what God has enabled us to discover. Can you kind of reframe that conversation.
[00:17:43] Speaker C: Of history and remind us of that?
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. That's just a wonderful story.
[00:17:48] Speaker E: And there was a period where I.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Was working for another think tank that has some overlap with discovery institute, and we did a documentary called the Birth.
[00:17:56] Speaker E: Of freedom that talked about the judeo christian influence on the rise of the.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: Good things in western culture. Obviously, since western civilization is run by humans and humans are fallen sinners, there's been all kinds of atrocities.
[00:18:12] Speaker E: But if you compare western civilization, its.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: Rise, compare it to every other major civilization, history.
They did amazing things, and the birth of science is one of the things we cover there.
And so I would recommend that as a good introduction. If you're like, I don't have time to read a book.
[00:18:31] Speaker E: Well, the birth of freedom, it also looks at the rise of representative government.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: The rise of economic freedom, and how many people that's managed to lift out of poverty globally.
[00:18:44] Speaker E: But, yeah, those guys, to a man, they were Christians.
[00:18:49] Speaker A: There might have been some that know, kind of theists, maybe not like Newton, may have been not a completely orthodox trinitarian, but to a man, they were.
[00:18:59] Speaker E: All theists who believed in a rational, loving God who created the world, and.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: Humans were made in his image. And so those two things combined meant.
[00:19:13] Speaker E: Hey, we could go and study nature carefully and uncover the hidden depths.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: We talk about nature being a work of genius in our book, a meaningful world, and we say that there's these different qualities. I'm getting a little bit ahead of.
[00:19:26] Speaker E: Ourselves here, but one of those is depth.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: There's a depth to any work of genius.
[00:19:31] Speaker E: You don't just read Shakespeare's Hammett once, oh, I got it all.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: Or go to a really great deep film. Oh, I got it all in the first try.
[00:19:41] Speaker E: No.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: You know, there's depths and depths and.
[00:19:43] Speaker E: Layers and layers to it.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: They saw nature as a work of.
[00:19:47] Speaker E: Supreme genius, so they expected there to.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Be hidden depths, mysterious things that wouldn't immediately reveal themselves to them, but because.
[00:19:55] Speaker E: They'Re made in the image of the creator, they thought, hey, if we study it carefully, maybe we can uncover some of that hidden order.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: They also believe that God, because he's.
[00:20:06] Speaker E: Rational, that maybe there's a hidden elegance there. And so Kepler, he was one of the famous early astronomers who, one of.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: His discoveries, pretty much sensed the case.
[00:20:19] Speaker E: For a heliocentric model of the solar system.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: For a long time, practically everybody thought.
[00:20:26] Speaker E: The sun went around the earth, and everything went around the earth.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: But Copernicus first and Galileo argued, no, the sun's at the center of the solar system. In Kepler, he came up with these.
[00:20:36] Speaker E: Three laws of planetary motion, and he.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Seized upon the ellipses as the shape of the rotation. Instead of a perfect circle, some people say, well, that ellipses, that's kind of messy. That's not as elegant as the perfect circle.
[00:20:52] Speaker E: But he stumbled, and he was searching.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: For it upon this very elegant mathematical.
[00:20:57] Speaker E: Formula to describe those orbits.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: And he said, and this is a paraphrase. When he made this discovery, I was.
[00:21:06] Speaker E: Thinking God's thoughts after him. And so what are he talking about?
[00:21:10] Speaker A: He's thinking God.
[00:21:11] Speaker E: Well, he thought of God as a mathematician.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: He thought God. There would be an elegance to God's creation. You look out with your eyes and.
[00:21:18] Speaker E: You see a lot of messiness, death.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: And decay, and manure turns into soil and worms going, there's a lot of messy stuff.
[00:21:26] Speaker E: But he said, there's got to also be, in addition to all that complexity and depth, I'm thinking there's probably some hidden elegance there, some order.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: If we can do mathematics as humans think, how much more of a mathematician God is. They went looking for that hidden mathematical order, and they found it. So that's one of the spectacular stories of the history of science, and it.
[00:21:47] Speaker E: Flips on its head the kind of.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: Modern myth that Christianity is somehow opposed to science.
[00:21:53] Speaker E: Christianity is the soil in which science was born. Right.
[00:21:59] Speaker D: And that Christianity in particular has no fear of science.
[00:22:04] Speaker C: It actually celebrates it, as you said, because the discovery of God, the thinking of God's thoughts after him.
[00:22:09] Speaker D: And to see that thread, to me.
[00:22:13] Speaker C: It'S just really the importance of a.
[00:22:15] Speaker D: Larger, better reading of history, rather than kind of the sound bite type approach.
[00:22:22] Speaker C: That we take to so many things.
[00:22:23] Speaker D: In our world today, and really gave.
[00:22:27] Speaker C: The foothold to the new atheists, to the Dawkins and the hitchens of the.
[00:22:31] Speaker D: World, to really mischaracterize faith broadly and Christianity specifically. But let's go back a little bit.
[00:22:40] Speaker C: To the title of the.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: Just quick to kind of put a nod on that. Our quarrel isn't with science. That's a search for truth about the natural world.
[00:22:47] Speaker E: Our quarrel is with scientism, which is.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: This philosophy that dresses itself up as just truth seeking science, but it's really a philosophy.
[00:22:57] Speaker E: It's an atheistic, materialistic philosophy posing as objective search for truth about nature.
[00:23:06] Speaker C: Thanks for bringing up that term. That's an important term in this conversation.
[00:23:11] Speaker D: And a distinction that people need to.
[00:23:13] Speaker C: Be aware of, the difference between legitimate.
[00:23:16] Speaker D: Science and scientific pursuit and that of scientism as what might even be described.
[00:23:23] Speaker C: Or would you describe it as a false religion, an idolatry in the context of a christian terminology?
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:23:31] Speaker C: Would you put it in that context?
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:33] Speaker E: Because it's not just a way of.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Kind of looking at the world. It is a substitute religion. You think science is going to solve.
[00:23:43] Speaker E: Everything, and it's not just any kind of science. It's science yoked to materialism, to this.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: Idea that ultimately all there is is matter and energy. Your soul isn't real. The idea of an immaterial creator isn't real love.
That's just glands, chemistry. There's not anything authentic there. Good and evil, those are just constructs. So scientism has a materialistic, philosophical, ideological substructure.
[00:24:16] Speaker E: And it's a substitute religion.
[00:24:19] Speaker C: Let me get you to chase a rabbit with me on that topic for just a second.
[00:24:23] Speaker D: And that is, do you think that.
[00:24:26] Speaker C: The shared experience that we all had.
[00:24:29] Speaker D: Over the last three, three and a half years. Relative to COVID and the COVID pandemic.
There was oftentimes this clarion call and.
[00:24:40] Speaker C: Then criticism of, well, just trust the science.
[00:24:43] Speaker D: Just trust the science.
Do you think the ideology of scientism. Has taken a hit and a step backward.
[00:24:52] Speaker C: Because of the journey through the pandemic.
[00:24:55] Speaker D: And that the world was grappling with something that we had long talked about.
[00:25:01] Speaker C: As a possibility, but now it was.
[00:25:03] Speaker D: Upon us, and science couldn't readily and quickly explain it and solve it?
[00:25:09] Speaker C: Do you think that's kind of hurt the movement of scientism or affected it in any way?
[00:25:15] Speaker A: I hope that it has caused a lot of people to realize. Just because somebody in a white lab code.
[00:25:20] Speaker E: Or the head of some scientific branch of government says science says that what.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: Is really happening is a particular, fallible.
[00:25:30] Speaker E: Human being is saying, here's what I think.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: And rather than carefully lay out the evidence in front of you, I'm going.
[00:25:38] Speaker E: To make an appeal to authority.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: And that should raise our baloney detector.
[00:25:50] Speaker E: Why is he making this questionable appeal to authority.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: If he can just trot out really.
[00:25:55] Speaker E: Powerful evidence for what he's saying?
So, yeah, we saw a lot of flip flopping. That I think should be educational. That we need to not be led.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Around by the nose.
[00:26:08] Speaker E: By somebody just claiming scientific authority. Right.
[00:26:11] Speaker D: And one of the healthy signs of.
[00:26:14] Speaker C: A healthy person, and a healthy scientist, for that matter.
[00:26:17] Speaker D: Would be someone who says that it's.
[00:26:19] Speaker C: Okay to say, I don't know.
[00:26:22] Speaker D: There just were times when all scientists.
[00:26:24] Speaker C: Need to be able to say that with the proper kind of humility.
[00:26:28] Speaker D: And especially when something of the nature of hopefully, once in a lifetime, once in a millennium global pandemic.
[00:26:37] Speaker C: That we can say, you know what? There was just a lot we didn't know.
[00:26:39] Speaker D: And now we know a lot more.
[00:26:41] Speaker C: But we don't know everything that we would like to know.
[00:26:43] Speaker D: And that's always the journey of what.
[00:26:47] Speaker C: Life and science is all about.
[00:26:48] Speaker D: Let's go back to the book a minute.
[00:26:50] Speaker C: The book is titled a meaningful world. And then the subtitle how the Arts and Science reveal the Genius of nature.
[00:26:59] Speaker D: Give us the backstory of what prompted.
[00:27:01] Speaker C: You to write this book.
[00:27:03] Speaker D: In the first.
[00:27:06] Speaker E: Working.
[00:27:07] Speaker A: By then, I was working at Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture. That's the hub of the intelligent design movement. And so that's some important context because.
[00:27:16] Speaker E: The theory of intelligent design, in a.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: Nutshell, it says that there are things.
[00:27:20] Speaker E: In nature that carry a clear mark.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: Of having been created by a designing intelligence.
[00:27:28] Speaker E: In other words, they didn't happen by.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Some lawlike magnetism or something random like floods or earthquakes or tornadoes, that there.
[00:27:38] Speaker E: Was a planning for thinking designer at work putting that together.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: So certain things in nature, it could be the molecular outboard motor we call the bacterial flagellum. That Michael B. Makes a really powerful argument, has the earmark of design. It could be the fine tuning of the laws and constants of physics and chemistry for life.
[00:28:04] Speaker E: That's such a problem for atheists that.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: The name for that issue in physics is the fine tuning problem.
They just call it the fine tuning. Well, it's not a problem to a theist, but to some people it's a problem because why would gravity and all these other be just right to allow for stars and planets to form and hundreds of other ways? Steve Meyer probably got into that little bit.
[00:28:30] Speaker E: When you talk to him, you can.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: Find his stuff online or get his book the Return to the God Hypothesis. He goes into depth about that. Many Nobel laureates have said fine tuning.
[00:28:40] Speaker E: Points to a.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Right. That's, that's where ID kind of stops, says, look, there's a designing intelligence. But we said, Ben Weiker.
[00:28:50] Speaker E: And I said, you know, we don't.
[00:28:54] Speaker A: Just have a uniform experience of what.
[00:28:56] Speaker E: Intelligent agents can do and can't do.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: And what an intelligent agent can do.
[00:29:01] Speaker E: Beyond what, say, a tornado can do.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: We have uniform and a rich experience.
[00:29:06] Speaker E: Of what geniuses can know, a higher form of intelligence.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: And since I had a background in.
[00:29:13] Speaker E: The arts and Ben Weicher had some.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: Background in that, as well as he's.
[00:29:17] Speaker E: Also a kind of jack of all trades, shameless generals like myself, we said.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: Let'S look at some of the iconic works of genius in western civilization, see.
[00:29:30] Speaker E: If we find some common themes, characteristics.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: And then go back into nature and.
[00:29:37] Speaker E: See if we find those.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: So we did. We found some common characteristics. We bowled it down to four, and then we show how, whether you're looking at chemistry, we're looking at cosmology whether you're looking at biology, we find these characteristics of genius. So we kind of took it to the next level, if you will, took the intelligent design argument to the next level.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: That was the first half of a conversation between Dr. Jonathan Witt and host Dr. Mark Turman discussing the nature of genius and the genius of nature. Look for the second half of the interview in another episode. I want to thank the Denison Forum for permission to rebroadcast this conversation. Learn more about the
[email protected]. For id the future, I'm andrew. Andrew Mcdermott. Thanks for listening.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org. This program is copyright Discovery institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
