Eric Weinstein: This makes scientists nervous…

should religious scientists live under a cloud of Suspicion and if their religion informs their science what are we to make of that is it contaminated and I think it's very important to recognize that there are multiple ways of being a scientist who happens to be religious um and I've learned this over time so I've been wrong on this topic and I've in coming into contact with higher quality scientists motivated by religion I've come to understand that there's a sub population that is very special and interesting and it's effectively a population of people who agreed to the rules of science they're not going to cheat on the rules of science because Jesus but they are going to use the idea of purpose and a personal relationship with God to give them courage to question things that are essentially unquestionable within the union of scientists that will get you thrown out of the Union of scientists very quickly as to your point so what we're talking about is we're talking about relatively self-destructive scientists focused on science who get their courage from religion and some of their bearings and their focus so for example um many of these people do not believe that there's a persuasive case for random mutation as being the major engine of selection they believe that it is simply improbable and they point to very often the wistar Conference held at the University of Pennsylvania at the Westar Institute and they they try to say this is a live issue where the books got closed prematurely and in fact it's the atheists according to them who were led into error because they were trying to close the books desperately so as not to leave any Gap large enough for a God to be smuggled into the Canon of science I am persuaded that the Richard Dawkins of the world who have contributed in my estimation hugely to modern evolutionary theory are so afraid of dealing with religious colleagues that they were eager to shut the books and not give many of these people their due and what's more the concept of intelligent design is a really interesting one now my brother who uh I think has just brilliant in terms of phrase and insights into evolutionary theory one of his Richard Dawkins I think wants to be remembered for the meme not not as the uh the the military the gift that gets sent over to Twitter but the meme and the extended phenotype is his greatest contributions and I think one of Brett's um better ideas is understanding perception-mediated selection it is very clear that when you have various breeds of dog they are intelligently designed when you produce a mule from a donkey and a horse that is not a natural animal you are producing an intelligently designed animal when you create Orchid varieties so in all of these cases you have to admit that darwinian theory has perception mediated selection the display of bowerbirds where they build these structures and Adorn them with blue in some cases perception mediated selection is a form of endogenous design which is intelligent because it is mediated through perception right it's a good place to study it because the words intelligent design have been made radioactive right and so what we're arguing about is should the should the books have been closed uh with the neo-darwinian synthesis or should they have been left open and I have to say I really think that without the religious scientists who are willing to destroy themselves in their careers but who still do not wish their love of a benevolent God or a fearsome Old Testament God or or a personal Jesus Christ I believe that many of those people are responsible for prying the Books open when Dawkins and Company wished to close them prematurely and I'm honestly sympathetic with the Dawkins perspective I cannot stand what I've called Jesus smuggling where you're in some very careful argument and you know you've set everything up and then somebody sort of says well I just believe that God's love pervades everything you're saying Oh Brother do I really have to listen to this um on the other hand going toe-to-toe with some of these religious scientists is an eye-opening experience because they are highly motivated not to got they know that they're Heretics and if you think about let's say um Galileo's heresy they are in some sense the Heretics of today and their reputations are burned at the stake they're not they're not Bruno in uh 1600s in the Square but I think that what we have to say is that many of these people are making points that atheists wish would go away what is the strongest or something give me a couple of uh arguments from design that appeal intellectually well I I'm particularly motivated by two systems uh in perception mediated selection one of which has to do with the lamp basilis muscle which uh produces a meaty lip that extends outside of its shell in clearly the form of a bait fish for bass and clear streams and when a bass swims by the muscle Wiggles this little piece of meat that is outside and it looks exactly like a fish in the Stream and the bass sometimes fall for it and sometimes see the ruse but if they fall for it the bass clamps down on the lip and all of the young of the muscle of the lampasillis muscle diffuse into the gills of the bass clamp on to get a blood meal and are taken away by the bass to distribute them in the Stream where the muscle doesn't have the ability to spread its young there's no way you can tell me that that isn't an intelligently designed system and it's the bass that is the intelligence and the bass is specifically designing its own fooling its own it's self-deception because Dumber bass fell for this trick before and smarter bass didn't fall for it and that pushes The Selective pressures in order to produce this now there's a closely related system that is not based on predation which is the bass system that is based on sexual reproduction and that has to do with the ofrees system in orchids so there's this one sort of clade of orchids um where no I talk about this a lot Darwin I asked the question one day what did Darwin do after Origin of Species like how do you follow yourself for Encore and he wrote this book which I couldn't believe the title which was on the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilized by insects and I thought that is the dumbest thing I can possibly imagine but Darwin being Darwin was incredibly smart or orchids are incredibly speciated and therefore they're a great system in which to study various mechanisms now if you read that Darwin does not understand why the ofrey's Orchid makes a replica of the species that pollinate it particularly the females with using its lowest of five petals I believe and producing incredible pheromones that are almost indistinguishable from the pheromones produced by a female who's receptive to mating and you watch Darwin trying to figure out why this would be and he can't figure out that this is actually a consequence of his own Theory because the theory is too new and it's just like one of the most beautiful vignettes and nobody talks about it and so what I would say is in that situation a male tries to copulate with the flower not realizing that it's not a female if it's fooled twice then the flowers don't have to give up an expense an energetically expensive nectar meal and they can they can be very cheap about it all they have to do is to offer an erzot's sexual experience and this is called pseudo copulation so in both of these systems if you look at the mirror Orchid for example it's a stunning replica with hair and the shininess on the back and this whole the whole thing you can tell what is fooling the pollinator now both of these are systems in which that which is dumber is fooling that which is smarter using the intelligence the bounded intelligence of the thing being fooled to intelligently design a trap and both of these are effectively parasites because they're stealing energy from the dupe and that energy is used to further the species in an antagonistic fashion um if I make that point and I say actually intelligent design is all through the animal kingdom it's just not what you think it's not a question of an initial Creator who's deciding you know then move mood or saying you're an aardvark you're a eucalyptus tree so endogenous intelligent design is essential to darwinian Theory within Brett's context of perception-mediated selection and then what do you get from the uh atheistic science communities like we will have no such discussion [Music] foreign

Channel: Dr Brian Keating

Views: 378,742

Keywords: Dr Brian Keating, into the impossible, brian keating, cosmology, Big Bang, Theory of Everything, Theories of Everything, Experimental cosmology, Brain Keating, Into the impossible Podcast, Science Podcast, Scientific interviews, exploring the universe, Universe Facts, Scientific podcasts, Universe exploration, Brain keating, Cosmology podcast, Eric Wienstein, Space, Science, Eric Weinstein, Chris Williamson, Modern Wisdom, Bret Weinstein, Bret wienstein

Id: evBmuCNFnxw

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 22 2023