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Feb. 10, 2000 - Art Bell
02:42:10
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Is Religion a Biological Impulse - Matthew Apler
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Welcome to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from February 10th, 2000.
From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening and or good morning, wherever you may be across this great land of ours.
Starting in the West, commercially from the Tahitian and Hawaiian Islands, exotic thoughts come to mind.
Eastward to the Caribbean and the U.S.
Virgin Islands, equally exotic.
South into many exotic parts of South America, North all the way to the frigid but thawing pole.
And worldwide on the internet this is Coast to Coast AM and I'm Art Bell.
Hello.
This is going to be an interesting night.
In a moment we'll have Colm Culler here.
He is actually the Deputy Administrator for the National Institute for Discovery Science in Las Vegas.
Sponsored Sponsored by a guy with a whole lot of money, Bob Bigelow.
And this group, complementary to what Peter Davenport does, Peter of course on yesterday, you know they've got the resources and if something big happens in ufology or the world of the paranormal, they can put PhDs on airplanes and they can be on the spot.
And in fact, thanks to many of you out there, And the tips, that's exactly what they have done.
So in a moment, we're going to get an update on what NIDS has done, is doing, and will do.
column color coming up shortly some of you have to be careful what you wish for an hour to
but i was wishing yesterday for
uh... song called black velvet which has been haunting me and uh... somebody who
emailed me as well and so i asked on the air All of you to please help me out.
Well, my email account at Minespring.com almost caused a denial of service attack on Minespring.
Because so many people answered the question.
Oh my God, I got a lot of email.
Thank you all.
I've got the song.
We'll get to it later this morning.
Right now, here is the Deputy Administrator for the Institute, National Institute for Discovery Science in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The man who runs all the day-to-day operations at NIDS.
That's what it is called, for short, NIDS.
Here is Colm Culler.
Welcome back, Colm.
Good evening, Art.
Good to be back.
Great to have you on.
Well, gee, where to begin?
Since we last talked, of course, there was this incredible sighting in Illinois, and I had the officers on the air, and very dramatic.
And I guess you all got involved in that and sent some people out to Illinois?
Yeah, that was a very interesting case.
We were really impressed with the way the guys got on your show, and they were very articulate and exact in their descriptions of this very large crowd.
Pretty gutsy stuff, actually, for a cop.
Yeah, I thought it was, too.
Naturally, being cops, they were probably subject to a lot of ridicule.
In fact, they have been.
In fact, now Psycop is after them today.
So anyway, you sent some people out.
Tell us what happened.
Yeah, we sent two people out there for several days and interviewed a bunch of eyewitnesses.
We think we've been able to construct a flight path for this very large, low-flying black triangle that came in off Lake Michigan, just north of Chicago, traveling in a southwesterly direction.
It was first picked up about 10 p.m.
on the night of the 4th.
When you say picked up, you mean by an eyewitness?
Picked up by an eyewitness just north of Chicago, just on the border of Lake Michigan.
It was traveling in a southwesterly direction, heading southwest.
The next eyewitness that has it was just north of Highland, Illinois.
A couple of hundred miles southwest, but it was picked up northeast of Highland, traveling at exactly the same altitude in the same direction at about 4 a.m.
So it was traveling very, very slowly.
Now, this thing was festooned with bright and even blinding lights, traveling at approximately a thousand feet.
It was then picked up by the first police police officer in Lebanon.
Again, traveling southwest, coming from the northeast.
The dispatch is very, very interesting because, essentially, we have not only do we have four different police officers as eyewitnesses, but we have police officers who are waiting to see something.
In other words, they were in observe mode.
They didn't walk into something and have a total surprise.
So, because of that, we think it's a high-quality eyewitness.
So, the thing was traveling in a southwestern direction.
Let's see, the eyewitnesses obviously agree on the configuration of it and the direction of it, but what did the eyewitnesses say about the size of it?
Well, there is some discrepancy between the eyewitnesses about the size, but if you take the broad spectrum or the consensus, the size was somewhere around two to three hundred feet long.
Uh-huh, that's big.
Triangular, possibly just arrowhead shape.
We think it may have made a slight deter to the northwest very briefly around Shiloh, but then it regained its southwesterly direction to Millstatt, Illinois.
And just after Millstatt, it seems to have gained altitude to about 10,000 feet, and all of these are approximate.
Sure.
Where the fourth police officer picked it up through binoculars at about 10,000 feet.
Did any witnesses report sound?
Two of them reported a very barely audible hum.
One of the police officers actually shut off his lights, shut off his vehicle engine, and shut everything down so that he could actually get out of his vehicle and listen to it.
And he said that there was no sound.
The closest the object came to him was about a thousand feet in his estimation.
Now, one of the interesting things about it was the ability apparently to accelerate to extremely high speeds, which it did from Lebanon to about Shiloh, and apparently it covered that gap in a very, very short time.
We're talking seconds.
Several miles in a few seconds.
So, I'm sure you've done some Calculations or somebody did, how fast would it have been going?
That's in the thousands of miles per hour.
So from just loafing along at not a speed that aerodynamically would keep anything in the air to thousands of miles an hour in seconds.
That's right.
There was no discernible increase or decrease in the light, no afterburn, no sound, nothing.
According to the police officer, it appeared to be right beside him at one stage, and then the next seconds, as he was talking on the walkie-talkie, it was right across the sky.
So he was just in mid-conversation when they picked it up at the next spot.
Well, this is interesting because there's a kind of a...
A mythology growing on the internet and everywhere about these triangular objects.
I had my beautiful sighting, my almost third-degree close encounter with mine.
So I know they're up there.
I have no question in my mind.
I saw it.
It was there.
I could have thrown a rock at the damn thing.
We've got them in our skies.
People are saying, well, it's a blimp.
You know, that it's some sort of military blimp.
But a blimp would not accelerate from Floating speed, two thousands of miles per hour, instantly.
Not any blimp I know of, anyway.
Well, yeah, we do have to remember these figures are approximate.
A couple of, several miles in a few seconds.
Even if you took it by half.
Yeah, either way, it's very, very fast.
The other thing that seems to be puzzling, if we're talking about a secret stealth, black military program that is flying a blimp, is that The craft was literally festooned with blinding lights.
According to at least two of the police officers, the lights were extremely bright.
It was traveling at about a thousand feet, so that's very, very low.
Our military wouldn't do that.
I mean, if it's a stealth aircraft and you're flying over populated areas of the U.S., albeit some of them sparsely, you wouldn't put blinding lights on the craft, would you?
Well, we have a problem with that.
There really doesn't seem to be any logic if you're trying to keep a program secret to have that sort of thing.
And that has been a consistent feature of these sightings.
We have this flight path that this object was in the air for, we think, about nine hours on that night.
And the lights were, as I said, blazing.
That does seem to be inconsistent.
With some secret program.
Now, the interesting thing about this was when the media got a hold of it, we think it was an unusually objective series of reporting that happened.
We had a lot of reports in the local St.
Louis, Missouri area on Fox TV.
It showed reports on three consecutive nights.
All those reports were just matter of fact reporting it like any other news item.
Then the LA Times did a story on it, which was objective.
I understand that even the Chicago Sun-Times did one.
Yeah.
And the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch.
All of these media stories were objective, and I think a lot of the reason for that was the fact that these police officers were the eyewitnesses.
However, two things have occurred.
Those police officers have taken a lot of ribbing from their colleagues.
Absolutely.
Number one.
Number two, The cops at PSYCOP have taken off after them, which is also not a surprise.
PSYCOP being the, I don't know what they are, their organization of debunkers, that's what I say.
And so they've taken off after the officers as well, saying, I think their first, according to Davenport, their first offering was that it was a delusional episode.
Well, we think that the delusional episode is probably not tenable at all because of the quality of the eyewitnesses.
What really became apparent when we went through the transcripts and we listened to the officers talking was that these guys were waiting for something to show up.
It was like they were sitting there in observer mode.
Sure.
It's not like they walked into something that was completely shocking and unexpected.
So, they were the best possible eyewitnesses.
It doesn't get any better than that.
You have an officer with his lights off, waiting for this craft, and here it comes.
I don't know.
So, let's flash forward.
Now, Peter Gersten is in court down in California, and he did an FOIA request asking the government to come back and give any information it had on triangular craft.
And the government came back, And first, the box you could actually see was checked.
Yes, we have information.
Then it was crossed out, and no was put there.
And so, Peter Gersten is in court in California, arguing a case, saying our government is being non-responsive, exhibiting bad faith.
They've got... Look, in my opinion, and you can echo in if you want, this thing is absolutely in our skies.
I've seen it.
Millions have seen it.
Policemen, airline pilots have seen it.
It's in our skies.
So, either it's our own government's craft or it's a craft from elsewhere and our government knows about it.
Either way, they're lying through their teeth.
Well, we think from the numbers of calls that we've got in the last couple of weeks regarding this sighting, There's been a lot of activity in that area, even before the night of January 5th and subsequent to the night of January 5th.
Now, you mentioned the court case, but one of the recent calls that we got was from a lady who is very, very articulate in how she described this thing, and she said that it was literally just over the treetops.
She put it out at about two to three hundred feet long and it was literally just over the treetop.
She actually started running because she thought it was going to crash.
It was that low.
And this thing did a perfect swivel right over her head.
In other words, it did a flat bank.
It didn't bank like a 747 does by going on its side.
It didn't seem to need any airlift whatsoever.
It seemed to make the turn and then head over Lake Michigan.
It was, according to her, an extraordinary maneuver without any sound whatsoever, but this thing was so low, she said that there were radio towers, smokestacks, chimneys in the area that were about 100 feet tall.
She said this thing was a hazard, a safety hazard, and it was flying so low, the slightest mistake could have caused it to crash.
NIDS, so far, in this investigation, has concluded... Have you concluded anything?
Well, we have concluded, number one, that those officers did see an object.
We have not fully ruled out a military black program because we're unable to.
But we think that the performance of this object seems to mitigate against a military program.
We're leaving that door open.
Would it be your view, Colum, that, you know, I understand that we have secret programs.
We all live near Area 51 here, where they do a lot of the secret stuff.
So, I understand that.
I mean, we have reasons to have ongoing black budget programs, I'm sure.
I'm comfortable with that.
If the government would come back and say, yes, we understand the sightings of these objects, but It's a matter of national security.
That might be all right.
But they're saying, oh no, we've never seen nor do we know anything about or have any object of this sort in our arsenal.
Period.
End of story.
Yeah.
Well, there does seem to be an inconsistency there with the way the numbers of reports that we've got for the last several weeks seems to mitigate against Well, that's what you all are in business for at NIDS.
military program in that the the craft of taking these enormous risk
yeah in crashing i mean if they do have a fair flying it like idiots
and they're also making absolutely no attempt to uh... to hide it
it's it's a very interesting conundrum
well that's what you all are in business for admits interesting
conundrum yes and and with i said national hold on will be will work the bottom
of the hour will You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM, from February 10th, 2000.
All the laws that he just found, and the reasoning, of his latest flame.
He talked and talked, and I heard him say, That she had the longest, blackest hair, the prettiest green eyes anywhere, and Marie's the name of his latest flame.
Though I smiled, the tears inside were a-burning.
I wished him luck and then he said it's fine He was gone but still his words kept returning
What else was there for me to do but cry?
Would you believe that yesterday This girl was in my arms and swore to me
She'd be mine eternally And the reason is, a blade of flame
Though I smiled the tears I would have burned I wished him luck and then he said it's fine
Nothing but a heartache never redeemed me But a heartache is just one of the ways
He's gonna be alright I've understood him
He's got me alright And I can hear him
Nothing but a heartache never redeemed me But a heartache is just one of the ways
He's gonna be alright He's gonna be alright
And I can hear him I got a lot of those heartaches, I got a lot of those teardrops,
heartaches, teardrops all the way Nothing but a heartache, everything, nothing but a heartache,
everything, nothing but a heartache Teardrops all the way, just wanna tear open him, just to
the fan, yeah Please find me a heartache, that I can heal
I got a lot of those heartaches, I got a lot of those teardrops You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 10th, 2000.
Ah, good morning everybody.
Colm Culler is here from NIDS, and they went and investigated what happened in Illinois.
It began over the Great Lakes.
This incredible threat, the one I saw, the one my wife saw, the one so many of you have seen out there, the one that Peter Gersten is fighting to get a line on from our government right now.
But undeniably, you've got to consider what Collum has just said, and that is, if it's our government's plane... Well, I think it was actually me.
He put it politely.
I said, they're flying it like idiots if it's a black program.
And you've got to think that one over a little bit, because if they had something like that, they wouldn't fly it over populated areas.
Well, speaking of alternatives, If this craft is not ours, there really is only one alternative, isn't there?
Get a paper and a pencil out, because we are going to tell you how to contact NIDS if you need them.
This phone number should be by your telephone, the way 911 is, so that if you do see something, you can get hold of NIDS right away, and they can dispatch people right away.
So get that paper and pencil and we'll get you the hotline number.
In the meantime, back to Conor.
Welcome back.
Thank you.
Okay, so there we are with what went on in Illinois.
What else has NIDS been doing?
Well, I just wanted to finish that the Illinois thing also happened on two subsequent nights That the original one with the four police officers was on the morning of the 5th.
Right.
Well, on the night of the 6th, we have four separate eyewitnesses who talked about very large, low-flying, extremely brightly lit craft on the night of the 6th and early morning of the 7th.
Really?
Then we've got another four who talked about Exactly the same thing on the night of the 7th and into the early morning of the 8th.
Well, see, now that's dumb and dumber, because again, if it was our government, assuming they were dumb enough to fly at once in front of witnesses, then you get the mainstream press running stories on it, because cops saw it.
You certainly wouldn't come back in successive days and do it again.
Well, that's the intriguing thing, and these eyewitnesses, we've tracked a few of them, and they're high credibility.
People who work at NASDAQ and Stock Exchange, that kind of thing.
And, by and large, a lot of them are saying exactly the same thing.
This thing was moving just over the treetops.
And we verified that they were talking about the night of the 7th and the 6th, rather than the 5th, which is the same night that the police officer saw it.
So, we think we have a very similar looking craft in roughly the same area, within a 50 mile radius of the same area, traveling on three subsequent nights.
And that is fairly consistent in terms of multiple eyewitnesses.
This seems pretty convincing to me, and it sure does point away from the military, and the alternative is, well... The alternative is definitely pretty interesting.
It's either got to be, I've gone over this a million times, either somebody or somebodies from elsewhere, or else when.
Or some other dimension, any one of the above would be really interesting.
Yeah.
Well, we had a really, going from the very, very large to the very, very small, we had another interesting case that we came up with recently, and it was in Utah, in that same area where the infamous ranch is, but this was not actually on the ranch, it was in the same area.
Because the ranch is located in an area that has probably for the last 50 years has had literally hundreds and possibly thousands of different sightings.
But this one happened in the morning in November, 11 a.m.
in the morning, when the rancher was just beside a water trough.
He was just filling it with his hose when he noticed something brightly lit in the sky It was moving pretty quickly down towards where he was sitting.
Since we have not identified where this is, Colum, how far from the ranch?
This would be within a mile or two.
A mile or two.
Okay, well then, it's reasonable to conclude that the anomalous occurrences at the ranch would not necessarily stop at this specific ranch's property line.
Well, it's very reasonable to conclude that, especially Because there's a very well documented history going actually right back to the 1940s of a lot of phenomena in that area within a 30 mile radius of that particular property.
So that the general area in northern eastern Utah has been host to very intense phenomena.
So this event was the rancher's He spotted something very bright in the sky.
It came down to within 50 feet of his head.
It was about 6 inches long, 4 inches wide, and about 1 inch high.
Yikes!
It was extremely reflective.
You know, it was shaped almost exactly, according to the rancher, like a sardine can.
And it hovered about 50 feet from his head initially.
He was looking at it as he sat there on the water trough.
It then began to move in front of him.
Back and forth, slowly back and forth.
He had a couple of dogs and a couple of horses and some cattle in his vicinity and he noticed that the dogs were holding this thing right in their eyes.
In other words, they were transfixed by it.
The other animals were very restless, very nervous.
The cattle and the horses especially were very nervous.
The object continued slowly going back and forth, about 30 to 40 feet, and then it would turn and go back the same way.
Holy smokes!
The rancher decided to contact his wife so that he could get another opinion.
So we stood up to go into the house to yell at her.
Instantly, the thing shot right up into the air, almost quicker than as I could follow it.
It was just, it went vertically right up above him.
It reacted to his movement almost instantaneously, and it was gone within less than a second.
It had moved out of his view.
Now, the reason I'm talking about this is because one of the people at the SETI, in the SETI group, a professor called Alan Tuff, has proposed that If there was ever a civilization that was monitoring us, they would use what he would call small, smart probes.
And this object, in our opinion, acted like a small, smart probe.
It acted exactly like something that seemed to be scanning the rancher, or scanning the area around the rancher, and it reacted instantly to his movement.
So it seemed to be either remote controlled or intelligently guided.
And one of the things that we would be interested in if any of your listeners have come across this kind of very small object that is obviously intelligently guided.
We've had a lot of experience with our investigators with interacting with balls of light of different colors.
There's white balls of light and blue and red and orange, but we have not had too much experience with These kinds of very, very small, compact objects.
Now, this sardine can-like thing did not have any protuberances.
It didn't have anything obvious sticking out from it.
It made no noise whatsoever.
And it was as reflective as aluminum foil.
Oh, wow.
This is not exactly the first report I've heard of small objects of this sort.
But it's one of the first.
I haven't heard a lot of this.
Usually it's, you know, saucers or triangles.
But this is fairly new to even me, and I've heard a lot.
Yeah.
Well, the animals definitely reacted to it.
It made them extremely nervous.
And as I mentioned, this is an area that is host to multiple different types of craft.
But this is the first time we've heard of Something that's this small.
And as you mentioned, the usual types of craft we're talking about are either disc-shaped objects, dome shapes, or even cigar shapes.
What we would describe as a craft.
Yeah.
Of some sort.
That's right.
Have NIDS done any hard thinking, and I'm sure they have, about why the ranch, why that specific area or for that matter why any specific area for
an abundance of this kind of phenomenon.
Well one of the things we've, we focused our first two or three years of our existence
on an area in Utah and an area in New Mexico that we knew had been host to a lot of activity
and what those areas and other areas that have in common is that they're way off the
They're very isolated communities.
They're not people who are really interested in going forth into the media.
They're not interested in publicity.
And by and large, they're completely away from the cities and away from the main highways.
So that may be a reason.
It may be a lack of interest in publicity.
Where multiple generations are experiencing these interactions with UFOs.
This is such a mystery.
Over 50 years, yes.
Such a complete mystery.
It just leaves one boggled as you think about it, because you really run through the possibilities and it just doesn't sound like our military, even though we know the military is at Area 51, we know they're There was a story indicating they moved, in fact, into Utah somewhere, and so this part of the country has acted that way as well.
It's just, how do you tear all this apart and never get to the bottom of it?
Well, we've got pretty reliable testimony, as I mentioned, going back to the 1940s and 50s, and the kinds of performances we're talking about that go back that far would probably be inconsistent with military technology.
There is definitely, you can make a strong argument in the late 1990s that the military would have very advanced technology, but the 1950s and the 1940s and these kinds of performances of hovering and these massive G-forces that would kill a human being are probably not viable in the 1940s and 50s.
Tell them, as you know, Dr. Stephen Greer has an organization that is trying to make contact with whatever it is that we're talking about here.
Has NIDS done anything like that, or considered a project of that sort, in actually trying to initiate contact?
I know we talked about the mother and the child a little bit, and the fact they left the ranch for their safety.
But other than that, have you given any thought to an attempt to initiate contact?
Well, one of the things that we've noticed on the ranch is that there's been a preponderance of events that are completely irreproducible.
In other words, they happen only once.
And that could be construed as a form of entrainment or even communication.
So we have been grappling with the Brainstorming, essentially, on the interpretation of a lot of these things, and one of the interpretations is, if there's a group of people in observer mode, and they're kept completely on their toes, and they're always exposed to something new, that does constitute a form of entrainment, or communication.
Yes.
But in terms of formal communication that you've just talked about, CSETI No, we haven't.
This calls for speculation on your part, Colin, but I'd really like to know, since you're so in the middle of this and a lot of Americans want to know too, are we headed toward, in your opinion, in the relatively near future, some sort of disclosure, some sort of announcement, or perhaps revelation, or landing, or event that will suddenly Well, we are definitely seeing an escalation in the reports that we're getting.
Since this 24-hour hotline started, we're getting a real escalation in the number of reports.
It has to be beyond a series of random events.
I can only speculate that if these intensify and intensify, there's going to be a critical mass of people who have had direct experience with these objects.
So it seems to me that it's almost like these objects are interacting with people at the individual level.
Most of the events that are being reported to us are happening outside population centers.
Rather than in the big cities where critical masses would be reached more quickly.
So therefore, if there is some kind of a contact occurring, it seems to be at the individual level.
But maybe, from a long-term perspective, it's a critical mass of individuals rather than a group in a city, so to speak, that are necessary.
Well, if people out there want to help out, and increasingly now with the professionals coming forth, like the pilots in Texas and the police officers in Illinois, So many others.
Then certainly the average person, I think, could be ready to step forward and help us.
NIDS has a 24-hour hotline.
You all have the resources to send qualified people into the field to do serious investigations.
Put it there, like your 911 number, and just let it sit there until you need it, because these are the people who can get the job done.
They've got the resources, they've got the talent, the scientific credentials, All of it.
And will it cost you anything?
No.
Just a phone call.
Having said that, where is NIDS headed?
Same direction?
We're trying to get as many different reports as possible and try to investigate the numbers that survive the initial telephone questionnaires.
There's quite a few of the reports that we get that don't survive those initial reports.
Sure.
The bigger the database that we have and the more experience that we have from the calls that we get, the better job we can do.
And we think that we're heading in the direction, hopefully, of being able to at least scientifically analyze what we're getting.
You also interviewed the pilots, I believe, in Texas, didn't you?
The pilots of what now?
In Texas.
The pilots who saw the triangle in Texas.
You know, the big 747 drivers.
We didn't actually interview those.
You didn't interview them.
No.
Well, that was another really very important case.
I mean, trained observers who were just absolutely blown away.
And I hear phones going like crazy in the background.
Well, that's the 24-hour hotline going.
Yeah, going like crazy.
All right, Colm, we will have you back on a regular basis.
To let us know what's going on.
Those people that do report to you and become part of a big investigation, do they get special treatment in terms of when you found something out, going back to them and letting them know what you found?
Yeah, what we do is we get a report together.
We publish, if we can stand behind it, we publish it on our website, but we always send one to the eyewitnesses because we do keep their names confidential.
And we send them a complete report of what we do, including all of the lab analysis, if it's actually done.
No cough to any of the eyewitnesses.
We pick up all of the cough.
You can't beat that.
That's funded by Robert Bigelow.
We're out of time.
Do me a favor and say hi to Bob for me.
I will indeed.
All right.
Thank you, Colum.
Thank you very much, Art.
It's always been a pleasure.
Take care, my friend, and good luck with the phones.
Okay, thank you.
See you later.
We're on the track, folks.
And it's people like Colm who are getting us there.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
tonight featuring a replay of coast to coast am from february tenth two thousand
a half the
the the
Lightning, bound to drive you wild Mama's baby is in the heart of every schoolgirl.
Love me tenderly isn't crying in the house.
When you need it, when you need it, the sweet and true All you're wanting more, feeling you're longing for
Black velvet and that easygoing smile Black velvet and that store of southern style
A new religion that'll bring you to your knees Black velvet if you please
Every word of this song that he sings is for you In a flash he's gone, it happened so soon
Black velvet Black velvet
Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell's Somewhere in Time
Tonight's program originally aired February 10th, 2000.
I tell ya, this one will get in your soul.
I want to thank everybody who sent it to me.
I, uh, sent about a thousand emails on this.
One thousand, maybe more.
You gotta be careful what you ask for.
But I did get it.
Thank you all very much, all of you who helped me out with this one.
It was a tough one to find.
A new religion, open up to me.
Black silver, heavy beam.
Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho.
That's building it up, isn't it?
Anyway, there you are, and again, I want to thank everybody out there who helped me find that, and you were literally in the thousands.
It's still coming in.
Please stop sending me email on that, and thank you all again.
I said earlier that, you know, there's this big thing going on with the denial of service, and they're attacking all these e-commerce sites and so forth.
Mindspring almost had a denial of service trying to handle all of my email messages on this one song.
But I wanted it.
It's just that you've got to be careful what you wish for.
Coming up in a moment is Matthew Alper, who was born and raised in New York City.
Educated at Vassar, Stony Brook University in North London, Polytechnic in England.
Pretty good background, where he finished With a degree in philosophy.
Since that time, he's worked on everything from a photographer's assistant, fifth grade and high school history teacher, in the projects of Brooklyn, now this is the one I like, he was a truck smuggler in Africa.
Where's the background for that one?
A personal bodyguard in the Philippines, and a screenwriter in Germany, All the while, working on his magnum opus, it's called, The God Part of the Brain, a scientific interpretation of human spirituality and God, and I'll tell you something.
I've interviewed Matthew a number of times now, and I cannot shake him.
And so that must mean that I really think there's something to what he's saying.
And you're going to hear what he's saying in a few moments.
We're going to get to Matthew.
A couple of things I've got to get done first, including the bills.
Let's pay the bills, and then do a couple of things, and we'll get to Matthew Alper, and I think you'll see what I mean.
Well, you know, that's worth a little comment all by itself.
That was a commercial for Jacobs Electronics and their ignition system, which is a good one.
But have you noticed the price of gas lately?
Now, we live out here in the middle of the desert.
I'll grant you that.
But know this.
As close as down the street from me and around town, the price for premium gasoline is about a buck seventy six point nine.
One dollar and seventy six point nine.
Now, what in the hell is going on that would have the gas prices that high around here?
I'd like to know.
It's not even summertime when we all know they artificially jack up the price of gas.
Most of it comes from the The Middle East, as you well know, and as far as I know, other than Iraq, which is smuggling gas out, oil, you know, the gas lines are open.
So why is our gasoline costing so much?
Maybe we should take, you know, a page from the book of the Saudis, and every time we find some gasoline executive who's hyped it up just for the fun of it, or, you know, whatever reasons, why we should chop off his arm.
And after a few arms, why, you'd probably see the price of gas coming right down.
Of course, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty angry about it.
There's no reason for the price to be up that high.
The government is requiring airlines, as they should, to inspect the tails of all MD series jetliners, all of them, and that's a lot, about 1,100 across the U.S., the whole series.
MD-80s, 90s, DC-9s, Boeing 717s.
It looks like they're suspecting this, I don't know what you call it, screw?
The thing that would take the horizontal stabilizer up and down.
It's a screw jack.
It looks like they're suspecting that may well be the problem.
And of course, it may well be.
There were two Alaska Airlines planes that, to their credit, Alaska Airlines, as soon as they saw a problem, they called the FAA and they said quarantine planes right away.
And then they ordered a nationwide inspection of all of them.
Good.
So they may be on to it.
And that's good if you're thinking of flying somewhere.
Now, Another item I wanted to cover tonight is a really weird one.
My wife and I are really big fans of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
I think that's a great show.
I mean, we're really stuck on it.
Regis Philbin is great.
A little caustic, but great.
And, in fact, he'd be a fun guy to interview.
I'd love to interview you, Regis.
But we're big fans.
And there's a story out tonight about who wants to be a millionaire.
About 30 million Americans watch it every time it's on.
We're two of them.
Here.
Anyway, here's the story, in part, by the Associated Press.
The company that insures ABC's hit game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, is suing them to get out of its contract Because it's claiming the questions are too easy, and they're at risk of paying out too much prize money.
I don't get any of this story.
I don't get any of it.
ABC says viewers should not worry about the legal fight they're planning.
No changes to the show.
Good for you, ABC.
The London-based insurance underwriters, Goshawk, that's G-O-S-H-A-W-K, syndicate, filed suit in Britain's High Court of Justice on the 24th of January against Buena Vista Entertainment Inc.
the show's producers to end its contract.
In essence, the insurance company said it needed assurances that who wants to be a millionaire, get this folks, would ask harder questions and select dumber contestants
uh...
now what what is it that i don't First of all, selecting harder questions, well, OK.
Maybe OK.
Although I think they're hard enough.
I mean, they've only had two millionaires, right?
People who have done it.
Selecting dumber contestants?
Now, I think that's an insult to everybody concerned with the production of the show, and I'm proud of ABC that they told them to stick it where the sun rarely shines, I'm sure.
So, good for them, but dumber contestants?
Dumber contestants!
So what do they do?
They change the curve of the testing they do?
Because you know you've got to call up and qualify for that show.
So what do they begin to do?
Assign points when you miss?
Oh, well, take him!
Look at that!
He missed three!
I don't think so.
And then there's one more thing I don't get about this.
It's such a popular show with 30 million viewers.
That the commercials alone must yield millions of dollars for every show they run, so they could pay the million.
Even if they get a millionaire, they could pay it from their own coffers.
What do they need an insurance company for?
Self-insure!
As long as a show is this popular, you can afford to do it.
The hell with an insurance company.
So, in case you're a fan of that show, as we are, that's a pretty interesting controversy going on right now.
If you were in San Diego earlier, you may have felt a big boom, because from the Mexican border to up in Orange County, about a hundred miles north, something went kaboom!
Residents around San Diego County reported hearing loud booms Thursday afternoon, but of course, as usual, no explanation for the source of the sounds.
They're thinking now the hackers are using big university mainframes to do their dirty work.
And that's quite logical, of course.
They're probably not as protected as well as they might be.
And so that's probably what's going on.
Here's a little commentary on, in some newspaper, Chicago Sun, not just some newspaper, Chicago Sun Times.
And it's talking about MTBE, which 60 minutes did the program on.
And they say, whether it's global warming or MTBE, a chemical added to gasoline to improve air quality, we're learning about the law of unintended consequences.
Unintended consequences.
Now, that would seem to apply in a lot of areas, you know, like if you're trying to bring back dinosaurs.
Unintended Consequences.
If you're sending all kinds of things into the air, Unintended Consequences.
If you're trying to create mini black holes, and you're ready to push the button, imagine what Unintended Consequences might be.
So I wanted to get that on there, too.
Unintended Consequences.
And then, this.
From the Seattle Times today.
Wind?
No.
It was a microburst on the ground.
An exceptionally strong wind that hit a two block area in West Seattle on Tuesday afternoon was a weather phenomena.
They say rare in the area.
Known as a microburst.
And the winds caused major property damage Along, get this, a short stretch of one street shortly before four o'clock in the afternoon on Tuesday.
Now, we had our own little phenomena earlier tonight, just about three hours ago, here in the desert.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere, you've got to remember now, this is February, right?
February?
It is.
Out of nowhere came the crash of thunder and lightning everywhere and we had one hell of a storm.
We had very hard driving rain and maybe some hail at night in the desert in February.
I don't know.
I'm telling you.
Our weather is really, really, really getting weird.
Alright.
Now on to the matter at hand.
We're going to have quite a bit of time tonight with Matthew Alper.
Matthew, welcome back to the program.
Thank you, Art.
It's nice to be back.
It's great to have you.
You know, Matthew, my wife Ramona just recorded a movie for me that I just finished playing, watching earlier today, and I wonder if you've seen it.
It's called At Play in the Fields of the Lord.
I heard of it as a stage play.
I didn't even know there was a film, so I'm not familiar.
Oh my God, it's a wonderful film.
Anybody out there should watch it.
At Play in the Fields of the Lord.
It was filmed entirely in Amazonia.
It revolved around, without giving away the plot, a contact with a never-before-contacted A group of Indians, deep in the Amazon, and the consequences of that contact, and their belief systems, what they believed, and of course, why the story involves, I think, a Catholic missionary and a couple of other missionary zealots who went down there and decided they were going to convert these savages
Into Good Christians.
Okay.
Rice-eating Christians.
And it turned out, very tragically, it was just a wonderful movie.
A reasonably common occurrence, I think.
It does seem to be a reasonably common occurrence, but it goes to the very center of what you have talked about in your book, The God Part of the Brain.
Oh, hey, by the way, I understand your book is now on Amazon.com.
Mm-hmm.
As well as in Barnes & Noble.
Oh, really?
And in barnesandnoble.com.
Oh, really?
Mm-hmm.
So, it began as a self-published little book.
Mm-hmm.
And now you're in... It's not a self-published little book.
It's just available in more stores.
Well, amazon.com is getting right on up there.
Mm-hmm.
And Barnes & Noble, that's no schlock either.
Mm-hmm.
And the sales boosted dramatically.
The week that you were on Larry King Live and mentioned me in my book.
That's right, I did, didn't I?
My rating on Amazon went from like 20,000 to like 1,200.
You're kidding!
For a week.
You're kidding!
You pulled me down many thousands.
And then I sank back into the muck.
But it's still selling reasonably well.
That's actually not even that bad.
They carry like Something like 400,000 books.
So if you're still in the top 50,000, it's not that bad, actually.
Oh, no, that's right.
And I mean, we'll probably take you right back up into the top 100 tonight.
I would hope so.
Yeah, I would imagine.
And so now your book is very much more generally available.
Yes.
And we're going to talk quite a bit about it tonight.
Are you familiar with a guest I've had on called Neil Slade?
No.
You're not?
No.
Oh, my.
All right.
Well, Neil deals with the brain as well.
He's worked with some real experts in the area, and we might get him on air with you for a few moments or so as the show goes on.
But right now, I would like to have you stand by because we are out of time.
So hold on.
We'll be right back.
I'm Art Bell.
And this is Coast to Coast AM.
Get that movie and watch it at Play in the Fields of the Lord.
It's very instructive.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 10th, 2000.
And you must send her somewhere where she's never been before.
Worn out phrases and morning gazes won't get you where you want to go.
No!
Words of love, soft and tender won't win her.
You ought to know by now.
If I had told her that I loved her She would have stayed till who knows when But I guess she couldn't understand it When I said I want to be your friend Because a friend would never doubt you or ever put you uptight.
And I wonder what she's doing tonight.
Oh yes, I wonder what she's doing tonight.
What's she doing tonight?
Oh, I wonder what she's doing tonight.
Ah, ah.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM, from February 10th, 2000.
Matthew Alper is here tonight.
We're going to be talking a lot about our brains and God, and whether our brains are actually wired to believe in God, or a God, or a creator, or a higher power.
Whether we are literally demanded it is demanded by our brains that we have such a belief to
protect ourselves against the greatest fear
that man has you know
as i consider matthew albert strange as he may be
he's got a spectacular background a very good education and just before launching into what we really want to talk
about tonight I really would like to know how he got to be smuggling trucks in Africa.
Now that strikes me as a really dangerous occupation, smuggling trucks in Africa.
They pretty much shoot you when they catch you for that, don't they?
Probably.
I never got caught, so I don't really know what they do.
But I mean, do you answer an ad?
Truck smuggler?
No, no.
It's just a strange combination of events, which is pretty much I mean, you don't just, like, get to Africa, or you don't go there to smuggle trucks.
No, I was a fifth grade teacher at the time, and I decided that I needed to get away.
I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life, so I actually was able to convince a friend into coming along with me on an overland trip that would cross the continent of Africa with about twelve other people who were much more organized and responsible than we were.
And about three months, four months into the trip, um, A, I decided I wanted my independence because I felt that they were just rushing through the continent and there were more things I wanted to see.
I know tourists stink.
Yeah.
So, and I had, um.
So you had to finance it, right?
Well, I had a chance experience with these Dutch students who were selling a truck that they crossed the Sahara in.
hoping that they were going to sell for a large profit and they couldn't sell it
and they ran out of time i gave them a hundred bucks for this truck me and my friend
left the overland group
drove around on our own in this nineteen fifty two german fire engine
and the next thing we knew we're selling the fire engine to these nigerians and
that's how things started you sold it to the nigerians? yes
a fire truck? yeah we were in togo at the time and we had to drive the truck
through togo through benin and then into nigeria
video.
And that was illegal, so that's kind of what happened.
Well, these African countries, they have border checkpoints.
Yeah, well, the thing is, it's not so much getting the truck in, it's getting ourselves out.
Because you have something on your visa stamp, if you go in with a vehicle, that's called a laissez-passer, it's the French meaning you're being given allowance to Cross the country in the vehicle, but you're not bringing it in as a commercial vehicle.
So you didn't have that?
Well, we did have the Lazy Passe.
The thing is, you can't leave that country without either your vehicle or the tax papers that show that when you sold it, you did it legitimately.
So it's more smuggling yourself out than the truck in.
So how'd you get out?
Um, these people paid cousins of theirs to, like, walk us through the jungles.
Like, you know, just crossing the invisible borders.
You went through the jungle?
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Yeah, it was scary.
They said, you know, that there are border snipers and, you know, keep it down.
It's safe for the trip.
All right, let's dig in now.
And if you would, A lot of the audience, believe it or not, will not have heard your thesis.
They don't understand what you mean by the God part of the brain, so lay it out.
Okay.
Just to give a basic overview, what I'm hypothesizing is that, essentially, that spirituality is a genetically inherited trait, that the human animal is wired to be spiritual, and that this represents the consequence of an evolutionary adaptation That emerged in our species as a coping mechanism that enabled us to survive our unique aware of our own deaths.
So that basically all religion is the consequence of an impulse that we're born with to make us believe in some kind of higher being and through the existence of this higher being of this spiritual realm, something that every culture from the beginning of our species has believed in, Which again, I'm suggesting is more than just a coincidence, that it has to do with, you know, our essential wiring.
And again, we're wired to believe in, well, there are three universal components to this inherent belief system.
One is a belief in a higher force or power, which is most often referred to as a god or gods.
The other is a spiritual or transcendental component that exists within ourselves, we as humans, and what we call a soul.
And the other universal is the preservation of that spiritual component or soul in some form of an afterlife.
I believe in all those things.
You do?
I do, Matthew.
Okay.
Well, you and the vast majority of the rest of your species.
So you're right on target.
My species?
Yes.
Well, I'm there too, but... You are, after all.
Our species.
You are, after all.
Yeah, thank you.
Our species.
Our species.
but you don't believe in a higher power.
Well, what I'm suggesting is that we really have no verifiable evidence to believe in anything other than the fact that our brains are compelling us, and there is now hard evidence, which I will discuss as the show goes on, that there are parts of our brain, parts of our physiology, that do compel us to feel these sensations that we refer to as spiritual, A sense of bliss, of peace, of tranquility, often combined with, complemented by another sensation we define as sort of a dissolution of our ego boundaries, a sense of losing ourselves to a cosmic self, a sense of what we call cosmic or God consciousness.
Yes, sir.
And so it's a combination of these belief systems, which actually they find is located in one part of the brain, and these sensations that are located in another part of the brain.
How much actual, scientific, hard evidence is there?
Well, it's growing.
As a matter of fact, I keep re-editing this book.
In other words, can they wire a person's brain and then the person would go and begin to pray or contemplate something very spiritual?
Well, it's not like they've ever done a spiritual function transplant.
They've never taken the spiritual function, that sight in the brain, out of a priest and stuck it in an atheist.
No, I didn't mean anything like that, although that's an idea.
What I meant was, can they wire the brain so that they can actually identify the specific part of the brain that begins to get active as you consider spiritual things?
What you confused me was when you said wire the brain.
They have what are called SPECT scans.
It's kind of like an MRI for the brain.
We've all seen those, you know, those images.
They look like sort of a colorful x-ray.
That's right.
Right, okay.
That's called a SPECT scan, and what it does is, let's say you went into the SPECT scan, and they played you music.
They would be locating the musical parts of the brain, the parts being neurally activated, and they'd be able to, if they took ten people from ten cultures, stuck them in a SPECT scan, and played them music, the same part of their brain would be lit up.
Now that's really interesting.
So it is a specific part of the brain that responds to music.
Oh yeah, yeah.
For every cognitive function that we have, whether it's our language functions, and we also know this because we know that there are parts of the brain that, for instance, they're called aphasias.
If they're damaged, then what it does is it affects that part of your consciousness.
So, for instance, you can have a language aphasia.
It can happen whether a tumor might erupt in that region of the brain, any kind of damage during surgery, a gunshot, and if you
suffer damage to this part of the brain, you'll lose, for instance, your ability to comprehend
certain words, or the way you can, the manner in which you can comprehend words.
So, for instance, certain linguistic aphasias, you might suffer a brain trauma and be able to read words,
understand words that you read, but not understand the same words as they're spoken.
I've got the spirit of that.
Can you cite even one case in which somebody had head trauma of any kind and was a deep believer, a very spiritual person, who suddenly lost it when they hit their head?
Okay, well, not that, but this is what I've heard.
And as a matter of fact, one of the first people to notify me He heard about me through a friend who had listened to me on your radio show.
His name is Dr. Sadwin.
He was the Chief of Neuropsychiatry at the Graduate Hospital at University of Pennsylvania, which is like a top ten school.
He wrote me a whole package of pamphlets he had written on head trauma and brain trauma.
That's a specialty.
He said, that's amazing.
My friend told me about you.
And he gave me, he got me a copy of your book, and all my life I've been doing these cases with head injuries, and I find that, you know, I've always been fascinated.
Why do these people, after they get banged in the head, you know, become suddenly religious?
And so there are a number of cases of this.
As a matter of fact, there are five of them.
Are there any cases going the other way?
Honestly, that I've never heard of.
There should be, shouldn't there?
Sure, there would be.
It's not the kind of thing, it's not as evident, it's not something like a doctor would notice.
There probably aren't too many people who've had like someone who is really religious in the house who got banged in the head and then like ran to the doctor and said, my son he doesn't pray anymore.
But there are cases of someone who gets knocked in the head and they have like a religious conversion and a friend of mine just wrote me an email, my friend Tanya, saying how her son was in a car accident and after the fact He went through this fit for like a week where he was obsessively praying.
And she would tell people, my son, he's changed.
There's something weird about him.
He's not the same person.
And they'd all say, well, it's good that he's praying.
It's a miracle that he lived.
So because of the way the majority of society thinks, we don't take note of the other extreme.
But there are examples of, yes, where head trauma can trigger the spiritual function and activate it.
What bothers me about your whole thesis is that it makes sense.
And it rips at me because it makes sense.
It just tears at me because it makes sense.
And it rips at the fabric of what I believe.
I mean, I really do have strong convictions.
I'm not a church goer.
I don't go to church on Sundays.
And I'm not even sure about the nature of God, but I surely believe there is a Creator very strongly.
I am a spiritual person.
You believe in a soul?
Yes, sir, I do.
I believe that we have a soul that exists after physical death.
I believe that very strongly.
One of the things I'd like to eventually discuss later on is the neurophysiology of the soul.
This is a new addition to the book where I discuss the parts of the brain responsible for self-identity.
Explain it.
Okay, well, there's all this research.
I mean, the cognitive sciences are very new, so this stuff is all coming out like now.
All right, conventional wisdom says the soul is something within us that is entirely separate from the physical and survives death.
Is that a fair description?
Okay, and moreover, we believe that it's really what we call the soul is actually consciousness.
It's what we refer to as our self.
Sure, self-awareness, if you want.
Right, exactly.
So that, like, when the body dies, there will be a part of, you know, me that will say, yep, here I am, I'm still Matthew.
Well, there's an argument that says, look, we are electrical beings, you know we are, the neurons fire, it's electricity, my friend, and even though there's physical death, that electricity does not cease to exist.
Well, I think you might be confusing philosophies where energy doesn't cease to exist.
Actually, the electricity itself will stop.
Energy in that form.
Right.
Because the electricity, the electrical impulses, the sodium ion pump will stop pumping when you die.
You know that.
Energy.
Okay, yes.
Right, we've discussed this, and I agree, absolutely.
First law of thermodynamics, the foundation of all physics.
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
And again, and I've addressed you on this, does it really matter if our energy is preserved in the form of a combination of soil and nitrogen and cosmic dust?
That will exist, yes, in many variations throughout all eternity, but it won't be our bell.
Consciousness, your lights will be out.
So, I mean, do you really get that much consolation out of the fact that you'll know that, well, one day I'm going to be dirt?
And that's good enough for me, because if it is, great.
Then, you know, you're set.
No, that's not good enough for me.
Okay.
I don't want to think one day I'm going to be dirt.
Right, okay.
So, how do you perceive that eternal consciousness?
How will it be more than dirt?
How will it resemble Art Bell at all, or will it?
I've been out of my body, Matthew.
Okay.
You've experienced a sensation that leads you to believe you've been out of your body, but okay.
That's right.
You don't have on video you floating around the room and your wife saying, hey, pass me a glass of water?
No.
Okay.
You've experienced a sensation where you believe you've been out of your body.
I've been dreaming all my life.
I know what dreams are, even odd and bizarre dreams.
I know that I've been dreaming and I know that one time, Matthew, I left my body.
Okay.
To me, there is something separate in us that does eclipse the physical, or is able to.
No, there actually is a part of us, okay, and this is new to you.
There's a new chapter in my newest edition of the book called Near Death Experiences.
Ah, you wrote about them?
Yes.
Okay.
So for those of you who have the old edition, I recommend that you go out and buy the new edition, because it's full of all kinds of new and fun chapters.
Fun chapters.
So, this one, near-death experiences, I reduce it to the neurophysiology of the experience, what's taking place in your brain chemically.
What do you call it?
Near-death ha-ha-ha?
No, I don't believe I called it that.
Okay.
I think just near-death experiences.
I see.
But, there's... I break down the experience into its neurophysiology, which includes the out-of-body experience, which has been a universal symptom of the near-death experience and most interestingly enough I didn't know that this information was out there but I started researching medical journals and I found that they've been doing a lot of research on near-death experiences and one of the more interesting facets of the research is the fact that there are drugs which can induce a near-death experience including the out-of-body experience.
Or what's considered the out-of-body sensation, because it can be reduced to a neurotransmitter.
If that neurotransmitter is flowing in your brain, you will have a near-death experience.
And it's a combination of endorphin flow and glutamate, which is the neurotransmitter, which is naturally activated in the times of low oxygen levels and low blood sugar.
And usually during something like a near-death experience, that's one of the things we're suffering, like low oxygen levels in the brain.
Maybe we have a heart attack.
You know what really kicks me off about you is that you sound so logical, and the logic tears at what I believe.
It really is driving me nuts, Matthew.
Hold on, we're at the top of the hour.
Matthew Alper is here, and his book is well, well worth a read if you've got the guts.
It's called The God Part of the Brain, and I continue to have him on the air because, as I just said, it makes sense.
We'll be right back.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 10th, 2000.
This is a teaser for the upcoming movie, Coast to Coast.
Lonely days, lonely nights Where would I be without my woman?
Lonely days, lonely nights Where would I be without my woman?
Good morning, this is sunshine.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 10, 2000.
You know, I just got a fax from somebody named Brian in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
And you know what he says here?
He says, Art, I can't believe you've got this guy on your show again.
He's so full of crap.
Sorry, but there's just too much proof of God's existence, so I called Brian up.
And said, you want a shot at him?
And Brian said, oh no, I'd need a lot of time to prepare.
I can't do that.
Brian, where's your faith?
Brian, where is your faith?
Your study, your belief.
Why do you need to prepare?
I don't understand.
The reason I bring him back is because what he says is so damn logical that, I don't know, if you're not challenged by it, then you're just, you're not thinking.
And I would think anybody who would want to be secure in their faith would consider something like you're hearing tonight.
At the very least, consider what you're hearing tonight.
And then, Rejected on equally solid grounds, at the very least.
Brian, I am disappointed in you.
Well, hey, Brian and Fort Wayne, if you're sitting out there seething and have changed your mind, send me a fax.
In the meantime, a doctor in Denver, Colorado, has done what Brian has not in a fax.
And so, Matthew, I have a question for you posed by this doctor.
Okay.
You ready for a big one?
Mm-hmm.
Do you believe in the color red?
Do I believe in the color red?
Yes, yes, yes.
I believe that red is a... Real color?
No, I believe it's a... Well, real, you can't define real.
Real, it's a... It's a concept contrived by humans by which we gave a name for 660 nanometers of light wavelength.
Okay.
That's fair.
But it's real.
By the definition you just gave, it's real.
No, but again, by the definition I'm giving, it's relative because we can't say that the real sunset is red.
It's red in our perception of it.
We could call it sink or we could call it It wouldn't matter what we call it, but there is such a thing in the spectrum.
Yes?
Again, it's a human, it's a contrived term.
I see where he's going.
He's saying the fact that we perceive it and it's real isn't the same true of God.
I get it.
Well, I wasn't done.
I was going to get you even more.
Okay.
But you must admit, in the spectrum, there is that thing, a rose by any other name, it's still in the spectrum.
Okay, but see, no, in the spectrum there's a wavelength.
Yes.
The human animal...
has given a name to the way we perceive, the way that that wavelength of light falls on our retinas, we've defined it in a certain way we call red.
Yes.
What we see as red is relative, because my version of red might be different from yours, and it's certainly different from all the other species.
So, for instance, when... Well, uh, Matthew?
Yeah?
You have fire engines there, right?
Yeah, and are they red?
Yeah, are they red?
Yes, they are red.
Okay, well then you and I perceive it the same way.
Okay.
Alright, do you believe in middle C, the musical tone?
Alright, he goes on.
These can both be elicited by electrical stimulation of the brain in the absence of the actual color or sound.
That doesn't mean they don't exist.
Neurological activity in a part of the brain that maybe can perceive or fabricate the existence of other realities Neither proves nor disproves the existence of those realities.
Okay, okay.
Now this is the thing.
We're talking about sensory information.
We're talking about the way we receive data from the external world.
But what I'm suggesting is aren't concepts of a God.
Like when we say, I feel like the spirit of the deceased in the room.
You know, let's say someone passes away and everybody's, you know, at the funeral parlor and we say we feel his spirit.
It's not that we're actually feeling like a sensation on our skin.
All of our perception, it's not the way we're translating information, which is called transduction, the way the brain interprets information that falls on our sensory perceptors, but rather the way when we say we feel like the sense of God, we feel the spirit of the dead, it's not touch, it's not hot or it's not cold, it's actually coming from within.
So it's not based on an external perceptor.
And that's why, though, you and I both see the fire truck as red, you, yourself, and someone from another culture will not see God as the same thing.
Because you're not seeing God as, like, everyone's looking up at the throne in the sky and saying, yeah, I see him, he's got a long beard.
We're all seeing him in a different way because we're really only just wired to perceive a greater force.
Okay.
Did you hear the interview I did the other night with a gay man, one of the longest surviving AIDS patients in the U.S.? ?
No.
Okay.
Doesn't matter.
This man was one of the first diagnosed cases of AIDS in the U.S.
He's still alive.
His partner died.
He's now written a book called Signals.
And one of the most provocative things that he said at the beginning of the program was that He and his partner, knowing what they might be facing, went to Mexico and they bought the suicide medicines that they would require at the right time.
His friend jumped the gun, took the medicines for no motive.
He just committed suicide.
He was the first to discover his friend's body.
He was holding the body.
and shaking the body in anger at his friend for having done this when his friend told him if he would go out into the backyard and jump the fence and look in the in the trash can at the house next door he would find a suicide note the police were there he did it they tried to stop him but they couldn't stop him he jumped the fence he opened the can And there was the suicide note.
Okay.
Really okay?
I think I might have missed something.
His friend was in his arms dying and he said there's a suicide.
No, no, no.
His friend was dead when he found him.
D-E-A-D.
Dead.
Dirt.
In your terms.
Okay.
I mean, everybody who's spiritual He has some kind of story to support their belief.
That's a pretty serious story, though.
Most people are.
I've had people who were communicated with by the dead.
I've heard it thousands of times.
Everyone who's spiritual, who's religious, has perceived reality in some way that they've believed that they've had contact with the dead.
To them, it's as real as the color red.
I'm suggesting, because we're wired that way, that the brain plays tricks on us.
We play tricks on ourselves, and it's not even that.
It's just, again, our wiring.
We don't necessarily perceive the world as an exact mirror of what the world represents.
We see it as human beings.
We see it through the human lens, and part of the human lens is to see the world spiritually, and we can interpret Different things.
We interpret our realities in a spiritual way, and people tend to be led, therefore, to believe things that ordinarily they wouldn't.
Alright, argument on your side again.
By the way, you better go out, and everybody else in the audience, as soon as you can, go rent a movie called At Play in the Fields of the Lord.
In the meantime, have we ever come upon, in the deep Amazon, or in the Philippines, or in Some remote part of Africa.
Any group or tribe of people who do not believe in something beyond the physical?
Not in all of my exploration of books on social and cultural anthropology, world religion.
Nope.
Here it's quote number 12 in my book.
There is not a civilization known to us that did not have faith in God or God.
That's a strong argument.
That's a terribly strong argument.
And if God were the same God, why then the people down in the deep Amazon should be talking about Jesus and... That's right.
If there's one God, why would he create a race of beings that perceive him in so many different ways that it compels them to constantly propel themselves into wars to kill one another, proving that theirs is the right one?
That'd be a very whimsical and odd god.
Yeah, there are a lot of people killed in his name.
And that's why I wrote this book.
Because not until we can recognize this as an inherent impulse in us will we be able to contain the more negative aspects of that influence.
And that seems to be rampant discrimination and hatred among people and and leading to eventually
what we see time and time again acts of genocide and war and until we understand that impulse is exactly just that
uh... and look at it from a rationalistic perspective we're going to
be an animal that continues to to barbarize one another do you believe
that there are people
who have power psychological powers
in their living brain that do you believe that
No.
You don't even believe that?
No.
I'd be glad to.
You know, I went out looking for this stuff as, like, a hopeful magician.
I hoped to be the one who'd be able to find the laws that would allow me to shoot fireballs from my fingers and hover and fly and do telekinesis and all of those neat things.
I was hoping to have a conversation with God.
I mean, I went looking for this stuff, looking for transcendence.
I wanted to find the magic.
Are you sure you have not done all of this because you could not find it?
No, I did this because this is what I found.
You cite, let's get back to the science part, you cite as one of the reasons that, as scientific proof, there exists a God part of the brain.
Just the brain, not a God, but part of the brain that demands God be there.
Temporal Lobe Epilepsy.
How does that fit in?
Well, it was one of the most provocative experiments done that sort of led to... I mean, I'd written my book before that experiment was done, but now the main body of neurophysiologists believe what they call that there is a God module in the brain.
That's their word for it.
And this research was triggered by a series of experiments done by a Dr. Ramachandran.
Who came out with a book last year called Phantoms in the Brain, and he was at UC San Diego, and he found that there were, while studying epileptics, that there was a group, a population of epileptics whose epilepsy, whereas like some people, the epilepsy was triggered by like a flashing light, in others it was triggered by a sequence of certain musical notes or chords, and in others it was triggered by religious icons or language.
And he found that in these people, that when their brains were studied, that the neural activity was based in their temporal lobes.
And not only was it religious language or icons that could trigger, that could affect an epileptic seizure in them, but furthermore, these were people who tended to be highly religious in general in their normal life, and during their seizure, came out of it professing that they had had like a religious experience, that they felt a union with God.
During their seizure, it was found that there was this neural activity in the temporal lobe, which seems to be the part of the brain from which our perceptions of some kind of higher being are located.
This study was further supported by research done by a Dr. Michael Persinger He's a neurophysiologist who created a helmet called a transcranial magnetic stimulator.
What is that?
Okay, this should be like right up your alley.
This is like, you know, sci-fi almost.
But basically it's a helmet, like a big football helmet, and it can direct a strong magnetic field at specific parts of the brain, stimulating them.
So prompted by this research, he put on his helmet, and he pointed it at his temporal lobe.
And when he took the helmet off, he said that he was an atheist, and he had his first experience with God.
He had triggered his temporal lobe, and he felt the presence of God.
He didn't become religious or spiritual after that, but he said, whatever that experience was, that's how I interpreted it.
This man was an atheist.
Well, no, actually he was an agnostic.
He had no formed opinion in his beliefs.
That's how he stated it.
He had his first religious experience, his first contact with God.
He felt the first presence of God in his life.
And it's probably, as much as it might be dormant in my own brain, or by the fact that my logical centers have overwhelmed it, If I put on the same helmet and pointed it at that same place, I would have that same experience.
I've even had experiences in my life during times of crisis or anxiety where I actually felt that draw of believing in something.
I felt it like a drug, like an opiate coming over me.
It was like, wow, what a sensation.
I thought to myself, wow, should I let myself go with this?
You know, and given what I had known, I said, you know, I don't think I should because I don't want to go there.
I'd rather pull back.
And I pulled myself away from that sensation.
I said, I resisted it.
Now, a religious person would say I resisted God.
Yes, that's what I was about to say.
Are you sure?
Since, I mean, wouldn't science demand that you go ahead and cross that threshold so that you can logically dissemble it and Well, see, I mean, I had.
I had been there.
I felt this warm, like, being like a basking in the sun.
Yeah, you felt the beginning of it, but you said you pulled back from it.
Well, I pulled back from, like, no, I was thinking to myself, like, gee, should I embrace some religion?
I hadn't even thought which one.
Right.
Just should I embrace some religion?
Because that sensation felt warm.
It felt warmer than the anxiety I was feeling at the time.
And I thought, gee, you know, just any religion.
I'll just pull something out of a hat.
Let it be Zeus.
But this feels good.
This is like a drug, and it probably was endorphins flooding into me by giving in to that particular escape mechanism that exists in all of our brains.
And it's the foundation for the phenomena we call religious conversions.
So then if a person were to really get crude, those people who are deeply religious and get a lot out of it are like junkies.
They're totally junkies.
Religion's the opiate of the masses.
Sure, why let go?
It has another important, this is kind of on the sidetrack, but it's a very important aspect.
It has a societal function.
In other words, if people believe there is a creator and that there is a life following this one in which you will be accountable for things you have done in this life, then you are, to some degree, your actions and The way you interact with society is to some degree controlled, correct?
Yeah, it has its multi-purpose, as are most of our cognitive traits.
I think the predominant reason that we possess a spiritual function is to allow our species to cope with our awareness of death.
We're the only self-conscious animal, and through that self-conscious awareness, we became the only animal aware of our own mortalities.
That's why I believe That was the strongest reason that prompted natural selection to modify our brains in such a way, but it also is utilized to play a role in our social organization.
Okay, but if Matthew Albers' book suddenly went to number one on the New York Times bestseller list, it was embraced suddenly by millions of people, wouldn't we have a Mad Max society on our hands?
No.
Why not?
I have it.
There's a chapter in the book which I think is fairly instrumental to the philosophy I'm trying to offer, and it's called The Guilt and Morality Function.
We'll get to that.
We're here at the bottom of the hour.
I suppose you think reincarnation is silliness, too, huh?
I don't like to use the word silly.
It's just the way we're wired.
Just not true, in other words.
Right.
Not real.
A misperception.
An inherited misperception.
All right.
You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 10, 2000.
you Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade.
The bastard hung me in the spring of 45.
But I am still alive.
I was a sailor.
I was born upon the tide.
With the sea I did abide.
I was a sailor, I was born upon the tide, With the sea I did abide.
I sailed a schooner around the whole of New Mexico, I went aloft to furl the mainsail in a float.
Thank you.
and when the yards broke off they said that i got killed don't know when i've been so blue don't know what come over
you you found someone
and don't it make my brown eyes blue I'll be fine when you're gone I'll just cry all night long Say it is all true And don't it make my brown eyes
Tell me no secrets, tell me some lies Give me no reason, give me advice Tell me you love me, and don't let me cry Say what I say, but don't say goodbye I big need to teach you bad Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Tonight's program originally aired February 10th, 2000.
Matthew Alper is here with hard logic.
And you know, I would think that anybody who is a religious person, deeply religious, would not be afraid of what Matthew's saying.
In fact, would read it, digest it, and come back at it with the same kind of logic that he expresses in his arguments.
Those who are not afraid would do that.
I realize that that may cut out a large percentage of the population, but that's what I think people who are not afraid would do.
Wouldn't you?
Matthew Alper's book is called The God Part of the Brain.
And if you are angry and you don't buy the book, then you're chicken.
You know, that's really what I think.
I think that the real thinking people out there, the real people who would test what they think they believe, would read this book.
You can get it now, finally, at Amazon.com and, you know, the major bookstores and stuff like that.
Amazon.com is a good deal because they give you 30% off.
And you should buy quickly from them because I don't know how long they're going to be around.
They're going to go broke given those kind of prices.
You can also get my book, by the way.
Becoming Global Superstorm in the same place at the same discount.
That's Art Bell, me, and Whitley Striever.
That's another book you should read.
Now, I have a rule on my program.
I've had it for 14 years of doing this program.
People calling are not allowed to quote scripture.
That's a hard, fast rule on this program.
However, I'm the host of this program and I can break it.
And I have on occasion done so, and I'm about to do it again, for Matthew's sake.
So, here it comes, Matthew.
You ready?
Teach me the word.
Jeremiah 31, 33.
Quote, I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.
No longer will a man teach his neighbor because they will all know me."
Now, why is it not possible to imagine in the scheme of things
at play here in the fields of the Lord that God put the God part of the brain
in the brain? Well, I mean, that would bring one back to
the point I brought up, you know, we discussed earlier which is
what kind of God would implant a, you know, a concept in the heads of his
creatures, programming them to believe in many different translations of what he is,
so much so that they go to killing one another to prove that their version is
Yeah, I hate that answer.
Alright.
And also to quote, you know, the theist, here's a quote by Thomas Aquinas, It seems that the existence of God is self-evident.
Those things are said to be self-evident to us, the knowledge of which is naturally implanted in us.
Men have been intuiting the God part of the brain as far back as recorded time.
We just didn't know neurophysiology.
I mean, this is new stuff.
Here's one to support you, and I asked, so I received.
It says, You were asked if there was any documentation of individuals who hit their head or whatever and then perhaps became less religious.
Well, I've got a friend in Ohio who was very religious.
He went to church all the time, church events, prayed a lot, read religious books, wore religious t-shirts, went out evangelizing, you know, the whole works.
He was a stagehand and he was in Tennessee doing a gig Where he was 30 feet up on a scaffold.
He fell that 30 feet down and basically hit his head.
He has not been the same since.
He now does not go to church, does not pray, does not act the same, does not do the same religious things he did before.
He now cusses, which is something he would never have done before.
He's always telling everyone he is not the same person now as before.
He even emailed the other day telling me he has doubts he's even a Christian now.
So, as your guest said, that's you, perhaps there are cases out there but they're just not reported.
I know my friend Mark is not at all willing to come out and tell individuals about his new self as he's somewhat, I think, ashamed of how he's acting now.
See, the reason... I mean, the majority of the science is because they haven't really speculated on a God part of the brain, and also because one of the battles that I have to contend with, or that this science that I call bio-theology has to contend with, is the fact that what would have been most of its proponents, the scientists, are religious as well, to a large degree.
Just because one has a... Oh, I don't know about that.
Well, I interview a lot of scientists here on the air, and a lot of them, when I pin them down, and I do it all the time, I say, do you believe in the God, the God of the Bible?
Long pause?
No.
So a lot of men of hard science... But if you ask them if there's a Creator, and if they believe in a soul, a lot of them will.
I think the majority of them will, because they still possess a spiritual function.
Because of their training in logic, they might have abandoned their conventional religions, but most of them will still tell you.
If you ask people, if you want to get to the heart of someone's beliefs, even if they deny a God, say, do you believe that your conscious experience, that your actions are Just the stirrings of an organic machine that you have no control over, or do you believe in free will?
Do you believe that there's a force in you that gives you the right and ability to make choices?
Most people will be very reluctant to forfeit their soul.
To say, nope, I'm just a chance combination of atoms being thrust through the whirlwind of time.
Consciousness is a hallucination that has no bearing on the infinite and eternal world, and I'm not immortal.
All right, let's try this out on you, just for the fun of it, Matthew.
Here you are, contemplating how your book's doing.
After the show tonight, maybe.
And there's an apparition that appears in your room.
And the apparition has glowing... Is she naked?
I didn't say it was a shame.
Never mind.
Never mind.
Go on.
It has glowing red eyes, and yes, big breasts.
Okay.
All right.
And so, this thing says to you, Matthew, I can make your book number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and I can keep it there for two years.
You'll be rich beyond belief.
Your ideas will be widespread across the face of the world.
Just one little thing.
I've got this paper here I want you to sign that says, when you expire, because you're going to live a very rich life, you're going to be a rich man, but when you do go, I get your soul.
Sign here.
Put an X right here.
You mean that thing I signed last month?
Oh, that document.
I didn't think anyone knew.
I'm still waiting.
I've been gypped.
I definitely don't feel like I've got a soul here.
Cheap answer, Matthew.
Come on.
I know you didn't sign it a month ago.
If that were to occur... Well, first of all, if the apparition did appear and I had, you know, tested it and questioned my sanity and it all seemed to be real...
Well then, I would say, well, I guess I've been wrong, and I guess there is a God, and I guess there is a soul, and gee, do I want to sign my soul over for fame and fortune?
Yeah.
So it'd be a different question.
Would I sign, if I was told, you know, if I got the book of a soul, and I got to, like, look into it, and it said, you know, the soul is something that will last for eternity, and you will get to keep it for all eternity, et cetera, et cetera.
Or I could forfeit it for the next 20 or 30 odd years of fame and fortune.
Of course I'd say no.
I'd say it's selling just fine, thank you.
Would you add a chapter?
That's a really serious ethical question.
I'd add a sequel.
A sequel?
Yes.
Condemning the first book.
Here's another one.
Art, your guest is full of it.
He simply must not understand or ever heard of biblical prophecy.
We're living it every day.
Let me twist this around a little bit, say, ask the obvious.
I mean, there is the Bible.
There are very ancient, well-documented scrolls that we can read that all indicate the man Jesus was here on earth.
Miracles occurred.
This was reasonably well-documented.
Yes, I know.
Tell a line of people a secret, and it ends up different on the other end.
But, I mean, after all, there's a fair amount of support for the Bible.
How do you deal with that question, Matthew?
Well, that's such an easy one to me.
And first of all, when you say the Bible, it's a very presumptuous statement, because it's presuming there's only one.
And there's hundreds, there's thousands, and they've been around before the New Testament.
I mean, there were people believing in a number of gods.
There were civilizations created where they went to, you know, temple every day and prayed to a number of gods before there was a belief in a, a monotheistic god, and b, a holy trinity with Jesus as its Messiah.
So when we speak of the Bible, that's really just coming from the mindset of somebody who was raised in a Christian household and is convinced that The New Testament is the Bible, and there is no other way.
However, had that same person who wrote you that email, or faxed you that letter, been switched at birth, and inadvertently raised as a Muslim, he'd send you that same fax, except he'd be preaching you the Prophets of Muhammad and Allah.
And he'd be telling you, how can this person not accept the doctrine of Allah?
Who is this man?
Who is this infidel?
He's just preaching his training, the way he was raised.
Religion is the cultural manifestation of the spiritual impulse.
Just like French is the cultural manifestation of one's linguistic impulse.
Or English, or German, or Russian.
The same as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism.
Taoism.
How would the world, how would Matthew Alper's world, perfect world, be different?
If there was no belief in anything beyond, if we all knew that it was dirt time at death, how would the world be different?
Would it be a better world?
Well, it's a very powerful question.
Yes it is.
At one point I had a serious moral dilemma Over whether it would be the right thing to write a book like this, because what might be the damage I could be doing?
Yes.
To those people who need, who rely on their beliefs.
People like me.
After all, people like me are implanted in it.
Even people like me.
You've done me damage, in a way.
No, let me rephrase that.
You've challenged me intellectually to the point where I've been compelled to bring you back on the air.
So, again and again.
Well, anything that gets me back on works for me.
But there are others, and surely you're going to have a dramatic effect on many of them.
So as you said, you must have had a bit of a struggle with yourself, all other issues aside about the impact of your book.
Well, I believe that what could be done is that we can maximize on this impulse's more productive aspects, like a sense of brotherhood, A sense of, actually even just the euphoria, the... Why?
Why would there be any sense of brotherhood?
To hell with brotherhood!
We're here until we're dirt!
Get all you can, grab... No, no, no, no, that's absolutely not the message.
That's because, I mean, it comes down to, you could look at it instead of from a biblical or divine sense, you can look at it from a selfish sense.
We are a social organism.
If each of the parts of that organism are operating only for itself, the organism as a whole will fall.
And that includes ourselves.
So in a sense, by being selfish, by acting on your own most primitive impulses, you're actually doing yourself harm.
Because, I mean, you know, the old saying, what goes around comes around.
If we had a society of everybody, basically what would be considered anarchy, Nobody wins.
Yeah, but what goes around comes around is really based on a faith in something beyond.
Well, I wasn't really saying it as if, like, you know, there's any meaning behind it, but really just that if you hurt another, not because it's stated, not because you're being punished, but just because the way we are made as a social organism, we have to operate as a whole.
You know, united we stand, divided we fall.
We are an organism.
But wouldn't there arguably be more people who would say, why should I work?
Why should I care about anything society says I should care about?
Why shouldn't I rob a bank or do something else?
Because you'll get shot in the head.
Because you'll be shot in the head and they'll be showing your bloody body on television, on Fox News an hour later.
That's why.
Not everybody robs banks.
About 80% I think get caught.
Oh, really?
Maybe even a little better.
But why not conclude, take your best shot, it's dirt to dirt, so what's the difference?
A few years here and there, I'm going to live the high life.
I'm going to hit a bank, take a lot of money, and go live the high life.
And there will be no repercussion, because I'm going to be dirt.
Well, there won't be eternal repercussion, no.
And, you know, again, it's part of the reason that this impulse was planted in us.
So have you ever thought about robbing a bank, or doing something equally I can't find a good getaway man.
That's the problem.
That's an honest question.
have you ever considered anything really nefarious uh... based on what you believe
i don't know everybody has an awfully big pause like i could i could have driven a truck
through that pause Well, I have to think about these things.
They're very good questions.
Um, I think like anybody, you know, I've had fantasies like, you know, that son of a gun, I could have killed him.
You know, when you think of blowing someone up, um, and it wasn't because like, I felt like, well, hey, you know, there's no God, so why not blow him up?
And I guess, A, because I've decided that it brings me the most joy as an individual to spread the least harm, I suppose.
Um, so, You know, you deal with your frustration and you try and adopt the philosophy, you know, thou shalt not blow up thy neighbor.
And it's not because you think you'll be punished in the eternal afterlife, but just because it makes for a nicer place to live in when everyone's not blowing everyone up.
And that's basically it.
You could call it even selfish.
But I know that if I acted on my primitive impulses and so did my neighbors, None of us would survive, and it would be a wicked and painful and insufferable world.
So the tribal instinct, really.
Right?
Mm-hmm.
I sure wish I could shoot more holes in all this.
I'll tell you what, after the top of the hour here, why don't we open the telephone lines and see what we get.
Remember, nobody quotes the Bible here but me.
That's art's law.
Hold on, Matthew, and we'll continue with this.
You've got to admit, this is very challenging.
It's called The God Part of the Brain.
Amazon.com and nationwide now in bookstores by Matthew Alper.
I'm Art Bell, and this is a provocative Coast to Coast AM.
You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 10, 2000.
Strange world design make foolish people.
I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you.
I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you No, I don't wanna fall in love
No, I don't wanna fall in love oh
With you With you
It's easy to try.
She said, if you try, no help in the world, above a lonely sky
Above a lonely sky Imagine all the people
Imagine all the people living for today Imagine there's no country, with this hard to do
Living for today Imagine there's no country
With no hard to do Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion to choose Imagine all the people
Living life in peace, you too You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be your home Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can you
Don't need to greet the wonder of brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people sharing all the world is blue.
You're listening to Arkbells Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 10, 2000.
and maybe he was just a little ahead of his time.
I hope someday you'll join us and the world will live as one.
So, actually I think it's back a little bit.
Let me just come back just a little bit.
Where was it?
Okay, let's come back like this.
I think this should do it.
Yeah, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.
I wonder what you think John Lennon was singing about.
Does that song resonate with you, Matthew?
Yeah, I mean, sure, I guess it was part of his paradise, a place with no religion, another reason for people to discriminate against one another, to kill one another, etc.
Here's Arthur from Cambridge, Massachusetts, who asks, before we go to the phones here, does Mr. Albert believe that because a part of the brain affects our perception of space and time, that space and time does not exist?
As we know, they exist as relative terms.
I mean, this is what 20th century physics has been telling us.
That something we took for granted as an absolute is really not an absolute.
It's a human perception, and it's relative to our perception of reality, and not indicative of anything absolute.
Well, then I would imagine you suspect, ultimately, travel to distant galaxies, even time travel, might be possible.
I don't think I said that.
Well, you sort of did.
You said that our conventional perceptions of space and time are being challenged.
That doesn't mean that we can have time machines that send us into other... Why not?
Why not?
If our perception of space and time is not accurate... Because it's just our perception.
That doesn't mean that we can actually take our molecular makeup and somehow place it in a different time.
Is it a possibility?
Maybe, in some absolute form, that other times are existing in correspondence with this present time as we perceive it.
Can our present selves be transported into those other times?
That I doubt.
I'm a skeptic.
Very, very reputable theoretical physicists think that it can be done, eventually, with enough power.
Okay, I mean, I would say that's something that if one asked me, I would speculate that it will never happen.
And if humankind is even around for another 100,000 years, with technology advancing at the rate that it is, I don't believe that we will ever achieve time travel.
But hey, you know, I'm the skeptic.
Show me.
So, and I've yet to see formulas or acknowledge scientists who've produced formulas and or machines that are indicative of it as a possibility, so.
But even the skeptic, the non-believer, when he encounters the big-breasted, red-eyed woman, wouldn't sign?
Well, again, then I wouldn't sign because I'd be a believer.
Yeah, that's it, alright.
First Time Caller line, you are on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hi, Ark.
Hello, where are you?
I'm calling from L.A.
L.A., alright.
Ark, I'm a big fan of yours and Matthew, I own your book and I respect your intellect.
It was a very good book.
Thank you.
My question to you is, did you ever consider what would happen if we all started to prescribe to this view of reality, which it seems to be in my opinion.
I am an atheist and I just wondered if If we didn't use the God part of the mind, it would diminish.
This capacity in our brain would diminish.
And with that cause, what kind of ramifications psychologically could that cause?
Well, just by not using it doesn't mean that it's going to go away.
That would be considered Lamarckian biology, the belief that you can acquire traits through your own behavior.
If we don't use it, that's not going to weed it out for natural selection.
If we really wanted to weed it out through natural selection, we'd basically have to take those who are the most religious and kill them.
And then they won't pass on their genes, which will produce an overdeveloped spiritual function in their children, etc., etc.
Which, of course, I'm not suggesting.
But in regard to, like, if we stop praying, will our children stop praying?
Not necessarily.
They'll still have that impulse.
It's like, if I don't listen to music and I have a child, will he grow up saying, you know, yeah, I have no interest in music?
Not necessarily.
He might end up being a great composer.
You can't suppress your genes.
You can suppress your behavior, but you can't suppress your genes.
A hypothetical example would be, if it led to depression, that could theoretically Perhaps lead to less procreation?
Well, I mean, again, this is what Art and I were discussing before, which is what are the ramifications of offering a theory like this, of putting a bug like this in people's heads?
What is its destructive potential?
I open the book, the opening quote, In the book is, um, great is the truth, and mighty above all things.
And it's actually a quote, it's a scripture.
It's a scripture from the Apocrypha, which were the books of the, uh, New Testament that were, that were banished.
They were, you know, basically, um, taken out of the Bible, and they're therefore called Apocrypha, meaning false, but they were once part of the Bible.
And I borrowed that for the reason that it was stricken from the Bible.
I thought that that was sort of poetic, as well as that's the philosophy I've decided to ascribe to, that if it's true that there is no God, if it's true there's no spiritual reality, that it's the way we've been wired by natural selection, by nature, what I call nature's white lie.
My feeling is that the truth is more powerful than anything, and we have to embrace the truth.
And just like as much as we can say With any white lie.
Like, would we rather live in ignorant bliss, or would we rather be knowing creatures?
And again, I subscribe to the philosophy, know thyself.
The greatest power is in knowledge and wisdom.
And in knowing, even if it's a painful truth, it's to our best advantage to know nonetheless.
And then to decide, what do we want to do with this?
Yes, I agree.
Know where we stand.
Know the reality of our own situation.
That's right, and then we can choose.
Maybe we'll decide, hey, we know there's an impulse and there might not be a God, but let's pray to him because it makes us feel good.
Maybe we'll become more religious.
I don't know, but I think we can at least step back.
It may make us value life even more.
That's right.
It could do a number of things, and I guess I'm willing to take a chance because I believe that it's true.
Right.
You believe in the truth.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you very much for the call.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Matthew Alper and Art Bell.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Before we challenge Mr. Alper on his religious faith, I'd like to say something to you, Art.
You were playing that song by John Lennon.
You said, as he headed his time, all these ideas and that were in the Communist Manifesto 150 years ago.
I know that's what they said.
You don't honestly believe that he was singing about communism, do you?
No, I don't.
I just said that he's not ahead of his time.
Those ideas have been around since the Communist Manifesto, and they're rapidly coming into... Well, that's what everybody said about Lennon at the time when he sang that song.
It sounds like it.
But maybe that isn't what he was singing about.
Maybe he was putting it in poetic terms, that's all.
No, but you've got to imagine That he was singing about what Matthew Alper is talking about.
I don't think he was singing the virtues of Stalinism.
He was singing about what he wanted, you know.
And that's exactly what Marx wanted.
But may I ask, I heard you mention natural selection, so I take it that you accept random evolution, Darwinism, in other words.
Yes, I'm a strict Darwinist.
Are you aware of the many credentialed scientists who are attacking Darwinism?
There are so many scientists out there whose ideas are adulterated by their spiritual function.
Have you read those books?
Darwin's Black Box, have you registered?
There are so many scientists out there whose ideas are adulterated by their spiritual function.
As a matter of fact, while we took the last commercial break, a friend of mine faxed me
a letter showing me an article from Scientific American which said that of 90% of scientists
that were polled, 90% were shown to believe in a higher power, 10% were atheists.
Which in the article it said reflected basically the standard of any human population.
Well that's true, but I asked you...
If you do believe that Michael Behe wrote that book on religious grounds, actually, it's very scientific and factual.
Have you read it, sir?
One man's book.
Did you answer my question?
Have I read it?
People have discussed it with me before.
Well, read it.
There are libraries full, our entire science at this point, from cloning to genetic therapy.
Hold it, hold it.
Time, time, time, time.
Okay.
What is it in that book that would stupefy my guess?
Well, I don't think it would change his mind.
Well, I know, but you read the book.
He didn't.
So give us a concept from the book that would argue with Matthew's concept.
Thank you, Art.
You're much more reasonable than I am.
Well, the idea of irreducible complexity.
Can I have ten minutes?
That's an argument of faith.
The world is so complex that it can't be reduced to... No, that's not it.
That's not it.
Certain functions of a biological entity need certain, like two or three at least, or maybe a thousand functioning things at one time to function, and therefore they could not have evolved.
Each one of those things could not have evolved separately.
That's the concept.
Please, anybody on the air, Who wants to really get into this?
Read Darwin's Black Box.
Don't listen to this man.
Alright, well, how about both?
I think this man makes a lot of sense.
And I, for one, don't reject the concept that the thing that we regard as a miracle of complexity all about us and within us, in fact, is not a product of evolution.
That's the argument against it.
That's one of the advanced arguments these days.
How could we, you know, how could this all be ascribed to some process?
Yeah.
Well, it seems like magic to us, but it may have taken billions of years to look that way.
That's right.
That's right.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hello.
Oh, that must be me.
That's you, all right.
Where are you?
I'm in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.
All right.
Well, I wanted to kind of shoot a little story here.
One of our astronauts had a friend who was an atheist.
And he had them over one day, and he was in one of his dens, and this guy had made a mock-up model of the universe in his den.
And the guy said, oh, hey, that's pretty good.
I like that.
Did you make that?
The astronaut says, no, I didn't make that.
And he says, well, who made it?
He says, well, nobody did.
He says, well, now, wait a minute.
I can see it right here.
What do you mean, nobody did?
Well, nobody did.
It's just there.
And so that guy says, well, no, this doesn't make any sense to me.
He says, well, you know, hey, you choose to, you know, not believe in God's universe and that God created it.
So, you know, it's the same thing, you know, essentially.
You know, and God gave everybody the freedom of choice to find Him, you know.
And that's why we have so many different religions, is because, you know, you have the choice, whether you don't or whether you do.
Or whether you believe in a stick or whatever it is.
And when it comes down to the end, then that's when it really matters.
What you got.
What are you going to have when you leave, buddy?
What are you going to have when you leave?
You don't have nothing to go for.
You're just here.
What do you got?
You don't have nothing to go for.
You're just here.
You're nothing.
You're nobody.
You are a piece of dust.
You're, you know, you're dust because you've got nothing to carry.
You've got no God.
Matthew?
Yes?
You're not arguing with him?
Um, because I am a piece of dust, what am I going to say?
Caller?
Are you dumb?
No, well, hey, I could talk to this guy probably all night, you know.
Well, I don't know.
So far he's agreeing with you, so.
Yeah, well, hey, imagine that.
Indeed, imagine that.
Alright, thank you very much.
I've just checked on Amazon.com, the God part of the brain, on Amazon.com.
You know they're selling your book for $11.95?
Mm-hmm.
Cheap.
Cheap, cheap, cheap.
And you know what else?
It's got a solid five-star review.
One, two, three, four, five.
Five stars.
Yeah, I know.
I'm very pleased.
Everybody who writes in, I'm shooting a perfect five.
Yeah, it's true.
Not even a four and a half in there.
That's amazing.
Well, to the Rockies, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello, Art.
Hello, Matthew.
Hello.
This is Rob, Central Oregon, listening on KNBD.
Yes, sir.
Yes.
I had a question and a comment, if I could.
Of course.
Okay.
The question is, God part of the brain, who programmed that?
The early civilizations, which had no instructions.
I understand organized religion.
But the early civilizations had none.
They had no religion to begin with.
Well, how about this?
Who programmed the people to dance around and worship the sun?
You know, before Jesus came.
I don't know.
I have no idea.
Well, maybe Matthew does.
Well, it's the same force that programmed us to believe in Jesus.
It's the same impulse.
It's just been manipulated over and over.
My comment would be, I think you're a very hurt and lonely man.
I think God didn't deliver on something that you wanted, besides writing a book and making There's some ducats there.
Okay, so let me be his angry son, and perhaps this will provoke him to show his face.
I think that's what you're testing.
Well, all right, directly come back at him.
Is, in fact, that the case?
Were you, in some way, horribly hurt by a death or by something that made you deny God, Matthew?
Did that happen to you?
Tell the truth.
I'll tell you what, don't even tell me right now.
Just hold on to that until after the break.
And remember, think about that great big-breasted woman with the glowing red eyes.
I like eyes.
Temptation eyes.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM, from February 10th, 2000.
Every time, can't make her mine.
She's no one's lover tonight With me she'll be so inviting
I want her all for myself Oh, temptation eyes
You can't improve my, my, my soul Temptation eyes
You gotta love me Gotta love me tonight
You love me baby, yeah Well, I don't think it's just a game.
We're just the same.
My head is spinning.
She's got a way to keep me on her side.
The charts are right.
On her side, just a ride If ever I live the life with me
She'll be so excited You'd think those people would've had enough of silly love
songs But look around me and I've seen some
Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs But what's wrong with that?
I'd like to know Cause here I go
Again I love you
I love you I love you
somewhere in time. Tonight featuring...
Good morning, everybody.
Matthew Alper is here, and he has a book that you really should read.
It's called The God Part of the Brain, and no matter what your faith, or lack of it, or strength of it, it should not be challenged by logic, should it?
Or is it?
I think that anybody out there who would shy away from this book Who would shy away from this concept intellectually?
I don't know.
They need to grow a little.
That's just my opinion, and it's probably going to get me in a lot of trouble, but that's alright too.
There was, just before I go to the break, and I do have to go to the break, but there was a very important caller, I thought, on the line before the break, who asked Matthew, If there was something that had happened in his life, something really terrible that made him suddenly deny God, and there was applause long enough to drive a smuggled African truck through.
So, let me come back to you, Matthew, and ask you about that.
Well, to be honest, I actually led a very, you know, cushy and privileged childhood and adolescence.
I was very fortunate in that I had a good family, and a supportive family, and good parents, and a good younger sister, and really nothing tragic happened to me.
I would say the most tragic thing for me was the realization that I'm mortal.
That the party will one day end was devastating to me, and I said, I'm getting to the bottom of this.
I want to find out, is there transcendence in the world?
Is there a spiritual reality?
Is there a God?
Or isn't there?
Am I mortal, or am I immortal?
That, to me, became the ultimate question.
I mean, I figured, why should I concern myself with the next 40, 50, 60-odd years, with my eternity left unanswered before me?
That's the answer, and here's the break.
Alright, Matthew, I have a friend who is a doctor, a man of science, and he's written a fax, and I want to read you, alright?
Okay.
Alright, here it comes.
From my perspective, I would propose that we are wired to worship, whether it is God, an entertainment celebrity, a sports figure, an idol, and so forth.
Our neurophysiology predicates and potentiates this process of adoration.
In other words, atheists still engage in this, but it is generally expressed in a secular manner.
The global dominance of the concept of God, in quotes, I believe, reflects in part the commonly shared human need for answers to questions for which we can find no other explanation.
However, this in no way negates the existence of the soul of God, of ETs, or anything else that we cannot measure with our three-dimensional yardstick.
Absence of evidence is not evidence for absence.
Okay.
Is that the end of the letter?
It is.
Okay.
This is true.
This is proof.
I mean, I cannot say with 100% certainty that there is no God.
All I can say is that this points to the possibility that one might not exist, and it's really just our programming that makes us believe in one.
However, I also believe that the burden of proof should be in proving that something does exist, not in that it doesn't, which is an absurdity.
Someone could tell me right now, prove that, you know, invisible three-headed unicorns don't exist.
Actually, I lied to you.
It's not quite the end of the letter.
In parentheses at the bottom it says, he has a stimulating premise.
Ah.
I've been thrown a crumb.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Matthew Crum Alper.
Hello.
Hi.
I'm a little bit nervous here.
Well, become unnervous, get close to your phone, and yell at us!
Okay, I'm going to yell at you.
That's good.
You issued a challenge to us, Faithful, so I'm going to ask Matthew, and I think there's a big hole in your argument.
Okay.
That hole is surrounding each and every one of us, including you, Art, and Me and Matthew is order.
Now, in order for there to be order, it has to be ordered by somebody.
Well, first of all, you're presuming order.
What you construe as order is another person's, you know, madness.
Well, not necessarily.
I can prove this by a simple example.
Please do so.
Okay.
Art, are you wearing shoes?
Yes.
I asked an ordered question and I received an ordered response.
Oh yeah, well we're programmed in a very organized way, meant to make us survivable.
And actually, there even is an order to the universe, because yes, the universe does seem to follow, all matter and energy do seem to follow these very particular laws, called the laws of thermodynamics.
They're the laws of nature.
Does that necessarily imply, however, that there's some kind of conscious force out there that's guiding all of this?
You're presuming that part.
I asked a spontaneous question and received a spontaneous answer.
Both were ordered.
There's no way that Mr. Bell could have presumed that I was going to ask these wearing shoes.
And yet he did answer.
You see what I'm saying?
Yeah, but I don't think what you're saying represents proof of God.
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing.
It's logical that I would be wearing shoes, probable I would be wearing shoes.
The fact that you asked me that question and I responded that I indeed was, what does that prove?
Well, it just... Does it prove real order?
No.
Well, it kind of does.
Kind of does?
It proves relative order between humans.
We can communicate, yes, and we can understand one another, but again, does it presume that there's a conscious creator out there that made us that way?
No.
Well, it presumes that we have intelligence.
And by the fact that we are here, indeed.
Again, these are all presumptions.
Well, no, we are here.
If it isn't a presumption, we're here.
Bring them on down.
Bring them on down.
Bring them on down?
Yeah, God.
Well, as far as my power... Then we'll talk business.
In the meantime, these are just presumptions.
Pardon me?
These are just presumptions you're making until that time.
Until you provide evidence that there is a God Not through some secondary means that, well, there's order and therefore there must be an orderer.
That's called the teleological argument of God, and I don't subscribe to it.
That there must be, you know, that if there's organization in the universe, there must be an ultimate conscious organizer.
Perhaps it's just the laws of nature, and we can't let go of the fact that maybe there is no protective force out there.
There is no spiritual father looking over us.
If there was no spiritual father looking over us, or a suffering guy, I think we'd do that anyway.
Well, let him finish.
If there was no spiritual father overlooking... If there was no order, if I'm presuming there's only order, then there would have to be some kind of anti-order, or chaos, in which it would be impossible Well, it would be impossible for things to be... But there is periodically great chaos on Earth, sir.
People hack each other to death with machetes.
They fight and kill in the name of their particular god.
There's chaos all the time.
This is true.
There's volcanic eruptions and earthquakes and typhoons.
That particular anarchy is caused by man himself.
And, um... Do we create typhoons?
No.
Do we create plagues?
Yes.
Do we create death and sickness?
We probably add a great deal to that.
We have no say in death.
We could be the most peaceful creatures that exist in the universe and we're all going to die.
So if you want to call that order, so be it.
Again, these are all conventions.
They're not indicative of a proof of a higher power.
Well, just the fact that we all die.
Yeah.
That means that it is ordered.
All right, so you could say all chaos is ordered, too.
I mean, now we're just playing Samantha.
Yeah, we are.
Plus, I had a doctor on the other night, the leading longevity physician in the world, Dr. Klatz, and he said, look, you manage to live for another 30 or 40 years, and there is some great possibility that we will stop Even reverse the aging process.
That's how close we're getting.
Mm-hmm.
I agree.
So, if that should occur, then where is the order?
In death.
Just a thought.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hello.
Yes, hello.
Am I on?
Oh, yes.
Okay.
Yeah, I've got a couple of observations.
Curious, though, that when we're speaking about theists here, That we're looking at them as presumptive and as imposing assumptions upon the universe.
But the reality is that everybody does that.
And your guest this evening also has a metaphysical naturalism that he's presuming and casting upon all of the evidences and casting upon all of his research and casting upon all of the conversations They're going on right now.
He has no way to prove his metaphysical positions and distinctives.
He might talk about the inferential method, he might talk about the empirical method, but the fact is that even if you look at the empirical method itself, the empirical method itself is not able to prove itself because it's a metaphysical construct.
The fact is we all approach life, we approach relationships, We approach our research and our studies presupposing things about the universe.
And I would argue that the reality of God is rational knowledge, and that all human beings possess that rational knowledge.
Now, the problem comes when we think about human sin.
And the biblical view of this is that human beings, in their ambition and in their autonomy in paradise, They sought to arrest something from the Creator that wasn't theirs.
They sought knowledge outside of the Creator and began to transpose that onto their own beings.
When they did that, they began to think outside of the laws and outside of the ethics that God had given them.
And so what has happened now is that we have an arrogant and sinful and repressive nature.
We don't want to fess up to the fact that we're sinners.
We live this doctrine of autonomy.
We cast contempt upon the Creator and upon God, when deep down, in our heart, we know He exists.
But in our bitterness, and in our anguish of heart, and in our anger over death, and our anger over broken relationships, we tend to squash Him and to put Him under our feet, because we don't want to look at Him.
And another thing, too, is really interesting.
We're so finite and so small, just particles in the grand scheme of things, and to impose a naturalistic metaphysic upon the entire universe when we can't even see behind us when we're walking, when we lay down at night and we fall asleep and we're unconscious and we have to lock our doors.
We're so limited and we have to understand those limitations.
I think though Matthew is arguing there is not a grand scheme of things.
Except for his naturalistic metaphysics, which makes sense of everything.
Right.
It is ultimate to him.
And he is casting that naturalistic metaphysics on all things.
He's making sense of the universe, of man, of core assumptions, of all human beings, of the doctrine of man.
God makes sense of everything according to that naturalistic metaphysics.
Let me tell you, it's that naturalistic metaphysics you speak of which provided us with these telephones that are allowing us to communicate And the light that's lighting your home right now and heating it, and the science that provides you with health care, and all of these things that you're calling this metaphysic, is actually not even a metaphysic.
It's a very tangible thing.
And if you want to know what I have faith in, I have faith that when I flip my light switch that the lights are going to go on.
It's not a metaphysic.
It's a physical reality.
And the fact that the same methodology that brought me electricity and computers and space shuttles, etc.
has provided me with brain scans that are showing that there are parts of the brain receptive to
religious language and that there are parts of the brain that are stimulated
which will fill us with a sense of the presence of God. It's that same
methodology and it's not a metaphysic.
And it's the same great unseen power that got us through Y2K, so when you throw your switch it
still goes on, Matthew.
That's right.
Well, the fact of the matter is that personality does not flow from impersonality, and creative ability does not flow from uncreative ability.
But the fact that we can plumb the depths of what exists is a direct byproduct of the fact that we've been made very intelligent Creatures by an intelligent creator.
It almost seems to fly in the face of what you're saying.
And the fact is, every human being has a presupposition about the universe.
We all presuppose it.
And you do that as well.
And I can make sense for every one of your arguments.
That there, oh, we can talk about science, we can talk about technology, we can talk about the development of whatever, electricity and this and that and the other thing.
The fact is that we can do these things because we're creative.
We can do these things because we have a personality.
We have intelligence because we've been given personality by the person who is God.
We've been given intelligence by an intelligent creator.
And we can do these things because he blesses us with the ability to pursue, to advance.
Again, that's your paradigm, and you're very articulate in expressing it.
It's just that I don't know if you're expressing anything.
Yeah, well, I am.
Why is it not possible, Collar?
That all of the things that you just named, we are able to do because we have evolved from the original muck and now have the creative brains that you're articulating so well.
Well, you know, I would argue then that if evolution is true, if biological evolution is true, then epistemological evolution is also true.
That is, that our knowledge is constantly changing.
That is the case.
We have no metaphysical basis for making any value judgments on anything, because our intellectual content is constantly morphing.
How can we possibly make sense of anything?
A hundred years down the road, this whole conversation is irrelevant.
Truth is laid waste in the whole process of things.
It doesn't make any sense.
Give this man a pulpit.
He's good at saying it, but I don't know what he's saying.
Well, the fact is, it's very simple.
If the doctrine of evolution is true, and it impacts my intelligence, and it impacts ethics, and it impacts reason, then the fact is that the stuff that we're discussing in this very moment is going to be irrelevant, and outdated, and relative to this particular time, and nothing of the final and ultimate sense.
Only for an outdated species, otherwise our chances are our wiring will still pretty much be the same, and our sense of ethics will be the same, As it always has?
Well, you don't have a metaphysical basis for ethics.
How do you make sense of ethics?
Biologically.
How does an ethic of value, like don't kill your neighbor, and don't steal from your neighbor, and don't commit adultery with your neighbor's wife, how do you ground that in chemical surges and firing synapses?
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Well, it hasn't made sense yet to you because you have not read the guilt and morality function in my book.
In which I discuss how, as a social organism, it became necessary for our species to be able to identify those actions which were destructive to the group as a whole, and as well as to be able to identify and discern those actions which are destructive to the whole.
In a very elegant way, you just really said, asked him the same question I did earlier, then why would we not have a Mad Max world?
Indeed.
And he's making so many assumptions.
But the answer to that is a pretty good one.
It is that there has to be some order, some ethical behavior for the survival of the species.
Right.
In my view, in my paradigm, we're wired for that too.
We're a biological animal.
We're made in our physiology, and our physiology, fortunately for us, is programmed in order, not anarchy.
We can cooperate with one another, and what you're calling good and evil, these absolutes that come from a god, I'm suggesting are just the ways we discern one another's behavior.
We promote that which we call good, and we condemn that which we call bad.
Every culture from the beginning of our species has broken all action into what they call either good or bad behavior, and in a spiritual context, what we call good or evil.
And it's, again, the way we're wired.
For one of the most primal of all reasons, callers, survival.
That's right.
Survival.
Why?
Why is survival a tangible concept?
Oh, yes.
It is a tangible... It's tangible insofar as the existence of organic matter.
Are ethics material or immaterial?
Material.
Non-corporeal or corporeal?
Right, I got it.
Material, corporeal.
Ethics are material.
If ethics are material, and they are just chemicals flowing, then everything is indeed relative.
And that means that your concepts are relative as well, and they're confined to you, and they don't have any ultimate meaning for the rest of us.
Good night, Matthew.
Good night, Art.
That's it, folks.
Um, you've gotta find it intellectually challenging.
And, in my opinion, you've gotta challenge yourself to the degree that you'll get the book, and read it, and consider it, and then With all your faith intact, reject it if you will.
But tonight's show should have challenged you to the point of wanting to read the book.
With that said, that's it for me this week.
From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
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