[Music] [Music] hello and welcome once again to father Spitzer's universe I'm Doug Keck your host we're here at the place where faith and reason meet each week as we meet with father Spitzer we're coming to you live from our EWTN studios in the heart of it all the mothership in Irondale Alabama where we launch our expedition each Wednesday of course and it's important that you send us an email check us out on Facebook send us a tweet on Twitter and for all things father Spitzer a couple places to go first there's the magic Center's website majus Center one word.com and of course remember Father's newest website which is what we're focusing on and going through those teachings from credible Catholic dot-com as well and you know today's topic is continuing on with the evolution the Bible and science and you know don't forget that incredible Catholic one of them is an incredible Catholic priest names father Spitzer it's got wonderful books as we can show you available through our catalog as well as for many many years he did wonderful series that are available on DVD as well EWTN are c-calm is the place to find father Spitzer's wonderful items through EWTN into don't forget by purchasing through our catalog you're helping the work of EWTN ongoing with that said we turn to the west coast once again and welcome father Spitzer from our studios again in Orange County California at Christ Cathedral beautiful campus out there and as everything begins here at EWTN it starts with prayer and this show is no exception father if you'd like to kick it off 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 blessings you give us and we ask you today again for wisdom for knowledge for discernment so that as we begin to delve into the beautiful nature that you have given around us and the various clues that we get to it through science we might be able to with greater and greater perception see your good hand and everything that we do see you guiding us and see you guiding our entire cosmos to its fruition in yourself please bless all of our audience members inspire them and please do Lord bring all of our good activities to fruition Eeyore will 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 right and before we get into some of the questions from last week's show one of the things you had going on was that big Napa Institute event happening out in California which people will be able to see highlights of some of the talks coming up in the coming months tell us what was the topic for this conference and what was some of the interesting takeaways that you thought you sell you yourself found from some of the talks and discussions that happened at the conference well there were three big themes one of them was it was the 50th anniversary it still is really the 50th anniversary of human Evita so the entire first day was of the conference on Thursday was devoted to that so we had talks on sexuality we had talks on on you know the proper meaning of Christian love and commitment Helen Alvaro was very good dr. Anna Samuel Mary Hassan really excellent talks and in that area our second day was devoted to the 40th anniversary of the ascendancy to the Pape and the papacy by Saint John Paul the second and so we had a variety of talks there that that tried to sort of expand you know the the outlook on you know John Paul's teaching Cardinal Amalur was just excellent I mean this is this is a first-rate academic paper from from him called the moral principles from veritatis splendor' but the other panelists dr. Katherine McCulloch etc etc were also very very good celebrating Saint John Paul then on our third day you know we had a combination of things one of them was the whole theme of marriage which of course was a favorite of Pope John Paul as well as you know obviously the consequence of human invent a so it was really dr. Tim gray and dr. Scott Hahn two of the favorite speakers at the conference really gave excellent talks and actually not just theoretical ones but it called to mind their own personal experiences and you know and and and you know how you know to bring Christian marriage alive it was really excellent I of course did my usual thing on faith and reason and and gave six ways to turn the rising tide of millennial unbelief and so we had a variety of other panels as well but it was a great conference we had over 605 people oh okay really inspiring and lots of liturgies lots of retreats and things of that nature that were interspersed throughout and of course the camaraderie was tremendous right and and that's the kind of thing where you've got people from different aspects of the church and many times at a high level working together talking with each other and seeing how we can all work together to help the church out as best we can right absolutely okay very good let's get on to some questions now that you've recovered from your conference there dear father you mentioned in an earlier show that a young girl painted a picture of Jesus near-death experience kids NDE recognize this image is what Jesus looked like where can we see that picture and was it done by a young lady whose name I'm not going to try and pronounce a kyani crime Eric and this is from Dean is that the one you were referring to when you talked about it on the show yeah Dean I believe that was her name and unfortunately since I don't I'm not cute in on these questions before the show I didn't look up look her up but I will try and get an you know a response to you but that name does ring a bell of that little girl and of course she would be now significantly older but that name does ring the mill and of course it it was identified by several of subsequent children as being that's what Jesus looked like so I can actually verify that and get an email out kind of yeah well and also we can bring it up on on one of our subsequent shows we can talk about it as well sure even next week we could answer that question in addition I was wondering with that why do you think that was so important I mean so a couple of kids said gee that looked like Jesus well I mean a you know children first of all so often have near-death experiences when they undergo clinical death about 85% of the time and virtually all of them are heavenly near-death experiences and part of their experience they do not associate Jesus with a bright white loving light a lot of adults do but most kids see the image of Jesus some adults also see the same image in picture of Jesus but it's mostly kids and what's interesting of course is you know how are they going to conjure this up in their mind since they haven't seen this image before yet when they're shown you know it's almost like looking through one of these police books you know I've shown a bunch of photographs and and you say well are any of these people familiar well in this case we should we can show kids about ten fifteen photographs or you know drawings and just say any of these familiar and when the kid automatically goes it's that one and they're right you know ninety five percent of the time that's the one it gives you pause because you think whoa maybe that's the one right and how else are they going to correlate this data it just couldn't be in their heads alone well and this makes it look much less likely that this is an intra subjective that is to say okay it's just within their hallucinating heads alone because there would be no correlation if it was just private if it was just their own hallucination but the fact is it's it's correlated again and again by suggesting very strongly but their having a common experience thereby eliminating the possibility of hallucination right let me ask you this question this being of correlation you you have a great interest in belief in the Shroud of Turin has there been any correlation in a sense of what Jesus looked like as portrayed by that young woman and and and recognized by other children with sort of what Jesus looks like in the image from the Shroud you know I haven't really done that you know they do right that's a really good question right now they do have you know taken from the Shroud of Turin they do have a sort of a statue a three-dimensional statue that's been developed by some current almost like 3d printing technology and it's very very accurate that the difficulty of course is it looks almost like a death mask right because this is the face of Jesus after his death uh you know so it's it's hard to say well what did he look like as when he was alive how would you redirect those features but no I I think there are you know some very very accurate portrayals of the shroud face and I would have to say we ought to make it do a study of that and and see if there is a correlation but I I don't have the answer to that question guys I'm struck out twice today oh well it just shows you're actually human that's what it shows like the rest of us you like the residents except more so you know speaking of this you know we got a lot of questions here with children and animals they always say actors don't work with children or but maybe that's why we're having difficulty as well here's another question this has to do with animals father last week you discussed animals not being able to know if they are sad if dogs are unaware they are said then why do they go into depression and not eat when their masters are away any other animal I get it but dogs are made to serve us similar to our relationship with God you know it's a lot of dog lovers out there father that's right well it's an ongoing sad state and that ongoing sad state is not reflective at all but you know they're not really going into a depression a depression is a reflective state of sadness but a dog can be continuously sad and when dogs are continuously sad as other animals are right when they're continuously sad for example when elephants lose another elephant and from the pack right they will actually people will say they're mourning well their mourning is a reflexive a reflective act okay it's it's but they are continuously sad they miss their companion and elephants are like dogs very intelligent for that animal species and so what we expect is that yes what do animals do they they don't eat when they're in that sad state but we shouldn't because they're not eating or because they think you know display you know symptoms of what we would call mourning or depression which more formally are reflective acts we shouldn't attribute reflectivity to them simply because they have an ongoing state of sadness which is causing them to lose their appetite or causing them to want to sleep more that's just okay very so is need reflect so is it is really the confusion maybe on some of our parts is really understanding the distinction between sadness and depression absolutely I mean for an animal to just be sad right you know or elated yeah an animal can be happy when the master comes home you know and can be wagging their tail and so forth and even displaying a quasi smile you know but that the animal you know is it that doesn't mean that they're reflective they're going wow I'm really happy now in order to do that you would really have to have a sense of self-consciousness and you'd also have to have what's called an integrated narrative capacity and we know from tests that have been done by Herbert terrorists dr. Herbert Ayers and others animals just simply do not have that gosh meaning you know they do not have self-consciousness or self reflectivity in the way that we have it right so and by the way if you read my book the souls upward yearning all the various good scholarly articles on that subject are contained in Chapter six of that book if you're really interested in the studies of Herbert eros Noam Chomsky and others about this phenomenon okay and you can get that through our catalog of course here's a another question that has to do with animals ok father here's another one dear father Spitzer since God gave Adam and Eve souls would he also gives souls to our pets I know this may sound silly but I know of too many people who think that they may be reunited with their pets when they die would this be possible Marie from North Carolina now over the period time we've talked about the differences in a human soul etc but what do you say to somebody who feels like heaven would be something less than it shouldn't be if they're their dog wasn't there yeah well here's the we got to make a first distinction about the soul and then whether they'll be reunited with their pet two different questions first do dogs have or their pets like cats do they have rational souls no they do not and again in Chapter six there are a variety of tests that we can do to measure animals response to certain of stimuli and data to see if they have typical you know capacities for what we call self reflectivity for what's called syntactical judgment and and for what we call a moveable narrative within their minds it's the ego it's the self-consciousness that unites all of our memories together and makes us narrative beings or as chimpanzees they don't have that capacity they don't have a sense that they're living in a narrative a holistic narrative that's united together by their self-consciousness because they don't have self-consciousness and so we can infer that properly from those studies but that so the main thing is does your dog is it is your dog going to have an immortal soul as you do you know a consciousness what we call a transcendent self-consciousness as you do know your dog does not have that does your dog have you know the capacity for its consciousness to survive bodily death well we don't know because we can't ask a dog who's had a near-death experience you know this has happened to him but my suspicion is no they do not have this because part of the reason for having that transcendental self consciousness that trans physical self-consciousness is not just to survive bodily death but so that you can have these capacities that go beyond what I call the physical processes of the cerebral cortex right so they they go beyond physical processes of the brain and so you know we can't reduce our self-conscious activities to what can be adequately described by physical processes in the brain and by the way there is a lot of stuff being done right now in philosophy of mind by people like dr. David Chalmers at Oxford University et cetera and but I have all those studies in Chapter six in my book the soul is upward yearning the main point is I would say no your your dog probably does not have a trans physical consciousness that's going to survive bodily death because your dog doesn't have a self-reflective consciousness which is capable of what we call you know autonomic a kind of moveable narrative activity and also does not have what we call transcendental mathematical a perceptions and other kinds of things that really do point to a transcendental soul so your dog probably doesn't have that nevertheless all that being said there is something rather interesting in st. Paul's letter to the Romans chapter 8 where he talks about all creation is yearning right that for a kind of a Redemption right so when he's saying that you know there have been volumes written in on these passages in Saint Paul where he has a kind of a sense that it's not just going to be human beings that are brought into the kingdom of heaven but somehow created things are also going to be as it were redeemed into a kind of heavenly status and would that include dogs well Paul st. Paul doesn't say does Paul X you know make explicit what he really means by this sort of redemption of all of creation or all of creation yearning for this kind of elevation to a redeemed unfallen status no he doesn't but could you say well is there a possibility that God could sort of take dogs and cats and and bring them up you know into a sort of a heavenly status at the end of time or something of that nature yeah you could probably infer that from the passage and and frankly you can't preclude it from Paul's meaning so I would say you know that's a reasonable supposition but not a proven doctrine or anything like that but there is room for that in the Christian view of the redemption you know of creation well I would think on one level some person one said they were talking about whatever it takes for you to be perfectly happy in heaven will obviously be there when you are there that's right and so if that's what it takes for that to happen then your dog will be there so oh yeah we can hope for that okay do your father Spitzer's since we've been talking about Bible and science and and Heaven and Hell but there's another question it has to do with Bible and science which we got into the last time dear father Spitzer where do Adam and Eve what I should say where Adam and Eve actual persons if so where do they exist in the timeline of evolution thank you and God bless and this is from Ray okay ray great question I'll just give you the quick summary right now it looks like our common ancestors and these now are what I'm gonna call genetic ancestors so what we'll call genetic Adam and Eve it looks like our genetic ancestors go back about 120,000 years and possibly a little longer there's now some differentiation between new studies and old studies there are some studies that suggest that mitochondrial Eve goes back to two hundred thousand two hundred thousand years ago and so does y-chromosome Adam but some newer studies are now reducing that down to probably a hundred and twenty thousand years ago but it's somewhere between a hundred and twenty thousand years ago and two hundred thousand years ago you have our genetic ancestors who are real people there is a real woman mitochondrial Eve and there is a real man Y chromosome Adam that lived around the same time that essentially our our common genetic ancestors now are they are common and sold ancestors did mitochondrial Eve and in Y chromosome Adam did they really have a soul I'm up in the air about this because there is a long period of time all the way until 70 thousand years ago so we've got some kind of an elapsing of time that somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe about a fifty thousand years to a hundred and thirty thousand years right somewhere you know for a long long long long time our genetic ancestors weren't doing a whole lot they were sitting on the border of Angola and Namibia in Africa there and they were pretty much eating bananas and wandering around and cracking a few nuts and doing some things but not a lot of stuff then suddenly 70,000 years ago you've got this huge burgeoning of intellect and culture it's just completely inexplicable now do I believe that there is our first insult Adam and Eve I really do I think God gave a trans physical soul to Adam and Eve about 70,000 years ago I'll call them insult Adam and Eve I say and I the reason I believe that is because here you see the blossoming of abstract arithmetic counting sticks etc that become you know the the the foundation for abacuses and the higher level of mathematics suddenly at 70,000 years ago people are burying their dead and they're putting in you know artifacts into the grave that obviously shows that they believe in an afterlife so that these people who they're burying can take this into the next life no we don't have any examples of this prior to 70,000 years ago and suddenly there's people are burying their dead and it gets more and more prolific the third thing that you see is syntactical language so that's to say the use of direct objects and and and and you know indirect objects and abstract categorical terms and these things chimpanzees simply do not do noam chomsky who is a very important linguist has written a series of articles on this showing that that chimpanzee simply can't distinguish between Man Bites dog and dog bites man a one and a half year old little kid will Shortell at the prospect of a man biting a dog but a chimpanzee doesn't get it it simply doesn't understand the difference at all because they don't understand you know the difference between subject and object subject and predicate subject and indirect object they just can't get abstract terminology but we do and suddenly when we do as Chomsky and another guy named Berwick from MIT write in a very interesting book why only us which is MIT press you ought to get it it's a very interesting book in that book they detail all of a sudden what's going on in this linguistic Renaissance and not even a Renaissance this this almost you know new advent in in in human history suddenly we have people using sentences and we can go you know as the human race moves and and and migrates everywhere notice that they have different languages and you can take a little kid from China put them into Africa and within a few days they get all the differences in syntactical structure all the differences in grammatical structure and pick up the language as if they had internally in them not just the genetics for one specific grammatical or syntactical type but every one of them it's just the most bizarre thing you've ever seen which makes the whole idea of this idea of a transcendental soul needed to have abstract thoughts come alive with some real anthropological proof anyway it's fascinating but this this capacity for language suddenly comes out at 70,000 years ago and then this great migration takes place suddenly they move from the border of Namibia and Angola up to the northernmost coasts of Africa they're going into the Middle East and of course they become seafarers all the way down to Indonesia then they go from the Middle East into China then into Europe and they go all the way to the uppermost part of of Europe you know and and and cross the Arctic land bridge which existed at that time go all the way over to Alaska and then the entire Western Hemisphere down to Chile and they accomplished all of this in 10,000 years total now you look at this and you go what were we doing for about fifty thousand to a hundred and thirty thousand years eating nuts and eating bananas on the border of Namibia and then BAM oh you know this you know wonder lust is almost this desire there's adventure to go see everything do everything catalogue everything suddenly at 70,000 years ago and then talk about art you know seventy thousand years ago all of a sudden art becomes you know a huge thing on these these paintings on the wall of the cave which show both symbolism and artistic sensitivity so what we have you know is homo aesthetic as homo symbolic us homo linguistic us homo matemáticas right you know and you just go right down line homo religiosa so floors right burying the dead etc etc something is happening at this period that manifests a completely different way of living and I'm calling it and that the point of being in sold and in sold atom and in sold Eve and their progeny from that point on God is infusing in them a separate soul individual unique soul and every one of their progeny since that time and and of course we have um you know today we are the the progeny of that group and it was Adam and Eve who did fall and who did decide they'd rather be gods instead of being the servants of God and we all know what happened today and we might have a question about them after this thank goodness knowledge a syntax isn't the only way we will consider human beings these days though because a lot of us would have a lot of problems with that being said we're going to take a break much more ahead of course with father Spitzer and his universe stay with us [Music] and we are talking about the Bible and science evolution part 2 basically on this episode of father Spitzer's universe moving ahead with questions we turn once again to father out of the West Coast studios in Orange County California we've been talking a little bit about children and and animals and now we've talked a little bit about Adam and Eve here's a another couple that kind of relate to that we thought we could get to what we were talking about it dear father Spitzer if Adam and Eve did not sin or quote-unquote fall what original sin sin still be possible if their children or future offsprings sinned what sinning not be possible in other words would we all be in heaven if Adam and Eve did not fall would free will still exist god bless you Walter okay first of all Walter in answer to your first question yes subsequent generation could have sinned no doubt about that and that would have actually precluded people in the human race at least the progeny of those people from inheriting the kingdom of God without the redemptive act of Jesus so yes that would be the answer to that question the second question you know regarding you know in general would Jesus be necessary well if there were no original sin still in Jesus could have come into the world you know to to reveal himself perfectly to us but would there be a necessity to redeem us and the answer would be well probably not because we would not be in a state of actual sin or selfishness or egocentricity however as you probably suspect from a realistic point of view I think the idea that the first man and woman sinned you know that wouldn't be unexpected you know and I do think that that person was egocentricity and I do think even though they had almost a beatific sensibility a you know to God because God had given them free choice you know there was something that the evil spirit the devil the serpent in the story there that the evil spirit could work on and of course what does he work on he works on the the sin of all sins you know if you eat this fruit you'll be likened unto God's you know you'll be like gods yourself now of course once you start thinking of this you know you think well you know that doesn't sound so bad that you know I could be you know maybe God's withholding something from me you know maybe this is something I deserve etcetera etc etc and the next thing you know you're gonna send so did I find it unusual that Adam and Eve sinned no and because of course I that they would have had a fairly long time to to consider the prospects and temptations of the evil spirit who God obviously allowed to be a part of the the world of human freedom I think you know I'm not surprised that Adam and Eve actually succumbed so we have the condition that we have and I think subsequent generations I would be surprised if they didn't actually sin as well as you've already suggested okay very good here's another question dear father Spitzer given your belief in an Old Earth how do you square the necessity of death prior to the fall in Genesis 3 please elaborate further on how this belief in of an Old Earth does not contradict God's Word and this is John from Boise Idaho I know we talked about this in a prior show yeah okay John there's two questions there with two different answers the first thing is what about death in in the old earth view as you put it right the the universe is about 4.5 I'm now I mean the the earth and the Sun you know is a little older it's about 4.5 billion years old and that's in a universe that's about 13.8 billion years old now the point of course for you know looking at this is well was there death in the world you know prior to when human beings were around say 70,000 years ago as in sold human beings or 120,000 years ago as our genetic ancestors of course there was death there was death you know of animals and we have evidence of you know fallen fossils that go back we have evidence of microscopic you know that there would be micro bukh you know living entities that are or deceased even pool pretty close to about 3.8 3.9 billion years ago so we have plenty of evidence for this now the the point is well how does that square with Scripture basically death is in the world prior to human beings recognizing what death is after they are in sold and most theologians today who do have an Old Earth view as as I do view this recognition of death as the real pain and punishment of death animals die but day don't reflect about dying before they die they just literally get into a sickly State and they go over in a place by themselves they lay down and they die but human beings we think about it we see our grandmother die or we see our grandfather died and we start thinking to ourselves yike mommy and daddy might die and I'm I died and what's the meaning of life and so forth and so on so two things happen immediately remember we are self reflective beings animals are not self reflective beings and as I said earlier in the program where there's a lot of evidence for that that they don't have self-consciousness now the point I'm getting to is if you don't have self reflectivity death is not a pain or a punishment death is just death it just takes place but if you do have self reflectivity you know it's a common and when you know what's it coming you can be scared of it you can anticipate it you can ask the meaning of it and some of those things are real pain and that's the pain of death right there through our self reflectivity and that happens in the fall and when that when that fall occurs and our self reflectivity is then turn to our impending death there is a real pain in that but there's a good side to that because it forces us to get our acts together after the fall so we basically know that we have to move beyond our concupiscent nature begin to live for love begin to live for God as Jesus Christ who has redeemed us has revealed it to us so that's the the the whole idea of how you square this with the with the our gospel texts I mean our Old Testament texts now the second question that you asked is a more generic one which is well how do you reconcile the Bible in general with with science or the Old Earth as you would put it scientific view and and that that comes up in two big papal encyclicals that I went over last week right the first one is a papal encyclical by Pope Pius the 12th called Divino a flow speery - i believe it goes back to 1942 and in that encyclical Pope Pius the 12th says the Bible is meant to give a sacred truths necessary for salvation it is not meant to give a perfect what we would call scientific explanation and description of the physical universe that's the job of science alternatively Sciences job is to give an accurate empirical mathematical description and explanation of the physical universe but it's job is not to give sacred truths necessary for salvation so the key thing to remember then is our Bible so what does our Bible tell us in Genesis that science could never tell us what the Bible tells us number one is there is but one God only one and everything else is a creature of God human beings are creatures right the Sun as it creatures those sun god Moon God seeing God etc the second thing to know from the Scriptures is that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God mm-hmm so we're made in the image and likeness of God so we're like and you know we've got godlike transcendental powers but we're not God we're simply not God and that's necessary for our salvation of course we're told to that matter is not a bad thing right and and so that's an important thing to see we're also told that God is not a capricious God right he's not just all right in the myths around the time of the biblical author right we see that that that many of those myths talk about gods being capricious and playing games with human beings and treating them like cannon fodder or chess pieces on an on board and and it's clear from the biblical narrative God is just and good and loving and treats human beings according to the same standard by which he wants us to treat one another justly and and good and lovingly so the point is this is our biblical narrative now do we expect then that God will come and give a scientific description of the physical universe through the Scriptures no we do not expect that as Catholics and neither did Pope Pius the 12th right we have to respect what each can do it would have been very strange indeed if God had come up to a fifth century BC biblical author and said okay biblical author I'm gonna give you the real intent of this narrative in the beginning there was a quantum of flux that occurred out of a Unified Field which led to you know a four dimensional a spacetime configuration enriched an electrodynamic weak and strong unified force and came out and and then began to separate data to death the biblical either would have said what are you talking about I I don't know even understand the first word you're saying so God inspires the biblical author and the biblical author using the categories he understands through the culture in which he received those categories he writes about the inspiration of God about the truths that are necessary for our salvation sacred truths necessary for our salvation and we leave up to science an accurate physical description and explanation of the universe so that's basically what Pope Pius tells us there's another encyclical regarding evolution I'm not going to go into it in detail it's by the same pope Pope Pius the 12th called human EJ nurus which allows Catholics to believe in evolution this is further specified and accommodated by st. John Paul in his elocution to the papal Academy Sciences I believe that was in 1998 I may be mistaken but I think that was the year of the allocution and you can read about that right on our magis Center website you can go and get the whole allocation of st. John Paul well I have to say I don't think the biblical author would be the only person kind of flummoxed by that explanation of exactly how the earth began there I think most of us would be quite as well and and that being said we're talking about evidencing existence of God a nature of God from credible Catholic and one of the things that struck me you said here in incredible Catholic while there are some intriguing incidental points of intersection between the biblical account and modern science you go on to list with some of them are these are secondary to God's main purpose in the Bible which is conveying sacred truths for salvation why is that such an important point of course the the sacred tree is necessary for salvation science can't deliver that and that's why that's really important that's what we have to be gleaning from the biblical text that was God's intention and inspiring the biblical author and science can't deliver it mathematics can't deliver it no human science can't I can deliver it it has to be from Revelation but as you already pointed out yes we have that very interesting thing you know in the first day of creation let there be light how true that is and I mean I ask myself every how did the biblical author come up with that one how did he get to light energy as the first manifestation of creation which by the way is dead-on accurate right a light is a form of energy it would have existed prior to a Higgs ian's field or other fields that would have given rise to rest mass etcetera and so that's a really interesting correlation and by the way there are about 10 of them that are really really interesting correlations that we can see between the biblical narrative and science however we cannot try and derive science from the biblical narrative that was neither God's intention nor the biblical authors intention and creating a narrative needed for our salvation well you say elsewhere as we go along we need not worry about contradictions in dealing with the Bible and science but if we force the biblical author to be a scientist or force scientists to give truths of salvation we find ourselves in a world of confusion absolutely the case absolutely the case we have to respect the two different methodologies that are seeking two different things and you know of course God is in a sense the source of the direct source of biblical inspiration leading to those revealed truths but God is also the source of reason and so he's also the source the ultimate source of mathematics he's also therefore the source of empirical method and so therefore scientific method and mathematical scientific method and so in a way you can say that that reason and revelation has to be consistent because they come from the same source but if you force them to do the same thing that's where we get in problems if you force the scientist to give you a truth of salvation he's unable to do it by his method and his knowledge and if you force the biblical author to give you you know an accurate empirical description of an explanation of the physical universe he's unable to do it because of his method and his knowledge and so we have to let the Bible be the Bible at sacred truths be signatures and on the other hand let science be science let scientific methodology be scientific methodology right you say we must keep in mind the Bible is not doing science you also go on to say here that the soul cannot be reduced any physical or biological structure or process thus so long as Catholics hold it you mean beings are transcendental and have a trans physical soul that did not evolve from chimpanzees or pro Homo sapiens they are faithful to church teaching that is correct and that was the that one specification that Pope Pius the 12th gives in Humana generous he said it is imperative that we believe as human beings that every human I mean as Catholics that every human being has a trans physical soul which enables them to be transcendental enables them their soul to survive physically physical bodily death right we have to believe that God creates a unique trans physical soul for every human being that will survive bodily death and is rational we have to believe that you know as as Catholics but nowadays that's not hard to believe in because as I said the evidence of near-death experiences and all of the evidence we have for you know not just terminal lucidity but all these areas of transcendental mathematics for example gadelle z' proof which is a very important proof yet o who is you know the famous german mathematician who showed that human beings do mathematics from the top down and not from the bottom up what we call algorithmically developed mathematics but really from a grasp of mathematical intelligibility itself this kind of thing shows we have some transcendent so our linguistic capacity that we were just talking about that shows that we have the capability to know concepts and categories right and why that implies you know that we have a trans physical soul and certainly what we were talking about earlier with respect to self reflectivity Saint Agustin had a wonderful proof also of the the what he calls the five trends and dental desires had come from Plato the desire for perfect truth love goodness beauty in home and those five desires said Agustin that shows that we already even children already have an awareness of perfect truth perfect love perfect beauty perfect goodness or justice and perfect home that enable us us to desire those things and that in turn reveals not only our ability to know something which is not out there in the empirical world but to know something which are physical brains with they're physically algorithmically finite structures cannot develop on their own without a soul and that's why by the way not only st. Agustin but Plato the pagan believed in an immortal soul was because of those five transcendental desires so there's a ton of evidence today and now with today's studies you know compounded with st. Agustin's and the near-death experiences in the terminal lucidity that we've talked about in other programs it's not hard to believe in a trance physical transcendental soul and human beings that's going to survive bottling also in in this section and we've talked about it a little bit in one of your earlier programs with people talking about you know are there answers possibly people in other worlds quote-unquote aliens and and could they be part of God's salvation plan and I thought in in this section on credible Catholic you said therefore we must have the same attitude towards aliens as the early missionaries had toward bringing the gospel from Israel to the Roman Empire and then to India and then to China Asia that a new world it really does not matter where the Son of God entered into the condition of unredeemed trance physical intelligent beings human or otherwise I thought that was a really interesting analogy I thought ah yeah absolutely because I think that's the the case today you know a notion is is not a real degree of separation anymore but space is but it won't be for very long and you know surely there is a possibility of other life out there is there a possibility to for transcendental life out there trans physical and sold life out there and the answer is if God wants it remember the only way you're going to get intelligence like ours mathematics like ours a sensitivity to you know life after death like ours are a linguistic ability at cetera et cetera the only way you're ever going to get that is if that being has a transcendental soul and so I would expect that if I went out and I discovered alien life that looked like me it had this alien life had a desire for perfect truth love goodness beauty and home betraying its awareness of perfect truth love goodness beauty in home which he could have never gotten from mere algorithmically finite structures in their brain or or in the environmental you know in the outside world then I would say whoa that being they have to have a soul and and that soul would have had to have been given by God and if God gave him a soul then Jesus Christ's one activity of entering into the world to redeem humanity is as good for them as it is for us and there's you know what's the difference you know we have to catechized that being and and we have to expect that if they have a desire for perfect truth love goodness beauty in home when we give them the Gospel message of Jesus Christ they're gonna go wow that sounds right as so many people did from the very inception of Christianity in in the Western world and then if they accept that truth in their hearts we baptize them aliens or not and that's our obligation so but let's if they exist like us then they have a soul you remember you're you're an old fan of the original Star Trek series when John TV in the sixties and there was an episode where they thought these people worshiped worshipping a Sun God and it turned out that they were worshipping quote-unquote the Son of God so you never know what you're gonna find out there right so yeah that's exactly right you just don't know and it's like those missionaries you know it's a Francis Xavier he gets to India and of course he expects that everybody there will never have heard of Jesus and st. Thomas apparently at least the he gets there to the southern India and these people are already Christians and goes where did you find out about all this and they said Oh from say Thomas so they'd been practicing Christianity down there for hundreds of years before that Francis Xavier I love it and speaking of that we are just out of time and we need your blessing so we can move ahead father very fine well bow your heads and pray for God's blessing and may the Lord send his spirit down upon you his spirit of wisdom of knowledge of beauty of love so that you can see all of these transcendentals put together in the creation that he has made for us and in the souls that he has given all of you to appreciate that creation and his loving and good hand in it in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen very good thank you so much father Spitzer we shall set see you again next week in the heart of your universe and there goes father Spitzer and there we go as well don't forget I want to put this up on the screen so you can see while I'm telling you all about the family celebration of member 3rd 2018 Jacksonville Florida prime Osborne Convention Center it's free one-day event if you're in the Florida area make sure you're there and you can always fly in as well next time we're going to be talking about God's inner call and there's a great person to talk to about it the one only father Spitzer you'll find us at the intersection of faith and reason we'll see you then [Music] you
