[Music] [Music] and welcome once again to father Spitzer's universe as we can explore the intricacies of the Catholic faith with father Spitzer I'm Doug Keck here live from our EWTN studios in the heart of the mothership Irondale Alabama we begin our journey each week and it's only possible because you send us your emails and you send us questions on Facebook or you tweet us on Twitter and you can also go to father Spitzer's website majus center website.com and of course also we're talking through credible Catholic calm a new expression of fathers teaching apostolate that's available on the web that's what we've been working through today our topic evolution the Bible and science yes they all fit together and they all work and we're going to show you how that is and just a reminder that EWTN has been working all year to set up for our next EWTN family celebration check it out coming up in November a little later this year November 3rd in Jacksonville Florida you I hope to see all our friends there our media missionaries everybody else Christa fanuc Janet bang Kovac Williams is going to be there the one and only father Mitch Pacwa and a lot of other people from EWTN will be there we hope to see you a wonderful family celebration Mother Angelica always wanted EWTN to be seen as a family another member of our extended family is out on the west coast it's one of the only father Spitzer out at our Orange County California studios and as we kick things off once again father could you lead us in a prayer absolutely in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen Heavenly Father we give you thanks for the revelation that you have given us through the universe around us it's perfect mathematical symmetries its beauty it's its capacity to keep us fully alive and developing it's it's dimensions of nature that they call us to you we ask you Lord that as we perceive this through the eyes of science and through the eyes of aesthetics through the eyes of faith that we'll be able to see your hand blending together faith and reason in beauty we ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord amen and Mary seat of wisdom pray for us in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen okay so we're going to move off of near-death experiences and moving into questions related to evolution the Bible and science which is in one of your modules module three towards the end of our credible catholic credible catholic calm is where you can go and get that all of that information so we have some interesting questions that came in person wrote to us I think we decided to get this one on to a show because we got it a while ago and we wanted to make sure we were fair to everybody so we put this on for Chuck dear father a few months ago you commented about an ailing being who Satan would tempt into sin and that when the alien died he would be judged by God do you believe there are other beings in the vast universe is that a universal law that all life throughout the universe must die eventually god bless you please give an update to all of us on your eye condition which a lot of people have been asking about and I'm remiss in not asking you to give an update father well I'll do that at the end of the answer but first of all are there alien beings you have to differentiate between you know what do you mean by alien life right if you're really meaning an intelligent alien life let me hold off on that for just one second let me move first is there life somewhere else in the universe there could be life somewhere in the universe the Catholic Church is certainly open to that possibility we know that there probably are somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10 to the 11th that's quite a few tend to that's a 1 with 11 0 is after it 10 to the 11th what we call exoplanets that may be capable of sustaining a life-form now that's that's really liberally viewed right so those exoplanets that just means that they're likely earth in the its in the planets position away from a star or a Sun so that you know that the Sun or the star will not eradicate life they'll be able to have an atmosphere etc but there's so many other things that have to be in place as well you need an iron core to give rise right so that the magnetic rays from the Sun can actually magnetize that core and and and that court can in turn produce the magnetic radiation that's going to protect us from the sun's solar flares and etc so all these things right there are you know other things that have to be considered nevertheless they're probably a good number of planets that may be able to sustain a life form out there so the Catholic Church says yes we just open we're open to the possibility and if there's a life-form out there great if there's not a life-form out there well great I mean I don't think the Catholic Church has a real stake in that game per se but of course is always open to the to new discoveries now when we go to the area of intelligent life that is a whole other area because if you mean intelligence like we have intelligence that is a very different thing so like how do we have intelligence we have what's called our five transcendental desires for perfect truth perfect love perfect beauty perfect goodness or justice and perfect being or home now those five transcendental desires there's a whole proof in module three that those transcendental desires didn't come from anything physical they didn't come from our brain they didn't come from the material world we didn't learn it from the material world because after all where did we get our awareness of perfect love well there's no examples of perfect love out in the world that I know of except for God and so the first thing you got to say is it wasn't something physical that revealed perfect love to us where did we get our sense of perfect truth so that we would want to know the complete set of correct answers the complete set of questions well we didn't get it from something material out in the empirical world old right we clearly didn't get it from our brain we're gonna have to get it from a trans physical source a trans physical cause because right remember the cause and effect have to be commensurate with one another you can't have a cause that won't produce a transcendent effect like the awareness of perfect truth love goodness beauty at home so God's got to be kind of communicating to us in our souls and that agustin actually had these beautiful proofs he came out with them a long time ago on the five transcendental desires which actually go back to Plato but here's the deal you know if you find a being that has a trans physical soul that survives bodily death and last week we were just talking about near-death experiences and we're talking about you know people surviving bodily death and going to another domain well if you go and ask this alien being hey have you ever you know had experience of you know being conscious after clinical death and the alien being goes yeah I have well then they have a soul like guys if you say hey have you ever had an experience or and the awareness of perfect truth love goodness beauty and home and the alien being goes yeah as a matter of fact I have and then if you say you already know that that that being has what we call conceptual ideas which already require some kind of trans physical activity right and that's a whole other proof unto itself right and if you find out that they violate what we call garrulous theorem which is a theorem of of kurtal which is a very important german mathematician who showed that human awareness of mathematics is not reducible to algorithms that it's trans algorithmic that means it's trans physical then of course in that being that alien being who's doing you know trans algorithmic mathematics having conceptual ideas right this this being who has obviously an experience of consciousness after physical death or you know has an awareness of perfect truth love goodness beauty in home hey wait a minute that beings got a soul that being is not the result of a merely physical or organic evolutionary process now if that being has a soul there's only one cause of that soul as Agustin said a long time ago that has to be a trans physical cause namely God trans physical means beyond physics beyond physical processes beyond physical structures beyond physical laws so of course the minute you say that's being has a trans physical soul you've got to have a trans physical cause namely God and if God created that being with a soul then you have one responsibility Chuck you're gonna have to catechism about Jesus Christ and try to baptize him okay that's what you have to do and of course that being might say just like you know when the missionaries came to the new world and they they met these people and they said hey have you ever heard of Jesus no we haven't and of course what did they do they catechized him and baptized him and they were glad to hear of him I I'm going to suppose that if these beings are made in the image and likeness of God they're going to have a transcendental awareness a perfect truth love goodness beauty and home which means God has been speaking to them just as you've been speaking to us in which case it's time to give them the revelation of Jesus Christ which I think they will open themselves up to in their hearts because they will see Jesus as the you know the highest dimension the zenith of unconditional love and the revelation of unconditional love and see that as the good that everybody in previous times did and understand the resurrection of Jesus as we understand it in its significance and therefore they will be catechized vil and therefore they will be baptized Abul so I really think no how have we discovered that no and like I said I don't think this is going to happen by merely trends by a merely physical or organic process this is going to happen right because of some trans physical cause and so again we have a responsibility to evangelize those intelligent alien people who I really believe will be open to the good news be they have the transcendental desires in their hearts so you're saying before we can proselytize people from other planets that's that's acceptable okay that's accept okay absolutely and and that's right that's right the federal government will not interfere I just wanted to make sure here's another question for you it's a free alien world okay okay I say okay that's that's not cheap stealing in that way okay so here's another question for you and it's kind of interesting and just popped up not too long ago in the news recently this person right so as I read a meta study which examined myriad strands of DNA and stated that 90% of all animals appeared at the same time that's a hundred thousand to two hundred thousand years ago this seems to point to a creator - have you heard of this study do you have any thoughts on it thanks and God bless you and this is from Daniel Daniel it's a great question now this study there is a great deal of validity to this study and let me just describe it very briefly for you and then give you some of the the the dimensions of the study and then tell you why it's significant in terms of your question this was done by two researchers dr. Mike nickel is how you would pronounce it in German and dr. David Thaler Steckle was from the the Rockefeller University in New York and Thaler was from the University of Basel but the the main thing is these guys actually decided that they would go to what's called the GenBank database which is this huge database of well over 100 thousand species and that they were going to analyze what's called mitochondrial DNA and 100,000 species now why mitochondrial DNA what is mitochondrial DNA anyway well there's nuclear DNA that's the kind of DNA that gives you you're sort of DNA imprint that's gonna make you the specific kind of physical being that you are not the spiritual being that you are not the soul that you are but it's gonna make you the physical being that you are and of course we're not talking about that because that's too highly differentiated but you have we all have another kind of DNA called mitochondrial DNA which we got from our common ancestor between a hundred thousand to two hundred thousand years ago and that common ancestor ancestor is called mitochondrial Eve now that ancestor she has given every single person in this world a little remnant of simplified DNA if I can put it that way that all of us share every single solitary human being in the world Africa China United States whatever all of us have this mitochondrial DNA that comes from her essentially down through the mother's lineage now what what's decalin and Thaler did was they isolated a particular gene which gives rise to what we call DNA barcoding and the best part about mitochondrial DNA is you can compare it from species to species can't do that with nuclear DNA but you can do it with mitochondrial DNA and now we've got this GenBank that has all the barcoding of hundreds of thousands of species right you know and and they go into this thing and meticulously go through all of these species looking for two things first are there a lot of variations in the species right you know that that would indicate that there is longevity so the more variations in the mitochondrial DNA barcode that you have so as you're examining let's say you know a thousand Birds and a particular species of bird you're analyzing about 1,000 of these babies you want to see if there's any kind of variations between the birds if there's lots of variations then you're going to suppose that there is also a lot of devel there and then if there's development that's going to take time and so you can then make a time projection for it now what they found interestingly is this is absolutely bizarre it goes against you know all you know traditional evolutionary theories and by the way it's reported in a very reputable journal the Journal of Human evolutions it could scientific journal so that the point though is that they found that there was very little genetic variation in the mitochondrial DNA and the barcoding as it were of this one particular gene from species to species and within the species itself that means that those species they didn't go back very far but here's the deal none of the species go back very far human species like Homo sapiens sapiens we are you know not more than two hundred thousand years old the same thing with bird species of various kind in fact ninety percent of all animal species all 90% of them all have the same origin date between 100,000 to 200,000 years ago now that's a mind-blower right off the top because of course traditional evolutionary theory would say no way this goes back at least to the Cambrian you know explosion which was 500 million years ago it certainly was there with the survivors you know after sixty five point five mm you know a million years ago we have the dinosaurs got wiped out right and about 50 percent of the animal species in the world got wiped out and so you know at that juncture there were some survived or 50 percent this.bc survived and so it's got to go back but no no that's not the case as a matter of fact only ten percent of the animal species that we have actually go back longer back to that you know period of sixty five point five million years ago or before so this is really bizarre so that's our first thing is we seem to be around at the same time as all the proliferation of 90 percent of the animal species of this wall now this conclusion holds out and it may well hold out I'm telling you when you analyze that kind of data meticulously it's pretty hard to avoid the conclusion that steckel and and Thaler drew but the second conclusion that they drew and this is even more of a mind-blower is that the the what we call the boundaries between species they're hard boundaries so what we can do is we can analyze when we have this cross species mitochondrial DNA investigation you can actually see whether the boundaries are hard in other words is there anything between the species do we see any variation or are there like species number one and then there's species number two but there's nothing between one and two there's nothing between two and three and you would expect that in Egypt in a complete evolutionary process where there's evolution between the species you would expect that there have to be genetic variations between the species we do not see those continuities we see instead hard genetic boundaries what does this mean it looks initially like we are not evolving from other species like we didn't come from chimpanzees right that we're our sort of species the chimpanzees are their species and even we may not have come not directly from other hominids they arise about the same time with hard genetic boundaries as well so Australopithecus right Homo erectus right and of course Homo sapiens neanderthalensis Homo sapiens sapiens it looks like we actually not we may not have evolved from one another now the fossil evidence seems to indicate it there's some elements of a nuclear DNA that indicate that that we that humans Homo Sapien civets did mate with some Neanderthals that's true so there's Neanderthal DNA in some human beings however to be frank that just means that they mated it didn't mean that they came from one another so we may have to change our entire image of what the evolutionary picture looks like we may have to drastically you know bring it down a huge amount and we may have to count for the fact that species you know did not evolve out of one another you know for a higher species from a lower species right we're just gonna have to redraw the entire evolutionary picture now the first thing you want to do though I forgot the Daniel and it's Daniel the first thing one do Daniel is we we don't want to you know draw this conclusion immediately better let the rest of the scientific community look at it so in other words the thing about science is you must have other scientists look over the same data do the same thing perhaps do another test that might test the data from a different perspective you want to make sure you've got multiple perspectives but right now because of the extensiveness of the study and the careful nature in which the study was conducted it looks right now like it may be the case that we're going to redraw the evolutionary picture so you really hit upon a remarkable finding of late unfortunately module number three of the seven essential modules and module number three of our credible catholic dot-com doesn't account for the study yet but don't worry yours truly will be putting the news up there and we'll get on it as soon as possible that's what's great about websites too they can be updated so easily you know you're not talking about having exactly in a book so to speak right yeah yeah exactly exactly so let me ask you that I we have another question I want to see if we can skip I had two question number four that I think it kind of fits in to what you were just talking about get it up on the screen there it is question of dear father science has calculated that the earth was created some billions of years ago does it mean that the earth existed for some billions of years before Jesus Christ came to us the kingdom of God on earth where do Adam and Eve fit into this and this is denílson from Cameroon calling from Africa letting us know is a question for him about this and and where does it fit in we talked about even you said well 90% was but 10% wasn't and you you mentioned some kind of mitochondrial Eve is that the same Eve as the eve of Scripture yeah all of those questions are super good so fasten your seat belt here is the basic picture and again the Catholic Church holds to this picture right we do allow belief in evolution going all the way back to a human EJ Norris that's the encyclical of Pope Pius the 12th the 1951 I believe where he said you know all Catholics can believe in evolution he in in that same encyclical he says though that we have to believe in a trans a unique trans physical soul created by God for every individual that's not a problem anymore and it's certainly after last week's broadcast it certainly isn't a problem for for any of us to believe in light of the evidence of near-death experiences in terminal lucidity so given all of that that the point is the Catholic Church does allow us to believe in evolution what is the best picture scientifically that we have right now that I think would be adhered to by a majority of Catholic scientists and also Catholic prelate who are aware of this evidence I would say it's the following first of all our earth is 4.5 billion years old is there a lot of evidence for this yes there is a ton of evidence for this it's both solar evidence and it's also earthly evidence so it's it's it comes from both the Sun and from the earth itself so we have a lot of geological evidence and we have a lot of astronomical evidence I don't want to go into it today but it's enormous very difficult to deny this conclusion secondly we do have fossils and again these are fossils of the earliest bacterial life-forms so this would be like single-celled bacteria like an amoeba protozoa right so this would be maybe a flagellum I'm not sure whether they have a fossil of a flagellum or not but the main thing to remember is that this probably goes back to about 3.9 billion years ago so there does seem to be bacterial life going back to 3.9 billion years now if you keep going down you will see that there is a steady progression of evolution that takes place and and what occurs over that time period is it basically leads to a period 500 million years ago where you have this huge proliferation of animal species called the Cambrian explosion so about 500 million years ago and then as I just said this explosion continues you know for for a long long time even resulting in dinosaurs etc and then we know 60 5.5 million years ago an asteroid hit the earth of significant size when that asteroid hit the earth it wiped out the entire dinosaur population and 50% of the animal species in the world about 50% kept on going now in accordance with the new study what seems to have happened is 10% of the of the animal species we have today came from that remnant 50% back there sixty five point five million years ago however 90% seemed to have boom just come right up and side-by-side just like the Cambrian explosion huge proliferation of species comes up which as you pointed out suggests a creator it does suggest some kind of a creation event it really does not lend itself to one species coming from another certainly not in a purely Darwinian way there's just no way Darwin is going to survive you know this new discovery if it remains you know to be validated and and I think it probably will but the main thing right now is that in light of all of this you have the sheer proliferation of species it does seem to have some kind of non organic non-physical transcendent none genetic cause which I would call in general God and so why not call it you know the creator or God yes it does seem to have that that indication and now looking at that we have to ask ourselves you know well well okay two hundred thousand years ago is that our common ancestor we do know that are come we do know who our common ancestor is genetically and that genetic common ancestors I just said is mitochondrial Eve we also know the ancestor of every the common ancestor of every male that is called his name is Y chromosome Adam he does come from 200,000 years ago approximately as well so a mitochondrial Eve and Y chromosome Adam come about 200,000 years now is that our common ancestor don't know yet honestly but my thinking is it is not hmm it's our genetic common ancestor but I don't know if it's our insult common ancestor might be but here's the problem for a hundred and thirty thousand years those ancestors are mitochondrial even Y chromosome Adam they were basically sitting around the border of Namibia and Angola and basically cracking nuts and eating bananas and being content but I have to tell you they weren't doing then 70,000 years ago something happens all of a sudden our genetic ancestors because these came from mitochondrial even my chromosome Adam but some uh you know and I'm gonna say to ancestors and sold Eve and in sold Adam given Souls by God they come up and what do they suddenly do they start developing developing conceptual languages with release and what we call significant syntax right I would indicate that this has to come from a soul and I have a lot of evidence for it in a book I wrote called the souls upward yearning but you can get it free of charge by looking at module 2 of credible Catholic calm there's all this evidence for conceptual language having to come from a soul but what's my point you all of a sudden human beings start doing what no chimpanzee can do but no other animal species ever what no other hominid species ever showed signs of doing and and what is that they're starting to speak with direct objects and predicates they can differentiate between Man Bites dog and dog bites man a little child will chortle at you know Man Bites Dog nim chimpsky the most highly trained chimpanzee in the world with a hundred and seventy s length science and artificial a sign language cannot do this it cannot pass the syntax test so suddenly human beings start speaking conceptually suddenly human beings start crafting you know logs where they're notching and out so these are obviously counting sticks things of that nature they're already doing arithmetic there's no evidence of this before 70 thousand years and they start applying that arithmetic you know to the situation around them all of a sudden you know they start burying their dead they never buried their dead previously and they buried them with objects that they can take with them into the next life they never had a sense of afterlife we have no evidence of you know pre 70,000 years ago man you know there all of a sudden they start drawing pictures in caves 70,000 years ago human beings become symbolic and artistic so what what's the point all of a sudden these people I'm going to call them right all of a sudden they are doing uniquely human things which by all accounts if you read that book the souls upward yearning or you go to module two of credible Catholic calm you will see these all these activities require a soul and in addition to that it they require that we have this awareness of perfect truth love goodness being in home I can't explain that right now but I right because heaven says the other thing they started to probably keep track of was time and we're out of it for this portion of the show so we're gonna take a break and you can continue in the second half with your point there father we'll be back in a moment one and only father Spitzer's on a roll you won't want to miss it stay with us we'll be back in a minute [Music] [Applause] and thank you so much for staying with us at the heart of father Spitzer's universe I'm Doug Keck as we continue on with father Spitzer talking about evolution the Bible and science specifically as we rejoin with father we've got some great questions for you continuing because I think some people have anticipated some of our topics here's another question that was sent in to us dear father to believe the big theory and evolutionary theory and maybe it's the big bang don't we have to believe that God introduced death at the creation of the universe in order to create Adam and Eve wouldn't the many previous evolutionary species have to die to evolve into humans this is Joseph you know theologians have been discussing it for many many many years if not practically for over a century the main thing to remember is yes was there organic death prior to a two hundred thousand years ago and the answer is yes we know that the bacteria that we have fossils for 3.9 billion years ago died we know that all those dinosaurs died but we know that you know you know that 50% of the species died 65 point 5 million years ago because of that asteroid and so forth we also know you know that that many many animals died we've got frankly all the oil we're using in our in our cars come from a lot of decayed plant and animal bodies that died and so we know that yes there was death before two hundred thousand years ago when we have our genetic ancestors and what I was just calling our insult ancestors and sold eat Adam and Eve maybe seventy thousand years ago yes there was death so how do we reconcile that with the whole aspect of death that Jesus talks about I believe that insult and this is one answer that many theologians give insult atom and insult Eve had the potential through their soul for eternal life and eternal life with God so they did have something that other animal species did not have they had a soul which could allow them to continue to live what we've been talking about in the previous week when we were talking about near-death experiences etc we talked about the revelation of Jesus the promise of eternal life they had this trans physical soul so they had as it were what I'm gonna call the pure possibility of eternal life right then and there and I truly believe that God intended them for eternal life and of course he still intends us return it eternal life but I do believe what happened was when they were given their souls they had an awareness of interiorly of the internal of the eternal life to which they were called because they also had an awareness of the God the Creator who made them in His image with that very eternal soul now I do believe for that that the scripture is right I do think Satan comes into the picture you know he just thought you know and I think this happened about 70,000 years ago irresistible of course he's right there johnny-on-the-spot to tempt Adam and Eve and what does he tempt him with he tempts him with God is ahead of you guys and so he doesn't want you to be like a God so if you want to be like a god you got to do your own thing don't listen to God and of course out of sheer ego - egotism right and sure you know pride and sheer desire to be like God I think the Bible is so insightful I can't tell you how inside this is like right on the marker I think our insult ancestors Adam and Eve I think they fell and I think a whole new kind of death came into the world into the universe a whole new kind of death and that death was of course that the body was going to die and that the soul would have to be redeemed by Jesus Christ and and that was not in the world I think also the idea of pain well was there suffering in pain you know in in in the world before Adam and Eve yes yes animals suffered when they died when and when a dinosaur ate another dinosaur there was screams of pain just like there would be screams of pain when the Coyotes outside of my house are eating a rabbit I mean I know that they there was suffering however there was not reflective suffering so in other words human beings remember when I was talking a while back about self-consciousness how I'm aware of the cup but I'm also aware of being aware of the cup so for all intents and purposes then you know I can actually be aware of my suffering I can not only suffer right but I can be aware of my suffering and even be depressed because of my awareness of my suffering right so it you know you come home from work and your dog is wagging his tail he's so happy to see you he's genuinely happy to see you but he's not aware that he's happy to see you and when you believe yes he's sad that you're going but he's not going oh my gosh I'm aware of my sadness and I'm gonna get depressed or I'm aware of my happiness and I'm gonna be elated well what came into the world when we decided to you know to choose ourselves over God when we fell what came into the world was reflective suffering and that's a hundred thousand times worse than unreflective suffering we now have a reflective sense of our death because we do have a trans physical soul and it was caused by our fall and I think that is a hundred thousand times worse than a dog who you know beloved as can be just goes into a corner and quietly dies right and so forth you know it's it's we think about it we obsess about it my point being that yes this is the new kind of death and suffering that came into the world and it comes into the world part you know in virtue of our having a transcendent self reflective soul and that is the reason that we suffer and also what came into the world is we lost our vision you know remember I said we have an awareness of perfect truth love goodness beauty and in home but we have that awareness in a very obscure way we lost the much pure awareness of God that much pure awareness of perfect truth love goodness beauty and home in our fall I mean God gave Adam and Eve what they wanted right they wanted to be on their own they wanted to be likened unto God here try and be like God without me go ahead well he didn't make his fall completely right but he made us a fall in the sense that we lost you know maybe up to 49 percent of that vision of perfect truth love goodness beauty in home and we seen life now dimly as you know as through almost a filter you know and so the key thing that that we have to remember is all these things what we call concupiscence now comes into the world our own egocentric desires have I have a good strong hand on us and of course we have to choose those transcendentals over against the pain of our egocentricity and so all this stuff came into the world I think it came in 70,000 years ago and I do think it comes well from two single ancestors who were in sold and since that time God has been giving a unique trans physical soul to all the ancestors to all the excuse me progeny of our original ancestors and I just wanted to make sure that everybody knows Father's web address for all the dog lovers and cat lovers out there have concerns on his perspective of whether dogs how they suffer or how depressed they may or may not be but that being said we have another question for you your father I see the earth prior to man as in a state of original justice but not a place of peace and harmony shouldn't this time of evolving be viewed as a time without sin since nature was already pretty violent question mark a creature would have to have knowledge of sin in order to commit sin correct any thoughts and this is from Patrick yeah Patrick I think I would give the same explanation to the previous question and that is you know yes at the in prior to human being so I'm just gonna say prior to our first and sold ancestor 70 thousand years ago III don't think there was any sin in the world therefore that 4.5 million years - two hundred thousand right I a billion years excuse me billion years - two hundred thousand million so - two hundred thousand it's a lot of it's a lot of years and so I don't think there was any sin because there wasn't any self-awareness you're absolutely correct Patrick and I don't think also that that that there was you know a state of what you might call you know painless nasur perfect you know bliss within the world as I just said I think there there was plenty of pain and there was plenty of death no question about that but of course everything you know in in the you know the the two first chapters of Genesis it's all about what human beings you know so Genesis 1 we are the pinnacle of that creation right in Adam and Eve we're the ones that fell and so what we're talking about is that's the original sin which I believe did happen 70,000 years ago - first parents - in soul first parents I do think that that does have an effect on us in the ways that I described but prior to that no I don't think there was any sin in the world and of course you're right there was suffering and pain in the world and and the violence as well okay here's another question dear father Spitzer as a biologist I am familiar with the teaching that says that biology reduces to chemistry and the chemistry reduces to physics at what point do physics and chemistry become quote/unquote life what does the theologian say that life is thank you and this is Robin I gotta tell you Robin that is still one of the most perplexing questions even in as you you're a biologist yourself as you know biologists have not answered that question this is is the problem in fact physicists and chemists have not answered that question yes we can get up to amino acids and we can get to proteins and we can get to very very very very very sophisticated ones you know like DNA in in RNA and and so forth yes we can see all of that as an evolution of physical what we call physical chemical organic compounds however when does it become life the ant the big answer the big scientific answer to the question is we don't know we don't know what as it were ignites this fire that we call self movement ignites this fire that we call you know metabolism and and and and and self desire what is it that puts it together now if you really want a very insightful insightful essay by a Nobel prize-winning chemist his name is michael polanyi pol a and y:i and he writes this well he's written a whole lot of books on this you know and and and one of his essays is on the origin of life and he really thinks that in order to have a living cell right or just talking about a single cell here which i think is what you're describing is a biologist right right in order to get a single cell you're going to have to get that you know metabolic event and that the the diff the problem with metabolism is its ear its ear it's not reducible completely right it's reducible in many ways to chemistry in physics but there are other elements that are not reducible to chemistry and physics right the protons that are moving in metabolic activity there's nothing in the protons to direct them to do metabolic activities electromagnetic activities yes there's nothing in the chemistry that that indicates that complex molecules should be doing metabolism all these parts that are busily working together you know in this cell mom seemed to suggest programming according to Palani who knows chemistry certainly better than I do right he's saying that chemistry cannot explain the the advent of these activities you're going to need what's called a higher-order unity and you're going to get a need a higher-order set of laws for metabolism for replication or reproduction and even for instinctual survival you're going to need some additional laws within that higher order unity that I'm gonna call a cell or a living organism and that we cannot explain with chemistry it's irreducible and that's polanyi's view and I tell you this is a very well conceived a viewpoint and he articulates it very very well he's got two full books on this area and I think if you're a biologist yourself you really want to get to it michael polanyi on the origin of life okay here's another question this one we can put up question number seven it's one that's a little bit on the surface of it is kind of out there on one second sense but there are a lot of people Bible believers who read the creation account and they wonder how does this work here is the question dear father there's a question I have about a Creation Museum in Texas that teaches that the dinosaurs became extinct because they were too large to fit aboard Noah's Ark yet science has proven this theory wrong do you have any opinions or thoughts on this as you are certainly yourself a scientist thank you and this is from Mike and of course I think we know what the answer is we've talked about that well what do you say to people who are Bible believing Christians read the account from Genesis and they read this and they find this to be disturbing to their faith you know we'll know where Ark and the dinosaurs and how does this all fit together and I still hold on to my trust in Scripture yeah I would say Michael you know that it's a tough go but here's the thing the first thing we need to do is go back to the time of the Protestant Reformation and this doctrine called Sola scriptura was a kind of pronounced by really all of the Reformers and what it means is scripture alone and and that is to say we don't need a church Magisterium to teach us or to interpret the scriptures for us we in our own capacity can read the scriptures and that should be sufficient to interpret the scriptures well the Catholic Church has never believed that we believe there's a combination here of both Scripture of Scripture of course which is the deposit of faith and of course it's the Word of God and we've also believed that we need a tradition we need our church to help us interpret that tradition because there's a myriad of possible interpretations for every possible scripture saying and then of course you can have thousands upon thousands of scripture sayings and you can sort of say well there's a conflict between this one and this one and that one and that one and you can go on and on and if you don't have a church mantis theorem to sort the whole thing out what's gonna happen you're going to get 30 thousand denominations in 500 years that's what's going to happen Sola scriptura is dead wrong if you don't have a man theorem if you don't have teaching you've got a mess and the mess is every interpretation that comes up gives rise to a whole other religion well this is not gonna be a proper ground for anything now what happened though once you got Sola scriptura off the ground what do you think is the next thing that's going to have to be defended by let's say one of our Protestant brethren they're gonna have to defend in some sense the the literal interpretation of Scripture and this gets down to what we call inspiration and by the way there's a nice Magisterial teaching on inspiration divine inspiration of the scriptures and what some people have what's called the dictation view of inspiration where God literally comes to the biblical author and says okay biblical author I'm gonna dictate this whole thing to you get your pen out your quill out and write like mad I'm giving it to you word for word now Sola scriptura I maintain leads to that kind of what we'll call biblical literalism which has to be defended with the dictation view of inspiration because right that's God's Word you know in Scripture alone will suffice you know skip the need for a magisterial teaching right Magisterium just it means teaching right and so a magisterial authority skip that right you can do it all yourself well you're gonna be led right down this primrose path and so that's called the dedication we never as Catholics believed in that st. Thomas Aquinas had a beautiful phrase called you know quid quid we chip it or as we tip it or and in moto a champion reach of yentas in other words well whatever is received is received in the manner of the receiver right such of the receivers so the idea is is that you know what we need to do is we need in some sense then to recover another view of inspiration that the church has given us and that is what we'll call the cope or anticipative view of inspiration what's Co participative inspiration that means that yes god of course is inspiring the biblical author but he's not dictating the scripture to the biblical author he's giving it to the biblical author in the way in the categories of his culture in the categories that he can understand is the biblical undergoing to understand the methodology of science no he hasn't even heard of it is the biblical author going to understand the mathematics that we use for scientific analysis no he's never even done that kind of mathematics is a biblical you get the point the biblical authors going to understand whatever's received is received in the manner of the receiver according to the cultural categories he's got according to the age in which he's living according to the culture in which he lives and according to his individual dispositions so he's going to frame that truth in a way that is going to be as it were you know appropriate to his age and so the Catholics would say well yeah the Ark was appropriate to his age there was a flood and that flood does seem to have had a remnant and the remnant seems to have come in in a through some kind of a boat so there's some kind of a good grounding of that of that story but of course the biblical author takes the opportunity to say this is why you know some species died off but some species did not now is that what we would hold today is that what the Catholic Church holds today no we do not so the dinosaurs didn't die because they weren't in the ark you know I mean that's just not what we would hold is an asteroid wiped about 65 point five million years ago but the point I'm trying to get to is it all goes back to biblical literal literal ISM which goes back to that doctrine of Sola scriptura in the part of Luther and and and the Reformers and it goes you if you don't have a Magisterium this is what you're going to come with every time you're going to be forced into a literalism now Pope Pius the 12th was a great guy and he wrote this encyclical called Divino allanté Spiritu I think in 1943 or 42 anyway this was about biblical inspiration and the Pope made a really important distinction he said look he said that the Scriptures are to give you sacred truths necessary for your salvation not scientific truths that are correct descriptions or explanations of the physical world as measured through scientific analysis mathematics and and and and scientific method no and we have buddyp that in mind every week we watch this show because that's who are teaching to everything going on I thought it was wonderful you pointed out the whole Sola scriptura hadn't really put those two together but if you give us your blessing as we end the show that was great well okay and bow your heads and pray for God's blessing and may Almighty God give you the blessing of the ages which is his wisdom manifest through his love and manifest through the order of the universe and the goodness in which he made all of us and made creation and of course the image of himself into which we were made so that through this image of ourselves we may know the true dignity of every human being including ourselves and they progress steadily through obedience to His Son and obedience to the church we may progress steadily into the kingdom of salvation in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen thank you so much father Spitzer we shall see you next time and reminding everybody that we'll be back with our program next week and that also as always we have our family celebration this one's coming up in November November 3rd Jacksonville Florida go to our website and find out more about it we just about touched on evolution the Bible and Sciences a lot more to be said as you can see father had a lot to say and we'll see you next week when we talk about that I'm Doug Keck at the heart of father Spitzer's University intersection of faith and reason we'll be there we'll be waiting for you see you next time [Music] Oh
