Reconciling Religion and Science (Guest: Fr. Paul Robinson)

[00:00:11] Speaker A: The modern conflict between religion and science has only intensified in recent years. While some Catholics want to completely reject all modern scientific findings, many scientists act as infallible guides to all of reality. What's the proper catholic perspective to this issue? That's what we're going to talk about today on crisis point. Hello, I'm Eric. Sam is your host editor in chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, just want to encourage people to hit that, like, button to subscribe to the channel, let other people know about it. We really do appreciate that. Wherever you listen to the podcast or watch it, just make sure you subscribe like it. Do whatever it takes to let the algorithm know, the almighty algorithm, know exactly about that, that we exist, and let others know about it. You can also follow us on social media. Just go anywhere at Crisismag, at all the major social media outlets, and you subscribe to our newsletter, just go to crisismagazine.com, put in your email address, and we will send you an email once a day with our articles for the day. Okay, so I got a great guest today, Father Paul Robinson. He received a master's degree in engineering, mathematics, and computer science from University of Louisville, and after two years in the field, he entered a catholic seminary to discern his vocation. He eventually became a priest and is now a priest of the society of St. Pius Xdem. And he's the author of this great book, the Realist Guide to Religion and Science, which I purchased. Okay, I will be a little honesty here that sometimes our podcasts, we interview people with books, that they send the book to me. I like it, and I say, okay, I'm going to go ahead and have the guests on, and that's fine. This is not the case here. Robinson did not reach out to me at all. I heard him on another podcast got, was so, like, interested, got the book, read through it and said, okay, I have to get this, the author of this, this book on to talk about this. So welcome to the program, father. [00:02:00] Speaker B: Thank you very much for having me on, Eric. Appreciate it. [00:02:03] Speaker A: I think people who have followed the podcast know that I've had this subject come up a few times. I've had a few different people come on to talk about this relationship between science and religion. I think it's a very important one today because I think we'd all agree that, that there are at least aspects of how science has been presented in our schools and whatnot that has led to a loss of belief in Catholicism in the modern age. And so how we correctly deal with this is very important. So I think I first just want to ask you, father, growing up, did you always have an interest in scientific endeavors? Did you grow up like, I don't even know. Did you grow up even religious in a catholic home? Kind of. What was your background as far as your faith and also your interest in science growing up? [00:02:49] Speaker B: So I grew up a traditional Catholic with the latin mass. Basically what happened was my grandfather did not like the new mass, and so we had a priest who came to my hometown, Louisville, Kentucky, and was offering the latin mass. And so my grandfather took my mother. I was just a young child at the time there, and this priest founded a place there in Louisville. So that's the environment I grew up in. Very traditional Catholic. And I think I was always kind of a math nerd. I did very well at math, so definitely always interested in the sciences. And then when I went to college, it was just very heavily math based. And at the time, I'll be honest, I was a young earth creationist at the time. That's kind of in the circles I was walking in. That was the common view and I kind of took it for granted. And I read the creationist literature, especially this short booklet by Doctor Walt Brown, who is a Protestant, that I had made reference to at the time. And I came into a bit of conflict with my professors there at the university. I remember trying to get, um, arrange a debate between Doctor Brown and, and one of my thesis advisors, believe it or not. Um, but, but uh, yeah, it didn't end up happening. In retrospect, I'm kind of happy it didn't, didn't pan out. But, uh, yeah, that, that was, that was, uh, where I was. And it wasn't until I got to the seminary and received a seminary formation and was really instructed in the, the catholic spirit on exegesis. So I was given, we had scripture every year, all six years of my seminary, we had a scripture course. And when I understood the catholic spirit on the interpretation of scripture, I realized that this question of whether the earth is 6000 years old or whether the earth is 4.5 billion years old is really not a question of faith. And I also was made to understand that the pre Vatican II scripture exegetes, who made the manuals which the seminaries used, had a very balanced view. And they found the evidence, the geological evidence, the astronomical evidence for an old earth to be compelling. And they didn't find any conflict with the faith. It was not considered modernist at all. It was just kind of a mainstream opinion among orthodox Catholics, pre Vatican II and that just really opened my eyes and made me see that the views that I had adopted as a traditional Catholic, we're closer to a fundamentalist protestant view of basically how you find the truth about those questions, because I think my book is really about the way we pursue truth and how we find truth, and the faculties that God has given to us to pursue the truth, and how important it is for us to use those faculties in a balanced way and to have. But the truth filter that we have. We all have a truth filter that philosophers call that, you know, your epistemology. It's basically your way of finding truth, your theory about how truth is discovered. And we have to be careful to be very balanced. And I think the catholic spirit gives to us, if we. If we truly adopt it, that balance in finding the truth. [00:06:27] Speaker A: I think it's interesting that you grew up traditional catholic, and then it was going to and kind of adopted a young earth creationist viewpoint, but then going to a traditional catholic seminary ended up kind of disabusing you of that, which I think a lot of people don't understand, how that makes sense, how it is, how those two things go together. What were some of the like? Was it really, you said scripture, so learning exegesis, that was obviously part of it. Was it also partly just like Thomas Aquinas, like philosophy? Because I know obviously Aquinas is very much emphasized in traditional catholic seminary. Like, was it like the philosophy that really started getting you to realize, okay, maybe this isn't the way to look at things, or was it just the scripture and understanding? It's because you said it's not a matter of faith, but yet you still did change your mind on it. And so did it have anything to do with, like, your study of philosophy or catholic theology? [00:07:28] Speaker B: Well, I think this question is really a multidisciplinary question, and one of the things that motivated me to write my book was the fact that I had something to bring to the table, both from the side of theology, philosophy, and science, because I think all three kind of weigh in on this question and have some factor in the prudential judgment you make as to where the truth is on these questions. But the seminary really provided me philosophy and theology, a balanced philosophy and theology. So St. Thomas Aquinas, certainly in his whole spirit, with the questions of science and exegesis, was that we want to be careful in how we interpret scripture on questions that do not have to do with the faith, because if we interpret them in a certain way, we say scripture is teaching x and then later on, perhaps the natural sciences prove that x is wrong, then that's going to undermine the faith of people. They're going to say, well, this is something that you believe on faith. It's in your revealed dogma. You know, it's part of your revealed scriptures. And then our scientists, or our natural scientists, as the language back then, are showing that that's false. So your faith must be wrong. So St. Thomas would say that we have to be very careful not to assume that the Bible is teaching this or that and questions regarding natural science. So I think that was very compelling. But also, as I say, the, for me, there's a window of time, Eric, that is extremely important. And that is the time when geology and astronomy were first taking off and providing the first solid evidence for an old earth and an old universe. And the catholic reaction to that. So you're talking about like the mid 18 hundreds. There starts to come forth evidence in the, especially, as I say, geology and astronomy that seems substantive to establish that we must date the age of the earth and universe in terms of millions and billions of years instead of thousands. And for me, the interesting thing is I know that I can trust the scripture manualists of those time. I know I can trust the popes of those times. Things are pretty crazy in the church right now. Your organization's called crisis. [00:10:03] Speaker A: We cover it. [00:10:06] Speaker B: It's kind of your shtick. [00:10:07] Speaker A: You know, you're on that. [00:10:11] Speaker B: So these figures are very orthodox, very trustworthy, and I trust them to give me a captive balance. So when I explored their opinions, as I say, the common position was that this scientific evidence is compelling. It doesn't conflict with catholic interpretation of scripture. It doesn't conflict with the faith in any way. And that was really an eye opener for me. And I'm really trying to get the message out to Catholics and say, well, this is really the catholic balance. We want to be traditional catholic. This is where the balance lies, right? [00:10:52] Speaker A: Because I think that the story goes that religion, Catholicism, or just religion in general, but Christianity in the west, it was very much, everything was by faith, really wasn't scientific. And then the scientists came during, like the 16th century, you know, and the 17th century, and the scientists, and they started to see, okay, actually reality is much different that we can know and see everything. We see materialism. And then what happened was the Christians reacted by saying, no, we reject that. And that is our, that's the narrative. We often hear that in sins and science and religion are in conflict. But what you're saying is that really that's not really accurate as far as how the catholic church reacted to the findings in science. And so could you take us a little bit, first, of how the church reacted? Because obviously the church reacted initially in the 16th century and 17th century with some definite skepticism, at least I think we could say pretty clearly. But then how it reacted in the 18th and 19th century when. I'm sorry, 19th century and 20th century when new findings happened. So can you kind of take us through that? Because I do think that's really important, because I don't think a lot of Catholics really under, especially traditional Catholics, let's be honest, really understand that. [00:12:13] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. And, I mean, I think the story, Eric, really begins in the Middle Ages. That was the first time that the catholic ethos just, like, really permeated society. And we look back, I think, with nostalgia to those times because you had a catholic civilization. We dream, of course, restoring that and of bringing that back to this world because it was the greatest civilization that has ever existed. And what we find in that time is something kind of hard for us to imagine today when knowledge is so fragmented, is that all the disciplines were kind of melded together. They were interlocking, and they each had their own domain, yet they were complementary and they weren't seen as a threat to one another. So I think especially of natural science, philosophy and theology and what a certain catholic scientist of the early 19 hundreds by the name of Pierre Duham. Pierre Duham, I think his name needs to be more. Have more currency in the catholic circles. He was able to unearth all these medieval manuscripts and basically establish that the scientific method as we know it originated in the Middle Ages. And I try to explain in my book why the. The catholic ethos and the catholic society was. Was able to develop a mentality in that society that encouraged people to investigate material causes and find natural laws for the first time. So father Stanley Yaqui took Pierre Duham. That was Pierre Duham's thesis that basically the scientific method as we know it came from the Catholic Middle Ages, and there was only the catholic society and the environment, the intellectual environment it created that was able to get people to start to look for natural laws using a method that was gauged to be successful. And so modern scientists today, they use that method that came from a catholic society. And part of what was going on in there at that time is, for instance, you had bishops and clerics proposing heliocentric theories. You know, the sort of Cliff notes version of the history is that the Catholic Church was. Was against Galileo, and they were trying to be anti science and they were trying to suppress knowledge all throughout the middle Ages and so on. It's just false. I mean, there was a lot of chatter about heliocentrism in the Middle Ages and with Galileo, when you come to Galileo, which is kind of a blip in the map, and the church's relationship with science is that Galilei was not able to provide conclusive proof. St. Robert Bellarmine and the others, he said, look, if you provide solid proof for paleocentrism, we're willing to accept it and to say that scripture is not teaching geocentrism. But he didn't have the proof. We didn't really have it until the 18 hundreds. But I would claim, I would claim, Eric, that the church has been really broad minded, more broad minded than pretty much all the other religions, I would claim throughout its entire history, and not only that was at the origin of modern science as we know it and the very method by which we've been able to bring forth all these really, really amazing discoveries about God's natural world. So that's the bold claim that I make in the book. [00:15:49] Speaker A: Yeah. And do you think that's why when the discoveries of the 19th century in particular started coming about, particularly as it directly impacted the age of the world, age of the universe, age of the earth, that the Catholic Church was more willing to just say, okay, we're not going to just immediately discount this. In fact, it might be very true and we're willing to accept that. Do you think it's because of the fact that they understood that Catholics had been doing this for all this time, embracing the scientific method, embracing scientific theories like this? [00:16:25] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. And I make the claim that the reason why the Protestants have perhaps veered to an extreme position on this is because their relationship with their sacred texts is different from the Catholics relationship to their sacred text. So I look at how the Muslims interpret the Quran and how the Protestants approach the Bible as opposed to how the Catholic Church approaches the Bible. And what we do is we don't go to the Bible as the exclusive source of truth. We have an infallible magisterium. We believe that our Lord, that God himself, wanted to create a visible body which would have his vicar, his representatives, sort of like Moses and the prophets of the Old Testament, who would speak in his name. And so we don't just have a book, but we have a living magisterium that tells us what the book means and that we already have been told through the traditions of the church what we are to believe. We know what's contained in the deposit of the faith. And so that doesn't make us go to the Bible as the one stop source of all truth, and it enables us to be free, as it were. We're investigating the natural world. So I think it really boils down to that relationship we have with the Bible Catholics have with the Bible. That gives us a balance in interpreting the Bible. We draw from it the truth of the deposit of the faith, and we say, whatever does not pertain to the deposit of the faith, then pretty much Catholics have freedom of opinion on those questions. And so when we read the Bible, we already know what we believe, and we're not looking to find those truths. So when you don't know what you believe, you're looking to say, well, I go to the Bible for all truth. Chances are you're going to look to find physics in there or all kinds of scientific truths. [00:18:27] Speaker A: Now, one of the things that kind of the modern conception now is that you have the atheist scientists, like, all the scientists are atheists, and they're all materialists, and a lot of them are. And then the other side, you have the, what might be called fundamentalist. I know it's usually used as a derogatory term, but just more like literalistic interpretation of the Bible and rejecting a lot of scientific findings. But what you talk about in your book is that you have what you call the realist. It's called the realist guide. I mean, that's the name of it. And you talk about realism. Can you explain? Because I want to talk about some of the specifics issues of modern times right now. But I think we need to, like, explain. What do you mean by realism? And how does that contrast with both the atheistic materialist viewpoint and the more idealistic fiest? What's the word? Oh, I'm blanking on the word. I was thinking about the fetism. Fadism. Fetism. Yeah. Okay, sorry. Like, those are the kind of the extremes. How is realism kind of between them, I guess, or different from them? [00:19:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So realism is one of those epistemologies that I was talking about, the truth filters or whatever, your basic approach to reality and how you think it is the right way to find the truth. And what I claim is that while God gave us various faculties to find the truth, he gave us our senses. For instance, he wants us to discover certain truths by means of our senses. And the sciences especially have to make heavy use of the senses, whereas we also have our intellect, by which we form concepts. And we also need to make use of that, especially in a discipline like philosophy, where we try to find the ultimate principles of reality. Someone who is a realist is willing to use the senses in the areas where they're needed to find the truth and is willing to use the intellect in those other areas of reality where the intellect comes into play and someone who's unbalanced will try to isolate one or more of those faculties. You think people from Missouri, and they're just like, well, you have to show me. I'm not going to believe it unless you show me. There's some things I can't show you. There's some things that you can't. There's some truths that are not tangible and you're not able to put it before you. Or some people would be, like, wholly mathematical. You have to prove it with a bar chart. You have to show me a bar chart or what have you. And if it's not in a bar chart, I don't believe it. So, effectively, a realist is willing to use the type of method for finding the truth that its object demands. So am I looking to discover the laws of the motions of bodies? That's physics. Well, I'm willing to use a method where I look at the bodies, I measure them, I use mathematics, I model them, I create a hypothesis, I test the hypothesis and so on. That's the method I'm going to use. Okay, so what about philosophy? When I approach philosophy, I'm going to form ideas that correspond to my experience of reality. And if those ideas don't match up with reality, then I'm going to reject it. I mean, you think of, for instance, transgenderism today. What's my idea of human nature? Is there male and female, or there are many different genders? Well, our constant repeated experience of human beings is that there's obviously two genders. So when I'm going to form my philosophy of human nature, my ideas about the essence of human nature, I want to say, well, there's two genders, for instance. So, I mean, those are just examples. And when we come to the scientific realm or we come to this debate, this great debate that exists today between, like, the atheist on the one side and the protestant fundamentalists on the other side, the atheists are materialists, and basically they, they've reduced all truth finding to sense knowledge. They. They're called empiricists. They. They say that unless I can measure it, unless I can mathematize it and put a mathematical model on it, then I'm not going to believe it. And I remember, I think, I don't know if it's in the book or not, but Lawrence Krause, a famous, famous new atheist, Lawrence Krauss, I believe it was him who said, well, I look in the telescope and I don't see God, so he must not exist. Well, you have to be willing for God to prove his existence to you in a way other than a tangible way to him, to give indirect signs of his existence. But you see, he's created this truth filter to where I've only got this one path to truth. And so similarly, on the other side, the idealists, people might form this beautiful idea of what the truth needs to be. For instance, the Protestants, the fundamentalists, the young earth creationists, they might say, well, it's clear to me from the Bible that God created a world before the fall where there was no animal death. And others might say, well, how can that be the case? When animals are mortal, they don't have an immortal soul. I mean, are you saying, so the animals live forever and you just have, like, for instance, we got a lot of rabbits here, but there's like, the rabbits, just like you have eternal rabbits just everywhere, and they keep reproducing, and you got piles and piles of rabbits that never die, you know, and plus God, God made certain animals to kill other animals. I mean, he made predators. So is that in their nature? So it wouldn't seem to make sense. And why is that necessary? But the idea perhaps is so beautiful to them that they're going to impose that on reality despite what their senses are telling them. The senses telling them that doesn't make sense, but they're going to say, no, it has to make sense because that's the interpretation of this revealed text that I believe is true. [00:24:55] Speaker A: Right? So the key point there, I believe, is using the correct tools for the situation hand. So if I have a nail, I use a hammer, I don't use a saw, but if I want to cut a tree, I don't use a hammer. And so it depends on what knowledge we're trying to gain. We use the correct tools. So, for example, if we're trying to determine the age of the universe, we don't use the Bible as the guide. Now what about the objection that, well, look at the church fathers. They all believed in, maybe not all, but like most of them, at least believed in a, a young earth. And they used the Bible. They taught they would use the Bible somewhat as their tool. It seems, at least on some reading, it does. So were they doing it wrong? I hate, I always, I don't want to criticize the church fathers. I don't know about you, but I hesitate to do that. They're the church fathers. So how do we kind of reconcile what you're saying with what we read in some of the church fathers? [00:25:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think Pope Leo XIII clarified that in his encyclical on scripture, providentissimus deus, where he said, you know, the fathers held certain opinions on science that we don't hold today. That's not a problem. I mean, we follow them when there's a unanimous consent on faith and morals. But this is the age of the universe is not a question of faith and morals. And when people say, well, all the fathers believed in a young earth, and so we have to follow them, I reply by saying, well, you don't really know. You can't really call them young earth creationists because of the fact that that opinion as such is a reaction to modern science. So the young earth creationist movement is a movement that started in response to the science of the 18 hundreds that was proposing these long ages, was also proposing darwinian evolution, which, as you know, I think is not scientifically sound. And so we don't really know how the fathers would react. I mean, if we could teleport, you know, from, from, back from time, the past these fathers, and put them here and present to them the geological evidence, present them the astronomical evidence, say, well, what do you think? And how would you reconcile this with the Bible? Well, then we could have a fair comparison. But, and I would argue that I think the fathers were very balanced on the science of their, of their day. But, but the fact is, the science of their day was very primitive. There was no scientific method. They weren't finding these things. And so to, to co opt them for, for your side, I think, is a little unfair. And, and I would also mention as a last point that the secretary of the pontifical biblical commission under Pope Pius X, his name was Father Phulkan Vigurub, he wrote a scripture manual, and he thought the geological and astronomical evidence was compelling. But basically, he wrote something and he said that the followers would be on his side, he thought, because that he was interpreting scripture in the spirit of the fathers, because he had the proper balance as they did. So it really can be argued both ways, I think. So, according to the letter, yes, the fathers thought there was a young earth according to the spirit. I think there's room to say that they might very well have adopted the same position as all those scripture manualists and all those pre Vatican II figures, right? [00:28:26] Speaker A: Because they had the same type of outlook towards finding truth, at the very least that later was more developed and made more clear in the Middle Ages. So how is it that we've talked a little bit about the flaws somewhat of, like, young earth creationists and fundamentalists, but really, how is it that it is difficult like, modern science as a Catholic? I mean, we're told to follow the science, and the science tells us that a man can become a woman or that, you know, and of course, the big thing was with COVID and the vaccines and the masks and everything, that was like, if you didn't agree with what Doctor Fauci and others said, you weren't following the science. So where is the flaw in that? Like, why is Catholics, and you saw catholic leaders too, let's be honest, who are saying that as Catholics, we, like they say, like you just did, we embrace science. So we have to follow the science and do all these things. So where's the problem there? [00:29:28] Speaker B: Yeah, so, I mean, I think basically after the revolution and the catholic world order collapsed, we entered a world where society as a whole, we always want to have something we can agree upon as our truth filter and the means by which we reach truth so that we can agree, we can agree what is real and that's so necessary for society to run. I mean, I think our society is collapsing today because no one can agree about what what is, you know, that's really fundamental problem. But after the scientific revolution, our society, our western society basically agreed that it was by means of science that you achieve truth, that science was the one objective thing that's going to bring the truth to us. And so then, of course, that leaves room for the bad actors to come in and say, let's co op science for our purposes. And that's where we have arrived today, to where the one thing perhaps that we're expected to agree upon is objective scientific fact. And so everybody's going after that and trying to co opt that to spin their narrative. And what I want to encourage people to do is that, first of all, not to be afraid of what the real facts might be, what the real science might be. There are real measurements, there's real data out there. And just before we got on, Eric, you edified me by saying that on these scientific questions, you've read both sides. You've read Dawkins and probably Krause and some of these other ones, as well as people on the other side. And I think on these questions where the church gives us freedom, it's just important that we make an informed decision. What we have to remember as cats, who we believe that we suffer from the effects of original sin. And one of the, one of the wounds is the wound of ignorance. It's difficult for us to find the truth, and we have to work hard at finding the truth in the realm of the faith. It's easy. We just obey the church. The church just gives it to us, you know, like, like we're little babes and we just, you know, nurse from the rest of the church. You know, we receive that milk that St. Paul speaks about. But in, in those areas and where we have freedom, especially today, where whether you can find an opinion about everything, we just read up about it. Read books, read books and weigh the opinions. And I think, you know, you found, and I have found that after you read about ten books or 15 books about a certain topic, the truth starts to become clear. If you read books, books on both sides, that's what I would say. But don't just throw it all out. [00:32:16] Speaker A: I found also, and tell me if this has been your experience, but I found that if you read enough from scientists about a subject, for example, I've read a lot on the big bang and the age of the universe and how the universe developed and all that. What I find is you'll have a few scientists who are ideologically atheist, and they come to atheist conclusions like a Stephen Hawking, a Richard Dawkins, somebody like that. And they, of course, get all the press. They become the darlings, they become the spokesman. But when you actually then. But you read all the kind of unknown scientists, they don't do that at all. They just simply, they might be believers, they might not be. I don't know. But the point is they just simply say, here's what we found to. We don't want to go. I mean, they'll even say, like, for example, the big bang theory. They'll say, we're not saying this is dogma that can never be challenged. We're simply saying the evidence we have right now most strongly favors this theory that was originated by a catholic priest, by the way. And so they say. But they never said, whereas you will see a Dawkins or a hawking or people like that who will basically be like, this is dogma. And I think Catholics, then rightly they read those guys, the popular atheists, and they say, well, hold on, you're now making this a religious dogma. And of course, something like the big bang theory is not a religious dogma. So has that been your experience, too, and kind of actually reading the scientists versus the popular kind of conception? The popular ones, absolutely. [00:33:48] Speaker B: I mean, I think it becomes clear, as I say, after a little bit of reading, where. Where the science is and where the philosophy imposed upon the science is that that epistemology or the spin that they're. They're giving to it. I mean, we would obviously know that if they're trying to take some fact about God's creation and prove that God doesn't exist, that can't be right. There's nothing that we would discover in this nature that would argue against God because it comes from God. It's just impossible. And so I do think that there's a lot of fascinating information out there, real, real data. And one of the other things that I would say is that with the question of conspiracy theories and so on, the conspiracy theories become less likely to the degree that it's harder to cover up the truth. So the more data that you have out there and the more people know about the data, the less plausible it is that there's some vast conspiracy to hide the truth. So you think about the flat earth theory or geocentric theory or whatever. I mean, us landing on the moon. I mean, to what? How many people have to be keeping silent about the truth? How much data that is accessible to everybody has to be hidden to hide these things? I think this is something. This is one of those things where if I'm making a prudential, intellectual judgment about what's true and what's not true, I should be suspicious. If it's pretty much impossible to pull this conspiracy theory off, what is the danger of. [00:35:32] Speaker A: I mean, so many conspiracy theories lately have become conspiracy facts. I mean, like, related to Covid and things like that. And I've seen a lot of people say, well, the government was lying about the origin of COVID or about the vaccine, so I don't trust it about the moon landing either. And they just, like, how can you trust them about the moon landing when we know they lie about this? How do you respond to that? Because, I mean, they're saying, the same people basically, who lied about this, you can't trust them for anything. They're saying we land on the moon. [00:36:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think the whole stuff with the COVID vaccine, that unraveled very quickly, and it was pretty. There's a lot of data out there of side effects of the vaccine and so on. And I know, you know, not really meant to get on that side topic. [00:36:20] Speaker A: Don'T kick us off of YouTube, father. [00:36:23] Speaker B: Exactly. I don't want to. [00:36:24] Speaker A: We know what you're saying. [00:36:25] Speaker B: Yeah, right, right. But for the other things, again, it's a question of the formation of the mind and being willing to take time to sit down and actually study it. And I would suggest that people discern between solid deep dive articles and ones that are more superficial or the question between difference between a book and just watching a ten minute video clip. So with a lot of these things, people are just not willing to invest the time necessary to discern. But I think the discernment is easier than people might think. So I would recommend to people, if there's a deep dive article, print it out. Print it out and take it to your room. You know, underline it, underline, make notes or what have you in order to really form a solid opinion. And then where you can get to a point, you can talk to somebody, you say, what do you think about this? And you're able to express, these are all the reasons why you think we landed on the moon, for instance, or that the COVID vaccine was problematic or what have you. [00:37:32] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, I think that's a great point. That like the conspiracies around Covid and the COVID vaccine, like you said, they unravel very quickly. Well, the moon landing happened 55 years ago and it hasn't unraveled because, I mean, because it happened. I mean, it had nothing to unravel. And so I think that's something, as Catholics, we should use our reason to recognize the differences between that. Just because one conspiracy theory turns out to be true doesn't mean every conspiracy theory is true. Now, one thing I think the big issue that often comes up is that, and you've kind of suggested that, is that people believe there's a direct connection between age of the earth and darwinian evolution. That if you believe the earth and the universe is four and a half billion years old, then you also believe in darwinian evolution and vice versa. If you think that the earth is 6000 years old, then therefore darwinian evolution can't be true. In fact, I've heard a number of people who are young earth creation said the reason they came up with the age of the universe being four and a half billion years old because they needed time for, for their winning evolution to work, which of course, actually isn't true. It wouldn't have worked over four and a half billion years. But anyway. So, but you're saying. But basically your position is not just your personal position, but like how you've come to this conclusion through realist, through realism, is that, yes, the earth is very old, but darwinian evolution is very problematic, has some issues. Can you reconcile those two, how you can believe in one but not the other? [00:39:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I represent this strange breed as sort of a third possibility on this topic that most people don't even know about. It's like, what? You think the big Bang theory is compelling, but you don't believe in darwinian evolution. Like, how can you do that? And as I say, I think those scripture, that was the common opinion, pre vatican two. I think darwinian evolution is one of those questions where the science never became settled. And there were a lot of holes from the beginning, a lot of solid scientists questioning it. And as we go on, as time marches on and we discover more and more about the biological world, there's. There's more and more compelling evidence of darwinian evolution. The mechanism proposed by Darwin is not in any way sufficient to explain the biological diversity that we have on this planet. So I would say to the Darwinists, I grant you your time. You have that time, all right. You have the 4.5 billion years, because I find the evidence for that age of the earth compelling. But you have to provide a cause that's operating in that time that can get us from these molecules to these very advanced forms of life. You have to describe the cause that is acting in that time and make a substantive case that it's sufficient to produce these diverse life forms. And the cause proposed by Darwin is random mutation and natural selection. And our deep investigation through field studies of its capacity to innovate in the biological world have provided, I think, very substantial evidence that it's. It's not a very powerful cause at all. It's not. It's not capable of doing much at all. It is capable of doing little bit, little changes, but. But not really much at all. So I just think that the time is not enough for Darwin's mechanism. The mechanism itself has to do the work in that time, and it's not in any way sufficient. It's not as causally sufficient explanation. [00:41:13] Speaker A: But would you say that humans, as we define them, intellect and will and maybe image of God, we've not been around, we have not been around for four and a half billion years, though. However, wouldn't you, would you agree with kind of the idea that we've only been here for maybe, I don't know, thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, something like that? [00:41:34] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, the age of man is. Is something that I don't know. I don't know how long we've been here. I do think that anthropology is a science that still has a ways to go, that there's not subtle science. The fossil record, they're definitely hominids. There are these pre human creatures that resemble us more than apes. And there's arguments about where. Where does man start with these various species, homo species, you know, but I'm not sure. I don't have a real solid opinion on that question about how old man is and. Yeah. [00:42:25] Speaker A: What does the faith, the catholic faith, teach us that we must believe, though, about the creation of Mandev. [00:42:32] Speaker B: So it's a dogma of the faith that all human beings come from a single man and a single woman, Adam and Eve. We have to believe that the whole doctrine of original sin relies upon that. So that's called monogenism, monogam as opposed to polygynism. The typical evolutionary view is that the current human race comes from multiple first parents. But the catholic teaching is that we all come from a single set of first parents, Adam and Eve, that were directly created by God. So that's. That's what we must believe. [00:43:04] Speaker A: Aren't there scientists. I mean, I know scientists would say, at least some scientists would say, aren't there scientific reasons, though, that you couldn't have everybody come from a single man and single woman because of just inbreeding and things of that nature? [00:43:18] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, there's. There's a question of sufficient genetic diversity and what have you. I would. I would say, based on the reading that I've done, that that evidence is not conclusive. Some of the people with the Discovery Institute to, like Doctor Anne Gager, they've done some interesting work on that. And meanwhile, sciences has discovered that there's something called the mitochondrial eve. They're able to track like that. Basically, we all came from the same woman, which is interesting, but they would say we didn't come from the same man or it's uncertain. I think the science, an honest scientist would tell you today the science is not conclusive right now. And of course, we believe that we all come from Adam and Eve and we don't have the solid science yet, and we just wait to see if there's more information to confirm what we know is true by faith. [00:44:16] Speaker A: And what about, what else do we have to believe when it comes to creation? Man, like the direct creation of the soul and things of that nature. [00:44:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So we have to believe in the direct creation of the soul. Darwinian evolution is. Catholics are open to believe that, you know, it's not something that's. That's against the faith as such. Of course, it has to come from God. If the biological adaptations created all the biological diversity, then it came from a design of God. But, yeah, as I say, Catholics have freedom. I, as a Catholic, have done the research. You, as a Catholic who've done the research, and my informed opinion is that darwinian evolution does not explain that. I believe that God seeded the earth with plants and animals at different periods of time, as described in Genesis one. [00:45:04] Speaker A: Okay, so. But you wouldn't say, for example, or maybe you would. I don't know, like, the days. Some. Some people would say, like, the days represent a certain time, but the days seem to be kind of out of order in some way. So would you. Would you go by that kind of the day age theory, or is it more just a matter of that? Genesis is telling us that God is creating these things, and exactly the timeframe when he did it isn't necessarily set. Is that kind of where you're coming from? [00:45:33] Speaker B: I lean more to the day age theory, and that's something called concordism, and that's where you take the six day framework and you try to match it up with what science is telling us about the development of the universe. I lean more towards that. There's different ways you can explain those six days and match them up, as I say, with that development. But the church doesn't compel us to believe that. But I think it was the more common opinion pre Vatican II. [00:46:04] Speaker A: Okay, I just have a couple more questions, although I would want to go for about five more hours, but I won't. One is that, like, there's this common idea of thought, especially among, let's be honest, some more traditional Catholics, that somehow these findings of science, for example, that the universe being very old and stuff like that somehow takes away from our faith, that somehow diminishes God. How would you say. I don't think that's true, but I just want to ask you, how would you say, like, how has these discoveries, like, finding out that, oh, the universe actually is 13 plus billion years old, the earth is four and a half billion years old. How has that actually fostered your catholic faith to make it, your faith in God, actually stronger? Or has it. [00:46:47] Speaker B: It definitely has. I mean, I. I don't know. I can just feel my butterflies in my stomach just thinking about what science has discovered, about how God has created this universe. It's. It's really stunning. It's. It's just so moving. The. One of the things is, it's so moving for me is to think that. That God prepared this place for us. God prepared this universe for us. So you think about when you're having somebody over and you prepare the house, you clean the house and everything, you make it for them and then you bring them in, especially someone who's going to live there. Someone's going to live in your house. They speak about mothers when they're pregnant. They have this instinct to decorate their house to prepare for their. For the child they're going to bring into their home. And we know that God made this earth for us. He made this universe for us. And to see this so elaborate preparation on the part of God for us to be here. And when you look at the night sky, I don't know if you've been able to be at a place where there's a dark night sky, there's no light pollution. I lived in Australia for ten years and the night sky was just so stunning. I would walk out and see it every night and this overwhelming, overwhelmingly beautiful. And to think that. I was just thinking, you know, who can appreciate this? Who can see this beauty? Why is that there? Why is the universe billions of light years across? And it's for us to. God made it for us is for him to say to us who he is and for us. He likes to delight us with the universe that he made. And he likes to delight us. He knows that we are moved to wonder. We like games where we find things. We like scavenger hunts or Easter egg hunts and things where something's hidden and you discover it. And so he made a us with the capacity for discovering and this delight in discovering, and he hid all these little secrets all throughout the universe and we've been discovering them. We live in a very privileged time in that sense that we've been. We were the first ones who would understand what's actually out there in the universe, how immense this universe is and the story of its formation and everything, the formation of the galaxies. So it's delightful, it's astounding. It teaches us something about God, his beauty, his love for us. [00:49:30] Speaker A: Jeff, have you been following the James Webb telescope findings? [00:49:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:35] Speaker A: Those are kind of mind blowing when you kind. They're like, oh, my gosh, it's just. It's unbelievable. And I think, though, like, I've always. I remember as a kid when I was very young, thinking, like, what's beyond space? You know, that was kind of how I thought of it. Like, okay, what's the. After the barrier space, whatever that is, what's beyond it? And of course, that's just as you can't really answer that question, but just think of how immense, how vast the universe is. And it's still like less than an anthill to God. I mean, it's like nothing but it. Because like a lot of scientists, atheist scientists, they come to the conclusion that we're so small in comparison to the universe that somehow makes us insignificant. And I feel like I come to the exact opposite conclusion, that that makes us so significant that he's given us, that God has given us this vast universe just for us to, like you said, to wander in, to delight in. It's like, like you said, it's like preparing a home when the baby's coming or something like that, is amazing. And we find new things out all the time and. [00:50:37] Speaker B: Yeah, so, yeah, and I think it's both. I think it's both. It both teaches us about the greatness of God, his love for us, and also how small we are in comparison to him. We are lowly. We are lowly. And hopefully it moves us to adore God more profoundly when we go back to mass. It's like, well, this is the same God who created this vast universe for me. And I hope it leads to devotion in that sense of. [00:51:08] Speaker A: Right. Okay, so last question, aliens, I gotta ask. Do you believe that there is intelligent life in the universe or any life in the universe outside of Earth? I know this isn't a dogma of faith or anything. I just. I'm just curious. [00:51:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm skeptical. I'm very skeptical. I mean, I'm open to evidence. You know, there's a whole SETI project to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. And we've been, we've been listening for, for decades for some sort of signals from, from out in outer space. And there's a so called Drake equation where trying to figure out the make, make some sort of mathematical equation to see what was the likelihood of there being life on other planets. And I think these, these equations of themselves have an evolutionary perspective because they assume that life evolved here from, from basically non life. I know the chances of life evolving from non life are zero. So I don't believe that life evolved from non life anywhere else. I believe that God created life here. And as I say, he, he prepared the universe for us. If there was evidence, I would be willing to accept. Accept it. But, yeah, I think it's unlikely. I don't know if you, if you're familiar with CS Lewis's space trilogy? [00:52:28] Speaker A: Yes. [00:52:28] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. And, I mean, I especially like Perilandra. It's just sort of because he wanted to, he wanted to make Peralanda as a conceptualization of an unfallen race, and sort of the temptation that was, that was met and defeated and what that would be like. And it's fun to think about, but I'm a little skeptical that there's other. There's aliens. Yeah, I read. [00:52:53] Speaker A: I don't know if I'm forgetting the author of the book. It's sitting over there on my bookshelf. It's called where is everybody? And it's a guy who goes through a hundred different arguments for whether or not there is life in the intelligent life in the universe. And he goes through them all, and he kind of explains why. And this is not, this is. I don't think he's a believer. I don't know. He doesn't have any. There's no christian backing in this. But it's interesting because he comes inclusion, and he goes, okay, now, here's my opinion. I don't think there is scientifically, I don't think there is intelligent life, because I think if there were intelligent life somewhere, we would know about it somehow. That just would not be possible, that we wouldn't know about. And I've kind of, I've kind of gone back and forth, but I kind of think that if God and I do would like you, it's not like life from non life, but just if God had created intelligent life somewhere else, I think we probably would know about it on some level. But I think it's possible. Like, I do think it's possible that there is life on other places in the universe, but nothing necessarily intelligent life. So, because it's kind of like how the, in the old world in Europe, they didn't realize there was a whole other side of the world where there was a bunch of life, including intelligent life, in that case, but that they could explore and everything that it might be one day we're, we're going to explore the universe. And so there are some places set up that will have life that we can live on or something like that. Maybe not. I mean, maybe our Lord will come before them, but, uh. But, you know, so I think it's possible, but, yeah, like you, I I just don't see. I'm skeptical of until I see some better evidence. [00:54:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And, I mean, I think you make a good point that God can do anything, and God, he's infinitely creative. So I would encourage some people, just look at the species of life that have existed on this earth in the past. And it's like crazy animals, 99% of the. But the species that have existed on this earth no longer exist at all. Extinct. But that's, again, something for us to wonder at. Look at these ancient species and you're like, whoa, these are crazy. These animals like the dinosaurs. But God has a lot of surprises ready for us, I think. I have not seen. Our ear has heard. [00:55:04] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. Amen. Well, father, thank you very much. I appreciate. This has been great. I want to recommend the book again. It's called the realist Guide to religion and Science. I will have a link to it on the show notes. I believe the link is to Angeles press because I think you can buy it there. So I'll put a link to that. That's the best place to go to it, to buy it. [00:55:22] Speaker B: That's a good place. I think the Angela sells the paperback, but there's also the Kindle version and the hardback available on Amazon. [00:55:30] Speaker A: Okay. Okay, great. So I'll make sure I link to that. So. Okay, father, thank you and God bless you, and I appreciate all the work you're doing. [00:55:38] Speaker B: Thank you, Eric. Appreciate it. [00:55:40] Speaker A: Okay, everybody, until next time. God love.