Fr Robert Spitzer: Faith and Science

[Music] welcome to the parousia podcast i'm trouble race your host here in the head office at perusia we are not in the voice of charity studios today we ask for your prayers jesse from the voice of charity has um contracted the virus covert 19 in the last week and we ask you to pray for her as she is um in lockdown so please please remember her in your prayers today we have a guest all the way from california united states the founder of the major center you may know him on ewtn as well on father spitzer's world and he joins me live from california it's father robert spitzer hello father how are you i'm doing well sure bell uh just great to be on with you in australia uh just a short distance away really from the west coast here thank you very much for joining us um it's i've been watching your work over the years um and it's just been amazing to see uh the reach you have and the amount of people you are engaging in in today's times well thank you uh we uh we really are trying to to hit the uh millennial generation but also very much our high schools and middle schools with this information on this wonderful complementarity of space with faith and science brings in of course space and time father it might be it is your first um first time with us and and maybe um i'd love to introduce you to our audience and maybe to start from the beginning a bit about um your upbringing um were you a cradle catholic just a bit of background about yourself and then maybe um leading into how you started this work absolutely well my mother was a daily communicant so i was a cradle catholic my father was not a catholic but i was very open to seeing us raised in the catholic church i was born in honolulu hawaii which is a lot closer to washington than california and lived there for 18 years went to a school named punahou which was not a catholic school but went faithfully to catechism classes and well the rest as they say is history i went to a catholic university gonzaga university in spokane for my collegiate years and by the grace of god wound up being president there for 11 years a little while later so um i've been definitely doing the faith and science thing for a long long time wrote my dissertation on uh basically um the reality of time and especially in the general theory of relativity and uh uh what are the what's what is time how does it operate in in the general theory but really i've been concentrating in the last 11 years on this complementarity of faith and science especially in the area of physics and cosmology though we get into all kinds of other things like peer-reviewed medical studies of near-death experiences and even the scientific investigation of the shroud of turin and a million other things where science really does touch upon our faith well that's um very important for today i mean the church has always been um um you know in in the media as portrayed as against science or opposed to science and that's that's nothing further from the truth um and love to maybe uh were you were you called to the priest or did you say in in college time or was that just one of your majors in studying for the priesthood uh actually you know i didn't even i was i didn't formally study theology or religion um at the time uh what i did uh do was definitely study philosophy very deeply but that led me you know obviously to to science and um and the complementarity there and uh was very nice to have some professors who were able to expose me at that time to what were called the hawking penrose equations for singularity that really fascinated me tremendously i happened by a metaphysics class quite by accident um when i was a junior in in college and uh i heard this professor saying proofs for the existence of god and you know i just stopped a mint hallway there and i kind of thought i'm going in there that sounds interesting so i went to the back of the classroom like i really belonged you know and i just went for class and um this guy got you know he was really fascinating me so i i stayed to the end of class and i sort of zoomed over to him i said hey i i don't think you can prove the existence of god he goes oh yes i can and i said well uh well once you do it now and he goes i've been in the process of doing it for two days i know very well you're not in this class if you come back and take the entire class i'll prove the existence of god to you he did and and so uh that really made a change in my life along with the the the hawking penrose singularity uh um you know theorems you know that shows the beginning of time you know if you have you know infinite curvature of space at a particular point um this is before they discovered negative pressure in in the universe but anyway uh um but uh today there are these proofs uh um you know from science uh you know they're new space-time geometry proofs are they're not singularity theorems anymore but um one of them the board of lincoln and guth proof is a very important one that really does show uh the need for something fundamental uh like a creation of the entirety of space-time outside of the universe itself so there's a lot of things going on but anyway that that happened to me and and you know i went uh from the head to the heart i know a lot of people go from the heart to the head but by the time i was uh done with college i was on fire i i really wanted to know about theology and so i just went up to one of these jesuits and i said well um where would i begin you know if i wanted to do theology and he said scripture so i you know i thought okay not thomas aquinas or something like that you know i said you know he's got these proofs for god's existence and he's got this huge pseudo-theological and he goes scripture scripture so i said okay so i got into a gospel of john class and then after the gospel of john class i came right back full swing to thomas aquinas bought myself a whole bunch of used books i even got a day potency a day which was a very expensive set of books at a used bookstore and just started burrowing into it the next thing you know i really wanted to go on an ignatian retreat and when i got on that uh you know it's a basically a five-day retreat with this fellow father steckler george steckler and um that was it i mean god you know i was smitten i mean i really was i i went from the head to the heart and that retreat was the heart and um you know after that i couldn't avoid wanting to be a priest i every time i turned around i just thought well you know my dad had a big law firm in honolulu and i i really was you know want to go to his alma mater harvard law school and and then go to uh take over his firm and and every time i tried to gear myself up you know for it and i was preparing for the sat for the cpa exam and the certified public scholars exam try to become a lawyer that would do financial end of things and i just theology wasn't more interest religion was becoming slowly but surely truly the most important thing in my life and i could not escape this fact and so uh one day um well i had a very curious experience but uh anyway i was so convinced i should be a priest but i was just tormented by it i didn't want to tell my dad i didn't want to take over his law firm or anything like that so i i you know said to my mom you know what what am i going to do here and she said well i was just reading this time magazine today and there's a thing called the permanent diaconate and you can get married you could you know have a law career and you could still be a deacon you know which is kind of halfway there and so i thought that's it i'll be a deacon and i had peace for about three weeks but you know how it is when the lord is calling you uh after about three weeks i'm coming out of saint aloysius church which is the college church of gonzaga and uh coming out of the church and and uh i see this pamphlet on the corner of my eye i see uh you know priests a pamphlet on priesthood and i couldn't resist it i picked it right up off the shelf there and i started breathing next thing i know i'm i've read through the entire thing i'm going back through it looking at these pictures again and i just thought what am i talking about i don't want to be a deacon i really want to be a priest my religion is the most important thing in my life what am i talking about and so uh next thing you know um i was uh i had another curious incident and after that incident i i wound up uh deciding to apply uh you know to the society of jesus as a jesuit and the rest as i say is history too yeah well and that um how many years now have you been ordained well 37 years three years till i'm 40. ordained so 37 years so i was a i was one of those uh uh wonderful uh you know folks that were mostly uh rude on the the 70s and to a certain extent a little bit of the 80s i was you know ordained in 83 so but it was uh those are interesting times and uh but again i i just loved i went to the gregorian in rome for my theology and i i loved it i couldn't get enough i mean i'd have gone to class 24 7 if i could i mean i just i loved everything i loved systematics i loved history i loved scripture especially uh i went on to do a you know a th m in scripture uh new testament studies and uh but then you know the province said you know we need you for philosophy of science you gotta you know an interest in the physics side of that we really want people in our universities with that specialty it's gonna become more important boy did they not i mean they didn't even begin to know how prescient those words were yes yes i mean it turned out to be always be obedient because you don't understand it fully it winds up you know god can speak to that holy obedience like there's nobody's business and so i wound up doing that specialty loved that specialty too and and then of course it turned out to be really important because the more i got into it the more you know my classes were just like people loved them they just absolutely loved my classes because it had all the physics in it it had the science it had the cosmology and even when i was president of gonzaga i used to teach those classes i could have easily you know filled an entire lecture hall of 300 kids you know uh uh uh with but you know i can only max out you know i had three uh three uh faculty members who were helping me great papers and doing the usual things which i just didn't have time to do i did the lectures in the lecture hall and um and uh but uh they just filled up instantly and wasn't because of me it was because the topic was so interesting faith in science this is um was it was this in the sort of mid to late 80s or early 90s around the time well you mean when i did my doctorate in in foster science yes yeah i got my doctorate in foster science 88. okay so so it was in throughout the 80s i was ordained in 83 uh then i went on to the the thm and biblical studies you know and i got that in 84 and then got my doctorate in philosophy of science and metaphysics in 88 so and then went on to you know i was teaching at the time at georgetown university in washington dc doing my doctorate actually catholic u um and so i kind of did a back and forth deal there but oh teaching at georgetown was wonderful and again i i could fill up you know we we had a auditorium you know 80 was supposed to be the max for the freshmen so for classes but i just sign in anybody who wanted to be there so i had a great old time and uh and uh but it turned out to be really fruitful i mean those students i mean i when i even did philosophical proofs of the existence of god they they just were all ears you know when i did the singularity theorems you know they were uh you know the they were all the vogue in those days singularity theorems i mean people were just totally attentive and today uh you know i updated it for what's called inflationary cosmology and quantum gravity but you have to do but it's easy update and once you update it it's it's amazing uh how strong the evidence is for a creation of not only our physical universe but a creation of physical reality itself uh outside of a physical universe outside of what we call physical spacetime asymmetry so um this is good it is exciting can i ask um what what you found over the last 30 years or so in teaching um what i guess uh was the view typical world view um as you said were people looking at science to try you know we hear of the the big the big big topics out there the big bang theorem or the um or uh we're trying to explain or explain away this concept of god um and just sort of looking for a particular proof have you seen god or many people you know there would have been common arguments um that for one way or another what's been your experience seeing over the last 30 years um what sort of were the pressing arguments back then and what has that sort of evolved to now you sort of touched on it with quantum um whole quantum realm but could you talk about maybe what was it sort of the the biggest issues back in the late 80s in when you were teaching this stuff well you know uh very few people knew even among my students that it was a catholic priest who discovered the big bang theory and rigorously uh showed it that was father georges lemaitre he's a belgian priest went on to mit uh to get his phd and was a colleague of einstein's over there at mount wilson uh uh here actually in california and of course i was at the advanced institute at princeton and um so you know lemaitre father lemaitre showed his uh his theory to einstein and einstein because he used you know einstein's own equations but adapted them for what would have been a uniformly expanding uh universe where the space between the galaxies was actually stretching and growing and when you adapted it those equations to that scenario einstein responded well you know that would mean that there was a beginning of the universe and he said you know they said the the the physics you know in the mathematics is is really great but the idea of an expanding universe you know you can hardly expect me to believe this well three years later after edwin humble the the american astronomer had you know done that survey of the heavens uh you know humanism and uh and hubble made that survey of the heavens he had proved you know what was called the red shifting of galaxies and the further away the galaxy was the greater the redshift which means that further galaxies are receding from us at a faster rate than nearer galaxies the only way you can explain that is if spacetime as a whole is expanding and then of course einstein knew that father lemaitre was absolutely correct and he came back to lemaitre in all honesty and he said you know well elementary said this is the most satisfying explanation of creation that i have ever heard so it was a nice you know uh comeback but anyway uh one of the things that that fascinated the kids was you know big bang theory you know they thought wow that's the most rigorously comprehensive physical theory that there is you know what could be better and i go and by the way discovered by a catholic priest uh you know and today we still have lemaitre space time got lemaitre walker uh you know on time and you know coefficients we've got uh you know lemaitre's uh equation uh for uh you know the uh the uh you know the the proportion the ratio of the distance from a galaxy is from us to the uh the acceleration or the velocity of the galaxy away from us so all these things are still around father lewis are still very very important uh today but when people hear that they go wow the catholic church is really involved in in the discovery of the big bang theory i said intimately you know i mean i mean he's the first guy to have done it you know and he was so humble you know that when people attributed it to uh to hubble he never disputed it for years you know he didn't say hey wait a minute you know i published all this stuff four years before he did you know and there was nothing like that uh you know he just sort of said okay and then of course as you know probably 20 years ago uh all the papers were on earth then people said actually you know hubble didn't you know discover the expanding university he validated father lemaitre's theory who you know elementary was the one who discovered it and then you know people don't know gregor mendel you know the father of quantitative genetics was uh you know not only a catholic priest but an abbot an augustinian abbott and people don't know that uh nicholas stano the father of contemporary geology and stratigraphy was a catholic uh bishop a danish bishop of the catholic church i mean people don't even know that nicholas copernicus of the copernican revolution um you know the heliocentric uh theory first mathematical verification of it was actually a catholic cleric so i mean when you start looking at it there are 286 catholic priests who are in the forefront of every single discipline including quantum mechanics um you know in the forefront of the discoveries of those disciplines and if you if you want a fascinating wiki article uh just go to priest i'm sorry uh cleric scientist uh wiki and um are catholic cleric scientists and you'll see 286 of these guys who are at the forefront and by the way the catholic church is the only church to have a pontifical academy of sciences with the 46 nobel prize winners that have participated in it so just or not a bunch of slouches in the catholic church who are making science a whipping boy for anything we've never thought there was a contradiction between faith and science oh contraire we thought precisely the opposite and so we've made our contributions and by the way like i said you know back then the real deal you know was creation of the universe um you know viewed from the vantage point of singularity theorems today um you know the the new um uh evidence for god from contemporary physics focuses on three areas uh the first is uh new developments in the theory of entropy um that's been a huge deal because entropy really cuts through all the multiverses and everything else it just seems to show a beginning not only of our universe but of any physical system and the reason for that is because disorder which is basically equilibrium in physics right so thermodynamic equilibrium would be the the worst thing you can have in physics that's complete disorder because nothing can happen at thermodynamic equilibrium but the opposite is the case you know and that is that it's very good to have disequilibrium of temperature pressure molecular distribution etc because wherever you have disequilibrium there you have the capacity for a system to do work now the main thing to remember is that entropy is the the you know the process by which all that good energy all that disequilibrium all that physical order needed to do work it's running down just like a mechanical toy right so you wind it up but it's only got so much tension disequilibrium in that coil and eventually what's going to happen is it's just going to stop and that's what's not only only going to happen in our universe it's also going to happen even in a multiverse there have been various attempts to try and get the multiverse out of it sean carroll is one example but really it really doesn't work because there's so many problems uh with the multiverse and uh we can talk about that in another uh point but multiverses are big today uh quantum uh gravity and quantum cosmology is a big deal today um so the the proofs the the evidence for uh for creation the evidence for creation outside of space and time outside of uh you know our physical universe or even a multiverse that's what's really the big deal today so back in the 80s people weren't really i'm thinking about multiverses they they weren't thinking about string universes in the higher dimensional space of string theory that comes that's part of the quantum cosmology quantum gravity area so they they just you know you didn't have to to deal with that sort of thing um they weren't thinking about even you know um what what we now call you know um uh you know bouncing universes on steroids right you know the steinhardt turok you know expanding universe where you again you're you're depending on higher dimensional space you have three dimensional two three-dimensional um you know kind of worlds that are positioned between a four dimensional bulk space time and they kind of these membranes collide in the four dimensional bulk space time and they burp out additional universes so there's all kinds of theories out there but right now if you really look at the implications of the board of lincoln and goof proof and you look at the implications of entropy it actually applies to multiverses string universes in the higher dimensional space of string theory bouncing universes even on steroids et cetera so basically you've got some uh really interesting evidence uh for god even if you postulate all of these by the way very hypothetical scenarios but you know they're there and uh so you know um it's uh it's interesting stuff but uh board of lincoln goof proof is uh you know the the per people who you know uh developed it you know arvind border alexander lincoln and alan guth i mean alan guth he's really truly a remarkable person he he's the father of inflationary cosmology holds a chair at mit and massachusetts institute of technology um which is um uh you know a high-end deal here in the united states uh alexander lincoln he's actually the director of the institute of cosmology at tufts university in boston another high-end guy and arvin borda is at the cavalier institute university california santa barbara so these guys are not what we might call um on the low end of the physics scale and um you know it they've really uncovered something which is not just suggestive of a creation outside of space-time asymmetry or even outside of a multiverse but a creation of physical reality itself and all space-time systems uh it's really interesting stuff and then we've got a whole other area right now uh you know fine tuning i just finished an article for a volume called theism and atheism um you know contrary arguments in philosophy uh it's one of these macmillan reference deals uh but i i did the uh uh with dr sinclair i did the article there on fine-tuning and uh indications of intelligent life and um there is a ton of evidence there but that's a big topic for another you know uh something but it's it's fascinating i mean where you not only see the creator of the universe just see how smart he really is yes we're talking about mega intelligence here this is a fan i do want to give a um in the comments section uh you're welcome those who are watching can make any comments or ask any questions very happy to ask on your behalf but uh we've put in the comment section the links that father has has mentioned and also you'll notice there's a link to the margis center maybe we're quickly right in the middle midway here talk about the major center um and a bit about what when did you found the major center um and then what can people expect from it how do people get involved how can they learn more about what the major centre does yeah the current iteration of the majes center uh uh occurred when i came down here um so that was uh in 2009 i came down to california as i said i was president of gonzaga until 2009 and you know at that time it was very clear to me not only from my classes you know and the students needs to know the evidence for god from contemporary physics uh the evidence for even you know transcendent intelligence from contemporary physics even the evidence for a soul you know from contemporary peer-reviewed medical studies near-death experiences things like that they had real needs and i knew it uh and this is way before the few surveys came out in the united states now the pew foundation has very very good uh research surveys um that they run and they are especially interested in the whole question of religion but um in 2012 they did the first survey that showed that the main reason for the uh for a kids uh you know i called kids but you know we're talking about basically um from 10 years old all the way to 35 so the um let's just call it millennials gen z's etc you know the whole span there from 10 to 35 why were they leaving the faith in fact why were 42 of them leaving the faith the primary reason bar none the first one was because of the um uh of the uh rift between faith and science they felt that there was no evidence for god from science they felt that there was actually a contradiction between religion and science science had to be the truth therefore religion had to be false and they were literally talking themselves out of their faith by a completely false contention there's tons of evidence for god from science and there's no contradiction between faith and science and there never really has been a contradiction uh between faith and science so i just thought okay we got to stop this on a massive scale so our objective back then was to uh try and put together all the materials we could to um not only you know bring to a website you know not only but we wanted to train teachers uh to use this in our catholic middle schools and high schools we wanted to train confirmation teachers here in the united states we have basically most of our confirmations are either 7th and 8th graders or 9th and 10th graders and this is you know we we know from this other study called the kara study the center for applied research and the apostolate we know that for us the mean age at which our kids are going to make the decision that they need to leave the church is 13. so it was much earlier than anyone had thought when i came down here in 2009 i thought okay if we could just reach the high school students and the college students we'll be in pretty good shape but no that's really not the case we need to reach the middle school students i'm sure australia is probably very same uh range 13 is probably the age they're really considering it they won't leave because he can't do it in front of their parents the minute they get the chance senior year of high school or go to college off they go and so they you know the decision has been made so we need to counter it uh right up there and so we decided need to get it in the confirmation classes too but it honestly took about nine years to gear the whole thing up because um you know first of all i had to assemble all the material and i had to write all the books so it took me five books regular scholarly books to put it all together there's a book i wrote for erdmann's called new proofs for the existence of god contributions of contemporary physics and philosophy that kind of was the starting point in 2010 where you know i kind of got the the the the scholarly academic layout done uh then i did the souls upward yearning you know looking at the evidence for the soul then started looking at the evidence for jesus god so loved the world you know etc so then trying to to put all those things together but anyway it took a little while to get the scholarly stuff done and then it has to be converted to modules and curricula that teachers will show in class um and religion teachers a lot of them don't have a science background so uh you know there's like the first time they hear stuff they go oh my gosh i don't know anything about this i'm not going to show anything about this i can't answer any questions about this so they they get a kind of a block so what we had to do was put it into modules where basically you just download them for free so if you go to modus center or i'm sorry crediblecatholic.com incredible.com just go to that and if you just click on seven essential modules you can they're all there you can just download them you can download all seven modules show them to your classes if you're a teacher or a catechist but it's all there for you the the modules are read to the students so you just you know you download them to your computer and you just turn your computer on um you know with the if you can get a nicer screen you know than your computer screen or a little television set or um you know a little amplified uh signal for the audio that's great because then the whole class can sort of watch it together and module can be done in about 45 minutes but if you want teachers want to have discussion about it it's it's pretty good there's we don't use a lot of tech talk we certainly don't use equations occasionally we'll have a number you know we're talking about fine-tuning and things of that nature we show the extraordinary you know extraordinary odds exceedingly exceedingly exceedingly improbable odds of something happen happening so we will always compare it to something analogous that's within the reach of the teachers and students but it took a little time to convert all that stuff to you know things with you know you have to have videos that intrigue the students in embedded in the modules you know by experts and you have to have you know graphics in the in the videos to hold their attention um things of that nature so it took a little time to put those together and then we needed to create a dissemination system uh obviously we started with the us and um you know it's our intention uh uh next year will be in ireland in every single high school in ireland um north and south uh so the hell the i the irish uh council of catholic bishops has been so so wonderful to us i mean it's just been great so we're trying to get it you know there and you know um of course perusia you know your ministry we're sure hoping that our partnership with you will get a lot of teachers uh interested a lot of catechists interested um and believe me these things are really usable and we've got an mtp program a master teacher program uh here where we'd love to teach um even australian master teachers that unfortunately the certificate comes from catholic distance university here in the united states but i think it would count um very much in australia so if there are some australian teachers who would want to get certification on this kind of contemporary apologetics that will really be responsib will be responded to by the students that that could uh really um uh you know uh be a help to us because once you have teachers right there who go through the certification program um and that's on the same website crediblecatholic.com so both the the masters um course and the um the modules for teachers who could use in classrooms are both there um on that website yeah yeah and uh you can get all the workbooks too they're free of charge everything's free of charge completely free completely free how have you done that father god bless you well we don't give printed workbooks uh you'd have to download the workbook and print it but saves a lot of currency exchange you know when you send ireland or australia you know that the government would like to tax it you know and you know both ways so um you know it's probably easier just to download it and just photocopy it there in australia there's no copyright restrictions well this is this is brilliant um if you're a teacher watching this i strongly urge you to to check out the links download these modules and use them in your classrooms um these are the questions our young people are asking today and and we need to really have some sound responses to to faith and science and and really debunk the myth that the churches against science i really want to unpack that father with you in a minute um i do want to do a little mention out there that perusia is going to do its bit in promoting this across australia and across all the diocese and schools so if you are watching this any any priests out there or bishops or anyone in in leadership of education please contact me and contact us at parousia and we'll tell you how we can and help implement that uh for you completely free and this is what's exciting about it and we want to do a lot more with father spitzer in this space and look out next year as we launch our parousia academy one of the modules we want to present is something on faith and science and and and many of these courses so present them to you as well so look out for all of that um praying for this work this is excellent father what a um a legacy so how many how many courses are there right now so um you've got uh is it a junior high level and can you have that through what sort of what's been done so far yeah we have what's called a 12 plus that's basically a junior high and above you can actually use the junior high one for high school and a lot of high school teachers like to use the 12 plus but the 12 plus is also good for middle school and don't think for a second that sixth seventh and eighth graders are not completely tuned into these problems so module one you know deals you know i mean the near-death experience data just blows them away but the thing that blows them away when they see the evidence for god from contemporary physics and cosmology that's module two blows them away and then we know the five big questions that they're going to ask the minute you show you know that that you have a you know a confluence of faith in science a 13.8 billion year old universe etc etc they're going to say hey wait a minute how's that square with the bible you know six thousand years or something and and so forth and they got the wrong evolutionary picture here and so forth so we do have a module three is devoted to the first the bible and science why they're complementary and not contradictory there's a completely different kind of methodology doing completely different things and we try to explain what's going on there the second thing is of course evolution you know the bible doesn't have anything about dinosaurs bible we hear it all the time but the bible does have something about mitochondrial eve and y chromosome adam who are our ancestors right that are that you know every single one of us on this earth has mitochondrial um eaves uh remnant um you know of what we call mitochondrial dna and so uh you know our common mother is her dna is in every single person around here and every man on the globe i don't care if you're from australia or africa or china or europe it doesn't really matter we all have every male has the remnant of y chromosome adam both of our common ancestors lived 200 000 years ago okay that you say well the bible looks like it's 6 000 years ago well it's not it's 200 000 years ago and here's why the bible doesn't have the right number because they weren't doing science that's a huge reason why and uh we know that even you know um uh you know we have a variety of other things that just show how the soul was part of that evolution it's not just having uh you know our common genetic ancestors uh we can actually identify the point at which our genetic anzac ancestors probably got a soul and that was probably about 70 000 years ago and the reason we know that is because for 130 000 years our genetic ancestors were hanging around the border of namibia and and then gold and they just sat there cracking coconuts and eating bananas happy as clams doing nothing then suddenly 70 000 years ago they start doing everything they go on this geographical binge i mean they literally scoot up to the top of africa cross the streets go over into europe go over into asia all the way down to indonesia go all the way to the very tippy top of europe cross the arctic land bridge which was of course exposed in those days right over to alaska come right down the entire tip you know of alaska and actually move from indonesia to the aboriginal populations in australia i might add and this is going on 70 000 years ago all the way down to the tip of south america and they do that in 10 000 years for 130 000 years you know they're just scratching their heads down there in angola namibia and suddenly they do all this but that's just the tip of the iceberg what else is going on they start forming conceptual languages where they can actually say something about something well this doesn't happen uh just you know out of a biological switch uh in in the human brain conceptual ideas you're going to have to get over the problem what's called abstraction too much to talk about right now but you know chimpanzees highly trained chimpanzees like nem chimsky have never been able to do this because chimpanzees don't have any conceptual awareness they have perceptual ideas they don't have conceptual ideas therefore they can't have predicates they can't have direct objects they can't have indirect objects you can't have any abstract thought whatsoever a chimpanzee can't even tell you the difference between dog bites man and man bites dog can't tell whereas a little one and a half year old will chortle at the very prospect of a man biting a dog getting the humor the point of course is that's because the the little two-year-old gets conceptual language and therefore they get syntax uh monkeys can be trained by the way chimpanzees like namchimski can be changed trained to do 200 words in american sign language uh but they they can't you know no syntax whatsoever so syntax develops and what happens the sh as the geographical expansion continues there's a sheer proliferation of languages all over the place i mean it's just the most remarkable thing as if our very soul were programmed to do conceptual uh syntactical linguistics and and just you know this happens and so you go well how did this happen not the flip of a genetic switch this is not just a biological process the third thing that happens is human beings start getting self-reflective and again we can show uh you know there's a there's a whole bunch of work that's been done by david chalmers at oxford university a bunch of other people that really show that self-consciousness is not reducible to a physical process inner awareness is not reducible to a physical process too much to talk about today then something else happens you know these human beings start burying their dead but neanderthals buried their dead what's the difference when human beings homo sapiens sapiens started burying their dead they started putting objects into the grave that could be used on their journey after this life is over there's food there's weapons for protection there's all kinds of indications that these people actually had a sense not only of the afterlife but they're trinkets of gods trinkets of divinities that are you know placed in there with them now you know god divinities are going to protect them on the journey right now this is going back you know so the caves of indonesia this is to the caves in in heidelberg which go back 50 000 years you know we can trace these things actually we can trace them back even a little bit further but then that's just the tip of the iceberg they start putting together little counting rods right notched sticks and then from notch sticks to movable uh you know um uh you know pins like not quite an abacus yet but something akin to an abacus to do you know counting boards and things of that nature so we see that mathematical consciousness is already developing too and then the art on the walls of the cave not just symbolic art but symbolic art that reveals that they have a sense of transcendence of religion uh you know so i mean basically what happened seventy thousand years ago the evidence points to that that that homo sapiens became homo religiosis homo mathematicus homo linguisticus homo symbolicas homo you know uh uh you know uh uh you know transcendental as if i can put a coin a word so i mean that there's basically this this uh this complete transformation that betrays something happening beyond what physical processes can do and of course the kids are fascinated so they you know our unsold relatives were 70 000 years ago absolutely i think this is almost pinpointable that you have you know kind of a an insoled adam and an unsold eve and they give rise to an insult progeny that still is with us today we are categorically different from chimpanzees and from dolphins and you know so forth uh we are not only saying things about something we we're we have mathematical consciousness logical consciousness transcendental consciousness religious consciousness symbolic consciousness um and so forth it's it's utterly fascinating and it fascinates them uh you know we've never catholic church has never denied evolution the catholic church you know even john paul ii is allocation 1996 to the pontifical academy of sciences basically said evolutionism more than a hypothesis it's now a validated theory and so uh you know catholics have been free to believe this even since uh 1951 uh when uh pope pius xii wrote humanity generous but kids don't know it they think the catholic church is against uh evolution which of course is uh not true at all one of the greatest uh uh anthropologists of all time was a jesuit by the name of father pierre desjardins charnette and and a variety of others so there's certainly um the catholic church been pretty enlightened about these topics for for quite some time but anyway that's that's module three uh module four of course is all the evidence for jesus historical evidence even evidence for his resurrection from the shroud of turin the scientific investigation this route i'm looking forward to that oh no it's just you just gotta watch module four it really rivets the kids it has huge impact on it to be honest with you and then module five is all about the church but we make recourse to miracles eucharistic miracles uh marian miracles just to show you know if there's some scientific validation for these miracles how it points to the catholic church and jesus's basic commission of peter in matthew 16 17-19 so uh that's five and then uh six is on the four levels of happiness which is really about four levels of meaning and purpose in life interesting yeah oh yeah and then the seventh one is the big question another big question for the kids why would an all-loving god allow suffering and how do you use your faith uh to explain um to to deal with suffering well not only to get into the kingdom of heaven but to help a lot of other people to get into the kingdom of heaven and to help people to deal with this life you know with the compassion that jesus showed not only to those who are sinners but to those who are in real physical needs and um and um it's uh that's that's basically the series uh but it uh it does completely free all completely free at com crediblecatholic.com incredible well that's in there um and and please there's a there's a whole lot there that now this is not gonna do justice this show to dive into a lot of them um i'm my mind is buzzing right now just everything you just said and there's a lot of things i've just heard for the first time there and uh you know when you're doing bible studies that all these common questions occur you've addressed many of these and in fact it sounds like you've addressed pretty much all of the most common questions when it comes to um existence of god the creation and evolution concept the idea of um intelligent designer i love i love uh that there was a dvd you were part of in that whole project there and just all this none of this contradicts your faith none of this contradicts your catholic faith just to reinforce if people are hearing this for the first time all this points towards the catholic church and its teachings and it doesn't shake your faith in fact it strengthens it and tell us about your own personal faith father as um how is this um strengthen your own personal faith the more you dive into science well you know it actually has an in an interesting way i mean his near-death experiences are so fascinating that was one way you know i was right there at the beginning of it way back in 1974 when i saw the first set of studies from elizabeth kubler-ross and raymond moody and so i became fascinated then but now i look at the evidence that's just overwhelming uh this new samuel parnea study a study from the university of southampton in england is really something 2060 patients and they really do have uh the evidence there that there's no way you can explain what these people are doing and saying by simply appealing to a hallucination you're going to have to appeal to some form of consciousness that survives what's called clinical death or bodily death so if you had a heart attack for example and and you uh um you 30 seconds after that heart attack basically your brain functioning is going to go down to zero electrical activity in the in the cerebral cortex and the frontal cortex which is you know high thinking and judging functions in the brain it's going to go down to zero flat eeg you know electroencephalogram and when that happens you're not going to be doing any thinking with your brain but these people oh 30 seconds after that they have no gag reflex so no even brain activity going on in the lower brain uh fixed and dilated pupils they're basically you know once you know micrometer away from from brain death and what are they doing highly high cognitive functions they're seeing things eighty percent of blind people actually see when they're clinically dead for the first time uh totally inexplicable by means of physical apparatus brain chemistry physical processes can't do that because basically blind people don't have any visual images in fact one of our videos in our first module there on near-death experiences she's an english lady named nora who got into an automobile accident when she was 22 born blind from birth you want to just click on that video just to click on it because if you see it it will practically you know it'll just nail you because she says well you know i i had you know thoughts of taste i had thoughts of you know um tactile you know touching and and and smell and so forth and so on but i i didn't have any visual thoughts whatsoever and then she talks about what happened in this accident and uh you know 30 seconds after the accident her soul just floats out of her body she's seeing everything for the first time not to her physical eyes she's seeing her body sitting there in the car in the accident with her other eyes of her soul if i can put it that way describes it perfectly in complete detail and uh you know goes over to the other side and of course sees jesus and you know this incredibly loving white light and and she's describing this in in the most remarkable way but you know i think kids who see this for the first time um are just blown away i know they're blown away because i see the evaluations of the students who just say more of these you know we want to see more of these videos and they they do but i mean the point of course is is when i i studied that that that was really fascinating for me uh you know of course uh being from the physics side of things i basically also was very very impressed uh by the what i call the intelligent design argument there's a wonderful uh book by a guy named luke barnes and it's called fortunate universe and he by the way is a good australian there um uh sydney at the university uh no i'm sorry university of melbourne uh perhaps do you have an astronomical observatory there i think it wouldn't you know imagine it yeah and so he uh he uh wrote a book called fortunate universe uh you just have to read it it's it's uh okay it's just like the the the the development of the fine-tuning argument and transcendent intelligence you know designing the universe is really spectacularly you know um well developed you know since 20 years ago and uh i thought i think luke barnes uh has a most uh accessible book for you know you'd have to have a little bit of physics background uh you know you just you you know you you wouldn't you know quite be there but it's not like you have to to to know all the equations uh if you if you have a little bit of uh you know physics background and a science interest you could pick up that book and get it or if you didn't want to go into that kind of technicality you could just go to our second module or you could go to crediblecatholic.com again click on the big book and just click on volume 2 and all this stuff is kind of simplified for you in a form it's more technical than the modules but uh the workbooks have a little bit more you know uh a little bit more complete treatment than the modules and then the big book is what we call it um the big book has the most complete and those are summaries but like i said this australian barns he's is really something and his response to the multiverse arguments is also one of the most enlightened responses so i i'd say uh might take a look at him yeah definitely we'll look out for that i do want to um just raise a question here um dorothy um watching from the cradio platform is asking um uh uh are you covering anything about the string theory and then of the expanding universe theory and which age level would that be pitched at yeah we have as i said we have a middle school yes we do cover it uh string theory is covered um in module number two so okay yeah module two and again we and um expanding universe is also covered in module two so go to module two there uh we have the 12 plus version um would be for the middle school seventh and e seventh and eighth grade here um and then for the uh high school we have a 15 plus version but like i said many of the high school teachers like the 12 plus version and then we are putting together a a good advanced one so our for our master teacher program we have what are called advanced modules and advanced modules would have a much more complete explanation of string theory much more complete explanation of multiverses much more complete explanation of quantum gravity etc so that would be the advanced modules there you can make a whole course in your senior year out of those advanced modules and in ireland uh indeed that is what they're doing they're making an entire course uh for the senior cycle uh from those advanced modules so you can you've got three really big you have three levels you have the basic uh middle school you've got the high school and then you've got the advanced which are really for high school seniors could be for juniors and a good prep school but for high school seniors also for college students and also for um uh teachers uh you know especially teachers who are going through our master teacher program we would have those available and again they would have their own separate workbooks which would be much more developed than things like you know science or scripture or whatever it may be brilliant brilliant well father we are out of time would you believe i cannot believe it quick um but i do want to invite those watching um and listening uh to this podcast to go and visit um if you go to the parousian media website we will have the page up in the next day or so you'll see all the links that we've been mentioning in today's show it's going to be part of a partners page we've got exclusive on on the parousia website and we're going to point you to the major center and all of the wonderful work there's free articles that point you to that website these modules as father was mentioned incredible catholic and of course um any of these materials that are online any of the videos online that are free and of course links to to purchase any of the books as well so we're going to make sure that we um bring all that together um and and present that to you so those who are already on our on our database um you'll get emails this week about all of this and of course if you haven't signed up to our email list i invite you to go to perusiammedia.com pop in your email and then you'll be up to date each week we'll send you uh information about what's happening in the parisian world including this week's podcast and everything we've mentioned as well father i want to thank you so much um i'd love to have you on again uh in the future and maybe we can break open a specific topic um that i mean the near-death experiences sounds fascinating oh no that more the shroud of turin of course um that for me personally uh is quite uh important and then um uh just this creation versus evolution all these fascinating topics i want to thank you you've certainly given me a lot to think about personally and i hope others dive in a bit deeper and take their their faith deeper as well well thank you charles it's really been an honor to be with you and just to reach you your good australian audience here so thanks for the opportunity but could i ask uh maybe uh just a a final blessing um as we close here all right i figured you might yeah and pray for god's blessing and may the lord of all consolation and love send his spirit down upon you to inspire and guide you may he uh tell you not only of his intelligence but always of his overwhelming love for you calling you through that love into the fullness of salvation through the word of jesus christ in the catholic church may almighty god bless you all father and son and holy spirit amen thank you so much father that's a a scientist and a faith-based man that has a deep relationship with god there you go thank you so much you

Channel: ParousiaMedia

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Length: 61min 15sec (3675 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2020