1
00:00:15,240 --> 00:00:19,039
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Gods I View podcast. I am your host, Trevor,

2
00:00:19,600 --> 00:00:23,920
joined by a special guest, doctor David Campbell from Gardner

3
00:00:23,920 --> 00:00:24,800
Webb University.

4
00:00:25,800 --> 00:00:29,280
Speaker 2: David, how are you doing all right? Good?

5
00:00:30,239 --> 00:00:35,079
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming by. I appreciate it. Tell us a

6
00:00:35,119 --> 00:00:37,320
little bit about yourself. How did you get into this field?

7
00:00:38,880 --> 00:00:44,240
Speaker 3: So it's basically inherited. Both of my parents did graduate

8
00:00:44,280 --> 00:00:50,960
work studying fossil seashells, and so I was out picking

9
00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:52,240
them up when it wasn't as far for me to

10
00:00:52,240 --> 00:00:57,280
have beenever and pick them up. So I've continued in

11
00:00:57,359 --> 00:01:03,560
that area and so got under grand degree in biology

12
00:01:03,600 --> 00:01:09,400
and graduate degrees geology, did some post work doc work

13
00:01:09,480 --> 00:01:13,319
on DNA and now so he's focused particularly on rare

14
00:01:13,560 --> 00:01:17,480
modern species. So I've gone through a wide range of

15
00:01:18,400 --> 00:01:22,280
different training and now I'm teaching.

16
00:01:24,400 --> 00:01:28,040
Speaker 1: Awesome, fantastic. So, so you said both of your parents

17
00:01:28,079 --> 00:01:30,159
were in the same field or they were just both

18
00:01:30,920 --> 00:01:33,280
both academics.

19
00:01:33,959 --> 00:01:39,760
Speaker 3: Fairly similar field. My father did a little bit more

20
00:01:39,760 --> 00:01:41,319
of the geology and a mother a little bit more

21
00:01:41,319 --> 00:01:44,519
of the biology, and but pretty similar were they?

22
00:01:44,560 --> 00:01:46,879
Speaker 1: Were they pretty happy when you decided to do that

23
00:01:47,159 --> 00:01:50,680
or was it just expected that you'd be going down

24
00:01:50,719 --> 00:01:51,120
this road.

25
00:01:52,079 --> 00:01:57,879
Speaker 3: It was certainly not surprising, and they would have supported

26
00:01:57,920 --> 00:02:06,120
doing other things as well. But but I'm both my

27
00:02:06,159 --> 00:02:09,199
brothers all basically ended up in the same area.

28
00:02:09,639 --> 00:02:14,520
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, that's fantastic. Well, I had posted a beacon,

29
00:02:15,159 --> 00:02:17,960
you know, on the hill, looking for folks to come

30
00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:23,680
talk to me, because we around here, we I don't

31
00:02:23,680 --> 00:02:25,800
know what we do. I was for most of my life,

32
00:02:25,800 --> 00:02:30,759
I was an atheist and very persuaded by like the

33
00:02:30,879 --> 00:02:35,280
nineteen nineties, in early two thousands new atheism.

34
00:02:35,439 --> 00:02:36,560
Speaker 2: And you know, I was.

35
00:02:36,520 --> 00:02:41,159
Speaker 1: In like middle school during the Human Genome project, and

36
00:02:41,680 --> 00:02:44,599
when Bill Clinton said cancer would just be a constellation

37
00:02:44,719 --> 00:02:47,280
in the stars and there was a space shut it

38
00:02:47,360 --> 00:02:50,719
just felt like science had it all figured out, you know,

39
00:02:51,439 --> 00:02:55,080
and religion kind of felt superstitious to me at the time.

40
00:02:55,080 --> 00:02:58,240
But anyway, for whatever reason, probably not through my own will,

41
00:02:59,240 --> 00:03:02,000
in my mid I started having like really serious doubts

42
00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:07,400
about that, and read started reading the Bible, started really

43
00:03:07,439 --> 00:03:12,039
reflecting deeply on my own views, which were sort of

44
00:03:12,080 --> 00:03:17,080
a scientized religion themselves. And so we've just kind of

45
00:03:17,080 --> 00:03:21,280
been exploring those ideas on the show. And uh, you

46
00:03:21,319 --> 00:03:23,759
now you're you're a professor of paleontology. But I think

47
00:03:23,800 --> 00:03:27,360
you teach a lot of classes related to evolution and

48
00:03:28,120 --> 00:03:31,360
is it zoology or zoology? This is a debate I've

49
00:03:31,400 --> 00:03:37,120
heard people have It's it's zoology, right, is the oh?

50
00:03:37,240 --> 00:03:39,879
The is the oh the joiner between zo and all

51
00:03:40,479 --> 00:03:42,560
the logy? Or is it zoology?

52
00:03:48,840 --> 00:03:51,840
Speaker 3: I guess I would tend to prompt zoology, but I

53
00:03:51,840 --> 00:03:55,319
mean those things, it's a lot of it's what you heard.

54
00:03:55,439 --> 00:03:58,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, just kind of yeah, what your mentor

55
00:03:58,560 --> 00:04:00,560
said before you or what your teacher said, yeah.

56
00:04:00,960 --> 00:04:05,759
Speaker 3: Scientific names. Remember going to the Paris Museum and I'd

57
00:04:05,800 --> 00:04:08,039
like to look at specimens of this. Oh you mean this.

58
00:04:09,599 --> 00:04:14,520
Speaker 1: Exactly? Exactly yes. And so you know the fact that

59
00:04:14,520 --> 00:04:18,079
you're in this field and you're also you have a

60
00:04:18,120 --> 00:04:21,399
religious belief makes you an incredibly interesting person to me.

61
00:04:21,519 --> 00:04:24,920
So I probably just if you don't mind me putting

62
00:04:25,000 --> 00:04:27,879
you on the spot, if you could explain to us, like,

63
00:04:28,480 --> 00:04:31,480
what is the I hate to use the word mainstream,

64
00:04:31,519 --> 00:04:34,639
what is the consensus isn't even the right word either,

65
00:04:34,680 --> 00:04:40,920
But what's the predominant view on evolutionary theory and how

66
00:04:40,959 --> 00:04:41,639
we got here?

67
00:04:41,839 --> 00:04:45,120
Speaker 2: What is that view? Basically, in a nutshell.

68
00:04:46,839 --> 00:04:55,160
Speaker 3: Well, you've got talking as far as the scientific patterns go.

69
00:04:57,120 --> 00:05:01,839
Evolution works rather well as a physical description of the

70
00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:07,439
normal way that new kinds of organisms are created in nature.

71
00:05:10,040 --> 00:05:15,560
There's variation in DNA copying is not perfect, so we

72
00:05:15,600 --> 00:05:18,839
do have mutations and duplications and deletions and all these

73
00:05:18,839 --> 00:05:23,680
sorts of things happening. So there's some variation in the

74
00:05:23,759 --> 00:05:28,120
DNA offspring aren't totally identical to the parents. Of course,

75
00:05:28,160 --> 00:05:30,439
sexual reproduction, you've out their mixing between the parents going

76
00:05:30,439 --> 00:05:34,920
on as well, and a lot of those variations don't

77
00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:38,000
really make any difference, but some of them may be

78
00:05:38,160 --> 00:05:43,720
either more or less useful under certain circumstances, so that

79
00:05:43,759 --> 00:05:47,000
will tend to have some individuals doing a little better,

80
00:05:47,079 --> 00:05:51,600
some not as well. And we see changes happening over time.

81
00:05:51,639 --> 00:05:55,519
Of course, also environment changes, and so what worked at

82
00:05:55,519 --> 00:06:00,000
one time doesn't necessarily keep on workings. There may be

83
00:06:01,279 --> 00:06:04,600
advantages to change due to that, as well as getting

84
00:06:04,639 --> 00:06:09,759
better at something existing as possibilities there. And there's also

85
00:06:09,920 --> 00:06:13,920
just the well that one was in the wrong place

86
00:06:13,959 --> 00:06:16,560
at the wrong time and this one wasn't. There are

87
00:06:16,639 --> 00:06:21,240
some aspects that aren't predicted just by the biological situation.

88
00:06:23,160 --> 00:06:28,240
So over time we have a series of changes taking place.

89
00:06:28,920 --> 00:06:30,920
We can look at the fossils and yes, types of

90
00:06:30,920 --> 00:06:35,040
things change over time. The very earliest fossils are all

91
00:06:35,199 --> 00:06:39,000
rather simple things, actually bacteria type stuff, and gradually we

92
00:06:39,040 --> 00:06:42,759
see more complex things added on over time. So we

93
00:06:42,800 --> 00:06:48,279
see that diversification and addition to new things happening. Likewise,

94
00:06:48,519 --> 00:06:52,600
on the genetics we can see patterns of similarities that

95
00:06:52,639 --> 00:06:58,639
match up well. Now there's always various unexpected things that

96
00:06:58,639 --> 00:07:03,199
turn up as well. A few years back, somebody analyzed

97
00:07:03,199 --> 00:07:08,839
the DNA from this weird grass from New Zealand and oh,

98
00:07:08,879 --> 00:07:13,480
it's not a grass at all, but it was very simple.

99
00:07:13,519 --> 00:07:15,680
It looked kind of grassy, but turned out to be

100
00:07:15,720 --> 00:07:21,600
a very early diverging flowering plant, not close to the

101
00:07:21,600 --> 00:07:25,000
true grasses after all. So you do sometimes find wait,

102
00:07:25,120 --> 00:07:27,600
that isn't what we expected. But then you look closer

103
00:07:27,639 --> 00:07:35,160
and oh, yeah, there are some reasons why what we

104
00:07:35,199 --> 00:07:42,279
thought before needs to be corrected. So overall, evolution gives

105
00:07:42,279 --> 00:07:48,040
a good physical model of how we get new kinds

106
00:07:48,040 --> 00:07:56,399
of organisms, including ourselves. There's some current and some people

107
00:07:56,399 --> 00:08:00,439
think that we need to say more about some of

108
00:08:00,519 --> 00:08:06,759
the additional complications, like sometimes it's not just a little

109
00:08:06,759 --> 00:08:10,360
bit of DNA that extra that shows up, but an

110
00:08:10,480 --> 00:08:16,519
individual ends up with almost the whole genome doubled. Right now,

111
00:08:16,560 --> 00:08:20,160
You've got extra a lot of things, and you can

112
00:08:20,560 --> 00:08:22,560
mess around with one copy and you got the other

113
00:08:22,639 --> 00:08:25,959
that's working. And so that seems to be associated with

114
00:08:25,959 --> 00:08:34,000
some significant diversification events like vertebrates getting going. Various invertebrate

115
00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:39,639
and plant groups as well seem to have that issues

116
00:08:39,679 --> 00:08:44,960
of epigenetic patterns where DNA different parts turned on and off,

117
00:08:46,279 --> 00:08:50,080
and that can be happening while individuals alive, not just

118
00:08:51,000 --> 00:08:55,600
inherent and mutation, and that affects how it functions, flexibility

119
00:08:55,600 --> 00:08:59,879
of the organism cybernation. There are a lot of complications

120
00:08:59,879 --> 00:09:03,320
that do occur, and some people say this is really big,

121
00:09:03,360 --> 00:09:06,559
we need to Okay, I call this a total new theory.

122
00:09:06,679 --> 00:09:10,919
Others say, yeah, those are important additions to think about,

123
00:09:10,919 --> 00:09:14,600
but it's not really a new theory. But well, that's

124
00:09:14,679 --> 00:09:18,320
just your perspective, right right. Do you look more at

125
00:09:18,360 --> 00:09:21,799
the well, all this is still continuing or all this

126
00:09:21,879 --> 00:09:25,759
is new. Different people will spend that differently.

127
00:09:27,639 --> 00:09:30,639
Speaker 1: I have I have a ton of just very naive

128
00:09:30,759 --> 00:09:32,919
questions that I want to ask you, but maybe before

129
00:09:32,960 --> 00:09:36,080
I get to them, I'm just curious and sorry if

130
00:09:36,120 --> 00:09:37,840
I interrupted a train of thought. We can go back.

131
00:09:37,919 --> 00:09:41,120
But what where That all seems very intuitive to me?

132
00:09:41,240 --> 00:09:41,440
Speaker 3: Right?

133
00:09:41,480 --> 00:09:45,759
Speaker 1: You have a population of you know, deer, let's say,

134
00:09:46,360 --> 00:09:49,960
and for whatever reason, through random mutation or maybe you know,

135
00:09:50,000 --> 00:09:54,240
their environment changes, there's certain new traits or certain existing

136
00:09:54,279 --> 00:09:57,720
traits that are more adaptive, They're more beneficial, and so

137
00:09:58,440 --> 00:10:02,279
those deer have more success reproducing. And so you I

138
00:10:02,279 --> 00:10:07,960
can imagine stuff changing over time and adapting, and certainly right,

139
00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:10,000
I mean, we see this with selective breeding, like look

140
00:10:10,000 --> 00:10:12,279
at dogs. You know, we can make dugs bigger, smaller,

141
00:10:12,399 --> 00:10:18,279
goofy or whatever. But where like I won't ask you

142
00:10:18,320 --> 00:10:21,320
to speak for all Christians, of course, because Christians have

143
00:10:22,000 --> 00:10:24,840
varied belief and you're you're a scientist as well as

144
00:10:24,840 --> 00:10:27,039
a Christian. So maybe maybe people who are kind of

145
00:10:27,080 --> 00:10:31,440
like you, who know this field but also have some

146
00:10:31,480 --> 00:10:36,039
sort of religious belief, where do they diverge from that idea?

147
00:10:36,120 --> 00:10:41,080
Like like, what part of consensus evolutionary theory is like

148
00:10:41,120 --> 00:10:41,879
a bridge too far?

149
00:10:42,879 --> 00:10:51,399
Speaker 3: Boo evolutionary garry. That's fine biological model, and that's also

150
00:10:51,840 --> 00:10:57,519
all it is, right telling us about biology. There are

151
00:10:57,519 --> 00:11:01,559
lots of other things that are in important beyond that,

152
00:11:02,679 --> 00:11:04,399
And of course there's some things that other areas of

153
00:11:04,399 --> 00:11:07,320
science get at and some that science really doesn't handle much.

154
00:11:08,320 --> 00:11:13,360
For example, actually ironically famously pointing out by David Hume,

155
00:11:14,759 --> 00:11:20,879
Enlightenment atheist, going from is to aunt right doesn't really

156
00:11:21,799 --> 00:11:28,440
work logically. Here's the way things happen. As far as

157
00:11:28,440 --> 00:11:32,360
the natural laws, is that something we want to happen

158
00:11:33,799 --> 00:11:35,799
is that good? It's a bad?

159
00:11:35,879 --> 00:11:36,080
Speaker 2: Is it?

160
00:11:36,759 --> 00:11:40,919
Speaker 3: And not really one of the other. Well, we need

161
00:11:40,919 --> 00:11:47,120
something beyond science to tell us that right. Similarly, as

162
00:11:47,120 --> 00:11:51,320
far as the spiritual nature for humans, that's something that

163
00:11:52,759 --> 00:12:00,399
biology doesn't really tell us. Now, the Bible says God's

164
00:12:00,399 --> 00:12:04,440
given us that right, doesn't really give some sort of

165
00:12:04,519 --> 00:12:09,519
scientific mechanism. So there are various possible ideas as to

166
00:12:09,639 --> 00:12:14,879
just how our being in God's image, which of course

167
00:12:16,240 --> 00:12:23,960
isn't a physical resemblance, but something about our spiritual nature,

168
00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:32,799
how does that actually come in. That's something where different

169
00:12:32,799 --> 00:12:35,879
people with different ideas of what in terms of the

170
00:12:35,919 --> 00:12:40,639
stuff that is physically getting to look more like modern

171
00:12:40,679 --> 00:12:45,879
humans spiritually like us as well, different people have different ideas.

172
00:12:46,519 --> 00:12:52,399
There's a range there in terms of what people think

173
00:12:52,600 --> 00:12:56,279
in well, we really don't have data to decide, so

174
00:12:56,279 --> 00:13:02,039
it's kind of a right ideas you can speculate, and

175
00:13:02,600 --> 00:13:05,399
that's about all we can do on those questions. But

176
00:13:05,440 --> 00:13:12,440
I think that's really where we see having a meaning

177
00:13:12,440 --> 00:13:16,919
and purpose, not just in existence, is something that the

178
00:13:16,919 --> 00:13:26,440
theological information provides. Overall my experience, there's actually a fair

179
00:13:26,519 --> 00:13:29,559
number of people in the field generally that have some

180
00:13:29,679 --> 00:13:34,279
level of religious belief. Now what level it is varies

181
00:13:34,320 --> 00:13:41,080
a lot, but I remember being it Paymological Society meeting

182
00:13:41,159 --> 00:13:43,519
and a number of folks are saying, well, this is

183
00:13:43,519 --> 00:13:46,840
what I do at my church, and there was actually somebody,

184
00:13:47,679 --> 00:13:51,720
I don't go to church, what do I do? Because

185
00:13:51,879 --> 00:13:56,480
so many people were talking about what they did relating

186
00:13:56,799 --> 00:14:03,639
to faith things. So mm hm. Of course there's a

187
00:14:03,679 --> 00:14:10,559
wide range of where people new things and also kind

188
00:14:10,600 --> 00:14:14,200
of in terms of the m HM the pattern of

189
00:14:14,240 --> 00:14:18,919
biological evolution, what all doesn't explain? Are there some things

190
00:14:18,919 --> 00:14:27,879
where kind of runs into a wall doesn't explain stuff personally?

191
00:14:29,919 --> 00:14:30,960
One m.

192
00:14:33,320 --> 00:14:33,360
Speaker 1: H.

193
00:14:34,320 --> 00:14:38,320
Speaker 3: I don't see that we're really hitting brick wall. We're

194
00:14:38,360 --> 00:14:43,240
hitting a fog in many places. Uh, We're not so sure.

195
00:14:43,279 --> 00:14:44,960
We can kind of see, here's.

196
00:14:44,679 --> 00:14:47,039
Speaker 2: Something in what way? In what way?

197
00:14:47,879 --> 00:14:55,039
Speaker 3: For example, how do you get from the various simple

198
00:14:55,200 --> 00:14:58,960
building blocks of life that you can fairly really get

199
00:14:59,519 --> 00:15:04,399
right in a lab experiment, from standard very simple chemicals

200
00:15:04,480 --> 00:15:07,720
all the way to actually living things. Right, Well, we've

201
00:15:07,720 --> 00:15:11,279
got some ideas if you do various stuff, you can

202
00:15:11,720 --> 00:15:17,080
build up somewhat more complex molecules who do have experience

203
00:15:17,159 --> 00:15:19,679
that way. Kind of coming from the other end, there

204
00:15:19,720 --> 00:15:21,559
are ways we can see where you can kind of

205
00:15:21,600 --> 00:15:25,320
simplify from living things and still have a functioning system.

206
00:15:25,799 --> 00:15:29,720
There are some hints in the genetic patterns. For example,

207
00:15:30,679 --> 00:15:34,080
today all living things are using a core set of

208
00:15:34,120 --> 00:15:40,519
twenty amino acids, but the r and ees involved in

209
00:15:40,559 --> 00:15:44,360
that there are some similarities between certain groups as if

210
00:15:44,399 --> 00:15:47,919
they were duplicated from each other started with a smaller set.

211
00:15:49,000 --> 00:15:51,639
Speaker 1: So we can see this would kind of be like

212
00:15:51,679 --> 00:15:56,039
a modern version of those experiments in the seventies or

213
00:15:56,039 --> 00:15:59,679
something where they basically had like the the amino acids

214
00:15:59,720 --> 00:16:02,320
and water and they like hit it with various you know,

215
00:16:02,360 --> 00:16:05,639
electricity or radiation, and they said, oh, now we have

216
00:16:05,720 --> 00:16:08,080
more amino ad some something like this famous experiments.

217
00:16:08,120 --> 00:16:10,799
Speaker 3: I'm not familiar what you can build as you're saying,

218
00:16:10,840 --> 00:16:16,480
like the amino message, the sugars, nukelets, lipids that way

219
00:16:17,039 --> 00:16:21,120
in a pretty reasonable and here's what you could have

220
00:16:21,200 --> 00:16:24,519
on some random planet kind of like early Earth conditions.

221
00:16:24,679 --> 00:16:26,080
Speaker 2: But you can't make a protozoa.

222
00:16:27,240 --> 00:16:29,399
Speaker 3: But we certainly have not made a prozon and even

223
00:16:29,399 --> 00:16:35,480
a bacterium that way, right, So okay, you can get blocks.

224
00:16:34,679 --> 00:16:37,840
Speaker 1: And ironically enough, although this is a cheap shot, that

225
00:16:37,840 --> 00:16:41,000
that that experimental setup had a designer, right, it had

226
00:16:41,039 --> 00:16:46,000
a had a a someone setting up the conditions for

227
00:16:46,159 --> 00:16:46,799
it to happen.

228
00:16:46,919 --> 00:16:50,039
Speaker 3: So definitely, where do the laws of nature come from?

229
00:16:50,080 --> 00:16:54,159
That's one where alience doesn't tell you that they're there,

230
00:16:54,200 --> 00:16:59,039
and science works with it, and we could get off

231
00:16:59,039 --> 00:17:05,200
into the missive multiverse claims that M. Kenny needs work.

232
00:17:06,480 --> 00:17:09,039
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. Tell me what you think about this.

233
00:17:09,119 --> 00:17:12,640
So there's this idea about evidence where you know you

234
00:17:12,759 --> 00:17:16,519
can eventually your theories will become so similar that any

235
00:17:16,519 --> 00:17:18,799
piece of evidence will equally support both of them. It's

236
00:17:18,799 --> 00:17:21,440
the idea that if you have four people around a table,

237
00:17:21,519 --> 00:17:25,119
a blackjack table, and they're all placing bets on what

238
00:17:25,200 --> 00:17:27,640
suit the next card will be, and someone says spade,

239
00:17:27,720 --> 00:17:30,920
someone says heart, someone says diamond, someone says clubs, and

240
00:17:31,000 --> 00:17:34,279
the dealer takes a sneak peek and says it's red.

241
00:17:35,279 --> 00:17:38,039
And so there's two people. There's two theories at that

242
00:17:38,079 --> 00:17:42,759
table who that evidence equally supports. And increasingly it seems

243
00:17:42,799 --> 00:17:44,920
to me like that's what science is doing. Some of these,

244
00:17:45,599 --> 00:17:48,200
you know, the theories of the origin of life, for example,

245
00:17:48,920 --> 00:17:53,480
a biogenesis, the origin of the universe, fine tuning the

246
00:17:53,480 --> 00:17:56,440
theories behind this, it would be impossible to come up

247
00:17:56,440 --> 00:18:00,599
with a piece of evidence that would support God or

248
00:18:00,640 --> 00:18:02,480
the multiverse, but not the other.

249
00:18:03,039 --> 00:18:03,559
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.

250
00:18:03,559 --> 00:18:06,160
Speaker 1: It's like the theories have evolved, part in the pun

251
00:18:06,880 --> 00:18:10,720
to just mirror God. So there is no experiment you

252
00:18:10,720 --> 00:18:13,680
could design to figure some of this stuff out. And

253
00:18:13,759 --> 00:18:17,079
I think that's kind of I don't know, something strikes

254
00:18:17,119 --> 00:18:22,119
me as I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical of that if the

255
00:18:22,119 --> 00:18:25,440
theories just keep changing over time to just look like

256
00:18:25,559 --> 00:18:28,480
God without God, it's like, well, that to me, that

257
00:18:28,559 --> 00:18:32,319
seems a little I don't know, what do you think

258
00:18:32,319 --> 00:18:32,960
about that idea?

259
00:18:33,720 --> 00:18:40,640
Speaker 3: I mean, we don't have a way of taking tests

260
00:18:40,680 --> 00:18:45,240
tube and putting things together and hey, there's God. Of course, right,

261
00:18:45,960 --> 00:18:51,200
you cannot put God to the test scientifically, it's not

262
00:18:51,240 --> 00:18:55,759
really something that you really could do. But so it

263
00:18:55,880 --> 00:19:01,240
is going to kind of go to what seems plausible

264
00:19:01,240 --> 00:19:04,720
to you. There's not really a scientific right this proves

265
00:19:04,720 --> 00:19:08,599
one thing or another. So there certainly are a number

266
00:19:08,680 --> 00:19:11,599
of the aspects of the laws of nature that look

267
00:19:11,720 --> 00:19:14,160
like if you change them, even just a little bit,

268
00:19:14,880 --> 00:19:22,200
things aren't suitable for life. Is this because they were

269
00:19:23,160 --> 00:19:26,559
designed for that? Is it just well, if they were different,

270
00:19:26,599 --> 00:19:27,839
we wouldn't be here wondering.

271
00:19:29,039 --> 00:19:31,200
Speaker 2: And kind of a survivorship bias. Yeah.

272
00:19:31,480 --> 00:19:37,359
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's not really scientific data that you can really

273
00:19:38,720 --> 00:19:41,200
do with that. We have a one universe, so not

274
00:19:41,240 --> 00:19:43,079
a very good sample size, and it's not even a

275
00:19:43,160 --> 00:19:53,279
randomly picked one. So from that, what seems most plausible

276
00:19:53,279 --> 00:19:56,039
to you? Does this look likely that it's because it

277
00:19:56,079 --> 00:19:59,640
was designed to be that way or not.

278
00:20:00,440 --> 00:20:03,319
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting though, because, I mean, there was a

279
00:20:03,400 --> 00:20:08,839
time where the scientific worldview and the theological worldview that

280
00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:11,599
you could design experiments to sort of support one or

281
00:20:11,640 --> 00:20:13,519
the other, you know, because we used to think the

282
00:20:13,599 --> 00:20:16,960
universe was eternal, right, and that this was sort of

283
00:20:17,000 --> 00:20:21,519
the more atheistic worldview because the idea of the universe starting,

284
00:20:21,559 --> 00:20:25,240
anything that has a start has a cause, and therefore,

285
00:20:25,279 --> 00:20:28,720
you know, God right, or whatever the colom cosmological argument is.

286
00:20:29,319 --> 00:20:34,119
And but but then that changed. Then then the you know,

287
00:20:35,279 --> 00:20:37,519
the worldview that the universe had a beginning became the

288
00:20:37,559 --> 00:20:41,759
scientific worldview, you know, And so it is it is

289
00:20:41,799 --> 00:20:43,480
odd to me that there was a time that you

290
00:20:43,559 --> 00:20:46,920
could conduct experiments or observe data that would sort of

291
00:20:46,960 --> 00:20:49,079
prove one or the other, but now you can't because

292
00:20:49,079 --> 00:20:53,559
they've the scientific worldview has evolved to be like a

293
00:20:53,680 --> 00:20:57,279
mirror image of the religious worldview. So to me, I

294
00:20:57,279 --> 00:20:59,759
think that kind of I think we let them get

295
00:20:59,759 --> 00:21:02,599
away with that too much, you know, that them, you know,

296
00:21:02,599 --> 00:21:04,839
we're all that's not the right way of calling it.

297
00:21:04,880 --> 00:21:09,319
But that does seem to be like a a an issue.

298
00:21:09,599 --> 00:21:13,079
It doesn't feel scientific to me to just keep it's

299
00:21:13,119 --> 00:21:15,599
it's tough because you know, you always update your theories

300
00:21:15,599 --> 00:21:18,160
in the face of new evidence, But there does seem

301
00:21:18,200 --> 00:21:23,359
to be just a a priori reluctance to even entertain

302
00:21:25,359 --> 00:21:29,240
like an a gential creator as part of the answer,

303
00:21:29,319 --> 00:21:30,920
you know what I mean. It's it seems like a

304
00:21:31,319 --> 00:21:33,079
kind of non scientific in a strange way.

305
00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:39,000
Speaker 3: And you've got okay, two things there, One the can

306
00:21:40,119 --> 00:21:46,880
a scientific tests answer this question? And then m but

307
00:21:47,559 --> 00:21:51,160
do you assume that science covers everything?

308
00:21:51,880 --> 00:21:52,200
Speaker 2: Right?

309
00:21:52,440 --> 00:21:55,119
Speaker 3: Well, you've run pretty great problems if you do. But

310
00:21:57,119 --> 00:22:00,000
you're making that assumption then that we've got a scientific bottom.

311
00:22:00,119 --> 00:22:05,680
Therefore we don't need God. No, I mean the Bible

312
00:22:05,799 --> 00:22:11,920
portrays God being behind all sorts of ordinary physical processes.

313
00:22:13,440 --> 00:22:13,839
Speaker 2: This is.

314
00:22:16,200 --> 00:22:19,319
Speaker 3: From that point of view, it's how did God do

315
00:22:19,400 --> 00:22:22,799
something right? And did he use the ordinary patterns of

316
00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:29,519
natural laws or occasionally a miracle doing something differently. So,

317
00:22:29,680 --> 00:22:38,079
for example, going back even earlier, geology, rather popular Enlightenment

318
00:22:38,160 --> 00:22:46,000
idea was Earth being basically eternal and while okay, sometimes

319
00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:50,119
this area rises up and is eroding land while that

320
00:22:50,200 --> 00:22:53,880
area is under the water, and then they swamp, so

321
00:22:53,920 --> 00:22:58,519
you do have changes, but they're fairly psychical and people. Yeah,

322
00:22:58,519 --> 00:23:03,440
they're around throughout the practically eternal earth, not that different

323
00:23:03,480 --> 00:23:09,279
from today. Just the rain remains then went under the water,

324
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:14,920
and so that was kind of a popular Enlightenment deism

325
00:23:15,000 --> 00:23:21,400
type point of view. And more they looked at geology

326
00:23:21,559 --> 00:23:27,400
and no, we see a trend over time and it's

327
00:23:27,960 --> 00:23:30,519
going back to simpler life and then we just have

328
00:23:30,759 --> 00:23:37,079
rocks and extrapolate further, and that looks more like a beginning,

329
00:23:38,759 --> 00:23:44,960
like some eternal cycling. And so that was perceived among

330
00:23:47,559 --> 00:23:53,680
geologists pretty chilly in the early eighteen hundreds as pointing

331
00:23:53,680 --> 00:23:57,759
to match with a more biblical point of view rather

332
00:23:57,839 --> 00:24:02,240
than the eternal cycles type of thing.

333
00:24:02,920 --> 00:24:04,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

334
00:24:05,519 --> 00:24:12,559
Speaker 3: And then similarly, kind of city state type ideas versus

335
00:24:13,279 --> 00:24:17,079
big bang. A lot of the let's have to stay

336
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:22,759
state was that sounds like creation. But at the same time,

337
00:24:23,440 --> 00:24:27,680
m well, in principle, God could create a stay eight

338
00:24:27,799 --> 00:24:32,440
universe and then it looks steady from whatever point of

339
00:24:32,480 --> 00:24:36,079
creation there is. So it doesn't really prove something one

340
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:40,480
way or the other, but you certainly had people advocating

341
00:24:40,839 --> 00:24:44,759
this for that view. And then yeah, the science points

342
00:24:44,759 --> 00:24:48,839
to our universe having a beginning at any rate and

343
00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:53,200
the Earth having a beginning, things like that. But yeah,

344
00:24:53,279 --> 00:24:55,279
multiverse is one that's kind of a miss. There's kind

345
00:24:55,319 --> 00:24:58,559
of pup about what is supposedly doing, and then there's

346
00:24:58,599 --> 00:25:01,400
the taking close look at what act is there.

347
00:25:01,759 --> 00:25:05,799
Speaker 1: And I mean it's evolutionary theory applied to cosmology. It's

348
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:08,640
kind of interesting. It's this idea. You know, Well, the

349
00:25:08,680 --> 00:25:11,880
reason all the constants are fine tuned is because you know,

350
00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:17,039
there's many universes and the only ones that are adequately

351
00:25:17,079 --> 00:25:19,400
fine tuned can give rise to life. You know, just

352
00:25:19,759 --> 00:25:21,920
like how did this uh you know, why does this

353
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:22,680
dog look like this?

354
00:25:22,799 --> 00:25:23,880
Speaker 2: Well? Over over?

355
00:25:24,079 --> 00:25:28,640
Speaker 1: You know, there's many dogs, right, and these selective pressures

356
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:32,279
can can select for traits that are most adaptive, and

357
00:25:32,480 --> 00:25:35,039
that's I guess how the universe works. But I think

358
00:25:35,079 --> 00:25:38,759
even most scientists now sort of view that idea with skepticism.

359
00:25:38,799 --> 00:25:41,400
It's like it's like a like a bridge too far

360
00:25:41,559 --> 00:25:46,039
to just pose it. Well, maybe there's an infinite number

361
00:25:46,079 --> 00:25:47,279
of universes, you.

362
00:25:47,200 --> 00:25:50,240
Speaker 2: Know, it's a it's a it's a big it's a

363
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:50,920
big leap, and.

364
00:25:52,960 --> 00:25:55,039
Speaker 1: There's of course no evidence for it other than the

365
00:25:55,039 --> 00:25:58,319
fact that our universe is fine tuned. So it's a

366
00:25:58,359 --> 00:26:01,039
solution to a problem, but it's not. There is not

367
00:26:01,079 --> 00:26:02,240
any evidence for it, so.

368
00:26:04,039 --> 00:26:09,240
Speaker 3: No additional like I'm saying, I mean the kind of

369
00:26:09,319 --> 00:26:13,359
picture for Narnias, that's another universe.

370
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:15,839
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, Multiverses.

371
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:20,680
Speaker 3: Aren't inherently atheistic. But also there's several different multiverse models. Yeah,

372
00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:24,279
different things. I mean some of them. It's basically saying

373
00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:29,599
there's a bunch but they're all basically with the same laws. Okay, well,

374
00:26:29,759 --> 00:26:31,880
why are the laws for all the universes?

375
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:32,559
Speaker 2: Pseudo?

376
00:26:33,799 --> 00:26:36,240
Speaker 3: It doesn't get around the question. It just claims there

377
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:39,599
a whole bunch more. There even ones that are saying

378
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:43,640
all these different universes of different laws, there's an infinite

379
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:48,799
number of bad options. Right, you could have an infinite

380
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:52,079
range of possible physical laws and none of them are

381
00:26:52,079 --> 00:26:58,039
the good one. So that doesn't really avoid the problem,

382
00:26:58,119 --> 00:26:59,920
just kind of moves it back. One, why is the

383
00:27:01,440 --> 00:27:06,759
set of parameters for generating the multiple first universes such

384
00:27:06,799 --> 00:27:09,559
that it does generate at least some that or at

385
00:27:09,599 --> 00:27:11,720
least one that are suitable for life?

386
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:14,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, and where did that engine come from? Where did

387
00:27:14,119 --> 00:27:16,599
that universe creation engine come from? As well, yeah, you're right,

388
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:18,880
it's just you you you said, it's sort of kicking

389
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:20,960
the can down the road, or it just moves the

390
00:27:21,079 --> 00:27:23,759
question back. That seems to be true for all of

391
00:27:23,799 --> 00:27:28,759
the big questions, right, like even for evolution, which again

392
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:34,160
just to restate, like clearly there's observable phenomenon there that

393
00:27:34,160 --> 00:27:38,720
that evolution occurs in some sense then and then there's

394
00:27:38,799 --> 00:27:42,440
like debate around certain issues. But I do wonder if

395
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:45,440
you were to run that clock all the way back

396
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:52,519
to the very first life form capable of reproduction, what

397
00:27:52,799 --> 00:27:57,759
happened before that? Do we does evolutionary theory address evolutionary theory?

398
00:27:57,759 --> 00:28:00,000
It's always it's sort of put forward as an expert

399
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:02,799
nation for life, the origin of life, but it really is,

400
00:28:02,839 --> 00:28:06,200
and it's it's the explanation for the origin of different species.

401
00:28:06,799 --> 00:28:09,680
But in pop culture we treat it like the explanation

402
00:28:09,759 --> 00:28:12,839
of life. Where does science stand on that today? The

403
00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:13,680
origin of life?

404
00:28:14,079 --> 00:28:18,359
Speaker 3: Yeah, technically why is shereally drawn for? The evolution is

405
00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:21,880
the process kind of going once we've got life, and

406
00:28:21,920 --> 00:28:28,119
then apiochansis the process of making life from non life,

407
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:32,119
and they do kind of grade into each other some degree.

408
00:28:32,720 --> 00:28:37,839
You have some of the same factors involved, but a

409
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:42,200
bio chances there's a lot less data and evidence to

410
00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:47,480
pending things down, and so there's a lot more speculation.

411
00:28:47,559 --> 00:28:51,039
We certainly have Okay, these things work this way, and

412
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:54,000
it looks like you could kind of have something like

413
00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:57,519
this as a system that's working. So there's ideas out there,

414
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:01,440
but it's much more we've got to guesses how that

415
00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:04,119
this part works and this part and kind of how

416
00:29:04,119 --> 00:29:08,440
they might fit together. It's much more of a speculation

417
00:29:08,599 --> 00:29:16,720
and discovery right situation, where that my guess, and I

418
00:29:16,759 --> 00:29:21,519
wouldn't put it particularly stronger than that, is that there's

419
00:29:21,519 --> 00:29:27,359
an awful lot of things that do happen by natural

420
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:34,200
law type processes, and biblically miracles happen, but they're relatively

421
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:41,039
rare and therefore special reason. And even with them, they

422
00:29:41,079 --> 00:29:45,440
tend to seem to be kind just what is needed

423
00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:51,720
for the particular purpose, and say, kind of turns the

424
00:29:51,759 --> 00:29:55,119
water to wine, and then the servants have to go

425
00:29:56,440 --> 00:30:01,799
lail it out, put it in the cup and carry it.

426
00:30:01,799 --> 00:30:08,160
It's not a magic fountain refilling all the cups. So

427
00:30:10,440 --> 00:30:13,720
my guess would be that, given that there seems to

428
00:30:13,759 --> 00:30:18,519
be a not using miracles but it's not necessary, that

429
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:24,640
I guess is that God probably worked things happening through

430
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:33,000
natural laws patterns. But that's a guess with rather limited data.

431
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:36,400
Speaker 1: Well, it seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to speculate.

432
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:38,880
I mean, we're all just speculating when it comes to

433
00:30:39,039 --> 00:30:41,359
the origin of life, and the only difference is we

434
00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:44,640
propose a you know, a first Domino toppler or a

435
00:30:44,680 --> 00:30:48,200
first cause, whereas a atheist person wouldn't it would they

436
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:53,720
would just pause it some mysterious force or just randomness

437
00:30:54,039 --> 00:30:58,640
or infinite time, or some some way to sort of

438
00:30:59,079 --> 00:31:01,799
account for the life lack of a motive engine. But

439
00:31:02,359 --> 00:31:07,079
I'll speculate wildly. This is not you talking, so everyone listening,

440
00:31:07,119 --> 00:31:09,960
this is me saying these wild and crazy things. I

441
00:31:10,039 --> 00:31:13,359
kind of I can't help but think about I don't

442
00:31:13,359 --> 00:31:15,680
think we can help it. You know, our culture influences

443
00:31:15,759 --> 00:31:18,200
us when we think of analogies and metaphors. We can't

444
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:21,359
help but use what we know. And I can't help

445
00:31:21,359 --> 00:31:24,920
but think of the way a video game works. You know,

446
00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:28,240
the characters in the game just have a different relationship

447
00:31:28,279 --> 00:31:31,920
with their physical world than I do, being outside of

448
00:31:31,960 --> 00:31:35,279
their you know, whatever it is that they are, you know,

449
00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:39,599
information spinning on a disc right, And there's things I

450
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:41,759
can just do that they can't do, and vice versa.

451
00:31:42,440 --> 00:31:46,640
And if I were a programmer, I could imagine trying

452
00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:49,559
to make a game that just operates on its own,

453
00:31:49,839 --> 00:31:51,960
you know, I could. I could program each little character

454
00:31:52,000 --> 00:31:55,920
with a chat GPT like level of intelligence. And I

455
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:59,039
could if I had infinite time and wisdom. I could

456
00:31:59,079 --> 00:32:02,000
sort of set up a game that just works. You know,

457
00:32:02,279 --> 00:32:05,839
maybe I need tectonic activity, you know, maybe this is

458
00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:09,640
important for the natural cycle. And so I can put

459
00:32:09,640 --> 00:32:13,000
all these laws in these constants, and after that, I

460
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:17,319
wouldn't really need to get so involved by some like

461
00:32:17,559 --> 00:32:20,920
major action by going into the code and editing it,

462
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:24,200
you know, but I could. And so to me, this

463
00:32:24,240 --> 00:32:26,960
is sort of a it's amazing how cool this metaphor

464
00:32:27,119 --> 00:32:31,160
is for existence here in the twenty first century. So

465
00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:34,160
I appreciate that from you, because I do find some

466
00:32:35,079 --> 00:32:39,279
Christians are really reluctant to entertain that any of these

467
00:32:39,319 --> 00:32:42,880
things happen, like even natural selection, Like oh, that's I

468
00:32:42,920 --> 00:32:45,079
can't entertain that idea. And it's like, well, no, we

469
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:47,960
have to use our reason. I mean, we can observe

470
00:32:48,359 --> 00:32:50,720
a lot of this stuff. So I appreciate that. I

471
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:53,599
will ask sometime. I have a paleontologist. I've always wanted

472
00:32:53,599 --> 00:32:58,079
to ask someone this question. We have a fossil record

473
00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:03,680
and it's not continuous, but it's pretty impressive. I imagine,

474
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:07,839
do we this This will show how little I know,

475
00:33:08,559 --> 00:33:14,640
you know, we humans and chimpanzees. We are proposed to

476
00:33:14,759 --> 00:33:18,960
share a common ancestor, and of course we all share

477
00:33:19,319 --> 00:33:22,920
according to evolutionary three eight eight common ancestry, every organism

478
00:33:23,279 --> 00:33:27,359
shares a common ancestor with us. How good you know,

479
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:30,680
because I imagine, okay, we have some common ancestor, and

480
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:34,839
then from that common ancestor we have chimpanzees, we have humans.

481
00:33:35,559 --> 00:33:40,359
How good is the fossil record connecting those two points,

482
00:33:40,400 --> 00:33:44,119
you know, from modern anatomical humans to a common ancestor

483
00:33:44,119 --> 00:33:48,880
with chimpanzees. How complete is that fossil record?

484
00:33:53,200 --> 00:34:01,119
Speaker 3: Okay, would be kind of okay. Forest is generally a

485
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:04,720
really lousy place to get fossilized, really good place to

486
00:34:04,799 --> 00:34:12,719
get decayed away and back into the food web. So

487
00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:20,320
and that's where quite a lot of the great apes

488
00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:26,599
I like to live. So our fossil record for the

489
00:34:26,679 --> 00:34:36,719
chimps is not very good. For human relatives somewhat better.

490
00:34:37,280 --> 00:34:43,920
So we do have some older EIGHTE fossils that well,

491
00:34:44,280 --> 00:34:51,079
kind of basic early ape could reasonly be ancestral to both.

492
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:57,719
But then actually it's the chip lineage that we don't

493
00:34:57,719 --> 00:35:05,480
have much on the fossil For humans. We've got ones

494
00:35:05,519 --> 00:35:08,320
that well, it's basically an ape sized brain, which by

495
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:11,280
animal standards pretty good by human standards not so good,

496
00:35:11,800 --> 00:35:18,119
but getting more upright stance and good for running around

497
00:35:18,119 --> 00:35:22,000
on the ground as opposed to the knuckle walk approach

498
00:35:22,039 --> 00:35:25,000
that's the usual for chins and grills. I mean, they

499
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:28,679
can stand and walk if they need to, handsful or something,

500
00:35:28,719 --> 00:35:35,079
but generally they're using their hand knuckles as well as

501
00:35:35,360 --> 00:35:40,239
back feet for walking on the ground, whereas we're on

502
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:45,559
just the hind feet. But you still have probably the

503
00:35:45,639 --> 00:35:49,400
scramble up a tree for safety rather than just flat

504
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:54,280
out running. And then we gradually see here are ones

505
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:59,280
that are increasingly better at getting around of the ground

506
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:04,519
faster running. For example, the eight and the early Hammond

507
00:36:04,559 --> 00:36:08,519
and ribcage tends to be somewhat more funnel shaped rather

508
00:36:08,519 --> 00:36:14,119
than straight sides like us straight sides. That's more room

509
00:36:14,199 --> 00:36:14,760
for lungs.

510
00:36:15,239 --> 00:36:15,559
Speaker 2: Got it.

511
00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:19,400
Speaker 3: If you're trying to outrun that saber tooth, you want

512
00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:27,840
to get plenty option. So we have increasing specialization for

513
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:34,960
running around on two feet on the ground, and then

514
00:36:35,119 --> 00:36:42,599
start also getting noticeably larger brain size and gradually start

515
00:36:42,639 --> 00:36:47,119
to see more use of tools. And then especially with

516
00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:51,880
the first modern humans, we start to see all of

517
00:36:51,920 --> 00:36:57,119
a sudden there's a takeoff in things like more decoration,

518
00:36:57,679 --> 00:37:02,320
a lot more innovation, things like that going on. So

519
00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:07,119
we've got kind of the sequence for us, but the

520
00:37:07,199 --> 00:37:10,719
chimp sequence, we've got a few teeth and things like that,

521
00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:14,639
but not very much fossil material for more chimp or

522
00:37:14,639 --> 00:37:15,559
gorilla like things.

523
00:37:16,320 --> 00:37:17,079
Speaker 2: That's interesting.

524
00:37:17,159 --> 00:37:20,360
Speaker 1: Okay, what what as far as you know, what would

525
00:37:20,400 --> 00:37:24,880
be like the best example of the most complete fossil

526
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:31,239
record from some common ancestor to two distinct species. I

527
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:34,400
hope ideally not like at the level of like, you know,

528
00:37:34,840 --> 00:37:39,920
bacteria or you know, stuff like that, some something recognizable.

529
00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:44,039
Speaker 3: I mean bacteria. It's actually extremely challenging because once you

530
00:37:44,119 --> 00:37:47,679
get passed, Okay, this one looks like a dot, this

531
00:37:47,719 --> 00:37:50,400
one's kind of oval, and that one's a little twisty,

532
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:55,639
you pretty much summarized what all the bacteria looks like.

533
00:37:56,079 --> 00:38:00,159
There are a few weird ones, but in appearance they're

534
00:38:00,159 --> 00:38:03,320
off engineeric. It's being in chemistry and things like that,

535
00:38:03,360 --> 00:38:07,400
which doesn't necessarily preserve well. Some of the things with

536
00:38:07,440 --> 00:38:13,000
the best fossil record actually are tiny stuff floating around

537
00:38:13,119 --> 00:38:16,119
in the ocean, in the plankton. There are some of

538
00:38:16,159 --> 00:38:20,800
those that make a hard shell, and so those are

539
00:38:21,199 --> 00:38:24,599
major part of the sediments out in the ocean making

540
00:38:24,719 --> 00:38:29,159
up chalk rock and things like that. And so given

541
00:38:29,239 --> 00:38:32,960
that you've got huge numbers on them, and they've also

542
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:37,639
been studied rather extensively, we have some very good transitions

543
00:38:37,679 --> 00:38:43,840
of going from for example, the big extinction taking out

544
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:50,519
the dinosaurs also hit hard for the ocean plankton, so

545
00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:54,280
a lot of things tying out a few survivors. Hey,

546
00:38:54,320 --> 00:39:00,119
not much competition, and you see diverse case to forms

547
00:39:00,119 --> 00:39:06,960
really taking off in those groups. Also, being really tiny

548
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:10,639
doesn't take much rot to have lots of them, and

549
00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:13,280
as they change the time their useful marker for time

550
00:39:14,519 --> 00:39:16,519
and a little tiny bit of rock. That's something you

551
00:39:16,599 --> 00:39:20,000
might get up when you drill a hole, and if

552
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:22,039
you're drilling a really deep hall, you've probably got a reason,

553
00:39:22,079 --> 00:39:26,599
and that reason is usually oil. Knowing exactly what layer

554
00:39:26,599 --> 00:39:28,800
you're in helps you find the oil.

555
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:31,760
Speaker 1: Oh wow, it's like an ice core sample for land.

556
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:35,840
That's interesting, pretty good money in being able to figure

557
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:39,159
out which layer're in. Right that, there's been quite a

558
00:39:39,199 --> 00:39:43,559
lot of looking at these tiny fossils and how they change.

559
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:49,360
Some of the work that I focus on with the

560
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:54,360
snails and clams, we do have some examples, like Project

561
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:59,000
involved in right now trying to thoroughly document the various

562
00:39:59,239 --> 00:40:03,559
snails and clam fossils here in the southeast in US

563
00:40:03,599 --> 00:40:05,960
from kind of a little before the ice Age is

564
00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:08,559
really get going on into ice age up too recent

565
00:40:09,599 --> 00:40:15,079
and not too surprisingly, they're somewhere we've got the oldest

566
00:40:15,079 --> 00:40:18,119
ones that definitely look different from the modern ones. And

567
00:40:18,159 --> 00:40:23,800
then in between age and it's in between, and there's

568
00:40:23,800 --> 00:40:28,239
somewhere we're kind of well, what do we call it?

569
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:35,239
It's midway between these two? Okay, so sort of heavy

570
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:42,559
this name slashed, that name that we make use for

571
00:40:42,639 --> 00:40:45,079
the shells that are in between an age and in

572
00:40:45,159 --> 00:40:48,079
between in form I get. I guess what I would want,

573
00:40:48,199 --> 00:40:50,960
Like if I were an evolutionary biologist, I would want

574
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:53,519
to be able to make this argument where I have

575
00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:56,960
like some ancient I'm gonna use I have no idea

576
00:40:56,960 --> 00:40:59,800
what these words mean. Paleolithic, No, that's the wrong, you know,

577
00:41:00,159 --> 00:41:06,440
ancient shrew or whatever that I'm proposing eventually, over millions

578
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:09,119
and millions of years, turns into this, let's say bat

579
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:13,239
or something, some winged creature, right, I would you know,

580
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:15,400
I would want to be able to show like the

581
00:41:15,519 --> 00:41:20,400
incremental changes from like one body plan to another. And

582
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:23,320
I would kind of expect, given that each of these

583
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:27,719
incremental changes existed on Earth for maybe hundreds of thousands

584
00:41:27,760 --> 00:41:29,559
of years, you know that there would be a lot

585
00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:33,199
of fossils. Now, I know fossilization is rare and stuff,

586
00:41:33,199 --> 00:41:36,440
but is there anything like that where we can really

587
00:41:36,719 --> 00:41:39,480
like go through the change of a body.

588
00:41:39,119 --> 00:41:41,800
Speaker 2: Plan or anything. In evolutionary biology.

589
00:41:42,519 --> 00:41:49,519
Speaker 3: We do have some things like going back cambering, we

590
00:41:49,559 --> 00:41:55,000
have major diversification there, and we're kind of establishing a

591
00:41:55,039 --> 00:41:58,480
lot of the major body plans for living things. And

592
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:01,480
so again going with areas I've focused on a lot.

593
00:42:01,519 --> 00:42:05,559
With the shells, we do have a nice sequence, for example,

594
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:09,880
where start with kind of a cap shape shell, something

595
00:42:09,920 --> 00:42:16,119
that's crawling around kind of snail style, but not a

596
00:42:16,320 --> 00:42:20,559
true snail, just kind of cap cheap pattern which some

597
00:42:20,599 --> 00:42:24,559
snails have, but this would have been somewhat different anatomically

598
00:42:24,599 --> 00:42:28,239
into tail. And then we've got some that are kind

599
00:42:28,239 --> 00:42:37,440
of skinnier, more narrow cap shape, possibly a little better

600
00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:42,800
for digging around. And then as they get more skinny,

601
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:47,480
the two sides get my hands kind of coming together more.

602
00:42:48,519 --> 00:42:55,119
See the shell right along the midline getting bitner a

603
00:42:55,159 --> 00:43:00,199
little flexible, and if we go all the way to

604
00:43:01,559 --> 00:43:06,800
pulling so that the bottoms can come together and the

605
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:10,360
top edge is entirely flexible, we've gone from the cap

606
00:43:10,400 --> 00:43:15,280
shape to a clam. And we do have this sequence

607
00:43:15,320 --> 00:43:20,719
of fossils showing that type of transition. Okay, interesting, So

608
00:43:21,599 --> 00:43:25,480
things that have a good hard skeleton to look at

609
00:43:26,320 --> 00:43:29,519
and that lives someplace like in shallow water where it's

610
00:43:29,519 --> 00:43:33,000
pretty easy to get buried and preserved. So we do have,

611
00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:38,679
certainly for the vertebrates, some nice transitions between more fish

612
00:43:38,719 --> 00:43:45,599
and amphibian style of things. Is another good example. Of course,

613
00:43:45,920 --> 00:43:49,559
they're actually are certain types of fish today that have

614
00:43:49,679 --> 00:43:53,199
some ability to kind of screw down the water a

615
00:43:53,199 --> 00:43:58,559
little bit. Famously, they got the mud skippers and kind

616
00:43:58,559 --> 00:44:04,679
of the Indian Ocean region. Remember when I was in

617
00:44:05,519 --> 00:44:08,199
PG glimpse, there's something scutting along the water surface and

618
00:44:08,199 --> 00:44:13,639
climbing out of the rock and it's a fish. Not

619
00:44:13,719 --> 00:44:17,800
quite what I was expecting to see there, So, I

620
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:19,400
mean air has a lot more.

621
00:44:19,880 --> 00:44:22,880
Speaker 1: The first evolutionary biologist to find that fish must have

622
00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:24,000
just been ecstatic.

623
00:44:26,519 --> 00:44:31,840
Speaker 3: So there are a fair number of fish that breathe

624
00:44:31,880 --> 00:44:36,760
air to get more aucyen. Tarpin, for example, popular game

625
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:40,639
fish around Florida because if you get it very vigorously

626
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:44,199
jumps around internashes.

627
00:44:43,599 --> 00:44:45,199
Speaker 2: And beautiful fish. They're huge.

628
00:44:46,559 --> 00:44:49,840
Speaker 3: Being that active needs a lot of auction, So tarpin

629
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:54,000
actually golpen air breathe that they will brown the held underwater.

630
00:44:55,960 --> 00:45:01,639
But if you're kind of in an area that's kind

631
00:45:01,639 --> 00:45:06,599
of a low an auction, breathing ear is useful. And

632
00:45:06,639 --> 00:45:09,440
if it's kind of a but he is there's some

633
00:45:10,880 --> 00:45:14,159
bugs around, maybe being able to get out a little

634
00:45:14,159 --> 00:45:21,280
bit scoot around between one pond and the next, they're

635
00:45:22,239 --> 00:45:23,920
use in that. Whorse, there's also used in being a

636
00:45:23,960 --> 00:45:25,920
fast swing fish that stays out in the deeper water.

637
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:30,119
But there are potential advantages and so we do have

638
00:45:31,599 --> 00:45:36,400
specimens where the limbs of some of the lobe fins

639
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:40,199
are getting more suited to be able to hold them

640
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:47,719
up rather than just for paddling. Also, if you're in

641
00:45:47,760 --> 00:45:50,239
the water, you can just sort of we go fins

642
00:45:50,280 --> 00:45:53,639
and tilt this way that way. On land, it's handy

643
00:45:53,639 --> 00:45:57,280
to be able to turn your neck. Fish don't really

644
00:45:57,320 --> 00:46:01,000
have necks, but we start to see the fossils where

645
00:46:01,039 --> 00:46:05,880
the yeah, it does not firmly attached to the shoulders, but

646
00:46:06,239 --> 00:46:10,679
giving a little flexibility there to bend around. So we

647
00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:16,400
have a nice series from fish with lungs and paddles

648
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:20,039
that have bones kind of like aramon leg bones in them,

649
00:46:20,039 --> 00:46:24,599
but it's paddles to ones that start to have some

650
00:46:25,519 --> 00:46:28,639
bit more support, getting some kind of toe type structures

651
00:46:30,039 --> 00:46:32,960
in the foot, getting a little bit more of being

652
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:38,320
able to move the head around. And then the very

653
00:46:38,320 --> 00:46:43,400
earliest ones we considered true amphibians have actually feet than fins,

654
00:46:44,079 --> 00:46:48,960
but they're still also living primarily in the water. They

655
00:46:49,079 --> 00:46:53,440
still have their gills, actually still have a lateral line,

656
00:46:53,440 --> 00:46:56,000
which is a sensory structure that works in water but

657
00:46:56,039 --> 00:47:00,000
not in air along the side. So there's still mostly aquatic,

658
00:47:00,639 --> 00:47:03,679
but certainly able to crawl a bit across the mud.

659
00:47:04,599 --> 00:47:09,000
And then further specialization goes on from there. But we

660
00:47:09,079 --> 00:47:16,519
have fairly nice transitions going from more fish style thing

661
00:47:16,639 --> 00:47:22,440
to more amphibian and again that's shell what are good

662
00:47:22,440 --> 00:47:27,440
place to get buried. They have bones. So yeah, well

663
00:47:27,440 --> 00:47:31,199
then I mean sequence there that's super compelling to me.

664
00:47:31,360 --> 00:47:33,559
I mean because you can sort of imagine like, okay, yeah,

665
00:47:33,599 --> 00:47:37,599
I have this brief human life. So while I well,

666
00:47:37,599 --> 00:47:40,719
it may seem far fetched that this tarpan could someday

667
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:46,559
be a you know, cow like creature or something, you know,

668
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:52,400
at least theoretically, I kind of see, like, compounded over

669
00:47:52,480 --> 00:47:55,920
time in the right conditions, that pretty serious body plan

670
00:47:56,039 --> 00:47:59,960
changes could happen. But of course I'll just never see it,

671
00:48:00,079 --> 00:48:01,880
because you know, I would need to live for a

672
00:48:01,960 --> 00:48:05,599
million years. But you know, I do wonder because something

673
00:48:05,599 --> 00:48:08,760
we haven't really talked about directly is speciation, and this

674
00:48:08,840 --> 00:48:13,400
is like a hot topic. You know, Yeah, Okay, changes happen,

675
00:48:13,519 --> 00:48:15,719
and they can compound, and they can be pretty dramatic.

676
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:17,599
I mean, look at the difference between a chihuahua and

677
00:48:17,639 --> 00:48:20,719
a Great Dane, But technically a Chihuahua and a Great

678
00:48:20,760 --> 00:48:25,119
Day maybe not physically, but technically they could reproduce. Right,

679
00:48:25,199 --> 00:48:28,679
So so what so two questions I guess is like,

680
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:32,800
what what is that threshold that has to be crossed?

681
00:48:32,880 --> 00:48:36,960
Speaker 1: I assume it has to do with the uh, you

682
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:40,239
know X, you know, chromosomes that relate to sexual reproduction

683
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:44,199
need to change perhaps, But and then also I mean, yeah,

684
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:47,239
this stuff happens over huge time scales, but there are

685
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:50,800
a lot of different species on Earth. So surely in

686
00:48:50,840 --> 00:48:54,880
the five hundred years or so that we've had or more,

687
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:59,400
I guess biologists or something like biologists, surely we've seen

688
00:48:59,559 --> 00:49:03,119
species should happen, right, And if so, what are what

689
00:49:03,159 --> 00:49:03,639
have you seen?

690
00:49:05,679 --> 00:49:11,079
Speaker 3: We do have a number of good examples there. Now,

691
00:49:11,119 --> 00:49:13,199
as you know, it's kind of complicated when do we

692
00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:18,639
say these are actual separate species. There are some challenges

693
00:49:18,679 --> 00:49:22,000
of just where do you draw the line, And so

694
00:49:23,440 --> 00:49:27,280
we do see things that are all sorts of degrees

695
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:33,480
of difference from each other. Ones where and I think

696
00:49:33,519 --> 00:49:36,400
those are probably the same, and those are definitely the same,

697
00:49:36,880 --> 00:49:41,840
and as a getting pretty different. One place where you

698
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:45,719
can kind of see the process of figuring these types

699
00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:51,079
of things out is if you get some different editions

700
00:49:51,119 --> 00:49:55,639
of field guides for birds. It's a fairly accessible option,

701
00:49:56,719 --> 00:50:02,440
and you'll see there are some changes in the species

702
00:50:02,480 --> 00:50:07,119
that are recognized. For example, one of the newest ones.

703
00:50:07,159 --> 00:50:12,480
They just recently decided that the western and Eastern warbling

704
00:50:12,920 --> 00:50:17,320
vireos here in North America are different enough to those

705
00:50:17,360 --> 00:50:18,679
are really different species.

706
00:50:19,480 --> 00:50:19,880
Speaker 2: Is that so?

707
00:50:19,960 --> 00:50:22,400
Speaker 1: Is that an anatomical distinction or is it Does it

708
00:50:22,440 --> 00:50:24,039
related to the ability to reproduce.

709
00:50:24,079 --> 00:50:25,880
Speaker 2: I I don't know much about this.

710
00:50:26,400 --> 00:50:32,760
Speaker 3: So this wouldn't relate to some extent if it's been studying.

711
00:50:34,159 --> 00:50:39,199
How much do they hybridize or not? And do the hybrids,

712
00:50:39,199 --> 00:50:43,760
if there are any, seem to do just fine or

713
00:50:44,119 --> 00:50:50,239
not so great? And then also and we.

714
00:50:50,199 --> 00:50:54,679
Speaker 1: Know we know that they used to reproduce and have

715
00:50:54,800 --> 00:50:57,119
viable offspring and now they sometimes don't.

716
00:50:57,360 --> 00:51:03,559
Speaker 3: Is that they are very similar? Okay, I don't think

717
00:51:03,599 --> 00:51:12,039
we have the way back. They used to be freer,

718
00:51:12,079 --> 00:51:14,559
but we can see now those look pretty similar. But

719
00:51:16,920 --> 00:51:20,920
these days DNA differences are very important. Do we see, okay,

720
00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:23,880
these ones have this range of things and then there's

721
00:51:24,639 --> 00:51:28,360
a gap here and then these or do they grantually

722
00:51:28,480 --> 00:51:32,199
all blur into each other for birds or it's also

723
00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:38,679
very important. Are do they have different songs? Which is

724
00:51:38,960 --> 00:51:42,519
a key thing for the males and females to recognize

725
00:51:42,559 --> 00:51:47,760
each other. If the song is different and the female

726
00:51:47,960 --> 00:51:50,800
here's one and it's interested in and here's the other

727
00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:59,320
and isn't, well, that's going to differences. So there's kind

728
00:51:59,320 --> 00:52:03,719
of gradually rightcognizing these two. Well, they do kind of

729
00:52:03,719 --> 00:52:08,440
look different, but they seem to mix pretty thoroughly. Where

730
00:52:08,480 --> 00:52:10,800
they come together, and so you get some things that

731
00:52:10,960 --> 00:52:13,880
older books, That is, two things that now are one,

732
00:52:15,119 --> 00:52:20,480
and there are somewhere these actually seem to keep themselves apart.

733
00:52:21,039 --> 00:52:23,480
They seem to be different, and so we recognize them

734
00:52:23,480 --> 00:52:28,039
as two species where they were previously put together, but

735
00:52:28,079 --> 00:52:32,559
actually seeing the process in action. One place where this

736
00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:42,960
sometimes happens relatively obviously, is in plants. Plants can reproduce asexually.

737
00:52:45,280 --> 00:52:49,239
A plant sell that's alive, given suitable conditions, can grow

738
00:52:49,280 --> 00:52:53,920
into a new plant. Most of ourselves can't do that,

739
00:52:55,159 --> 00:53:00,480
but in plants, asexual reproduction is really really possible. Bolsto

740
00:53:01,320 --> 00:53:05,400
you can get a new species that doesn't have to

741
00:53:05,400 --> 00:53:07,760
have lots of others like it, that can potentially just

742
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:12,119
reproduce itself a sexual thing. And it turns out this

743
00:53:12,719 --> 00:53:16,679
can happen quite a lot. If two different ones hybridize,

744
00:53:19,239 --> 00:53:23,239
that may end up with a full set of chromosomes

745
00:53:23,239 --> 00:53:29,480
form both parents, and now it's got twice as many chromosomes.

746
00:53:29,960 --> 00:53:32,880
That doesn't breed well with either parent, but it can

747
00:53:33,000 --> 00:53:37,559
reproduce itself interesting, and so we get a group that

748
00:53:37,679 --> 00:53:43,599
is not able to breed with anybody else newly formed

749
00:53:43,840 --> 00:53:49,079
from that hybridation event, and this does happen in nature.

750
00:53:49,519 --> 00:53:56,119
For example, a little bit of accidental human help and

751
00:53:56,199 --> 00:54:03,239
standard salt marsh grass along east coast of US accidentally

752
00:54:04,119 --> 00:54:07,760
got transport over to Europe and the two inner bread

753
00:54:08,079 --> 00:54:17,400
and made a new kind with more chromosomes, doesn't breathe

754
00:54:17,400 --> 00:54:21,559
with either parent, but reproduces itself. This is actually pretty

755
00:54:21,599 --> 00:54:25,760
important to us because some additional examples of this are

756
00:54:25,880 --> 00:54:31,000
wheat and corn beating an awful lot of humanity. Yeah,

757
00:54:31,079 --> 00:54:36,960
pretty important, and so there's a number of examples. There

758
00:54:37,000 --> 00:54:40,840
are a few animals where this happens as well. For example,

759
00:54:41,840 --> 00:54:46,079
Campelloma is one group of freshwater snails in eastern US,

760
00:54:47,039 --> 00:54:51,840
and there are some normal it's sexually reproducing standard set

761
00:54:51,840 --> 00:54:57,039
of chromosome types, and then if two of those happening

762
00:54:57,079 --> 00:54:59,480
it together are actually it sometimes just happens within an individual.

763
00:55:00,039 --> 00:55:06,760
It's extra copy that becomes a distinct lineage that reproduces

764
00:55:06,840 --> 00:55:13,480
asexually and different from either parent form. So we do

765
00:55:13,599 --> 00:55:18,360
have that sort of instantaneous and even beyond species, there

766
00:55:18,400 --> 00:55:23,920
have been cases like notorious Rafabraska. It was supposed to

767
00:55:23,960 --> 00:55:29,199
be a triumph of Soviet science feeding the world. They

768
00:55:30,079 --> 00:55:34,960
in the lab crossed radishes and cabbages. So the goal

769
00:55:35,079 --> 00:55:37,039
was to have something with the edible radish root and

770
00:55:37,079 --> 00:55:43,920
the cabbage leaves. It had cabbage roots, and that wasn't useful.

771
00:55:44,519 --> 00:55:48,639
But here are things from do separate genera now merge

772
00:55:48,679 --> 00:55:54,599
into this one useless plant. So we do have things

773
00:55:54,639 --> 00:56:02,360
of that sort. There's also some more gradual ones. One

774
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:07,239
very famous example comes from a group of fruit flies,

775
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:12,719
not the standard lab genetics ones, but another type where

776
00:56:14,760 --> 00:56:20,079
there were various species living on some of the native

777
00:56:20,119 --> 00:56:23,320
plants here in the New World, and then Europeans brought

778
00:56:23,559 --> 00:56:27,480
these apples, really big fruit.

779
00:56:28,800 --> 00:56:33,880
Speaker 1: And and apples are in like the rose family or something, right, yeah, yeah.

780
00:56:35,079 --> 00:56:43,079
Speaker 3: So if fly instead of coming to one of the

781
00:56:43,199 --> 00:56:48,440
native like a hawthorn with a little fruit, here's this

782
00:56:48,519 --> 00:56:53,480
great big apple, they actually court and meet on the fruit.

783
00:56:54,679 --> 00:56:59,400
So a fly that starts liking the smell of apples

784
00:56:59,480 --> 00:57:04,320
rather than the previous those will tend not to mix

785
00:57:04,360 --> 00:57:12,559
with each other so much. And so we've got now

786
00:57:12,679 --> 00:57:17,360
a population that's specialized on apples that's not particularly mixing

787
00:57:17,400 --> 00:57:22,440
with the ones that still live on the awthorns. And

788
00:57:22,519 --> 00:57:27,840
so we've got is it completely too being a new

789
00:57:27,880 --> 00:57:32,719
species or somewhere along that line. Kind of hard to

790
00:57:33,519 --> 00:57:39,480
decide exactly if we've made it to definitely two species,

791
00:57:39,480 --> 00:57:41,559
but it's certainly headed that direction.

792
00:57:42,480 --> 00:57:46,719
Speaker 1: That. Yeah, I mean, that's that's interesting. I think I

793
00:57:46,719 --> 00:57:51,760
think it seems very reasonable that some things come from

794
00:57:51,840 --> 00:57:54,599
other things. You know, this is just totally there's there's

795
00:57:54,679 --> 00:57:57,800
nothing logically inconsistent about that, and that at some point

796
00:57:57,880 --> 00:58:02,159
in the process of changing, you cross some threshold where

797
00:58:02,159 --> 00:58:05,639
there's no going back, or at least no going back easily,

798
00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:09,079
or no no ability to reproduce, or whatever the standard

799
00:58:09,159 --> 00:58:12,360
is for determining a new species. I have a last question,

800
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:14,800
because it's almost I told you an hour and we're

801
00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:16,559
just right, we're right there. So let me ask my

802
00:58:16,639 --> 00:58:21,599
last question here. And it's kind of convoluted, so I

803
00:58:21,719 --> 00:58:24,760
so saying that that that all sounds incredibly reasonable. I

804
00:58:25,079 --> 00:58:27,880
can sort of imagine. I can like abstract myself out

805
00:58:27,920 --> 00:58:32,280
of my small human frame and picture that the millennia

806
00:58:32,480 --> 00:58:35,079
and the millions of years going by and these radical

807
00:58:35,159 --> 00:58:38,119
changes happening. And I can even go all the way

808
00:58:38,119 --> 00:58:40,880
to like imagine a human coming from a naked mole,

809
00:58:40,960 --> 00:58:43,440
rat or whatever. You know, eventually, you know, and many

810
00:58:43,480 --> 00:58:48,079
many iterations, I do sense so, and this maybe it's

811
00:58:48,119 --> 00:58:51,159
because I'm out of the field and I'm mostly learning

812
00:58:51,159 --> 00:58:53,599
the stuff on YouTube. You know, it does seem like

813
00:58:53,639 --> 00:58:58,320
there are like new challenges to kind of the neo

814
00:58:58,440 --> 00:59:02,920
Darwinism framework revolution not for evolution in general, but just

815
00:59:03,519 --> 00:59:07,639
the specific way we think this happens. Seems to be

816
00:59:08,400 --> 00:59:11,760
under more scrutiny than I have ever known since I

817
00:59:11,880 --> 00:59:15,119
was first interested in the topic. So kind of a

818
00:59:15,119 --> 00:59:17,679
two part question. One have you noticed that? And then

819
00:59:17,800 --> 00:59:21,880
second part, are any of the new ideas particularly compelling

820
00:59:21,880 --> 00:59:25,440
to you? Like, for example, there's a a biologist at

821
00:59:25,519 --> 00:59:31,360
TOFFS named Michael Levin who's very popular, does a lot

822
00:59:31,400 --> 00:59:36,199
of interviews, and he's showing just radical body plan changes

823
00:59:36,440 --> 00:59:40,960
that do pass on to the next generation in relatively

824
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:44,280
simple life, like these little simple worms and things without

825
00:59:44,320 --> 00:59:49,800
altering the DNA. So he's showing hereditary changes without DNA changes.

826
00:59:49,840 --> 00:59:53,360
It's kind of bizarre, it doesn't make any sense. And

827
00:59:53,440 --> 00:59:57,599
these are through things like modifying ion channels and epigenetic

828
00:59:57,639 --> 01:00:01,960
networks and things. So it is this idea that random

829
01:00:02,079 --> 01:00:08,800
mutation and environmental changes as the engine for evolution? Is

830
01:00:08,800 --> 01:00:11,599
it inadequate? Giving some of the rapid changes we see

831
01:00:11,599 --> 01:00:15,159
in short successions like the Cambrian explosion and things. Is

832
01:00:15,199 --> 01:00:18,440
it inadequate? Do you think we'll have a new evolutionary

833
01:00:18,440 --> 01:00:21,320
framework in twenty years thirty years?

834
01:00:22,119 --> 01:00:24,719
Speaker 3: Part of the problem is what counts as a new framework,

835
01:00:24,920 --> 01:00:31,159
right right, right me. It's something that's often missed, like

836
01:00:31,199 --> 01:00:35,159
the paradigm shift claims and things like that, is right,

837
01:00:37,119 --> 01:00:41,760
something that's already working. The ideas have to explain that too,

838
01:00:41,880 --> 01:00:48,880
as well as give us something more right. So, I

839
01:00:48,880 --> 01:00:52,559
think it's going to be building onto now whether that

840
01:00:52,800 --> 01:00:56,440
when that gets say, this is new kind of the

841
01:00:56,440 --> 01:01:02,199
ship of theseus question that's kind of a challenge to define,

842
01:01:02,519 --> 01:01:07,440
Like is the city species the same problem. I think

843
01:01:08,000 --> 01:01:11,360
one very important thing is we've had awful lot of

844
01:01:11,440 --> 01:01:18,480
technological advances happening, being able to analyze what's going on

845
01:01:18,639 --> 01:01:23,559
with the DNA, with the other biological molecules, the proteins

846
01:01:24,559 --> 01:01:27,679
in much greater detail, and of course also having a

847
01:01:27,719 --> 01:01:31,800
computer power to analyze what data and so we're discovering

848
01:01:31,840 --> 01:01:34,840
a lot of things that we simply weren't able to

849
01:01:34,840 --> 01:01:38,239
see before. So that's really giving us a lot of

850
01:01:38,239 --> 01:01:42,920
new ideas, a lot of new information on oh, here

851
01:01:42,960 --> 01:01:46,280
this is happening beyond the things that we knew about,

852
01:01:46,320 --> 01:01:50,360
and here's that happening. So I think we are really

853
01:01:50,400 --> 01:01:58,599
seeing a revolution in terms of the additional information and

854
01:01:58,880 --> 01:02:03,639
understanding more complications, more things that are going on that

855
01:02:03,760 --> 01:02:09,719
are factors. And so for example, oh, this is an

856
01:02:09,760 --> 01:02:15,079
epigenetic change, we can show that that's what's causing it.

857
01:02:15,239 --> 01:02:20,000
And how big a difference does that make? How might

858
01:02:20,039 --> 01:02:29,639
that play out over time potentially leading to different selective

859
01:02:29,800 --> 01:02:35,840
forces and leading to that becoming a new form versus

860
01:02:36,000 --> 01:02:40,079
existing ones. So there's definitely a lot of questions of

861
01:02:40,119 --> 01:02:45,360
that sort. I think we are likely to have a

862
01:02:45,400 --> 01:02:52,960
more complex and more complete model coming along, whether that's

863
01:02:53,639 --> 01:03:00,639
totally a new version like I've got the book kind

864
01:03:00,639 --> 01:03:07,599
of evolution two point oh, and I would tend to

865
01:03:07,639 --> 01:03:09,800
be more like I call it evolution one point before

866
01:03:09,800 --> 01:03:15,039
seven B. But that's my way of thinking about things

867
01:03:15,119 --> 01:03:19,360
versus his way of thinking about things. It's not that

868
01:03:19,440 --> 01:03:23,880
he's wrong. He just really focuses on the here's what's new, right,

869
01:03:24,199 --> 01:03:26,679
and I focus a little bit more on the here's

870
01:03:26,719 --> 01:03:29,679
how it connects to the old.

871
01:03:30,519 --> 01:03:30,719
Speaker 2: Yeah.

872
01:03:30,880 --> 01:03:36,280
Speaker 3: Of course, also a complication is sometimes there's confusion with

873
01:03:36,880 --> 01:03:42,519
random as a label, what do we really mean? There's

874
01:03:42,559 --> 01:03:44,320
one important thing to keep in mind is that there

875
01:03:44,320 --> 01:03:47,039
are a bunch of things that can be considered random

876
01:03:47,360 --> 01:03:50,639
that the Bible says God's in control. It's not removing

877
01:03:50,639 --> 01:03:53,840
God from the picture. It's a description of it's not

878
01:03:53,880 --> 01:03:57,840
something we can predict it fully, whether this is a

879
01:03:58,159 --> 01:04:02,519
flipping a coin that mathema random or something that it's

880
01:04:02,559 --> 01:04:05,480
not exactly mathematically random, but it's still not something practical,

881
01:04:06,000 --> 01:04:09,360
like say chaos. Technically there is an exact math formula,

882
01:04:10,079 --> 01:04:12,840
it's just that you have to know the setup in

883
01:04:12,920 --> 01:04:16,639
more detail than it is feasible to apply the formula.

884
01:04:17,239 --> 01:04:20,000
A tiny difference in your input will lead to a

885
01:04:20,000 --> 01:04:24,880
big difference in what comes out. Or there's the seems

886
01:04:24,920 --> 01:04:31,519
purposeless sense of random, But at what level? If I

887
01:04:31,559 --> 01:04:34,000
flip a coin, no matter how much you stay the coin,

888
01:04:34,039 --> 01:04:39,400
you're not going to figure out why, right, So likewise,

889
01:04:39,599 --> 01:04:45,559
the fact that something doesn't have a internal purpose doesn't

890
01:04:45,599 --> 01:04:50,760
mean that God can't be using it for his purposes.

891
01:04:51,840 --> 01:04:55,719
And also kind of what do you mean by random mutation?

892
01:04:57,480 --> 01:05:03,360
Some mutations are more likely to happen to others. It's

893
01:05:03,440 --> 01:05:11,519
not completely random in that sense, But what is, as

894
01:05:11,559 --> 01:05:15,639
far as we can tell scientifically random about mutation, is

895
01:05:15,679 --> 01:05:21,599
that organism can't say, oh, climate's getting warmer, I need

896
01:05:21,639 --> 01:05:26,400
to mutate this gene to work better under warm conditions.

897
01:05:28,039 --> 01:05:32,199
A may or may not happen, and it does not

898
01:05:32,320 --> 01:05:37,400
happen because it is more useful to happen that way.

899
01:05:38,280 --> 01:05:41,159
But of course if it does happen to be useful,

900
01:05:41,199 --> 01:05:44,920
then that conveys an advantage, or if it happens to

901
01:05:44,920 --> 01:05:49,320
be detrimental, then conveys a disadvantage. There have been some

902
01:05:49,400 --> 01:05:54,559
studys finding that, okay, we have this mutation bacteria that's

903
01:05:54,639 --> 01:05:57,079
useful for them, and then we take some of those

904
01:05:57,119 --> 01:06:03,000
bacteria back again, undo that mutation and they mutated faster. Well,

905
01:06:03,039 --> 01:06:05,480
it turned out they had a mutation that promoted having

906
01:06:05,519 --> 01:06:09,400
more mutations. Oh and because the lab conditions they were

907
01:06:09,440 --> 01:06:14,719
in what they had wasn't working great, mutating more helped

908
01:06:14,760 --> 01:06:18,280
because their current situation was bad. If you got something

909
01:06:18,280 --> 01:06:21,800
that's already working, then mutating more generally not so good.

910
01:06:23,599 --> 01:06:26,679
But they were mutating more, and of course that makes

911
01:06:26,679 --> 01:06:29,239
it more likely for the useful mutation happened as well

912
01:06:29,320 --> 01:06:35,159
a bunch of not so useful ones. So what's truly

913
01:06:35,639 --> 01:06:39,960
random that something gets confusion. People think that random means, say,

914
01:06:40,039 --> 01:06:43,599
God's une involvable. No, it just means right, something particularly

915
01:06:43,639 --> 01:06:48,239
predictable by us or by the organism that has the mutation.

916
01:06:49,639 --> 01:06:50,239
Speaker 2: Fantastic.

917
01:06:50,280 --> 01:06:52,800
Speaker 1: I think that's a good spot to end, if you'll

918
01:06:52,800 --> 01:06:54,880
stick with me while I just summarize a few things

919
01:06:54,920 --> 01:06:56,800
and hang out while I in the show so we

920
01:06:56,840 --> 01:07:01,559
can say goodbye. I appreciate that perspective because I find

921
01:07:01,559 --> 01:07:04,920
myself frustrated, and maybe this is a personality flaw. I'm

922
01:07:04,920 --> 01:07:08,840
frustrated by everybody, you know. I'm frustrated by the certainty

923
01:07:08,880 --> 01:07:11,840
on one side and the certainty on the other side,

924
01:07:11,880 --> 01:07:14,639
the sort of like they have the preordained knowledge of

925
01:07:14,639 --> 01:07:19,280
what the truth is. And I think to just assume

926
01:07:19,440 --> 01:07:23,440
that God couldn't do it this way is kind of

927
01:07:23,920 --> 01:07:27,880
a strange take, right. I would kind of expect the

928
01:07:27,920 --> 01:07:33,280
origin of life to be pretty complicated and just rich

929
01:07:33,320 --> 01:07:36,840
in mystery, and so I love that there's more questions

930
01:07:36,880 --> 01:07:40,079
than ever. But I also don't think that's a huge

931
01:07:42,280 --> 01:07:46,039
flaw of the scientific process. You know, that there's more

932
01:07:46,119 --> 01:07:48,320
questions than ever. I think we're just learning, and so

933
01:07:48,480 --> 01:07:51,039
I hope we can all sort of not call each

934
01:07:51,079 --> 01:07:54,679
other names in either direction. This is a tremendous mystery

935
01:07:54,920 --> 01:07:57,639
that we find ourselves in and it's very exciting, so

936
01:07:58,159 --> 01:08:02,239
I appreciate your perspective. If anyone has any questions, email

937
01:08:02,320 --> 01:08:04,719
me at God's Eye Viewbook at gmail dot com. And

938
01:08:04,760 --> 01:08:06,519
if you have a question for doctor Campbell, you can

939
01:08:06,559 --> 01:08:09,519
send it to me and I'll pass it on everyone.

940
01:08:09,639 --> 01:08:12,920
Thanks for listening, Stay safe out there, and God bless