The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 394. A Conversation About God

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00:00:30.000 Hello everyone watching and listening.

00:00:32.620 Today I'm speaking with Dr. John Lennox, mathematician, professor, author of many books and public intellectual.

00:00:39.800 We discuss the axioms and the dangerous aims of transhumanism.

00:00:45.140 The interplay between ethical faith, reason and the empirical world that makes up the scientific endeavor.

00:00:52.920 And the line between Luciferian intellectual presumption and wise, courageous exploration.

00:00:58.240 So, I wanted to start by asking you your opinion on some questions that have gone through my mind recently.

00:01:07.180 And there's one that's very specific I think I'll start with, which is that, you know, I think for a lot of my life,

00:01:15.580 and certainly when I was younger, I really bought the doctrine that there was an unbridgeable gap

00:01:22.880 between the scientific way of looking at the world and the Christian way of looking at the world, let's say.

00:01:29.660 And that that split, the split, the apparent split between science and religion

00:01:37.660 was a consequence of an incommensurate dichotomy of worldviews, you know.

00:01:43.720 And that the church had been opposed to scientific progress, at least in part because the scientific viewpoint

00:01:50.780 existed in contradiction to Christian doctrine.

00:01:55.560 But then, especially in recent years, in the last 10 years, I've started to understand that

00:02:01.500 that that was something like a French enlightenment-slash-rationalist propaganda campaign.

00:02:12.120 And that there's a different, that the relationship between science and Christianity is much closer than I had imagined.

00:02:22.540 I caught on to this a little bit by reading Jung, but that just as the universities developed out of the monastic tradition,

00:02:31.840 the notion that the natural world was intelligible to the inquiring logos,

00:02:39.200 that it had an intrinsic logic, that studying it would be beneficial to man,

00:02:46.060 first of all, that it would be comprehensible and beneficial,

00:02:48.960 and that that was actually a kind of moral obligation.

00:02:52.540 That all struck me as, like, axiomatic statements of faith that were predicated on the Christian tradition

00:02:59.720 that were the preconditions for the emergence of science.

00:03:05.180 And, you know, I've tried to take that idea apart over the last three or four years

00:03:09.180 to see if I can find any flaws in it.

00:03:11.480 But I think the evidence that the universities emerged out of the monastic tradition

00:03:17.680 instead of emerging contrary to that, that's absolutely incontrovertible on every grounds you could possibly imagine.

00:03:24.900 And the notion that you need to believe in the intelligibility of the world,

00:03:30.600 the capability of the human logos,

00:03:33.760 and the beneficial consequence of acquiring knowledge.

00:03:38.400 You have to believe in all that to even get the scientific enterprise going.

00:03:41.980 I also think that's incontrovertible and that those are axioms of faith.

00:03:46.080 And so, I don't know how, I don't know if those views are in accordance with your views or what you think about that.

00:03:52.900 So, I'd like to hear what you think about that.

00:03:54.760 This is extremely interesting to me because I never saw the tension between Christianity and science

00:04:03.840 because very early on as a teenager, I was introduced to the writings of a scientist who was a Christian

00:04:11.620 who drew my attention to something Alfred North Whitehead wrote.

00:04:16.760 And it was really put in much simpler language by C.S. Lewis when he wrote,

00:04:24.040 Men became scientific because they expected law in nature,

00:04:28.040 and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.

00:04:32.340 And so, very early on, and I was fascinated by the idea

00:04:36.460 that actually modern science is a legacy of the biblical worldview.

00:04:42.840 And therefore, it's no accident that the pioneers, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Maxwell, and so on,

00:04:53.340 were believers in God.

00:04:54.780 And as you pointed out, it underpins the tradition that lies behind the great universities of the world

00:05:01.740 that the doctrine of creation was actually the belief,

00:05:07.780 the underlying presupposition that allowed people to do science.

00:05:11.520 So, I've come over my life to the conclusion that science and the biblical worldview sit very comfortably together,

00:05:19.920 but it's science and atheism that do not sit comfortably together,

00:05:23.940 which I know is quite a controversial statement, but at least it gets discussion going.

00:05:28.740 I just completed a couple of documentaries with the Daily Wire Plus crew,

00:05:32.960 and one of them was in Athens and two were in Jerusalem.

00:05:35.640 And we were trying to puzzle out the relationship between Greek thought and Judeo-Christian thought,

00:05:45.800 most particularly the strange happenstance that the Greek idea of an intrinsic logos in the world

00:05:53.980 seemed to dovetail with the Judeo-Christian idea of,

00:05:59.240 you might say, of the word incarnate in the human psyche.

00:06:03.960 And it seemed to me, and obviously to other observers,

00:06:09.220 that there was an affinity between the Greek idea that the cosmos had an intrinsic comprehensibility

00:06:16.340 and the idea that the proper orientation for human beings ethically

00:06:21.880 would be one of honest communication and investigation.

00:06:25.980 And those two things snapped on top of each other.

00:06:29.880 And it made me think of something that I actually learned from Richard Dawkins.

00:06:34.960 And I think this is a deep idea.

00:06:37.180 Dawkins wrote a very influential essay

00:06:40.100 where he claimed that any organism that can function in an environment

00:06:46.900 has to be a microcosm of that environment.

00:06:50.280 So, for example, if you were an alien biologist

00:06:54.980 and you were presented with a terrestrial bird

00:06:58.240 and you took the bird apart,

00:07:01.260 you could infer from the bird's structure

00:07:03.820 the gravitational pull of the Earth,

00:07:06.440 the density of the atmosphere,

00:07:08.640 the chemical composition of the atmosphere,

00:07:11.860 the electromagnetic frequency that the sunlight was,

00:07:18.080 what would you say,

00:07:19.280 most at what electromagnetic frequencies

00:07:22.260 the sun's light was most amenable to vision, etc.

00:07:25.940 You could derive a model of the environment

00:07:29.520 from the physiology of the organism.

00:07:33.140 Now, I know that there were medieval ideas

00:07:36.260 that were deep in Christianity

00:07:38.620 that the human soul was a microcosm of the cosmos, right?

00:07:42.160 That it reflected the structure of reality itself.

00:07:44.620 And I've been thinking about this

00:07:45.880 in terms of how the world might be best conceptualized.

00:07:51.260 So there's a mix of ideas here.

00:07:52.880 And if an organism has to be a microcosm of the cosmos

00:07:57.260 in order to function,

00:07:59.540 and we are a microcosm in that regard,

00:08:03.260 and we are a personality that runs on a narrative,

00:08:06.820 which we seem to be,

00:08:08.620 then in what way is it reasonable to claim

00:08:11.200 that the cosmos itself

00:08:13.940 is best conceptualized

00:08:16.100 as something that can be entered into relationship

00:08:18.520 with personality to personality,

00:08:21.340 and that that's not the most fundamental reflection of reality?

00:08:24.700 I mean, it seems to me

00:08:25.560 that that's where Dawkins' thought

00:08:27.300 eventually points

00:08:29.860 if his proclamation that

00:08:31.880 an organism has to be a microcosm,

00:08:34.600 an accurate microcosm in order to survive,

00:08:37.360 is accurate.

00:08:37.920 So, now, that dovetails with the idea

00:08:41.260 that the logos as a personality,

00:08:44.840 so that would be the Judeo-Christian concept,

00:08:47.420 can investigate the logos of the universe

00:08:49.720 and that those things dovetail.

00:08:51.880 So, now, I know that's a complicated mishmash of ideas,

00:08:55.300 but I'm interested in your thoughts on that.

00:08:57.920 Well, I think there's a lot in that, actually,

00:09:02.260 and I recall listening to you give a very interesting lecture

00:09:06.740 on Genesis 1,

00:09:08.180 and when you came to the statement

00:09:10.520 that human beings are made in the image of God,

00:09:13.900 you paused,

00:09:15.360 and you pointed out that

00:09:16.560 this was the cornerstone of our civilization,

00:09:19.140 and I agree with that entirely.

00:09:21.320 I think that what Dawkins is saying

00:09:24.960 actually points in the exact opposite direction

00:09:27.580 to what his worldview is,

00:09:29.940 which is atheism, of course.

00:09:31.880 In other words,

00:09:32.780 that we can read off from creation

00:09:36.100 something about the idea of a creator,

00:09:40.220 and, as you say,

00:09:41.380 it dovetails perfectly.

00:09:43.660 Let me put this another way.

00:09:46.200 I'm a mathematician by background

00:09:48.440 and a linguist.

00:09:49.360 I love language,

00:09:50.760 and mathematics is a very sophisticated language,

00:09:53.460 but I love natural languages as well,

00:09:56.180 and it seems to me

00:09:58.140 that where this fits together best

00:10:00.700 is first in the fact that we can do science

00:10:05.060 in the sense that

00:10:06.400 there is a rational intelligibility

00:10:09.400 to the universe,

00:10:10.860 which is the foundation of modern science

00:10:13.900 and is a legacy of the biblical worldview,

00:10:17.220 so that the mathematical describability,

00:10:20.660 Einstein talked about,

00:10:23.080 he couldn't imagine any genuine scientist

00:10:26.020 without faith in that.

00:10:28.100 It's the axiom for doing science

00:10:30.120 is to believe the universe is intelligible,

00:10:32.480 but if you ask for the rationale behind that,

00:10:35.140 why do we believe the universe is intelligible?

00:10:37.740 It bears the imprint of a creator,

00:10:40.700 and I see that at the level of mathematics

00:10:43.180 in its capacity to,

00:10:45.260 at least in part,

00:10:46.920 give us a handle on what's out there,

00:10:48.960 and also in biology,

00:10:50.420 where we have at the heart of every living cell

00:10:53.160 the longest word we've ever found,

00:10:55.400 the genetic code,

00:10:56.740 and all of that leads me

00:10:59.280 to formulate it as follows,

00:11:01.000 that we live in a word-based universe,

00:11:03.680 and that's the key of the logos for me.

00:11:08.200 Okay, and so what do you mean in that case?

00:11:10.400 So what do you mean specifically

00:11:12.060 that we live in a word-based universe?

00:11:15.320 What does that mean for you

00:11:16.440 on the broader conceptual landscape?

00:11:19.640 Well, it means that this universe

00:11:21.980 is not simply a product

00:11:24.420 of natural unguided forces.

00:11:28.360 It is a product of a rational creator,

00:11:31.880 an intelligent creator,

00:11:33.600 and I believe even more than that,

00:11:35.100 a personal creator.

00:11:36.620 Now, how I get there

00:11:38.040 is only in part

00:11:39.620 from a response to the universe

00:11:42.200 as I find it,

00:11:43.320 the point you made

00:11:44.200 about each organism

00:11:46.120 being a microcosm of its environment.

00:11:49.220 It's also,

00:11:50.820 it seems to me that there are

00:11:52.460 two sources,

00:11:53.840 two major sources of knowledge.

00:11:55.720 There is, first of all,

00:11:57.980 observing the universe,

00:11:59.340 science, etc.

00:12:00.820 Then there are the humanities,

00:12:03.200 but there's also the concept

00:12:04.960 of revelation,

00:12:06.560 in which I believe.

00:12:07.480 In other words,

00:12:08.560 it's not simply the human quest

00:12:11.100 for the creator,

00:12:12.960 it's the creator revealing himself.

00:12:15.220 So for me,

00:12:16.580 the anchor point in the end

00:12:18.400 is that the logos became human

00:12:21.160 and we beheld his glory.

00:12:23.360 In other words,

00:12:23.920 we can see exactly

00:12:26.180 what this means

00:12:27.260 in terms of what we can understand.

00:12:29.720 That is the human being

00:12:31.880 in which God encoded himself

00:12:34.020 in Christ.

00:12:35.300 Now, those are big ideas,

00:12:37.260 of course.

00:12:37.700 They're very deep ideas.

00:12:39.020 They need unpacking.

00:12:40.300 But that's essentially

00:12:41.640 where I'm coming from.

00:12:43.480 Okay, so,

00:12:44.300 all right,

00:12:44.740 so let me

00:12:45.660 elaborate in two directions

00:12:49.320 with regards to that.

00:12:50.640 So, the first is that,

00:12:53.120 so one of the axioms of faith

00:12:54.720 that's necessary

00:12:55.540 before you embark

00:12:56.760 on the scientific endeavor

00:12:57.960 as an individual

00:12:58.880 or as a culture,

00:13:00.120 which might explain

00:13:00.900 why science emerged

00:13:01.960 in the Judeo-Christian context

00:13:03.880 and no other place,

00:13:05.880 is that the universe

00:13:07.840 is intrinsically intelligible.

00:13:09.520 But there's another axiom, too,

00:13:11.340 which is that

00:13:11.900 the honest investigation

00:13:14.780 of that intelligibility

00:13:16.300 will be good.

00:13:17.920 And so,

00:13:18.920 there is this insistence

00:13:20.060 in Genesis

00:13:20.660 when God casts order

00:13:23.120 out of chaos

00:13:23.940 and creates the world.

00:13:25.660 After each day

00:13:26.900 of creation,

00:13:28.760 he says,

00:13:29.460 he states explicitly,

00:13:30.840 and it was good.

00:13:31.620 And when he creates man,

00:13:32.720 I believe he says

00:13:34.040 that it is very good.

00:13:35.160 And so,

00:13:35.800 and the reason for that

00:13:36.760 is that not only

00:13:37.900 is there an order,

00:13:38.800 but that the order is,

00:13:40.520 in its deepest sense,

00:13:42.360 beneficial and positive.

00:13:43.720 And the thing is,

00:13:44.940 is that

00:13:45.320 it's easy

00:13:47.340 and even rational,

00:13:49.060 it might be easy

00:13:50.220 and even rational

00:13:51.140 to take the Frankenstein monster

00:13:53.780 view of

00:13:55.240 the investigation

00:13:56.260 of the world

00:13:57.040 and to say,

00:13:58.300 well,

00:13:58.460 even if the cosmos

00:13:59.300 is intelligible,

00:14:00.880 that doesn't mean

00:14:01.920 that our investigation

00:14:03.660 into it

00:14:04.740 is intrinsically good

00:14:06.120 or that it would

00:14:07.080 bear good fruit.

00:14:08.800 Now,

00:14:09.020 you have to believe

00:14:09.840 that the truth

00:14:10.460 will set you free

00:14:11.480 in order to be a scientist

00:14:13.000 because if you believed

00:14:14.280 that the truth

00:14:15.280 had no bearing

00:14:16.200 on human flourishing,

00:14:18.260 let's say,

00:14:18.680 then the whole enterprise

00:14:19.480 would be pointless.

00:14:20.620 And if you believed

00:14:21.460 that the investigation

00:14:22.780 of the complexities

00:14:23.960 of material reality

00:14:25.220 would lead us astray,

00:14:26.840 then you'd say

00:14:27.480 that that should be

00:14:28.260 taboo and forbidden.

00:14:29.380 But that isn't

00:14:29.960 what we decided.

00:14:30.880 We decided that

00:14:31.760 the revealed order

00:14:33.740 would be good.

00:14:35.640 And then,

00:14:36.340 I'll add one other thing

00:14:37.420 to that,

00:14:37.880 which I think

00:14:38.460 is also axiomatic,

00:14:39.880 which is

00:14:40.260 part of the Logos idea

00:14:43.260 in its deepest sense

00:14:46.100 is that

00:14:46.760 we are required

00:14:49.040 to

00:14:50.180 explore,

00:14:52.300 investigate,

00:14:52.940 and communicate

00:14:53.580 about everything

00:14:54.720 as deeply as possible.

00:14:56.240 So,

00:14:57.000 the idea,

00:14:58.340 you have this idea

00:14:59.260 in Job

00:14:59.940 that is quite well developed

00:15:02.500 that no matter

00:15:03.300 what God

00:15:03.940 and the devil

00:15:04.400 throw at you,

00:15:05.900 you're called upon

00:15:06.940 to maintain

00:15:07.600 your equilibrium

00:15:08.380 and your faith

00:15:09.360 in the intrinsic goodness

00:15:10.380 of being.

00:15:10.960 and then

00:15:12.380 that's expanded

00:15:13.340 in the Gospels

00:15:14.300 because

00:15:14.700 the trials of Christ

00:15:16.980 are the most extreme trials

00:15:18.620 that can be imagined.

00:15:20.080 And I mean that literally.

00:15:21.380 That's partly why

00:15:22.120 the story has such potency,

00:15:23.640 right?

00:15:23.800 It's the worst possible

00:15:25.120 sequence of events

00:15:26.720 that could happen

00:15:27.480 to the least possibly

00:15:28.660 deserving person.

00:15:30.300 And

00:15:30.560 that's

00:15:31.560 an injunction

00:15:33.280 to

00:15:33.900 accept

00:15:35.160 all of the terrible

00:15:36.220 catastrophes of life

00:15:37.580 full on

00:15:38.900 in this

00:15:40.520 supposition

00:15:41.960 that

00:15:42.900 doing so

00:15:44.020 is the manner

00:15:45.540 in which

00:15:46.100 life most abundant

00:15:49.020 could reveal itself.

00:15:50.320 And

00:15:50.420 if you're a scientist

00:15:51.660 and the real scientists

00:15:53.240 are like this,

00:15:53.940 and I think Dawkins

00:15:54.800 in this way

00:15:55.360 is a real scientist,

00:15:56.400 is that you're actually

00:15:57.360 committed to the truth,

00:15:58.720 right?

00:15:58.920 You put that above all else.

00:16:00.860 And

00:16:01.340 you wouldn't do that

00:16:02.720 if you didn't believe

00:16:03.640 that

00:16:03.980 the logos of commitment

00:16:06.680 establishes

00:16:07.760 the order that is good.

00:16:09.100 And I don't think

00:16:09.920 you do that

00:16:10.500 without an intrinsic belief

00:16:11.860 that

00:16:12.220 it's something like

00:16:13.520 human beings are made

00:16:14.420 in the image of God.

00:16:16.080 I can't see any escape

00:16:17.600 from that rationale.

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00:17:55.240 Nor can I.

00:17:59.200 And it's interesting

00:17:59.960 that when

00:18:00.700 I did my

00:18:02.020 debate with Dawkins

00:18:03.760 at the Oxford

00:18:04.480 Natural History Museum

00:18:05.880 at the press conference

00:18:07.560 afterwards,

00:18:08.160 we were asked,

00:18:09.360 was there anything

00:18:10.160 that we agreed on?

00:18:12.180 And there was one thing

00:18:13.420 and that is

00:18:13.960 that truth exists.

00:18:15.700 And this is a crucial thing.

00:18:17.720 It depends

00:18:18.860 that we

00:18:19.580 are committed

00:18:20.560 to the pursuit

00:18:21.300 of truth.

00:18:21.920 Otherwise,

00:18:22.360 as you say,

00:18:23.080 science is absolutely

00:18:24.180 no point.

00:18:25.520 I happen to believe

00:18:26.460 that truth,

00:18:27.120 of course,

00:18:27.500 is not simply

00:18:28.180 propositional truth,

00:18:29.620 but ultimately

00:18:30.440 truth as a person.

00:18:32.240 And that is

00:18:32.900 the very deep

00:18:34.100 claim.

00:18:35.360 I am

00:18:36.120 the way,

00:18:36.940 the truth

00:18:37.580 and the life.

00:18:39.000 And it's interesting

00:18:39.820 there that

00:18:40.740 Jesus wasn't

00:18:42.100 merely saying

00:18:43.040 I say true things.

00:18:45.160 This goes

00:18:45.720 much deeper.

00:18:46.700 I am the truth.

00:18:48.040 And if we set up

00:18:48.780 a sequence of questions

00:18:50.000 about anything,

00:18:51.220 what is the truth

00:18:52.060 about the atom?

00:18:53.160 Well,

00:18:53.340 you can split it

00:18:54.080 into elementary

00:18:54.760 particles.

00:18:55.280 What is the truth

00:18:56.140 about those?

00:18:57.060 I believe this

00:18:57.940 claim is so big

00:18:59.480 that it's actually

00:19:00.620 saying that at the

00:19:01.820 end of the

00:19:02.460 backward sequence

00:19:03.280 of questions,

00:19:04.860 Jesus Christ

00:19:06.040 will say,

00:19:06.680 I am the truth.

00:19:08.140 And of course,

00:19:08.720 that resonates

00:19:09.380 with what you

00:19:10.480 were studying

00:19:11.060 in Exodus

00:19:11.600 so interestingly.

00:19:13.200 I am

00:19:14.280 is the fundamental

00:19:15.840 proposition

00:19:16.400 about the nature

00:19:17.340 of God.

00:19:19.040 Right,

00:19:19.360 right.

00:19:19.600 So that's

00:19:20.040 an existential

00:19:20.840 proposition

00:19:21.540 that has

00:19:22.160 to do

00:19:22.440 with action.

00:19:23.220 So Thomas,

00:19:23.900 well,

00:19:24.320 okay,

00:19:24.700 so when Thomas

00:19:25.420 Kuhn wrote

00:19:26.660 the,

00:19:27.600 what was it,

00:19:29.960 his theory

00:19:30.420 of scientific

00:19:30.980 revolution,

00:19:31.660 I can't remember

00:19:32.140 the name of the book

00:19:32.680 exactly at the moment,

00:19:34.200 of the structure

00:19:34.680 of scientific

00:19:35.220 revolutions.

00:19:35.740 Now,

00:19:36.280 Kuhn did something

00:19:37.880 that other philosophers

00:19:38.780 of science did

00:19:39.680 in the 20th century.

00:19:40.800 You know,

00:19:40.980 he laid out

00:19:41.600 the case

00:19:42.140 for science

00:19:43.300 being a coherent

00:19:44.880 set of explicit

00:19:45.920 statable propositions.

00:19:47.380 And that's generally

00:19:48.160 what people think

00:19:49.000 of as science.

00:19:50.160 But that's not

00:19:51.040 accurate nor sufficient

00:19:53.020 by any stretch

00:19:53.800 of the imagination.

00:19:55.140 So,

00:19:55.540 so I'll give you

00:19:56.280 an example of this

00:19:57.080 and we can expand

00:19:57.900 on that.

00:19:58.460 So,

00:19:59.340 my graduate supervisor,

00:20:01.020 Robert Peel,

00:20:01.940 was a real scientist.

00:20:03.880 And what that meant

00:20:05.260 was that he conducted

00:20:06.380 himself in a certain way.

00:20:08.680 It wasn't a matter

00:20:09.540 of the things

00:20:10.280 he believed explicitly.

00:20:12.240 It was a matter

00:20:13.180 of the way

00:20:13.660 that he conducted himself,

00:20:14.960 let's say,

00:20:15.380 as a laboratory researcher.

00:20:16.940 Okay,

00:20:17.180 so,

00:20:17.340 and that conduct

00:20:19.080 was oriented

00:20:19.780 around a variety

00:20:20.680 of ethical propositions.

00:20:22.660 So,

00:20:23.220 he was very generous

00:20:24.340 with his ideas.

00:20:26.120 And what that meant

00:20:27.000 was he had

00:20:28.620 a lot of ideas

00:20:29.400 because he would

00:20:30.080 share them

00:20:30.560 with his graduate students,

00:20:31.860 for example,

00:20:32.420 and the undergraduates,

00:20:33.360 and they would

00:20:34.040 respond positively.

00:20:35.920 And that would

00:20:36.660 reinforce the mechanism

00:20:38.240 within him

00:20:38.900 that generated ideas.

00:20:40.400 And then ideas

00:20:41.260 would flow forth

00:20:42.400 more abundantly.

00:20:43.840 And so,

00:20:44.360 that was part

00:20:45.100 of the scientific ethos

00:20:46.360 to be generous

00:20:47.100 with ideas.

00:20:47.840 And then,

00:20:48.760 the next part

00:20:49.560 of that was,

00:20:50.660 if he published

00:20:52.120 his scientific

00:20:53.540 research papers,

00:20:55.100 he was generous

00:20:56.460 in the credit

00:20:57.320 he gave

00:20:57.900 to his graduate

00:20:58.780 student collaborators,

00:21:01.160 generally listing them

00:21:02.580 as the first author

00:21:03.460 and putting himself

00:21:04.300 in the final place,

00:21:05.300 which is a convention

00:21:06.100 among genuine scientists.

00:21:08.160 And so,

00:21:09.200 he played fair

00:21:10.860 on the reputational front.

00:21:12.620 I had a supervisor

00:21:14.780 like that.

00:21:16.000 I had a supervisor

00:21:17.220 like that at Cambridge.

00:21:19.180 Yeah,

00:21:19.440 well,

00:21:19.560 it's a great good fort.

00:21:20.540 You can't become

00:21:21.320 a successful scientist.

00:21:23.080 It's very difficult

00:21:23.680 to become a successful scientist

00:21:25.000 without someone like that

00:21:26.180 to apprentice with.

00:21:28.040 Yep.

00:21:28.780 Okay,

00:21:29.220 so then,

00:21:29.920 on the statistical

00:21:31.060 analysis front,

00:21:32.860 so,

00:21:33.140 you know,

00:21:33.880 people who don't

00:21:35.080 know anything

00:21:35.640 about statistics

00:21:36.440 think that you take

00:21:37.880 a spreadsheet of numbers

00:21:39.440 and dump it

00:21:40.020 into a meat grinder

00:21:40.860 and crank the handle

00:21:41.760 and out comes truth

00:21:42.720 and that is 100% false

00:21:45.120 because when you're

00:21:46.420 doing statistical analysis,

00:21:47.840 it's a form of

00:21:48.980 critical thinking

00:21:50.160 and exploration

00:21:50.800 and you're making

00:21:52.120 ethical decisions

00:21:53.100 at every choice point.

00:21:54.900 So,

00:21:55.420 you have to figure out

00:21:56.320 which data points

00:21:57.620 constitute outliers

00:21:58.920 because maybe there was

00:21:59.900 a measurement error,

00:22:00.840 for example,

00:22:01.460 while you were sampling

00:22:02.600 that particular behavior

00:22:03.760 and you have to tilt

00:22:06.800 the statistical investigation

00:22:08.620 to some degree

00:22:10.500 against the outcome

00:22:11.600 that you're hoping for

00:22:12.780 to make sure

00:22:13.300 that you don't fool yourself

00:22:14.420 and it's saturated

00:22:15.900 with ethical decisions

00:22:17.060 and then that all

00:22:18.420 has to be nested

00:22:19.300 within the presumption,

00:22:21.140 first of all,

00:22:21.620 the presumption

00:22:22.060 that you should not

00:22:22.900 ever publish

00:22:24.840 false data

00:22:25.680 just to move

00:22:26.320 your career forward,

00:22:27.640 you know,

00:22:27.880 and you might say,

00:22:28.560 well,

00:22:28.700 why the hell not?

00:22:29.900 And also,

00:22:30.900 that you are required

00:22:32.440 on ethical grounds

00:22:34.060 to let go

00:22:35.500 of your tyrannical

00:22:36.480 presuppositions

00:22:37.520 if the data reveals

00:22:39.200 that what you're

00:22:40.200 clinging to

00:22:40.820 for your own

00:22:41.460 psychological reasons

00:22:42.520 is wrong

00:22:43.220 and all of that's

00:22:45.880 an attitude

00:22:46.520 of ethical conduct

00:22:47.840 and not a set

00:22:49.000 of explicit

00:22:50.000 statable propositions.

00:22:52.160 Yeah,

00:22:52.520 that's hugely important.

00:22:54.840 Richard Feynman,

00:22:56.280 the physicist,

00:22:57.300 the Nobel Prize winner,

00:22:58.920 used to say

00:22:59.680 you must bend backwards

00:23:01.620 to criticize yourself

00:23:03.360 because you are

00:23:04.980 the easiest person

00:23:06.220 to fool.

00:23:07.520 And I'm very

00:23:08.900 interested in this

00:23:10.040 ethical dimension

00:23:11.200 because this is

00:23:13.020 over and beyond

00:23:14.300 the propositions

00:23:15.580 and the methodology

00:23:16.420 of science.

00:23:17.480 I think it was

00:23:18.140 Einstein who said

00:23:19.440 you may talk

00:23:20.600 about the ethical

00:23:21.520 foundations of science

00:23:22.980 but you cannot talk

00:23:24.140 about the scientific

00:23:24.980 foundations of ethics.

00:23:26.680 So this is another

00:23:27.800 layer in looking

00:23:29.020 at the universe.

00:23:30.200 It's rationally

00:23:31.260 intelligible

00:23:32.000 but it's also

00:23:32.660 a moral universe

00:23:33.900 and ethical

00:23:35.180 presuppositions

00:23:36.340 and decisions

00:23:37.200 infect all of our lives

00:23:39.040 and they do affect

00:23:40.500 the scientific endeavor.

00:23:42.580 It's not just

00:23:43.320 dispassionate observation

00:23:44.900 and making conclusions

00:23:46.480 and theories.

00:23:47.340 There's a huge

00:23:48.040 ethical dimension

00:23:48.960 which raises

00:23:50.080 deep questions

00:23:51.080 as to what

00:23:52.420 the reference point is.

00:23:53.840 Who said so?

00:23:54.740 What are the norms

00:23:56.200 behind that ethical

00:23:57.300 decision-making process?

00:23:58.960 Well, it also implies

00:24:02.600 that the scientific truth

00:24:04.980 that's truest

00:24:05.900 and beneficial

00:24:07.640 simultaneously

00:24:08.900 is actually

00:24:10.020 the conjunction

00:24:10.900 in this

00:24:12.260 Athens-Jerusalem sense

00:24:13.920 it's actually

00:24:14.460 the conjunction

00:24:15.260 of the intrinsic logic

00:24:17.740 of the objective world

00:24:19.420 making itself manifest

00:24:21.300 to the truthful

00:24:22.580 penetrating psyche

00:24:23.840 of the human observer.

00:24:25.420 It's the interaction

00:24:26.380 between those two

00:24:27.640 that constitute

00:24:28.260 scientific truth

00:24:29.220 and not one

00:24:30.360 or the other.

00:24:31.900 And so

00:24:32.160 and there's no getting

00:24:33.240 see and what

00:24:34.160 the atheist materialists

00:24:35.500 would like to do

00:24:36.320 is to say

00:24:36.960 well the world of facts

00:24:38.780 speaks for itself

00:24:40.380 but that's also

00:24:41.560 technically untrue

00:24:42.660 because there's

00:24:43.340 an infinite number

00:24:44.220 of facts

00:24:44.860 they're certainly

00:24:45.820 not all relevant

00:24:46.760 we can drown

00:24:48.060 in the plethora of facts

00:24:49.420 and we certainly

00:24:50.060 will do that

00:24:51.060 and to even

00:24:52.060 communicate about them

00:24:53.200 or study them

00:24:54.040 or even draw

00:24:55.020 our attention to them

00:24:55.820 we have to prioritize

00:24:57.240 and hierarchically

00:24:58.300 arrange the facts

00:24:59.760 and we do that

00:25:00.880 according to an ethic

00:25:01.720 and I think

00:25:02.340 that's actually

00:25:03.040 I think that is

00:25:04.540 incontrovertible

00:25:05.360 on scientific grounds

00:25:06.440 because we have seen

00:25:08.160 the emergent realization

00:25:10.180 in a whole variety

00:25:11.160 of domains

00:25:11.740 AI not least

00:25:12.900 that there are facts

00:25:15.360 but those facts

00:25:16.060 have to be prioritized

00:25:17.340 and you prioritize

00:25:18.240 facts with an ethic.

00:25:20.520 That's absolutely right

00:25:21.640 there's a deeper problem

00:25:22.900 it seems to me

00:25:23.700 with the atheist

00:25:24.460 understanding

00:25:25.360 of science

00:25:27.060 and that is this

00:25:28.620 that we do the science

00:25:31.040 with our minds

00:25:32.080 some people think

00:25:33.300 the mind and the brain

00:25:34.180 are the same

00:25:34.720 I leave that aside

00:25:35.680 since you're an expert

00:25:36.780 on the mind

00:25:38.160 and the brain

00:25:38.760 but I often say

00:25:40.800 to people

00:25:41.440 you know

00:25:42.840 what do you do

00:25:43.600 science with?

00:25:45.180 I've asked many

00:25:45.980 leading scientists

00:25:46.880 this

00:25:47.260 they say

00:25:47.680 well I do it

00:25:48.380 with my mind

00:25:49.160 and my brain

00:25:49.900 give me a brief

00:25:51.620 account of the brain

00:25:52.800 and they say to me

00:25:54.380 well the brain

00:25:55.200 is the end product

00:25:56.020 of a mindless

00:25:56.780 unguided process

00:25:57.740 and I pause

00:25:59.040 and I look them

00:25:59.680 straight in the eye

00:26:00.640 and I smile

00:26:01.480 and I say

00:26:01.960 and you trust it

00:26:03.380 tell me honestly

00:26:04.940 if you knew

00:26:06.360 that the computer

00:26:07.320 you use

00:26:08.320 or the machinery

00:26:09.220 you use

00:26:09.960 in the lab

00:26:10.600 was the end product

00:26:12.220 of a mindless

00:26:13.140 unguided process

00:26:14.280 would you trust it?

00:26:15.700 And the interesting thing

00:26:16.620 I've done a lot

00:26:17.240 of experiments

00:26:17.840 with this little story

00:26:18.980 and I've always

00:26:19.960 got the answer

00:26:21.200 no I would not

00:26:22.660 so I say

00:26:23.660 you have a problem

00:26:24.960 in other words

00:26:25.920 your atheism

00:26:26.920 is undermining

00:26:28.000 the very rationality

00:26:29.260 you use

00:26:29.820 not only to do science

00:26:31.300 but to construct

00:26:32.020 any argument

00:26:32.700 whatsoever

00:26:33.300 it's not only

00:26:34.400 shooting itself

00:26:35.260 in the foot

00:26:35.840 it's worse

00:26:36.400 it's shooting itself

00:26:37.240 in the brain

00:26:37.880 let me

00:26:39.140 let me ask you

00:26:40.180 about something

00:26:40.640 you said earlier

00:26:41.260 about revelation

00:26:41.960 so I've also been

00:26:43.020 I've been very interested

00:26:45.400 in the

00:26:46.820 what would you call it

00:26:48.400 the

00:26:48.740 the anthropological

00:26:50.560 psychology

00:26:51.400 of the development

00:26:52.120 of thought

00:26:52.620 that's a good way

00:26:53.380 of thinking about it

00:26:54.120 is that

00:26:54.460 how is it that

00:26:55.280 human beings

00:26:55.880 came to think

00:26:56.800 now

00:26:57.720 Carl Jung said

00:26:59.540 something very interesting

00:27:00.540 about thought

00:27:01.360 about typical thought

00:27:03.020 normative thought

00:27:04.040 and he said

00:27:05.120 the typical person

00:27:06.260 doesn't think

00:27:07.380 what happens

00:27:08.860 to the typical person

00:27:09.860 is that thoughts

00:27:10.800 appear to them

00:27:11.960 and they accept them

00:27:13.760 as axiomatically true

00:27:15.400 without further investigation

00:27:16.900 and so

00:27:18.660 and I believe

00:27:20.120 that to be the case

00:27:20.980 I think that

00:27:21.660 in order to think

00:27:23.080 critically

00:27:23.660 you have to set up

00:27:25.860 in the theater

00:27:26.440 of your imagination

00:27:27.440 something that

00:27:29.720 holds a proposition

00:27:30.800 and defends it

00:27:31.820 and then an adversary

00:27:32.920 or two adversaries

00:27:34.180 that take it apart

00:27:35.580 and so

00:27:36.120 you're actually

00:27:37.140 producing a collective

00:27:38.760 within

00:27:39.180 that will then

00:27:39.940 hash out the thought

00:27:41.060 but

00:27:41.320 that's led me

00:27:42.440 down the rabbit hole

00:27:43.280 of trying to understand

00:27:44.680 what we mean

00:27:45.600 when we say

00:27:46.380 something like

00:27:47.200 I thought

00:27:48.400 which would be

00:27:49.140 the sort of thing

00:27:49.800 that scientists

00:27:50.500 would say

00:27:51.080 when they're talking

00:27:51.760 about how they do science

00:27:52.920 well I thought up

00:27:54.140 my hypothesis

00:27:55.080 it's like you know

00:27:56.240 that's not much

00:27:57.020 of an explanation

00:27:57.860 there buddy

00:27:58.580 like what do you mean

00:27:59.700 you thought it up

00:28:00.440 because

00:28:00.780 you didn't know

00:28:01.880 the hypothesis

00:28:02.680 let's say yesterday

00:28:03.920 and now you do know it

00:28:05.200 and so how did you

00:28:06.040 not know it then

00:28:07.100 and how do you

00:28:08.300 know it now

00:28:09.060 and how is it

00:28:10.160 that that new idea

00:28:11.140 manifested itself

00:28:12.260 and the answer

00:28:13.260 is always going to be

00:28:13.960 well it came

00:28:14.660 to me

00:28:15.120 and so that's

00:28:15.920 the crucial thing

00:28:16.640 I want to dive into

00:28:17.540 so here's how I think

00:28:19.280 the hypothesis generation

00:28:21.220 process works

00:28:22.380 and scientists

00:28:23.200 very rarely talk

00:28:24.300 about this

00:28:24.800 say

00:28:24.980 they talk about

00:28:25.940 the observable data

00:28:27.060 but they don't talk

00:28:28.500 about the mechanism

00:28:29.340 by which the

00:28:30.140 investigative question

00:28:31.300 was formulated

00:28:32.080 and that's a huge

00:28:33.840 lacuna

00:28:34.320 right

00:28:34.640 that's a huge

00:28:35.360 domain of unconsciousness

00:28:36.620 so this is how

00:28:37.620 it seems to me

00:28:38.420 is that

00:28:38.760 first of all

00:28:39.940 you have to have

00:28:41.940 a problem

00:28:42.520 and so that's

00:28:44.660 something that

00:28:45.160 calls to you

00:28:45.900 generally

00:28:46.260 because people

00:28:46.980 are generally

00:28:47.620 gripped by a

00:28:48.720 problem

00:28:49.100 right

00:28:49.680 it isn't

00:28:50.220 that they choose

00:28:51.260 it voluntarily

00:28:51.900 precisely

00:28:52.740 it comes knocking

00:28:53.760 they can open

00:28:54.700 the door to it

00:28:55.460 but it's something

00:28:56.520 that grips them

00:28:57.220 and compels them

00:28:58.080 and it has a kind

00:28:59.500 of autonomy

00:29:00.060 in that sense

00:29:01.020 you know

00:29:02.600 if something

00:29:03.140 really besets you

00:29:03.980 as a problem

00:29:04.540 you can't shake it

00:29:05.700 it dogs you

00:29:07.220 and that

00:29:08.460 that seems like

00:29:09.680 a kind of autonomy

00:29:10.520 on the part

00:29:11.140 of the problem

00:29:11.740 and also

00:29:12.960 there's a million

00:29:13.660 problems that could

00:29:14.680 beset you

00:29:15.500 but some stand out

00:29:17.260 against the background

00:29:18.220 right

00:29:18.520 I think that's

00:29:19.100 equivalent to the

00:29:19.860 burning bush

00:29:20.460 by the way

00:29:21.060 anyway

00:29:21.820 so you have a problem

00:29:23.020 and you're

00:29:24.900 you're searching

00:29:27.040 humbly for a solution

00:29:28.520 and humbly

00:29:30.140 because

00:29:31.040 you have to admit

00:29:32.600 that you have a problem

00:29:33.380 and you have to admit

00:29:34.120 that you don't know

00:29:34.740 to answer

00:29:35.260 and then if you

00:29:36.740 open yourself up

00:29:38.080 whatever the hell

00:29:38.780 that means

00:29:39.400 you'll get a revelation

00:29:40.780 and the revelation

00:29:42.240 will be an insight

00:29:43.180 where it'll be something

00:29:43.920 that strikes you

00:29:44.820 as probable

00:29:45.700 or likely

00:29:46.440 and so that's

00:29:47.580 the first element

00:29:48.320 that's the first

00:29:49.320 two elements of thought

00:29:50.380 the first element

00:29:51.420 is

00:29:51.800 a felt lack

00:29:53.600 and that would be

00:29:54.860 an admission

00:29:55.580 of personal insufficiency

00:29:57.120 on some vital front

00:29:58.420 the next would be

00:30:00.120 the knocking

00:30:00.740 which is

00:30:01.380 I would like

00:30:02.420 to know the answer

00:30:03.500 the next

00:30:04.940 seat part of the sequence

00:30:07.360 is a revelation

00:30:08.160 as far as I can tell

00:30:09.380 and it's

00:30:10.820 something appears to you

00:30:12.160 and it springs out

00:30:13.080 of the void

00:30:13.640 for all intents and purposes

00:30:14.920 and you can say

00:30:16.700 you thought it up

00:30:18.620 but you're not saying

00:30:19.940 any more than

00:30:20.760 it appeared to me

00:30:21.920 there's no more content

00:30:23.560 in those two

00:30:24.340 descriptive

00:30:24.920 what would you call

00:30:27.200 approaches

00:30:27.760 and then

00:30:28.880 once

00:30:29.480 the revelation

00:30:30.440 makes itself manifest

00:30:31.820 you can

00:30:33.060 analyze it

00:30:34.080 critically

00:30:34.460 or you can

00:30:35.880 subject it

00:30:36.520 to further

00:30:37.040 empirical analysis

00:30:38.300 and to the

00:30:39.540 criticism of others

00:30:40.520 and it's that

00:30:42.000 whole panoply

00:30:42.840 of

00:30:43.500 sequence

00:30:45.140 processes

00:30:45.760 that make up

00:30:46.480 thought

00:30:46.820 but there's a

00:30:47.740 revelatory element

00:30:48.840 to that

00:30:49.300 that seems to me

00:30:50.060 to be

00:30:51.060 irreducible

00:30:52.560 now the question

00:30:54.300 is from

00:30:54.920 from where

00:30:55.620 does the revelation

00:30:56.400 spring

00:30:57.000 I would sympathize

00:30:59.300 with that analysis

00:31:00.200 very very much

00:31:02.080 I think thought

00:31:03.640 is a little bit

00:31:04.400 like time

00:31:05.300 as Augustine

00:31:06.860 said

00:31:07.240 everybody knows

00:31:08.280 what time is

00:31:09.160 until they try

00:31:09.900 to define it

00:31:10.840 and I certainly

00:31:12.180 think

00:31:12.620 that the idea

00:31:14.080 that it

00:31:14.600 came to me

00:31:15.880 actually

00:31:17.180 it cogs in

00:31:18.880 with my

00:31:19.440 own experience

00:31:20.460 of my

00:31:21.020 limited

00:31:21.660 success

00:31:23.020 in mathematical

00:31:23.820 research

00:31:24.400 it came to me

00:31:25.560 I think

00:31:26.580 there are other

00:31:27.100 dimensions

00:31:27.620 of course

00:31:28.220 as well

00:31:28.620 you're absolutely

00:31:29.400 right

00:31:30.140 to try

00:31:31.720 to take

00:31:32.260 this question

00:31:32.900 of analyzing

00:31:33.960 hypotheses

00:31:34.740 deeper

00:31:35.320 because

00:31:35.840 things often

00:31:37.180 play a role

00:31:38.000 that folk

00:31:38.680 wouldn't think

00:31:39.260 about

00:31:39.520 like dreams

00:31:40.380 like hunches

00:31:42.040 like intuition

00:31:43.640 and all this

00:31:45.080 kind of thing

00:31:45.940 and whether

00:31:47.140 it comes to

00:31:47.960 us swelling

00:31:48.580 up from the

00:31:49.280 unconscious

00:31:49.880 or all this

00:31:50.680 kind of thing

00:31:51.280 because I

00:31:52.120 wonder

00:31:52.600 let me step

00:31:53.920 back from this

00:31:54.580 one second

00:31:55.260 I wonder

00:31:56.280 if we have

00:31:57.420 to think

00:31:57.820 in terms

00:31:58.300 of different

00:31:58.900 levels

00:31:59.500 of revelation

00:32:00.380 for example

00:32:01.480 if I want

00:32:02.580 to get to

00:32:03.080 know you

00:32:03.680 and you want

00:32:04.420 to get to

00:32:05.060 know me

00:32:05.500 it's no use

00:32:06.440 me putting

00:32:07.400 you into

00:32:08.260 a tomography

00:32:09.540 machine

00:32:10.080 and looking

00:32:10.600 at your

00:32:11.000 brain waves

00:32:11.740 I will never

00:32:13.000 get to know

00:32:13.780 you unless

00:32:14.440 you reveal

00:32:15.540 yourself to

00:32:16.300 me

00:32:16.540 and usually

00:32:17.380 that will

00:32:17.840 be you

00:32:18.380 speak to

00:32:18.940 me as

00:32:19.420 you are

00:32:19.760 now and

00:32:20.180 I speak

00:32:20.640 to you

00:32:21.020 that is

00:32:21.760 partly

00:32:22.140 revelation

00:32:22.740 if you

00:32:23.100 never say

00:32:23.680 anything

00:32:24.240 I'll never

00:32:25.200 get to

00:32:25.780 know you

00:32:26.300 now

00:32:26.980 those words

00:32:28.860 that you

00:32:29.340 use are

00:32:29.840 coming from

00:32:30.440 inside you

00:32:31.380 and they

00:32:31.680 have to do

00:32:32.160 with your

00:32:32.520 mind and

00:32:33.200 your brain

00:32:33.860 and all

00:32:34.360 that

00:32:34.780 very

00:32:35.380 sophisticated

00:32:35.960 stuff

00:32:36.640 that we

00:32:37.320 really know

00:32:37.860 very little

00:32:38.380 about because

00:32:39.000 we don't

00:32:39.380 even know

00:32:39.780 what consciousness

00:32:40.520 is but

00:32:41.800 I wonder

00:32:42.720 if above

00:32:43.800 and beyond

00:32:44.440 that kind

00:32:45.040 of human

00:32:45.640 level of

00:32:46.380 revelation

00:32:46.940 or what

00:32:47.620 wells up

00:32:48.360 when we've

00:32:48.860 looked at

00:32:49.320 a problem

00:32:50.400 or something

00:32:51.640 else what

00:32:52.160 wells up

00:32:52.800 in our

00:32:53.180 minds

00:32:53.620 we have

00:32:54.520 to have

00:32:55.400 a separate

00:32:55.920 category

00:32:56.440 which I

00:32:57.000 would call

00:32:57.360 divine

00:32:57.960 revelation

00:32:58.640 now

00:32:59.400 whether

00:32:59.780 the two

00:33:00.360 dovetail

00:33:02.420 and flow

00:33:02.860 into one

00:33:03.380 another

00:33:03.740 is

00:33:04.820 an

00:33:05.800 interesting

00:33:06.260 matter

00:33:06.660 because

00:33:07.080 if you

00:33:07.680 go back

00:33:08.020 to

00:33:08.240 Genesis

00:33:08.720 one of

00:33:10.320 the most

00:33:10.680 interesting

00:33:11.220 things is

00:33:12.040 we're told

00:33:12.560 we're made

00:33:13.000 in the image

00:33:13.480 of God

00:33:13.960 but it

00:33:14.640 was God

00:33:15.160 that told

00:33:15.620 human

00:33:15.960 beings

00:33:16.300 to do

00:33:16.720 biology

00:33:17.360 name the

00:33:18.660 animals

00:33:19.120 that's

00:33:19.640 taxonomy

00:33:20.240 it's the

00:33:20.700 fundamental

00:33:21.180 intellectual

00:33:21.820 discipline

00:33:22.360 I'm not

00:33:23.180 going to

00:33:23.420 do it

00:33:23.660 for you

00:33:24.060 you do

00:33:25.100 it for

00:33:25.460 yourself

00:33:26.120 and so

00:33:26.980 the capacity

00:33:28.920 of human

00:33:29.840 beings

00:33:30.480 to think

00:33:31.700 in that

00:33:32.440 sense

00:33:32.800 whatever it

00:33:33.380 really means

00:33:34.180 seems to

00:33:35.220 me to be

00:33:35.720 a reflection

00:33:36.300 of their

00:33:36.800 creator

00:33:37.420 and possibly

00:33:38.820 an evidence

00:33:39.760 if we extrapolate

00:33:41.080 it of his

00:33:42.260 existence

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00:34:49.700 okay so now

00:34:53.720 let's take this

00:34:55.580 idea of the

00:34:56.840 source of thought

00:34:57.820 and the different

00:34:58.520 levels of depth

00:34:59.320 let's explore that

00:35:00.240 for a minute

00:35:00.660 so I'm going to

00:35:02.240 describe a potential

00:35:03.200 pitfall down that

00:35:04.360 route so let's

00:35:05.700 say that I'm a

00:35:06.900 scientist and a

00:35:08.020 bright idea strikes

00:35:09.020 me or I'm an

00:35:09.660 artist and a

00:35:10.380 bright intuition

00:35:11.120 strikes me now

00:35:12.000 I have two

00:35:13.300 options when I'm

00:35:14.640 considering that

00:35:15.440 source I could

00:35:17.600 consider that a

00:35:19.300 manifestation of

00:35:20.400 the same spirit of

00:35:21.940 intuition and

00:35:23.500 revelation that has

00:35:25.120 made itself

00:35:25.820 manifest as part

00:35:27.520 and parcel of the

00:35:28.360 creative enterprise

00:35:29.160 of all of mankind

00:35:30.780 since the dawn of

00:35:31.960 time right a

00:35:32.740 continuance of that

00:35:34.160 same process

00:35:35.320 which insinuates

00:35:39.140 something transpersonal

00:35:41.220 about it right

00:35:41.900 it's the operation

00:35:42.840 of something

00:35:43.540 transcendent or I

00:35:45.920 can take personal

00:35:46.740 credit for it and

00:35:47.520 say I thought it

00:35:48.420 up now the

00:35:50.420 problem with the

00:35:51.300 latter approach as

00:35:52.320 far as I can tell

00:35:53.200 is first of all I

00:35:54.280 think it's I think

00:35:55.660 it's incautious and

00:35:57.100 unwarranted because

00:35:58.300 you know the great

00:35:59.700 scientists have always

00:36:00.560 said that they stand

00:36:01.540 on the shoulders of

00:36:02.400 giants and can see

00:36:03.380 farther for that

00:36:04.160 reason is we are

00:36:05.360 part of a great

00:36:06.320 collective creative

00:36:07.500 enterprise and God

00:36:08.980 only knows how deep

00:36:09.960 that goes but then

00:36:11.320 there's also the

00:36:12.060 terrible threat of

00:36:14.080 self-deification that

00:36:16.200 might otherwise make

00:36:17.120 itself manifest you

00:36:18.140 know and I see that

00:36:19.200 emerging in our

00:36:20.420 culture I see part of

00:36:21.700 what's happening in

00:36:22.340 our culture a kind of

00:36:23.860 extension of demented

00:36:25.120 Protestantism where

00:36:26.820 instead of the God

00:36:28.720 that revealed itself to

00:36:30.200 Moses saying I am

00:36:32.080 what I am it's the

00:36:33.660 individual person who

00:36:34.920 says I am what I

00:36:36.420 am I get to define

00:36:37.840 myself I'm the source

00:36:39.540 of all wisdom and

00:36:40.480 revelation my brain

00:36:41.980 my psyche my

00:36:42.880 subjectivity with with

00:36:44.900 no humility in that

00:36:46.880 regard and I

00:36:47.880 actually think that

00:36:48.740 that's a that's a

00:36:50.080 devastating cultural

00:36:51.720 impropriety because it

00:36:53.880 elevates the subjective

00:36:55.860 intellect to the status

00:36:57.320 of God and that's a

00:36:58.800 Luciferian crime it is

00:37:01.560 yes absolutely and

00:37:02.720 specifically a

00:37:04.400 Luciferian crime

00:37:05.580 because the temptation

00:37:08.120 you shall be as gods

00:37:09.940 is in the very first

00:37:12.020 pages of Genesis and

00:37:14.240 it fascinates me that

00:37:16.940 the temptation came in

00:37:18.840 a very clever way

00:37:20.520 giving the impression

00:37:21.880 that God wants to hold

00:37:23.320 you humans down he

00:37:24.760 doesn't want you to rise

00:37:25.900 to his level don't you

00:37:27.860 realize if you go

00:37:29.300 against his word then

00:37:32.120 you will rise in the

00:37:33.940 hierarchy of being and

00:37:35.260 you will be as gods

00:37:36.240 knowing good and evil

00:37:37.400 and what fascinates me

00:37:40.000 about that Dr.

00:37:41.580 Peterson is this in the

00:37:43.280 first section of

00:37:44.340 Genesis you have God's

00:37:46.080 word creating the

00:37:47.240 universe and God said

00:37:48.720 and God said and God

00:37:50.160 said in the second part

00:37:52.360 you have God's word in a

00:37:54.820 prohibition defining

00:37:55.980 morality and the first

00:37:58.040 humans are encouraged to

00:37:59.980 go against it by being

00:38:01.920 promised Godhood and the

00:38:04.060 knowledge of good and

00:38:05.180 evil not knowledge of

00:38:06.740 course God wanted to have

00:38:09.220 lots of knowledge it was

00:38:10.420 the knowledge of good and

00:38:11.360 evil that nobody wants

00:38:12.440 and what I see in current

00:38:14.240 society and I very much

00:38:17.020 applaud your stance on

00:38:19.520 this because it seems to

00:38:21.240 me that the whole

00:38:22.080 homo deus phenomenon as

00:38:24.440 for example illustrated

00:38:25.780 in the book by Yuval

00:38:26.840 Noah Harari on

00:38:28.380 artificial intelligence

00:38:29.640 this idea of

00:38:31.760 transhumanism that

00:38:33.040 actually we should go

00:38:34.200 for this and turn human

00:38:35.480 beings into gods seems to

00:38:37.440 me to be incredibly

00:38:38.800 dangerous and it's the

00:38:40.500 height of pride arrogance

00:38:42.780 and it is very

00:38:45.660 destructive

00:38:46.300 okay so so in the late

00:38:49.240 1800s when Nietzsche

00:38:51.140 observed that God was

00:38:52.300 dead it was a very

00:38:53.700 complex observation

00:38:54.760 because people like to

00:38:55.980 think of that as a

00:38:56.700 triumphal and triumphalist

00:38:58.080 proclamation by this

00:38:59.360 emancipatory philosopher

00:39:01.020 and that wasn't the case

00:39:02.040 at all because Nietzsche

00:39:03.120 basically said that God

00:39:04.760 was dead and we'd killed

00:39:05.840 him and we'll never find

00:39:06.740 enough water to wash away

00:39:07.840 the blood right I mean he

00:39:09.020 knew it was a catastrophe

00:39:09.980 and he he prophesied that

00:39:13.200 three things would happen

00:39:14.400 one would be that there'd be

00:39:16.200 a wicked turn towards a kind

00:39:17.640 of hopeless nihilism because

00:39:19.320 every structure of morality

00:39:20.900 had fallen apart the second

00:39:22.700 would be the rise of

00:39:24.420 totalitarian substitutions

00:39:26.360 for God and Nietzsche

00:39:27.680 actually specified communism

00:39:29.460 as a likely candidate and

00:39:31.780 also prophesied that hundreds

00:39:33.320 of millions of people would

00:39:34.460 die as a consequence which was

00:39:35.900 quite the damn prophecy for for

00:39:38.460 the mid late 1800s and and

00:39:42.060 then he also said but the

00:39:43.440 alternative is that we could

00:39:44.660 create our own values and that

00:39:46.180 was the route that Nietzsche

00:39:47.280 saw as the way out now there's

00:39:50.140 a couple of problems with

00:39:51.300 that technical problems you

00:39:53.140 might say one is well we don't

00:39:55.580 live very long and it isn't

00:39:56.860 obvious that any of us singly is

00:39:58.680 wise enough to create our own

00:40:00.620 values the second problem is as

00:40:04.180 the psychoanalysts point out

00:40:05.800 pointed out very quickly it isn't

00:40:08.140 obvious at all that we're masters

00:40:09.600 in our own houses because even if

00:40:12.080 you only look at the spiritual realm

00:40:14.860 as equivalent to something like

00:40:16.580 the unconscious we're all haunted

00:40:18.840 beings and we can't necessarily

00:40:21.000 trust our judgment and this the

00:40:23.500 third problem there's four the

00:40:25.960 third problem is that well who do

00:40:28.300 you mean by the way that will

00:40:29.640 create our own values like which

00:40:31.260 aspect of the psyche is now going

00:40:33.660 to create value Nietzsche said

00:40:35.440 himself that each drive tends to

00:40:39.100 philosophize in its own spirit and so

00:40:42.320 in order for us to create our own

00:40:43.780 values in some sort of transcendent

00:40:45.620 sense you have to hypothesize the

00:40:48.420 hierarchical integration of the

00:40:50.440 psyche towards some superordinate

00:40:52.500 end and that speaking in some voice

00:40:55.840 and it isn't obvious to me at all that

00:40:57.640 that would be a subjective voice I

00:40:59.580 think it would be akin so so what

00:41:01.740 happens with Moses is when he

00:41:03.280 investigates the burning bush he goes

00:41:05.800 deeper and deeper into the

00:41:07.060 investigation and the first thing

00:41:09.240 that happens is well his attention is

00:41:11.240 attracted the second thing is that he

00:41:14.120 starts to notice that he's treading on

00:41:16.220 sacred ground right because he's

00:41:18.400 getting deep into the phenomenon and

00:41:21.140 the third thing that happens is that

00:41:22.800 and this is relevant to your notion of

00:41:25.240 levels of revelation is that the voice

00:41:27.580 of being itself speaks to him right the

00:41:29.720 eternal transcendent voice of being and

00:41:32.700 Moses is smart enough he's wise enough

00:41:34.600 to know that that's not him right it's

00:41:37.640 something above and beyond him and he

00:41:39.540 doesn't take credit for it and that's

00:41:41.380 partly why he never turns into a pharaoh

00:41:43.460 in the desert right he separates himself

00:41:46.100 from the source of sovereignty as such and

00:41:48.700 I don't see how that can be done in the

00:41:51.060 rationalist atheist materialist realm of

00:41:53.440 conceptualization you fall into that

00:41:55.920 subjectivist trap okay okay

00:41:58.300 not nor do I and I think Nietzsche in that

00:42:03.200 sense was a kind of prophet and we're

00:42:06.240 seeing the damage done you know ever

00:42:08.400 since I was very young I was fascinated

00:42:12.400 by the polar opposite of my Christian

00:42:15.440 heritage and that has led me to spend

00:42:18.560 quite a lot of time in Russia and I

00:42:21.500 talked about these kind of things to

00:42:24.140 Russian friends many of whom suffered in

00:42:26.300 the gulag and I remember one

00:42:27.580 conversation with a leading academician

00:42:30.800 and he said to me he said you know John

00:42:33.080 he said we thought we could get rid of

00:42:36.500 God and retain a value for human beings

00:42:39.680 and we woke up too late to realize that

00:42:42.220 it cannot be done and it was Nietzsche that

00:42:45.020 said if you destroy God you lose all right

00:42:48.680 to the kind of values that we accept in a

00:42:52.360 sense deep down in our Judeo-Christian

00:42:55.480 culture and what is so interesting about

00:42:58.640 Moses and I loved your discussion about

00:43:01.860 that is that he came face to face not

00:43:07.920 only with the concept of transcendence but

00:43:11.380 transcendence itself and he was brought

00:43:14.800 into the presence of the very glory of

00:43:18.780 God and you were discussing in your round

00:43:21.300 table how in Hebrew kavod glory is

00:43:24.500 associated with weight and that leads me

00:43:27.140 to think relevant to what you've just

00:43:29.280 said about C.S. Lewis I'm old enough to

00:43:32.300 have listened to C.S. Lewis by the way

00:43:34.200 when I was younger and C.S. Lewis in the

00:43:36.980 1940s saw exactly what was going to

00:43:40.400 happen if a group of human beings took

00:43:45.380 it into their heads to determine and

00:43:49.160 redefine all future generations through

00:43:51.960 genetic experimentation and so on and in

00:43:54.760 two books the abolition of man and that

00:43:56.880 hideous strength he spelled that out

00:43:58.500 and he made the point that if that

00:44:01.200 happens it is not going to liberate

00:44:04.100 human beings in fact it's going to

00:44:05.860 abolish them because what will be

00:44:07.920 created by say playing around with the

00:44:10.720 germline is not human beings but

00:44:12.560 artifacts and so he writes the final

00:44:15.120 triumph of humanity scientists will be

00:44:18.500 the abolition of man and it's that that I

00:44:21.580 fear is really permeating our culture I

00:44:25.920 mean the Caesars in Rome and the

00:44:28.100 Babylonian emperors who thought of

00:44:30.040 themselves as gods looks pretty trivial

00:44:32.840 stuff compared with this insidious

00:44:36.100 teaching that's around in particularly

00:44:39.120 the western world today that we are

00:44:41.280 actually all gods and we ought to rise to

00:44:43.700 this and the only way to rise to it is

00:44:45.840 to reject the transcendent completely there

00:44:48.280 is nothing above us

00:44:49.640 okay so so let's delve into that a

00:44:52.620 little bit because the devil's always in

00:44:54.820 the details and so you know when I had

00:44:58.280 when I had little kids I thought once

00:45:01.880 about my son when he was about three and

00:45:04.260 you know there's a terrible fragility to

00:45:06.480 children right and I mean adults are

00:45:08.800 fragile obviously all we all are because

00:45:10.720 we're mortal and vulnerable and prone to

00:45:13.120 suffering and I thought about my three-year-old

00:45:17.320 son you know and I thought well he has

00:45:19.580 this terrible vulnerability wouldn't it

00:45:21.980 be good if that could be ameliorated now

00:45:25.080 you can do that two ways say you can you

00:45:28.600 can institute protective mechanisms that

00:45:31.060 shield them from the depredations of the

00:45:33.260 world or you can strive to make them into

00:45:36.840 this sort of competent people that can take

00:45:39.800 the world on on their own right and it's

00:45:42.360 akin to the gospel ideas I would say

00:45:44.740 that you know you can you can learn to

00:45:46.640 handle serpents and that's your best

00:45:48.520 defense against serpents is that way you

00:45:51.060 get to have the benefits of being and

00:45:54.300 develop into someone simultaneously capable

00:45:57.360 of bearing the weight of being let's say and

00:46:01.040 I don't know if you can have being without

00:46:02.880 it having a weight you know I don't even

00:46:05.320 know it's like it's possible that mortal

00:46:07.060 limitation is the price you pay for being I

00:46:10.960 don't know how things are constructed

00:46:12.760 it could well be what you're saying

00:46:16.700 reminds me of Dostoevsky who said that he

00:46:19.420 couldn't imagine a great person who had

00:46:23.800 not known some kind of suffering and what

00:46:26.800 we try to do with our children is somehow

00:46:30.000 to limit that but we realize that part of

00:46:33.220 their maturing has to do with how they

00:46:36.220 learn to handle life and we don't want to

00:46:38.380 leave them defenseless do we so what

00:46:41.960 you're raising is a very big set of

00:46:45.540 questions now you mentioned that

00:46:47.980 transhumanism attempts to solve some of

00:46:51.040 this vulnerability and of course some

00:46:53.680 things are very good I wear glasses and

00:46:56.920 they enhance my vision and they're very

00:46:59.700 important but this idea of Harari's where

00:47:05.080 he sets two agenda items for the 21st

00:47:07.880 century firstly to abolish physical death

00:47:11.240 to solve it as a technical medical problem

00:47:13.720 and then to enhance human happiness by

00:47:17.080 genetic engineering and cyborg engineering

00:47:19.920 and so so forth I take a very radical

00:47:22.940 view of that when people hold out this

00:47:25.940 promise to me I simply say to them you're

00:47:28.300 too late the problem of physical death was

00:47:31.080 solved 20 centuries ago because I think

00:47:34.220 there's strong evidence that Jesus Christ

00:47:36.420 rose from the dead and the problem

00:47:39.260 therefore of developing some kind of

00:47:42.000 immortality was simultaneously solved with

00:47:44.520 that because Christ promises to those that

00:47:46.900 trust him and follow him that he will

00:47:50.240 eventually raise them from the dead and

00:47:52.480 that will be the best uploading you can

00:47:54.340 ever imagine of brains body and everything

00:47:56.840 else so I take a very radical view that the

00:48:00.400 transhumanist ideal is bound to fail at

00:48:03.980 their deeper reasons behind that as well

00:48:05.840 well so there's also a biological truism on

00:48:10.040 the genetic front and so for example and it's

00:48:13.960 it's summed up in the phrase there is no

00:48:17.160 breeding for for evolutionary fitness like you

00:48:20.960 cannot you cannot rationally breed a variant

00:48:25.300 of cattle for example that are going to be more

00:48:29.200 successful at surviving in the ecology of

00:48:34.480 cattle it's not possible and part of the

00:48:36.700 reason for that as far as I can tell it's a

00:48:38.640 deep problem part of the reason for that is

00:48:40.960 that the horizon of the future actually

00:48:44.780 transforms unpredictably like actually

00:48:47.920 unpredictably technically unpredictably it's

00:48:50.700 not deterministic and what that means is that you

00:48:54.540 you cannot make a rational calculation that will

00:48:57.240 determine a priori what direction evolution

00:49:01.140 should go in in order to be more successful and

00:49:04.860 it's also for that reason that what the

00:49:08.040 evolutionary process does is capitalize on

00:49:10.860 actual random chance in order to produce

00:49:13.440 variants that can meet the transforming horizon of

00:49:17.220 the future and so now the theory has been

00:49:21.000 been forever that genetic mutation is random and

00:49:25.200 part of the reason for that is that it's

00:49:27.700 part of its mechanism there are a variety one of

00:49:31.260 its mechanisms is the damage of dna molecules by

00:49:34.880 cosmic rays which is definitely random but you know

00:49:37.180 there was a study published a year ago or two years ago in

00:49:41.820 nature this is so interesting and bears on our

00:49:45.500 our issues here that even though the mechanism of

00:49:50.240 variability at the dna molecule level is truly random

00:49:55.820 there are repair mechanisms that fix damage to dna molecules and there's a

00:50:05.580 hierarchy of genes such that some genes are so crucial to morphological

00:50:11.500 development that if they mutate death is virtually certain or severe limitation

00:50:17.580 right on the reproductive front virtually certain whereas there are other

00:50:20.940 variable variations that are permissible within the realm of likely

00:50:27.120 survivability and the accuracy of the repair mechanisms is

00:50:32.280 proportionate to the depth of profundity of the genetic code the genes that are

00:50:39.560 most crucial to survival are repaired with 100 percent accuracy

00:50:45.000 so there's room for variation at the fringe

00:50:48.700 now the reason i brought that up is partly because

00:50:52.560 there's an implication in the

00:50:56.560 futurist post-humanist types that they could

00:51:01.980 breed a better person by rational means but that means accepting the proposition a

00:51:08.980 priori that you can compute what constitutes better rationally that you

00:51:13.940 actually know enough about that and that's also a derivation of the notion that

00:51:17.560 we can create our own values and i don't think any of that's actually

00:51:21.520 tenable i think it's likely to produce all sorts of catastrophic

00:51:26.180 unpredicted outcomes that's much more likely like those would be mutations that are

00:51:34.340 counterproductive in every way so to speak that's much more likely than work that than

00:51:39.140 the notion that we're going to hit the target more squarely by mucking about with

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00:53:02.600 now that's i think i think that's absolutely right but it raises a number of other questions

00:53:11.000 because the tacit assumption against a lot of this and it was formulated recently that evolution has

00:53:19.420 brought us to where we are in the present an intelligent design will bring us to our stated

00:53:25.080 goal in the future and i like you i deny the second proposition but the first is beginning to look

00:53:33.720 very shaky indeed now i'm not a biologist but i do study a lot of the recent developments called the

00:53:40.580 third wave in biology which are associated with systems biology dennis noble and james shapiro and so on

00:53:48.960 who now questions seriously the whole darwinian um scheme the neo-darwinist explanation because

00:53:58.520 although it still accounts for variation they're now pretty clear it accounts for very little else

00:54:05.660 and statements like lynn margulis saying that it's dead and my colleague here dennis noble who founded

00:54:14.100 systems biology says that it's not fit for purpose it doesn't need to be modified and therefore replaced

00:54:20.320 and therefore i i suppose part of my skepticism comes from mathematics we've always been skeptical

00:54:27.120 about the idea that random processes can increase information as distinct from variant so i have huge

00:54:34.760 problems with this which is why i wrote a book about it recently so the two problems are for me

00:54:41.240 one i i do not really believe that darwinian evolution does all that people think it does

00:54:48.120 it certainly does something but secondly that looking towards the future i i the idea that we

00:54:54.600 will take it into our hands and intelligently move towards the goal of a superhuman i think is

00:55:00.980 immensely dangerous because it's the creation of god and there's a lovely little quote from a conference

00:55:08.740 recently that i picked up a biology conference and a student was there and um she said oh it sounds as

00:55:18.240 if you're creating god to the speaker and he says exactly that is exactly what we're trying to do

00:55:24.740 and i do think that's doomed to failure for the reasons that you have been so explicit about

00:55:30.760 yeah well you know you might aim at creating god but that doesn't mean that the transcendent entity

00:55:37.160 that you produce will be god absolutely not so right right i mean you'd have to have a fair bit

00:55:43.620 of hubris to assume that you would hit the target that exactly so i've been thinking about you know

00:55:48.680 you mentioned when we were talking about the dangers of transhumanism and the abolition of man you know

00:55:54.820 you rightly pointed out very rapidly that well you know you have reading glasses and you're pretty damn

00:56:01.060 happy with that you have these prosthesis that help you ameliorate your vulnerability

00:56:06.000 and you wouldn't give them up and you do recognize them as positive goods and you know

00:56:11.360 and you could say with a fair bit of uh credibility that the fact that you have reading glasses is one way

00:56:18.440 that you've transcended your mortal limitations sure now not entirely now so now we're faced with the

00:56:25.120 problem of given our advanced technological capability there are a variety of biological

00:56:31.900 limitations that in principle we could transcend and then we might say well which of those should

00:56:39.480 we transcend and so i have a complicated answer to that you tell me what you think about this you

00:56:44.300 know i thought a long while back about the problem of lying you know because it's reasonable for a young

00:56:53.400 child or a young adult for that matter to ask the question well why shouldn't i just lie all the time

00:56:59.680 if i can get what i want and i can avoid unpleasant responsibility by doing so like and every child

00:57:06.200 knows this which is and every adult for that matter which is why we lie because we assume that we can

00:57:11.440 shirk off a certain unpleasant responsibility or we can gain an opportunity and like what the hell why not

00:57:17.140 do it and so i thought about that for a long time it's like well what exactly is the problem here and

00:57:21.720 then i realized you know when you're there'll be times in your life where very very complicated

00:57:29.660 dilemmas will confront you like life and death situations and and you'll be suffering and so will

00:57:35.700 the people around you and that will be no joke and then you bloody well better be how you better have

00:57:41.460 a clear head at that moment because if you make the wrong decision you're going to take the catastrophe

00:57:46.160 that surrounds you and you're really going to turn it into something indistinguishable from hell

00:57:50.160 and then you might say well how can you be sure that you have a clear head when the storms come

00:57:56.360 and the answer is well how about if you don't allow the detritus in your vision to accumulate

00:58:02.840 voluntarily right how about you don't blind yourself with lies how about you don't pollute the very

00:58:09.700 mechanism that orients you in the world so that you have something to rely on when the difficulties come

00:58:15.900 and i would say maybe it's the same thing on the moral front right because maybe the answer to what

00:58:20.700 should our limitations be on the scientific front isn't a list of prohibitions in the explicit knowledge

00:58:28.220 realm but something like we should bloody well be sure that if we're going to be good scientists

00:58:35.220 that we're truly ethically oriented so that when a technological possibility makes itself manifest to us

00:58:43.360 we have enough wisdom to judge whether or not that's a direction that wise people would walk down

00:58:48.560 so i read this book a while back hey it was written by a kgb agent and he purported to have knowledge of

00:58:56.740 chemical weapons research program in the former soviet union and the goal of the program was to

00:59:04.580 generate a hybrid of ebola and smallpox and then to aerosolize it for large-scale distribution

00:59:12.680 and he reported that the soviets had killed a number of people 500 or so accidentally as a

00:59:21.580 release of some of the chemical compounds or biological compounds this lab had been producing

00:59:26.140 but you know it made me think because technically scientifically outside the realm of of ethics and

00:59:35.320 and subjective value there's no reason why how might we breed a ebola smallpox

00:59:43.540 um hybrid there's no reason that that's not a valid scientific question right from the perspective of

00:59:50.240 the of the pure facts if the facts have no value then any other any fact is worth pursuing any knowledge

00:59:57.700 is worth pursuing but if you're sensible and you look at something like that you think well if you're an

01:00:03.280 ethical scientist and you think something like should i hybridize smallpox and ebola the answer should be

01:00:12.260 no right that's just a road you're not going to walk down and if you have any wisdom it's going to be

01:00:18.960 obvious that that's a bad road and so it also seems to me that in order to deal with the catastrophic

01:00:26.340 possibilities of the post-human realm that we're going to have to become wise enough as scientists not to

01:00:31.920 make that sort of egregious luciferian error and i don't think think we can do that by abandoning our

01:00:38.420 traditional metaphysics i think that won't that won't work to say the least absolutely it won't work

01:00:44.780 because what we're raising now is is a parallel question to the question of truth

01:00:51.000 it's the question of the existence of the concepts of right and wrong

01:00:55.460 and defining them and if you've got no transcendent reference point you end up with dostoevsky

01:01:04.020 rightly saying if god does not exist then everything is permissible he didn't mean that atheists couldn't

01:01:10.020 behave of course they can but he meant there's no rational justification for distinguishing

01:01:14.780 between right and wrong and we've got to face that on the question of lying it's very interesting to me

01:01:22.720 that the whole condition humaine arose from the lie originally you shall be as gods knowing good

01:01:31.820 and evil and you were talking about people thinking why shouldn't i lie and so on well of course one of

01:01:39.980 the arguments is that people who take that view if you lie to them and accuse them of something they

01:01:47.660 don't believe to be true for instance accuse them of murder or theft or something like that you'll soon

01:01:54.300 see that they believe in truth and they want the truth about themselves to be known so it's entirely

01:01:59.700 inconsistent of course it's up to them to take that view if they want to but it's not one of those

01:02:06.920 things that follows one of your rules of life that you want to be able to apply to others what you apply

01:02:13.280 to yourself so so so that knowing good and evil so i think the luciferian temptation is that

01:02:23.120 is part of that offering of becoming as gods is to offer to people the possibility of defining good

01:02:35.220 and evil as subjective creatures right so so the prohibition that god places on humanity in genesis

01:02:43.700 is to not eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and it's it's a very complicated

01:02:49.620 narrative trope um but one of the in in what would you say the the the uh the the the connotations

01:02:59.660 right the implications is that there is a there are moral guidelines that are absolute that aren't

01:03:07.260 within the human realm of of it's of the knowledge it's partly the knowledge the ability to manipulate

01:03:15.260 the ability to change or even to define the fundamental moral propositions are transcendent and

01:03:20.580 axiomatic and they're not in the proper domain of human maneuvering it's something like that and

01:03:26.040 and the serpent says to man no you can take it all you can you can have full knowledge even of the

01:03:32.560 moral axioms and that seems to be something that's what would you say that's off limits if the game

01:03:39.720 of being itself is to progress i think without catastrophe yeah that's something like that i think

01:03:44.860 it's exactly like that because what is interesting about genesis is that the first encounter we have

01:03:51.940 with morality in the pages of genesis morality is defined not horizontally between humans but

01:03:58.960 vertically between humans and god and that's crucial it's it's god that defines it ultimate ultimately so

01:04:07.200 there is a transcendence from the very beginning and it's the loss of that transcendence that we're

01:04:14.680 seeing damaging our culture today because we've lost that common sense of values that however

01:04:21.680 distorted it has been over the centuries that we did owe to the biblical tradition and now we wonder

01:04:28.540 in total confusion and it interests me greatly that the pressure particularly in young people today

01:04:34.540 is to look inside for answers to these questions when what we need to be teaching them is no look

01:04:41.760 outside and have your mind open to the fact that transcendence is real and that there is a god and there is

01:04:48.640 something bigger there's something more than materialism is giving you okay so so let's take

01:04:54.840 that apart a bit you could imagine that there could be three sources of moral knowledge that's the kind of

01:04:59.760 knowledge that orients you in the world and one source could be the subjective now we've already talked

01:05:05.680 about the limitations there is that well you don't live very long and what the hell do you know and

01:05:09.900 what do you mean by the subjective like which part of you and and then there's the danger of elevating

01:05:16.220 yourself to the status of final moral arbiter which is a kind of luciferian presumption okay so those seem

01:05:22.140 like bad pitfalls the next objection you might say is like okay well you can't do it just subjectively

01:05:28.520 i am who i am which is certainly the proclamation in our culture you could do it by consensus you know and

01:05:35.780 that's more of a that's more of a view that well the the group gets together and sort of decides by

01:05:42.620 general agreement what right and wrong is and that can shift with time and place but as long as everybody

01:05:49.060 is willing to abide by the same principles then we can define them canonically as good or as good

01:05:55.120 but there's the problem with that is you run yeah go on there's a huge problem with that you tell me

01:06:01.360 what your problem with it is and then i'll tell you mine well my problem with that is the nazi germany

01:06:07.820 problem exactly it's like well what what the hell happens when the whole herd stampedes towards hell

01:06:13.540 if you're a consensus person and there's nothing else there it's like well there's no hell that's

01:06:19.680 consensus and so the consensus by definition is right and so if everyone decides that no jews would

01:06:26.980 be better who the hell are you to stand in the way and you know if you're willing to stand up and say

01:06:32.240 well you should stand in the way well right so upon what grounds do you make that claim because it's not

01:06:38.080 merely subjective so that brings us back to the problem of transcendent morality okay so you were

01:06:43.700 going to talk about the problems of consensus yes it's exactly right that is the problem with

01:06:48.560 utilitarianism um treating others as you want them to treat you and by consensus is fine if you've got

01:06:57.420 equal centers of power if you've got a whole lot of equal centers of power vying with one another

01:07:03.400 then you can say if you don't do this i won't do that but the very interesting thing about the case

01:07:10.340 in point you mentioned nazi germany hitler in his political youth made treaties but he tore them up

01:07:18.080 once he had the power and if people say you shouldn't do that he said what do you mean you

01:07:23.080 shouldn't i've got the power so it doesn't answer the question why ought you to go with the herd and

01:07:32.120 murder so many jews and that's a huge weakness it's all right if you're dividing ice cream among

01:07:37.880 children then utilitarianism is fine give an equal amount to all of them or you'll be in trouble

01:07:45.160 but at the higher level it's shot through with this problem of the total absence of any transcendence

01:07:52.840 the oughtness has to come from above okay so now you talked about power there you know and

01:07:59.480 one of the radical claims of the post-modern types especially people like foucault is that

01:08:05.040 the fundamental motivating drive of humanity and perhaps the cosmos itself is power now you know i

01:08:14.900 i think everything foucault thought about everything is to be taken with a gigantic grain of salt

01:08:19.660 because you know he was quite the awful creature and i think he had every reason for putting forward

01:08:25.320 the proposition that there's nothing other than power because that justified everything he did that

01:08:30.540 was done purely on the basis of power but but the but there's another there's another problem that

01:08:38.200 emerges with that proclamation which is a kind of self-evident problem and and i would think this is

01:08:43.620 something the rationalists have a very difficult time with which is if i can compel you to do

01:08:49.340 something why don't the next two propositions follow logically first of all if i can compel you

01:08:56.620 the mere fact that i can indicates precisely that i'm actually a better man than you because if you

01:09:02.540 were better than me you could compel me and of course this is might makes right but might makes

01:09:08.120 right is a very powerful doctrine and almost all the pre-christian pagan societies operated on that

01:09:13.600 basis in the most fundamental manner and the aristocratic justification was something like

01:09:18.660 well you're a peasant and the cosmos has established that you're a peasant and i'm an aristocrat and so

01:09:26.800 screw you and and actually morally speaking because if you weren't a useless slug you wouldn't be a peasant

01:09:34.000 and that's a very very difficult argument to to generate a counter proposition to and the corollary

01:09:40.820 argument is well if i can force you clearly i'm more powerful than you are and that means that i have

01:09:47.260 every moral right to do so and in fact you don't even get to object because you're too lowly to object

01:09:53.260 but that and that reflects the way of the world man yeah but it reflects a series of values that needs

01:09:59.840 to be questioned where do these values come hey everyone real quick before you skip i want to talk

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01:10:52.040 you deserve from to argue that the cosmos made me an aristocrat and you a serf is a very tenuous

01:11:03.680 argument and in the end it seems to me that we've got to ask ourselves the fundamental question what

01:11:12.000 basis have we for valuing human beings as unique and again i refer to your comment on genesis we're made

01:11:21.000 in the image of god that gives us huge dignity and value it was something my parents got across to me

01:11:27.320 when i was very young and as a christian even at the bigger level the the idea that there's a higher value

01:11:35.220 even than the created value which is the whole topic of exodus and i was utterly fascinated by your

01:11:42.560 conversations on exodus because the valuation of people that is reflected in the passover lamb and the

01:11:50.600 sacrifice in that god accepts them on the basis of a sacrifice and it seems to me that actually leads me

01:11:59.260 now that i think of it and into into another direction one of the problems of establishing

01:12:05.240 rules of any kind seems to me that many of them bypass the heart of exodus it's very noticeable that the law

01:12:15.160 of the commandments comes after the passover sacrifice after the redemption and in the new testament the

01:12:22.900 parallel thing for christians is the sacrifices first the acceptance is settled it's not on the basis of

01:12:31.120 your moral behavior your life but that empowers you to live so that the moral commandments in the letters

01:12:37.740 of paul for example come after the discussion of the sacrifice that gives you a true value now that is

01:12:45.000 something that is lacking at the heart of our our culture we have no answer ultimately to the big

01:12:53.240 questions of guilt and the whole problem nobody likes the word sin but that's what it is the the moral

01:13:01.020 damage we cause to ourselves and other people and setting up rules and regulations is hugely important

01:13:07.600 we need them they're in the new testament and in the old testament but i noticed that one of the major

01:13:13.320 messages of exodus is first redemption and redemption is by the blood of the passover lamb to put it in the

01:13:21.460 biblical language and then the teaching and the same exactly okay so let's let's let's delve into that

01:13:28.880 well so what what appears to happen as far as i can tell in the in the post paradise lost

01:13:38.320 transition in genesis is that human beings are called upon to sacrifice right and you see that

01:13:45.740 particularly in the story of cain and abel because two patterns of sacrifice are laid out in that story

01:13:52.840 and one is genuine sacrifice and that's abel and the other is half-hearted

01:13:58.340 self-deceptive self-deceptive instrumental sacrifice and that's cain and not only does that not go very

01:14:05.220 well for cain it engenders bitter murderous resentment and then eventually the horrors of war

01:14:13.920 because tubal cain who's cain's descendant is the first artificer of weapons of war and it's after that

01:14:20.720 story that the flood comes and also the tower of babel and so there's two forms of sacrifice outlined

01:14:26.360 and someone reading that who's a rationalist might object well why is sacrifice necessary and i think

01:14:33.480 that's actually an utterly clueless rejoinder and and here's why so for example if you're going to be

01:14:40.240 a scientist you know there was a woman i think her name was barbara mclintock and she spent her whole

01:14:45.260 life studying variations of color in so-called indian corn and with a consequence of that was she

01:14:52.900 discovered a variety of facts about genetic structure that led to technological improvements

01:14:59.280 in cancer treatment but she labored in isolation for decades now you might say well what was her

01:15:04.600 sacrifice and that's pretty obvious her sacrifice was that there was a trillion things in the world

01:15:10.360 she could have been interested in and pursued and she sacrificed every single one of them

01:15:15.980 to the curiosity that made itself manifest in relationship to this strange genetic anomaly

01:15:22.220 right and the thing is every time you focus your attention on one thing instead of the multitude of

01:15:28.120 other things you're making a sacrifice okay so you have to sacrifice in order to attend and act

01:15:33.800 there's no way out of it and so then the next question emerges here's another element of sacrifice

01:15:39.960 if you're immature there's only the present as you become more mature there's only the present and

01:15:48.440 there's only you as you become more mature there's the future at longer and longer durations and there's

01:15:56.000 other people and so what you do as you mature is you sacrifice you and the present to the future and

01:16:04.300 everyone else and if you don't do that then you stay dangerously immature and psychopathic right

01:16:10.660 because you're completely self-centered and narcissistic and so that's not good for you

01:16:15.600 because narcissistic psychopaths tend to fail and it's certainly not good for everyone else

01:16:20.200 so you have to sacrifice to attend and act and you have to sacrifice to mature and then you might say

01:16:27.440 well what's the sacrifice that's most pleasing to god and the answer to that has to be something like

01:16:36.460 well yourself right you have to offer up everything to what's transcended and i think that is the

01:16:44.560 that sacrifice that you described that's an a priori act before the coming of the law right it's the

01:16:51.140 willingness to lay it's the willingness to voluntarily lay everything on the line in the pursuit of truth

01:16:56.700 and life more abundant something like that and i think that is the pattern that's laid out in the

01:17:02.480 christian story it looks to me like that's the pattern yeah well let let me comment on that i'm very

01:17:08.000 interested that you mentioned barbara mclintock because actually she discovered the jump so-called

01:17:14.040 jumping gene and she really was the pioneer that's led to this third wave of biology i mentioned earlier

01:17:21.860 that's that's just a point aside but it's extremely interesting she was a pioneer and she sacrificed a

01:17:28.480 great deal but it seems to me that there we may need to think in terms of different kinds of sacrifice

01:17:35.440 you see at the heart of christianity is not my sacrifice but god's sacrifice on my part a sacrifice that i

01:17:43.620 could not have made but that sacrifice demands my sacrifice offer up your body as a living sacrifice

01:17:52.160 is what paul says to me as a christian but i'm prepared to do that the power to do that comes from

01:18:00.140 the fact that my acceptance with god depends on a sacrifice that's entirely outside of me but can be

01:18:07.820 appropriated by me and that is when christ died and rose again now this this goes very deep but it goes

01:18:14.680 to the heart of god doing something so that he can forgive me and deal with the guilt that i've

01:18:22.100 incurred by my messed up behavior and all the rest of it that's one thing now in response to that yes of

01:18:30.080 course we're called upon to sacrifice and they're all these different levels a mother sacrifices for her

01:18:35.640 child she doesn't sacrifice to some god she gives up her time and her energy and sometimes slaves very

01:18:43.100 hard working to make ends meet for the children so she's given her all in that sense and at that level

01:18:49.800 but there's a much more fundamental level that deals with the problem of human relationship with god

01:18:56.220 that's gone wrong ever since genesis 3 so you you mentioned that the mother's the maternal sacrifice and

01:19:03.640 and so there were archaic societies where people sacrificed their children to the gods and that

01:19:09.860 meant in some sense that they were giving up something that was valuable and vital to please fate but what

01:19:16.640 we have come to regard as the appropriate sacrifice on the part of the mother is as you pointed out it's

01:19:22.500 herself to her child and and there's something deeper there in that which is that it's the voluntary

01:19:29.580 sacrifice of the more powerful and that would be the mother in this case to the least powerful right

01:19:35.820 and so that's the service of the higher to the lower as the exemplar of the highest form of service

01:19:41.720 that's the proper form of sacrifice and you know i saw the pieta when i was at saint peter's the couple

01:19:47.820 of times i've been there that great michelangelo statue and you know that really is emblematic to me of

01:19:53.000 something approximating the female crucifixion right because you have christ offering his own being

01:20:01.060 in this cataclysmic way to the incidences of being let's say but you have mary making an offering that's

01:20:10.000 of equivalent pain in some ways right because i think it's a toss-up whether having yourself destroyed

01:20:17.540 by the mob for example is a more painful experience than the experience of a mother watching her child

01:20:23.860 be torn apart by the ravenous mob right but we would also say i think to the degree that we have

01:20:30.280 any sense that a mother who is performing her role properly all she offers herself to the she offers

01:20:38.980 herself to the glorious adventure of her child right she puts herself secondary to her child's needs but

01:20:44.780 she's also doing in a doing that in a way that offers the child to be what to invent to to enter

01:20:52.480 upon the full adventure of the world and that would mean the voluntary acceptance of something like

01:20:57.540 suffering and death right because that's the destiny of everyone now a mother could try to protect her

01:21:03.060 child against that and against the knowledge of that but that turns her into well a devouring mother

01:21:08.500 right someone who destroys the burgeoning ability of the child to thrive and so there's a mute

01:21:14.460 there's a dual acceptance of sacrifice on the part of the properly behaving mother she has to

01:21:19.880 sacrifice herself to the child especially in infancy but then she has to be willing to let the child

01:21:27.280 go to be broken by the world and that that is the route to well as you pointed out that's part of the

01:21:33.180 divine pattern it seems to be part of the deep divine pattern of eternal salvation it's something like

01:21:38.760 that it's very paradoxical right because it means you have to take the full weight of mortality onto

01:21:44.680 yourself voluntarily and maintain your moral orientation and that that's actually the key to

01:21:50.500 well that's the key to that's the key to paradise i suppose that's one way of thinking about it that's a

01:21:57.060 key to reacquiring what you lost in childhood yeah taking the full weight of morality mortality upon

01:22:04.120 yourself is hugely important it's transformed of course if we believe that death is not the end

01:22:12.660 and as i am convinced that christ rose from the dead this introduces up for me a huge a huge new world of

01:22:24.160 possibility that i am mortal but death is physical death that is is not going to be the end so as i get

01:22:32.480 older my own personal orientation towards the future it gets brighter and brighter because i know that

01:22:39.860 whatever happens if i am taken by cancer or covid or anything else that there has been a new life that

01:22:50.060 i already possess according to the new testament a power within me that enables me to live but will

01:22:56.300 also raise me from the dead in the last day and that's a huge hope of course it's the central christian

01:23:01.980 hope and it would be unfortunate not to hear that side of christianity and i feel many people today

01:23:11.620 don't listen to the whole in a sense the whole meta-narrative that christianity offers because

01:23:18.920 they would see in it that there's a real prospect for the future that it does answer the problem of

01:23:25.320 physical death in a much better way than the possibly pseudo promises of transhumanist engineering

01:23:31.700 well all right let me let me approach that psychologically um to to some degree i did um

01:23:39.100 when when you're talking about anything that's theological the psychological can only make inroads

01:23:44.400 to a certain depth but but look one of the things that psychologists have agreed upon on the clinical

01:23:50.640 front for the last five or six decades i would say so quite a long time is that if you voluntary if

01:23:59.020 you can voluntarily get your clients to expose themselves to the things that they're afraid of

01:24:06.080 and are avoiding as they're making their way to their destination that that makes them braver and more

01:24:14.140 competent it's not exactly that it reduces their fear it produces within them a revelation of their

01:24:22.320 own strength so for example if you take a woman who's agoraphobic and who is afraid of getting on

01:24:29.060 an elevator because she thinks she'll have a heart attack on the elevator and be unable to get to a

01:24:33.820 hospital and will die stupidly and loudly in front of the crowd in the elevator because that's the

01:24:39.680 typical agoraphobic fantasy you can teach her to reacquaint herself with elevators through graduated

01:24:48.000 exposure right and so you're basically taking the thing that she's most afraid of and then feeding it

01:24:53.280 to her in graduated doses now what happens is she not only becomes able to take the elevator but a lot

01:25:00.260 of fears that had beset her also vanished simultaneously and the reason for that is that she sees that when she

01:25:07.780 encounters something she thought was beyond her capability there's something within her that

01:25:13.320 reveals itself that's bigger than the fear oh but there's also a theological aspect to that i mean i think

01:25:19.760 that psychological insight is very important that's another example of it is of course if someone's afraid

01:25:26.060 of flying you need to get them onto a plane you need to acquaint them with the actual reality of which

01:25:32.320 they are afraid but but you also get that in situations theologically where people are afraid of the future

01:25:39.980 and why is that because they don't know enough about what god offers to people to conquer those fears

01:25:48.180 it doesn't mean they'll disappear completely but it means that they can orientate themselves and come to

01:25:54.780 terms with those things so i would take that insight absolutely because i use it all the time myself with other

01:26:01.000 people well then people people shrink away if they don't have that faith and so on the mythological

01:26:07.240 front you see this reflected in the dragon encounter stories that tolkien made so famous for example and

01:26:13.480 the idea is that if you can find the dragon that lurks in the deepest cavern that's where the gold is

01:26:19.640 hoarded and so the the christian notion of resurrection is a an extension of that corpus of ideas because

01:26:28.040 it's predicated on the notion that if you forthrightly confronted the whole panoply of the horrors of death

01:26:37.080 in its multiple forms death and betrayal and and and what and the catastrophe of the mob if you faced all

01:26:46.200 of that what you would see as a consequence is not so much eternal darkness as the eternal resurrection of the

01:26:55.160 the light you know and it's a limit case right and and i i really it's hard for me to to know what

01:27:01.720 to make of that again on the psychological front because it's a truism definitely both in the

01:27:07.560 narrative domain and in the practical clinical domain is that if you if people can find it within

01:27:13.160 themselves to voluntarily shoulder the burden of confronting what they're afraid of they definitely

01:27:21.560 get braver and more competent you know and some of that's because they get informed about themselves

01:27:25.880 but there are also even biological transformations that take place you know if you voluntarily face

01:27:33.720 a stressor entirely different psychophysiological systems are manifest in you as a content consequence

01:27:41.800 of the voluntary confrontation that would be manifest if it was imposed on you involuntarily

01:27:47.880 it's a whole different spirit that inhabits you that that's a very good way of thinking about it it's

01:27:53.000 genuinely a different spirit that inhabits you and it makes itself manifest all the way from the

01:27:58.040 cellular level upward and the habitual practice of that attitude of voluntary confrontation can switch

01:28:05.320 on new genes it doesn't just happen conceptually it actually transforms you physiologically and we

01:28:12.200 have no idea what the limit of that is there's a very interesting in fact brilliant illustration of that

01:28:19.640 principle in the new testament in the famous story of the man lazarus and his two sisters jesus is with his

01:28:29.640 disciples in galilee a long way from where they lived and they send him a message and say that lazarus the

01:28:38.680 the one you love is ill he was a friend of jesus and jesus doesn't do anything to come to them and

01:28:46.120 allows the man to die and in that situation um he says to his disciples let's now go to them and explains

01:28:56.600 that lazarus is actually dead and they get really scared and they say are you going to go to judea again

01:29:03.480 look they were seeking to kill you why do you go there again it's like committing suicide and thomas

01:29:09.160 one of them the doubter he says let's go with them that we might die with him but when they go what

01:29:16.760 happens is that jesus raises lazarus from the dead and that's the light that transforms everything if

01:29:22.920 they had stayed away and not gone with him into what was potential danger they would have never learned

01:29:29.160 that he could raise the dead so that they stayed in the darkness and jesus explains the thing in a

01:29:35.080 very interesting metaphor he talks about himself as the light of the world and he says you know

01:29:41.960 god has made the solar system in a very interesting way that he's placed the light that we see by

01:29:48.120 during the day outside our world the sun's outside our world so if a person walks in the night they will

01:29:54.680 stumble because and here's the observation it's a very interesting one jesus says because the light

01:30:00.280 isn't in them now the light is in some deep sea creatures as we know they've got luminescence and

01:30:06.520 all the rest and i often wish i had a built-in light in my head and sometimes i wear one a little lamp

01:30:12.760 but the point is he's saying look the light isn't in you i am the light of the world he that follows me

01:30:20.520 will have the light of life and i just imagine it very simplistically that if here's the light and

01:30:26.440 here's me and the light moves i'll end up in the dark but if i move with the light i will have the

01:30:32.760 light all the time and that's exactly what happened to these people consumed with fear they went with

01:30:39.480 him thinking they'd be killed and then they discovered he could raise the dead and that transformed

01:30:44.440 everything so that seems to me to be a very powerful um exposition of what you're saying

01:30:53.080 well look john i think i think that's a good place to end actually we're at about night the

01:30:58.360 90 minute mark are we really delved into of yes yes we are uh surprisingly enough um we for everyone

01:31:05.960 watching and listening i'm going to talk to john a bit more about how his interests in mathematics and

01:31:11.080 science and religion develop simultaneously on the autobiographical front so you can join us

01:31:16.360 on the dailywire plus platform for that additional half an hour if you're inclined to um otherwise thank

01:31:22.840 you john very much for talking to me today um i will be in touch with you if you don't mind about the

01:31:29.640 next exodus-like seminar that i'm going to host in miami maybe you'd like to come and join us you'd be

01:31:35.000 a very interesting contributor as far as i can tell and we had that was a that was really a conception

01:31:41.000 transforming experience not only for me but for everyone else who participated man it was quite

01:31:46.200 the trip well that's for sure thank you so much it's been more than i can say a pleasure to meet

01:31:52.200 you and i would be delighted to join you on that if i could os guinness is a very close friend of mine

01:31:57.800 and uh i i was interested to see that at one stage you had two people from cambridge but nobody from

01:32:04.920 oxford so yeah well it's probably just sampling error you know um for everybody watching and

01:32:14.040 listening thank you very much for your time and attention and join us on the dailywire plus platform

01:32:19.000 if you're inclined to the film crew here for setting this up today through the thunderstorm much

01:32:22.840 appreciated and we'll see everyone watching and listening on the next podcast thanks john pleasure a

01:32:28.280 pleasure bye

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - November 06, 2023

394. A Conversation About God ｜ Dr. John Lennox

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