Historical Verification of the Torah - Part 4 - Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb

[Music] I'm trying to show that it's reasonable to believe in the total and I gave two arguments so far now when you try to show something's reasonable there are two jobs one is to show this evidence a favor and the other is to say that if they're quick criticisms you can answer them someone raised yesterday the question about the age of the universe scientific matters so what I think to do today is talk about two famous scientific matters and show you that we have what to say and then tomorrow and Wednesday I'll take you through as I can one more piece of positive evidence but I think especially in today's climate if you think that we're under pressure from science people feel very defensive science has a gigantic prestige most of which it doesn't deserve and they feel if I take a position which puts them at odds of science to start I'd be able to handle it they people are going to regard them as having fallen off the deep end so let's first talk about the age of the universe that's what was the question was asked just today there's only a little bit of a discrepancy that a current scientific picture is 13.8 billion years and we are in Year 5775 so just a little bit of a difference there that could be addressed and give it much too much time as we how about talk also about the theory of evolution 13.8 billion years how do we how they get such a figure how do they manage how can it do something like that well there is the computed distance of the galaxies and the speed of light they're that far away and the speed of light tells you how fast light is going then you know how long for traveling so you know how old the universe is and you have radioactive decay you have stuff that's radioactive and decays like uranium and we have a halflife law which says that over a certain period of time half of it will be decay so you assume that once upon a time it was all pure radioactive and then you say well the only 2% left so in the first period of decay half-life was down to 50 and the next one was down to 25 next one is down to 12 and a half and if the half-life is 100 million years or something like that so you add up the hundreds of millions of years and you get a much longer period of time and then as far as the Earth's age is concerned you have ice core samples that go down and record the layers of ice over thousands or tens of thousands or hundred thousands or millions of years course of rock is you're supposed to go back billions of years you have a variety of different ways in which you can calculate the age of the universe and the happy fact is that they coincide more or less about ten years ago there was a little problem that there were some stars that were older than the universe that doesn't fit too well and then they revised some figures and some measurements and they somehow brought it into line I mean there are some tensions of the picture but that's how it's done now there is an assumption underlying this picture assumption that was taken for granted and accepted so widely that people don't bother mention it but it is an assumption nevertheless and that is that the laws of nature that we are using to calculate this result have stayed the same always have always been the same laws so the speed of light has always been the same speed of light and the force of gravity has always been the same force of gravity and the half-lives of the radioactive elements have always been the same half-lives and so it goes that there's there are the laws of nature which we use to calculate backwards well if it's only 2% radioactive and it started 1% radioactive and it's a half-life so you need some of the many helpful to get down from 102 - assuming the half-life has always been the same and you can add them up again how disabilities are billions of years if it's always been the same as the speed of light has always been the same if the force of gravity has always been the same if so then you're gonna add them up one ought to ask what reason do we have to think that it's always been the same it's dad supported by observation by evidence by calculation calculation of the basis of what usually when you make calculations you're using the laws of nature now we're asking about whether the claws of nature were constant or not not obvious how you going to bear go about that kind of calculation now let me tell you a story Maimonides was confronting our stuff Aristotle was in favor of 13.8 billion years Aristotle said the universe is infinitely oh it's a big gap between 13.8 billion and infinity right the gap is infinitely big and he had all of science and all the philosophy on his side the best thinkers understood the universe has no beginning and here we are within those days instead of five thousand four thousand how you gonna face an opponent who says it's infinitely old when you say it's four thousand seven years old he's gonna wanna tease did he said imagine the following scenario child is born a meal and a few months after birth his father takes the child to a community of only men no woman child grows up and becomes an adult and he begins to wonder he never sees any new members so yes his father where did we come from how did we begin we people we he does males of course that's all he's ever seen and if father tells him well there are others who very much like us but different in some respects and every one of us starts out as a miniature inside the abdomen of one of those and after nine months comes out and grows to be the way you see us so the young man says to his father let's see well we are miniatures inside the abdomens of those others can we breathe father says no can we eat father says no can we drink father's no so then he says well then what you're telling me can't be true this can't be true everyone knows you don't breathe for four minutes you think you don't eat for three months you're dead you don't drink for three weeks you're dead your story kid be right now giving what he knows about the world his objection is correct he observing what we would call life after birth humans living or even animals living you cannot survive without breathing you cannot survive without eating you cannot survive without drinking it's just not possible you just die of course the truth is that the fetus in the womb exists in a very different condition vision you can't even imagine and under those conditions you don't have to breathe you don't have to eat you don't have to drink things are very different for the fetus in the world after birth there's a radical change in the way that creature survives supports itself since he can't imagine because he has no experience nobody told him about it nobody explained it to him he can't imagine what it's like to be that other condition condition of a fetus he can't accept it as correct Maimonides says that the six days of creation that we read about in the Torah are the gestation of the world it's the world in its embryo state it's the world before birth the six days of the of creation are the development of the world before birth the end of the six days the birth takes place and what we see is only after birth we're like that boy well becomes a man in the community of men who knows only the lives of people after birth because that's all he's ever seen we too know only the lives of the universe with the laws that we see operating because we were we were created into that world that's all we've ever experienced but before we were created what we were brought into the world the laws that we see were not ready indeed the six days of creation are not only the creation of stars and galaxies and space and time and energy it's a creation of the laws of nature also it's a developing and building and creating of the laws of nature and what we know we know only after the creation process is over what we experience of the world so to speak after birth and that makes it very difficult for us to imagine what the world was like when it was developing when the laws didn't apply just like that child grows up in the community of men has no conception what it's like to be a fetus in the womb and therefore projecting our reality backwards without limit saying that the laws have always been the same it's just as inappropriate as that boy say to his father store you tell him he has to be false because no one can live without breathing because in fact the laws that we see weren't operating during those six days by the way people always ask how did the plants grow on day three with no Sun in the sky for photosynthesis it's a non-starter you're worried about photosynthesis because that's part of the world that you see that's just like the boy s key how could we live that weren't breathing well you don't happen to know but we had an umbilical cord that's out so we didn't need to breathe during the six days plants didn't exist from photosynthesis that's not how they existed exist in a different way because the law that to cry so deposit this wasn't in place yet some emeriti says if you assume like Aristotle did more or less where's the chicken come from an egg where's the egg come from a chicken chicken egg chicken egg chicken egg or ever where you gonna get an egg without a chicken we're gonna chicken without an egg chicken egg chicken forever and the skies I told you last time for the Greeks the skies never change the skies never changed the heavens never change so especially circular orbits he's going around in circles nothing ever changes in that way and it's always been that way well that's just assuming that what you see today has always been that way now you can make your assumptions as a free world but like I said the other day you don't have to roll over play dead because of somebody else's assumptions that's the assumption that he makes we have a different picture I have to twist and it only started after the end of the six days not being the case it's incumbent to project backwards into that six-day period because of a different state of the world it's operating that time and by the way if you need to back this up from a source that's not a religious source Niels Bohr one of the great founders of quantum mechanics said that projecting back to the early age of the universe is not competent for this reason from a scientific point of view because laws have been changing the laws have been evolving and that being the case we don't know what the laws were in earlier ages projecting back into those ages is just not competent so it comes out that scientific world has its picture and this picture is based on an assumption and as I said it's a free world you can make whatever assumption you want but if we get tied that we're not going to accept that assumption because we have a different point of view we are perfectly justified in saying that we don't have to accept their conclusion and we can accept that questions up to you okay now that's just the age of the universe if you ask but what about all the fossils what about all the developments what about all the sequence of events that the scientists describe there are several ways to handle that but I'll give you one which psychologically is easier psychologically is more comfortable I don't think in logic it's any better than the others but I'll give you something which you can you can lean out with some confidence this is due to a Schwab who wrote to send an article published it then it was accept it as one way to explain the Jewish point of view not the only way and as I say and logic is that maybe the best way not any worse than any other sir others are equally good but I'm just telling you this way because it's easier to relate to because the laws that we see weren't operated during the six days things happened faster everything the scientists described is true there were dinosaurs it's just that whether dinosaurs when they talk about 100 million years where the dinosaurs ruled the earth so in our timeframe that comes out to be about an hour and a half because things happen much faster and if you'll say as one critic did but then if it's happening much faster it violates the laws of nature things like to move too fast to them to be stable and bones will break and some others so on yes that's true little violate the laws of nature but we said now three times already during those six days what we call the laws of nature we're not operating after all the Torah describes it in holy miraculous ters God made this and God made that and God commanded and the earth brought out this the earth brought out that it's all described in miraculous terms so from our point of view it's not surprising that we think it's a miracle that's the language of the verses and that being the case we say it all happened it's just that you stretch it out you stretch it out because you assume that the speed of light was always the same the force of gravity was always the same and radioactive decay you had always had the same half-life you assumed that and you use your assumption okay but we reject the assumption and ever thereby we're not stuck with the 13.8 billion years well that might be correct but then on the same grounds the scientific picture is also only a possibility it's not a probability because how shall I describe that this laws of nature have always been the same is that a probability not sure why since you don't know what happened but I understand that but the claim that something's probable needs evidence in its favor what evidence are you going to offer in favor of assuming that it was the same rather than okay that sounds to me not really like probability that sounds to me more like I can't think of a reason now I can't think of a reason it's really a confession of maybe the limits of our imagination or the limits of our inventiveness or we don't want to tolerate novelties probability has to be baked based on something more than I can't think of a reason doesn't that doesn't back up that's like a probability it's really a question of method you know if you're going to tolerate the possibility of changes then sky's the limit so then you'd be left with no method at all it's just going to arbitrarily allow someone to say that that changes took place then you could have any any number of changes and you lose any way of making progress and understanding anything that's the way action I think is put and I think it's it's a reasonable objection until you look at the details let me give you an example person is accused of a crime murder now we have his footprints outside the residence and we have his fingerprints at the place of the murder and we have a motive and we have a murder weapon that's the same kind that fired the bullet I found in his possession looks pretty bad looks pretty damning the defense attorney says my client is being framed by the Mafia yes the footprints are there in the fingerprints are there the gun my clients being framed by the Mafia will that get him off for sure not because if you could get off with that you could never convicted II no matter how much evidence you had could always say it's framed by the Mafia so that's not going to be tolerated but now let's suppose change the case a little bit and the footprints and the fingerprints yeah the murder weapon but you also have an eyewitness who saw the defendant a hundred miles away at the time of the crime now you have a contradiction in the evidence and now the defense attorney says you know where the circumstantial evidence came from the footprint the fingerprints on the gun he's been framed by the Mafia now I think there'll be an investigation because there's a contradiction in the evidence you can't stop every criminal prosecution on the grounds that it was a frame-up because then you can't Curtis you can't convict anybody but when you have a contradiction you have all the circumstantial evidence in the other eyewitness who says no the investigation maybe he was right friendly does happen it does happen from time to time when there's a contradiction so that's what I say here yes if someone can simply say you say 13.8 billion I say 5 million because things change and he says 24 billion because things change the other way so many sell to us by 5 minutes because he thinks change the other way that makes it free plain that means you can't make any progress at all but I claim that we have a contradiction in the evidence because on the one hand you have what the scientists present to us on the basis of their assumption that the laws have never changed and the other hand you have our evidence for the Jewish tradition period like the evidence for Revelation like the evidence of prediction of the future history of the Jewish people which we saw yesterday came true against all expectation so if I look at my picture of the world my whole picture of the world and its evidence I see evidence in favor of the scientific picture based on the assumption things have stayed the same and I see evidence in favor of the Jewish picture which doesn't agree with the scientific picture and I have to make sense out of the whole thing making sense out of the whole thing I say well I have a way to explain away the scientific evidence scientific evidence is based on an assumption and the Jewish picture has a different assumption there I'm not just short-circuiting all inquiry short-circuiting all investigation on the grounds that I can always say it was different I'm appealing to real evidence on the other side I don't think that is a legitimate someone who mix it up it just picks an arbitrary time it says I could say it changed at that time I agree that that was short-circuit all investigation it's not appropriate but I'm not doing that I think I think we have a we have a reason to say that yeah so regarding your claim that the scientific laws of flight physics have changed things like dinosaurs have existed for 65 million years prior to the advent of humans the scale that they used specifically is earth years 365 days 24 hours moreover when you claim that these laws of physics have been malleable I think he was referring to specifically the so my question is how do we reconcile these types of issues I maybe I'm maybe I didn't explain it clearly enough I wasn't saying that Bohr will agree with us all I was saying was if someone has this picture that the laws are always the same I want you to know that there is a respectable scientific point of view that they haven't always been the same I'm not saying he's going to agree with our 5,000 he was saying was after like the events surrounding BIGBANG is that these laws have made pretty stagnant and I think would be very hard to find a scientific community that disagrees with things like theory of gravity or relativity past this point so now we understand that dinosaurs existed it exists 65 millions prior to the coming of humans this isn't the same scale ok I'm not proposing Bohr as a model for us I'm just pointing out that there's a it's not uniform that the laws have stayed the same forever let me give you let me give you an example of this kind of thinking within the scientific community that is accepted although it's coming under pressure now there are problems with the Big Bang how's that we know since it was officially adopted in 1965 palms that were known what is the horizon problem the university you look how to look at the distribution of free energy it's very very uniform something like the one point in 10,000 on part in 10,000 how come it's so uniform now you know very well if you take a warm glass of water and you put in some ice after a while the ice will melt and the glass of water will be cooled off and it'll all be a uniform temperature we know that when things are different temperatures you put them together there's a heat flow and they become of roughly the same temperature but that takes time takes time drop the ice in for two seconds to pull it out it's not going to happen so now the thought was well in the early universe there were all sorts of different pockets of different temperatures but it evened out so he did some calculations they found out I was expanding so fast there wasn't enough time for it to even out so how come it's so even happen are you going to tell me that it started out exquisitely even that doesn't sound natural that doesn't sound but we expect any universe without a designer without a creator we expect it to be random that means patchy along came Alan Guth in 1980 and invented cosmic inflation cosmic inflation says this you imagine the Big Bang and what you imagine is a world that starts expanding quite rapidly and then the expansion slows down because of gravity and you think of that it's a more or less uniform process it's expanding and then slows down and expands more slowly that's not what happened that's not what happened what happened is this the very very first fraction of a second it was expanding fairly slowly then it shot up by a factor of 10 to the 80 in a triple a trillionth of a second or less gigantic jump and then it slowed down again let slowed down to the leisurely expansion that we observed except for the acceleration which discoveries in years ago okay that's called cosmic inflation there was a moment of inflation now here's the picture slow expansion bang inflation and then continuing slow expansion now be calculated look at the first phase the first phase of slow expansion was there enough time when it was that small and expanding so slowly was enough time for the ice melt and make the water the same temperature was enough time for heat flow to go from one place to the other the answer yes oh boy I wouldn't say that hey you know we found a solution we now can understand why the universe is so even in temperature because the earliest phase was one that was slow enough to balance out to eat the differences in temperature what happened to the uniformity button to uniformity expanding Spain in the same way have you slowing it down how did you stick in a blip a change right a change a gigantic change expansion of 10 to the 80 power in a fraction of a second how you stick in it well we stuck in it because because we need it and if we put it in then we could make things work it's okay okay so how committed are we really two things have always been the same not very not very it's a starting position its position which you take because yeah I passed no reason to go otherwise but when you have a reason if you can't split in a second you can cancel in a second because you need so it's not as if we have a hard scientific scientific commitment to things haven't always been the same a uniformity it's a starting position which is maybe simplicity or maybe where else you're going to start because if you try to start otherwise it's arbitrary but it isn't that solid I'll tell you something else without going into great detail unless you like I know that he fails on this when it was this carbon the universe is getting bigger or let's put it this way let's be more careful when it's discovered that things are moving away from one another galaxies are moving away from one another it was thought that means it was thought that means the universe is getting bigger that means the past that was smaller smaller and smaller further and further the past smaller and smaller well it's got to be a limit to this you can't be smaller than zero so it's got to be a beginning nobody likes that Stephen Hawking says that here the beginning smacks of a creator and we didn't want that so they invented a theory which could avoid that call the steady state theory you can look it up but Wikipedia which avoided that now maybe I just this isn't this isn't necessary but for those who get it steady state theory says the space is infinitely big no beginning the universe never began they're always doing the same thing things are moving away that's true and we're being away for one another but we're going on forever how come we're not all infinitely spread out answer is new stuff is coming into existence throughout the universe all the time new stuff out of nothing out of nowhere new stuff is coming into existence all the time course you don't observe it because the rate is something like in a cubic meter of space in a hundred years we'll get an electron no you're not gonna see that and you're not gonna be able to discover it with that the cont the density stays roughly the same now let's just stop a tick steak take stock of this the scientific community adopted new stuff coming in out of nothing what happened to the conservation laws that mass mass energy always stays constant well you know if we need to balance things and we need to have more mass energy coming in so we'll just take more mass energy coming in you know because I in the laboratories you don't see that the laboratories not that sensitive whenever laboratory around 400 years monitoring a single cubic meter of space to find an electron we never did that so how solid our thesis assumption of here's really the same and really constants over the Sun when you get into trouble and you need it you can cancel them at will so they aren't really that well established they're a starting point that you take for convenience sake for simplicity sake but they're no more than that if there were real probability you couldn't do that if there were a real probability you couldn't do that you have to have counter evidence against the probability but since it's only in a some starting point you need to cancel it you can cancel it and nobody stopped to think new stuff coming out of nowhere nothing how could that be could be we need we needed to make a consistent picture so put it in 1965 when they discovered the background radiation they took it out because they didn't need it anymore no question but but the point is this no one said but that's so improbable you can't use it you can't use it gotta look for something else it's not an acceptable theory nobody said that they said okay you want to change that and then things will work out okay that's fine if you had real probability hood real evidence in favor and somebody to say oh I got these experiments if these observations servers and so on if I just assume that water boils at 120 degree centigrade everything will be fine what people say excuse me it doesn't for that hurt when TV Center it boys I had to be sent away just you can't do that because we know what's not right you have too much evidence a favor of this so look for a better theory because that Theory's not going to work honey nobody said that which means that you don't have a theory with real positive evidence in its paper you have an assumption a natural assumption and it's the naturals hope you keep up until you need to change it now you change it that's not the same as having real positive evidence that's why I said I don't either but Buddha means you've got some experience you check the alternatives you check the predictions none of that has been done okay that's the age of the universe now I want to tell you one thing about evolution and I'm issuing this as a challenge not only to you but to your teachers your professors your philosophers who believe in this I'm finishing this challenge for 30 years and some pretty famous people issued it reasonably only I I have my way of presenting it which I think it's very intuitive and if you can get me an answer to this question I'll be better educated and I'll give up one of my key arguments I'll give you an analogy and then I'll tell you how it applies I have an object and on this object I have painted on one of its sides I've painted an X now I tell you the following story I threw the object into the air and it landed on the X three times in a row by accident vaccine I didn't throw it in any special way it's not wait it's not magnetized it hasn't got ridges that catch the airflow I throw it up and it came down three times in a row on the X by accident do you believe me can you believe me three times in a row okay most people are satisfied sometimes in the ropes pretty septa ball but I left out one key piece of information what didn't I tell you how many sides to object hands maybe you were something it was a coin it was a coin the probability of getting the X 3 times 0 is 1 in 8 that's 12 and a half percent that happens more than a tenth of the time not hard to believe that I threw a coin in the air three times it got I had to hit three times in a row by accident that sort of thing happens one tenth of the time suppose this is silicon shooting the gun has a thousand sides so that means the probability of getting 2 X 3 times 0 is 1 and up billion I think you shouldn't believe it if I tell you it's a sugar you got and I suppose I refuse to tell you what object it is no time but I tell you my story I put the X on one side I threw it in the air three times in a row three times in a row it in then on the X do believe me or not I think the appropriate response is you haven't given me enough information to make up my mind you're telling me something happened by accident well to believe that I've got to believe the probability is reasonably high if you told me it was a shilling gun I reject it right away one in a billion that doesn't happen told me it's a coin I've accepted chords it's twelve and a half percent you don't tell me how many sides it has so you don't tell me what the probability is that I can't make up my mind now I think that's rock solid find me somebody disagrees with that and thinks you can't have an answer without knowing the probability I'll be very surprised but I'll learn something new that's rock solid ok evolution tells me that the development of life on the planet from the first self-replicating to butterflies and orangutan sand redwood trees and porpoises and the rest all of it is due to an accidental process in this sense that the variations that created new forms are accidentally sure selection determines which ones will survive because of the differential reproduction fine and good but the generation of new forms of accident cosmic-ray it's the DNA or whatever okay so give me a probability tell me according to your picture what's the probability of getting this envelope of life from the first self-replicating by the process that you described they can't do it they haven't if they've been chance to do this for 40 years the latest challenge came from Thomas Nagel card-carrying atheist one of the most eminent contemporary philosophers published a book with Oxford University Press called mine the cosmos and he said where's the probability if you can't show me the probability is reasonably high let's say 1 in 10,000 that's reasonably high what probability of what that your process will do it in the 3.8 billion years since they arrived since the first life is detected on the planet if you don't if you don't do that so then why should I believe it you don't give me a probability there's no reason for me to believe it it remains a possibility is evolution possible sure leprechauns are possible also we talked about that but without a probability you haven't given me enough information to make up my mind so it's a presented and say that I have to roll over and agree is simply wrong it's wrong i straightforward intellectual grounds and with all of the outrageous response to niggles book no one no one was able to refute that point but maybe I'm missing something write to your professors right depressors of biology and professors of philosophy and get me an answer to this question how am I supposed to be required logically set the theory of evolution if you can't give me a probability yeah that's something I struggled with I feel like the problems like the unlike the probability of humans developing through the process evolution is also a reason to believe as well well you see I'll show you why my problem really cuts both ways when you try to say that certain things that happen for evolution is very unlikely you have to presuppose you know exactly all of the factors that will contribute to the evolution but we don't know that I don't know if you've heard of Steve for councilman Cashman at the Santa Fe Institute California he says maybe there are laws of self-organization in nature chemically we know there are nearly a preacher genie in the 1980s won the new book Nobel Prize for self-organizing chemical systems there's certain chemicals you put them together and heat them and it changes from red to blue every half-second exactly red blue blue nobody planned that nobody predicted it you're mixing the chemicals and they and they that's what happened if you heat water on the stove you have a pot you have a central heat that forms convection currents the water goes up in the middle down on the sides and that determines how it what and when boilies start fast and drop that Kevin noticed when you're boiling in a pot in a kettle that just before it boils it gets quiet and then it starts to boil that's because the convection currents are changing at that time that means the water doesn't move around randomly no it moves in strict formed patterns and it always does that so he said if there are self organizing principles of chemistry maybe there are self organizing principles in biology also now of course the key word in that sentence is maybe yeah but maybe for all we know in which case evolution could have happened much faster things just organize you know daisies organize into a frog maybe so can I prove not have we tried all the possibilities no so that that means I can't say that it's too unlikely because I don't know what the principles are that our moving the changes Richard Dawkins by the way you know what his cheer was at Oxford at Oxford University with a chair in the public understanding of science he never was a scientist and ever made any scientific discoveries Selfish Gene he took from a fella named Williams published it a decade before his chairs in the public understanding of science which that means you could be more forgiving when he makes gross errors in science and blind watchmaker he said sure if you're looking for the development of life by a purely random process just putting all the pieces together but that's not how it happened it happened by starting changes and then with changes taking off the best ones how many do that it's easy he said I took a random list of 50 letters and I transformed them into a quote from Shakespeare over lunch I set my my computer to make you manthan changes and picking out let's say 10 random changes on the string picking out the one that's closer to the to the target quotation for Shakespeare and over a few thousand changes I got Shakespeare out of nonsense ok ok as someone had written in a book before that before that called by Denton he was first name it's called the evolution theory crisis pointed out you can't just make changes and pick the best when you make the changes the thing it changes into has to live it had to survive that's reproduce what you really should have done if you wanted to make a model you should have started with one sentence of 50 letters and your target should be another sentence of 50 letters make random changes and make sure that each one in between is a full formed perfect English sentence try that answer so you try that you'll never get there because English sentences in the sets of letters are almost vanishingly small now let me go from sentence to sentence by random changes but Dawkins didn't do that so what did he do he chose a false model and false model is if you have too many degrees of freedom we don't know how many degrees of freedom there are we don't know what the principles are so you say human evolution is too unlikely it's only too unlikely if you say the only things that are going on or ABC and ABC can't produce it but there might be de F going on also nobody knows so to convict evolution of a mistake on the grounds that is too unlikely falls before the same ignorant that I'm accusing them of we just don't have enough information as to how the probability works yes it happened three times did it happen three times by accident no one will believe that let's say it's fixed you've got a magnet in there and your tables magnetized or it's weighted on that side or you can throw it in a particular way no one's gonna believe they're gonna say you're a good magician and you've hidden them you've hidden the mechanism so big it's not like it's meaning what the the probability man is a lot for me to decide whether it happened by accident or not Houdini was tied up and he had handcuffs on they put him in a sealed case sealed case had metal bands around it they threw it down into the water and 15 minutes later he came out no you don't see well now the word evolution hazards my point data has at least five different meanings what you see is event after event after event the evolution I'm talking about it's supposed to explain why those events took place what's the mechanism that that caused them to take place you don't see that you don't see the random mutation in the selection going on what you see is the species and the species and the species at this species we're talking about what you don't see and I'm not questioning the fossil record which could be questioned but I'm not doing that I'm not quite let's say that you have this order of development of life but why did it develop that way the critics are saying your picture of why develop isn't adequate one reason it isn't adequate is because you can't give me a probability if it's happening that way that's what that's what Nagle argued in this book among a lot of other things so I think that as far as the age of the universe and evolution is concerned we are in a position where we can neutralize the critique I don't say we can show that we're right and they're wrong I say we can neutralize the crit see we don't have to run scared from the the scientific critique and that means that we can hold up our heads in public and say look you have your position I'm not attacking your position but I think you can attack my position either and therefore we have to just practice respectful coexistence okay that's the to the two issues tomorrow and Thursday and Wednesday we'll talk about choose survival to your survival is also the source of evidence for the truth [Music] you