Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What is evidence? It's actually, turns out the definition of evidence is pretty simple. Evidence is anything that tends to make a proposition more probable.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design welcome to ID the Future. I'm Casey Luskin with Discovery Institute's Stuff center for Science and Culture. And today we have back on the show with us Barry Arrington, an attorney and former member of the Colorado State House of Representatives. He earned his law degree from the University of Texas Law School, and he's worked in a variety of interesting fields of law, civil litigation, nonprofit law, and also constitutional law, doing a lot of work in the area of First Amendment law. Also, Barry, some of your cases have gone to the Supreme Court before, and I know you have another case that coming up. So Beer, I'd like to welcome you back to ID the Future to continue to discuss your recently published book, Unforgetting God.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Well, thank you for having me, Casey.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Now, in the first podcast we had with you, we talked about some of your scientific arguments in the book for Intelligent Design. And I also mentioned that, yeah, the book does also make an explicit case for Christian apologetics. We're not going to talk about that really, on this podcast, but in this particular episode, what I want to focus on is you sort of, we laid a scientific foundation for intelligent design with your work in the previous podcast, but you also discuss in your book the larger implications of intelligent design for culture, morality, and even law. And so I'd like to ask you some questions about that. But actually, before we jump into that, you and your book have one. Actually, one of my favorite parts of your book is that you go through some objections to design arguments and you basically go through objection after objection after objection. And it really is a tour de force. And I want to go through some of your responses to objections where I think you this is where you know, your attorney skills and your argumentation skills come out throughout the book. But they really shined in this chapter. And you asked the question of whether or not neo Darwinian evolution really is unassailable fact. And I like the fact that you focused on the origin of body plans because in your sort of legal style approach, I remember taking evidence in law school. We talked about this a little bit in the previous podcast. And of course, in Evidence, we learned that when a party opponent admits a fact that tends to be detrimental to their own side's case, that tends to indicate that that piece of evidence is trustworthy and reliable and has strong probative value. So a judge is supposed to admit that that kind of evidence. So if you were like, you know, if that's why when somebody confesses, oh yes, I stole the queen's jewels or I did X, Y or Z, you know, when, when they confess to doing something, you would not normally say that, you know, something that's against your interest unless there really was a lot of truth to it. You were compelled by the truth to say, to make that admission. So you have some quotations and some sort of admissions from proponents of neo Darwinian evolution with regard to the origin of new animal body plants. So I guess the question I would ask you is what do these proponents of neo Darwinism say about the origin of body plans? And do they acknowledge that their model really has not explained this?
[00:03:25] Speaker A: And so obviously the standard neo Darwinian line is that neo Darwinian theory explains everything, right?
But in recent years, there has come to the fore some pushback, not just from intelligent design proponents, but people like Dennis Noble, who have you've been working with recently.
And this kind of third wave or extended synthesis.
And the interesting thing about all of these extended synthesis biologists, these evolutionary biologists, every single one of them is a materialist. They do not have a theological ax to grind. And you're right, if I'm trying a case in front of a jury and I put my client on the stand and they tell their story, well, the jury expected them to tell their story. That. And, you know, it might be, they might believe it, they might not. But if I put my opponent's client on the stand and I get them to admit facts that are good for me, that's as in the south, we say that's a lead pipe cinch. I mean, that's, that's just unassailable.
And, and so having these materialists, proponents of the extended synthesis come out and admit that the neo Darwinian synthesis as it has existed for the last 80 years, doesn't really do what it purports to do, which is extend the origin of new body plans. And we need a new. The least, an extension of the old theory. That's powerful.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with you very much and I'm familiar with a lot of that literature. And there's a reason why these folks actually have rejected neo Darwinism and are trying to come up with new evolutionary models is because they don't feel that the standard evolutionary model has explained this crucial aspect of biology. Where do new body plans come from? Where does biological novelty come from? So really great point. So what about the origin of life?
Do mainstream, even, you know, materialistic Oriented scientists do they acknowledge that this fundamental question remains unresolved?
[00:05:37] Speaker A: So I absolutely love Jim Tour.
He's just fabulous. And I just highly recommend his YouTube channel for those who haven't already been there. I'm sure most of our viewers have.
But this is the thing that is so fabulous about Professor Tour is he is now standing up like the boy at the parade where the emperor is marching down the street with no clothes on. Hey, hey, wait a minute. He doesn't have any clothes on.
And, and so we have had a headline after headline after headline for decades now, where the, the, the theory, or the, the at least the purported theory of the origin of life. We're just on the verge of explaining how life began in the pr.
Well, Professor Tour is saying, well, wait a minute, you don't really have the faintest clue how life began in the primordial earth. And if you say otherwise, you are misleading people.
And, and one of the things that I thought was so fabulous is he said, tell you what, I will give you the. He challenged five of the leading origin of life, actually ten of the leading origin of life scientists. He says, I will give you five of the things that you need for the existence of life. And he. And he gave these five parameters, including information and. And basic chemicals necessary in their pure form. Okay, you've got that. All right. Produce life. Tell me how that combines to life. Well, they can't even do that. He said, I will take. I will stop criticizing you. I will take down all my Internet content if anybody can explain to me how starting way ahead, not from the finish starting line, but way ahead from the starting line. Those things can combine randomly into life. Nobody took him up on the challenge because nobody's able to take him up on the challenge. So Professor Tour has exposed the complete and utter poverty and failure of the materialist Origin of Life project.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I love when Jim Tour goes through those scientists who have said, oh, yeah, we're going to have the origin of life solved within five years or 10 years. And okay, I mean, it's fair to make predictions in science, but then we can go back and look at those claims and say, okay, well, what happened? Like, why are these predictions never even remotely coming true? We're nowhere near closer. In fact, I love the way that Jim Tour frames it where he says, look, the more we discover about the complexity of life, the more the solution recedes from our grasp. Okay, we're not getting closer to explaining it. We're getting further away. The more we discover about science, which.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Is I say in the book Darwin, and I might be vilified for saying this, Darwin was actually a very keen observer.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: I mean, I always say that I think Darren was a very good scientist. Barry, go ahead, please continue.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: I mean his is, if nothing else is his science on coral reefs, for example, would have been, you know, to this day would be.
Hold up. One wonders, I wonder whether Darwin would be a Darwinist if he had the information that available to him that we have today. Because I say, because his conception of the cell was just like Hael said, it's just a blob of protoplasm with a nucleus. Well, no, it is a little factory with a library inside with little nanomachines. And if Darwin had been able to sit, see that, would he have gone forward with his theory? He never really dealt with the origin of life issue in any sort of rigor. He, he basically said it was beyond science, frankly.
And, and, but I say in the book that, that Darwinism is a 19th century analog theory trying to make its way in a 21st century digital age.
Wow.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: Wow. No, look, I agree with you. I've often wondered the same thing. If Darwin was alive today, would he still embrace his own theory? And of course his theory does explain some things. Nobody denies that. But would he embrace it as, you know, the full blown model of how new species arise. Of course it wasn't intended to apply to the origin of life, but how we get diversification of species. One of the things that I've always appreciated about Darwin is how open he was about weaknesses in his theory, which I also think is what part of what made him a very good scientist. And if you look at some of those weaknesses, you know, he predicted that those weaknesses would be resolved, but they really haven't been thinking about the fossil record, thinking about, you know, explaining features that seem like they might need numerous excessive, slight modifications, but then we can't explain them in that manner. They require sort of leaps of complexity in order to evolve or the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record. There's other issues where Darwin predicted or sort of acknowledged problems with his theory, predicted they would be resolved, but then they haven't been resolved. Okay, so Darwin being honest enough and candid enough to acknowledge the weaknesses in the theory, if he was here today, I'd like to think that he might say, yeah, my theory just didn't work to explain those things. But we can only speculate. I mean we could speculate all day, but we'll never know for sure. But it is an interesting question. Yeah.
So you also asked the question in your book, why do the media fail to show the slightest curiosity about or skepticism toward materialist scientists? And I've interacted a lot with the media in my job here.
About maybe a month and a half ago, I had a lengthy, it was an over an hour long interview with npr and I actually appreciated doing an interview with somebody like that because, yes, the reporter was hostile, but at least, you know, when a reporter is hostile, they're being honest with you. Okay. And I love it when people are, you know, just being real, just being themselves. And I thought this reporter was being real with me, that he was skeptical. And I appreciate that. That's fine. I can totally cool with people, you know, disagreeing with me or not sharing the same view. That's, that's fine. And I welcome those kinds of conversations, but, you know, that's fine. But this reporter, like, I just would love to have been a fly on the wall when he was interviewing Ken Miller or some other. This is an interview I did about the Scopes trial or some other, you know, pro evolution scientists, you know, did he treat them with a similar amount of asking hard questions, skepticism, etc. Etc. Which is what a reporter is supposed to do.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: So I remember on this in the same.
Sorry for interrupting, but I remember on this same line of inquiry, when I was in the legislature, I had an interview with a reporter from the Denver Post and he said, okay, so Barry, you're our Representative Arrington, you are an arch conservative. So how, as an arch conservative do you feel about blah, blah, blah, blah. And I, and I said to him, how many times have you been interviewing someone on the other side of the aisle and saying, so you're an arch liberal and you're just so far to the left.
How do you feel about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? And he admitted to me he had never used the term. And so it is a one way street for, for, for the media.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: And what you just also, you know, sort of brought out is the lack of self awareness. A lot of folks have lack of self awareness that they even have that bias. You know, I, I mean, I've experienced this so many times with reporters. You've obviously dealt with the media lot. Barry, I'm not telling you anything that you don't know. But it's not just the bias. It's the complete lack of awareness that the bias is there, which again just compounds the bias. Like if you are sort of in the minority view, you have to be ultra careful about what you're saying. To make sure you get your facts right. And you have to be ultra sensitive that, you know, you're not just the majority. And so I actually prefer that being in that position, us being ID proponents, I like the fact that it forces us to be careful, to be sensitive and to be aware that, like, yes, I have a bias, but so does everybody. It really gives you a more, I think, acute understanding of just the reality of human nature, the reality of our own biases and the reality of our own fallibility, all those things. And again, I'm capable of being fallible as well, but it just makes. It forces you to be in that position.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: But it's like we all suffer from confirmation bias.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: We all do. We all suffer. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And we've all got to be careful, but it's better to be aware of it than to not be aware of it. Right.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: One of the advantages that conservatives have in the media world is the, the media is very, very careful to point out their confirmation bias. And so you have to be prepared for it. Not so on the other side.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: And to take this out of the conservative liberal context. And in the ID debate, we got, we have liberals who support id, we have conservatives who support id. We also, you know, have to be very aware and point out, you know, they will point out to us our confirmation bias, and we can say, sure, but what about yours? You know, did you ever think about that? Yeah. So there you go. Anyway, back to the question.
You responded to this, this, this sort of, this question, why did the media fail to show the slightest curiosity about, or skepticism toward materialist scientist? You respond to that by citing a very famous quote from Richard Lewontin about the centrality of materialism, which I think is so important for people to realize. It is a very candid moment from a very honest scientist who is a materialist. What is that quote, Barry? And why, why is that so important, that point to bring out?
[00:15:25] Speaker A: And so, and it is, it is extremely famous, it's extremely important quote from this died in the world, materialist, Darwinist. And he said, we take the side as scientists of materialism and that commitment to materialism. And here's the key word, absolute.
And he ends it because we cannot allow, quote, a divine foot in the door. And he admitted that that materialism sometimes leads to some very counterintuitive conclusions. But we take the side of materialism. No, no matter.
I think the patent absurdity of some of the conclusions that leads us to, because we cannot step back from that absolute commitment to materialism. Even one hair's breadth. And that's the same thing that I think motivates these materialist reporters. And why I say materialist reporter. Well, journalism, if you, if you look at it as a profession, the, the chattering classes, I call them the intelligentsia, the, the Western intellectual elite from which the journalistic classes are drawn, are imbued with materialist imperative from the very, very beginning. And they swim in it in, in, in their education, they swim in it in their professional lives. They get no pushback from it from practically anybody. And so if you're metaphysical commitments compel something, demand something, and some evidence, or even no evidence supports it, well, that's. Okay, that's enough.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: Yeah, Abs, absolutely. Materialism, as you said, it's absolute within that worldview. And, and I think that Richard Lewontin deserves huge amount of commendation for being honest about that. Quick little interlude here. Media tip for our listeners. All right? If you are an ID proponent and a reporter from the mainstream media comes to you and says, oh, I just think that intelligence line is so interesting, and I just want to help you get your message out and tell your side of the story, and they're being all sickly sweet towards you, okay, all the alarm bells should be going off in your head that this person is, is hiding their real agenda. I'm not saying you shouldn't do the interview. I'm just saying be aware, this person is not probably not telling you the truth. But if a reporter from the mainstream media comes to you and says, look, I think intelligent design is probably wrong. It's a minority view. Most scientists reject it. But look, I want to, you know, we want to interview you for this story and hear what you have to say. Now, that's a reporter that you can trust, okay? Because at least, you know, they're being honest with you about their skepticism. All right? So I don't usually give media tips, but I don't bury any, any media tips you would give after your vast years of experience working with the media on, on various issues.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: Well, I, I think that that that one is, is if there is one media tip, I would just reiterate that that reporter is not your friend, they're going to try to act like their friend to get you to open up. So if I'm taking a deposition and the deponent is, is my opponent's client, and, and I say to them, you know, admit you're a Nazi pig.
Nobody's ever going to admit they're a Nazi pig.
But if I say, you know, I just want to have A conversation with you. And I start talking to them. And I'm not all nice and I don't get confrontational with them, they will inevitably open up and say things they would not have other otherwise said. So any good interlocutory, whether it's a deposition where there's a media interview, knows that if you want to get the best stuff from the other side, you don't come at them with guns blazing. You come at them with, okay, I'm your friend. Let's have a conversation. But they're not your friend. They don't want to have a conversation.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: That is the key point. You have to remember, Barry, they are not your friend. That doesn't mean that they're evil people or terrible people.
We can treat people who are not our friends with all the civility and kindness in the world and receive what they're saying. But remember, at all moments, never forget this. They are not your friend. And if you can keep that in mind, you'll probably survive. But the moment you forget, that's the moment that they're going to, you know, they're going to work their wily ways on you and not treat you fairly. So, anyway, there we go. All right, so what about the objection that people. And I've heard this objection many times, you know, you make an argument for intelligent design, you're providing all this evidence, and then people say, well, there's no evidence for an intelligent designer, or there's no evidence that God exists, so therefore design cannot be accepted. We hear this sometimes. It's a very odd objection because. But, but I mean, I want to, I want to hear from you, how do you respond to that objection?
[00:20:19] Speaker A: So anyone who says that there is no evidence that God exists, there's one thing about which we can be absolutely certain, one of two things are true. They're not telling the truth, or. And the more charitable interpretation is they don't know what that word means, evidence.
As a lawyer, I deal with evidence all the time. That's, that's as in litigation. That's your job, to marshal the evidence and advance it towards proving a case.
A scientist does kind of the same thing in a different context. They marshal evidence and advance it towards proving a scientific conclusion, a case.
And so what is evidence? It's actually turns out the definition of evidence is pretty simple.
Evidence is anything that tends to make a proposition more probable. Now, it doesn't have to prove it in and of itself. It doesn't have to be smoking gun, but if it advances the ball one iota, it Is evidence. And it is often the case. As a matter of fact, it's usually the case that if you're going to trial, you're not going to have a smoking gun, because the cases that go to trial are by definition the ones that don't have smoking guns. Those are the ones that settle, right? And so you marshal your evidence and you take fact by precept by precept, fact by fact, evidence by evidence. And the totality of the evidence is what you make your base, your conclusion upon. And I, and I, and I lay out all the evidence for the existence of a intelligent designer.
God, if you will, but at least an intelligent designer in one chapter. And then I point to that, and I can I, and I say, you may not be persuaded by that evidence, but that doesn't mean it's not evidence. Too many people say or believe it. Seems like that evidence that does not persuade me is the same as not evidence. Well, that's just not true.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: 100%. Great, great response, Barry. And I need to remember that response, actually, because I'll say, look, I just provided you with all this evidence. They're like, well, I don't accept it. Okay, well, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: I mean, so I used the example of a trial. So, so I'm. I've got a client, and he says that he was run over in an intersection. His name's Ted, and Ted is the plaintiff in a case against Bill. And Bill hires a lawyer, Ted hires me. And we put on our evidence. I put on my witnesses and everything, and they testify. Bill's lawyer puts on their witnesses and everything, and they testify. It goes to the jury. They jury comes back and says, we think that Bill did it, that he ran over Ted.
Okay, well, they. That evidence persuaded the jury. Ted's evidence persuaded the jury.
Well, wait a minute. Does that mean that Bill didn't put on any evidence? Of course he did. He put on witnesses and he tried to persuade the ev. The jury with his evidence. Well, the fact that Bill's evidence didn't persuade the jury didn't mean. Doesn't mean that it wasn't evidence. Of course it was evidence.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: Well, by the way, was that a subtle reference to Bill and Ted's excellent adventure there, Barry, or was that totally unintentional?
[00:23:32] Speaker A: It was.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: It was. It was intended or.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: I had Bill and Ted in my mind.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: Okay, nicely done. Nicely done. I. I grew up in that area. I'm definitely is or was a fan. Yeah. Okay, cool. So let's now turn and we don't have a lot of time left here, so we'll have to keep this kind of brief to some of the cultural aspects of the debate over intelligent design materialism. And this is not my area of expertise. I got the sense when I read your book, this is something that you have really just delved into very deeply and really poured your heart into it in your mind, and I really appreciate that. But in the opening pages of your book, you talk about the ideas of the late philosopher Daniel Dennett. Daniel Dennett, of course, was a new atheist and a strong proponent of Darwinian evolution. He wrote the book Darwin's Dangerous Idea where he called Darwinian evolution a universal acid. What did Dennett mean by that? And do you agree with Dennett when he, when he called Darwinian evolution a universal acid? And if it is that, what are the implications?
[00:24:31] Speaker A: And so, you know, people are going to be surprised when I say that. Yeah, I agree with this new atheist, at least insofar as he calls Darwinian evolution the universal acid.
And because it is a fact of the matter, it is an indisputable fact of the matter. Darwin changed the world. And I think Richard Dawkins sums this up very well. He said it would have been impossible for him, Richard Dawkins, to have been an atheist prior to Darwin. Why? Because there was no explanation, no plausible explanation for this overwhelming appearance of design and living things prior to Darwin. After Darwin, you could be a, quote, intellectually fulfilled atheist, atheist. Because Darwin purported to provide that missing explanation. Now, whether he did or not is another question. But that's what he purported to do. And it's no understatement to say that the history of the Western intellectual tradition for the last 170 years or so hinged on that moment.
Because the universal acid began to be poured out in, in law and politics and journalism and academ in education.
Where before we had a more or less theistic or at least deistic conception of the universe, then we turned to a, a atheistic view of the universe, a materialist view of the universe. And the next thing you know, you get Nisha and, and his ideas, what happens in the wake of the death of God. And I go into the ramifications of that, of that in the book.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: Well, let's talk a little bit about that. You quote the Declaration of Independence in your book, which of course is the foundation for rights in our society here in the United States. And I think probably reflects in Western society, Judeo Christian worldview in general. You know, where we get our Rights from. And of course it says all men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And you then write in your book, you say the overwhelming majority of legal scholars are at least functional materialists. To the denizens of the legal academy and to much of the rest of the legal profession, the Declaration's propositions are not self evidently true. Indeed, materialists insist they are self evidently false. If the universe is a closed system of natural causes, there is no room for a Creator who creates men with equal moral status and endows them with rights.
I remember reading Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens and wrote a review of a couple of years ago where he, he actually agrees kind of with what you're saying here. And he himself though is a Darwinian, he's an atheist of some stripe who believes in an evolutionary origin of humanity. And he says, look, unfortunately, I mean, I'm paraphrasing him here, unfortunately this is true, that if we evolved, there is no objective basis for saying that all people have fundamental value and that there is, you know, fundamental rights given by a Creator in an evolutionary view, which he very much defends in that book. And that's kind of scary to have people who actually acknowledge that they're, that they don't even believe that. And so I guess the question I want to ask is, number one, you know, what happens in a world where Yuval Noah Harari kind of reigns basically, where if he was in control and he was, you know, openly telling the world that there is no objective basis for fundamental human rights, for believing in human equality, then what happens to the world? And are we living in that world today or are we, and I guess, is it possible that we might be living in that world, but people want to pretend that we're not. Where are we at with this whole issue, Barry?
[00:28:30] Speaker A: And, and these are, those are excellent questions. And, and in my view, they are the most important questions that we can ask as citizens of the United States because it is a fact that if you give up on a creator, if you give up on the Creator reflected in the preamble of the Declaration, you give up on the conception of rights set forth in the Declaration, which utterly depended upon natural law and the existence of rights as real objective things.
And what happens when you do that? Well, we're finding out, and this is kind of part of the been the impetus behind the book is, is I look around and the critical legal theory and critical theory generally really kind of pushed me as the genesis of the book.
And so why is that? Well, if you look at critical theory, critical theory at its essence is simply metaphysical materialism applied to human relations. And what do I mean by that?
So if you start with the premises that there's, that there's nothing in the universe but particles in motion and there is no objective right and wrong, that there, that, that and Dawkins words, there's, there's no ultimate good, there's no ultimate bad, there's just blind, pitiless indifference. What does that mean? Well, well, it means that all of human relations aren't based upon fundamental concepts of justice and morality and good and evil, right and wrong. They are instead based upon power dynamics, which is the fundamental insight of critical theory.
And they say that all human relations are between oppressed and oppressors, those with power, those opposite, those without power. And as that plays out, what happens? Well, you can't say that, that a particular act is right or wrong. No, you can, you can say only that advances the interest of a group or it hinders the advance interest of a group. Take for example, free speech.
It was not, not, not long ago that the materialists or were the great champions of free speech because it was in their interest to advance free speech to obtain their political goals.
Now it is materialist side of the spectrum that is trying to chomp down on free speech and limit it. Well, materialists never valued free speech as such as an independent objective good. Rather they valued it as a, on an instrumental basis. It either advances their goals, inhibits their goals. And so what we have, when that, that happens, when people actually accept that all human relations are just power dynamics played out, everything devolves into tribalism of your interest, against your interest and oppressors oppressed. And the only thing that is missing from that is any objective reason to prefer one tribe's interests to another tribe's interests.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: But you lose that objective basis for saying this is a fundamental good that we have to value in all cases above whatever our interests might be, so to speak. And that is where you really preserve those goods in societies when you have that objective basis for valuing fundamental human rights, the, the value of human beings, etc, etc, and I use the Holocaust.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: As an example of this.
People, many people don't know this. Did you know that the Holocaust wasn't illegal?
It was not illegal in the sense that it did not violate any of the internal laws of Germany at the time. But of course we know that, that, that those laws violated fundamental human rights. So the Holocaust was, while it was not illegal, and pursuant to the internal laws of Germany, pursuant to a higher law, it was illegal pursuant to the most high law that it is, that is evil. To slaughter 6 million people for no reason other than the fact that you don't like their race.
Doesn't matter what the internal laws of Germany said at the time. Well, a critical theorist would have to say, well, that's not right.
You, you can say that, that the Holocaust was wrong.
But you have to add, by my lights, and I actually quote Richard Posner, who was the, the chief Judge of the 7th Circuit, very powerful judge, who's, who said this in no uncertain terms. He said, Holocaust wasn't wrong. This is one of our most powerful judges in the country. Holocaust wasn't wrong in any objective sense. I didn't, I don't agree with it, and I would have stopped it if I could. But we can't say that the Holocaust is wrong, because in order to do that, you have to say that there's some objective basis higher than a culture for, for evaluating the Holocaust. And he asserted that there is none.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Yeah, Posner is really striking. I remember learning about Posner in law school. In fact, little aside here, when I took civil procedure in law school my first semester, my professor at the University of San Diego, Roy L. Brooks, instead of really teaching US civil procedure, he taught us legal theory and spent a lot of time actually promoting critical legal theory in the class. And at the time, I was like, how am I ever going to. You know, this is like, not useful when you actually practice the law. But in retrospect, I'm so grateful, even though I disagreed with his perspective that he taught in the class, I'm so grateful because I was able to appreciate and learn that, yes, there is this dominant strain of thought in the law today that says that it is just about might makes right. There's not fundamental ethical values and human rights that are stronger considerations than any other issue you could come up with.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: The name of that theory is legal positivism.
It is the overwhelmingly predominant theory of jurisprudence. And it says that that law as such is just what people with power make other people do. It has no necessary relationship with morality. Which leads to my best quote from law school from Sanford Leverson, a very famous legal scholar from the University of Texas who stood up in class one day and said, okay, guys, guess what?
The most. The closest American analog to a Maoist thought reform school is the first year of law school.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: Yikes. Wow.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: Because in the first year of law school, Just like a Maoist thought reform camp, they're trying to change your fundamental worldview.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: I, I didn't know it at the time that that's what I was getting. It was very well camouflaged, but I think that I was getting some of that my first year. Yeah, Very, very, very well said. Okay, well, look, we are running a bit long, but, you know, you brought up very, very serious topic of the Holocaust. My family on my dad's side, they're originally Jews from Belarus. My ancestors originally escaped from Belarus before the Holocaust. But I'm pretty sure we had families still there. And a lot of Jews were killed in the Holocaust there. So this, this kind of stuff hits very close to home for me. You know, if we can't objectively say that that was wrong, then clearly there's something wrong with that worldview or that philosophy or that legal theory, whatever you want to call it. But you, this also, these issues hit home for you because you actually represented some of the parents of children who were killed in the Columbine shooting. And I was listening to your recent podcast with Sean McDowell today on the way to work with, with a buddy of mine, a young kid that I mentor, great young guy, and he was too young to know what the Columbine shooting was. Had to explain it to him. And, and I was like, you know, all those shootings, those school shootings that we have today, well, that didn't used to happen. Okay. And the first time that really blew up, you know, so to speak, was the Columbine shooting. And everybody else had just been trying to copycat that. And he was like, oh, wow. So I kind of explained to him what the, what the Columbine shooting was. So can you explain what was the Columbine shooting and what was the connection to materialism among those shooters? Were. You know, the vast majority of materialists are not killers. We're all made in the image of God. We know right and wrong. Most people choose to do right and are not doing this, whether they acknowledge that they're made in the image of God or not. So I don't want anyone to misunderstand us. We're not trying to say that materialists are somehow less moral or worse people than non materialists. We're all imperfect. But you make it a point that materialism has consequences. So how does the Columbine. What was the Columbine shooting and how does that bring that out?
I guess for, for what's going on in our culture today.
[00:37:39] Speaker A: And I would like to add or actually join that caveat no materialist actually lives their life. Actually, I should say almost no materialist actually lives their life as if their fundamental metaphysical premises are true. Nobody, nobody lives their lives practically facing the fact that. That if my metaphysical premises are true, everything is ultimately meaningless and there's no right and there's no wrong.
So that's my first caveat. But what was the Columbine shooting? April 20, 1999. Dylan Harrison and Eric Klebold, two students at Columbine High School near Denver, came in and they wound up shooting 13 of their classmates in one of the most famous school shootings.
And one of the most, some people would say, the. The school shooting that kind of kicked off a lot of other school shootings.
Through a long series of details that I won't get into, I wound up representing a number of the parents whose children were killed that day.
And as a result, I spent literally hundreds of hours investigating that massacre and what motivated the killers. I studied thousands of pages of documents and countless hours of video and audio recordings that the killers left behind. It's interesting that the killers left behind a trove of data where they talked about what they were going to do and what their motives were. And so we don't really have to guess about what their motives were, because I told us. And what did they tell us? Well, it turns out that Eric Harrison and I talk about Eric Harris because he was the leader. Colin got Klebold was a follower.
Harris was a very committed materialist. He had actually studied philosophy, and he wrote in his journal that. That there is no law, there is no right, there is no wrong. Everything, his. His words were everything is just chemistry and math. That's kind of the definition of materialism. He did not believe in objective right and wrong. He was also a very committed Darwinist.
They. He wore a shirt.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Didn't he wear a shirt that said natural selection, Barry?
[00:39:54] Speaker A: And that was not a coincidence.
[00:39:55] Speaker B: And I want to say something. I was. I knew there was some connection. And before this interview I was preparing, I was trying to find that fact on the Internet. That fact is almost impossible to find. In fact, I didn't find it till I found an article that David Klinghoffer had written. But go ahead. That's. That's really interesting. People have really buried that fact, and people.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: Well, Darwinists aren't necessarily killers. That's. That's certainly true.
But Harris had a connection between his Darwinism and his philosophy. And what was the bridge between his Darwinism and his philosophy? And it's Nisha and you Say, well, this is an 18 year old kid, he doesn't know anything about Nisha. Well, he did. He wrote in his journal, I love Nisha. He was familiar with Nisha's ideas and the, the, the idea that Nisha had, it's called the Ubermensch. What is the Ubermensch? The Ubermensch is the superman who is, has evolved beyond the, the average person who's actually kind of a new species of man who is above the, the normal people and has no obligations to the normal people. And you can call him evil, he doesn't care, because he knows evil doesn't mean anything.
And Harris literally believed, least he said he believed, that he had evolved beyond his classmates into a nation. Ubermensch. Well, what does the Ubermensch do? He does what he wants. His, the, the, the fundamental expression of the Ubermensch personality is the assertion of his will.
And at its essence, Columbine was a niche assertion of will.
And Eric Harris wanted, and Dylan Klebold to a lesser extent, wanted to have a monumental, epic assertion of his will that people would always remember. That's what motivated Columbine.
[00:41:55] Speaker B: Wow.
Amazing, Barry. And I'm really glad that you brought these points out. People need to understand, we need to not forget the history here. And of course, again, just to reiterate this in case it's not clear, we're not saying that if you are a Darwinian materialist that somehow you are less moral. I mean, the vast. I have many friends and even some family who are coming from that perspective. And they're wonderful people. Okay, we're not making attack on people here. We're just saying that this worldview does have implications about your ability to objectively justify morality. And even though the vast majority of, you know, materialists are very normal, civil, law abiding, wonderful people, we can't pretend that as this worldview becomes more dominant in our culture that there aren't negative implications and erosive factors.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: And here, and here's where we get to the cut flower theory.
I learned about it from Dennis Prager, but he got it from prior writers. And a cut flower culture is this.
Think about your, the flowers that you got for your wife on Valentine's Day, beautiful roses or lilies or whatever you got her and you stuck them in some water and you gave them to her, you presented to him and it was just fabulous. They're so gorgeous. Well, what happened to those flowers three days later? They were rotten. They were good. They were no good. You threw them away.
Well, the same thing happens with culture.
For nearly 2,000 years, the Western culture has been infused with Judeo Christian ethics.
It's been infused to such a degree that we don't hardly even recognize it anymore. I highly recommend Tom Holland's book Dominion, where he traces the fact that the entire Western civilization is based upon, based upon Christian presuppositions to such an extent we all, we almost hardly recognize them anymore. And John Daniel Davidson's book Pagan America, where he, he talks about how the, the pagans of Rome and Greece would not recognize our modern culture because it, Christianity has transformed it so much. But as Christianity subsides, both Holland and Danielson make this point. As Christianity subsides, what takes its place?
Well, this is cut flowers. We are in the cut flower phase of our culture right now, where the sustaining nutrients, if you will, of our ethical system, Christianity, has been removed largely from the Western intellectual elite and replaced by a non Christian or a materialist conception of ethics. And as those ethics come to the fore, what happens? Well, necessarily the flowers that flourished in that Christian soil are going to start to wilt.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: Or we could say the Judeo Christian worldview generally. There are many people of faith who believe in those foundational laws and rights given by God that you find in the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, and that is what provided the foundation for our civilization. Yeah.
[00:45:06] Speaker A: And it, many materialists will be very upfront about this. They will say, you're absolutely right. My basic moral. Our metaphysical presuppositions say there are no objective moral truths. But you know what, I'm a freeloader on the Judeo Christian ethical system, which of course they are.
[00:45:24] Speaker B: And look, we're not saying that like the Bible should become the ruling book of society. We're talking about sort of the philosophical basis for these rights coming from the idea that there's a creator. Very much in the spirit of the founders of the United States who were not, you know, all Christians, they were not all trying to implement some, you know, whatever Levitical law in society, but.
[00:45:47] Speaker A: They were believing they created prevents that. That's what this.
[00:45:49] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly, exactly. We have freedom of religion, freedom of freedom of belief, but at the same time they believe that there was a creator who endowed us with inalienable rights. And so it's so great that you bring these points out, Barry. And the good news, of course, to not end on a dour note, is that there is evidence for a designer and a creator from science. So we don't live in this materialistic worldview and this materialistic universe where everything at the bottom is, you know, just blind, pitiless indifference, as Richard Dawkins says. Instead, we see a universe that is endowed and filled with purpose and meaning and that gives meaning to our lives as human beings. And we see this as you very nicely talk about in your book. From the macro architecture of the universe, Barry, all the way down to the smallest cell and protein and biomolecules, we see evidence of purpose in nature.
[00:46:38] Speaker A: And that further down to the smallest quantum level.
[00:46:42] Speaker B: There you go. Quantum mechanics even. Absolutely. Great. I'm glad, glad you brought that up. So, Barry, the book is Unforgetting God, published by Inkwell Press. It's a tour de force of arguments for intelligent design and the implications that that has for culture. So thank you, Barry, for your great work on this.
[00:46:59] Speaker A: Thank you for having me, Casey. It's been fun.
[00:47:01] Speaker B: Well, I'm Casey Luskin with ID the Future. Thanks for watching.
Visit us at idthefuture. Com and intelligentdesign. Org. This program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
