When Carl Sagan RIPPED Nutcase Dennis Prager’s Hypocrite Beliefs

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]God is omnipotent and omnisient.

[00:00:02]>> Yes.

[00:00:02]>> Why is it necessary for God to be meddling in the universe after he made it? Why didn't he make it right in the first place so it would go in the direction he wanted?

[00:00:11]>> Because there would be no need for us then. If the world were perfect, then we could not exist because we couldn't have no freedom of choice to do bad.

[00:00:18]>> We couldn't choose anything imperfect.

[00:00:20]>> This is a very egocentric that the point of the world is so that we will do good or bad.

[00:00:26]>> That's right. Let me let me tell you without humanity I don't think there's a point of you know you are the best known astronomer in the world but I was just thinking >> who's the second best known astronomer in the world >> you know it it is true but it's not it's a funny time it's like a now the best known chemist it's just you you've just made something you know unique out of your life truly because astronomers are not wellknown thank you I I never intended to do it my all I wanted to do was research to sort of immerse myself in the magnificence of the universe and all this other stuff just sort of knocked on my door.

[00:01:00]>> You well believe that there's uh there are people out there, don't you?

[00:01:04]>> People no chance because people are the result of a particular evolutionary pathway on the earth that could not possibly recur elsewhere.

[00:01:13]>> Belief is a very I'm sorry to catch you up on words.

[00:01:16]>> No, I like that. That's fine.

[00:01:18]>> Believe is a very strong matter for scientists. And uh belief in the absence of evidence maybe exists in religion but it shouldn't exist in science.

[00:01:26]>> Okay.

[00:01:27]>> And since we do not have strong evidence for extraterrestrial life, I neither believe nor disbelieve. What I do say is that it's an extremely important question. We have the tools to find out.

[00:01:38]Let's look.

[00:01:39]>> Why is it important?

[00:01:40]>> It's important because first of all, it characterizes who we are. For the longest time, um, people have thought that they were the center and point of the universe, the reason there is a universe. And that of course is connected with there not being anybody else.

[00:01:58]>> Right.

[00:01:58]>> If there is somebody else, then that >> we're not that we're not quite as important.

[00:02:02]>> We're not quite as important. But there's other evidence that we're not quite as important.

[00:02:06]>> You said that we were unique that you you laughed at the suggestion that there were people out there. Absolute unique sequence of events made human beings.

[00:02:15]Does that >> and every other animal and plant?

[00:02:16]>> Okay. Does that not argue for a god? For a design?

[00:02:19]>> I can't imagine. Why would you say that the existence of a slime mold argues for God?

[00:02:24]>> Yes.

[00:02:24]>> Why would you say that?

[00:02:25]>> Because the the existence of something that that is designed implies to me a designer.

[00:02:32]>> Uh you have not met Mr. Charles Darwin.

[00:02:35]I can tell >> I have met Mr. Darwin and Mr. Darwin believed in God.

[00:02:40]>> Mr. Darwin I asked him he believed >> but he did not believe that the argument you presented holds water. What Mr. Darwin said is that the slime mold and humans and everybody else have evolved by a set of natural processes and no hand of a creator is evident or needed.

[00:02:57]That's the whole point of evolution by natural selection.

[00:03:00]>> So you feel that the pancreas and the liver and the intestines and the brain arrange themselves by natural pure fluky chance.

[00:03:07]>> Uh a caricature.

[00:03:09]>> Why? set of characters.

[00:03:11]>> You're walking along the beach. You look down. There's something shiny. You pick it up. It's a pocket watch. You say, "My goodness, look how beautifully this is put together.

[00:03:20]>> Look how well form matches function. Is it possible that the various gears and wheels fell together by accident?

[00:03:30]Ridiculous idea. A watch maker means a watch means a watch maker."

[00:03:34]>> Right?

[00:03:35]>> Now, you go and you look at the pancreas maker, >> right? And that's the step where you've made a mistake because I'll tell you I'll tell you.

[00:03:44]>> Now let us look at the variety of dogs in the world.

[00:03:47]>> Okay?

[00:03:48]>> Ranging from let's say Daxonss to Great Dan. Okay? Different forms, different functions, wildly different. How did they get to be so different?

[00:04:00]The answer is humans made them different. I know you think this is still watchmaker, but wait a minute.

[00:04:06]Humans made them different by interfering with who mates with whom.

[00:04:12]You want a dog that goes into uh into holes in the ground and ferrets out moles or something. Then make sure that this lowslung guy mates with that low slung female and probably you're going to get more lowslung dogs. Now what you are doing is what Darwin called artificial selection. the imposing of restrictions on what kind of offspring they're going to be by an external force. And if humans in a mere 10,000 years or so can produce the entire variety of dogs cannot nature which reaches into the inards of organisms >> but nature doesn't have a brain >> having doesn't need a brain doesn't need a brain having four billion years of biological evolution to create all the diversity and beauty in the natural world. Having said all that, I will ask when we get back whether you do believe in God and what God means to you cuz it's it's a question people like to ask scientists, especially a Carl Sean.

[00:05:12]We'll be back in a moment with that question. The watchmaker argument sounds persuasive until you look at biology. A watch cannot reproduce, mutate, or pass traits to the next generation. Living organisms can. That is why natural selection matters. Science shows that organisms better suited to their environment are more likely to survive and pass on their traits, which causes species to change over time. Evolution explains complexity through a natural process, not pure random chance. That directly challenges the Bible's claim that animals and humans were specially created according to their kinds. The evidence points to life changing through natural causes, not a designer stepping in from outside nature.

[00:05:57]Welcome back. With me is Carl Sean, the the worldrenowned astronomer. I I I hasten to add that his new book is out, A Vision of the Human Future in Space.

[00:06:07]Uh and it's called Pale Blue Dot, and I strongly recommend it. Uh the uh we're going to talk about that in a moment, but we were having a little debate here.

[00:06:15]You you asked me, uh do I believe that the pancreas suggests a god? And I do.

[00:06:20]And >> as you stone suggests a god.

[00:06:22]>> Yes. And I said that not quite as much as the pancreas.

[00:06:24]>> That's probably because you're not a stone. If you were a stone, you'd probably think it the other way around.

[00:06:29]>> As you're from Brooklyn, as we established, there was a statement that that we used to say then about those ifs. If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a trolley car.

[00:06:37]>> Whereas people, you know, Yeah.

[00:06:39]>> Whereas people not in Brooklyn say, "If I had eggs, I'd have ham and eggs. If I >> Yes, that's right. But right. All right.

[00:06:45]So therefore, the ifs, if I were a stone, I wouldn't be, you know, I would Well, on television, anything.

[00:06:50]But maybe if I were a stone I would be here right now actually. Sometimes I watch TV and I think I am watching a stone. Be that as it may. Uh you look at all this I I have to ask you a question then. Are you an atheist?

[00:07:05]>> What do you mean by atheist?

[00:07:06]>> One who believes that there is no god.

[00:07:08]>> What do you mean by god?

[00:07:09]>> Uh a uh I'll tell you exactly. Uh a uh a creator uh who uh with intelligence who is aware of his creation.

[00:07:19]But uh there are religions that believe in no god of that sort and still are religions.

[00:07:24]>> I didn't I didn't ask you if you were religious. I know I understand that >> this is a scientific question. Was the universe created or was it always here?

[00:07:32]>> Mhm.

[00:07:33]>> And the only way to answer this is through science. We don't have the answer yet.

[00:07:37]>> Suggested answer. The big bang suggests that it wasn't always here.

[00:07:40]>> Not at all. Not at all.

[00:07:41]>> Not at all. The big bang here are two alternative. Let me let me say the three possibilities or three of the possibilities. One is that 10 or 15 billion years ago or whatever it is, the universe was made from nothing. Right?

[00:07:55]Number two, that 10 or 15 billion years ago, the latest in an infinite sequence of expansions and contractions of the universe occurred.

[00:08:05]>> Mhm. Third possibility that 15 billion years ago our universe was created from nothing one of an infinite number of universes that are spontaneously forming and destroying.

[00:08:20]>> Right? Okay. Now let me ask you something. Does the idea I admit that the idea of God is mindboggling. But do you not admit that the idea of infinity is more mind-boggling?

[00:08:30]>> Not more.

[00:08:30]>> Not more.

[00:08:30]>> There is no limit to the number of universes. What does that mean?

[00:08:34]>> What does God mean? What does it mean to make something from I I gave it's mindboggling either way. Let's admit it.

[00:08:39]>> Okay, let's admit it.

[00:08:40]>> So, where do you think the evidence leads? You look at a baby born and you say, "Ah, mother nature is amazing." Or, you know, there might be a god. Which is the more >> that your more spontaneous response?

[00:08:51]>> Which is the more superficial and sentimental answer? Which is the deeper answer?

[00:08:56]>> There a lot of question the sentimental and deeper may be the same.

[00:08:59]>> They may not be.

[00:09:00]>> That's correct.

[00:09:02]S sentimental is a danger because sentimental sentimental can lead you into other direction. But anyway, we don't decide on where the baby comes from by how it feels to have a baby.

[00:09:14]I've had five. I mean, not in that sense, but in that sense, >> I've had five and I think it's great.

[00:09:20]And I never had for a moment the thought God intervened to make this baby. Let me ask you a question about that. By the way, if God is omnipotent and omniscient, >> yes, >> why is it necessary for God to be meddling in the universe after he made it? Why did he make it right in the first place so it would go in the direction he wanted?

[00:09:39]>> Because there would be no need for us then. If the world were perfect, then we could not exist because we couldn't have no freedom of choice to do bad.

[00:09:46]>> We couldn't choose anything imperfect.

[00:09:48]>> This is a very egocentric point of view that the point of the world is so that we will do good or bad.

[00:09:54]>> That's right. Let me let me tell you a fact.

[00:09:56]>> Without humanity, I don't think there's a point to the universe.

[00:09:58]>> Let me now argue about that.

[00:10:02]>> A lot of people like that idea, right?

[00:10:04]It's satisfying. We're No way. Let me make a remark.

[00:10:09]>> It's satisfying. We're at the center.

[00:10:11]We're important. We're the reason the universe was made. Feels good. Right now, let's think of where we are. We live on a tiny world in a solar system which has about 70 or 80 big worlds going around the sun, which is an obscure star in an obscure spiral arm of a humdrum galaxy that contains 400 billion stars. And this Milky Way galaxy is one of about a 100 billion galaxies.

[00:10:51]Now imagine that number of places. And in this obscure galaxy, in that tiny star, that little planet, those guys think they're the center of the universe. It's hilarious.

[00:11:03]>> It's not hilarious. It just shows size isn't important. We'll be back in a minute with more. And it's >> not a question of size. Question of multiplicity.

[00:11:12]>> Okay.

[00:11:14]Um, my family.

[00:11:17]>> Yeah, I'm from Sirius. The star Sirius.

[00:11:20]>> Things we don't know about yet. Things that Carl Sean will tell us about.

[00:11:25]>> Why is it that man is still not evolving into a more perfect race? Why does it seem like we're actually declining instead of inclining?

[00:11:37]>> You have to bear in mind, I don't understand why that question received applause. You you have to bear in mind >> people are pessimistic about humanity.

[00:11:44]Really that is the reason and it's sad.

[00:11:45]>> You have to bear in mind this time scale of evolution the the average lifetime of a mamalian species is a few million years.

[00:11:55]We live in our personal lives only a few decades. There's a discordance between what we see personally and what the history of our species are. And by the way and by the way by the way evolution is not always an upward direction.

[00:12:10]Evolution goes in all sorts of directions, including species that become less fit and become extinct. Most species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct. Extinction.

[00:12:21]>> What is your answer? What is your answer to those who say we have so many needs on Earth and specifically in our society? We shouldn't spend billions and billions on on scientific research.

[00:12:31]>> I would say that there are short-term problems and there are long-term problems. And if you eat the seed corn, you're just as dead as if you shot yourself.

[00:12:38]>> Fair enough. Yes, please.

[00:12:40]>> Dr. Seagan, how do you how would you explain the large markings in the fields and do you think maybe those were caused by spaceships?

[00:12:47]>> You're talking about crop circles?

[00:12:49]>> Yeah, >> this is well understood.

[00:12:51]>> Crop circles are a hoax. There were two guys in a pub in Wiltshire in southern England who said, "I've had enough of this UFO stuff. Let's really show them up. Let's make a big circle in the wheat and see what happens." And what happened, let me spend just a second on this. What happened is people said, "Oh, UFOs have landed." So then they they thought, "Okay, this is too too easy.

[00:13:18]Let's make something more complicated."

[00:13:20]And they did that. And then not only did people say UFOs have landed, they said, "This is too complex for human beings ever to have made. This must be extraterrestrials for sure."

[00:13:29]>> And for 15 years, no one caught on. And then they confessed. And you see, you have heard about it being extraterrestrials. You never heard about the two guys who did it, who confessed, and that says something about the way the media work. Hey, I just did a show on that. You're absolutely right.

[00:13:50]Religion keeps trying to make humans the center of everything. That is the problem. Science gives us a much colder answer. Earth is one small planet around one ordinary star, inside one galaxy among billions. NASA estimates the universe is about 13.8 billion years old and science still does not claim to know what happened before the earliest moments of cosmic expansion.

[00:14:15]That honesty matters. Religion fills the unknown with God, then acts like the mystery has been solved. Christianity even places earth, humans, sin, and salvation at the center of the story.

[00:14:29]But the scale of the universe makes that claim look more emotional than factual >> to this. I hate to read too much, but this is it's almost like they've been reading your book. This is from the New York Times for Friday, uh, May 24.

[00:14:42]Americans flunk science. A study finds less than half of all American adults understand that the Earth orbits the Sun yearly, according to a basic science survey. Nevertheless, there's enthusiasm for research, except in some fields like genetic engineering and nuclear power that are viewed with suspicion. Only about 25% of American adults get passing grades in a National Science Foundation survey of what people know about basic science and economics. I mean, this is singing your song, isn't it?

[00:15:12]>> Well, it's certainly what I'm talking about in in the demon haunted world. My my feeling, Charlie, is that um it's it's not that um pseudocience and superstition and new age so-called beliefs and fundamentalist zealatry are something new. They've been with us for as long as we've been we've been human.

[00:15:34]>> But we live in an age based on science and technology with formidable technological powers. Science and technology are propelling us forward at accelerating rates.

[00:15:46]>> That's right. And if we don't understand it, by we, I mean the general public. If it's something that, oh, I'm not good at that. I don't know anything about it.

[00:15:54]Then who is making all the decisions about science and technology that uh are going to determine what kind of future our children live in? Just uh some members of Congress. But there's no more than a handful of members of Congress with any background in science at all.

[00:16:09]And the Republican Congress has just abolished its own office of technology assessment. The organization that gave them bipartisan competent advice on science and technology. They say we don't want to know. Don't tell us about science.

[00:16:23]>> Surprising because Genrich is genuinely interested I think in these kinds of things as a you know out of his own intellectual curiosity. Does the president still have a science adviser?

[00:16:32]>> Uh he does. He does. John Gibbons and and the vice president uh is scientific well known scientifically a science maven.

[00:16:40]>> I mean you you blast them all creationist uh Christian scientists who you say would rather allow their children uh to suffer uh than give them insulin or antibiotics. Uh astrologers come in for particular scorn on your part.

[00:16:56]>> Well, I would say scorn just derision derision.

[00:17:00]a more generous version of this corn.

[00:17:03]>> But what's the danger of all this? I mean, you know, this is not the thing that >> there's two kinds of dangers. One is what I just talked about that we've arranged a society based on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology.

[00:17:18]And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it? And the second reason that I'm I'm worried about this is that science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.

[00:17:49]If if we are not able to ask skeptical question to interrogate those who tell us that something is true to be skeptical of those in authority then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan political or religious who comes amling along it. It's a thing that Jefferson lay great stress on. It wasn't enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a in a constitution or a bill of rights. The people had to be educated and they had to practice their skepticism and their education.

[00:18:25]Otherwise, we don't run the government.

[00:18:28]The government runs us. Jefferson was amazing in his devotion to science.

[00:18:34]Think of Jefferson as this man who was literate and who was a passionate def uh articulator of freedom.

[00:18:42]>> But if you go to Montichello >> Exactly.

[00:18:44]>> What you appreciate is he was at heart a scientist, a botonist, an architectologist.

[00:18:50]geologist and and if you Marweather Lewis as we know know from Steven Ambrose, >> you know, he wanted him to go out and do experimentations and explore and be skeptical and find answers to passages and explore the West.

[00:19:06]>> Exactly. Right. And there was also an economic grail there if the Northwest Passage was found. Uh Jefferson said that uh he was at heart a scientist that he would have loved to have been a scientist but there were certain events happening in America that called to him and so he devoted his life to that kind of politics >> indeed.

[00:19:29]>> So that generations later people could be scientists.

[00:19:34]>> Yeah. Have we the point is made and maybe by you you know is it when's the last time we had a president who made a speech about science you know I mean it made I say that you know >> uh it is this notion that that science is of not of great interest to us in some sense that that somehow we don't want to learn. You see people read the stock market quotations and financial pages. Look how complex that is and because they know the direct connection to their own. There's a motivation but they're capable. Large numbers of people are able to look at sports statistics. Look how many people can do that.

[00:20:12]>> Understanding science is not more difficult than that. It doesn't involve greater intellectual activities. But the the thing about science is first of all it's after the way the universe really is and not what makes us feel good. And a lot of the competing doctrines are after what feels good and not what what's >> okay. Okay. But you got to make I'm not sure you'll go this far with me, but I mean there's a lot of that that is about feeling good and there's a lot of that that's about hocus pocus. But at the same time there are millions of people who understand science does not prove religion because religion is faithbased and therefore you should not deny the value of it because it is faithbased and not scientific.

[00:20:59]>> But let's but let's let's look a little more deeply into that.

[00:21:02]>> What is faith? It is belief in the absence of evidence. Now, I don't propose to tell anybody what to believe, but for me, believing when there's no compelling evidence is a mistake. The idea is to withhold belief until there is compelling evidence. And if the universe does not comply with our predispositions, okay, then we have the wrenching obligation to accommodate to the way the universe is. you I mean but I mean you so you step forward to say I deny all religion because I can't see it proved scientifically >> the value of religious experience and the value of of of of reaching for higher experiences >> let me say >> religion deals with history with poetry with great literature with ethics with morals including the morality of uh treating being compassionately the least fortunate among us. All of these are things that I endorse wholeheartedly.

[00:22:08]Where religion gets into trouble is in those cases that it pretends to know something about science. The science in the Bible, for example, was acquired by the Jews from the Babylonians during the Babylonian captivity of 600 BC. That was the best science on the planet then. But we've learned something since then.

[00:22:30]Roman Catholicism, uh, reformed Judaism, most of the mainstream Protestant denominations have no difficulty with, uh, the idea that humans have evolved from other creatures, that uh, the earth is 4.6 billion years old, with the big bang. They don't have any trouble with that. The trouble comes with people who are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is dictated by the creator of the universe to an unairring stenographer >> and so therefore they >> and and has no metaphor or allegory.

[00:23:08]>> Faith is often presented like a virtue but in plain terms faith means believing without enough evidence.

[00:23:14]That is exactly why religion becomes dangerous when it starts making claims about science, medicine or the origin of life. Science tests ideas, corrects mistakes and changes when the evidence changes.

[00:23:29]Religion protects old claims because people are emotionally attached to them.

[00:23:34]The Bible reflects the ancient world that produced it. It does not explain genetics, evolution, germs, galaxies, or the age of Earth. When Christianity tries to override science with faith, it asks people to trust ancient certainty over modern evidence.

[00:23:50]>> And from there, they make their political and economic choices >> and social choices >> and scientific >> and scientific choices and scientific.

[00:23:57]And that's part of your problem with that idea. It is that because for the wrong reasons, we make the wrong choices about science.

[00:24:04]>> That's right. So, who is more humble?

[00:24:07]the scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved in the writing of this book.

[00:24:27]>> Okay. Okay. I mean, I accept that, but I also the argument will be made by many is that, you know, you don't have to whether whether an a specific scientific act took place as described by some some biblical writer is not is is not at the heart of the religious faith and the religious experience.

[00:24:44]>> Some people agree with you and some people don't. Some people think that every jot and tit in the Bible is essential. You throw one thing away to allegory or metaphor, then it's up to everybody to make their own decision.

[00:24:57]>> Then how are we this a lot of this has to do with science in the United States.

[00:25:02]Are we different than other nations?

[00:25:05]>> Absolutely not. You can see this worldwide.

[00:25:08]Uh in India there's a a madness about astrology. In Britain it's ghosts. In Germany, it's rays coming up from the earth that can only be detected by dowsers. U every country uh has its its own specialties. We we seem to be fascinated by UFOs right now.

[00:25:29]>> But one thing, >> what is that? Before you leave UFOs, tell me about you and Professor Mack.

[00:25:34]>> John Mack is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard who I've known for many years.

[00:25:39]Um, we uh were arrested together at the Nevada nuclear test site protesting US testing in the face of a Soviet moratorum on testing. Um, and many years ago he asked me what what is there in this UFO business? Is there anything to it? And I said absolutely nothing except of course for a psychiatrist. He is a psychiatrist. Well, he looked into it and uh decided that uh there was so much emotional energy in the reports of people who claimed to be abducted that uh it couldn't possibly be some psychological aberration that it had to be true. He believed his patience. I do not believe his patience. Many of these stories are uh about waking up from a deep sleep and finding your bed surrounded by three or four short doer gray and sexually obsessed beings.

[00:26:41]>> Yeah.

[00:26:41]>> Who then take you to their spaceship after they slither you through their through your wall and perform a variety of objectionable sexual experiments. But here we have >> Dr. Carl Sean.

[00:26:57]>> Mhm.

[00:26:58]>> Uh astronomer versus Dr. John No, I mean Dr. What's his first name?

[00:27:04]>> John Mac.

[00:27:05]>> Uh MD.

[00:27:07]>> No question.

[00:27:09]So what's the problem?

[00:27:11]>> How could he?

[00:27:13]>> How could how can scientists disagree?

[00:27:14]>> He's a scientist. Is that what you're asking?

[00:27:15]>> No, I'm asking how could I mean what do you think of this man coming to these? I think he is not using the scientific method in approaching his issue.

[00:27:24]>> And when you constantly I mean I assume you come at him with both barrels in conversation >> and and in the demon world >> and he says >> he says I don't appreciate the emotional force you don't >> of of uh of these these reports but many people awaken from a nightmare with profound emotional force. That doesn't mean that the nightmare is true. It means something went on inside our head.

[00:27:51]>> You were making a point before I jumped to John Mack.

[00:27:53]>> Oh yeah. What I wanted to say is u uh going back to the question of uh of adequate evidence on something that's emotionally really uh >> really pulling you. Um I uh I lost both my parents about 12 or 15 years ago and u I had a great relationship with them.

[00:28:13]I really miss them. I would love to believe that their spirits were around somewhere and I'd give almost anything to uh spend five minutes a year with them.

[00:28:27]>> Do you hear their voices ever?

[00:28:28]>> Uh sometimes, but uh six or eight times since their death, I've heard Carl just in the voice of my father or my mother.

[00:28:39]Now, I don't think that means that they're in the next room. I think it means that they're in your >> I've had an auditory hallucination. I I was with them so long I heard their voices so often. Why shouldn't I be able to make a vivid recollection of it?

[00:28:53]>> Here's what's interesting about this for me. I You won't see this, but I'll throw it at you anyway. You convinced me a long time ago that it was arrogant for me or for anyone else to believe that there wasn't some life outside of our >> to exclude the possibility >> to exclude the possibility was was was to was an arrogance of intellect that we should not assume.

[00:29:18]>> You couldn't prove it. You didn't know it was there. But the arrogance, >> right? We don't know if it was there. We don't know if it's not there. Let's look.

[00:29:26]And if you take that, >> why can't you say there's a lot we don't know?

[00:29:32]>> There's a lot of power there that we don't a lot we don't know.

[00:29:34]>> You know, it's what I believe about.

[00:29:36]>> But that doesn't mean that every every fraudulent claim has to be accepted.

[00:29:45]We we demand the most rigorous standards of evidence, especially on what's important to us. So if some guy comes up to me in a channeler or a medium and I can put you in touch with your parents, >> well because I want so terribly to to believe that, >> yeah, >> I know I have to reach in for added reserves of skepticism because I'm likely to be fooled and and uh much more minor to have my money taken.

[00:30:13]>> What was it? Jay-Z Knight was >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. She she has a guy named Ramtha who's >> 10,000 years older.

[00:30:20]>> 35.

[00:30:21]>> 35. Yeah.

[00:30:23]>> Um, and uh, he tells you lots of things, but nothing about what life was like 35,000 years ago.

[00:30:29]>> Shirley Mlan believes >> uh, Shirley Mlan believes that Ramtha was her brother.

[00:30:36]>> Uh, things like the Loch Ness monster and big all that >> again. Is is it a photograph? Oh, fakes.

[00:30:45]I mean, the most famous photograph is now been shown to be a fake, but could there be a uh unknown mammal or even reptile of large dimensions swimming in an Irish in a Scottish lake? Sure, there could that we don't know about? Sure, there could. Who says no, >> but nobody.

[00:31:04]>> But the evidence does not support it.

[00:31:07]Does not demonstrate it. So, do we say, "Oh, ridiculous." No, we don't do that.

[00:31:12]we say unproved, which is a Scottish verdict.

[00:31:17]>> Some reviewers differ with your conclusions on this point that you seem to say it's growing this kind of pseudocience.

[00:31:26]>> Sorry to interrupt. I I I don't we we've this is part of being human. Humans have had this way of magical thinking through all of our history. The problem is that today the technology has reached formidable maybe even awesome proportions and so the dangers of thinking this way >> are larger not that this is a new kind of thinking you are living with myo dysplasia or I have been >> you have been it's in remission or you have what >> well you know with with diseases of this sort and all cancers cancer of the bone marrow.

[00:32:05]>> It it's mild displasia is not exactly cancer of the bone marrow, but if untreated, it inevitably leads to leukemia. Um, and the trouble with all these diseases is you never know that you've got every last cell. Um, you can only detect down to a certain level, but down to the level that anybody can detect in terms of how I feel and my stamina and all that, it seems to be gone. And I'm very lucky >> because you had a sister who >> enabled you to have a bone marrow transplant.

[00:32:38]>> That's one. And also the enormous advances in scientific uh in medical science in just the last few years. If I had had this thing five or 10 years ago, I would be dead sure as shooting. And then finally, the love and support of my family. All of those have played a central role. So you're optimistic. I'm very optimistic or at least very hopeful >> and just share with us because of your your sense of of language and and and your sense of understanding and and being reflective and introspective what this what do you think about and what does it do for you to >> I didn't have any near death say to you I didn't have any near-death experiences I didn't have a religious conversion but I >> you thought about what it would be like to die >> certainly and what it would be like for my my family and and uh I didn't much think about what it would be like for me because I don't think it's likely there's anything that you think about after you're dead.

[00:33:38]>> Yeah. Long dreamless sleep. I'd love to believe the opposite, but I don't know of any evidence. But one thing, >> faith, Carl, faith. One thing that it has done is to enhance my uh sense of appreciation for the the beauty of life uh and of the universe and the the sheer joy of being alive. You had a healthy portion of that before this. But even you it happens to >> Oh, there's no question.

[00:34:09]>> No question. every moment, every every inanimate object to say nothing of of the exquisite complexity of of living beings. Uh yeah, you imagine missing it all and suddenly it's so much more precious. May you live a long time.

[00:34:28]Thank you very much. Thank you.

[00:34:29]Pleasure.

[00:34:30]>> Religion often wins people through emotion, especially grief and fear of death. That does not make it true.

[00:34:37]People can hear the voice of someone they lost, feel their presence, or desperately want an afterlife to be real. Psychology can explain that as memory, longing, and the brain recreating familiar patterns.

[00:34:50]Strong feelings are not evidence. That matters because Christianity builds its biggest promise on life after death, heaven, and reunion with loved ones. But wanting something to be true does not prove it. The honest answer is simple.

[00:35:05]If there is no strong evidence, we should not pretend certainty.

[00:35:08]>> My question is given all these demotions, what is your personal religion? Or do you is there any type of God to you?

[00:35:19]Like is there a purpose given that we're just sitting on this speck in the middle of this sea of stars?

[00:35:28]Now, I don't want to duck any questions, and I'm not going to duck this one, even though I have uh high religious personages who are close friends of mine in this room. Um, but let me ask you, what do you mean when you use the word God?

[00:35:50]Well, I guess what my question it's it's like is there a purpose for I mean given all these demotions, why don't we just blow ourselves up?

[00:35:59]>> Why don't we?

[00:35:59]>> Yeah. What what is what is our purpose?

[00:36:01]I mean, >> let me turn the question around. If we do blow ourselves up, does that disprove the existence of God?

[00:36:09]>> No, I guess not.

[00:36:13]>> I mean, it'll be a little late to make the discovery, but still.

[00:36:16]>> Yeah. I I guess what I what I'm asking is since a as we as we kind of make God almost go away in this a as as he through these demotions and I I don't mean he because who knows what God is. But um >> but still saying it makes it sort of icky, doesn't it?

[00:36:40]>> Yeah. Yeah. It's it's tough.

[00:36:42]>> We like it to be a he, don't we?

[00:36:44]>> Yeah. We've been trained to think of it as a he.

[00:36:49]Um it's it seems that through the ages we have humans have created a mythological framework that has always involves some kind of often involves some kind of higher spiritual powers. And as >> every human culture has done that, >> as that goes away, as we know more and more that and it seems harder and harder to prove that anything might exist like that, where does that leave us? on our own, which to my mind is much more responsible than hoping >> that someone will save us from ourselves so we don't have to make our best efforts to do it oursself.

[00:37:39]And if we're wrong and there is someone who steps in and saves us, okay, that's all right.

[00:37:46]I'm for that. But we, you know, hedged our bets.

[00:37:49]>> Mhm.

[00:37:49]>> It's Pascal's bargain run backwards.

[00:37:53]Um, I I'll say another word.

[00:37:57]The word God covers an enormous range of different ideas, and you recognize that in the way you phrase the question.

[00:38:05]running from an outsized light-skinned male with a long white beard sitting in a throne in the sky and tallying the fall of every sparrow for which there is no evidence to my mind if anybody has some I sure would like to see it um to the kind of god that Einstein or Spinosa talked about which is very close to the sum total of the laws of the universe Now, it would be crazy to deny that there are laws in the universe. And if that's what you want to call God, then of course God exists.

[00:38:43]And there are all sorts of other nuances. There is, for example, the deest God that many of the founding fathers of this country believed in, although it is a secret whose name may not be spoken in some circles.

[00:38:59]a uh a do nothing king. The god who creates the universe and then retires and to whom praying to is sort of pointless. He's not here. He went somewhere else. He had other things to do. Now that's also a god. So when you say do you believe in god? If I say yes or if I say no, you have learned absolutely nothing. I guess I'm asking you to define yours if you have one.

[00:39:30]>> But why would we use a word so ambiguous that means so many different things?

[00:39:36]>> Gives you freedom to define it.

[00:39:38]>> It gives you freedom to seem to agree with someone else with whom you do not agree.

[00:39:46]It covers over differences.

[00:39:50]It makes for social lubrication.

[00:39:53]But it is not an aid to truth in my view and therefore I think we need much sharper language when we ask these questions. Sorry to take so long in answering this but this is a important issue.

[00:40:09]>> The word God is often kept vague on purpose. When religion needs comfort, God becomes love. When it needs authority, God becomes a ruler. When science pushes back, God suddenly becomes the laws of the universe. That is not proof. That is moving the definition whenever the old one becomes harder to defend. Christianity makes specific claims. A personal God, prayer, miracles, heaven, judgment, and divine intervention. Those claims need evidence. Calling the universe God does not rescue Christianity. It only hides the fact that the personal god people pray to has never been demonstrated >> with a science fiction writer and we were talking about being out at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and so forth.

[00:40:56]>> Well, what's new in space, Carl? See, I like to condense the subject down real quickly and don't start off too big.

[00:41:05]>> Yeah, I know. I think I think I saw a comment of yours. I don't know there was in Time or Newsweek somebody had asked you about u the pictures that are out now.

[00:41:12]Star Wars, Close Encounters, and so forth, and they ask you what you thought, and you thought that they should be, not that you didn't say they were entertaining, but you thought maybe they should deal a little closer with scientific facts.

[00:41:24]>> Yeah. My my sense of them is that sort of the 11-year-old in me loved them, but uh they they could have made a better effort to to do things right. A lot of lot of different aspects of things.

[00:41:38]There's a Star Wars starts out saying it's on some other galaxy, >> right?

[00:41:44]>> And then you see there's people and uh scene starting in scene one, there's a there's a problem because human beings are the result of a unique evolutionary sequence based upon so many individually unlikely random events on the earth. In fact, I think most evolutionary biologists would agree that if you started the earth out again and just let those random factors operate, you might wind up with beings that are as smart as us and as ethical and artistic and all the rest, but they would not be human beings. That's for the Earth. So, in another planet, different environment.

[00:42:16]>> Yeah.

[00:42:16]>> Very unlikely to have human beings. Are you saying on another galaxy um it's not possible that there could be >> it's extremely unlikely that uh there would be creatures as similar to us as uh as the dominant ones in Star Wars and a whole bunch of other things. They're all white. The skin of all the humans in uh in Star Wars, oddly enough is sort of like like this, >> right?

[00:42:38]>> And uh not even the other colors represented on the earth are present, much less greens and blues and purples and oranges. They did have a scene in Star Wars with a lot of strange characters.

[00:42:49]>> Yeah. But none of them seemed to be in charge of the galaxy. Everybody in charge of the galaxy seemed to look like us.

[00:42:56]>> And I I thought there was a large amount of human chauvinism. And it also I felt very bad that at the end the Wookie didn't get a medal also. You know, all the people got medals and the Wookie who had been in there fighting all the time, he didn't get any medal. And I thought that was an example of anti-Wookie discrimination.

[00:43:13]You're dissecting this scientifically, Carl, taking all the fun out of it for me.

[00:43:18]>> Well, that's it. I mean, you can you can view these pictures entirely uncritically.

[00:43:21]>> Well, that's really what it was. It was a it was a shootout, wasn't it? A western and outer space, good guys versus the bad guys.

[00:43:27]>> Well, my sense is that every picture which touches on science could do that and at the same time just a little more effort to get the science right.

[00:43:35]>> I remember one comment you made was about um illusion to speed when it really had to do with distance.

[00:43:42]>> Yeah. Uh that's right the par solo that's right talked about uh getting to a certain place in uh only so many parsects of time >> or speed when it's unit when it's unit of distance it's like uh saying that uh from here to San Diego is 30 miles an hour it just doesn't mean anything.

[00:44:03]>> Yeah.

[00:44:05]>> But how many people were sitting there that figured that out during the picture? All you got to do is hire one impoverished graduate student and uh get all the facts right.

[00:44:15]>> Uh I when Ray Bradbury was on here last night and I I think I've asked you this question before because if I remember in Star Wars they got up and they got in the spaceship and they were beyond the speed of light. Right.

[00:44:25]>> Yep.

[00:44:25]>> Now as far as I guess science knows that is supposed to be the finite limit of velocity is the speed of light and nothing can go faster than that. And yet in this picture they were going faster than that. And I asked Ray, I said, "What would happen?" I think I ask you the same question. If they found something that was beyond the speed of light, how wouldn't that change all of the whole >> physical conception of what's going on?

[00:44:52]>> A lot of people are sort of annoyed that physicists should lay any constraints on what we could do in the future. But uh I think the way to look at it is uh something like this. This is all due to Einstein. I mean hasn't related his lap all the people who are annoyed at not being able to travel faster than the speed of light.

[00:45:08]>> Um it's simply this. If no material object can travel at or beyond the speed of light, then there's a great deal of things in the world that are understandable quantitatively in detail.

[00:45:19]The universe makes sense. If it were possible to travel faster than the speed of light, then all of that that comprehensibility breaks down and there are a lot of awkward things that can happen such as uh effects preceding causes. Uh if you see what I mean, the light goes on and then you walk to the switch to turn it. And >> there wasn't there a famous poem about that after Einstein's there was a young lady from Bright >> named Bright who could travel much faster than light. She left >> set out one way, one day in a relative way and returned the preceding night.

[00:45:53]>> Right. That's the one. That was little Carl Sean reciting.

[00:45:58]>> And now let's hear our next student.

[00:46:00]>> Very good. Carl, you may take your seat.

[00:46:02]We'll be right back after this and talk about >> a lot of religious thinking has the same problem as bad science fiction. It makes the universe look too much like us.

[00:46:12]Christianity says the creator of everything cares deeply about one species on one planet in one corner of space. But evolution shows humans came from a long chain of local accidents, mutations, extinctions, and natural selection on Earth. If life exists elsewhere, there is no reason to assume it would look like us, think like us, or share our religious stories. That weakens the Christian claim that humanity is the main point of creation.

[00:46:40]Science keeps pushing us away from human- centered myths and toward reality.

[00:46:45]>> We're talking about Star Wars. During the commercial, I said, "You realize Star Wars made over $200 million?" And he said, "You can go to a planet for $200 million, right?"

[00:46:53]>> It's true. That's what it cost. And see it live, right?

[00:46:56]>> Unless you go coach, you >> That's right. And then you you get that one little trade dinners and it's lousy.

[00:47:03]Um, we start talking, we've talked about this before, but it's the fascination is still mindboggling. You're involved now with looking for extraterrestrial intelligence, right? What a committee.

[00:47:13]How do you go about looking for?

[00:47:16]>> Well, there there are a number of popular ideas.

[00:47:20]>> You know it. I mean that they were maybe we couldn't comprehend what they were trying to tell us. Is that a possibility?

[00:47:27]>> Uh sure. But uh it's a little like this.

[00:47:29]If uh if you're an advanced civilization and you wish to communicate to a backward civilization, you talk slow and simple and >> and obviously we would be the backward civilization because we do not have that capability of doing >> we just emerged. Our technology just barely has come to the point where we're able to send spacecraft to probe in a halting and tenative way the nearby planets and in which we're able to construct large radio telescopes to see if anyone is sending us a message. And it's this latter end of things that uh for the first time is now being funded at a quite low level but the first operational program that uh uh NASA has funded is uh in the present the present budget and uh the idea is simply to look at a lot of stars uh or carve up the sky into little pieces and look at each piece and see if there's a message coming to us. Now >> even the nearest one would be >> well near a star is a little more than four light years away. So if we got a message today it left that star four years ago.

[00:48:34]>> But you know we ought to be used to that kind of idea. You look at the sun you're not seeing it now. You're seeing it 8 minutes ago because it took 8 minutes for light to travel at the speed of light from the sun >> to the earth.

[00:48:46]>> Question of how you would recognize a signal as intelligent. Um suppose you heard something which said beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep >> and went through the first 30 or so prime numbers.

[00:49:00]>> That's an answering service.

[00:49:03]>> In other words, you go through the the numbers.

[00:49:05]>> Yeah. And and uh there's no natural process which you know would say 1 2 3 5 7 11 131 17 uh which are the once I missed one the first few prime numbers.

[00:49:16]And so you would say, well, look, here's somebody who for some reason is into prime numbers. Prime numbers is a number that can only be divided by one in itself, right?

[00:49:23]>> Here, here's somebody who's into prime numbers. They've attracted our attention. Uh there must be more to it than just prime numbers. And then you would look more closely. That's the sort of >> So you think you would get would be in some kind of mathematical >> Well, it would it would be so regular, >> which is a universal type of >> Yeah. that you could only say the only possibility would be that it was intelligent and then you would look for the more detailed message uh either at faster time resolution or at some adjacent frequency or something of that sort. The remarkable thing is that uh for all of the history of mankind people have wondered about intelligence elsewhere. I think it's in religion and philosophy legends but uh this is the first time that we have the competence and ability to actually do such a such a search and we're just beginning. Are we sending out from here some kind of outside of the thing that you the plaque that the you put on the mariner or pioneer >> pioneer and then the Voyager record which we >> and the record are we sending any type of radio signals?

[00:50:20]>> Not really. There there was one sort of ceremonial demonstration at the resurfacing of the Arosibo Observatory in 1974.

[00:50:30]A signal was sent by Frank Drake who's getting married in two days. I thought it might um but to a place that's 24,000 light years away. It's not a you know so if there was an answer it'll be in 48,000 years. Don't don't hold your breath.

[00:50:46]That was merely >> really being on hold isn't it?

[00:50:48]>> Wow.

[00:50:49]>> It was merely to demonstrate that it could be done but but uh in general radio astronomers have not sent out just have listened but there are signals that are sent out uh including this program.

[00:51:00]I was going to just exactly what I was saying. Is it true that all shows, television, radio shows that are sent out travel forever through the void?

[00:51:08]>> Yep, they do.

[00:51:09]>> They do not diminish in >> They do. They diminish by what's called the inverse square law. So goes twice as far, it's a quarter as intense.

[00:51:16]>> But somebody with a receiver >> with a powerful receiving antenna and >> so all the television shows and radio shows have been broadcast.

[00:51:23]>> Well, yeah. The earth turns so they get jumbled up. So >> are being are still traveling through the cosmos.

[00:51:28]>> So it's a little bit like this. You imagine here's the Earth and around it is a kind of spherical wavefront traveling at the speed of light. It's now about 30 light years away from the Earth because the first large scale commercial television was 30 years ago.

[00:51:44]And in there is the television programs of the late 40s. Howdy, Dudy, Milton Burl, the Army McCarthy hearings and other signs of high intelligence on the planet Earth.

[00:51:56]So somebody could be seeing Burl right now walking around on the sides of his feet 30 30 like in a dress >> and judging us >> and judging us saying well og I think we got troubles down there. Uh >> I just hope they wait till Sesame Street arrives it'll save us.

[00:52:14]>> That's fascinating the idea that goes out there. The the actual situation is that even if the programs could not themselves be made out, there's no question that uh a low form of intelligent life on the earth could be deduced in that way.

[00:52:28]>> If you had to make what I guess a calculated guess or theorize when do you think it would be if you think it it would happen? When would it happen? Within period of 10 years, 20, 50 years?

[00:52:41]>> See, it depends on how much of an effort we make. If we make no effort, the possibility of detecting such signals is small. If we make a big effort, then the probability goes up and nobody knows to what.

[00:52:51]>> Now people are going to ask you, you say because it this could cost money. You say, okay, you hear from somebody 10 light years away. But by the time you transmit back and forth, what is the value of that? I mean, if you have to sit around and wait for 50 years >> or a hundred years to get an answer, >> there's lot.

[00:53:10]>> They're saying why? What are you talking about? 100 years from now, who in the hell is going to care? We're going to be gone.

[00:53:15]>> Well, there's a lot lot of answers to that. It's a good question, but uh it's one worth pondering. For one thing, uh there's a lot of uh information in human society which goes only one way. Um Socrates talks to us. We don't talk to Socrates. That is that's what books are about. People who are dead convey their wisdom to us.

[00:53:34]>> So, somebody could transmit the knowledge of another planet and just send the direct knowledge.

[00:53:38]>> Think of that. Think of a civilization on a different planet evolved under quite different circumstances than here.

[00:53:45]What is their art like? Their music, their science, their technology, their politics. What have they learned? Have they been in contact with still other civilizations? Do they have a repository of such information? Think of how we'd be able to view ourselves in a new way suddenly to have a new perspective.

[00:54:02]There's another aspect to it too and that is we are at a very dangerous moment in human history. We have weapons of mass destruction. We are in the process of inadvertently altering our climate and exhaustion of fossil fuels and mineral all kinds of problems which come with technology. We are not certain that we will be able to survive this period of what I like to call technological adolescence. Were we to receive a message from somewhere else, it would show that it's possible to survive this kind of period. And that's a useful bit of information to have.

[00:54:34]>> Yeah. Wouldn't that be something? In other words, somebody has solved a particular problem we are still wrestling with.

[00:54:39]>> It's good to know that the problem could be solved. I think it would be very very useful information >> or some of the medical breakthroughs, some way to end wars or something like that.

[00:54:47]>> Maybe medical breakthroughs are tougher because I suspect our physiology would be quite different from that of any other creatures if there are some. Also, it's possible that you'd make such a search and the results would be negative. Uh that's perfectly possible.

[00:55:00]You don't want to prejudge the outcome.

[00:55:02]But it seems to me that's an important bit of information. Also, if it turns out that life, intelligent life is rare, that makes something particularly precious and valuable about life here.

[00:55:12]>> But isn't it true when you talk about 50 light years or 100 light years in astronomical terms, that is a minute distance.

[00:55:19]>> It's true.

[00:55:20]>> I mean, now you can get into thousands of light years and millions of light years.

[00:55:24]>> That's right. A lightyear is about 6 trillion miles. The distance to nearest star, as we said, is about four light years. The distance to the center of the Milky Way galaxy that we're a part of is 30,000 lighty years. The distance to the nearest galaxy is about 2 million lighty years. Fascinating book, The Dragons of Eden. And of course, you still got the cosmic connection.

[00:55:42]>> The search for life beyond Earth exposes a major weakness in religion. Science says, "Let's look, test, listen, and follow the evidence."

[00:55:52]Christianity starts with an answer and works backward. It says humans are specially made, spiritually central and watched by God. But the universe does not behave like it was built around us.

[00:56:05]We are a young species with nuclear weapons, climate problems, and a long record of violence. If intelligent life exists elsewhere, it would prove that meaning, morality, and survival do not need our religious story. The real question is not whether God will save us. It is whether humans can grow up before our own beliefs and technology destroy us. So here's the question. If science keeps explaining the universe through evidence, testing, and natural laws, why should anyone still accept religious claims that cannot be proven?

[00:56:38]Do you think belief in God is based on truth? Or is it something humans created to feel less alone in a massive universe?

[00:56:46]Comment your thoughts below. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for the next