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dot com. Everything's there. Want to welcome everyone back to
the Peaking Yona show. Thomas is here and we are
going to continue continental philosophy. So are you doing, Thomas?
How was Thanksgiving?
Speaker 2: It was fine? See I'm observing the Day of the Bird.
Oh it was nice, man. I like Thanksgiving and I
met some of the fellas downtown on Wednesday night, uh,
and that was great.
Speaker 3: One of the.
Speaker 2: One of my comrades hereies he's a Muhite Thaie fighter,
like he lived in Thailand and stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean he's white, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a serious competitor and boxing and muay thaih
you know, so we I mean, I'm old now, but
you know, I was always a huge fan of the
fight game. And he tends bar at a at a
place for our Northern division. So like his speaking of family,
he's like his family came out and his wife, who's
is a real peach, and yeah, we we hung out
and got to rip it up a bit.
Speaker 3: It was nice.
Speaker 2: And then yesterday I chilled with my dad and I
kind of made the rounds and spread a holiday cheer
with my magic because that's what I do on holidays.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: That's that's awesome, man, that's awesome. Glad it was Glad
it worked out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was all right. But I think an unsung
cultural theorist and philosophy of science figure who was a
real giant was Wolfgang Smith. Interestingly, a lot of younger
people became aware of him in the YouTube era because
into it. He only died a couple of years back.
He was in his nineties. But he's one of these
guys like Kissinger was, who had all his marbles into
advanced age, and he was still writing when he was
ninety two or something. But he he was a huge
critic of the scientific perspective. What he postuated dovetailed a
lot with a lot of figures in that traditionalist school,
but he was not of that. He was very distinct
from that you have thought he was.
Speaker 3: He was.
Speaker 2: He was Viennese by birth, but he moved to America,
I think in laid adolescence. He was an aerospace engineer.
He worked for Bell Aircraft. And it'll be clear, before
the days of McDonald Douglas in general dynamics and all
these kind of giants of the Cold War and high
tech weapons platforms, Bell Aircraft was king. They developed the
first super hypersonic multi row aircraft prototype and Wolfgang Smith
he taught it Purdue, he taught advanced physics and he
wrote prolifically in the problem of atmospheric reinjury, which was
a major engineering concern in the Cold in the early
Cold War. Obviously, this had basic implications for the space
program and how to you know, devise an engineer re
entry vehicles that and kill the occupants. But you know,
there's a strategic application two, not just in terms of
intercontinental platforms that obviously trail on a ballistic trajectory, but
the zenith really of that mode of strategic nuclear technology
as orbital bombardment. So even as far bank as the fifties,
even when manned bomber aircraft or the primary platform or
strategic delivery mechanism of the most powerful nuclear weapons, it
was understood in the future that being able to assault
from orbit, which would defeat early warning and overwhelmingy countermeasures,
it was clear that that was the way to accomplish
the splendid first strike capability. And obviously, and that's what
the space shittle ultimately was. It wasn't the Soviets freaked
out about it, because clearly it was a deployment mechanism
for orbital strike platforms. But my point being Wolfgang Smith.
He wasn't just some theologian, and he wasn't some cloistered philosopher.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with being those things. But
this gave him an a credibility because the man was
a scientist. He was a high level scientist. He was
also an engineer. People couldn't dismiss him and say, well,
this is some man of religion who just has an
ax to grind with the scientific establishment. But they couldn't say, well,
he's some academic philosopher. He doesn't understand science. He understood
science better than virtually anybody he was criticizing, okay, and
he was very much an ally of people in the
twentieth century who were resisting the calculator assault and religiosity.
And then after the Cold War he made the point
he made a case for ecumenicalism, and I do too,
as long as I like renade. You know, you know,
Orthodox Catholics were foreign people like myself, pious Moslems. We
need to look upon our differences and resist the tyranny
of Zionism as well as the scourge of secularism, which
is an assault on the assault on the human being
under offices of a you know, a humanist concern. But
so Smith was that Basically the way to understand him
is that hero he was a philosophy of science scholar,
but he wrote critical treatments of the science. What do
you call scientists them? His starting point was that what
he calls scientism, it does a weigh with the fact
value distinction. You know, facts and the interpretation of facts
are not synonymous, and subjectively facts are always associated with
with some kind of interpretation of a that's value oriented.
You know, So when we're talking about scientism, we're not
We're not talking about perspectives that value the scientific method
or something, and we're not talking about some ludite sensibility
that view science as bad. Your technology is deleterious a
human culture. I mean, there's a case that he made
those things. That's not what Smith was talking about, you know.
Him the point that when we say science, we're talking
about two disparate factors. We're talking about with positive findings,
which are articulable facts that can be falsified and are
neutral in their interpretation as presented, but we're also talking
about underlying philosophy and the way in which these discoveries
and their implications are framed and discussed. You know, so
when we're talking about science as affiliated with some sort
of political regime of any kind, it's never some sort
of purely empirical enterprise as it claims that it is.
There's there's epistemic priors and ontological assumptions and moral claims
that always that always underlie it. You know, I want
one one good example, and I look like the Human
Genome Project. Okay, you get these goofs in the academ
they'll go out of their way to talk about population
genetics and you know, human biodiversity and how this has
all these incredible implications for medical research, which it does.
But now we'll turn around and insist, but this means,
this doesn't mean there are racial differences, like you can't.
That's our really and literally like holding like two totally
contradictory posita whits in your mind and refusing to acknowledge
that one repudiates the other. You know, these aren't serious people.
A lot of things that they repose are quite literally insane. Yeah,
yet this has become sort of the religion of officialdom.
You know, most recently there's a display with the COVID nonsense.
You know, people in authority demanding, under pain of any
number of punitive sanctions that you do insane things that
even a child that recognize are insane, yet insisting that
it's because of science. You you simply must abide this.
You know, that this is reflective thoughtlessness to it that
these people that have the goal that turn around and
say characterizes religion in their mind.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: But and the problem with this is too, is that
people are inundated from a young age with these foundational
postulates that again are concept that are that are conceptually
prejudiced towards a discrete ideological coding. But instead of biosmosis,
they internalize that, you know, this this is just part
and parcel of a scientific education, you know, and they
almost subconsciously internalize the lie that this can't possibly be
partisan or driven by politically motivated concerns.
Speaker 3: You know. And really, from the Enlightenment onward.
Speaker 2: The scientists themselves, they they they've refused to even acknowledged
that this exists. You know, Einstein and Heisenberg were both
they both stand out because they did acknowledge that Einstein
really kind of sold out everything. Einstein was morally a
good man, But that's a different thing. But he wasn't
a fraud in the way that a lot of these
scientists are. And obviously Heisenberg was a great man in
all kinds of ways. But you know, Heisenberg openly acknowledged
that there is such a thing as a as a
as scientism, and it's an ideology, you know. But you know,
the problem is too that scientism what it draws upon.
It draws upon a valid set of postulates, and it
draws upon an exceptionally utile methodology that does produce results,
but then it bastardizes those results and suggests that there's
some total theory of human existence, you know. So it's
it's it's a lot easier to abust something that's abjectly
farcical that they can't draw upon a body of knowledge
that has actual merit, you know. But again, the problem
here isn't what actual scientific methodology. The problem is with
the framing and interpretation of, you know, the data that
that methodology yields. And also, and I'll get into this
in a minute, but I want to get ahead of myself.
There's essential pillars of the science, of the of the
scientism perspective that that are truly fallacious but they superficially
present some of these ideas as is scientifically valid and
methodologically rigorous when they're not, so it gets assimilated into
a broader prestiche of rigorous, incredible science that then can't
be extricated. So this is very very confusing, especially to
people you know again who've been availed to this sort
of subliminal conditioning through the entirety of their education.
Speaker 3: You know, and.
Speaker 2: That will smiss all point that, you know, scientific belief
is an oxymoron and it's become a secular theology. Science
isn't about beliefs, It's not about trusting things, you know.
It a good scientist is part of the is mandate
as a researcher is to rebut things that he previously
believed to be factual. But the scientific staleism doesn't do that.
What they'll do is, uh, they'll cling to outmoded structures
and theories that have in fact been falsified. They'll insist
that they're true. They'll insist that these things are factually coded,
when in reality they're philosophic opinions being passed off as
scientific truth, you know, and when challenged there'll be this
kind of a fuscatory rationale where they point to things
that have been proven and claim that if you don't
accept these dubious philosophical postulates, you're somehow rejecting science in
absolute terms. You know, it's a very it's a very
false dichotomy, and it's very dishonest, you know. And the
problem is, too, you get a lot of mediocrites who
owing to you know, sometimes even the most dubious association
with a highly respected and admired the sector of the
sign of a community like take you know, a guy
like Fauci. You know, people will associate this guy in
his title, this guy was a mediocrity and a nobody,
you know, a liar, and you know they'll associate him
with you know, some doctor who like helped their mom
overcome cancer, or some or some surgeon who's world renowned
because you know, we he devised some incredible technique. You know,
it really has kind of taken on the trap a
guy with doctor in front of his name, or a
guy in a lab quote who's got credentials from mit.
It's it's like a man in a priest collar in
the Middle Ages. You know, it really is.
Speaker 1: It reminds me back in the nineties when David Letterman
was still on the air, he had Edward Burnet's on
mm hmm, and Edward Burnet has made him call him doctor.
And then he explained why he called it, why he
made Dave call him doctor, because it now everybody thinks
I'm an expert on something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, and it shouldn't be like that, you know,
But unfortunately, I mean, people are hardwired.
Speaker 3: Two.
Speaker 2: I mean humans are human. Psychology is highly symbolic. I
think that's indisputable. And people have this need to seek
out authoritative structures and personages, you know, both in concrete
terms and an answer conceptual terms. And especially when you
consider a lot of these punctuated crises of modernity of
a psychological and social and spiritual nature. If you'll allow
that the scriptor the people look for a new priestly cast,
you know, that's that they do. Okay, even otherwise sensible people.
I see it all the time, you know. And uh,
like I said, I'm sorry to keep going back of
the COVID thing like some cheap polemicist, but that's the
that's the best case in point in recent memory of
this kind of mass hysteria.
Speaker 3: Owing the.
Speaker 2: Acclaimed Cloak and you know, have an year of science
when it's nothing of the sort. You know, it's it's
a it's an ideological and philosophical imperative being presented as
something that it's not.
Speaker 3: But the uh.
Speaker 2: Smith talked about two aspects of of scientism, and then
you went on to talk about three pillars of these
aspects that constitute and broad strokes the the core and
essential elements of this perspective. Well, one of these fundamental
aspects is what he called universal mechanism, or what can
be thought of as the exiom of physical determinism, which
is the tenet that the external universe consists exclusively of matter,
and the motion and action within this constellation of matter
is determined exclusively by the discrete interaction of its parts.
And given the configuration of this physical universe and the
state of the matter that constitutes it, the scientist and
mediology essentially posits that once the physical laws that govern
this mechanism can be determined in principle, the future revolution
and development of the entire universe, not the most discreete
in a new detail, can be predicted or calculated. All
uncertainty can be eradicated by deciphering the physical properties of
the universal mechanism. Okay, so in this way, the Enlightenment perspective,
which is the basis of scientism, is that the cosmos
is a kind of gigantic clockwork, you know, where all
these discrete parts interact with other parts and they determine
the movement of the whole. And this really this idea
being an to take shape in the sixteenth century, you know,
and in the Newtonian physics, which can point to a
tremendous wittany of accomplishment, like, don't get me wrong. And
Newton himself also was something of a crank, and he
had this sort of petulant need to assail.
Speaker 3: Classical and h.
Speaker 2: Thomas notions of matter in the essence of physics, you know,
the traditional view, obviously is that the natural state of
objects is to be at rest, Like like, how can
objects naturally be in motion and tend to remain in
motion without being acted upon? That doesn't make any sense.
That's one example, you know, this perspective of a guy
named Hermann von Helmholtz. He was one of the leading uh.
Speaker 3: Kind of.
Speaker 2: Early progressive era intellectuals, and he was he was a
leading science and I'm not getting wrong is reaccomplished, but
he openly stated that the final goal quote, the final
goal of the natural science is to reduce itself to mechanics.
Now interestingly and very much a layman like I like
astronomy and stuff, but I, you know, I I don't
know about physics and things.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I I consume a lot of podcasts and magazine content
related to astronomy, but I don't, you know, know any
more than anybody else does, to be clear, But what
I do know, and this has become.
Speaker 3: A big deal.
Speaker 2: And uh, the guy with the Event Horizon podcast, which
is dope, he gets into this a lot. The ad
but a quantum theory really dramatically change things, and it
it completely screwed up this kind of traditional Newtonian perspective
because the new physics, as it was called, it's not
compatible with this mechanistic premise, you know, because it's totally indeterminate.
But despite the fact of quantum indeterminism, you still have
this kind of community of the you know, the scientific
community continue to insist on what amounts it like the
Newtonian mechanistic tenet.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: That's one example of this kind of sensibility among these
people have like let nothing ever change, you know, And
we'll return to this because it becomes important in terms
of what Einstein's significance was, as you know, something of
an outlier as regards you know, people being willing to
abide the the ideology of scientism because, like I said,
like qualifiably at praise Einstein, but he you know, he
very much was was heterodox in his thinking, and he
wasn't a fraud in this way like a lot of
his peers were, as successors are. The second basic tenet
of the perspective of scientism is described wolf Nang Smith
as physical reductionism. What he means by that is the
fact that this perspective it hinges upon an epistemic prior,
which ironically is really an ideal as postulate. This perspective
claims that all sensory perception terminates not in an external
object as it actually is and as we experience it,
but as some sort of subjective representation of some kind
that's necessarily that's intrinsically corrupted by the inadequacy of human
senses to perceive reality. So to overly simplify it for
a layman like me, you know, looking at a red apple,
the way in which I perceive it, or any man
or woman perceives it is, you know, somehow tragically and
incorrigibly limited. You know, we need a scientist to to
to explain to us, like what the constituent elements are
of this apple, you know, and what it actually is,
because otherwise we're just mired in ignorance, you know, and
without uh with with without without literally the enlightening perspective
of these people who you know, constute the scientific priesthood
and possessed the tools and intellect to you know, wield
this methodology. You know, we we can't possibly determine the
actual essence and nature of things.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: And that's that's really the enduring legacy of Cartisanism. Des
Cartes contributed a huge amount to mathematics, including theoretical mathematics,
of which I have no understanding at all. But what
I just described, that's the Cartesian element that constitutes a
core philosophical foundation of modern scientism, not science scientism.
Speaker 3: They're going to be clear.
Speaker 2: I don't want a bunch of people thinking of some
leat I who hate science. I'm not talking about that,
and neither is neither was Smith. He's dead now, you know.
So this constitutes Alfred North Whitehead, who was actually a
major critic of what was then the scientific perspective. You know,
in his lifetime he referred to this as the Cartesan bifurcation,
you know, which he said was deleterious to a reason,
practical reason, and this morality and those all the kind
of things that hold you know, the intellectual side of
human culture together, because what it essentially is is this
considered attack on the common intuition of man. And it's
equally to odds with you know, what is it kind
of the Western canon of philosophical tradition. It's not just Tomism,
but you know, the Aristotelian perspective and you know, the
priest going back to the pre Socratics even you know,
and this is a fundamental what Wolfgang Smith called it,
the Cartesan bifurcation, Whatlfgang Smith considered to be a fundamental
plank of physics, you know, or.
Speaker 3: A fundamental.
Speaker 2: Core aspect of the scientistic worldview in terms of how
common people are expected to interpret physics. You know, it's
something that's just totally beyond them and can only be
interpreted by you know, uh, the scientific priesthood and what
Whitehead was talking about, and uh what Gang Smith came
back to white and again and again. He was a
guy he really respected. But why this is so destructive
is because it represents, it represented and represents a relinquishing
of dominion over the physical world by religious authorities, but
also by anybody, but you know, the self anointed scientific community.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Smith's contention was that religion goes astray the moment it
relinquishes what it justly. It's it's its rights that it
has over the natural domain. And you know the attendant
morality and philosophical orientation that encompasses that that now has
been occupied by by science. You know, the contemporary crisis
of faith in his estimation, and uh, the ongoing assault
and Christianity in Western society. He believed this was only possible.
Smith believed it is only possible because this had been
openly ceded to the scientists. You know, And uh, that's
really that that's really almost unfathomable when you think about it.
You know, uh, a priest who spent his life studying
philosophy and you know, who is scientifically literate declaring that,
well he's not. He's not going to weigh in on,
you know, questions relating to the the cosmos, because that
that's for the scientists to decide that that's preposterous, you know, well,
Being Smith, one of his books opens to a quote
by a guy and by a guy named.
Speaker 3: Theodore roschik.
Speaker 2: Raschek said science is the religion of you know, the
postmodern West, because most people, in his words, with any
living can't with any convictions, see around it, you know,
every everything in your environment, every sort of intellectual endeavor
relating to antological or epistemological things. People people only capable
of thinking of these things and the terms established by
scientific authorities. And that is true. The only way people
can understand the natural world in any other way is
if they have some sort of religious education, you know,
and going to some megachurch now and again, or going
to some you know, non denominational milk toast church, or
some guy like Joel Ostein basically talks about self help,
you know, but and occasionally mentions Jesus Christ. It's not adequate.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: People aren't equipped with the intellectual tools to contemplate competing
perspectives or even conceptualize them. And I believe, and I'm
obviously I can't prove this, but people need to have
that exposure and conditioning at a young age. You can't
one day at forty five wake up and say, you know,
I'm gonna I'm gonna start reading Calvin's Institute. So I'm
gonna start reading you know, the Summa theologic that I'm
like going to mass or you know, or going to
you know, a serious reformed church and and just somehow
like empty out my mind and heart of these sort
of conceptual biases. I mean, yeah, intellectually, people understand that,
you know, okay, there's problems with this dominant perspective, but
they're not really gonna develop an instinct for it, I
don't think. But again that's that's probably pretty subjective. But
I do believe that to be true, you know, the
h and also to the you know people, even people
who come to reject this kind of the scientism of
the regime, and but they don't have any proper spiritual education.
They're just gonna become nihilistic because they're just gonna say that, well,
you know, what I'm being told doesn't accord with physical reality.
You know, it certainly doesn't accord with spiritual reality. That
means everybody's lying to me. And you know, the system
I live under is is based upon you know, false postulates.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: But if there's nothing to fill that void, you know,
you people basically come to just wallow in despair or
they become totally fixated on hedonic distractions. And I mean,
so that's the other side of it.
Speaker 3: Two.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not just a question of disabusing people
of this miseducation. It's the fact that it's uh, you know,
destructive of the human spirit and the cultural learning that
can mitigate that deterioration of the basic.
Speaker 3: Dignity of the human being. You know.
Speaker 2: Smith cited a guy named Jean Barilla a lot who
I didn't I'd never heard of him wh I started
reading Smith, which probably exposed at some of the gaps
in my philosophical education. But he said, quote, the truth
is that the Catholic Church has been confronted by the
most formidable problem of religion can encounter, the scientistic disappearance
of the universe of symbolic forms which enable it to
express and manifest itself, that is to say, which permitted
to exist. The destruction has been affected by Galileean physics,
not as one generally claims, because it's the private man
of his central position, which for Saint Thomas Aquinas is
cosmologically the least noble in the lowest, but because it
reduces bodies material substance to the purely geometric, thus making
it at one stroke, scientifically impossible or devoid a meaning
that the world can serve as a medium for the
manifestation of God. What Brella called the theophanic capacity is
thus denied in absolute terms. Now fundamental that Wolfgang Smith's
paradigm is what he called the three presiding paradigms of
scientism that encompass and frame all conceptual modalities within the
postmodern West, reigning as a you know, the science the
scientific perspective does. The first of these is the Newtonian,
which again defines the world and the cosmos is this
clockwork universe. What exists is bear matter, you know, the
parts of which are only animate going to forces of
a trade action or repulsion, and that the movement of
the whole, of the entirety of the cosmos is determined
by the disposition of these discrete parts. Unlike the other
two presiding paradigms that we're gonna get into. That woofing
some of identifies the success as it were, or the
enduring persuasive power of the Newtonian perspective that actually makes
sense in a way that the others dumb because.
Speaker 3: Dubious.
Speaker 2: As core aspects of the Newtonian philosophy, and it is
a philosophy, are that Newtonian theories have had spectacular successes
that are unprecedented, in my opinion, relative to any other uh,
you know, individuated.
Speaker 3: School of physical science.
Speaker 2: What really put Newton on the map was the publication
of what's called colloquially the Principia. The full title translated
is Natural Philosophy and Principles of Mathematics of Philosophia naturalis
Principia matamatica. Really, from the seventeenth century until the early
twentieth century it was regarded not just as a framework
or the paradigm of physics, but it was literally viewed
as like the King James Bible of natural science, almost
like some sort of master code for understanding everything about
physical matter. You know, from the most prosaic understanding of
you know, magnetic attraction to the UH movements of astronomical
objects and everything in between, you know, and anything that's
that dominant in terms of its ability to frame conceptual processes,
it's going to exceed the boundaries of.
Speaker 3: You know, mere.
Speaker 2: Mechanics or mere physical science. It's going to become, for
lack of a more dignified way to phrase it, a
theory of everything. And I mean, make a mistake. I
agree with Michael Jones. I believe that was I believe
that was Newton's intent, you know.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: What happened, however, was the emergence of quantum physics again.
You know, that did real damage to the Newtonian perspective,
you know, but there was something of a there's something
of a synthesis after Einstein's revolutionary proposals, which did break
fundamentally with Newtonian conceptions, but there was a return. I
don't fully understand all this, and also I'm not gonna
bore people with the ESMs. They do understand there was
something of a return to the fundamentals of Newtonian physics, okay,
even even into the atomic age okay, and to this day.
And this is fancinating to me because I'm I'm kind
of a space fag. Albeit a Lehman. You know, one
of the reasons the web telescope and these deep field
telescopes generally are such a big deal. They're they're cutting
to pieces the entire theory of Big bang cosmology. But
the scientific community just won't accept it, you know, they
they'll they'll resort to these tortured and laughably uh you know,
unprovable claims and tautological postulates to try and shore up
and sustain you know, uh, what amounts to a totally
obsolete and speculative understanding of cosmology. But increasingly that's not possible.
And that's another thing that the Internet is facilitating, is
breaking the bully pulpit of the scientific community. But you know,
I the last kind of gasp of the Newtonian perspective
as this cosmological theory of everything that's gonna be done
by the end of this century, and it's gonna be
because of discoveries yielded look by things like the web telescope.
I stand by that asterition. I know this's probably guys
watching this are gonna like chuckle or get mad and say, well,
you're not a scientist, you don't know shit. Like I
stand by that postulate. You wait and see. Moving on,
the second aspect of the three paradigms is Darwinism. Okay,
Darwinism is the weakest other reign inconceptual, paradigmatic aspects of scientism. Well,
if Smith described Darwinism as some it's kind of the
opposite of the Newtonian perspective, because because Darwinism has been
a failure from the start, it's literally on the level
of Licanoism. It's not science, it's not biology. It's it's
tautological assertions, speculation, conjecture.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It really is kind of the anglophone parallel to Soviet Licanchoism.
Smith contends that not only is Darwinist claims about about
evolution incorrect, but he said it's worthless as a biological paradigm.
This is not a scientific theory. It's literally an ideological
claim masquerading in scientific garb. And interestingly, Carl Popper, who
have got nothing nice to say about he made a
big deal about that, and that guy was an atheist Jew,
So like, what does that tell you? Okay, it remains
amazing to me people act like Darwinism is science, and
and who doesn't accept that it's some holy roller who
doesn't believe in dinosaurs. I've got to believe they don't
understand what Darwinism actually is. You know, nobody takes this seriously.
Who isn't a blithering idiot? There isn't you know, gross,
the intellectually dishonest, then utilizing this paradigm to prop up
a conceptual model that they profit from personally and professionally. Now,
well is Smith's core objection. Well, Darwin claimed that existing
species derived from one of more primitive ancestors through chains
of linear descent over millions of years. Now he never
explained by what means this transformation from primitive to differentiated
comes about, or what that even means, And truly, you know,
explicatory terms. But what is clear to anybody whose right
original species is that dar you can see an evolution
as a gradual process involving countless intermediary forms. That's indisputable.
Yet somehow none of these, none of these appear in
the fossil record, apart from a handful of highly dubious specimens,
many of which have been discredited as representative of the
aforementioned phenomenon. These intermediary types that should be legion or
nowhere to be found, this is now generally admitted, even
by scientists who believe in some process of evolution.
Speaker 3: Stephen J.
Speaker 2: Gould, You know who is this big progress who is
I think he's still alive. You know, it's this big progressive,
anti racist type, you know, not exactly a guy who
puts scientific rigor atop his priorities. He stipulated that or
that Darwinism is basically worthless. You know, I mean, well,
what does that tell you? You got Steven J. Google,
you got Carl Popper, you got people like this saying
I'm not gonna cite Darwin in any direct capacity, because
that would, you know, subject me. At best, it would
subject me to kind of casual ridicule by my peers.
At worst, it would shoot the pieces everything that I'm
gonna claim subsequently. You know, I'm not just resulting the
hyperbole when I say, nobody takes this shit seriously, except
maybe I'm like Reddit or something. You know, yet that
you're expected to accept this as some absolute tenant of
a of a you know, of a biology and and existence.
It's quite literally insane. Phillip Johnson, he's kind of forgotten now.
In nineteen ninety one, he wrote a book I think
it was called It was called Darwin on Trial and Johnson.
He was a law professor. Okay, he was at Berkeley,
and he wasn't some holy roller.
Speaker 3: I think he was.
Speaker 2: He might have been a soft atheist, but he was
at least an agnostic. He is also the father of
intelligent design. That's what these frauds and these cretans like
Dawkins branded him as that, which I mean, obviously they
were trying to do so in a punitive way, but
that's not entirely accurate. But he was famous for the
quote he said in this book that he wrote quote,
Darwinism apparently passed the fossil test, but only because he
was not allowed to fail. Now his book Darwin on Trial,
he wrote in response, there was this famous Supreme Court
case from the eighties eighty seven. I believe if there's
some law students watching and I'm wrong on that, feel
free correct me in the comments or whatever. But there's this
case called Everards versus Aglard and uh. I think it
was from Louisiana, but it involved one of these challenges
that was common in a lot of southern parishes to
the exclusive teaching of of of Darwinists theory, as you know,
the only perspective on human origins, and they wanted to
equal time given to other perspectives, including things related to
intelligent design. Now, what Johnson came across can runs this
amachist Cury brief that was filed by the National Academy
of Sciences, and it basically defined science in such a
way that it was impossible to dispute the claims the
scientific establishment. Like with this NAEs amicus Cury brief proposed
of the Supreme Court, was that, well, what public schools
need to do is they need to adopt their rule
precluding what they called or what their lawyers called quote
negative argumentation and the teaching of der Winning evolution in
public schools. So basically, if they wanted it to be
forbidden for anybody to present their reasonable doubts for all
practical purposes around Darwin's theory, such that you know, basically
you could only you can only present competing perspectives that
were signed off on by some arbitrary quorum of scientific authorities.
And it was going to be defectively illegal to criticize
Darwinism in a classroom by anything other than an absolute
proving up according to whatever evidential standard of a competing
perspective on its own merits in a way that robuts
a Darwinism by being more persuasive, like simply pointing out
things like the lack of you know, intermediate forms and
the fossil record that would not be allowed, you know,
pointing out that Darwinism isn't a true scientific law as
it were, you know, it's basically a postulate, a theoretical
postulate that would not be allowed.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So again this is this is censorship masquerading as well. No,
we need to be scientifically rigorous or people are not
going to get the education they deserve. And like Johnson
found the somewhat shocking, you know. And again there's like
some this there's something like Berkeley Liberal you know, like
all these guys that what Kang Smith has ticked off
and uh his main critique of Darwin, which was an
essay later became incorporated into one of his books. These
guys are like Jewish atheists, like Berkeley Liberals, guys like
Carl Popper.
Speaker 3: You know, these are not.
Speaker 2: A bunch of Southern Baptists or you know, right wingers
or something.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: The the fact is that this this doesn't have legs
to stand on, you know, the UH.
Speaker 3: One of UH. I can't remember who said it.
Speaker 2: It might have actually in Popper himself, you know, Darwin's
great idea obviously, other than the fact that needs or
produce as small random mutations which then you know, are
passed on to the genetic line in accordance with survival
of the fittest. Like that phrase itself is a tautology.
It's it's a quota saying the rich have lots of money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's you.
Speaker 2: Know, and it's it's a definition of an unfalsifiable claim,
and thus by definition it's unscientific.
Speaker 3: You know. There's there's a really interesting.
Speaker 2: Around the time when I D Intelligence Design challenges UH
to the god of new atheist community, which interestingly, like
nobody it's just considered cringing now, like nobody invokes Dawkins
or or Chrissy Bitchens or any of these fools. But
UH when I was you know, kind of kind of
a in pop science journals and stuff and in mass
media when that kind of thing was popular. There's a
quorum of UH. I D proponents are also mathematicians, and
they relied on the work and part of this guy
named D. S Ulam. And here's the example. Use the
case of a human eye, you know, and D. Darwin
telling us, I mean, the human eye is unimaginably almost
unfathomably complex. So I mean to accept the except the
Darwinian paradigman, you've got to accept that this was accidentally
formed through a series of minute mutations.
Speaker 3: D Sulam.
Speaker 2: He calculated the number of mutations required to produce a
structure that kind is of such a magnitude that even
even in a timeframe measuring billions upon billions of years,
the likeli order that occurrence is so astronomically small, and
it's laughable, you know. The uh Smith concludes with a
quote from Ernst Mayor, who was known as one of
those kind of committed orthodox Darwinists like his this was
this big response to these challenges. Quote somehow or other,
by adjusting these figures, we will come out all right.
We are comforted by the fact that evolution has occurred.
That that that was his big rebuttal, you know, I
mean that, I don't I know guys who spend their
days like gluing their ass to bar schools, who could
come up with something better than that. And this guy,
this guy was a scientific authority.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: The final paradigm of this sort of core trifecta is
what Smith called the Copernican paradigm. And uh, it has
really little to do with it with Copernagus himself. But
what it involves, and again a lot of this is
like outside of my wheelhouse. But field equation, Einstein's field
equations plus astronomical data, it doesn't suffice to determine an
account for the total structure of the universe and the
indeterminate nature of it. Now, of course, after Einstein, signs
realized that they had to tweak what had been the
consensus relating the spatial uniformity and things and the just
and the distribution of matter. You know, like how how
the average density of matter is defined, what we can
assume to be throughout space, you know, how matter behaves
in a sufficiently large scale, how matter behaves at the
quantum level under observation. I mean, really crazy stuff you
know that shot to pieces this sort of static perspective.
There's a guy named Hermann Bondi who referred to these
assumptions that you know, scientists who had difficulty Rugon styling
these theories refused to a band with the new physics.
You're for this, you refer to this as the Copernican principle,
you know, even though Copernicus obvious karn nothing about the
controversies that we're then a foot you know, stuff relating
to you know, stellar matter.
Speaker 3: Or whatever. But uh, you know it, he Bondi.
Speaker 2: It seemed it strikes me as something like an inside
joke among theoretical physicists and astronomers about how the subject
matter in total, you know, somehow represents the complete repudiation
of geocenters, and we don't fully understand it. But Bondi
dubbed at the Copernican principles. That's what it became, you know.
Speaker 3: And it so this idea.
Speaker 2: Went from space and the cosmos being this sort of
clockwork mechanism, you know, to space being defined as a
void of structure and design but subject to localized fluctuations
from some sort of average density of astronomical objects, not
on light, because I understand it, or as I gleaned
from Smith, molecular fluctuations within a gas which, although it
might remain imperceptible without the aid of high tech instruments,
some of which you haven't even been devised yet. Do
you just need to accept this because this is really
the only way that you know, these sort of grand
theories of cosmology makes sense. I mean that's literally what
it is. That this isn't based on positive findings or
proven facts. It's a set of assumptions that basically these
leading lights in theoretical physics and astronomy claim, well, this
is just we have what we have to account for,
you know, for the theory to make sense. So it's
it's an acceptable supposition like oh, very dark matter. You know,
it's like over the equation doesn't make sense. There's you know,
there's not there's not adequate matter calculable, you know, for
this to make sense. Well, there's this thing called dark
matter which isn't detectable, but you just got to believe
that it exists, you know it there's something really amateur,
amateur is about it, you know, the uh and I
mean it's it's there's even a observable observational facts that
are being rejected, you know, and especially I mean it's
on display in the case of the web telescope and uh,
other things. I guess a big controversy of the last
thirty forty years. There's galaxies that have been identified supposedly
like close to a billion light years. But given what
was supposedly the low relative velocities between galaxies, it would
take uh some inconceivably long time for uh, the configuration
at these distances and these galaxies to exist. Based upon
current like raining cosmological theory, it would take it would
take something like ten times longer than the estimated age
of the entire universe, you know, and uh, there seems
to be not nearly enough matter to account for the
gravitational forces that would facilitate this. So again the alibi
as well as dark matter. You know, the matter it
is there, you just can't see it because otherwise my
theory doesn't makes sense. And we can't have my theory
not make sense. Like it sounds like I'm I'm being
Petu lantern being funny. That's literally like what these fucking
people say.
Speaker 3: Thomas Kuhn.
Speaker 2: Pointed out that, uh, he said, the primary concern is
science as it exists, and you know, modern America is
to preserve the paradigm, to protect science against hostile danta,
you know, And that's uh, That's a point that uh
Peter Duesberg used to make a lot, as as did
uh geez, what's his name, the the PC artist guy
Nobel Prize winner. He clied with Dusburg on inventing the
AIDS virus. I mean a senior moment. But that's that's
that's indisputable, going to cross the board. But I'd say
it's most on display in the field of cosmology. And
one of the reasons that's possible is because again they
presume an ignorance of weight people. And addately, I don't
understand theoretical physics or astronomy beyond the most like rudimentary level,
but I do know what the scientific method is, and
I do know what it is for a claim to
be falsifiable or not. And it should be obvious to
any reasonably intelligent adult that these postulists don't stand up
to scientific rigor. Carrying Molis That's what I was thinking about,
carrying Molis. He makes the point a lot about where
he made the point he's dead and now, unfortunately about
the scientific community being this sort of cloistered priesthood, the
primary interest to which is preventing the emergence of hostile
data as a tendency to rebut what they claim are
absolute truths. Yeah, that's that's all I got for today. Again,
forgive me if this isn't really my wheelhouse. I mean,
I cottinental and analytic philosophy or both things understand quite well.
Speaker 3: But I'm not a science guy.
Speaker 2: I know Bill Nye or that or that black guy
who pretends to know about science and space but he
really kneeled neel the grass, Tyson or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, steal the bikes. I said, just a couple of things. Actually,
Stephen J. Gould died in twenty in two thousand and two.
Speaker 3: Yeah he's been Yeah, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he was only sixty years old.
Speaker 3: Yeah I didn't Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: And Edwards versus Aguillard was argued in eighty six and
decided in eighty seven.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, yeah, thanks, yeah.
Speaker 1: Because Quist was Rankquist was chief at the time.
Speaker 3: So right, cool, yeah, thank you, Widdy, Yeah, man.
Speaker 1: No problem. All right, everybody go to Thomas's substack that
is real Thomas seven seven seven dot substack dot com,
and you can connect to him wherever he is all
the other places from there. So go ahead and do that.
And yeah we will.
Speaker 3: Uh, I know.
Speaker 1: Maybe the next thing we're gonna do is watch a movie. Yeah,
i'd be great, but we'll be back soon with Thomas.
I will invite you back on soon and we'll see
what comes next.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's great. Thank you everybody, all right, thanks