ASM001 Animal souls, the power of uncertainty, and getting freaky with angels

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animal souls the power of uncertainty and getting freaky with angels all that and more on this episode of ask

[Music] [Applause] sciencemike [Music]

hey everybody welcome to the first ever ask science mic podcast this is a weekly show where i answer your questions about science faith and life and you know as luck would have it i've got a head cold so my voice sounds really strange it's making me self-conscious but whatever it doesn't matter it's your show i'm answering your questions

i have no plan other than seeing where this goes and where you take it let's get started

## Animal Souls

“hey science mike all right so here's my question knowing what we do about science and evolution and uh assuming that's all correct uh who was adam and i guess by that i mean who is the first person with a soul so you know going from single-celled organisms to humans at some point something must have clicked over or something extra was added i guess it does kind of assume that animals don't have souls which i mean or bonus question do animals have souls but uh anyway do you have any insight as to maybe when or who or what um kind of created this extra layer of humanity that connects with god and contemplates existence and uh you know all that stuff all right well hey thanks”

you know as first questions for a podcast go that's a pretty good one thanks a lot you know it's like where everybody goes when they first start thinking about evolution when you've traditionally thought of a genesis a creationist model and for those of us who care about holding on to god and holding on to spiritual beliefs while also accepting and understanding scientific facts like the theory of evolution via natural selection this is a really inevitable question and one that i've given a lot of thought if we're going to consider the issue scientifically we have to start by really defining what we're talking about a part of how the scientific method does its magic is to be precise in its definition so that we're not spending all our times exploring different concepts so what is a soul anyway um you know there's sort of a classical ideas about soul that this is the essential essence of a being that persists beyond death and is separate from its physicality that's a really classical idea about souls there's another idea about souls that it's simply the essential essence of something but not necessarily separate from its physicality it is that which defines something so by those definitions both animals and people would have the second type of soul and the first type of soul would be basically impossible to define science doesn't speak to the supernatural

there is no physical evidence that anything has a soul and so science doesn't speak to it at all but there's another issue in this question that sort of uh brought to mind uh something about adam you know the story of the fall and of adam and eve is incredibly important to me because it speaks something real about what it means to be a human versus any other animal what do i mean by that humans have to consider the consequences of their actions in a way that animals don't we have ethical obligations we have morality other animals especially higher animals have some moral but not a reasoned ethic like we do and that difference comes down to our consciousness of course consciousness might be an even more slippery word than soul so let's define precisely what i mean when i say consciousness consciousness is the ability to respond to the environment that's it i got that from michio kaiku uh in his book the future of the mind where he has one of the most helpful discussions about consciousness that i've ever read uh he sort of surmises that consciousness emerges from feedback loops and then creates an ability to respond to the environment and he sets forth sort of levels of consciousness and this is really helpful when we consider what's different about people from animals your most basic consciousness would be a single loop where based on some input an action is taken and that action creates change in the environment that this loop must then respond to think about your thermostat if you set the heat to 68 degrees in your house falls to 67 your thermostat is aware of that and not only is it aware it responds by turning on the heat now when your house then warms up to say 69 degrees your thermostat turns the heat back off it is aware of and responding to a dynamic environment that it affects that's one loop but of course that's a very basic and primitive form of consciousness so kaikou says that there's also a level one consciousness to the thermostats level zero that'd be something like a plant think about the model of the world that plants build it's much much much more complex than a thermostat a thermostats world is nothing but temperature but a plant's world would include what humidity the direction the sun is coming from what time of year it is how wet or dry it is the nutrients in the soil even whether it's being attacked or consumed by animals all these things go into a plant's model of reality so there are many more tens and dozens even hundreds of feedback loops required for plant consciousness the same would be true of immobile animals sponges maybe even some mollusks but as you move up in sophistication you get to organisms especially animals that can move they can actually go from place to place in the world and because of that their model of reality must be much more detailed than a thermostat or a plant they have to be aware of their physical proximity to other things the location of food the location of predators and they have to actually have senses and and this level of consciousness requires so many feedback loops to keep going that nervous systems emerge suddenly you have brains and brain stems and all these sorts of very elaborate very intricate constructs in order to create a level two consciousness now what comes next level three what's level three social animals social animals have to be aware of everything a normal animal does but they also have to have some awareness of the mental state of other organisms that's quite remarkable your dog assesses and understands the feelings and mental state of other members of its pack this is also true for elephants or dolphins or chimpanzees and this requires hundreds of thousands of neural loops to pull off you have to build an understanding of another organism's understanding of the world it's quite remarkable that's not the top there is one particular attribute that human consciousness near as we can tell is an exclusive possession of on our planet and that is space time the model that humans build about reality encompasses time that's not true of any other animal even the very very bright animals that are near to us neurologically like chimpanzees dolphins are elephants we alone are constantly forecasting the future we alone are always weighing the potential outcome of any action versus our long-held experience and this is quite a burden it gives us stress and anxiety because we can imagine what it's like to not have food we can imagine what it's like to be excluded from the tribe or the group it is this incredible gift that the creation poem in genesis discusses our ability to use a space-time model of consciousness to determine right from wrong and with it grows an ethical and moral expectation for humanity not present in any other animal so this to me is when you get adam and eve when in the immense time frame of human development through evolution organisms finally could build a space time model of reality and at that moment something unique happened in their souls

well that was an absolutely phenomenal first question so let's see what we've got next

## The Power of Uncertainty

“hey mike this is john from central california i have a question for you kind of about certainty and how you deal with that i'm a scientist and a believer and i've recently started to explore some of the doctrines and um and ideas that have been kind of handed to me or taught to me over over my years in the church that i've just kind of accepted i've found myself as i'm exploring those going from a place of certainty on one side of the issue or the topic and coming to a place of certainty on the other side i'm trying to keep my mind open and and trying to kind of remain in a place of uncertainty and embrace that but it's difficult for me because i'm always looking for facts and looking for certainty how do you deal with this issue all right thanks man love what you're doing”

oh wow an actual scientist is listening to the program that's kind of intimidating i'll try to answer the question anyway um yeah i've been through that i was a really certain southern baptist for a long time i was sure that god was in control and that i was following the one true god and then i became an atheist i became equally certain and resolute that there was no god and i became very certain about what science had to tell me about the universe now i want to be clear these are different kinds of certainty for the religious person we're trusting that what an all-powerful creator tells us is trustworthy in science we're simply placing confidence and beliefs which is proportional to the amount of evidence that we have for them but both of them tickle the human need for certainty now this need is completely valid by the way since our brains as i said in the last answer build a space-time model of consciousness we're constantly forecasting and wondering about the future we feel good when we guess right that means our model of reality is accurate and it means if you think back to the times when we were traveling on the plains and in a pre-agricultural society our ability to forecast where food and water may be found that was worth feeling good about and as we moved into an agricultural society making the right calls about weather patterns that was rewarded as well so our need for certainty is natural and warranted but can undermine our ability to be open to new ideas it can undermine our abilities even to be happy in life because as we learn more about reality as we learn more about humanity's understanding of god and even science's understanding of the universe any person will find that all of human knowledge is very very limited now we can put robots on mars and we can assemble vast collections of religious writings about people's experiences of the almighty but the fact is there is far more out there unknown than gnome and that can give us kind of a philosophical head trip so to avoid the trap of excessive certainty to avoid having the rug pulled out from under me in the future when i learn new things about reality i have a trick i take all my ideas about the world and i hold them in an open hand instead of a closed fist so everything i know about god everything i've learned about science i put them in an open hand that does not mean i take all information equally no things that are absurd i give a lot less confidence too things that don't have evidence to support them i put less confidence in but i've learned to hack my brain's need for certainty by being certain about my own uncertainty i know that there are things i don't know i know that i'm wrong about some things i just don't know which things and that compels me to live a life of relative intellectual humility while still allowing me to what experience god to trust that there may be some higher plan out there than simply what we can learn through science but also to accept scientific fact and not reject it if it is in somehow conflict with my preconceived religious notions i like to swim in both streams science and faith great question what's next

## Getting Freaky with Angels

“hi science mike uh my name is crystal and i have a question about a verse in genesis oh genesis 6 2 the sons of god saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful and they married any of them they chose okay so there's a lot about that that i have many questions about and i know you don't necessarily take genesis literally but i think there's a lot here um that we can dissect scientifically and in hand in hand with faith and spirituality and stuff like that i noticed a couple different things one that the sons of god are often taken as angels because by the use of humans it implies that they were different beings than humans uh what i found interesting were that angels or fallen angels we're not i'm not sure about that found human women attractive which gives thought to angels features do they look similar to that of humans similar enough to find other than attractive i know it's not really a new idea that angels or you know like fallen angels got funky with human women because i know we see a lot of like giants in the in the old testament um and it's i know it's a theory that some people think that those were the nephilim nephilim the film yeah angel human hybrids where this came from uh that's where they came in and i was wondering um what you thought your thoughts about that whole thing that whole verse there scientifically um does that mean angels have similar features to humans that they have free will that if you are a fallen angel then you can suddenly have free will and how you become a spiritual body that suddenly decides to have a physical body to hang out with a physical lady yeah lots of questions lots of good stuff in there i'd love to hear your thoughts about it um thanks”

you're right i don't take genesis literally thinking about genesis in a literal context is actually not even very interesting it weakens the text i know heads might be exploding all over the internet but genesis is a mythic account especially genesis 1 and genesis 2. these early chapters are represent an early hebraic understanding of how the world came to be and what's interesting about them is not how well that they describe cosmology or astronomy or physics but what they teach us about god and god's role in the creation of the cosmos that's what's vital now uh that doesn't mean genesis is entirely mythical it there are certainly historical details and by the way mythic is a good thing uh when you have something that's mythic it's more than true you're talking about themes of the human experience as opposed to mere fact now there's uh to talk about this particular passage in genesis 6 we have to understand it in the larger context of a flood story now i almost didn't answer this question because we're getting into a particular type of uh history and biblical study that i'm far far from an expert in but i'll give a shot at it anyway this flood account that we have in this passage was not the first flood account of its time there's an earlier babylonian tale called the epic of gilgamesh that has similar elements with gods wiping out humanity for wickedness and these could come from some actual historical event where there was mass flooding in the mesopotamian river valley either way these stories have the gods intervening in our world and the gods do what they please but the genesis account of a flood is different because god promises never to do this again there's some way that this god can be trusted now when we think about these angels or sons of god they're in the story of the flood to set the stage it wasn't unusual at all in early religious mythology to have some kind of sexual contact between humans and deities and so this story i think has the sons of gods and human women together to show that corruption is so rampant that it's beginning to spread beyond the earthly realm and it's forcing god's hand he must act so they're kind of a they're setting the stage including the supposed offspring they're showing that that creation is radically deviating from the plan of the creator do you ever feel like creation is deviating from the plan of the creator do you ever feel like some kind of reconciliation or starting over is necessary in your life if so mythic stories are important to you now let's talk about angels uh especially because but you know almost 8 out of 10 americans believe in them what are angels like do they have bodies well the biblical accounts certainly indicate that they can take on bodies and take on physical form and uh the whole sexy sexy time with angels things doesn't end here in genesis 6. look forward to the story of sodom and gomorrah and how humans responded to those angel visitors but i don't think that tells us what angels are like or at least not scientifically again science only speaks to things that can be measured and quantified you have to have an observation or an experiment and angels if they exist are decidedly supernatural they appear and disappear and i know of no valid scientific account where someone has captured an angel on film or measured them in any way so in the terms of the scientific view of the world angels do not exist and yet we still believe in angels they still act as some way for us to understand god moving in the world and being involved in our lives so i can't nail down their characteristics for you but if part of the way you understand god moves and works and acts in your life and your environments and that helps you to feel closer to god it's totally fine by me fantastic question

## Does God Fit in Modern Cosmology?

“science mike my question is how do you deal with cognitive dissonance as a astrophysics enthusiast aka i can't do the math i see and read things every day that make me doubt the physical need for a god or a higher power to have done something to make the universe the way it is today but i still feel like there is this god or higher power what do you do with that

in a lot of ways this idea of cognitive dissonance is born from a fundamental misunderstanding of how human brains function our consciousness presents itself to us as a unified narrative where our agency acts and moves in the world but that's not how our brains work in fact our consciousness is undergirded by unconscious mental processes hundreds of thousands even millions of loops in our brain compete for attention for behavior and drive different priorities through our skulls contrary to a single observer watching some kind of cohesive existence our mental existence is much more like a giant corporation with millions of employees all going about their business and the consciousness we most associate with being ourselves is the ceo think about the limited picture the ceo or president of a company has about all the myriad operations happening elsewhere he may not even know what's happening in the mail room or in the janitorial staff he's not aware when different departments hire and fire he's only given the big picture and in times of crisis the ceo may no longer be in charge for example if the company's facilities were under attack security guards may rush in and grab the ceo and move him against his will to a place of safety so it is with our brains now what does this have to do with god and the cosmos and the universe's need for god

well first you're right modern cosmology doesn't leave a lot of room for the traditional god found in genesis to exist if any religious idea can find sort of philosophical footing with modern cosmology it's more of a deist god a god who created a universe that could then perpetuate itself

but at some point we all agree that the universe was infinitely compressed into something called a singularity and inside that singularity things were very very different there was no distinction between matter and energy and we also believe that the four fundamental forces of physics were just one force

that sounds positively mystical to me i can't imagine if that's not a higher power what is this mysterious unified energy that somehow caused everything to be so while we may say the cosmos does not need a god i certainly see the signature of god in our creation

i understand others don't that's fine

i'm just saying i do i also need god the universe may or may not need god i need god i'm up front with that i don't worry about it

and that means in all of my millions of neural loops i have some loops that act a lot like an atheist that approach the world with a reasoned examination of evidence that contemplate morality mainly through the lenses of consent and suffering and i don't try to kill those loops they help me make some good decisions but i also have loops and i've invested decades of my life in cultivating and understanding god not only god but jesus the holy spirit the christian experience and those parts of my brain and my consciousness open up to me entirely new experiences and different avenues of decision making and community and a culture that i'm very comfortable with and so guess what you can call it cognitive dissonance if you like but i don't try to kill either one of those loops in my brain there is a fully functional and aware atheist and there is a fully functional and aware christian my atheist wants to consider the world as a scientist my christian just wants to drop his nets and follow christ and i let them both go about their merry way and frankly i'm happier for it perhaps a path to peace for you is learning to accept all the different ways that you contemplate the world and trust that they can all be good in your life

## Closing

that just about wraps up the first episode of ask science mike uh you guys had some really great questions i'm excited about the ones we had now i do have several hundred questions that people emailed me for the program it's easier for me and frankly more fun to me to answer questions that people record and send in and you can record your question by using the hashtag asksciencemike you can record on your phone whatever you want to use and then you can post it on twitter soundcloud or youtube with the ask sciencemic and i'll see those questions and answer them on the program don't worry if you emailed a question if you don't record it no big deal i'll make sure i answer more of these in future episodes i just want to keep them under 30 minutes overall you can also go to the ask science mike website at asksciencemike.com how easy could that be and there's a button there where you can submit questions especially if you want to submit questions that you uh don't want other people to hear if they need to be anonymous if it's the kind of question you're not allowed to ask at your church i hope you've enjoyed it i really would like to hear what you think go to my facebook page uh facebook.com mike.mikargh or hit me on twitter at mikemccarg you can also use the asksciencemike handle on twitter especially because that's very easy to spell i also want to thank jeb boniford for the very very wonderful theme song jeb's a talented producer and songwriter he did all the songwriting he sang the lyrics played the instruments recorded it the whole thing and if you need music produced or done like that especially if you've got a podcast i bet jeb would be happy to help you his twitter will be linked in the show notes on this episode at asksciencemike.com thank you guys for listening and send in your questions i can't do it without you thank you