Uncommon Knowledge with David Berlinski on “The Deniable Darwin”

[Music] welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson we're shooting today in Italy in Fiesole town in the hills just above Florence an academic and author David Berlinski is a senior fellow at the discovery Institute's Center for science and culture and a contributing editor at inference international review of science dr. velinski holds a doctorate in philosophy from Princeton performed post doctoral work in molecular biology at Columbia and has taught philosophy mathematics and English at institutions such as Stanford Rutgers and the City University of New York and the universidad apache his books include the devil's delusion atheism and its scientific pretensions and the deniable darwin and other essays david Berlinski welcome thank you so much I have to speak for just a moment about David Cole earned her the Yale computer scientist who just this past spring published an essay in The Claremont Review of Books called giving up Darwin quotation there's no reason to doubt that Darwin successfully explained the small adjustments by which an organism adapts to local circumstances changes to fur density or wing style or beak shape yet there are many reasons to doubt whether he can explain the big picture not the fine-tuning of species but the emergence of new ones the Origin of Species is exactly what Darwin cannot explain close quote now David Gallinger is a leading computer scientist and computer science is at the very center of everything that's cool about the new economy about the current academia it's technocratic gets rational you don't have to ask ultimate questions and here's girl earner going over to the kooky side and why does he do this in part by reading the work of David Berlinski which David gallant nner in his essay referred to as quote essential so take me through a few of your arguments from the deniable darwin bearing in mind that you have a lot to answer for a lot to answer for look since Darwin published in 1859 everyone has pretty much recognized what the problem is the problem is at the end of the inference we have something we cannot properly describe a living system how on earth are we to place our confidence in a process of evolution if we can characterize what it reaches it's an essential problem not only for a dynamic theory of life but any learning theory for example if you can't characterize what an organism has learned you don't know how to evaluate a learning theory by the same token what we do know of living systems is a degree of complexity that's almost unfathomable its complexity wrapped up complexity wrapped up in complexity forming and endless panorama of labyrinths and we simply have no way of reconciling the kind of primitive mechanism we see in a local variation random mutation and that which Darwin did describe correctly he was gone to something there's sort of some they had a local theory of change but he had nothing like a global theory and this is what we're lacking all right let me ask you if I may David I've made notes I read the chore that master si the deniable Darwin and I just made notes I'm a layman you're a scientist I'm going to ask you to make me understand the fossil record this is you writing in the deniable Darwin quote if life progressed by an accumulation of small changes as Darwin suggests the fossil record should reflect this little organisms slightly more complicated slightly more complicated than that and in a smooth progression to to David Berlinski and me say or at least to dinosaurs but before the Canberra era a brief 600 million years ago very little is inscribed in the fossil record and then during this so-called Cambrian explosion an astonishing number of biological structures come into creation all at once the Cambrian era as I recall lasted 70 million years some uncertainty about the time it could be more could be low but the argument is that in geologic time so that Lincoln Illinois a blink of an eye and that's that's not only a problem for Darwin that's in and of itself fatal it's not fatal there are a variety of explanations in the literature I mean some some paleontologists argue that the record is there it's just not very evident others argue that there was a large scale radiation and much of the details are now lost but there's no reason to doubt that that occurred but the essential part is look you've got a theory that makes at least one qualitative prediction that is change in biology is continuous it's not radical it's not discontinuous it doesn't jump and if you look at the historical record it seems to jump all over the place especially the Cambrian now whether there are explanations whether that can be reconciled the historical record is an open question but for heaven's sake let's begin with the obvious there's something not right in the theory it makes a qualitative prediction on the one hand and the facts are recalcitrant on the other maybe you can reconcile the two I don't have an opinion I'm not a palaeontologist but the least that we should be doing is saying clearly look something's not right something isn't right and it's not only the Cambrian explosion look at us sitting around the room doing something that no other organism can do chatting with one another now what is it what is the explanation for a whole suite of human powers and capacities language foremost among them the usual Darwinian explanation the usual explanation of look it's tremendously useful right tremendous right okay but so useful why is it so isolated no other organism can speak try talking to the dog see how far it gets you they have nothing to say nor are the cats perhaps that's that's incorrect they don't wish to say yes don't deign to speak to us yeah but that's a typical example we have a property that's absolutely self-evident the power to assimilate a natural language no other organism has that power we don't know why we're the only species so gifted so is part of your I want to return to the deniable Darwin in a moment but part of the part of your argument I'm not even sure it's an argument as much as irritation probably better ah lack of humility within the field you say look here's what you'd expect from Darwin continuous change here's the fossil record they don't match up maybe there are explanations but for goodness sake have the humility to say there's a there's there's there's a problem and the field doesn't say that well I should probably be the last person on earth offering the council of humility my academic colleagues but I'll do it anyway yeah that would be a good beginning listen why don't we go back to 1859 and say here's a theory and have certain kinds of properties and then skip forward to the present day and say look the theory has many interesting things fidelity the to the facts doesn't seem to be among them it's an interesting theory it's no grouse default in a theory that it's not faithful to the facts but it's not a good sign either that includes all the discussions about gaps in the fossil record you know when you come to species they're not many they're form a continuous progression higher water you have large groupings that do form continuous progressions but species they're very few on the ground does as Gould recognized right even Jay Gould recognized you can't just say the theory is correct and it's infidelity to the facts is absolutely of no interest it's very interesting we don't have a continuous record maybe there's a good reason maybe there's a good reason but maybe there's not all right I sometimes think there's that there's that there's a urge to adapt the Burchill bertolt brecht we have a government legislating a new PA change the facts change the facts so here's like back to the deniable dharman quote according you david the general issue is one of size and space and the way in which something small may be found omits something very big this is the math of evolution can you explain that to me you cite you cite an example of Richard Dawkins who is the pro ologist I believe and Dawkins says monkeys typing at typewriters sooner or later they will type the phrase and he chooses a phrase from church from Shakespeare methinks it is a weasel and then you write methinks it is a weasel is a six word sentence containing 28 English letters including the spaces it occupies an isolated point in a space of ten thousand million million million million million million possibilities any definition of natural selection must plainly meet what I have called a rule against deferred success all right so this gets to the mathematics of random variation acted on under natural selection are there enough variations do we have time for do it are there enough life-forms mutating is there time has there been time since Big Bang I suppose I'm fumbling here but help me to think about the mathematics everybody's fumbling the mathematics isn't very complicated I assure you it's the implications that are Rabab ative you take any combinatorial string look at proteins consists of 20 amino acids right and you can jumble them up or permute them in a lot of different ways and the huge numbers of growing surprising speed with a surprising speed if you have a string of amino acids 250 amino acids in length that means you've got 20 to the 250 as power as your total space of possibilities now finding anything in this space is just impossible you don't have time you don't have the resources the space is too overwhelming what you cannot do in Darwinian theory is say I know what I'm looking for it happens to be a needle this is a haystack I know what a needle looks like it I can go find it yeah you can do that there's no problem about that but don't winning in evolution is blind to the future all success is local at a particular moment in a particular space and time if so how is some complicated protein ever found now I'm not suggesting for a minute that problem is negatively overwhelming but it is a problem exactly like the Cambrian explosion is a problem this is a problem - it's called combinatorial explosion it's called combinatorial explosion because I coined it thus many years ago the space becomes huge but exactly the same thing that's true in a natural language if you take oh I don't know a high school graduate is supposed to know something like 20 thousand words is that about right maybe half that mean I don't know her you and I know many more of course thank you dear and you take a simple sentence John brought the book back home and you consider all the different ways with different nouns and verbs could slot into that and all the different ways they could be permuted how'd you ever find that sentence it is much worse than finding a needle in a haystack you found something because you knew what you were looking for and you knew what you were looking for because you had a thought how that thought translates into a grammatical sentence knowing those but you did it if you did it by looking ahead it's very reasonable to suggest it's not an argument but it's reasonable to suggest life must have some forward-looking capacity to construct the fiercely complicated structures that we see everywhere like the human eye like the kidney okay so so properly understood Darwin is interesting but the gap between this very elegant or at least quite simple everybody can grasp what Darwin is up to the gap between that and what we actually see and what we have come to understand the gap is mathematics Cambrian explosion and so forth should instill a greater sense of wonder we don't know instead of a rather smug self-confidence that we've got the problem licked I think that the the opinion among evolutionary biologists is not necessarily we have the problem lick but we have the foundations laid and everything is everything else is a matter of embroidering knowledge foundation I think that's quite mistaken I see I don't think the foundations are well laid all right design you quote the 18th century English theologian William Paley who argued that no one could bring himself to believe that a watch was assembled at random much less all of creation I'm quoting you the deniable Darwin it is simply a fact that this courtly and old-fashioned argument is entirely compelling we we human beings we never attribute the existence of a complex artifact to chance close quote or if I may paraphrase that create philosopher William Jefferson Clinton if you see a turtle on a fence post you know it didn't get there by itself probably not ok so again why is this is dangerous territory dangerous yeah it is dangerous tears come truly dangerous territory anyway because what you're saying is life needs some forward-looking capacity to be able to find through those extremely complicated proteins that if something is going on there that isn't purely random and anybody who sees David Berlinski tick us even a half step in that directions is stop if you takes another two steps will be back to God the medieval period and the Inquisition stop him now yeah I suppose so although I look with unconcerned that those consequences I think they're neither here nor there we should we should have the confidence to follow a scientific theory wherever it leads and if it leads back to the medieval period it leads back to the 13th century that leads finally to the Inquisition I'm prepared so long as I'm among the inquisitors but other than that I think these are misguided criticisms I don't think the chasm is going to yarn if we say look we really don't understand this I don't think anything bad will happen all right well let me push back on that there's a essay an essay that appeared recently National Review by a biologist called Rajiv Khan who's you've read this all right you've you're familiar with that so let me try a little bit of this sure rajab Khan I apologize to him if I'm mispronouncing his name quote evolutionary biology is nothing for conservatives to fear because it is one of the crowning achievements of modern Western civilization one of the crowning achievements of Western civilization the science built upon the rock of Charles Darwin's ideas is a reflection of Western modernity 'he's commitment to truth as a fundamental value close quote charles darwin was a champion of truth and david Berlinski is an obscurantist I guess the radical loan should give you a little twinge of doubt crowning achievement of Western civilization I don't know Maxwell's theory of the electromagnetic field for sure Darwin publishing at the same time an interesting view not his uniquely and Alfred Wallace had the same idea but Alfred Wallace was very significantly significantly cognizant of the limitations of those theories Darwin was none it's influenced let's put it this way I wouldn't call it a crowning achievement of Western civilization because I think the theory is fundamentally deficient but it certainly had enormous social influence it's changed the whole way of thinking what the for the Goethe or these are other questions again Rajeev Kahn today many on the Left reject the very idea of human nature they assert that society and values can be restructured at will you're talking about the social implications of Darwin so is he that male and female are categories of the mind rather than of nature in rejecting evolution that's me a conservative gives up the most powerful rejoinder to these claims men are men and women are women and if you let go of Darwin you lose your ability to make that claim it's an interesting example of a complete non sequitur but I don't see how a a rational critique of Dhawan and pedes in any way the desire to uphold a concept of human nature not only a concept of human nature but essential human nature there is something essential about the binary divisions in human life between male and female it's not accidental it can be changed and deep down we all know that but that has nothing to do with Darwin how do you how do you reach the contrary conclusion by reading the Origin of Species Darwin himself got rid of any essential ideas in biology from a strictly philosophical point of view he's a nominalist there are no such things as species abstract entities there are progression of individuals receding into the past there's no point which one can say this is a species unless you're a group of isolated individuals and their problems about that too because that seems to embrace a species within the folds of set theory so I mean if you take a look at the dogs are all dogs if you think that all dogs form one species can you say where the species begin and where you can't say anything like that at all so the idea of reconciling species to a modern point of view and set theory is hopeless well if they're not sets what are they if dogs don't form a set of objects what are they either they're nothing which is Darwin's real position or there's some abstract planks dead terminal position because he has no way of defining the notion of a species there's nothing essential because everything is mutable it changes all the time and he didn't he didn't see that himself the book is called I'm the origin of that's an irony but consider it from a Darwinian point of view an organism changes and if the changes accumulate the whole structure of the species structure changes but there's no point where you can say that's a species everything before it's one species everything after there's another species is there an primordial dog such that its birth marks the beginning of the dogs and everything before that them's just the wolves no there is no such thing it's a gradual transition I see I see okay so you're hadn't every time I talk to you David there's a new idea that more or less lifts than my the top of my head off I'll have to got it I got it I'll try - all right back to you throwing me off here David sorry back to Rajiv Khan one last excerpt from his recent article a National Review of quote looking forward the energies of the right are not most fruitful II spent on debating descent with modification and common origin of life you're wasting your time the seeds of both tyranny and democracy were sown by the evolutionary pressures that shaped humans over millions of years we should not pass up knowledge and insights that might help in preserving what we think is good beautiful true close quote be awfully hard to disagree with that except for the first part of the seeds of something being so in an evolutionary time I don't see a whole lot of seeds being sown in the struggle for life primordial Africa certainly not seeds that have anything to do with modern life that's just one of the contemporary myths that's bandied about we're evolutionary evolutionary psychologists and sociologists keep talking about the deep aspects of our nature that were formed by evolutionary pressures I think most deep aspects of my nature were not formed by evolutionary impressions but that that's a separate argument but the the succeeding part of that quotation yeah sure we can judge things by standards of truth goodness and beauty nobody's stopping us David you recently in in in inference the International review of science which you helped to edit you published a review of something that somebody worked very hard at and was it was a clear effort to achieve something good and that object was a book called blueprint and it is a book by the Yale sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis whose name I may be mispronouncing but I tried hard to get it right Nicholas Christakis and the name the name of the book is blueprint and Christakis says we live at a difficult moment Europe is in turmoil more turmoil coming immigration pressures rise of China tensions between China and the United States and it is in the air that we are predisposed toward violence and disorder because of evolutionary pressures but let me Nicholas Christakis produce a book showing the way that we are predisposed to cooperate to form groups to work for the good as well by evolution the book runs to more than 500 pages but the argument in brief and I quoted from blue natural selection has shaped our lives as social animals you should be happy about this priming arpa capacity for love friendship cooperation learning and even our ability to recognize the uniqueness of other individuals all this from natural selection we each carry within us an evolutionary blueprint for making a good society close quote and I have to tell you that the tenor of your review is one in which you are just not impressed why is that well divide through those statements by natural selection you're left with rather an optimistic credo we are by and large disposed to certain worthwhile ends and we have the means to pursue them yeah that's true sometimes the negation is just as true if you look at the 20th century and all the virtues that he expresses for example cooperation can be put to very nefarious uses look the Nazi Party was a marvelous engine of cooperation all those Nazis cooperated with one another running death camps cooperation is relatively neutral the gulag couldn't have been maintained without without cooperation either China couldn't be maintained under under Mao in the 60 50s and 60s without large-scale cooperation this hasn't passed the level of the bromide something one swallows and expects some relief for heartburn the heartburn goes far too deep for this kind of analysis the heartburn of the 20th century and I'm not talking about indigestion either I'm talking about heartburn and we have very little by way of understanding what happened in the 20th century look we're talking about 220 million excess deaths between 1914 and 1945 that's not something that can be relieved by calling to mind our powers of cooperation if anything there was far too much cooperation during those years a little love far too much cooperation so these these offer little by way either of analysis penetrating analysis of the sought for example that had an errand although an errand and banality of evil and well and the sources of totalitarianism all of her books at Rice she recognized the magnitude of the question that needed to be answered which was why after the relatively optimistic 19th century was there a descent into barbarism and the 20th century we don't know and Charles Darwin doesn't help us answer it doesn't help much by the way the technique of argument that in blueprint you write this the argument that is Christakis is argument and blueprint the argument is unvarying and proceeds from the common feature of social life to the gene acting as its presumptive cause yet we can complete no connection between any particular gene and any phenotypic trait it's true isn't it by a connection I mean a complete causal connection and it is remote in time the time at which we were able to complete a chemical or a biochemical connection you have no idea what takes place I mean you learn to walk I learned to walk you can say there's a gene for walking because we didn't learn it but that doesn't tell you any more than that you learnt to walk David in your review of blueprint a book by Christie aqus you sum up your own view by writing this if the blueprint for our social behavior circumscribes the terrible societies of the 20th century it's too broad to be of interest and if it is determined by the human genome it's too narrow to be of hope we must look to other sources for our common humanity which led me to wonder what would David make of a certain document that I find compelling but difficult and that is the address on the relation between faith and reason of then Pope Benedict the 16th at 2006 at his old University of Regensburg Germany and I have no idea I'm doing this because we're friends and because I genuinely want to hear what you have to make of this what you make of this so and I may have to read a couple of longest passages to set it up the pope sets up the problem here's the problem part one Western thought has reached a point at which quote only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific by its very nature this method that is the scientific method is currently understood in the West by its very nature this method excludes the question of God making it of making that question appear unscientific or pre scientific close quote and you come out of your chair and say of course it excludes the question of God God has nothing to do with science or is that not quite your response maybe it should be well I do think is that if you look at the great theories in physics that's really where the richest tradition lies that has some relevance to the world as it is as opposed to mathematics not physics explaining observed reality well real physics explaining the world alright mathematics explains plenty of things but I think that should be put aside as a separate case for the time being but neither the assumptions nor the conclusions of any of the great four physical theories Newtonian mechanics Einstein relativity quantum mechanics quantum field theory make any claims about the existence of God they just don't do it out just leave it out that's either a good thing or bad thing but the fact is incontrovertible these are not theological documents fine treat them for what they are they're physical theories but don't argue as so many people do that their implicit conclusion is anti theistic it's not there's no conclusion you can draw from special relativity that would indicate God does not exist or that he does okay fair enough and I'm I'm even following you I believe the problem part two the pressure on Europe from the Islamic world again I'm quoting benedict xvi the world's profoundly religious cultures see the exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason that is we can talk about anything but not God as an attack on their most profound convictions a reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion to the realm of subcultures that's what you were saying what you were describing this notion of physics as disproving God or in one way or another condescending to the religious that relegate SRI illegitimate of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures close quote we have a problem we Westerners have shoved any notion of religious thought any sense of the transcendent off to the children's table and other cultures and in particular was Islam from which the West is under pressure aside from anything else just look at the population figures the population of Europe over the next half-century will decline the population of the Islamic world will grow by some hundreds of millions that's that's a problem and we can't talk to them let alone sorting out some kind of working room we can't talk to them because they take religion seriously you admit that he's framed a real problem admit at Grant u degree how would you see the problem you're not so you're not impressed I wouldn't express the problem in the way that he did I think were perfectly capable of discussing things with Islam we're less capable of entertaining a whole category of arguments that we used to entertain with considerable interest that is theological argument right and theology has more or less disappeared as part of the Western curricula part of the Western habit of thought but it has not completely disappeared look why has it just stopped there why has it disappeared and you're talking about whatever a century and a half two centuries what are you talking about since the French Revolution years maybe since the French Revolution because of the first of all that there are two parts to the disappearance the enormous success of a secular culture very obviously breeds an expectation that its fundamental assumptions must be correct if it produced so much material abundance so much relative absence of scarcity and the second part is the great difficulty of entertaining very abstract arguments about the existence and Providence of God in the world as it is without the apparatus of modern science to buttress those arguments that is we feel a distinct inadequacy in making any claims about the real world without having an enormous apparatus like a backpack saying I'll look in the backpack and special relativity tells me that the ontological proof is correct well no it's not going to tell you that you have to address it on its own and naked and that's something very few people want to do anymore it is temporary it's just a fashion theological arguments are not going to disappear and the fundamental questions they address are not going to disappear either you see certain signs of the wind for example the ontological argument and philosophy which has been current since the 12th in fact the late 11th century has not disappeared and the greatest logician of the 20th century curt girdle made it manifest in his own way he looks to explain that the girdle the girdle insufficient what is it called it I've never understood it Anselm argue within the 11th 12th century that God is a being greater than which none other can be conceived and he concluded therefore he must he must exist well why because if he didn't exist you conceive something still greater namely a being who exist oh well everybody said you know I couldn't be right oh my god what was he the trouble is it's very hard to refute it's very it's devilishly difficult to really come up with a convincing explanation of where he went wrong and in the 1960s Kurt girdle worked it all out in terms of modal logic any people I don't think he published Israel he showed his results - Dana Scott among others and it's provoked an enduring controversy ever since then an indication in a small subfield that these issues retain an intellectual vitality denied them by mainstream science does this mean the argument is correct I have no idea you have no idea but it's but the argument from design is also making a reappearance it's also making European inconclusively granted but it hasn't gone away and it won't go away because we're too impressed by the facts to avoid or an encounter with any theory that seems to explain them that's that action so Newton Einstein Max Planck the physical theories they come up with you don't find something you don't have a feeling that there's something else trying to push push into it but when you discuss is you have just discussed evolution and you say wait a minute what could possibly account for the complexity of life wait a minute even grant that these mean that life proceeds by way of mutation it doesn't look as though can be entirely random it looks as though it knows where it wants to go you feel as though just on the other side of the wall there must be something there that's an intelligent that's there's a beat there's something there you don't feel that in physics do you and that argument from design is look at this it must mean something what you study what you do know I think so you look at physics long enough and the murmur becomes quite insistent why are the laws of nature the way they are why are the constants the parameters fixed for the values that they happen to have these may be bad questions they may be good questions they may be unanswerable or undecidable questions but they are questions they are questions and the insistent murmur is heard whenever you push a discipline to a certain degree and with a certain effort of the will so that wasn't Einstein Einstein's comments we have a few comments in which he mentions God there's certain theories of which he'd approved disapproved because God wouldn't play dice with the universe the old one doesn't throw dice the old one doesn't throw dice Delta but that he wasn't just being coy he felt he felt it don't know Einstein was given over to expressing a lot of app offense pithy thought all right we shouldn't make his comments about God not playing dice were really a response to his discomfort with quantum theory all right but it was a fundamental attitude toward the universe as well because Einstein believed in the rationality the comprehensive bility of the universe okay stop there because now let me get you back to Benedict you just said the rationality of the universe and Benedict in this speech at Regensburg he quotes a medieval Byzantine Emperor who is and there's a dialogue we have a dialogue between the Byzantine Emperor and his Islamic captors he'd been captured and the Islam on well ii it doesn't matter but he makes the argument you must not attempt to convert by violence by conquest because that's an act against reason an unreasoning it's the nature of god which is reasonable and then the pope and that's in fourteen hundred and something or others i recall and here's what the what benedict xvi says in two thousand six is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts god's nature merely a greek idea something that occurred in Byzantine culture or is it always and in print Stickley true and then he gives a little exegesis modifying the first book of Genesis the first verse of the whole Bible John Gospel John begins the prologue of his gospel with the words in the beginning was the logos and logos of course means reason and word it's the very idea that the Greeks Hellenistic thought places at the center of its conception of reason and John the spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God and in his word all the often toilsome and torturous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis so in the distinctively Western judeo-christian tradition I suppose one thing I'm asking is whether that tradition still lives still informs it still should inform us there is no necessary contradiction between faith and reason when Richard Dawkins the zoologist says Darwin makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist he's talking nonsense this is not easy for you we don't like this you don't like this line of thought well intellectually fulfilled atheist how full should an intellectually fulfilled atheist really be must he have answers to all the questions that human beings have asked since time immemorial or is it sufficient that he just dismisses a great many questions and reposes and tranquility thereafter I think Dawkins really means the latter it gives us freedom to ignore a lot of questions and I suppose that's true it's true empirically but the questions returned returned the murmurs always heard if you listen carefully enough the interesting question is whether the interesting question theologically is whether rationality is an essential attribute of the deity and bear in mind the Islamic tradition says no right no yes and that is a deep found difference you only have to talk to a Muslim theologian for five minutes to realize how deep that runs God is limited by nothing including the powers of reason and this drove a great many medieval Muslim theologians men al-ghazali's for example he couldn't reconcile that view of the deity with anything to which he was committed in virtue of his training in Greek logic for example so he simply stopped talking stopped writing as his physician said very memorably God put a lock on his tongue and that's the only way he could reconcile these quite different impulses let me finish up Benedict and and Regensburg I'm having a lovely time just tossing these things that she was seeing what you do with them this is the Pope he's something I've had this attempt meaning his argument painted with broad strokes at a critique of modern reason strictly empirical scientific method from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age yet while we rejoice in the new possibility science has opened the material the material wealth we all did this the sheer success of empirical science in producing new wealth for society right we all rejoice in that we also see dangers and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them the enemy of modern life the end of all right we will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith can come together in a new way does David Berlinski buy this in this sense theology rightly belongs within the wide-ranging dialogue of the sciences precisely as theology as an inquiry into the rationality of faith only thus do we become capable of genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today faith and reason not only is there no necessary contradiction but we ought to recognize and in some way celebrate and in some way make use of the way in which the tradition we have inherited the judeo-christian tradition sees them as linked well you've got a synthesis between two and pound rubles I really don't know what what commitment is made when I I say or somebody else says I have faith I have faith in a great many things I use that elocution for example I have faith that tomorrow morning the Sun will rise or faith that yesterday the Sun did rise I believe in reason to the extent that I understand what people are talking about when they and I believe in logic let's put it that way I know what a good argument is what a bad argument what soundness is what validity is beyond that reason seems to have very little meaning for me so a reconciliation between two and ponderable seems to be like the meanest sort of kisses sold under famine conditions yeah that's what they are the reconciliation is what it is but it doesn't really mean anything one thing I'm reasonably certain of is that theology as a discipline is not going to undergo a resurrection anytime soon it's not no I don't believe it's not interesting enough why would that be there's a tremendous tremendous buffeting that ideas undergo and the closest we can come to explaining them is to say that they're buffeted by taste by by changes in what we consider important I mean everybody who dismisses theology as a moribund science for example Richard Dawkins you can be sure they're not studying it they just know the outlines devoted to an examination of the property it couldn't be any it couldn't be anything that occupies an evolutionary biologist and that's true it's not anything that occupies an evolutionary biologist without a dedicated audience the subject will perish and that's what's happened over the last 200 years it still exists in terms of Catholic hermeneutics it exists in terms of different different varieties of Catholic Jewish or Islamic doctrine but it's not at the mainstream and it's not going to move to the mainstream and that's just a fact we have to accept last questions Europe you lived here for a couple of decades now below replacement level birth rates economic stagnation relative to the United States relative to China certainly uncertainty about the continued role or even over the long term existence of the historic nation-states and under immense pressure from Africa population of Europe flat declining population of Africa is expected to double by 2050 two generations from now it will have doubled and Europe will have begun a hollowing out on the one hand you've got Emanuel Mack hall president of France Angela Merkel Chancellor of Germany who insist on a thoroughly secular Europe on the other hand one last time Benedict the 16th this convergence of biblical faith and Greek philosophy with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage created Europe and remains the foundation of what rightly can be called Europe close quote how does Europe survive must there be some kind of conscious return to the judeo-christian tradition are the secularists lazy day and France is that the way to go what what I certainly try not to think in terms of two generations into the future because it's just too long a period I can hardly hardly make sense of what's going to happen next week because the there's so many surprises I never expected the Mac home presidency to be jeopardized by the Shillito movement but guys with the yellow vests but it was I didn't expect Merkel to have emerged from her welcome in 2015 politically handicapped but she was she and may have done the right thing moral he should do the wrong thing politi welcome she welcomed million about a million immigrants into Germany she welcomed a million largely Syrian I think in Vincente to germany and she was warmly applauded by correct opinion everywhere and i think the moral gesture was reasonable considering germany is Germany unexpected but reasonable but politically it was a fatal a fatal mistake she didn't have jeopardized her power completely and that's why she's on the way out right now what very very often goes unnoticed is that socially the assimilation of a million refugees seems to have passed relatively successfully the small rate arise in the crime rate here and there but by and large the anarchy and the chaos that was predicted has not taken place that Germans seemed to be very capable of doing that sort of thing what the the role of the nation-state is that remains fraud the fact of the matter is nobody believes in the nation-state either not it's really gone it's gone not in Italy not in France there are vestiges of patriotism everyone is emotionally you without a little Britain I would include Britain you would include that would include the nation-state is an idea and no longer has an overwhelming hold on man's imagination so brexit was a waste of time brexit was a complicated decision where people just said they were fed up with the British elites and there there are loss of sovereignty to the EU and they were absolutely right there was a considerable loss of sovereignty you and the best proof is that it's so hard to get out of the EU but whether that is an exaltation of British identity I really doubt it the today's a contemporary Britain is incapable emotionally incapable of doing what it did in 1940 that is rallying to a superb leader in France ooh the idea of France is cultural now it's a matter of taste savoir faire but it's not a matter of Mendes sense of French identity nor the Italian nor the five years fifty years ago when de Gaulle spoke about let go I happened to laugh cause people somehow or other had some notion what he meant they don't today gone gone in half a century simply even that it's just not in French sense of self it can be said under on eclis today it cannot be said cannot be said without irony so so you're an optimist or a pessimist or you just don't you're just perfectly content leading one day little taking it one day at a time in Paris I think it's foolish to be an optimist or a pessimist there are plenty of reasons for both for optimism the remarkable improvement in the physical circumstances of life throughout Europe United States Japan even China burgeoning middle class probably also the Soviet Union to some extent in Africa to some extent Latin America is a case apart those are all good reasons for optimism the decline in poverty improvement in health very solid reasons for optimism but there are also reasons for pessimism the chief among them is just look back at the 20th century and see what can happen David last couple of questions in April 15 the Cathedral of Notre Dame consumed in flames that evening your daughter Claire a very fine writer in her own right by the way your daughter Claire puts up this post my father is safe but he's been evacuated so he's sleeping on my bed it's 20 years he said look that I've been looking out on Notre Dame that building is completely part of my life and then he fell asleep the French have announced an international competition to redesign the roof and spire of Notre Dame French Prime Minister Philippe the competition will give the building quote aspire suited to the techniques and challenges of our time cross forbid I was the kassay what God took respect what do you expect yourself to be looking out on for the next 20 years some architectural monstrosity without doubt I mean modern architecture is a spasm in ugliness almost everywhere that you look and these people's incompetence are exceeded only by their vanity we all know that every time a modern building goes up everyone wants to spit at it and if they lose the desire to spit at it it's only because they've become familiar with it like the pyramid in front of the Louvre I don't know whether you've seen any of the proposals for the roof of Notre Dom one enterprising architect suggested a swimming pool an Olympic sized swimming pool on top of a an 800 year old religious structure gives you an idea of what they have in mind all right on that point you're not optimistic your parents fled Europe for the United States you move back I checked the population statistics France has a population of about half a million Jews and a population of between five and six million Muslims do you feel safe completely so no problem me personally yes you know I've been dating a Muslim woman for 20 years unprotected I've got an appetizer right here so so you're telling me calm down this notion I've been trying to say Europe is under pressure okay and one thing we read in the United States often is that Jewish populations in France particularly are under pressure there are places you don't feel safe on the street one doesn't feel safe on the street and so you nurses there are yeah I mean look there are higher crime neighborhoods and lower crime neighborhoods I can tell you it as far as I'm concerned as far as Claire is concerned we don't feel under pressure from anti-semitism although we know perfectly well where the anti-semitism comes from I mean there's a great deal of Islamic anti-semitism but it's fragile it's very thin it's not anything like historical anti-semitism it's the narcissism of small differences because anyone who knows the Muslim community especially the Muslim family knows they're mirror images of the Jewish community they really are very close a last passage this is the last question last passage from your essay the deniable Darwin and you're discussing the second law this is this was fascinating I've not seen this anywhere else in the writing about Darwin probe for or against the second law of thermodynamics which of course holds that any in any system entropy will tend to increase never decrease entropy meaning disorder just disorder right so this is what you write quite life life appears to offer at least a temporary rebuke to the second law of thermodynamics if the complexity of living creatures is increasing the entropy that surrounds them is decreasing I thought to myself I had never thought of that as a definition of life but of course we inhale air we consume food and look we're ordered creatures whatever the universe as a whole may be doing and I'm old enough to have been taught that the universe is running down like a clock biologically things have gone from bad to better how so you continue God said let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven that is how so and who on the basis of experience would be inclined to disagree close quote now David it's been a long time since you and I addressed this question but are you still passing yourself off as an agnostic night and day I'm not going to you were cutting the lice for me on that one whatsoever look there's a crucial difference to be made a man men says I believe that God does not exist which Dawkins or Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens that's an affirmation he's making a commitment to a certain kind of cradle system I believe that just as I believe there's no natural number between four and five I think I can show that very easily a man who says I don't believe that God exists has no skin in the game he's just saying that among his beliefs are not one that could be expressed as God exists doesn't mean he believes the contrary it means he has not reached that state equipoise where he can say God exists I believe that God exists he's withdrawing his belief and that is something that is incontestable you can't argue against a man who says I just don't believe it it doesn't mean he he needs persuasion or he needs proof that in in the economy of his belief system you won't find a particular belief I think before one crosses the threshold of theological commitment one has to be put together in a certain way Pascal said very memorably every human being has a hole in his heart that's shaped like God well maybe but in some men the hole is a whole lot smaller than others I don't say this is a good thing or a bad thing but I am mindful of the smallness in diameter of the hole I possess and there's just nothing I wish to change about that that's the way it is there you know David Berlinski author of many works including the deniable Darwin and other essays and editor of inference International Journal of science thank you my pleasure thank you for having me for uncommon knowledge the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation I'm Peter Robinson [Music] you

Channel: Hoover Institution

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Length: 58min 31sec (3511 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 08 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Cepitore]

I enjoyed that. Thanks.

[u/onecowstampede]

I friggin love berlinski. He sugarcoats nothing