ASM018 The Cambrian Explosion, The Miracles of Jesus, and The Limits of Human Knowledge

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the cambrian explosion the miracles of jesus and the limits of human knowledge it's an extra nerdy edition of ask science mike=

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welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life so excited to tell you guys about an event called belong that i'm doing with michael gunger and some other folks from the liturgists in atlanta georgia june 15th and 16th there's just a hundred seats and there are a few left so if you'd like to join us and people from all over the country are just check it out on the web otherwise let's get it started [Music] hey mike what are your thoughts on the intelligent design theories that are based on the cambrian explosion era in which animals appeared in the fossil record without any prior ancestors apparently is it good science is it malarkey what's your thoughts thanks well the cambrian era is a time in history planetary history geologic history from like 540 million years ago to you know 490 495 million years ago something like that it's a big big period of time early in the history of life on this planet and in the early cambrian era there was suddenly a lot of species that appear in the fossil record but let's talk about what that means this cambrian explosion this appearance of a lot of life early in the fossil record early in the cambrian era an explosion is kind of bad branding if it was an explosion it was a very slow moving one we're talking about tens of millions of years 30 million years or so in which there was this explosion of life now it was an impressive addition to the amount of life on earth our earliest fossils are bacteria and single cell organisms and they dominated life on earth for a long long time then algae appears you know things are relatively static up toward the cambrian you did have some primitive multicellular life and even almost worm or or insect or arthropod-like organisms you know in the pre-cambrian period but suddenly you get this diversification the cambrian but here's the thing about that the fossil record is not a perfect record of life on earth you need certain conditions for fossilization to occur that aren't universal and fossilization heavily favors organisms that have a skeleton or a shell if you're soft and squishy it's very difficult for you to become a fossil you know your best case is probably an imprint but even that's a stretch uh compared to animals with a hard shell for obvious reasons you know go get some play-doh you know try to take a mold in your play-doh of some jelly it's not going to happen the jelly is too viscous to leave an impression in the play-doh right but if you take a spoon or an egg it's going to be really easy to make an impression on the play-doh and when the play-doh hardens you're going to have basically a fun impression fossil of your spoon or your egg okay that's pretty straightforward so when we look kind of at this explosion again it's like it's really slow moving and we don't always have perfect records of transitional organisms in the fossil record that's okay because evolution and natural selection is a very comprehensive theory but no scientist believes that it's perfect we expect that new information will come forward to help us refine how we understand evolution works when species emerged we know there's gaps in the theory and this is the problem with intelligent design science intelligent design begins with a conclusion and works backwards they start with the assumption that god made everything and that god directed everything and then they find data to support that conclusion that's not how science works science works by putting forth a testable hypothesis and then either finding the data or not right and a lot of times new data will not only destroy a hypothesis but lead science in completely new directions as fossils did in the first place so you know intelligent design is not in my opinion good science and man the email box is going to light up on that one but it should not be any surprise that science mike is not a fan of intelligent design i tend to think much much better of the science of something like theistic evolution where believers are open to looking at the way science informs our understanding of the process of creation but even there the assumption that god drives creation this presuppositionless proposition is is is unscientific right science begins with a null hypothesis we don't believe anything in science until we get the evidence for it so it's not surprising at all that in a 30 million year period of time you had a rapid diversification of life on earth that's happened multiple times in the fossil record typically following mass extinction events when suddenly niches in the ecosystem go unfilled because of wide scale extinction there could have been something similar in the pre-cambrian that led to the cambrian explosion or it could have just been natural selection as it does begin to repurpose certain attributes of organisms they were very successful in competing for energy for food and we're able to reproduce more and suddenly you you know natural selections the arms race accelerates none of this is surprising none of this undermines evolution and the fact that evolution has gaps doesn't automatically prove creationism that's not how science works you don't just put two ideas against other you test a hypothesis at a time and then you assemble a body of work to create operational theories capital t theories about how the universe works [Music] hi mike my name is emily and i'm in indianapolis i've been listening to your show pretty much since it started and i just want to say thanks for all you're doing um so my question is about the limits of human knowledge and how it pertains to our theology so i heard uh sometime last year about this idea that um some researchers think that we are reaching the limits of human knowledge that is there is only so much that the human brain can comprehend and we're reaching the end of it so it's like the brain is a glass and it's almost full of water and once it's all the way full it can't be filled up anymore so if we're assuming that there are limits to human knowledge what does that mean for the way that we view god you mentioned a few podcasts ago about how you you know think our theology is always evolving and the way we view god is always changing so if there are limits to human knowledge that means there are also definitely limits to what we can know about god which makes sense but then what happens to our ever-evolving theology when we can't know anymore so basically i'm just wondering if you think there's any water to this idea that there are limits on human knowledge and if that's the case then what does that mean for our theology thanks mike you know it's funny because this is such a diverse audience for this show i uh you know there's some really hardcore nerds like me that listen to the show that are really really into science really into philosophy really into epistemology and then there's this other crowd of like probably a larger crowd of more reasonable people who are just interested in safe conversations that incorporate science into how we understand faith and those people are always telling me that they love the show and that they still listen even when the question and the answer is confusing or gives them a headache and this is definitely a potential headache kind of question um so i hope that you know most of you guys will stay with me through a question that is really deeply philosophical in addition to touching on uh neurology and anyway we'll we'll see how much of a headbender this one ends up being um so when i listen to your question i couldn't find the research you were referring to uh if you want to send me that and a follow-up i'd really appreciate it i'd love to check it out but in your question i kind of heard two different things there's like there's limits on what humans can learn as a species by observation versus limits on what a brain can process or how much information a single brain can store you know so we've been in this interesting information treadmill in modern society as we are producing more and more and more and more information than ever so the percentage of total human knowledge that any one human can possibly hold is rapidly decreasing and that's causing intense specialization there's a great talk i watched once that was premised on the idea that there's no one person who can make a computer mouse that it requires a massive cooperation of people who have never met and never even know each other to make a computer mouse because some people know how to write software some people design chips some people know how to make plastic mold plastic to assembly ship it all these things have to come together to make a computer mouse and i think that's important because what that analogy shows or that story shows is that all the information in discrete human brains and different human brains can through civilization and cooperation create something that transcends the limitation of any one brain but let's talk about the limits of knowledge for just a second and donald rumsfeld of all people really summed this up well but he got horribly made fun of for it but here's a quote from from o'rummy he said there are known knowns these are the things we know that we know there are known unknowns that is to say there are things that we know we don't know but there are also unknown unknowns there are things we don't know we don't know now mr rumsfield was talking about national security but that certainly applies to science physics philosophy any realm of human knowledge there are things we know that we know there are things that we know that we don't know but then there is a vast well of knowledge that we don't know that we don't know and all you have to do is look back at history to see that there are things we know today that a thousand years ago we didn't even know we didn't know we didn't have the fundamental ideas that if someone would have told us about germ theory for example uh it wouldn't have made sense without any understanding of microorganisms if you told someone about uh you know natural selection or genetics independent of each other too far back in history it wouldn't make sense the requisite assumptions weren't there so are there limits on what humans can know well absolutely let's talk about some known unknowns in physics there's something called the cosmic microwave background radiation this is radiation left over from the moment that the universe first became translucent to light it's it's a signal that we can trace back to a mere 380 000 years or so after the universe first emerged from singularity that's a hard limit we have these theories these mathematical models that make predictions prior to that moment but we can make no observation that's why gravity waves are such a big deal why it was a big deal when we thought we found them and it was a big deal when we realized we didn't have the statistical confidence to make that claim because gravity waves would let us to make make observations before that moment and further refine or validate our understanding of the early origins of the universe things like cosmic inflation it's essential work today there is this veil around the universe you know it's also the edge of the observable universe the light that has had time to travel to us since the beginning of our observable universe that's a hard limit we can't see beyond it we don't have a theoretical framework for looking beyond it if we look on the small scale we have no idea how we would engineer and construct particle accelerators that were powerful enough to probe reality on the scale that theoretical physics is playing in building models in today if you look at string theory or quantum foam we're nowhere near the energy levels to reproduce the conditions that would allow us to make observations about these fundamental ideas about how the universe may be ultimately composed i heard it clipped once that you would need a particle accelerator the size of the orbit of pluto in order to probe some of those scales based on understanding of physics today i don't know if that's true or not that physicists could have been joking i'm not smart enough to tell the difference frankly but there's hard limits in physics now if we talk about brains human brains are pretty remarkable we can store a lot of information now we're not good at storing information the way that computers are we don't store precise bits of information we don't really store digital information human memory is far more complex and subtle we have memories that are built around story and narrative and images that are reassembled by our brains as we recall them that's why our memories are both very captivating and not terribly reliable we also know that through sleep our brain decides among other things what memories are important and which ones are going to get thrown in the trash so to speak in fact researchers have shown that one of the aspects that differentiates more intelligent brains from less intelligent brains is not the ability to remember but the ability to forget this is where absent-minded professor stereotype comes from the brain that can complicate physics is able to do so because that brain is all too ready to forget where the car keys are so that's there are limits on how much information we can store but our brains are well suited we know that in a hundred year lifetime a brain will be able to remember very early and significant memories and continue to have operational memory for each day it does this by disregarding information that's not essential or not important there's another idea in the limits of human knowledge and that's the complexity of data we're quickly getting to the point where some of our science cannot be explained via metaphor or intuitive language quantum physics is there already you really need math to accurately depict cosmology or quantum physics and in other fields of study the data sets are much too large for us to get our heads around economics of politics we make simplified models to operate within these systems but we are nowhere near uh understanding or modeling the immense complexity that actually drives those systems uh chaos theory kind of is is one idea behind that now we do can use metaphor and model to understand and and and kind of get a limited grasp on large data sites like this and of course computer science is enormously helpful but we are finding that perhaps there are some limits on the level of complexity our brains can handle without force amplifier like computing so is the edge of the observable universe or the standard model or any of these things are these hard limits on human knowledge those are unknown unknowns we have no way to know what the limits are on what we can know and if one day we think we've discovered everything we'd have no way to validate that the good news is we're absolutely nowhere near the limits of human knowledge there is much left to discover and much much left to learn and so this is an interesting sort of philosophical question what's interesting to me is how rapidly humanity is gaining knowledge and gaining insights about the natural world and frankly doing so in a way that can produce a better quality of human life hey science mike i have a question about the miracles of jesus did he ever heal the sick raise the dead feed the five thousand or turn water into wine or for instance was the writer of john simply trying to make jesus more interesting to the worshipers of dionysus the greek god of wine what do you as a scientifically minded person think of these miracles are they mutually exclusive if some or all of jesus's miracles did not actually happen why do you think they're included within the four gospels what do they mean to you looking forward to hearing what you say about this thanks a lot science mike this is such a frustrating question for me to answer because i'm pretty good at synthesis it's it's a it's a talent of mine i'm good at kind of taking lots of things i've learned and and without much effort turning that into a cohesive narrative or or a simple story or answer but this one there's so much even trying to write out notes ahead of time i would have insights of something i want to write down and then try to write it down as i write down i have another insight and this is this is a question that i probably could spend a lot of time writing this is probably a book in there i'm not the guy to write that book but there's definitely a book in this question i am science mike and not theology mike okay so i want to make that really clear we do ask questions about science faith and life on the program but a lot of times it's how science informs our faith not just faith i get a lot of just faith questions and i answer them because it's important to me that these questions get out in the open and this is certainly a question that in most churches uh an eyebrow or two would get raised at the least if you asked if jesus actually performed miracles so it is my pleasure to answer this question honestly but it's just so intimidating uh i certainly probably study biblical history more than the average person maybe even the average christian but i know actual experts i've spent time with people who have deeply studied these topics and it has made it so clear to me that i'm barely scratching the surface i know people with phds and multiple phds that can read the original languages and have studied the anthropology at a doctorate level and i am just not that qualified and i hate to do disclaimers like that but i have to on this question so with that here's kind of where i'm at today the gospels are meant to be persuasive to specific audiences the authors of each gospel had an audience in mind as that author wrote those authors were almost certainly not matthew mark luke and john in the world of academia the gospels were recorded later the gospels are actually generally believed to have been recorded later than paul's earliest letters and when you read those gospels uh they are heavily influenced by each other and what they talk about in terms of jesus dfinity helps you understand what audience they were trying to talk to so the gospels that were written for jewish audiences tend to emphasize lineage and draw parallels to uh old testament prophecy for those audiences whereas when you see more elements that indicate divinity for greco-roman audiences or even little clips against caesar for example there's no name under heaven and earth by which men may be saved by the name of jesus my understanding is the original saying there was caesar so that was equipped against caesar and that helps you understand that these documents were made for an audience to talk about why jesus was amazing modern history is different than ancient history and how it was understood uh people had a more narrative understanding there was no such thing as a dry historical read of history um and and these people are taking oral tradition things that were spread from person to person to person and then writing them down and in the process injecting their own ideas into the text that's how i read and understand the gospels there are certainly facts in the gospels i think jesus it's not controversial to say jesus was a real person and really a jew and really living about in that time in history but there's also very likely some mythological components now of course a secular academic would say that the resurrection is a mythological component as well as you know healing the sick and the feeding of the five thousand water and twine that that is all mythology i have been in the camp where i believe that the gospels are completely literal and i have been in the camp where frankly i didn't think jesus was a real person at all and it was all mythology it was an assemblage of different early apocalyptic cult rabbis okay today i'm more in the middle and here's the deal i don't know which miracles happened and which did not i don't have any idea scientifically i can't say water turned into wine or that 5 000 were fed from just a few loaves there's not enough empirical evidence to support those claims and apologists who point to things like eyewitness testimony scientists don't accept eyewitness testimony to validate such extraordinary claims and that's not unique to christianity if anybody else claimed that miracles are happening or the dead is rising those claims are questioned just as enthusiastically by scientists for any other faith or any other tradition period but i believe in the resurrection and as i've said before and that's not a scientific belief that's a belief i hold because of experiences in my own life that prove nothing to anyone but me for me the world is renewed the world comes alive and god becomes available to me when i put my trust in a resurrection because i do that i hold the door open for all those other miracles as well i do i hold the door open for them but when i'm reading the gospels i'm not trying to figure out which miracles happened or which did not when i see reports in the academic world that it doesn't scare me if things come out that refute factual accounts in the gospels because when i read the gospels i'm asking myself what is this author saying and to what audience is he saying it in the case of the gospels jesus is being revealed as the christ you know there are some people that believe that the earliest understandings of jesus didn't involve a bodily resurrection at all that was a cosmic resurrection the jesus part of jesus christ is overemphasized compared to this universal part of god that reconciles man back to god and that all that stuff was added later and it depending on what day it is you know i i kind of go back and forth on where i am but i leave my faith in the resurrection i i trust that this story matters i trust that this movement of people in the church goes back to something real and something amazing and really good news that god loves us and that god makes a way for us to be in his presence to be with him for me god does not work as a puzzle and trying to figure out exactly what's mythos or logos what's factual and what's story that points to something perhaps even greater than fact it just doesn't interest me anymore i'm interested in hearing the stories of people of faith and how they can inform my own journey of faith when i try to learn facts about physical world science is my jam but when i'm looking to understand how i can know and serve god better that's what my faith is for and in my faith water turns to wine [Music] our next question comes in from email and it reads first i need to thank you for all the work you are doing i have not only enjoyed it immensely but it has significantly helped me during a time in my life when i most needed it i recently went through a period of deconstruction which i had fearfully resisted for so long that when i could no longer hold back my questions it nearly drove me from the faith i have since done a great amount of rebuilding and more importantly have developed an attitude of joy and excitement when exploring my understanding of god though the journey was painful i have never felt so free nor so close to a loving creator however when i look back at my old community or similar such groups i can feel myself becoming angry at the way they misconstrue the biblical message in traditional ways which have caused so much pain i often find myself fantasizing about viciously arguing against them and have spent copious amounts of time watching atheist christian debates as to vicariously release emotion i know this is unhealthy i often remind myself that they are acting for good motives off the information that they have but this just refuels my anger and desire for harsh correction how can i better deal with my own emotions as to love my brothers and sisters in christ this question is fantastic because one of the things that most grieves me today is the constant mutual antipathy between conservative and progressive christians and well even different camps of progressive christians and different camps of conservative christians and forget christians versus atheists we'll happily eat our own first and which by the way i i hate i even said own because i don't see atheists is not somehow less or are different than christians and kind but i'm talking a little social identity there so forgive the slip but it's beautiful when you find this new faith i can relate to that and then you look back at the people who you recently shared a faith with and they seem trapped in something that's so oppressive and so wrong and you just wish they could see the freedom that you see and that is wrong that's the worst impulse because before your insight before your new understanding of god before your deconstruction the old model worked really well and made you very happy and helped you be a part of community and be more generous and more loving so i certainly certainly don't mind working on specific causes or issues that can cause tension with fellow believers a perfect example is lgbt equality right i'm constantly working to get my gay brothers and sisters the same rights in society that i have and to help them avoid being abused or oppressed by other people and that can certainly cause some tension with friends and family but that doesn't mean i see myself as some way more enlightened or superior to to these other people i've found a way of understanding god that works for me today but will it tomorrow i don't know 10 years ago i thought that the way i understood god would always work for me and would work for everyone else on the planet and i was wrong so when you're thinking about how you can with greater health deal with people you disagree with theologically people who have a different understanding of god i'm assuming you're probably less of a election and predestination and eternal conscious torment and hell kind of christian these days and so you look at kind of the the behaviors that come out of that belief and it bothers you where it's it's lgbt equality or it's one of these other hot button issues the first thing you should do is learn some humility you're no better than those people neither am i the one of the things i love the most about myself is the way that i see good in others in the way that i just i don't think too much of myself i don't think my ideas are the end all be all they're just the best i've got today so as you learn to hold your understanding of god in an open hand don't become a progressive fundamentalist right don't let your new understanding become the new dogma understand that experience with god compel us to realize that we are both very loved and very very small all of us and the best response you can have with others is patience and empathy and compassion let your faith become a faith of action and love those people uh i would i would totally ditch the internet debates they're they're not productive they're not helpful um they're interesting from an academic context i watch a few myself but anytime you're obsessing over something you're picking that wound that might mean it's time to go see a therapist you might need to recover from the shame you feel about yourself that you're projecting on to the people who believe as you once did that's what's happening they make you so angry because you see yourself in them you see where you were and you feel like you were duped but you weren't duped you understood what you needed to understand in that season and now you are in a new season if you want to get angry get angry about the way people are treated about real abuse real suffering but then let that anger fuel acts of compassion and healing and forgiveness in your life and for that other anger the anger that comes from grief the anger that comes from shame process through that in safe relationships and professional counseling and as you do so you may find a piece that passes understanding [Music] those are some great questions this week a couple were heady i hope it wasn't too much um i hope there's still some people around to listen next week uh i actually thought that was a pretty fun episode i do want to let you know about a few things coming up we're doing an event called belong as i mentioned at the beginning of the program uh with the liturgists the group that i'm a part of and the other podcast i do the liturgies podcast if you guys haven't heard it you should check it out it's really good shows we're doing an event called belong in atlanta june 15th and 16th i'm going to be there michael gunger is going to be there pastor betsy you've heard her on this program you've also heard her on the liturgical podcast will be there amina brown the amazing like amazing poet will be there and uh lanny donahoe will be there he's uh if you haven't heard lanny he started the catalyst conference and big stuff productions he's a really talented guy he's going to help us organize things and keep us all on the right track for belong we'd really love to see you there it's limited to a hundred people there are man just a few seats left but you haven't missed it yet but if you keep waiting you might so if you just go to the liturgist.com belong you can see information about the conference and register right there also the liturgists are going to be at wild gooses this year the wild goose festival in july i'll be giving a talk there i'd love to see you i want to thank by name my intern haley she did a lot to get episode 18 together she took over going through all the questions that uh takes me a long time to pick questions for the show helped write the poll that i put on patreon for our patreon for our donors to pick the questions on the show and then she actually wrote the show notes this week so man haley you're amazing and i'd love for you dear listener to send a question for haley to sort through you can do that using the hashtag asksciencemike on twitter soundcloud or youtube we'll grab those and put them in the email bin for consideration on the show you can also go to asksciencemike.com and put in a voice question record that or send a text question type it out and that's a great way to do anonymous questions we get a lot of anonymous questions on the show now the show is listener supported so you can help us cover the cost of putting on this production it is a multi-person effort it's a lot of man-hours every week and there are hard costs putting the show on we're at fifteen hundred dollars a month i'm blown away uh that covers the hard cost of the show but actually covers very very little time uh after that so i'd love to be able to help hayley and greg cover the time that they invest in the show and every single dollar helps guys and you can change or cancel a pledge at any time the show is produced by greg northeam he's the man i get a little choked up thinking about how grateful i am for greg and the work that he does and the fact that every week the show sounds amazing i get so many comments on sound quality and production quality about the show and that's greg and of course we have an amazing theme song by jeff waterford if you need podcast music or any kind of music production does jeff owns a recording studio and he can do music composition and he can perform the music so you need original music there are links to jeb and greg on applying twice.com and there are also uh links to full show notes with resources for every single question that's ever been asked on the show on ask sciencemike.com did i mention ask sciencemike.com thanks for listening to the show you [Music] guys