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From the Christian Research Institute in Charlotte, North Carolina, this is the Bible Answer Man broadcast with Hank Hanegraaff.We're on the air because truth matters.Life matters more.
On today's special edition of the Bible Answer Man, we pick up where we ended on our previous broadcast and present more of an episode of the Hank Unplugged podcast.
Hank is talking with philosopher Jay Richards, co-author of the 20th anniversary updated and revised edition of The Privileged Planet, How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery.
Let's now join Hank Hanegraaff and Jay Richards in their conversation.
Another interesting thing, and I think you point this out in your book as well, that's probably where I got this from, but there's a lot of talk on the Internet about how telescopes have undermined Big Bang cosmology.
Yeah, and I don't get this because there's always a kind of skepticism because of the James Webb Space Telescope, because what it's allowing us to do is basically
Now, so to remind listeners, so when you're looking into the distant universe, you're not looking at something at this moment, because light has a finite speed.
And so what you're seeing is you're sort of sampling different time periods in the universe.And so because the universe is large, we're able to visually sample different time periods.James Webb allows us to sort of reach farther back
And so lots of cosmologists had these models of galactic evolution, as it's called, and cosmic evolution, in which the models assumed, OK, how long did it take from the Big Bang and the decoupling and the formation of elements in order for us to get galaxies like we see now?
And the assumption was that it takes a really long time to get that. And so then all of a sudden, we're discovering what were considered to be mature galaxies.And so some people say, oh, that totally undermines the evidence of a Big Bang.
That is the evidence of the finite past.No, not at all.What it undermines is these models.It looks like, gosh.
Things had to be really fine-tuned beyond what we thought, because it's surprising how quickly you can get galaxy formation once you get the elements in place.It's sort of like finding life on Earth almost as soon as life could exist, right?
That tells you something.And so people, in some ways, they were so attached attached to their theoretical models of how this was supposed to have happened, that when we finally get some direct evidence of it, it's like they get totally skeptical.
Instead, they need to go back to the drawing board because clearly they got something wrong about what happens when galaxies form early in the history of the universe.
I want to ask you a question that one of my grandkids might ask me.They might say something like, why is the night sky dark, Papa?
But that's something you address in your book. Absolutely, and it's called Olber's paradox.
In some ways, I said earlier that we, just in the 20th century, finally have empirical evidence that the universe had a beginning because of the cosmic background radiation, the cosmic expansion.In fact, we've always had evidence of that.
The fact that the night sky is dark means that the universe is not infinite in expanse, and it hasn't always been like this.
Because if the universe had always been like this, same basic kind of density, and there are an infinite number of stars, then at every point, From an infinite amount of time ago, there should have been a star pointing in our direction.
And so the night sky should not be the night sky.It should be as bright as the surface of the sun.The fact that it's dark is itself evidence that the universe is not infinite either in space or in time. which is a really remarkable thing.
The other thing is that it's only because of the night sky that we're actually able to see a lot of stuff.You can't see distant stars and things like that during the day.And so the evidence was always there.
It was called Olber's paradox, though, Hank, because it's only a paradox if you assume the universe is eternal and infinite.If it's not a paradox, you say, well, yeah, of course, maybe the sky is dark. I guess the universe must not be eternal.
That would have been the kind of more natural inference.
And you know, one of the things that you point out in your book, and I mean, maybe this is as basic, not in the sense of unimportant, but basic and important, is that our universe is fine-tuned for not only discovery, but for the existence of life itself.
That's right.And so everything we've talked about so far is like, think of it as the fine tuning of the stuff you need to get right at the local level.
But then you have the question, OK, what about the universal properties of the universe, the stuff that's true everywhere that govern the structure of molecules and the elements and planets?And so there's sort of basically three of these.
It's kind of universal property, so there's the initial condition.So what that would be is, OK, how do things have to be set up right at the beginning in order to have a universe like we have now?
Then there are the laws, so like the law of gravity that people learn in physics.And then within the laws, there are these sort of variables that might be M or C or something, and they're constants.And so these are just, they're constant.
What that means is they're just literally constant.They're the same everywhere.And so they're these kind of mathematical properties of the universe that are true of absolutely everywhere.
Well, physicists in the 1950s started realizing, OK, so you've got the gravitational force constant.So that's that kind of big force.You've got electromagnetic and the strong and the weak nuclear forces.
So these are called the four fundamental forces.This is where it was first noticed.And some physicists said, you know, it's weird because if
you fiddled with the electromagnetic constant and made it different, or you fiddled with the gravitational force constant, you would not get a universe that had life in it.In fact, you probably wouldn't get a universe that had planets or galaxies.
As it happens, it's like these constants are very precisely tuned for the existence of life.In fact, it's called the fine-tuning problem. Well, it's only a problem if you don't really like the idea of the universe having been fine-tuned.
But let's just say, OK, if it quacks like a duck, it looks like a duck, maybe it's a duck.If the universe looks fine-tuned, maybe it is.If it looks fine-tuned for life, maybe it is.
And that's, again, a basic discovery of 20th century physics that confirms the theistic worldview.Lots of physicists have spent decades trying to find loopholes to get around it.
But it's an extraordinary thing, and it's strong enough that it actually has led some atheists, just itself, like the late Anthony Flew, was persuaded by the fine-tuning and the evidence for design in DNA to move from atheism to deism.
And Hank, even my debate way back in 2008, when I debated the late, new atheist Christopher Hitchens at Stanford, was about God and science.
And he ended up pivoting to deism, because he realized, okay, the argument for fine-tuning does sound like there's some purpose in the universe.
So he said, yeah, maybe deism is true, but God doesn't care anything about us, which I thought was kind of an interesting concession.It's really not a good time to be an atheist if you are honest with the evidence from physics and cosmology.
You know, I want to read a quote from your book that caught my attention.I wrote it down here on a piece of paper.But this is in the context of features of our universe that allow us to discover the laws of nature.
You say, the universe is an excellent tutor. It has not been so demanding as to ensure failure, but instead has presented us with worthy challenges that we can meet with diligence.And when I read that, I immediately thought of Proverbs 25, verse two.
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter.It is the glory of God's people to search out a matter.
Yes, absolutely.I mean, and we've known that, I mean, anyone that studies scripture like you have for a lifetime, you can read Genesis 1, you can read Genesis 1 to a seven-year-old, it's sort of simple and easy to get.
And it's bottomless though, the text, when you especially get into the Hebrew, that's how the created order is.
And we were talking there specifically about the way in which, okay, if you had to go from say a hunter-gatherer stage, when you don't have a written language,
And to figure anything out scientifically, you needed Einstein's general theory of relativity.There's no way to get there from here, right?But as it happens, it's like the world has been set up so that fairly difficult.It takes work.
But we're able to figure things out.And then each theoretical stage helped us to understand some things.And then it gave us a platform to discover the next stage.So you needed Kepler to get Newton. and you needed Newton to get Einstein.
And if you had to go straight to Einstein without the intermediate steps, you wouldn't have gotten there theoretically.
And that was something that, honestly, we kind of realized late in the book, this stair-stepping of physical discoveries and then theoretical discoveries.
And then Christian philosopher Robin Collins has actually has developed this more beyond what we did in terms of the kind of the theoretical stair-stepping in which God has set stuff up
so that if we're diligent, we can discover these things, but it's still a worthy enterprise.It's not like some kind of fake game that, you know, a parent will give to their six-year-old so that they're sure to win.
It's something that is a genuine accomplishment when we discover these things.
We hear this little phrase over and over again in various contexts, size matters.Comment on size.Is our mark of smallness a symptom of disrepute?Is our puny size in comparison to the universe something that denigrates the greatness of Earth?
I mean, clearly the fact that, you know, let's say a star, just a big lump of a giant lump of hydrogen gas or something that's a light year across, okay, spatially that's huge compared to the Earth or compared to an individual human being.
But surely a single human being is much more magnificent than just this kind of cloud of hydrogen.
Stay right there.We'll be back soon to rejoin Hank Hanegraaff's conversation with Dr. Jay Richards.
In the 20th anniversary revised and updated edition of The Privileged Planet, How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and philosopher Jay Richards lay out remarkable evidence showing that our Earth is a privileged planet designed for discovery.
Much of this evidence is also beautifully set forth in the original documentary film on DVD, The Privileged Planet, The Search for Purpose in the Universe.
To receive The Privileged Planet book or the documentary film on DVD for your gift to the ongoing work of the Christian Research Institute, call 888-7000-CRI.That's 888-7000-CRI.Or go online to equip.org. That's Equip.org.
For decades, Hank Hanegraaff has shared the truth of the historic Christian faith by answering questions over the radio, defending the faith through the written word, and preaching from pulpits around the globe.
Today, he is ready to share his life in Christ, as detailed in his most profoundly personal piece of penmanship to date, Truth Matters, Life Matters More.
Hank feels closer to Christ than ever before and wants you to learn from his experiences as recounted in Truth Matters, Life Matters More so that you can join him on life's greatest journey, the journey toward union with God in Christ.
To receive your copy of Truth Matters, Life Matters More, The Unexpected Beauty of an Authentic Christian Life, call 888-7000-CRI.
And make a gift to support the Christian Research Institute's life-changing outreaches, 888-7000-CRI, or visit us at equip.org.
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To discover how you can make a difference 24-7 in equipping believers at home and abroad to stand for life and truth, check out the benefits of membership at Equip.org.Once again, that's Equip.org.
The complete Bible Answer Book, Collector's Edition, is the comprehensive collection of the most often asked questions Hank Hanegraaff has received throughout his four decades as host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast.
With more than half a million copies already in print, this newly revised and expanded Collector's Edition helps seekers and skeptics alike sort through the truth on topics such as reliability of the Bible,
religions and cults, the resurrection and afterlife, and many more issues vital to a better understanding of God in Christ and our relationship to Him.
To receive your copy of the complete Bible Answer Book, Collector's Edition, revised and expanded, call 888-7000-CRI and make a gift to support the Christian Research Institute's life-changing outreaches.888-7000-CRI. or visit us at equip.org.
Here again are Hank Hanegraaff and his guest, philosopher Jay Richards, as they continue their conversation.
Surely a single human being is much more magnificent than just this kind of cloud of hydrogen.So size is not a specially good measure in the abstract for significance.
But as I mentioned earlier, and we actually do the calculation in the book, that the irony is that on a kind of logarithmic scale, the Earth the sort of human-Earth size scale is actually in the middle of size scales that we know in the universe.
So if you think of the universe as a whole as the big scale and you go all the way down to say quarks on the small scale, the human-Earth size scale is in the middle, which is interesting.So we're not tiny and we're not huge,
But that's where you'd want to be for scientific discovery as it happens.So if we were just to say an order of magnitude smaller for the size of ants, most of the universe would have been inaccessible to us.
They're kind of just basic physical dynamics in terms of the kind of instruments you'd need, what you'd need to be able to control fire, the size of
Lenses you'd need for telescopes, these kinds of things, in order to see large structures, you need to be about our size scale.On the other hand, if we were much larger, it would have been very hard for us to detect things at a very small scale.
So for scientific discovery, we're actually right in the sweet spot, but it would be really easy to miss that if you somehow thought our middling size compared to a blue supergiant somehow made us unimportant.
Is that constrained optimization, again, because one of the points you make in the book is that our size is perfect for the adaptation of technology.
That's right.It's absolutely constrained optimization, and our friend and colleague Michael Denton has actually taken this farther.
In fact, he has a series, Discovery Institute Press, on privileged species, this kind of technological stuff, which we talk a bit about in the book, but so much of technology depends upon our ability to control fire.
And, you know, look, ants can't control fire because of their size.So there's this kind of weird interlocking features of this thing.When you really start analyzing it, they get, as you said, eerie.
And people that get the argument, Hank, like really early on, I think the first times we even presented this stuff, Guillermo spoke at a conference. I feel like it was around 2000 or 2001 at Yale.
I was there, and a guy named Scott Minnick at the University of Idaho was there, and he heard our discussion about eclipses.It kept him awake all night.I mean, but this is a smart guy, a scientist, who got it right away.
He started running out the implications of this in his mind.And he thought, this was the eeriest thing I'd ever heard.Just eerie in the sense that, like,
Wow, this is like a cosmic conspiracy that I didn't know anything about, which we think that's actually the right response.
Well, this discussion wouldn't be complete if we didn't talk about the Copernican principle.You know, it's a myth, and like all great myths, it's a mixture of truth and falsehood.
And you go through in your book why this myth is perpetuated and how we can actually defend the truth in light of this mythology.
Absolutely.And so, of course, it's called the Copernican principle.So you'd think, OK, well, it's based on Copernicus.
Copernicus is the scientist who wrote the book on the revolution of the heavenly spheres in 1543, in which he proposed kind of mathematically that, in fact, you can understand the movement of the moon and the sun and the planets better if you think of the Earth as another one of the planets, with the moon rotating around us and the Earth rotating on its axis.
And the movement of the sun, then, is just merely apparent, whereas we're one of the planets that's actually orbiting the sun.
And he said, actually, the movements make more sense than the previous idea, the pre-Copernican idea, called the Aristotelian Ptolemaic view, which is that the Earth is this sort of stationary center and everything else that we see literally kind of goes around us.
And so the Copernican principle, the myth, is that, well, what Copernicus discovered is that we're not in the center.That is, we're not in the important part of the universe.We're just a mere planet.
And so what Copernicus did, he cast us into this position of mediocrity.Science has continued for several centuries.Every new scientific discovery just relegates us to a less and less important place. OK, so that's the myth.
But if you actually look at the history of science, that story appears in the 19th century, not in the 1500s or the 1600s.The reason is because it completely gets the details wrong about what the pre-Copernican cosmology was.
Anybody that knows Aristotle is going to know that Aristotle's physics, the Earth wasn't in the center because that was the important place to be.It's because it's one of the elements.It's the heavy element.That's where stuff falls.
And so you're going to get the heavy earth in the center.It's really the bottom of the universe, but it's also where death and decay are.It's where the detritus of the universe collects.The really important stuff is in the moon and above.
It's made of this quintessence of this fifth element of this kind of perfect, eternal, immutable matter that's separate from the earth. And so it wasn't that the center was a sort of position of pride of place.
And then if you take Dante's Christian interpretation of that, you read the Divine Comedy, the surface of the earth is where humans live.We can die, right?And we can ascend to the heavens, but we might also We might go to hell.
And if you're reading the Divine Comedy and you get to hell.Well, the center of the universe, the center of the earth.That's Satan.Right.That's the real that's the center of the universe and the kind of Christian eyes pre Copernican cosmology.
So in other words, The center of the universe for Copernicus was not the most important place to be.
And it's only by reinterpreting that and counting on people not to understand the history that they could think that, oh, when Copernicus told us we weren't in the center of the universe, that meant we were unimportant.
It's a terrible kind of bungling of the details of science.C.S.Lewis wrote a wonderful book describing all this called The Discarded Image.
And so if you read Copernicus and then later Galileo, Galileo actually says, you know, he thinks being a planet, we're reflecting the light of the sun.And that's a kind of glorious thing.And then Kepler realized later that actually
Because we move and we're not stationary, there will be a way for us to figure out the distances to some stars using a parallax measurement and trigonometry, which we actually did.
So we're able to measure the distances to some stars just based upon their slight movement It's six months later.
So we're on one side of the earth or the sun and we measure a star where it is on the sky and then measure it again six months later when you're on the other side of the sun.
And if there's a slight variation with some trigonometry, you can figure out how far away that that star is. So there's so much wrong with the Copernican myth, nothing wrong with Copernicus and what he discovered.
But he did not show us that we are insignificant by moving us from the so-called center.And the actual discoveries of science have not done that either.Yeah, the universe is a lot larger than maybe we imagined or realized.
But that doesn't answer the question that we're most interested in, which is that the significance of us here, both as creatures, living creatures, but also as discoverers.If you ask the question the right way, you get a very different answer.
Yeah, I mean, this is very important to you, devoted chapter 12 and 13 to eight principles that discredit this idea of mediocrity.
But you also mentioned something, and I want you to make a pitch here if you would, you mentioned something a number of times throughout the podcast, and it was, if you read If you read this, if you read that, if you read this.
Make a pitch for reading again in our generation.Do you think that's even possible?
It's certainly possible, and I'm optimistic about what I have seen, and so just as the education system generally keeps getting worse and worse and worse and worse, There's also pockets of light.
I mean, there are amazing private schools, there are homeschool co-ops that we've been part of.The classical school movement is a wonderful development.
The really good classical schools are actually designed around reading primary text and help forcing kids not to listen to hour-long lectures, but to have to synthesize and articulate and analyze text.
You can only be good at that if you learn to read, you learn to read deeply, are able to synthesize and you're able to focus for long periods of time.
And so I think that's how we renew the culture is by preserving and renewing and recovering those habits, which were just the kind of basic thing that everybody got that was educated until a century or two ago.
It's easy to notice all the stuff that's collapsing and easy not to notice these sort of pockets of light. We've been blessed to have been part of several of those movements and so seeing what it does to kids.
But honestly, thank anyone that's listening to us that has kids or has grandkids.If it's in your power, make sure that they have those kinds of educational options.They need to know the truths of the faith.
They need to know the scriptures like the back of their hand, but they also need intellectual habits.They need discernment.They need the ability to focus and to read and to pay attention.
Without those skills, none of this other stuff's going to work.
Again, it is a fantastic book.It's the 20th anniversary edition of The Privileged Planet. how our place in the cosmos is designed for discovery.
And it is available for all of those who stand shoulder to shoulder with us in the battle for life and truth.You can get your copy on the web at equip.org.
Thank you for listening to this special edition of the Bible Answer Man broadcast with Hank Hanegraaff and his guest, Dr. J. Richards.
To hear this Hank Unplugged podcast interview in its entirety, just go to equip.org, iTunes, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.
Our firm commitment here at the Christian Research Institute is to defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints and equip believers to become true disciples of Jesus Christ.
In appreciation for your vital gift to help strengthen and expand CRI's mind-shaping, life-changing outreaches, Hank would like to send you the
20th anniversary revised and updated edition of The Privileged Planet book or the original documentary film on DVD, The Privileged Planet, The Search for Purpose in the Universe.
Just call a resource consultant at 888-7000-CRI, 888-7000-CRI, or visit our website at equip.org. That's equip.org.Or you can write to CRI at post office box 8500, Charlotte, North Carolina, zip code 28271.
The Bible Answer Man broadcast is funded by listeners like you.We're on the air because truth matters, life matters more.
Hank Hanegraaff has dedicated his life to defending truth, because truth matters.However, his life and ministry were radically transformed by another three-word phrase, life matters more.
Truth matters because Christianity is rooted in history and evidence.Life matters more because it is the experience of union with God. The goal of Christian life is union with God.
All attempts to understand Christianity from a solely rational perspective put us in danger of devolving into a transactional rather than transformational relationship with God.
Truth Matters, Life Matters More will equip you to move beyond intellectually knowing about God to experientially knowing Him in Christ.
To receive your copy of Truth Matters, Life Matters More, call 888-7000-CRI and make a gift to support the Christian Research Institute's life-changing outreaches, 888-7000-CRI, or visit us online at equip.org.
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