[00:00:00] Speaker A: And what did Johnson say? He said lawyers are able to evaluate evidence and arguments. You know, science is an argument in many respects. Here's the evidence and here's how I'm arguing to a scientific conclusion.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
Welcome to ID the Future. I'm Casey Luskin and today we have on the show with us Barry Arrington. Barry is an attorney and former member of the Colorado State House of Representatives. He earned his law degree from the University of Texas School of Law and has worked in civil litigation, nonprofit law, and constitutional law, particularly in the area of first and Second Amendment law. In fact, Barry, you've had a couple of cases that have reached the US Supreme Court, is that right?
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Yes, that's correct. I had a case in 2020 that was on the emergency docket where I sued the state of Colorado for their Covid restrictions keeping the the churches open. And it was long, long drawn out process dragged over several months, lots of drama. But we succeeded in blasting open the doors of the churches in Colorado in 2020. And we have a case coming up. Oral Argument was actually just set yesterday.
It's called Childs vs Salazar. And that's going to the oral argument in that is going to be the term October 7th. So we're really looking forward to that. That's a First Amendment free speech case.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Okay, well, very interesting and welcome to ID the Future.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: It's probably long overdue, I don't think. Have you ever been on ID the Future with us before, Barry?
[00:01:37] Speaker A: I don't think I have. Yeah.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Okay. Well, it's great to have you. You've been a traveler with the ID movement for quite a few years and you've done a lot of writing on ID in the past. And Barry, you recently published a book titled Unforgetting God with Inkwell Press. And I think this book has kind of multiple purposes. Yes, part of the book is about Christian apologetics and does make an explicit case for Christianity, but another major focus of the book is to deal with the more limited topic of simply making an argument for intelligent design. So we're not going to get into the Christian apologetics material today, but we are going to focus on your sections dealing with intelligent design. I hope that's okay with you.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Well, actually it's more than okay because the apologetics is very important part of the book. But as I say in the introduction to the book, it really is very much designed to talk to the open minded, skeptical materialist. If you have any sort of open mind at all about materialism.
Here are some things you ought to talk about.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And within your ID section, you. You kind of have two other subparts, I would say. One part, I would say looks at the scientific and philosophical arguments for design, and another part looks at the larger implications of an intelligent design based worldview for culture, morality, and even in the law. And I'll be honest, if I was writing the book, I might have started with the scientific evidence and philosophical arguments for intelligent design, and then built on how that gives you sort of a foundation for. For talking about the implications of ID for culture, morality, law, et cetera. But that being said, I want to say that the first few chapters of your book, which went through some of the horrors that have been committed in the name of Darwinian materialism, we'll get into some of that. It really made for a riveting opening to your book. And so although the logical purist in me maybe wishes you had framed things a little bit differently, the book reader in me really found the way you framed the book very compelling. But for the podcast, right now, I'm going to let my inner logical purist win and we're going to start with the scientific and philosophical case for design, and then we'll get into the larger implications. So, first off, Barry, what first got you interested in the topic of intelligent design?
[00:03:55] Speaker A: So I've been involved in the intelligent design movement, I guess you would say, since about 2006, when Bill Demski asked me to take over his website, Uncommon Dissent. And I wrote which was one of the larger blogs focused on intelligent design for about 15 years.
But before that, even before that, in the early 90s, I. I really got involved in intelligent design and reading the literature and like so many people, my introduction was Philip Johnson, Darwin on Trial. And. And I read that book and it's like light bulbs went off and I said, yeah, that's it. That's. That's kind of. Johnson has articulated things that have been in Coate, in my mind for a long, long time. And it was just so fabulous to see them written down like that. And it's such lucid pros.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: That's great, Barry. In fact, back in the old days on Uncommon Ascent, you were Barry A. Barry A. I believe. Is that right?
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Okay. Is that. I didn't just out. You did. I. Was that already publicly known or.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Well, actually, in the very early days, that was Barry A. And then after that, I just started.
I changed my name to Barry Arrington. I always posted under my name.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Okay, okay. Well, I remember having lots of fun conversations and seeing you on Uncommon Ascent. And yeah, Philip Johnson certainly very influential on me. I read some of his materials when I was in college and had a big impact on my thinking on this issue. So let's get into sort of, you make a scientific case for intelligent design, and some people might be saying, oh, well, look, Barry Arrington's not a scientist, he's an attorney. You know, what good can an attorney do in the debate over intelligent design? Well, look, I'm an attorney, and I want to say, Barry, I think that you are very good at explaining complex topics. And one of the things that an attorney has to be able to do is to, you know, take a very complex issue, boil it down for a judge or a jury or a court, and help them to understand. So I actually find your scientific explanations in the book to be very lucid and helpful. So I'm very happy to have an attorney on ID the future to talk about the scientific evidence for intelligent design. But you say in your book that scientific evidence cannot prove that God exists with deductive certainty. I would agree with that statement.
But then that opens, you know, the case in what or the question, in what sense does science make a case for intelligent design?
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Okay, so that's one of the reasons that I think lawyer has something to say about this. And I would actually harken back to Philip Johnson, who answered this very question. You know, what is a lawyer doing writing what many believe to be kind of the seminal book of the intelligent design movement? Although we had other books like For Darwin theory and crisis, etc. Before that. But it really kind of exploded with Johnson. And then you had Demski and Behe and Meyer u kind of following on in those days in the 90s where we're all very excited with this new movement. And what did Johnson say? He said, lawyers are able to evaluate evidence and arguments. You know, science is an argument in many respects. Here's the evidence, and here's how I'm arguing to a scientific conclusion. And this is the thing that was so powerful about Johnson's book because he said something that resonates with. With me 30 years later. He said, when you actually look at the evidence for Darwinism, it's not that strong. So then why did it take over the world? Because if you start with materialism, that's all you have left. That it. That Darwinism in many respects is simply a logical deduction from metaphysical premises. That's inevitable in some senses.
And. And it took a lawyer to. To lay that out and make it it plain. And the same thing is true today.
So I, I take it from a lawyer's perspective for I, I having debated this issue for many, many years on, that's one of the things about uncommon dissent. We did a lot of debates and I've, I've debated many, many scores, if not hundreds of materialists. And, and the issues always come up. You hear people say things like there's no evidence for God. Well, as a lawyer I know a thing or two about evidence. And, and, and, and they don't know what that word means because there's plenty of evidence for a designer at least. And, and, and, and I also argue for God. And I would also argue as I go on for a particular view of God.
And there's, there's, then you also hear, well, there's no proof that God exists. Well, again, as a lawyer I know a thing or two about pro, proving things to a fact finder, whether it's a judge or a jury.
And, and you say that there's no way to prove God to an apodopic certainty. And that is, is certainly true. You can't prove hardly anything except you know, two plus two is four. You can prove that. But that's kind of in some senses trivial. The very important questions we have to deal with some level of uncertainty. And that's why as a lawyer I understand that proof is not a discrete function. It's not, yes, no black, white, off on it falls on a spectrum and there's various levels of proof.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: What a great answer, Barry. And I couldn't agree with you more. I mean if you are objecting to intelligent design or belief in God generally because you can't prove it with deductive certainty, then the response is, well, nothing in science is proved with deductive certainty. So you basically have to reject all of science and you're holding intelligent design to a higher standard than you hold every other scientific theory. So, and I'm sure we're going to get into this, we're going to talk about the nature of evidence. I remember taking evidence in law school myself. It was the first class where I got a really, really high A in law school. Before that time I was still kind of figuring things out, but, but I really enjoyed that class a lot. And I think, you know, understanding the nature of evidence, what is probative, what counts as reliable or strong evidence is really helpful in these debates. So I, I know you have a lot to say about that, I'm sure.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: Well, you and I are very similar in that respect.
I took evidence in Law School 40 years ago now, and I actually won the award for highest grade in class in that.
And it just kind of.
Evidence is one of those things, especially legal evidence. You just get it, it makes sense. Some people never get it. It just never makes sense. And it just clicked with me. It was fabulous class. I enjoy it to this day, dealing with evidence. And I do deal with evidence questions all the time.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: That's great. We're going to come back to that for sure. But let's talk right now. You talk about the Big Bang. How do you see the Big Bang making a case for intelligent design and being evidence for intelligent design, or even theism, as you explain in your book.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Okay. And so here I'm standing on Steve Meyer's shoulders. I mean, he just laid it out so wonderfully and the return of the God hypothesis.
And so if a designer of the universe exists, or a creator, if you will, exists, you would expect a beginning.
And there is good scientific evidence to believe that there was a beginning.
And therefore there's good reason to believe that the creator exists to caused that beginning. Now, on the other side, from materialist perspective, if you are a materialist, there is no explanation for a beginning. Other, you know, of course they have the steady state theory of infinite universes, which is kind of refuted by the Big Bang, which is one of the reasons that so many scientists resisted it, because it points intellectually to a beginning which points to a creator. Fred Hoyle actually accused those who advocated for the Big Bang being religious fundamentalists. I mean, he went that far.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So this is sort of almost like a Bayesian framing where we say, on which model would you most expect there to be a beginning to the universe under a, a designed universe or a materialistic universe? And I think you framed it very nicely. And look, it's okay to stand on the shoulders of people like Steve Meyer. Everybody's standing on the shoulders of somebody else. So there's no shame in that. But I think it's a very helpful way to make the argument which model leads you to expect this data more compared to the other model. Now, I really appreciated that you went into quantum mechanics in your book and how it challenges materialism. I've seen ID proponents do this in the past, but I think that this is an area where ID really can expand more and make more and more arguments in the area of quantum mechanics. I'm hoping we can do that more in the future.
But how is quantum mechanics probabilistic rather than deterministic? And why is that an argument, in your view, against materialism and for intelligent design?
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Okay. And here I would recommend Spencer Clavin's book, Light of the World, Light of the Mind. Very, very excellent book.
And the argument is basically this.
Prior to the quantum mechanic revolution in the 1920s, we had classical mechanics, classical physics, Newtonian physics is often called.
And we have Laplace and his famous dictum. There's. There's some question about whether he said it or not, but he's quoted for it very often when Napoleon asks, well, what about God? And he says, well, I have no need for that hypothesis, which is, of course, the. The. The genesis of Meyer's return of the God hypothesis. He's kind of refuting Laplace here. And so what did he mean by that? So prior to that time, and this is what Laplace said, that if you have classical mechanics, Newtonian physics, it was kind of a billiard ball sort of mechanics, where imagine billiard balls on a surface of a pool table, and you hit one. And in theory, you can predict absolutely where it's going to go, its momentum, it's the velocity, its direction.
And he said, if I knew everything about the state at a beginning time, I could in theory, predict everything that's going to go forward. It's very, very. And here's the keyword, deterministic.
From a given state, a future state is absolutely determined. Well, Laplace died, as I point out in the book, in 1827.
In 1927, you have the Solvay conference, probably the most famous conference in the history of the.
A majority of the people at that conference won the. No. Or won. Or had. Or in the future would win the Nobel Prize. And they were. They were there talk about the new quantum mechanics. And the one thing that they were trying to wrap their heads around this, and this particularly vexed Einstein, who, Who famously said God does not throw dice. Right, is that they realize that they. At the. At the level of the ultra small, the quantum level, they were going to have to throw out determinism. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says you can know the position of a particle or you can know its velocity. You cannot, in principle, know both. And then you had this, the famous double split experiments, where it turns out that it's a. Where that particle is going to go is not utterly determined. It is a probabilistic equation called a wave function, and you don't know until the wave function collapses. And so it turns out that in 1927, we could say they wrote the obituary to Laplace's. Determinism.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: Very interesting. Yeah. I think this is a fascinating story. And if determinism is false. Wow. Then what's going on in their inner workings behind the universe? That raises all kinds of questions and certainly opens the door for intelligent design.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: And I didn't actually answer the question, which is what does that have to do with intelligent design?
And is this that that collapsing of the wave function? At least in terms of the most popular interpretation of quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpretation is a function of mind.
It. It doesn't. It does not. We don't know what the actual state of the system is until you have an intelligent observer. It is, it is beyond comprehension. If I think Feynman said it, that if you understand quantum mechanics well, come and tell me because nobody else does.
Yeah.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: It's pretty extraordinary that it almost seems like for anything to exist, there has to be a mind behind it all, according to quantum mechanics under this interpretation, as you said. And does that imply a supreme mind behind everything, where the whole universe would collapse, you know, and cease to exist? I don't know. But it's pretty fascinating. And it definitely shows that not only is there a role for mind and consciousness in the inner workings of how the universe operates, which itself, you know, very much points to an intelligent cause, but it shows that mind is even primary. And that's pretty amazing.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: And so just like the Big Bang, materialists try to get around it. And the materialist get around for quantum mechanics is of course, the many worlds theory. And the many worlds theory is. Well, you know, you don't have to choose it. It's not one way or the other. It's both things happen. And a new universe splits off at every quantum event.
And there. So that's why, you know, there's infinite universes and very, very intellig.
Derek Mueller at or Veritasium. I'm sure our viewers know that did an art a video on the many worlds theory which he subscribes to recently.
Now, that is a minority view. There's actually not a majority view. Now, the Copenhagen view, according to a recent survey, is by far the most popular view. But it's not over 50%. It's about 35%.
Many Worlds is about 15% of physicists who responded in this survey. But it, it is a interesting phenomenon that materialists will go to literally infinite extremes, literally infinite extremes to avoid the conclusions of something that's going to invoke mind as being part of this process and especially an ultimate mind, to the point of positing infinite universes. Which is quite crazy. Why is it crazy? Because if there are infinite universes, everything happens.
And the opposite of everything also happens, which means all of rationality goes by the boards.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: And it's the same thing that happens in the case of the fine tuning argument, which we'll get to in just a second, where they will postulate a multiverse and a huge, immense number of unobservable, unseen other universes that have to exist in order to make it less improbable that our universe would exist and get all of the right parameters you need for life without a mind. Okay. And so again, they're postulating these just incredible things to avoid the conclusion of a mind being primary behind the universe. And we, and then we see this with regards to, you know, where did just the universe come from to begin with? Self creating universes, this idea that universes just can pop into existence out of nothing. Again, we have no experience with that. So time and time again you have to see, the materialists have to believe some pretty incredible things.
Use the word crazy. We'll get to that later. But you know, it adds up over time. You realize that actually believing in a mind is far more parsimonious, a worldview and an answer to a lot of these questions than what you have to believe if you're going to hold on to your materialism. But, well, let's get there as we go through the conversation, because you also do raise fine tuning as an argument for intelligent design in your book. And I appreciated you quoting me in your section on fine tuning, Barry. But again, but I really admire your ability to explain things. And I wanted to ask you, could you explain for our listeners what is fine tuning, why is it an argument for design? And perhaps what is your favorite example of fine tuning in nature?
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Okay, so about 70 years ago, physicists began to recognize that the universe is on a razor's edge to have life in it, life that can observe the universe. In other words, in order to have life, you have to have certain parameters. And when they started calculating those parameters, if the constants of the universe varied in even the slightest degree, there would be no universe at all that had life that could observe the life, the universe to begin with. And so this is a common sense observation, is that the universe is fine tuned for the existence of life. Even materialists, the, the arch materialists like Stephen Hawking will say, yeah, it, there's, it's, it's fine tuned for the existence of life. That's not in dispute.
So what is in dispute? Well, what what is the result of this fine tuning? Of course, there's two competing explanations. The first explanation is obvious. The, there's fine tuning, there's a fine tuner. I don't know.
Many of our viewers are old enough to remember the old receivers that you, that you used to have radio signals come in on and you can get a gross tune and then you had a fine tune and you'd get the doc and well, you at that point were the fine tuner.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: I remember those. Barry, when, when my wife and I first got married, we didn't have cable. This was only, you know, we married for 17 years, so it wasn't all that long ago. We just put, we just had a little TV in our living room with antennas. And you would stand there, I remember trying to watch the 2008 Olympics. And I was like standing there like holding on to the antenna, trying to get just right so we could watch the Olympics that summer. But anyway, go ahead.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: Yeah, you were fine tuning. And so the obvious explanation for the fine tuning, at least one obvious explanation for the fine tuning of the universe is there is a fine tuner, a creator God, if you will. And what's the other explanation for the fine tuning of the universe?
And there's not really a good one, but the one that has been advanced most by the materialists who again their motive is to avoid the conclusion of a creator, is the multiverse theory. And of course the multiverse theory posits that there, every imaginable universe exists. There's an infinite number of universes and we just happen to be in one where you can observe life.
Well, the problem with that becomes immediately apparent. It it like the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics, it utterly destroys reason why because if there are infinite universes, everything that can happen will happen. As a matter of fact, it will happen infinitely number of times. And if everything that can happen will happen, it explains every observed phenomenon plus the opposite of every observed phenomenon. And so something that explains everything with equal alacrity actually winds up explaining nothing. Right? And so that's, that's the, the fine tuning argument in a nutshell. Now that my favorite I think is, is the privileged planet explanation. And you know, there are so many variables that have to be done just exactly right for life on Earth to, to exist. Now everybody, well, most people are familiar with the Drake equation and, and the, is the, is the one where, you know, you take all these parameters for the existence of life and you multiply them. You, you come up with more or less arbitrary percentages for what Those probabilities are. And you can come to the conclusion that there are billions or even trillions of inhabited worlds or zero inhabited worlds. That's. The Drake Equation is, in my view, useless because it's infinitely malleable.
On the other hand, if you actually look at what the, the parameter are and how fine tuned they have to be, and the calculations that they did in that book, the privileged planets, Gonzalez and Richards, that it turns out that the probability of even one habitable planet existing in the Milky Way is less than 1. And, and that, that's why they call it the privileged planet. We beat the odds out of the billions and billions of stars out there. The problem, if you, if you calculate all those odds, the probability that one habitable planet exists is less than 1.
And that's why we're the privileged planet.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: Either that or there is a near infinite multitude of other universes out there that we can't observe where there is no privileged planet and we just happen to live in the one that got lucky. You can take your pick, but I think that I'll go with a more parsimonious explanation here.
[00:25:38] Speaker A: The parsimony theory is very, very key to every argument here. You know, everybody is familiar with Occam's Razor and Occam's Raz, in its classical formulation, doesn't say. We all say. The, the theory that's simplest is usually the correct one. Well, that's not what it actually says in its classical formulation. It says entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Well, if you're going to multiply to infinite entities, that is the most egregious violation of Occam's Razor that it's possible to imagine.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: That's really. I've never heard that formulation, Barry, but that really is like the definition of the multiverse is multiplying things beyond. Well, I guess they would argue it's necessary, but if you just look at the data, I don't think it's necessary. But anyway, that's, that's very interesting, Barry. I'll have to talk to you offline and get the reference for that, because that's a great formulation.
We're running a little bit long on this one, so I want to finish this podcast up pretty quick here. But you also talk about extremely unlikely things happening in our everyday experience, and you give the example of poker getting a royal flush and spades, or what you call an rfs. And I love this example, Barry, because I often use it in my own presentations. I think people can relate to poker. One time I Won a thousand dollars poker tournament. I got extremely lucky. I'm not like a poker shark or anything like that. Like I enjoy playing it, but I'm not like an amazing poker player.
But I think that people can relate to poker.
So poker raises the question of whether unlikelihood alone is enough to implicate design. Because you go through in your book calculating the likelihood of giving, getting any given hand when you're playing poker and it's pretty low. Okay, but is it so low or is it the nature of that event such that you would detect design just from getting some unlikely hand of cards? The answer of course is no. But could you explain what is the idea of an RFS and how does it help us to understand the idea of combinatorial space, specified complexity and what counts as evidence for intelligent design?
[00:27:43] Speaker A: And here I'm still standing on Bill Demski's shoulders. I mean everything in that chapter with respect to that issue is from his book the Design Inference. And now Winston Ewart is also his co author there.
And so the issue. Let's lay out the example that I give in the book.
Suppose that you are playing poker and it's just you and your buddy, you're playing heads up and he deals himself three royal flushes and spades in a row, the first three hands.
And you go well that seems kind of fishy.
And he could say to you, well it's, I admit that it's an extremely improbable event that I got these three royal flushes in a row, but guess what?
The, the probability of that three hand sequence is exactly the same as every other three hand sequence. This is counterintuitive. And so what's the, what's the probability of any particular hand? It's about 1 in 2 million. And so the probability of a 1 in a three hand sequence is 1 in 2 million times 1 in 2 million times 1 in two million.
Well, in the three hand sequence is the same probability.
Well if it's the same probability of Z, what we would call random hand.
Well why are you griping that he got that, that that series.
It's the exact same probability that of a three hand sequence that you wouldn't even raise your eyebrows out. And here is the idea of specification.
Specification. Royal flesh and spades makes that particular hand a something that, that can be described very, very compactly in it. And it's it within the rules of poker. It is a specification.
And it turns out that if you, if you and Demski and Newark lay this out in the design inference that if you combine both complexity and specification, you actually can rule out just pure random chance. And since that specification, three royal flushes in a row, could not happen in all the time from the big Bang to the present moment, by pure random chance, you can roll, you can rule out pure random chance. And so that, that combinatorial space, when you have a very, very tiny specification in, in that vast ocean of combinatorial space, if someone hits it, you can, you can be certain that it was designed. And in this case, cheating and design inference are the same thing.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, if he just got some weird hand that doesn't mean anything in the game of poker, you might think, okay, that's really weird to get it three times in a row and you may even get a little suspicious. But, you know, you're not going to necessarily, you know, make that argument to your death. But if he's getting the royal flush that he needs to win the hand of poker three times in a row, you are going to, you know, call in the, the bouncer at the casino and say, this guy is cheating, right? Absolutely.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: And it actually doesn't have to be the same hand. You could get 2, 7, Ace, 3, King, 7.
That series is, has actually the same probability as three royal flushes in a row.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: Well, and this gets into George Montanaz's method of detecting design where you talk about specialness and you can. Anyway, we won't get into that right now, but absolutely.
Okay, so the question then becomes, and we'll close it up with this one for the first podcast, are these kinds of unlikely specified events or structures or scenarios, Are they only found in physics and cosmology? Because I think we do see that with the privileged planet and some of these fine tuning parameters. But do we also see these in biology? And if so, where do we see the equivalent of these Royal flush in spades, RFS is in biology. Where do you see them? Barry?
[00:31:36] Speaker A: Okay, and okay, I'm going to climb up on Jim Tour's shoulders now. You see them two places. First you see them at the origin of life. And Professor Tour has made such a fabulous demonstration of how it is. Nobody has a clue how non living matter turned into living matter. And if you think about it in terms of combinatorial space, the specification living matter is a very, very, very, very tiny specification in a vast combinational ocean of matter, which almost all of which is not living. And so what do I mean by that? That the, the complexity of the living matter, even the simplest living matter, as Professor Tour points out, is so Mind bogglingly vast that the, that the probability that it just came together randomly without any sort of guidance is practically nil. It is a specification in a vast combinatorial space. And that's why you can have a design inference with the Origin of Life. And Professor Tour's genius is demonstrating for the masses the utter failure of the Origin of life project. For the last 70 years, they've been trying to explain this. They're not any closer today than they were 70 years ago, the other place.
And, and Michael Behe points this out in, in. Very good, very well. In Darwin's Black Box, for instance, you have irreducibly complex structures in all these biological systems.
And the probability that these, these structures can come together without guidance is again, that that specification is extremely low in a combinatorial space. And then you have, as Meyer points out, the language of intelligent design in every living cell, which is DNA. And DNA is not isomorphic within semiotic code. It is a semiotic code.
It has it. It conveys meaning. You have these, these chemicals arrange in exactly a particular way, and you have a chemical interpretation system that then results in a particular protein being made pursuant to those instructions. And that interpretation system that cannot arise in the absence of intelligence. It's just practically impossible.
[00:34:15] Speaker B: Great, great points, Barry. These are all great arguments for intelligent design. You're just taking us on a tour of where we see fine tuning, specified complexity in biology. Okay, so let's now close this up. You say in your book that materialists have to believe some crazy things.
And this, of course, is a quote from mathematician Granville Sewell, who's a friend of both of ours. And I'll be honest, I kind of recoiled when, when I saw that quote, because I don't normally talk like this. But let's read the full quote from Granville Sewell in context. He, of course, is a professor of mathematics, might be emeritus now from the University of Texas, El Paso. He says, if you're going to be a materialist, he says, you must believe that a few unintelligent forces of physics alone could have rearranged the fundamental particles of physics into computers and science techs and jet airplanes and nuclear power plants and Apple iPhones. So is it crazy to believe that blind matter and energy can create, you know, iPhones and jet airplanes? Barry? And if so, you know, sum it all up for us. Why? Why is that? Why would you say that?
[00:35:21] Speaker A: So the obvious rejoinder to what it's crazy to believe those things is we. Wait a minute. The blind physical forces acting on the fundamental particles didn't create all those things. People did. Well, wait a minute. If you are a materialist, by reductionist materialist especially, you have to believe by definition that the people themselves were made by blind physical forces acting on the fundamental particles. And so you've just pushed it back one step. And in the book I demonstrate how if you, if you just keep pushing back one step at a time as a materialist, your principles say that from the Big Bang to the present moment, blind physical forces acting on the fundamental particles produced all of those things. Well, we know that that is impossible, that that when you have specified complexity, like Apple iPhones, every time we have observed the existence of specified complexity, without exception in the history of observations, it has been the product of what mind.
And therefore the most parsimonious explanation for the existence of those things is a mind that created.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: Great way to end it. Barry, I very much agree with you. In our experience, mine is what produces these things. And we have no experience with unintelligent processes creating these complex features. So great argument, very well argued. And I would expect nothing less from you, Barry. So the book is Unforgetting God by Barry Arrington. We've covered sort of his scientific arguments in this podcast. We're going to do a second podcast with Barry where we're going to talk about how he addresses some common objections to intelligent design and also talks about some of the larger philosophical, cultural, and even legal implications of this debate. So stay tuned for more with Barry Arrington. Barry, thank you so much for joining us.
[00:37:18] Speaker A: Thank you for having me.
[00:37:19] Speaker B: I'm Casey Luskin with ID the Future. Thanks for watching and listening.
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