Brian Miller on the Return of Natural Theology

[00:00:04] Speaker A: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design. [00:00:12] Speaker B: Greetings. I'm Tom Gilson. We have an outstanding and extended conversation for you to listen to today on ID The Future. Covering more than the usual territory, the interview is hosted by Pat Flynn on his Philosophy for the People podcast. He's a man of many talents, ranging from martial arts to music and from philosophy to theology. And his guest is physicist Brian Miller, research coordinator for the Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture, who ties the philosophy and the theology together with biology, physics, and engineering. [00:00:53] Speaker C: Hey, everybody. [00:00:53] Speaker A: Welcome back to the podcast. We are joined by Dr. Brian Miller, a new guest on the show. I'm delighted to welcome you to the show, Dr. Miller. Thanks so much for taking to be here. [00:01:03] Speaker C: It's a pleasure to be here. [00:01:05] Speaker A: So I guess we're going to probably talk about a couple of different things. I'm really interested in getting your perspective on what science has to say for natural theology. You know, I'm not a scientist and I rarely play one on the podcast. It depends how ambitious I'm feeling on any given day. But I am very interested in natural theology, and I think science does have something. Contemporary science does have something to contribute. And in fact, maybe that'll be my first question for you. There's a philosopher that I like very much. Maybe you've read him. Some of my listeners will be familiar, Peter von Inwagen, and he says that. [00:01:39] Speaker C: He thinks that there's only two things. [00:01:41] Speaker A: That science has contributed, relatively recent scientific discoveries that have any bearing on natural theology. And he says those two things are that it seems like the universe had a beginning. That's one of the things that we're going to talk about today. And the other is the age of the universe and its evolutionary history. And I guess from a theistic perspective, he thinks that the first one's sort of favorable, the second one sort of problematic at least, might add a little bit more to deal with with the problem of evil and stuff like that. So my question is, do you think that's right? Is there more that you think science. [00:02:16] Speaker C: Has to contribute to natural theology? Less? [00:02:18] Speaker A: What's your perspective on the intersection between these two? [00:02:21] Speaker C: Yeah, I would argue that what you're seeing in every realm of science is supporting natural theology. And I'm sure many of your listeners are very savvy with the philosophy. But I'll just take a step back for a few that may not be as familiar. And that's the perspective that when you look at the discussion of whether you see design in nature, whether you Believe you can look at nature and see evidence of God, see aspects of his nature is a debate that really is ancient. It goes back to like 500 BC between people like the Adamus Democritus who believe that everything was explainable through natural processes, that you basically had these eternal atoms that would interact according to rules. And those interactions, the rules, chance and time, explains everything we see in the universe. And they would be like the modern day scientific materialists, they would be like the Richard Dawkins, right. And they were in disagreement with people that were believed in teleology, purpose was, was in the universe. And again, this is very basic to some of you, but I hope it'll be helpful for others of you that may not be trained in the philosophy. You have people like Aristotle and Plato and obviously Socrates. And they were in more of a tradition that believed that you can't explain everything you see in the world purely through these interactions of atoms and natural processes. But there was a mind and that mind had, if you want to use Platonic language, like divine forms. Aristotle saw things a bit differently, but the basic idea was that matter in of itself could not explain the order we see in the universe, the order in life, the order in our planet. But a mind had to shape matter to create this purposeful outcome. And Plato had an idea of these forms that existed in another world. While Aristotle believed that you had something that, and again, I'll use very simplistic language that was like a soul or a male principle or there was this immaterial reality inside of life that would cause it to shape the, the, the seed or the embryo into a final form. And the language used was like a carpenter crafting a ship. So this is sort of this very teleologically designed based tradition. What happened was after the Christian faith became more and more prominent, as Catholicism spread throughout Europe and other parts of the world, the teleological perspective, the belief in design became more and more prominent. You have people like obviously Augustine that very much appreciated the writings of Plato, people like Aquinas who obviously appreciated Arist. And then what they believed is when you looked at nature, you would see evidence of design. You could see you could learn about God through nature. That's natural theology. That's the idea. So that science and theology were intertwined. And that really dominated the scene for many, many years. And what happened is you have essentially the pendulum shifted towards Aristotle and Plato. And then what happened is during the modern era, with the Enlightenment, with, with the more skeptical philosophers, it shifted back more to an atomistic Tradition. And part of that made sense because when you look at nature, you can explain a lot from simple natural laws. You can talk about the development of our universe, from gravity, from. From Einstein's equations, the field equations. You can talk about chemistry, you can talk about the motion of planets with Newton. So it seemed like the atomist tradition made a lot of sense. And what happened is that philosophical framework dominated the mental landscape of Western society. Obviously with Charles Darwin. What Charles Darwin did was he was very much continuing in the tradition of the atomists, because many people think that everything he thought about was very original. But Darwin, at the end of his life, talked about how his views of heredity and adaptation were essentially the same with people like Hippocrates. So what happened is the ancient Greeks had an idea of evolution. In fact, you have people like Lucretius, who was a Latin poet in the first century bc, who had a primitive version of natural selection. It was not the modern scientific version, but it was basically the idea that you have this netherworld with different animal parts that were randomly being shifted back and forth and they would form things and some would survive and some would not survive. So it's a very similar idea. So what happened was in Charles Darwin, you read his popular writings, he would portray himself as sort of this objective observer of nature pursuing truth. But then when you read his private journals, which have been published in the last few decades, and he talks about how he was deeply shaped by the free thinkers of his era, people that very much were following the tradition of the atomist, this very materialistic view of the world. So he reshaped biology, because what happened was you have people like William Paley, who talked about when you look at biology, you see purpose, you see design. He used the famous watchmaker argument, where you see the purposeful arrangement of parts in an organism is very much like the purposeful arrangement of parts in a watch. And if you see a watch, you know it was something wasn't produced by nature, but there was a mind behind it. And many people think that there was. And this is sort of a common misperception that somehow Paley was in attention with people like Aquinas. And that's really not the case, because even if you read Aquinas, he believed that when you looked at biology that you could compare biology to human artifacts and you see teleology. So again, this idea that you look at life and you see design was something that was almost universally accepted by the early church fathers, the doctors of the church. But with evolution, that shifted dramatically. The People said, well, it really isn't design, but it's just chance, time, natural selection, natural processes. So it's very much going back to Lucretius. And that has shifted the conversation. The perspective was that natural theology is passe. It's been overturned. But what's happened is scientific advancements over the last, you know, could be, you know, even the last several decades, even the last several years, is returning science to a teleological perspective. The idea of purpose, so natural. So the idea of natural theology is really, I would argue and other people have argued, is going to have a heyday. It's. It's starting to recapture science. And in the chapters of the book God's Grandeur I wrote, I dealt with two specific issues. One was the fine tuning the laws of nature. And I also talked the beginning of the universe because people at that time thought that the universe was eternal. And if it's eternal, you have lots of time and anything can happen. That's exactly what the Greeks believed. But the fact that time, space, matter and energy started means that there is something immaterial that had to start it, which kind of points to a creator. But beyond that, if you look at the laws of nature, if you imagine that you created a machine that could create universes, like you give it to your child for Christmas, and it's this box with lots of dials, you can control every detail of the universe you want to create. [00:09:22] Speaker A: Boy, they'd be excited about that. Yeah. [00:09:24] Speaker C: Oh, they would love it. We want to get one for our office and just generate universes just to show people, right? [00:09:29] Speaker A: You think the Nintendo Switch is good? Where do you see this? [00:09:32] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. And what happens? You look. If you were to adjust various details about the laws of nature, the force of gravity, the. The force is a strong nuclear force that holds protons and neutrons together in nucleus. If you change the mass of various subatomic particles. If you don't get these dials just right, the universe could not support life. So it looks like a mind created the laws of nature for the purpose of supporting life. If you look at Earth, there's a book out called the Privileged Planet by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards. And Jay Richards was also an author of the book God's Grandeur. They talk about how there's so many details about our planet that are not just essential for us to live, but they give a planet that's incredibly optimized for life, and not just for life, but scientific investigation. So there's teleology, purpose there, origin of life. If you look, and that's again, more my specialty because I studied complex systems physics. And when you look at everything we know about physics, chemistry, it dictates that a cell could not have formed through a natural process. What's interesting is if you read leaders of the field, people like Steve Benner, who's really one of the top leaders of the field, he wrote an incredible paper called Paradoxes in the Origin of Life. I believe it was like 2009, where he talks about how if you look at thermodynamics, if you look at everything we know about chemistry, it dictates that life is impossible. It appears that life is impossible. He didn't say it was an unsolved problem. He said the laws of nature suggest it's impossible. Now, he was coming from a very materialistic perspective. He was probably atheist or agnostic. So at the end of the paper, he said, but we should still have faith. We should still just have faith that eventually will explain it. But again, if you just are honest about the science, it suggests life did not originate through natural process. And then if you look at studies of minimally complex cells, or you look at studies of self replicating machines, either way, what you find is to have something that self replicates, whether it's a cell or robot or a space probe, you must have certain functions. You must have things like energy production, information processing, error correction, selective gateways, global coordination, feedback loops. So what you're seeing in life at its most basic level is design, its purpose. So again, the pendulum is going back to teleology. So natural theology is really becoming the center of science these days. [00:11:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Wow, that's a wonderful tour through the history of natural theology, Dr. Miller. Thank you. You know what I realized? I was so excited to dive right in that rudely, I forgot to even do introductions. This is your first time on the podcast, so please. Sorry to do a hard gear shift, but before we keep going further, tell us a little bit about your background. Just love to hear about that briefly, and then we'll get back into the meaty stuff. Yeah, sorry about that. [00:12:15] Speaker C: Oh, sure, sure. Well, I was actually, I was raised Catholic, but then what happened was I went through a very serious faith crisis. Because what happened is I read people like Richard Dawkins, who wrote the book the Blind Watchmaker. And I'm sure most of your listeners know about him, but for those who don't, he's sort of a patron saint of atheism. He wrote the book God Delusion, which speaks for itself, but he also wrote a book called The Blind Watchmaker and this book actually stated that you may think you see design in nature, but it's all an illusion. It's all just chance, time, natural processes. He was arguing that he, and he stated that the universe we, we look at suggests that there is no Creator. It's just blind, pitiless indifference was his idea. And I became pretty convinced that Catholicism, Christianity, belief in God in general was a psychological crutch, that people believed it because they weren't very well trained in science, they're a bit more emotional, they didn't think as rationally. And that was discouraging because if God didn't exist, well, there's no point to life. I'm just going to die and the sun will explode and our planet will vaporize. So what's the point? So I had a kind of a heart to heart with God. I went to my room and I said, God, I don't know if you exist, but if you do exist, you have to prove it to me because I'm a scientist. And what happened is that put me on a journey for many years. And he providentially brought my life into conjunction with some really top level scientists that showed that when you look at science, you see design everywhere, you see purpose everywhere. I met other people that talked about the, the evidence for the resurrection, that it's one of the most well attested events in human history of that, of that scope and experience. God personally, I've seen miracles of experiencing his love. So it was really through that intellectual journey and through God's intervention that really brought me back to faith. And that's where I'm here today. [00:14:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. And you said that your sort of, your focus is actually related to origin of life. [00:14:12] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I talked about my spiritual journey. I forgot about my intellectual. [00:14:16] Speaker A: No, both very important. So yeah, I am. [00:14:18] Speaker C: I received a PhD in complex system physics. I studied physics and engineering at mit. Okay. Physics with my primary major and engineering was my minor. For those of you from MIT, I was course 8A. You know what that means. And then I went to Duke University to finish my PhD in complex systems physics. And it was during my time and during my PhD my faith came back actually just through my studies. And you may have heard the adage that a little science brings you away from God, but a lot of science brings you back. [00:14:48] Speaker A: Right. [00:14:48] Speaker C: And that's when I said I really need to dedicate my life to really revealing to people who are struggling with faith why it is that science really points to a creator and ultimately why is the Christian faith true? So I worked in the private sector for a while, but eventually I helped to write books on the evidence for God and creation. I helped Stephen Meyer recently write the book the Return of the God Hypothesis. I was sort of the main technical consultant for the physics this cosmology. I've helped do consulting in the past. I've had a lot of different things, but in the last six and a half years I've worked for the Discovery Institute where I'm the research coordinator. So I help to work with scientists around the world who are doing research that is using the intuition of design to help them do better research. So it's helping them to ask better questions. I'm working with biologists and engineers and what they're doing is they're showing how engineering helps you to understand biology at a much, much deeper level. So I'm helping do research on that. I'm helping to connect scientists around the world and speaking and writing on that topic. [00:15:51] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. Wow. Again, so much we could now explore and talk about. Can't do it all, of course, but fortunately there's a new book out we're going to mention here towards the end. So let's maybe focus in on a few things that I think will be of interest to the audience. I wasn't actually expecting to talk about origin of life. It's not something that I've spent a lot of time on. But you brought up reproduction. It's always just seemed to me like, okay, there's probably some difficulty here. I don't know how good the proposed solutions are. So I want to kind of get your thought on it. And the difficulty that just seems obvious is that, you know, for evolution you need reproduction. But it seems like reproduction is one of those systems. It's an explanatory target of evolution. Right. So it seems like we immediately have a chicken and egg situation. I know there's proposals of proto replicators and stuff out there and I thought about them for like five minutes. It seems kind of like proto consciousness. I'm not sure that even makes sense when you understand it. So maybe talk to us a little about that. Do you think that this is a genuine problem and maybe we could explore around that issue a little bit? [00:16:50] Speaker C: I actually hope to write a chapter of a book on that topic. There's a book called the Mystery of Life's Origin. The Continuing Controversy. And I talked about the thermodynamic issues of the origin of life. Oh, perfect, let's do it. And there have been a lot on this topic. And I've interacted and talked with other people that really are leaders in the field. Privately, I've talked to people that assume there must have been a natural origin of life, but then they recognize that there's serious problems to justify that and other people that are more skeptical. So I can give you. What I'm doing is I'm going to condense for you over the last 10 years of research in about 100 hours of lecturing into a few minutes. [00:17:26] Speaker A: Great. [00:17:27] Speaker C: So here's the fundamental challenge is that all natural processes tend to create greater disorder. That would be referred to entropy. It's harder to keep your room neat than to keep it messy. [00:17:43] Speaker A: If you've got children, believe me, I've. [00:17:45] Speaker C: Got naturally going to go to disorder, order. It's not going to organize. There are cases where that's not the case. Like when water freezes. What happens is you've got water, which is disordered, which becomes ice, which is more ordered. But the reason that happens is because the forces between the molecules, the water molecules, pull themselves towards each other to form a crystal lattice. Because it's a lower energy state, it's favored. So the only time where something can go from disorder or high entropy to low entropy is if it's going to a lower energy state. Attractive forces are pulling things together. What happens is when that happens, like when water freezes, it puts heat into the environment. And the heat in the environment causes the order of the environment to increase. The disorder of the environment, the entropy of the environment to decrease by amount greater than you had a decrease in entropy when water froze. So the net change of the universe is greater disorder, greater entropy. That's how nature works. Yeah. The problem is the origin of life requires chemicals to go into a state of both high order low entropy and high energy. That never happens without help. Now what do I mean by help? Well, let me use an analogy to make this very simple. Imagine that you've heard that energy can give you order. And that's what you hear in origin of life circles all the time. You've got sunlight, you've got maybe some high energy chemical, you've got a proton gradient. So this energy can create order. That's what you always hear. But there's a problem with that. And here's the analogy. If you were to go to your house and it's a complete mess, maybe you left for the weekend and your children just sort of went wild, you'd say, well, I heard energy can give you order. So I'm going to put gasoline on the couch and I'm going to set on fire and the energy from the burning gas is going to create order. Would that work? [00:19:34] Speaker A: I don't know if that's. It's a testable hypothesis, but I think I'll refrain. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:19:39] Speaker C: It's not going to work out so well because raw energy is going to create disorder. So what you would need is you'd have to convert that energy into a form that's useful. So you buy a robot off ebay and you plug the robot into a wall socket and then you have energy, because this energy is being converted into the robot moving to create order. So in order to have order, you've got to have some machinery that can convert some raw form of energy into a form that's useful to do work to create the order you want. But that's not enough, because if you buy a robot and you charge it up and you let it run wild, it's going to destroy your house. Because what do you need? You need software, you need information, you need instructions of the order you want to create. So the only way to create order in life is you've got to have very complex machinery that can process some energy source like sunlight or glucose, convert it to a form that's useful for the cell, like these molecules called ATP. [00:20:36] Speaker A: But. [00:20:36] Speaker C: But then you need information, instructions of how to direct that energy and direct the mass in such a way to create the order you want. So the only way life can originate is with life already existing because only it has the machinery to make that happen. Now, this has been acknowledged, actually in the literature, at least implicitly, like I talked about Steve Benner, that said it was a physical impossibility that for life to form from everything we know about chemistry and physics, because nature always goes in the wrong direction. Now, and you also have a wonderful paper by Michael Russell, who is another leader of the field, who talks about the thermal vent theory of the origin of life, proton gradients and all that. And in this, in this article, it's a beautiful article. It's a Frankenstein. It's sort of Frankenstein View of Origin of Life or Thermal vents. That's sort of the title if you look that up. Can't remember the exact title, but he talked about how everything in nature, in life happens because you've got machines that force it to happen, that chemistry in its. By itself will never give you life. He actually says this. But you have to have machinery that will force reactions to take place, that will build structures, and without that machinery causing things to happen that go against the natural flow of nature thermodynamically you're never going to have life. So you need the machinery and you need information. He acknowledges this. Now what's fascinating is he also says it has to conform to an elaborate organizational design. That's a quote, an elaborate organizational design. So he's going back to Plato and Aristotle. It's the idea that you've got to have some sort of blueprint, some sort of form that dictates how matter is arranged for it to become what you want. It's very non materialistic. Now again, he doesn't believe in a creator from what I can tell. So he doesn't believe go in that direction. But what he says is, he says how did it happen, natural selection? And this is what happens with Darwin. What happened with Darwin is he loved William Paley. He practically memorized his writings. And what he did in his writings of Origin, of Origin of Species is that he used Paley's language, examples and even cadence. And Stephen J. Gould talks about this. But he replaced God with natural suction. So essentially he talked about design in nature, but God didn't do it. Natural selection did it. And that's exactly what origin of life people do is they see there's design and organizational pattern. They know nature can't do it by itself, so they invoke natural selection, but nothing's reproducing. So they invoke natural selection not as a real process, but almost like a demiurge, like the demiurge of the Gnostics, to smuggle design into their research without giving credit to the designer. [00:23:18] Speaker A: So that, that boggles my mind. I'm not, I'm not in this literature, but I mean that just seems so obviously wrong. [00:23:24] Speaker C: Right. [00:23:25] Speaker A: It's just like, do they just, do they really just miss that? [00:23:29] Speaker C: They really just miss that. Because what happens is because they're functioning in the framework of scientific materialism because they assume there's no creator. That's an axiomatic assumption. That's a faith commitment. And they see design, they have to explain it. So natural selection is a designer substitute. And you see this all the time. So you'll always see the invoking of either self organization. There's just some natural process that causes things to magically do what they're supposed to do. [00:23:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I do see magic invoked a lot in a lot of places. [00:24:01] Speaker C: Yeah, they invoke emergence or natural section. [00:24:03] Speaker A: Emergence is pretty much synonymous with magic. And a lot of the philosophy of mind literature, so familiar with that, right? [00:24:09] Speaker C: Exactly. So, so you read it and it's, it's, it's so obvious when you change your philosophical lens, but when you're in that framework and you're told over, because this is something people understand. Science education in the west is not simply teaching facts and figures and procedures and protocols. It's a catechism. It's a faith training in the faith of scientific materialism. You're told over and over and over again there is no design. Anyone that believes in design, they're stupid. They're religious fundamentalists. They're people that bomb abortion clinics are just crazy people. And also smart people are the ones that believe everything's a product of natural processes. And you want to be smart. Don't you want people to think you're smart? So you need to denounce this idea that you see design in nature and just accept it's all natural processes. So they go through this catechism and they're mentally conditioned to suppress the evidence of design. I mean, in my article, I wrote my chapter for the book the Mystery of Life's Origin, the continuing controversy, there was a critic that wrote about my chapter, and it's really quite amazing because what he did is he quoted me. He then said I had presented no evidence, positive evidence for design. He referred to it as God of the gaps. And you look at what he quoted. He quoted me, but he cut out the quote where I mentioned the positive evidence for design. He put little ellipses and he completely, like literally his philosophical framework forced him to unconsciously suppress the evidence through design he encountered. That's kind of what's happening. [00:25:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Motivated reasoning, as they say. Right. So, yeah. So I mean, look, when I, when I read again, and the scientific literature is not where I spend my time, but in philosophical literature, you know, a lot of the smart atheists, you know, they don't, they don't deny that God has a lot of explanatory. Right. What they try to do, at least the ones that I think are the brightest, try to just say that, well, naturalism has just as much explanatory oomph. Right. [00:26:04] Speaker C: So. [00:26:05] Speaker A: And then maybe throw the problem of evil on top or something like that. Right. So I don't, I don't see the, the really bright atheists denying that, you know, as a sort of theoretical worldview, posit that God could explain all this stuff. I mean, obviously, right. If you hold the divine attributes right, omnipotence and whatnot would be no, would be no problem. But there's what they really try to do is just. Yeah. Just try and show that, that the principle, it's, it's Aquinas's other objection against God. Right. The principles of nature are. Are sufficient. Right. So what it sounds like a lot of what your project up to, Dr. Miller is showing is saying no, they're not right. And, and here's, here's a couple, a couple maybe many instances where I don't know, either there is no explanation or like the explanation is just really, really, really bad or super, super, super improbable. I don't know how you know, where you would. Would classify it. Yeah. So build that point out a little bit. Maybe you can jam on. [00:27:01] Speaker C: That's a really. That's a great question. What happens is it really comes back. It goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. It's the same basic objection. What happens is people see that you see purpose, design, evidence of a creator everywhere. The laws of nature, the beginning of the universe, life, it's just everywhere. But as the apostle Paul said in Romans chapter one is that people suppress the truth. And again, if you look at the cultural and philosophical milieu of his period, if you look at the context he was talking about, the debate between the people like the, at that time, people like the Epicureans who followed in the tradition of the Atomists versus the Stoics who followed in the tradition of like Plato and Aristotle. So it was the same debate. It always comes back to the same thing. Chance and time. And perhaps some form of natural selection can mimic the appearance of design. So what happens? How do you explain away the fine tuning of nature? You say there's many, many universes, there's a multiverse out there with. There's infinite numbers of possibilities and we just won the lottery. Chance and natural selection. We live here, so we selected this universe sort of in reverse order. Explains design. But there's a problem when you go back to all of these multiverse theories. If you talk about things like eternal inflation, stuff put out by people like Stephen J. I'm sor. Sorry. Like Alan Guth and Lind and formerly Steinhardt, but he changes views. If you look at other theories, things like string landscapes where you have this multi dimensional landscape with brains that collide and produce the universes. All of these ways to justify a multiverse have to be fine tuned to work. So you can't get rid of fine tuning. It's kind of like if you've got a massive carpet and it's too big for your room, there's a bulge in the Middle when you hammer down that bulge, it just appears someplace else. Every attempt to explain away fine tuning you appeal to, let's say a multiverse has to have fine tuning to work. So the bulge just reappears. So you really can't get rid of it. So what happens is people just oh, or the same thing in Origin of Life. What happens in Origin of Life? The idea is that you have all These self replicating RNAs in the RNA world hypothesis or self replicating autocatalytic cycles or something along those lines. And just chance time and a form of natural suction can mimic the appearance of design. But here again it's really a materialism of the gaps argument. Every time people see design in nature, they try to explain a materialistic means that can take place. But as science advances, those models and those explanations consistently collapse. So for instance, if you look at self replicating RNAs, it's an impossibility, one you're not going to get RNA because any chemical process will produce so many random molecules. You'll never get nucleotides to form rna. It's a non starter, it's physically impossible. But even if you had RNAs that existed, even if aliens dumped trillions of tons of RNAs onto the early Earth, and then RNAs are like DNA in your, in your genome, except it's not one sugar, it's another sugar. So it's basically the carrier of information in your body. But the idea is you have the all these long complex molecules that are self replicating. But the problem is the odds of a random sequence self replicating is unfathomably small. And what happens is you need literally like a million copies of these self replicating molecules in a little bit of water, like a thimble of water, to sustain self replication. Because without that many replicators, RNA will naturally decompose. So this whole idea of replication is completely implausible. If you look at the science and many top level researchers have acknowledged that, like Jim Shapiro was a classic, I'm sorry, Robert Shapiro was a classic person that talked about this. So what happens is all these attempts to rationalize away design fail. But where do people go? Back to a multiverse? We just have an infinite universe, we can't prove it. You have infinite numbers of possibilities. We just assume that on faith and that's why we were lucky enough to be in the universe appears designed. So both sides have to appeal to an infinite. Either it's an infinite God, that's all powerful, or an infinitely large multiverse. With all possibilities. So we both have to deal with that. But I would argue that you break that stalemate if you look at Jesus Christ and the resurrection. So I'd say the science points you to a creator, it points you to design, but to, not to break this impasse of rationalization. It really is the person of Jesus Christ that makes a big difference. [00:31:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really interesting. A lot of important and good stuff. I kind of eager to explore all of it, but we'll have to just restrain ourselves a little bit. I wonder if there's more that we can say against the multiverse too. So, you know, as something that's meant to explain fine tuning, if it seems to have a relocation problem. Right. We're just sort of, that's. And again, I don't, I've not looked at all the theories. I wouldn't even know how to look at them. But I've heard this many times that, you know, for any multiverse theory that's actually been worked out, it seems to require fine tuning. And I guess there's a lot out there that just haven't even been close to being worked out or anything like that at all. So, so, okay, that's. That, that's, that's. I guess that's, that's an issue too. What about the, the, the beginning of the universe does that. How, how, how much do you think that weighs in on the debate to how far can science really, in saying that the universe really did have a beginning? So let's talk about that a little bit because that seems like that would be, you know, a potential could tip the scales as well. Right? [00:32:46] Speaker C: Yeah, and that's a very insightful observation because what happens is if the universe began, if all matter, space, time and energy began, then whatever began, it has to be outside of time and space. It has to be a material. It even has to be personal, because only a personal being can act and choose to create something through their own free will without any antecedent process. That's a more complex argument that people like. [00:33:10] Speaker A: And when you use universe in this context, you mean just all physical reality. Multiverse, right? [00:33:15] Speaker C: Yeah, physical reality. Exactly. Even a multiverse here we have like bubble universes and all that. So that's a huge issue. So this is. If you look at the standard Big Bang model, it's based on Einstein's field equations. If you look at like the standard equations used to, like the Friedman equations that talk about the development of our universe, it suggests if you go back in time, there was a point where everything began and that was shocking to people. And people like. In fact, it's ironic that the term Big Bang comes from people like Fred Hoyle. And Fred Hoyle was an atheist and he said that this whole idea is just foolish. He called it the Big Bang and he tried to rationalize it away with, with other people. And he came up, he and others came up with different models to explain away the Big Bang. Things would be like the oscillating universe that would go back and go forward and never ending cycles. He had the idea of the steady state universe where you have a universe that's always expanding and then matter is being created in the cracks. So then you get new galaxies that form. And this is an eternal process that happened all the way in the past. The problem is all of these models, ancient and recent, have faced serious problems because you have what's called the Bored Guth Villenkin Theorem, which has proven that any universe on average expanding must have had an absolute beginning. And, and Vilenkin, who's, who is not religious, but he says that there is no escaping it, that the universe had a beginning. And, and this is very problematic because it really does point to some creator outside of time and space. Now how have people dealt with this? Well, you have people that are atheists like, like Sean Carroll and they've argued that maybe you have this sort of special event, but the universe expanded both forward and backward in time for eternity, so that on average it's not expanding. But the problem is how do you get that very special event to argue that? You have to say the universe was infinitely fine tuned and the infinite past such that it just happened to compress to the special Big Bang event, then start to expand. And it had to have this remarkably low entropy at that point to explain the formation of galaxies and stars and not a bunch of back holes. So the only way people have been able to get around the beginning of the universe is to invoke implausible models that required enormous levels, infinite levels of fine tuning. And you have more recent attempts, people like Steinhardt, who's come up with sort of a steady state model or more of an oscillating type model, where he argued, you got these brains that are colliding and that's caused the universe to expand and then contract and expand more. But the more you look at the details of his model, the more you have to have extraordinary levels of fine tuning for that to work. So you're sort of jumping from the philosophical frying pan and the philosophical fire. You can only get Rid of the beginning by more fine tuning. So again, the most straightforward interpretation of the science is that it had to have had a beginning pointing to a creator. [00:36:08] Speaker A: So yeah, that's interesting too because I guess if you're adding in additional fine tuning, you're making your theory more complex. And that's not, that's not, that's not usually seen as a good thing either. Right. Yeah. So I mean, look, you know, as a non scientist, you know, when I read about these issues, when I study these issues, it does seem to me like there's a really, really powerful case, at least against the general sort of naturalistic worldview from the, from, from contemporary science. Whether you look at origin of life, like, like minimally, it seems like the proposed naturalistic explanations are really, really, really bad. And, and there, and I think one of the indications that there's not really a whole lot of, to offer here is, is how, you know, certain really smart naturalists will take very different attempts at explaining things. Right. So you'll have one naturalist, you know, punted the multiverse. We have another naturalist reject the multiverse and just say it's necessary, the fine tuning is necessary. Right. Which I think there's a ton of problems with that proposal. But hey, if you have, you gotta, I guess you gotta figure out a way to deal with it somehow. Right. Rarely, rarely do you see naturalists denying fine tuning. I think we have pretty strong relevant expert consensus that fine tuning is a phenomena that requires explanation. Right. Is that right? [00:37:34] Speaker C: That's absolutely true. Fine tuning would be the consensus view. Luke Barnes co wrote a book about the fortunate universe that really has listed a whole litany of top level cosmologists that accept fine tuning. So it's not that controversial in those circles. [00:37:50] Speaker A: Yeah. So if that's the case and you just have to be, I guess, as courteous as possible, just, you know, really not great naturalistic, you know, solutions to these, to these problems and theism could explain all of them easily, it seems like. Unless you have some other reason to not believe in God. Like something like the problem of evil. [00:38:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:38:13] Speaker A: Why, why, why on earth would the scientific worldview disincline you from theism? Maybe it isn't going to pop you right into any specific religious tradition. [00:38:21] Speaker C: Right. [00:38:22] Speaker A: But why would, and this, I say this, you know, personally too, because I grew up, I have a very not religious, naturalistic background and I was always under that assumption like science over here, religion over there. Right. And then you realize, you start to realize that, okay, that seems a little superficial and you start to get a little bit more substantial. More substantial. And at least for me, again, as a non scientist, you realize, okay, that kindergarten narrative just definitely isn't true. And it really seems like the best of contemporary science, yeah, probably in the most obvious ways, points toward rather than away from the existence of God. So I know we've hit a lot of points here. Dr. Miller, is there anything else that you think is worth mentioning that's relevant to your work or that you think that science contributes to natural theology? [00:39:12] Speaker C: Yeah. And just to go back to your point is there's actually a famous quote by a Harvard biologist, Levantin, I think it was Richard Levantin, who basically said that we accept basically absurd explanations and plausible ideas because we have chosen not to allow a divine foot in the door. In other words, they know they're in a very bad place, but they've decided we will not consider design, we will not consider a creator. That was an axiomatic assumption. And people make that assumption and it's not entirely irrational like they, they may have. Really. Honestly, if we're going to be very honest, the reason many people don't believe in a creator is because they haven't experienced the Creator. They haven't seen answers to prayer, they've seen hypocrisy in the church, things like that. So it's not irrational. I was there. I mean, that's where I was. I felt that I didn't see evidence of God. So, you know, I, I was close to becoming an atheist. But I think the difference for me is I said, God, if you exist. I just said, God, if you exist, I will serve you. Because it wasn't for me an existential quest. It was a recognition that if God did exist, he deserved my loyalty, my allegiance. And that's what I see all the time, is when people say, because the separation between us and God is not intellectual, it's moral. It's, it's, it's an issue of our will. It's volitional. And I said, God, show me the truth and I'll serve you. And he went out of his way to bring me to the right people and to open my eyes. And I've seen this a lot too. I've talked with people in mid conversation actually is. I would talk to an atheist and they would be absolutely convinced there was no creator. And then like suddenly it was like scales fall from their eyes and they'll say, oh, I don't know, I just, I just. Everything you say makes sense. So again, it's. That issue is when people turn to God humbly and want to serve him. God will do what's necessary to help us see the truth, because it's not just an intellectual issue, it's a. It's. It's a spiritual conflict in many ways. [00:41:01] Speaker A: Yes. Right. [00:41:02] Speaker C: So that's what I've seen, and that's. And I both seen that opposition to acknowledging design in the world. And I've seen people whose minds were open and humble that have described that experience of having that revelation of truth, both in the intellectual sense and encountering God. So that's what I see. Also, the last thing I want to mention is we are just getting warmed up. I mean, we've talked about evidence for design, but it's just getting warmed up. What's happened is there is a revolution taking place in biologists because engineers have started working more and more with biologists. And what they're seeing is that the same engineering logic, the same design patterns that we use are in life. In other words, God deliberately designed the universe. It appears such that certain engineering principles work, which is why we see engineering that we use so similar to life. And I believe that's deliberate. I think it's deliberate because God wanted to make sure that we see the evidence of design in nature. And two, to help us advance technologically. [00:42:01] Speaker A: Right. [00:42:01] Speaker C: And I'm working with some leading biologists and engineers around the world, and one is one of the top engineers in the UK because he was able to borrow from life to improve human engineering. He was able to use human engineering to better understand life. And that's a revolution that is really just ramping up. So we're about to see natural theology reshape science and biology in a dramatic way. And it shouldn't take any more than a century or so. So, I mean, we're just. We're jumping into it. So any of you listeners who happen to be going to biology, I encourage you to study engineering and then be part of the next great scientific revolution. [00:42:38] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. Just a century away. Stay tuned, gentle listeners. And that's totally. I'm sure that's right. And everything you said, by the way, about the moral aspects of that, of conversion, really very, very true to my experience, certainly. So, Dr. Miller, before we say goodbye, two more questions for you. One, tell us about this God's Grandeur book, this cool new title that's been released, and two, what else you're currently working on in terms of writing or research projects and how people can keep up with you and your work. Great. [00:43:07] Speaker C: And I'll have to keep a Little bit of my research under wraps. Because what's happened is when people find out about our research projects or people involved with our projects, they'll work very hard to blacklist us with journals. [00:43:18] Speaker A: Ah, yeah. No. Yes. [00:43:20] Speaker C: So we have to be. It's kind of like being a leader in the church in China under Mao. It's kind of how things operate. But what happened is I really, really want to honor Ann Gager for two reasons. One is Ann Gager has been a leading scientist in what's called the Intelligent Design movement. And the Intelligent Design movement is a group of scientists who've come to realize that we see design in nature and that can help us do better science. And they've been involved with cosmology, biology, chemistry, different things like that. And what's happened is Ann Gager realized that there is so much misinformation in the Catholic Church about what's called Intelligent Design theory or Intelligent Design research. And so Anne brought together top level scientists, theologians, philosophers to write a book called God's Grandeur. And she was the editor. And different people had chapters. I talked about cosmology and origin of life. And what's happened is we were able to really show one, that you do see positive evidence for design in nature. And two, that that is completely consistent with Catholic teaching. That was the whole point of the book. [00:44:24] Speaker A: Right. [00:44:25] Speaker C: So. And we've able to correct a lot of mistakes. Like people think Aquinas would have opposed Intelligent Design. And the truth is the exact opposite. Aquinas believed that organisms that were fundamentally different had to be created by God, because in essence, the essence, and I'll be very sloppy, I'm not a philosopher, I apologize, but the essence of an organism had to be created by God. Then its accidents could change. So you get little changes, but not the fundamental change. And he believed again that you could look at human artifacts and that showed parallels to biology. So again, he was very much on board with the Intelligent Design movement. Also, people think Aristotle was more of a materialist. He would have embraced evolution, not design. And it's completely false. We have a great chapter about that that when people read Aristotle, the primary literature, it's very clear that Aristotle did not accept the democratist or the atomists or the evolutionary framework. But he again felt that different organisms had a immaterial essence that did not change. It could adapt, it could change slightly, but it couldn't fundamentally change. We have other chapters that talk about the implications, because why does it matter? Well, there are certain biologists who said that humans are an accident of nature, that we're a happenstance that might as well have not happened. Even Catholics have said that. And that's simply not consistent with the Catholic catechism or the historic Church. I think it was Pope Benedict XIV that talked about how we're not an accident evolution, but we're an act of God's love, his purpose. We have meaning. Almost everyone who opposes us opposes us because of misinformation, misunderstanding, sure, caricatures. So we wrote this book to help correct that, so people would really understand what we're saying and why it's consistent with Catholic truth. As far as the projects, my project I'm really excited about is engineers working with biologists because we're helping to lead the charge with many other scientists in the mainstream community with the next great scientific revolution. And that's what people in systems biology say, like mainstream biologists saying that biology is going through a revolution because it's very reductionist perspective, that if you look at the chemicals, that tells you everything doesn't work. But now they're seeing that there's design, logic, design patterns, and by bringing in engineering, you can help advance the field dramatically. So that's the project I'm most excited about. [00:46:48] Speaker A: Very cool. Well, I'm going to, obviously, I'm going to link God's Grandeur, the book below, and I just want to echo one thing that you said, and again, this is related to my experience. Dr. Michael Behe has been on the show several times, and even as I was working my way toward the church. Dr. Miller, I've said this many times on the podcast, but you haven't heard it, so I'll just repeat myself. I never looked at the ID stuff. Now. Why? Well, you know, there's, first of all, the, the, you know, the, the howling coming from the secularists, right, about these pseudo scientists. Creationists. Creationists in a cheap tuxedo. All those nasty things they say, right, that are definitely not true. But even from the religious people, right. And especially from people that I was very attracted to, their philosophical suicide. Thomas. Right. So I sort of unfairly dismissed id. But then finally curiosity got the better of me, and I read with Behe some. Some of his work, and I realized, oh, my goodness, this is far more substantive than I was told it would be. This guy does not at all seem like a creationist in a cheap tuxedo. And in fact, he's offering something quite sophisticated. Let me go read the best responses. And boy, was I, was I, you know, underwhelmed, to say the least. So I Sort of. I told Mike this in our first conversation. Like at that point I'm like, I, I'm a friendly agnostic to id. You know, I honestly haven't been able to examine everything, but at least I felt I had a bit of egg on my face, right? And so like, if nothing else, I felt this sort of mission, this small mission to make sure what happened to me, which was just kind of fall for the, that I don't want to say slander. Some of it is slander, right? But some of it I think is, you know, you know, not everybody. It just, it's just one of those things that, just the myths that gets passed on, right. That, that never seems to die. Right. So I hope all this to say is I hope that people, if you have not looked at the work being put out by thinkers within the Intelligent Design community like yourself, Dr. Miller, Dr. Michael Behee, Dr. Stephen Meyer, and even other people who, who have been on this show before. Dr. Rob Coons is a contributor to this new book. A great philosopher, very ID friendly, far from a dum dum. Right? Do it. Check it out. There's some really, really cool, fascinating stuff happening within the ID community. And I just want to thank you, Dr. Miller, for taking time to be here. This is, this has been an absolute treat for me. [00:49:19] Speaker C: Thank you. It's been such a pleasure. And again, if anyone wants more information, you can go. IntelligentDesign.org has different resources and discovery.org and I write for Evolution News, so you can see a lot of my articles and there's many other amazing writers there too. So thank you so much for having me and thank you for hearing my summary of the book. [00:49:40] Speaker A: Thank you gentle listeners, for tuning in. If you like what you're hearing here in Philosophy for the People, please subscribe and leave your thoughts in the comments section. [00:49:47] Speaker B: That was Pat Flynn, host of the Philosophy for the People podcast, whom we thank for allowing us the use of this interview with Brian Miller, physicist and research coordinator for the Discovery Institute's center for science and culture. Dr. Miller is a contributor to the book God's Grandeur, the Catholic Case for Intelligent Design, edited by Ann Gager. The book is available at online bookstores, so purchase your copy now. You'll enjoy the Read for ID the Future. I'm Tom Gilson. Thank you for listening. [00:50:25] Speaker A: Visit [email protected] and intelligent design.org this program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.