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Nov. 23, 2003 - Art Bell
02:49:33
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - The God Part of the Brain - Matthew Alper
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From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon,
wherever you may be in the world's time zones.
Live, I'm thankful to say, from the high desert, I'm Art Bell, and this, of course, is Coast to Coast AM, weekend version.
And, oh, man, what a 24 hours it has been!
I'm gonna tell you all about it.
That is to say, what happened.
Last night was incredible, and today has been incredible in terms of That's why you didn't hear us live last night.
It was the broadcasting equivalent of why a shuttle blows up.
I'm not kidding.
It was a broadcasting equivalent of that.
Now, my signal is carried from me to you, ultimately, through satellite technology.
And we've got a satellite dish here in my backyard that transmits a Extremely reliable KU band signal up to the satellite.
And last night, when I turned the system on, the guys in Denver who received this, and in Los Angeles, hey, no signal!
You know what I mean?
Signal!
And I thought, well, you know, the traveling wave tube or klystron or whatever they've got in here to generate the power has finally gone.
It's been out there for about, oh, I don't know, 12 years, 11 or 12 years, something like that.
And we're already well beyond its Stated useful life, so I thought for sure you know it had finally gone And I was sitting here talking to Mike Hagan engineering at premier and we were discussing that Essentially just about saying thank goodness.
We've got the ISDN backup, and I looked down and it went blank the ISDN black backup just went black like boom all the power is gone and I great you know and there was no fuse immediately on the back of it and And I had already started to tear in.
I thought, maybe it's on my end.
So I tore every wire in here apart.
I had my soldering iron out.
I was redoing things just to be sure, checking the audio chain.
Just going berserko in here.
So there was no way to get on last night, either through the primary satellite, reliable, or the ISDN, reliable backup.
Both went down.
Now, what happened?
Well, we...
Again, assuming that we had lost the transmit side of things here, today I got a call from Denver, in the uplink facility in Denver, that receives my signal.
And we got to talking and they said, hey, you know, we see a rogue signal on your frequency.
A rogue signal.
In other words, they have no idea.
It's not supposed to be there.
It could be from an adjacent satellite.
Or maybe on the same satellite with the opposite polarity or something.
But anyway, a signal that should not be there.
And you can't take two digital signals and mix them together.
When you do, you get a soup that's completely unintelligible for anybody.
So, some other network, some other program, some other something has a misaligned dish, or what have you, and they were jamming me, is what was going on.
I was being jammed.
And they're still referring to it as a rogue signal.
Well, I got a call this afternoon from Jack Rowland.
Thank you, Jack.
He's a ham.
K-E-0-V-H in Denver.
He's at the Uplink in Denver.
And when I had my signal down, he said, we see this rogue signal.
He said, bring yours up.
And he said, oh, there you are.
But there's another signal with you.
And so I said, OK, how about this?
See if you can find Another clear frequency that we can use just for tonight while you search for this rogue.
And sure enough, they found a frequency that normally carries a television signal and gave me the frequency and I changed the frequency on the uplink here and boom, boom, locked right in and we were in business this afternoon.
But to see two failures like that and have a rogue jamming signal is just beyond bizarre.
At any rate, that's what happened.
So I want to thank Mike Hagan at Premier.
I want to thank Jack Rowland in Denver, who really was top-notch.
I mean, they just really are on top of tracking this down.
And it's fascinating stuff.
I mean, technically fascinating stuff, folks.
And there's been a lot of that today.
Now, if you go to the Coast to Coast AM website, here's another little bit of fascination for you.
Let me see if I can get there myself.
There was a CNN news crew that was covering an incident in Iraq.
And you'll see it right on the front page of coasttocoastam.com.
Now, in the original photo from CNN, in the upper right-hand corner, you can see someone's drawn a little John Madden-like circle around an object in the background.
And then you've got to go down and you've got to click on the close-ups, which you can do.
And when you click on the close-up, you'll see, well, you know, it could be a conventional aircraft of some kind.
God knows enough of them certainly in the skies over Iraq, right?
But this one does have a kind of a UFO shape to it.
So I, you know, as Stan would do, I would put this in my gray box, but certainly the CNN cameras caught something rather Interesting.
You can be the judge.
It's obviously not clear enough to say definitively what it is, but it does have a UFO-y type shape.
You might take a look at that.
Next item.
My webcam photo this evening.
In between talking to Denver and Los Angeles, trying to get all of this worked out so we could get the show to you tonight.
I turned on, you know, I got a new HDTV, which I just, you know, it's like, hey, bury me with this, you know?
It's a wonderful television, but I happened to click it on, and because I was in the middle of phone calls with Denver and so forth, and oh my gosh, here comes this program on Discovery HD.
Lord, what a channel.
Discovery High Definition.
And they were covering, thanks to the Japanese who had been working on it for two years, a total sun eclipse that was going to occur in the Antarctic.
Of all places, the Antarctic.
And the Japanese had worked out this incredible technology.
They had ground stations.
They had an airplane flying at, I don't know, 30 or 40,000 feet.
And they had shock mounted this high-definition camera inside the airplane.
They had replaced the airplane's window with a piece of a window made out of clear crystal.
I mean absolutely clear crystal.
An entire window made out of clear crystal.
And they covered for an hour and a half or so this incredible sight from a place in the world that is so hostile to man, Antarctica.
It's got It's got air so cold, so dry, so free of any particulate matter that it can be 20 below zero and you can breathe and there is nothing to see.
There's no fog that will come from your mouth as you speak.
And they covered this.
It occurred today in Antarctica and it was just absolutely amazing.
And the webcam picture, of course, wouldn't begin to do justice to it, but I got my camera out and took a picture of the screen.
And what you're seeing there If you take a good look, again, it's my webcam.
You go to coasttocoastam.com and click on Arts Webcam.
And what you'll see in the photograph is the moment of totality.
And, of course, you can see this, well, it speaks for itself.
Not in high definition, of course, because it was just me taking a picture of the, you know, the screen.
But, oh, what a program that was.
If you get an opportunity to see that on Discovery, it's something you don't want to miss, believe me.
So that's up there at the moment.
And just, it's one of those things, it's a jaw-dropper.
That's what it was, an absolute jaw-dropper.
We'll be back with more in a moment.
Open lines this hour.
As soon as we get to them, I've got a few things for you.
you and then open lines coming right up.
By the way, somebody just fast blasted and asked, well, why is the corona of the sun?
And that's what you see at that moment of totality.
You see the corona there around the moon, which is perfectly, actually a little better than perfectly covering the sun.
Did you know that eventually the moon will spiral out to the point where we will not have any A total sun eclipses again, because the moon will actually spiral out from the earth.
It's doing that a little bit every year, and eventually it'll be too small to cover the sun.
At any rate, the reason you see the corona, and the corona appears to be uneven, is not because you're seeing explosions from the sun, but because the sun has different magnetic forces in it that shape the corona in the way that you're seeing it right now.
And it looks like you're seeing explosions, but you're not.
That's just the son's magnetic field uh... distorting the corona and pushing it out uh... more in some places than others there is news of the day to talk about and let us begin uh... in iraq iraqi teenagers this this one is just uh... it's disgusting iraqi teenagers dragged
Bloodied U.S.
soldiers from a wrecked vehicle and pummeled them with concrete blocks Sunday.
Witnesses described the killings as a burst of savagery in a city once safe for Americans.
Another soldier was killed by a bomb and a U.S.
allied police chief was assassinated.
Nice way to say thank you for freeing that country.
Can you imagine that?
Two of our wounded U.S.
soldiers were dragged from a wrecked vehicle and beaten to death with concrete blocks.
Great way to say thank you.
In Afghanistan, five U.S.
soldiers were killed and seven injured when their helicopter crashed Sunday near the American military headquarters north of the Afghan capital.
Hoping to rescue energy legislation stalled in the Senate, Republicans were discussing elimination of a controversial provision to give legal protection to the makers of MTBE, a gasoline additive found to contaminate drinking water.
So they're going to give them legal protection?
Really?
These sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Senate and House officials, as well as the Bush administration, have discussed the suggestion, but no decisions have been made yet.
And it seems a little early, but radio, some radio stations, even though we've not yet made Thanksgiving, some radio stations are changing their format, and they're going to all music.
All Christmas music.
Before Thanksgiving.
Can you imagine that?
Matt Drudge had the headlines last night.
Matt Drudge always seems to get it first today, the British publication The Mirror, regarding the Michael Jackson story.
The following.
Unhinged Michael Jackson, listen to this, went into mid-air meltdown and tried to flee America as he flew home to be arrested and handcuffed.
The singer, sedated by doctors, But gripped by panic at child sex charges, demanded to be flown to a South American bolt, that's B-O-L-T, bolt hole.
Trembling and swaying, he ordered aides to change his plane's flight path and spring him to a haven beyond the reach of U.S.
law.
But Flunkies, their word, refused for fear that the U.S.
Air Control would force the 87 TD private jet down for an emergency landing by knocking out its satellite navigation systems.
And they insisted that Jackson, accused of sex offenses against 12-year-old, I'm not going to name him, a 12-year-old cancer victim, should give himself up Muttering to himself and screaming, it's not fair, Jackson spent the journey rocking backwards and forward in his seat.
The star's deranged antics on the jet from Las Vegas to California shocked even those used to his odd behavior.
At first, he refused to board the plane at all, taking him to Santa Barbara for a showdown with the district attorney there, Tom Sneddon.
Witness said, quote, his people almost dragged him on in the end.
He was shaking and in a state of near hysteria.
Once aboard, the father of three, Jackson, demanded the pilot change routes and take him and his children to South America.
The witness said, quote, Jackson was adamant he was going to do a runner because he was so nervous.
But his attorneys managed to talk him out of it.
There was a lot of shouting.
They told him the authorities would jam the guidance systems on the plane.
They said the plane would be forced into an emergency landing.
And even if he did succeed in leaving the country, he'd be extradited back to the United States.
And then this.
And again, Matt Drudge had this one early as well.
Jackson's explicit letters seized.
Letters and poems said to have been written by Michael Jackson to his alleged victim will form the centerpiece of the sex abuse case against him.
Police seized at least a dozen letters during a raid on Jackson's Neverland Ranch last week.
The district attorney is convinced these letters will be crucial to the case against Jackson.
The boy told investigators about letters and poems and their precise location inside Michael's home.
These letters were among the evidence seized along with video tapes.
They are very explicit and intimate and show a degree of familiarity.
Uh, basically they appear to be love letters from Michael to the boy.
Okay.
Time for a couple of others here.
And again, we're going to go into open lines here, um, after the bottom of the hour break.
So, uh, if you want to get on in the next half hour before our guest at the top, Oh, top of the hour, Matthew Alper is going to be here.
An incredible guy with an incredible.
theory about why we worship that's right why we worship and you know I've done I suppose in my years thousands of interviews and to some degree they run all together but Matthew Alper I've never been able to shake and I'm not exactly sure why perhaps after you hear him tonight You will understand why I've never been able to shake it.
But anyway, top of the hour.
On Sunday night, Monday morning, listen to this.
Remember this from, I believe, the last weekend, right?
On Sunday night, Monday morning, November 16th through the 17th, you had a caller, this is an email, you had a caller claiming to have found a shell casing in a two-inch pipe in the ground behind the Grassy Knoll in Dealey Plaza.
I am a resident of Dallas, 49 years.
And I visited Dealey Plaza today.
I found the pipe the caller was talking about.
And, in fact, it appears to be perfectly positioned to have caught an ejected shell casing, assuming the pipe was empty at the time, from the most likely spot that a marksman might have chosen behind the fence.
Today, the pipe is filled with dirt, just as the caller mentioned.
The pipe that the caller described appears to be the blowground portion of a metal fence post that's been cut off at ground level at some point in the past, as though it had been part of a picket fence at one time.
If the caller has sent the shell casing to you, which he has not, by the way, I would volunteer to send you some dirt from the same pipe if you're interested in pursuing any type of analysis.
I record your shows every weekend, listen to them during the week, driving to and from work.
Hope your back holds out.
Thank you.
And you're able to keep doing the show.
Thank you, Mike, in Dallas, Texas.
So, you know, with open lines, you never know.
You just never know.
And what appeared to be laughably wrong at the time, you never know.
Might have been the real McCoy.
So if the person without showcasing would kindly The most powerful conventional bomb in the U.S.
as the rest of you may do, I'm artbell at mindspring.com.
That's my email address.
artbell, a-r-t-e-b-e-l-l, lowercase, all strewn together, artbell at mindspring.com.
The most powerful conventional bomb in the U.S. arsenal exploded in a huge fiery cloud on a
Florida test range Friday after being dropped from an Air Force cargo plane
in the latest developmental step for nearly, actually an 11-ton, we always have the mother of all bombs, right?
The MOAB, the mother of all bombs.
So they actually let one go.
An MC-130E Combat Talon I dropped the 21,700-pound satellite-guided GBU-43-B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB, over the test range at Eglin Air Force Base in northwestern Florida.
A plume of smoke rose more than 10,000 feet in the air and was visible 40 miles away in Pensacola.
And of course there was a big UFO flap in the Bay Area.
I guess you heard about that, right?
It is still not clear what exactly caused the two bright balls of light that fell through the sky Thursday night.
KCBS reporter Holly Kwan says the National Weather Service thought it was Northern Lights, U.S.
Coast Guard.
Said it was leftovers from the Leonid Meteor Shower, which happens every year at the end of November.
A military representative said, quote, It couldn't have been anything but a meteor, because nothing else that we have in our arsenal flies at a velocity like that.
Now, fine.
Maybe it was a meteor, but again, study what the military said.
It couldn't have been anything but a meteor because nothing else that we have, key, we have, in our arsenal flies at that kind of velocity.
So, there you have it.
Now, the one thing nobody said was, well, maybe it was from elsewhere.
Everybody is so quick to say meteors.
Well, maybe most of the time they are meteors, but until you have a rock on the ground, In a hole in the ground where it fell, you can't know for sure it's a meteor.
Can you?
No, of course you can't.
So, you know, since we're this program, I thought I'd hold that possibility out to you.
Maybe it was something else.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
Thanks for watching.
He's got this dream about buying some land.
He's gonna give up the booze and the one night stand and then he'll settle down.
It's a quiet little town and forget about everything.
But you know he'll always keep moving You know he's never gonna stop moving
Cause he's rolling He's the Rolling Stone.
When you wake up, it's a new morning.
The sun is shining, it's a new morning.
You're gone, you're gone now Call Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nigh from west of the Rockies
at 1-800-325-9000 East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
First time callers may reach Art at 1-775-727-1222.
1-800-825-5033.
First time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
And the wildcard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
To rechart on the toll free international line, call your AT&T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell from the Kingdom of Nine.
Top of the hour tonight, Matthew Alper.
And of all the interviews I've ever done, I've not been able to shake the one I've done with Matthew.
And we'll do kind of a repeat and a lot more tonight, so... You've never heard him and... About the book he wrote called The God Part of the Brain.
Then you stay right where you are.
Because once you hear it, I don't think you'll be able to shake it either.
Let's do a little unscreened open line work, shall we?
On the first time caller line, you are on the air.
Hi.
Hello there.
Hi there.
Hi, this is Patrick from Houston.
Houston, huh?
Yeah.
Welcome, Patrick.
What's up?
It's a pleasure to talk to you.
I can't believe I got through in the first try.
I've been listening to you since 1995.
Well, yeah, I've been around for actually since the mid-80s doing this kind of show, believe it or not.
It's a pleasure to talk with you.
Andy, what's up?
Well, I was at the movies last week and I saw the preview for a movie the day after tomorrow.
Yes.
Is that based on The Coming Superstorm?
Why, yes indeed.
It is a movie suggested by the book The Coming Global Superstorm.
Day after tomorrow.
What did you think of the trailer?
Pretty awesome, huh?
Oh yeah, I mean, the scene right at the end when they showed the frozen ocean was quite a jaw-dropper.
I just hope, you know, I don't like my End of the World movies to have happy endings.
I hope that, you know, Does your subject matter?
End-of-the-world movies, by their very nature, should not have happy endings.
However, in this case, we'll have to wait and see.
Now, with regard to the movie, I would say they better hurry up and get it on.
The premiere date is May 28th, and the way the changes are going on in the world right now, for real, I hope they get a chance to show it.
I'm kind of kidding, but... Yeah, I know what you mean.
It is funny, isn't it?
So many times they make movies that appear at the time to be science fiction, and too many times they appear to turn into science fact, either before the movie comes out, or concurrent with the movie's release, or just afterward.
I mean, it's almost bizarre.
Yeah, the only thing that had me worried was that director of Independence Day.
I mean, that's a good movie, I liked it, but a little too much of a popcorn flick.
Oh, I loved Independence Day.
You know what I loved about Independence Day?
In the first, it was the first half, it's Roland Emmerich of course, the first half of Independence Day was without parallel.
I mean, for a change, they showed aliens that didn't want to bargain with us, they didn't want to change our national or even world policy, or they didn't want a thing from us, they just wanted us dead.
Right.
The first time you referenced that, I think in relationship to the terrorists, I immediately Thought of Independence Day.
I mean, yes, sir.
Great.
Yep.
Now, for my taste, it got a little syrupy in the second half.
But the first half was dynamite.
Yep.
All right.
I appreciate the call, sir.
All right.
You take care.
Right.
You too.
Yes, absolutely.
Proud to have Roland Emmerich.
And, you know, I'm sure he's just, well, the trailer shows you.
Go take a look if you want.
I mean, you go to Google and put in the day after tomorrow and you'll get to the trailer.
It's just incredible.
I mean, absolutely.
It's a jaw-dropper.
You'll go, wow!
I want to see that.
And I want to see that.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
This is James in Arctic, Kansas City.
In Arctic.
Is it cold there?
Is it a little cool?
Three days ago it was 75, and today it's about 15 right now.
32 degrees here in the desert.
We had a rip snorter come through, about 50 mile an hour winds, and it went from the mid-60s down to 30.
Wow, that's incredible.
Yes.
I have actually two questions.
First of all, with the climate change like we've all been hearing about... More like experiencing.
Exactly.
There was a gentleman that was interviewed, I believe it was by George, maybe eight months ago, and he talked about the coming ice storm and where the glacier would go to and where it would stop.
And he basically said it would stop at the Missouri River, which is Go right through Kansas City.
And he's talking about skyscraper size stuff.
He wasn't talking about ground level permafrost or anything.
He was basically saying hundreds of feet of ice.
And he said it could happen in a very rapid manner.
And he kind of tied a little bit of it into maybe The Earth changing its axis again, because that is one thing that's scientific fact.
A lot of speculation about a lot of stuff like Planet X, but one thing that's fact is the planet's poles shift and the Earth goes through dramatic changes.
We've just never seen it to document it.
Well, for the last couple of weeks, my friend, I've been covering a story about a nice green leaf down in the mountains in Peru.
Where apparently there was lush tropical type climate at one point and then boom!
It changed overnight and that has remained frozen for thousands and thousands and thousands of years and the climate has not changed since.
So that indicates that literally happened within a matter of hours or a few days.
Sure, and that's just frightening.
I can't imagine Uh, at least half the Earth's population being able to survive something like that.
Lord knows the mammoths and animals ten times the size of humans weren't able to survive it, so I don't see us being able to.
I'm just lucky I'm on the south side of the Missouri River, and the glacier won't get to my two miles south of it, but I don't feel that I'm in a safe zone, but I think it's absolutely happening.
I hope it doesn't happen as fast as he's saying it's going to happen, but As far as the rapid change in water, I've spent lots of time on the East Coast and in Ocean City, Maryland.
Over the summer, there was a report from documenters out there who document water temperature.
The water temperature dropped 10 degrees overnight.
Oh, yes.
That's just unheard of.
I know.
And for water to be changing at that temperature and where it's coming from, it really ought to be paid attention to.
And I don't see anything in the mainstream news about it.
That's why I'm a Streamlink subscriber.
And I get the news that I think is important, not the news that we're fed.
I recommend it to everybody.
But I really think we need to pay attention to that.
And my other question is, how familiar are you with the, for lack of a better term, death zone around the supervolcano?
And at what point does that 100% death zone stop and then It would depend on the magnitude of the explosion, of course.
Going back to your first question, yes, of course, if you observe the changes going on in our weather, which I believe are related to the changes going on with our sun, if you observe the changes at the North Pole and at the South Pole, And put together all of the weather data and the climate data that we're seeing right now, and you don't come up with a sum total of, hey, it's changing.
And I tire of the argument of whether it's man's hand or a cyclic change.
Doesn't matter.
Seems to me it doesn't matter one bit because it is changing and there's nothing we're going to do to stop it.
So what we should be doing is adjusting to that change And planning our agriculture and the rest of what we do based on the obvious fact that it is changing.
In effect, otherwise, we fiddle as Rome, this being Rome in this case, burns.
So, I don't know.
It's obvious, it's changing, and I wish we would begin to pay attention to how to live through it, instead of arguing about why.
East of the Rockies, you are on the air.
Hello.
Good evening, Mr. Bell.
How are you?
I'm just fine, thank you.
It's great to have you back on the air, and I wish all the best to you and yours.
Thank you.
My name is Sean.
I'm calling from Washington, D.C., and I'm listening to you on WTNT.
Way to go.
Now, I've seen a number of strange things in my life, Mr. Bell, and what I'm about to relate to you at the time I actually did not think was a very strange thing, but the other night George Norrie related what could possibly have been a chupacabra sighting in Toronto.
Are you perhaps familiar with what I'm speaking of?
I'm not really.
I didn't hear the show.
So it's somebody who thought they saw a chupacabra in Toronto, a little north for the chupacabra.
Yeah, no doubt.
Well, some sort of creature, roughly coincident with the description of chupacabra, he saw in a sewer system in Toronto in 1979.
It could have been a completely different animal that we're talking about.
And to an extent, I would like to say that My training from the University of Washington was, in fact, in wildlife science.
So what I'm going to relate to you is actually what I would think of as an animal sighting.
But when I looked into the subject myself, and I guess I'll go back to the beginning here.
In June of 2000, I was living on a few acres in Pensacola, Florida.
And we were having a terrible drought at the time.
uh... and so i was watering the trees uh... around my house because Well, a couple of them had fallen on my truck, and one of them had threatened to fall on my house, and the cost-benefit ratio of watering the trees seemed to make some sense.
By the way, while you're talking about this, I'm going to go to an archive I have.
I had one photograph that I consider to be good of a chupacabra.
I mean, this is a real beaut, and I'm going to send it up to my webcam as we speak.
So go ahead, continue.
Well, great.
I'll check that out in just a minute.
Okay.
Now basically from that story I went on and I looked at a number of different chupacabra sites.
The story itself sort of intrigued me.
But basically in 2000 I was watering my trees and during the hottest part of the day I would spray down the trunks with nozzle sprayer and at one point the spray of my water went into the cavity of one of these trees and They were water oaks and they tend to form these pretty big cavities that wildlife likes to live in.
And the water sprayed in there and out from this cavity in the tree popped these two animals, roughly about two feet long, that were white Had somewhat powerful looking legs and bat-like arms.
Not entirely like bats, if for only the fact that they were white and they also did not have the ears that you normally associate with bats.
And I've seen a number of bats.
There's a kind of bat, you may have seen this out in your neck of the woods, called the Western Mastiff bat.
I have, yes.
It's a very large bat.
It's like a chihuahua and a hang glider.
It's big.
Now, the body of that bat is about 9 to 14 inches long.
These were about two feet long and white.
And there were two of them.
And they popped out of this hole and scampered around the tree and ran up.
And I tried to get another sight of them.
And I was living in the country in Florida and have an interest in wildlife science.
And so I was just trying to get a sight of them.
I went into my wife at the time, and I said, my gosh, I've just seen something that looked like an albino fruit bat or something.
Let's look on the Internet and see if there's any description of this kind of being or creature.
I don't want to sound too spooky here.
Out there, we couldn't find anything, and it's really only now, years later.
I don't live in Florida.
Not even married anymore.
You think you might have seen a chupacabra?
Okay, well listen, go to the website, coasttocoastam.com.
As you were speaking to me, I uploaded the only photograph that I think may be an accurate picture.
I can't say that.
I don't know it to be an accurate photograph of a chupacabra.
Anyway, it's scary as hell.
And it's the only one that has ever been, let's say, passed on to me as being a chupacabra, and something that I utterly don't recognize otherwise.
There may be somebody out there that does, but it's pretty creepy on my webcam right now.
If you go to www.coasttocoastam.com, west of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes, hi.
Hi.
This is Kathy from Henderson.
Well, hi, Kathy.
How are you?
Fine.
I happened on that show just as it was beginning on the solar eclipse.
Oh my gosh!
What a program!
What a program!
I couldn't believe it!
Discovery HD and or even just Discovery I guess.
It was beautiful!
The sky, it was so clear and then they showed, you could even see the mountain peaks instead of the moon and then they saw the black spots on the sun.
I mean, what an incredible thing the Japanese did.
spots were totally visible. I mean what they had from the Antarctica, what an incredible
thing the Japanese did. It took them two years to do that, to even get ready for it.
The plane they set up, everything they did, it was great.
Yeah, to see a high-definition from the Antarctic, I thought it was spellbinding.
It was!
I couldn't... I didn't leave the TV set.
I just sat there and looked at it.
I couldn't move.
I mean, I never seen anything like it.
Excellent.
It was absolutely beautiful.
Well, I appreciate your concurrence.
But one more thing, Art.
Yes, ma'am?
I have called the radio station here, and you know our local station here that carries George, Monday through Friday.
Yes.
And I've had friends call, and I've had family call, and I'm not getting any response, because I'm not getting you in clear or hardly at all.
Which station are you referring to?
Caydawn.
Oh, in Las Vegas.
Yeah.
Which you might try.
It's going to be really rough from Henderson, but we do have a translator that sends KNYE over the hill at 100.1 FM.
And so you might give that a shot.
We've got the translator on low potency.
If you point an antenna from Las Vegas to low potency, you might just get lucky and get it.
Otherwise, the next best shot for you would be KFI from Los Angeles.
Yes, I think I'm getting KOH or something like that.
That would be KOH 780 from Reno, but you can also try 640 KFI in LA.
They might have a slightly stronger signal into Vegas.
Okay, 640.
And then the other one is FM.
101?
A 100.1.
100.1.
100.1 FM.
Give it a try.
I'm going to give that a try, because I'm trying like crazy to get you here on the weekend, but I'm not having any luck.
Well, they have paid programming, as you know.
I know.
That's what this person explained to me.
That's correct.
All right, dear.
Thank you.
Thank you, Art.
And good luck.
Yes, KNYE has a translator at 100.1 FM, and you can give that a try.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hello.
Thank you for your truly infectious laugh.
You're welcome.
How are you doing?
All right.
Major Ed sounds so down.
Do you think that if we called him Major Awareness instead of Major Doom, it might change his messages altogether?
No.
No, I don't think so.
A lot of people either love or hate Ed.
He's alright.
You're kind of in a he's okay category, huh?
One thing you've got to say about him, for years and years and years, people laughed and cawed about his crowing about the sun.
And then all of a sudden I started getting these emails saying, uh-oh, uh-oh, in the last few weeks, this sure smacks of what Ed Dames was talking about.
Yes, sir.
So, there you are.
Um, so, no, I don't think, you know, a rose by any other name probably would still be looking at the end of the world.
Thank you.
You're very welcome.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hey, Art.
Hello.
Where are you, sir?
Worcester, Mass.
Worcester.
All right.
Welcome.
It's James.
Yes, James.
What's up?
I have a quick funny story for you.
A what story?
Funny story for you.
Okay.
It's in the miscellaneous category.
Uh-huh.
Borrowed my mom's car one night, right?
I beg your pardon?
I borrowed my mother's car one night?
I'm having a tough time understanding you.
Oh, hold on.
You know what?
Maybe I'm in a bad spot.
Are you on a cell phone?
I'm on a cordless.
On a cordless phone, yes.
How's that?
I'm sorry.
Okay, we'll try it again.
Okay.
I borrowed my mother's car one night, right?
I think maybe it's your accent.
Oh, come on.
You always pick on it.
What is it you're saying?
Again, slowly.
I borrowed my mom's car one night.
You borrowed your mom's car?
Oh, it's the car.
You're picking on the car.
Car, car.
Yeah, that's it.
I'm sorry.
That's okay.
And I'm originally from the Northeast, too.
I should be able to pick up on that.
Okay, we don't have a lot of time.
So you got her car?
Yes.
It's been broken for two years.
Yes.
Never worked.
She just drove it to and from work, blah, blah.
Yes.
Called a bunch of buddies.
Yes.
They throw a tape in.
It plays.
You know, usually it's shredded.
It didn't come in at all, nothing.
It's been totally dead for years.
And?
It works.
Plays for the whole night.
Pulled the tape out.
No tape ever worked again.
No tape ever worked again?
If you wish me.
It was a ghost tape.
I don't know.
Either that or one of those magicians who can fix things.
Remember that?
Watches?
Suddenly start working.
Tapes too?
In cars?
It was car.
I couldn't get that.
All right, we're going to take a break, and as I said, one of the most unshakable interviews I've ever done was with Matthew Alper, a guy who wrote something called The God Part of the Brain.
And that's where we're going, at the top of the hour, in the nighttime, running through the darkness like a freight train.
This is Coast to Coast AM and I'm Art Bell.
Welcome to the Coast to Coast AM and AMC News.
Welcome to the Coast to Coast AM and AMC News.
When I think of...
Once upon a time, once when you were mine I remember your smiles reflected in your eyes
As I wonder where you are, I won't forget you think about me
Once upon a time, in your wildest dreams Wanna take a ride?
Call Art Bell from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
First time callers may reach Art at 1-775-727-1222.
to the Rockies 1-800-825-5033. First time callers may reach out at 1-775-727-1222. The
wild card line is open at 1-775-727-1295. And to call out on the toll free international
line call your AT&T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell from the Kingdom of Nine.
It is just a program reminder.
By schedule, I will not be here next weekend.
Ramona and I will climb into what we call our land yacht and experience the outside world a little bit.
Barbara Simpson will be here, along with others.
I'm not quite sure how they have it all scheduled.
Just wanted to remind you of that.
Alright, coming up in a moment, as I said earlier, and I'm going to repeat now, for Matthew's benefit, since he's on the line, I've done, in my career, thousands of interviews, and frankly, a lot of them run together in a lot of ways, but this interview, this man, Matthew Alper, And his book, The God Part of the Brain, I certainly believe in a creator.
I do.
I believe in a creator.
I'm not sure about my belief structure otherwise.
I was christened Lutheran and I didn't really attend a lot of church after asking questions that weren't answered.
So I've never been a formally religious person, but I do believe in a creator now.
What Matthew Alper will say to you tonight may challenge that, and it may disturb you.
There are many who get very upset with Matthew Alper, and others who, if they quietly listen and consider what he's about to say, well, he'll probably be disturbed, frankly.
But it's an intellectual process that I think is a good thing for all of us.
And so tonight we have Matthew Alper.
Matthew Alper was born and raised in New York City.
us is called the God part of the brain. Stand by for a ride indeed.
Matthew Alper was born and raised in New York City. He was educated at Vassar and North
London University where he acquired a degree in philosophy of science. After finishing
school Matthew spent extensive time living abroad in Europe, Africa and Asia where he
studied comparative world cultures, religion and history.
After teaching high school history, Matthew went on to become a screenwriter, and then to write his seminal work, The God Part of the Brain.
Since then, Matthew has lectured at various universities on the topic of cognitive science and philosophy.
He has also been written up in the Washington Post and appeared on NBC.
And when I first got him online tonight, he said, well, you must have called me because of, what was it?
Because of last week's Newsweek cover article, which is, God and Health.
Is Religion Good Medicine?
Why Science is Starting to Believe.
Really?
Yeah.
No, Matthew, I called you and scheduled you as a guest, or had you called, because I've never been able to shake you.
That's why.
Because I've never been able to shake the interview.
It probably intellectually impacted me as much or more than any I've ever done.
There's obviously a great, great number of new listeners to the program.
Let us begin at the beginning.
What do you in fact mean by the God part of the brain?
Okay, well what I'm suggesting is it starts with a premise based in modern evolutionary theory which suggests that any trait that's universal to a species must have a genetic component.
So if we take whether the fact that all cats have whiskers Or humans have two hands, etc.
It's not an accident, it's because within those creatures' genetic blueprint is information that determines the creation of these parts of us.
Right.
The same, according to sociobiology, a newer offshoot of evolutionary theory, the same premise can be applied to universal behaviors as well.
So, for instance, the fact that all cats meow or all dogs bark.
Even if you took a kitten away from its parents, at birth and raised it by humans it would still grow to
meow basically suggesting that it's not a learned behavior but
an inherited reflex a genetic genetically inherited
behavior and the human equivalent of that you're going to apply to our brain I guess huh exactly
so our I'm sorry our brain then is a genetic order and is ordered
genetically is that correct?
Well, I'm kind of pointing it more toward the specific behavior.
What it does is now the sociobiological sciences look for universal behaviors in any number of species, including homo sapien, our species.
So, for instance, the fact that every culture from the beginning of our species, no matter how isolated, has created some form of a spoken language.
Would suggest that humans are a linguistic animal, or an animal with the capacity to create a language, to put together sounds that represent symbolically objects.
Fair.
Okay.
The next step in the science is to then look into the brain to see if this is true.
Are there parts of the brain from which this behavior is generated?
According to the neurosciences, there's the Wernicke's area, the Broca's area, the angular gyrus, parts of the brain that generate these specific Language behaviors, this capacity for us to speak or read or write a language.
If you damage any of these parts, you'll suffer what's called misphasia, which is damage to some part of your language ability, whether it's to comprehend written words, spoken word, to speak, etc.
Matthew, is there, and I know we investigate from time to time, tribes that have, you know, never been touched by civilization.
Have we ever come upon a case where, for example, Humans did not develop in the same way.
They, for example, went on all fours instead of walking upright.
That if they didn't have the example of human behavior, they might develop in some other way.
Right, right.
Do we have anything?
No, nothing.
Obviously there are deviations, but within certain themes.
And those themes are basically universal to every human culture that's ever been explored.
So now what I've done is I've applied this sociobiological premise to human spirituality.
The fact that every culture, no matter how isolated, has maintained a belief in some form of a spiritual reality, has prayed and worshipped gods, has buried its dead with a ritual anticipating sending a person's spirit to some other realm, suggesting that humans are a spiritual animal.
It's an inherent part of our nature, Therefore, ergo, it's part of our genetic makeup to believe these things.
Yeah, no matter how isolated a tribe might be found, they worship the sun or something.
In every single case, something is worshipped.
Right, and we create deities.
We actually anthropomorphize these somethings.
We generally give them some type of human form or personified form.
We call it the wind or, like you said, the sun.
But every culture has prayed to and believed in some form of a spiritual reality, a reality that transcends the limitations of our physical world.
And moreover, the belief that since there does exist a spiritual reality, we're partly composed in spirit as well, which explains the universal belief in the notion of a spirit or soul, which also then goes a step further into the universality of a belief that when the physical body dies, This spiritual component within us, this soul, will persevere beyond physical death.
And this is a universal chain of belief systems that has existed in every culture, again, no matter how isolated, from the dawn of man.
Actually, even dating back to Neanderthal, which is the only other species that has shown, through its behaviors, any evidence of possessing some type of a belief in another reality.
Because they buried their dead with artifacts, suggesting they believed that these were possessions they would be taking to some next world.
Yes.
So, therefore, the premise of the theory is that humans are hardwired to believe in some form of a spiritual reality, to believe in gods, a soul, and an afterlife.
That that would be some sort of genetic order to the brain.
Mm-hmm.
Meaning it would be an evolutionary adaptation, that it evolved in us For a very particular reason, to serve some function to enhance our species' survivability.
I'll go into that momentarily, but the ramifications of such a theory are that it's not that God created man, but that God is the manifestation of a cognitive process, of human wiring.
So that, basically, if you take man out of the picture, there is no God, there are no gods, there is no spiritual reality.
That all spirit is the consequence of a cognitive process that exists in our species.
Are you an atheist?
Yes.
You are an atheist.
So an atheist, flat out, so we define it, an atheist just does not believe there is any such thing as God, period, right?
Well, I don't believe in any form of a spiritual reality, and that encompasses all things spiritual, including a god or gods, Spirits, souls, afterlives.
I am forced, I think, to agree with you that there is this genetic order that creates the God part of the brain.
I really do think I agree with that.
Now, your position would be, I think, that it's a product of evolution that such an order was issued or created.
But why is it not possible, Matthew, possible, That this God part of the brain was an order by the Creator.
I mean, how can you rule that out?
Okay, well, the only way one can rule it out is you have to first take your stand.
Are you one a creationist or an evolutionist?
If you take a bit, if we're going to accept and embrace the science of evolutionary theory, which has been supported time and time again by everything from The, you know, putting together of the human genome to gene splicing, to gene enhancement.
We use it with the food products we eat.
It's basically been tested and proven again and again.
So if we accept evolutionary theory, I do, we have to then accept that every part of us, including every part of our brain or every part of our heart, whether it's the valves in our heart or the veins that run throughout our body, we can't say, Well, everything else evolved in us except this part of the brain that was injected by God.
If there is a neurophysiological site that's responsible for generating these perceptions and these belief systems, then if we do embrace evolutionary theory, then it's an organ, it's organic matter, and we have to therefore seek an evolutionary explanation for why did this evolve in us?
Why was this process selected into our species' genetic makeup?
Well, I've never really had a problem embracing creation and evolution.
I've always felt that evolution, I mean it's obvious, the science is there, I wouldn't even try to argue with it, but again, who's to say that the hand of the creator isn't responsible for the The first domino in the evolutionary process.
You would be almost like in the realm of an Aristotelian deus.
You believe God gave the primary push, and from there on things have been evolving.
Yes, and I have a problem with someone who says they're an atheist, because that's almost into itself a religion as unprovable as the other.
To me, it's possible our Creator did give us the God part.
And I can appreciate that argument, that ultimately nothing is 100% provable.
However, generally speaking, we're a skeptical species, and the burden of proof lies in proving the existence of something.
So if I'm suggesting that such an object exists, it's up to me to prove that it does, rather than for everyone else to come and prove that it doesn't.
I could then take that argument and I could apply it to unicorns, and leprechauns, and flying pink dragons, and I could not prove, under any circumstance, that there is not a purple flying dragon, invisible dragon, you know, sitting on my head right now.
I could never disprove that fact, but again, if someone's going to suggest that there is such a thing, I would say, well then, the burden of proof is on you, show me.
Because otherwise, it's an absurd argument, because you can't disprove the existence of Well, how are you doing on proving the God part of the brain?
Okay, well, good question.
In the last, more or less, like, you know, ten years, not even, there's been all sorts of scientific validation of this notion that have been coming out.
The first evidence is the sociobiological.
the fact that every culture, no matter how isolated, has continued to perpetuate these
very similar rituals and customary practices. That's the sociobiological argument.
The next argument that I refer to is the ethnobotanical, which is the fact that various cultures, again
from the dawn of our species, spread across the continent, have used different substances
to induce religious and spiritual experiences. So whether it was the Aztecs' use of magic
mushrooms, which they referred to as God's flesh in their language, or the use of peoples
through Africa, all over South America, in the Amazon, the Scythians, even the Greeks
used various substances as part of their religious ritual to induce a spiritual experience.
The fact that chemistry can induce this type of experience would suggest that it's neurophysiological in nature.
Speaking of physiological, can we yet put electrodes in a brain and observe during worship or prayer a specific area of activity within the brain?
Actually, that fits into the category of what I call the neurophysiological argument.
There are several things that encompass that argument.
That's actually the most recent and in many ways compelling evidence That there is a God part of the brain and I was kind of leading up to that.
Okay.
You're jumping the gun on my grand finale here.
I'm sorry.
Go back to the build up.
Okay.
The next argument is the genetic, which in the last five years, they've been doing a lot of genes.
they've been doing a lot of uh... genetic studies based in identical twin
studies and
mit university minnesota did the most comprehensive where they took forty
thousand pairs of identical twins separated at birth
and then they compared and contrasted different case preferences that cetera
one of the things that they compared and contrasted work religious attitudes and and and and
conviction of belief very interesting Now, bear in mind, everybody, these are twins at birth, separated, and then, I suppose, studied later as adults.
And the object of the study was to find out, I guess, how specifically genetic Things like belief systems and every aspect of life, it would turn out to be... Right, how musical is someone, how moral is someone, every type of behavior they broke it down to, like taste in clothing and food, etc.
And what were the results?
Well, they found that there was a 50% higher correlation of similarity between religious conviction and attitude as compared to fraternal twins separated at birth.
That's a wow!
So fraternal twins don't have the same genes.
Identical twins do.
Right.
So obviously these same people separated, raised in completely different environments, when raised to adulthood, ended up having a much, a 50% higher likelihood of having the same type of religious conviction or belief.
Now that doesn't mean religious conviction as in like, you know, they believed in the same religion.
They just were asked to like write out like in a number of, you know, out of one to ten, How strongly religious you are, how often you attend church, how often you pray, etc.
And so they found that there's a genetic, there's obviously a connection through our genes, you know, that correlates to our sense of religiosity and spirituality.
And a 50% greater corollary as compared to fraternal twins that were given the same study.
Yeah, that'll be a while.
Okay.
And then the last, which is again going back to the neurophysiological argument, which deals with various studies that have been done specifically on the human brain to see if the sociobiological premise pays off.
How recent are these studies?
All done within like the last seven years.
Okay.
The first one I'll point to, which you just referred to, was the work done by Eugene Bikili and his assistant Andrew Newberg, where they took monks, Buddhist monks, as well as Franciscan nuns, they took two separate groups that believed in two separate religions, and in the midst of there, they took the nuns and had them pray, and had them pull a string when they reached that heightened sense of experience that they say they feel when they pray.
And they had the monks do the same when they reached that sense of transcendental meditation that they were seeking.
And they turned on an MRI to do a brain scan.
And what they found was that they ended up with the same results, the same changes to the brain were shown through the tests of these two different groups, as compared to people who were not meditating or praying.
It does a number of things.
One thing it does is when you meditate or pray, your brain's amygdala, which is a part that every human possesses, it's a part of what's called the limbic system where emotions are generated.
All right, hold that thought.
We're at the bottom of the hour, Matthew.
I guess this Matthew Alper, his book is The God Part of the Brain.
Just at that point, you pull this string.
I'm Art Bell from the high desert, coast to coast, AM, underway in the dark.
I can feel it coming in the air tonight.
Oh.
so so
you so
do from west of the rockies dial one
East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
First time callers may recharge at 1-775-727-1222.
East of the Rockies 1-800-825-5033.
First time callers may reach out at 1-775-727-1222 or use the wildcard line at 1-775-727-1295.
To reach out on the toll free international line, call your AT&T operator and have them
dial 800-893-0903.
This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell on the Premier Radio Networks.
You've really got to ask yourself, no matter where in the world you go, the deepest jungles of the Philippines, some of the islands in that part of the world, South America, areas where they found tribes that have never ever encountered modern man.
What modern man has found is that these tribes always worship something.
Always are spiritual in some way.
Perhaps to us as Christians or Buddhists or whatever we happen to be, we consider it strange or bizarre, but always something is worshipped.
There's a reason for that, perhaps, and Matthew Alper has the answer, perhaps.
Matthew, I am fast blasted by Lexi in Seattle, Washington.
We have lungs because there is air.
We have mouths because there is food.
We have eyes because there is light.
Doesn't it follow that we have a God center of the brain because there is a God?
Seems logical to me.
Anyway, we were, I think, stuck at the amygdala.
And I will answer that question.
I will go back later as to why do we have this.
All right.
OK.
Yes, so when these two neuroscientists started experimenting on people's brains by putting them in MRIs while they were in the midst of meditation and prayer, they recorded the various changes that took place in the brain.
All of this can be seen in, I think it was in 2001 Newsweek, Are We Wired for Spirituality.
That's right, I remember that.
I'm surprised they didn't come and interview you.
Well, that was their mistake.
It may have been, but it was my shock.
When I saw that cover, I went, Matthew!
Yeah, well, I kind of turned that editor on to this story.
So, that was its own little political thing.
Interesting.
So, what they found was, one, the brain's amygdala, where fear is generated, got a decreased blood flow.
So, all sense of fear is diminished.
We're overcome with this sense of serenity, of calm, of tranquility, of euphoria.
The next thing, the brain's parietal lobe, where basically our biological clock is.
It's where temporal and spatial consciousness is generated.
Also, decreased blood flow.
So we're left feeling sort of this ambiguous feeling, this loss of sense of time and space, which is often recorded when people define their spiritual experiences.
Next thing, decreased blood flow to the frontal lobe.
Which is where our sense of self is generated.
So, we report feelings like a loss of sense of self, a dissolution of normal ego boundaries, a feeling connected to some greater whole.
And the last thing that was found was there was an increased blood flow to the brain's temporal lobe, which corresponded with other research being done in this science, specifically with a Dr. Ramachandran, who was doing studies on epilepsy, and he found that within the people who he was studying within these various epileptics, there was a particular type of epilepsy that started in the brain's temporal lobe.
He called them temporal lobe epileptics.
These specific people, these temporal lobe epileptics, it also happened where generally they happen to be What he described as hyper-religious, and during their seizures, they would go into this state of religious ardor, often crying or going into some religious ecstasy, sometimes falling to the ground in just like a reflex behavior, almost like spouting the thing, God, God, God, God, coming out of it, running through the streets crying, God is here, God is here.
Again, finding that possibly this might be one of the locations where our religious instincts and impulses are generated.
So, a fellow scientist, the Dr. Persinger up in Canada, who had created a device called a transcranial magnetic stimulator.
It looks like a football helmet.
You put it on your head and it basically, it will send a focused magnetic wave Into some specific region in the brain, wherever you point it to.
Right.
And it will stimulate that region in the brain.
So based on Ramachandran's experiments with these temporal lobe epileptics, Dr. Persinger decided to take his helmet and point it at people's temporal lobe.
Matthew, were these the same experiments that were said to have produced what are known as near-death experiences and that sort of thing?
No, actually that's done with a guy, Jensen.
A neurophysiologist who injected people with a drug, ketamine.
Ketamine.
Well, no, but there was also a stimulation of the brain non-chemically, I think.
Oh, yeah.
With some sort of electromagnetic apparatus, which did produce, I believe, What they called an NDE or something of that order.
Well, it's possible.
It's possible.
The last I heard of Persinger and his helmet was in pointing at the temporal lobe.
Perhaps he redirected it to some other specific part of the temporal lobe and found that it triggered something close to a near-death experience.
What I'm knowledgeable of are his experiments where he pointed it to the temporal lobe and found that not consistently But more consistently than pointing it to any other part of the brain, people felt that they reported feeling the presence of God, and it was also determined by religion.
So, you know, Christians said they maybe felt the presence of Jesus in the room, whereas Muslims said they felt the presence of Allah.
Yes.
So again, it stimulated their religious proclivities, their sense of a religious belief system, all done by pure neuromechanics, just You know, neural hardwiring, no divine spirit being infused in them, just a little electricity.
Similar to what these various primitive cultures have been doing, using different chemicals to, again, induce the same experiences, except chemically instead of electrically.
Well, I remember our first interview, Matthew, and in that, I think at about this point I asked you why our brains would be so constructed By evolution, if you wish, or whatever.
And in your answer, I thought was interesting, you said, we have, all humans have, instinctually, a terrible fear of our own mortality, of death.
And that the brain's only way to handle that, and to have people remain sane, was to give them something to look forward to.
In other words, this God part of the brain, is genetically there, because otherwise we'd go crazy in fear of dying and utter nothingness, presumably.
So that's why the God part of the brain.
Do you still believe that to be true?
Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much the crux of it.
I mean, more specifically, after I'd come upon all the science and these various arguments that seem to support that, yes, we are hardwired this way, well, the next thing I had to do was say, well, as with any part of our body, Whether it's a part of any other organ or the brain.
If it did emerge in us, if it does exist, it must have provided some sort of function.
It must have some adaptive value for why nature would have selected this.
There must have been some need.
So I started separating those traits that are unique to humans from every other species.
And the most profound difference that correlate also with parts of the brain that give us these capacities is that humans, unlike any other species, possess self-conscious awareness.
They're the first self-conscious organism.
And what that did was, it enhanced our species.
It's the primary factor that makes us the strongest species on Earth.
Because once we develop self-conscious awareness, we sort of took the reins from natural selection thereafter.
So, for instance, if another Ice Age occurs, We don't have to wait passively 10 million years to grow thicker coats, to have thicker coats of hair selected in us.
Instead, we'll just say, I feel cold, and we can modify ourselves, so we will sew ourselves a coat of fur.
So, in developing self-conscious awareness, humans develop the capacity for self-modification.
If there's some slight change in the environment, we no longer have to wait to be selected And we can change ourselves.
We can alter our own environments.
We can build walls to fortify ourselves.
We can build weapons to make ourselves stronger than any species with claws and fangs and wings, etc.
Well, with the current change going on globally with our weather and the changes in the globe, I wonder if that ability isn't slightly stalled at the moment because we seem to be arguing about why it's changing as opposed to adapting, which I think we should be doing, to the obvious change at any rate.
Okay.
Well, regardless of that, you know, issue in itself, what happened was humans becoming the first self-conscious animal, the first self-aware creature, what happened was, at the same time, that evolutionary adaptation backfired on us, because it made us the first Creature also aware of our own mortality.
Once we became aware of the notion that we are, we exist.
Yes.
Humans became the first species to realize that one day we won't.
Right.
And empirically we see it validated every day.
Things die.
Living things die.
So we're running on a clock and that clock is ticking and one day it's gonna run out.
Yes.
And that's inevitable.
Yes.
All life is wired to survive.
It's the primary motivation of all living things.
Self-preservation.
From up until man, all life was wired with these mechanisms that if some life-threatening situation occurred, that organism would be repelled by it, and it would try and avoid life-threatening circumstance.
All of a sudden, a species comes into the picture that becomes aware of the fact that no matter what it does, it cannot escape death.
All of a sudden, humans were subdued by a perpetual mortal crisis.
A constant sense of peril and dread.
And so you think our brain in its own defense, and the only defense possible would be the creation of what you call the God part of the brain.
Hypothetically, Matthew, our scientists right now are getting closer and closer to a life extension and ultimately, perhaps even within our lifetimes, eternal life.
In other words, even to the point where brains might be downloaded into machines, and that's really going off the cliff, but basically suppose science were to make that giant leap, and all of a sudden we were immortal.
What do you suppose then would be the change in man?
How would man's brain adapt to that immortality when it's stuck with its god part?
Well, I mean, it's all, you know, very compelling questions and the notion of, like, consciousness being downloaded is, you know, that's material for a screenplay right there.
Oh, yes.
But how would we deal with that?
Well, first of all, the notion of eternal.
I mean, even if somebody, you know, some scientist said, take this pill and you will never age.
It still doesn't mean that I'm eternal.
I mean, you know, I could step outside my door and some drunken driver could smush me into goo.
True enough.
So that fear, then, you maintain even with otherwise.
Right.
I mean, there's always physical ends.
So at some point, we have to be connected.
As long as we're not spiritual, we have to be connected to some physical mechanic.
Even if they can take our brain out and put it in an android, which has like three layers of steel that is very hard to penetrate, ultimately, You know, a meteorite shower, any number of things.
Or even if you're downloaded into a machine, somebody pulls the plug.
Yeah, I get it.
In other words, there's always going to be the fear of mortality.
Exactly.
And just the fact that we're aware of it, it will always exist within us.
It's one of the most essential parts of the human condition is to be aware, have existential awareness.
Sure.
And it's what makes us unique from the other animals.
It's basically, you know, almost what compels us to almost separate ourselves from the other animals.
Those are the animals, and we're men, as if that's somehow different.
Well, I think it's a mixed blessing.
And that's exactly what it is.
It made us the most, you know, aware, powerful, astute, you know, we're capable of seeing things that no other species could ever dream of.
And, you know, in many ways it's an exciting and wonderful existence, but at the same time, we know that it It comes with a timer.
So, the fear of knowing that death could come at any given moment, we just don't know when, we just know that it will, left us in a chronic state of panic.
And nature, therefore, had to select some type of modification, some type of cognitive modification that would help, you know, would allow us to survive our unique intelligence and with it our awareness of death.
So, what I suggest is And the reason I say this is, I mean, there are a lot of people who are coming up with different theories now as to, like, why this evolved.
The fact that a burial ritual or a funerary rite of some sort is so universal to every culture, to the belief in a soul and the preservation of that soul, whether we call it reincarnation, heaven, hell, the transmigration of spirit, every culture has come up with a sense that we're immortal, we have an immortal soul.
So I believe that the universality of that belief system points to that fear of death must have played a critical role in the evolution of these belief systems.
So I think that that's probably, again, what marks us more unique from the other species than any other capacity we have, whether it's for musical ability or mathematical ability or language ability, all of course which interconnect even with our spiritual awarenesses.
I think that the most compelling argument, again, is that it's a consequence of self-conscious awareness.
Well, you know the program I do here, it deals very frequently, Matthew, with the paranormal, aspects of the paranormal or spiritual.
And I've had a number of recent guests on who have quoted some absolutely astounding statistics regarding prayer.
on other words are you got uh... one group and then you've got a
control group i guess and uh... you get into a situation where these groups are
praying for the recovery
of somebody and uh... uh... they did this in many many many many cases are
groups that uh... people that were not prayed for versus groups of people that
were prayed for and the results are
pretty astounding at least a sounding as a study you quoted earlier on brain
and uh... you know the people who are prayed for are and then they don't know they're being prayed for so there's
no voodoo here They get healthier?
Live longer?
Recover faster?
I'm sure you've seen the studies, right?
No.
Well, there are various studies.
And again, if one wants to look at November 10, 2003's cover story of Newsweek, God and Health is Religion, Good Medicine, Why Science is Starting to Believe, the cover story with a picture of a woman praying.
Yes.
They cite various studies, and what they say is that, you know, it has been in question whether people prayed for who have no knowledge that they're even prayed for, whether that has any consequences, and according to this article, the answer is no.
Oh, now, we really did read different articles.
Well, I'm just going by November 10th Newsweek.
You know, whether one wants to trust Newsweek as an authority, as a respectable, you know, source of information, that's up to one's, you know, subjectivity.
Personally, I don't believe that it's possible that the act of prayer without one's knowledge... Now, I believe a lot of, you know, people might think that because I believe there's no God, and I believe that praying wouldn't even have A beneficial medical consequence.
Yes, I do.
I've seen the statistics for that.
Ah, okay.
Well, Matthew, even if it's true that prayer does have effect, that the aiming of consciousness in an effort by many does have an effect, that still doesn't ruin your theory.
No, not at all.
It fits in perfectly well because it's part of why I'm suggesting that all of this evolved in us in the first place.
Before there was modern medicine, before there was like scientific method from which to derive modern medicine, humans pretty much, you know, they dealt with what were, you know, the shamans or the priests of their tribes who were often the same as sort of the witch doctor.
They were the person you went for to be healed, to be cured, and it was often ascribed to From a spiritual way, you know, someone would dance around you, and wave smoke around your body, and paint you, and all number of things, all meant to, whether it was to chase out evil spirits, or to summon the good spirits to cure you, and they found that it does make a difference.
Alright, hold that thought.
It does make a difference.
Indeed, I believe it does.
I don't know if all this adds up to God, but it adds up to Mass consciousness and prayer absolutely making a difference.
I don't think that ruins Matthew's theories at all.
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Who loves you, pretty baby?
I guess that's what we're talking tonight about, in a way, with Matthew Alper.
His book, The God Part of the Brain.
Stand by for more.
Surely some areas of the paranormal would challenge Matthew Alper pretty seriously.
Catherine, I don't want to give her last name, I guess, of Morgantown, West Virginia, says, Art, you know, I'd be tempted to believe you're a guest if not for the fact that I grew up in a very haunted house.
I know there is a spiritual reality.
I'm talking about beds that move all the way across the room with three people in them, witnesses to the fact.
Are there aspects, certainly there are, of the paranormal, Matthew, that would Would trouble you greatly if proven, yes?
Yeah, well, for instance, the notion of a ghost of some ectoplasmic remainder of a conscious self would imply a spiritual reality, a spiritual life after death.
Indeed.
Sure.
Do I believe in ghosts?
Obviously not.
Obviously.
But that doesn't mean they don't exist and that you shouldn't examine evidence that They do.
You know what?
It's not that I haven't.
It's just that nothing I've seen has surfaced beyond first-person accounts.
I mean, think of all of the equipment, all of the scientific equipment we now possess, all of the video cameras and potential to pick up all kinds of signals.
Well, you see, that's exactly what I'm laying on.
Right, but how come that's not the cover of Newsweek?
How come, like, the ghost at 857 Smith Street You know, and it's an interview with the dead Mr. Smith.
Well, yes, but you might want to look at some new sciences like electronic voice phenomena, for example.
Voices recorded on tapes or even digital equipment that do in fact appear to come from the other side and scientifically have no other reasonable... What kind of scientist can confirm the fact that they've created a technology that has contact with the other side?
And again, if they did, then I will look forward to, I will relish the article of the interview, which is the cover story of Newsweek, that talks about the interview with the ghost.
Or the interesting research going on at Princeton, which I hope you're aware of, regarding mass consciousness, and they have these little eggs, they call them, which are really random number computers scattered around the globe, Matthew, and these all report back to a master computer, At Princeton, and they're able to, through the reporting of these computers that normally issue just random numbers, there are these spikes in non-randomness when large events occur, like 9-11, for example.
It just goes right up off the chart.
Now, these are a few modern, new, but real things I'm explaining to you that would seem to indicate some sort of mass consciousness reaction, or some sort of reaction.
For me, I'll wait for the validation in accepted authorities like the New York Times, Time,
Newsweek, whatever news channels, Fox News.
When I see the proof in anything more than some runaway PhD article on random number
generators or ghosts that affect random number generators and every number of paranormal
stories that most people have.
Most people, if you ask them, because most people do believe in a spiritual reality,
will tell you some story about the ghost of their deceased grandmother or some such paranormal
phenomena that they bore witness to.
But even with all that you've told us about the brain and the God part of the brain, you have to allow for the possibility that yes, there is a God part of the brain, because I think you make a good logical argument, it's about how it got there that we might differ.
Right, well again, Then you go back to the question... I'm just simply saying you haven't conclusively proven your case with respect to... Okay, but I can prove that there's a part of the brain that if electrically stimulated will make you think of God.
Okay.
Your basis of a God, it's not founded in anything.
All you can point to is, well, yeah, well there was a book and it was written 2,000 years ago.
There's a whole bunch of books and they were written by Every number of cultures, each with their own definition of who that God is.
Like you were saying earlier, you know, when we discover these people lost in the Amazonian jungles and we think that their beliefs maybe are weird, they think the same of Christianity.
You know, we're all coming from this relative perspective that we take for granted as, like, the Bible.
Yes, but Matthew, since you brought up the book, then deal with the book.
I mean, as much as you might want to believe, and I do, frankly, that I'm sure that it was changed, modified, rehashed, retranslated, whatever, and it may not have come to us word for word, But don't you believe, like, the Bible, like every culture's Bible, because I don't even believe in such a thing as the Bible.
I think the mere using of the word the, suggestive of it, like, somehow stands above all others, which it does not.
Do you believe that that Bible was written by humans?
Or do you think God came down with, like, a with a big pen and wrote in our language All of these different stories, and how come he doesn't refer, how come it says, and then God smote the enemy?
Why isn't it like, and then I smote my enemy?
Right?
I mean, it was written by men.
It was written by men and the story.
Perhaps so, but what about the written evidence of the existence of Christ who walked on earth?
I mean, you know, it's awfully specific.
As a matter of fact, there's nothing historical.
The first Writings of a Jesus of Nazareth came hundreds of years after it was even suggested he existed.
There are no first-hand accounts like, you know, Jesus, my neighbor, written by Abraham, across the street.
You know, there are no first-hand accounts.
So basically, we had Paul, who saw the Jew from Israel, walked across Asia Minor, went to Rome, and then ...started this cult, which, you know, was a cult at the time, or at least that's what the Romans considered it.
Hundreds of years later, Christianity emerges to the surface as the predominant new belief system in Rome, and then people start writing books about it.
There's no first-hand account.
Now, again, I'm not suggesting that there was no historical Jesus.
There might have been a guide Jesus.
But was there ever a person who... I don't believe there was anyone who walked on water or rose from the dead any more than I believe there was a guy who parted the Red Sea or someone who sat on Olympus on his, you know, throwing thunderbolts down at like the bad kings who disobeyed him and every other number of deities that every world culture has created in our time or in times before us.
All right, Matthew.
Here's an interesting question for you.
What do you suppose would happen to humanity If, incredibly, suddenly your beliefs were embraced universally, and people, for whatever reason, magically began to believe that all of this is nothing more than a wired, genetic, evolutionary demand that we worship, and so it's all not real, and everybody believed as you believe, what kind of world would we have, Matthew?
Well, first of all, if they magically believed it, then we'd have a problem.
That's how you worded it.
Well, it's so unlikely that I had to include the word magical because nothing short of it is going to do that.
Wouldn't you agree?
Absolutely.
It's a part, just like, you know, it would take magic for humans to all of a sudden stop having sex or stop eating.
It's an impulse.
That would take a hydrogen bomb.
Exactly.
And it's going to take a few hydrogen bombs to shut some of these religions up.
That's the problem with this impulse, and that's the point of this.
And again, when you ask this question, what will happen?
I could pose the equal question as, what will happen if we don't?
Well, don't, though.
Try and nevertheless answer it.
And this was one of the moral dilemmas that I personally had in even writing a book like this, because I realized that The main, you know, the majority of the species is wired this way for a reason, because they have this need to believe.
It gives us a sense of hope.
So you had to say to yourself, good heavens, or... Yeah, even if this is true... What if I convince them?
Right, even if this is true, is it best for humans to know?
Right.
So it became, you know, it became an ethical and philosophical question, what are the ramifications of such a theory?
Even if the science can prove that this is the case, is it in our best interest to know?
And so, what in your moral compass allowed you to put pen to paper?
Okay, well, and I explain this in the last chapter of my book, which is called, What if Anything is to be Gained from a Scientific Interpretation of Spirituality and God, and I discuss the unfortunate historical consequences of us being a religious animal, of having been Wired with this religious impulse.
See, the thing is, maybe at the dawn of the emergence of man, when we were small nomadic species that wandered the earth in these, you know, isolated nomadic communities, having these belief systems gave them a sense of hope, gave them a sense of relief from their anxieties, from this perpetual fear of death, of imminent death, It bonded communities by giving them a common belief system, a common set of values and customs and rituals that bonded them.
And so what's changed?
They have brought a strength in numbers.
So then what's changed?
Are you saying that the God part of the brain today is like the appendix of no use?
Yes.
Well, it's not a vestige because it's still with us, but it has become Obsolete.
It's become, you know, dated.
And the reason for that is because, for instance, Homo sapiens first arose on Earth.
The environment we were selected into is very different from the one that existed at that time.
Unlike then, unlike the past, in today's world, basically humans have now populated the Earth.
We are a global species, and every one of these once sparsely spread apart nomadic tribes with all their unique
belief systems that didn't represent a threat to one another.
One of the inherent problems with this impulse is when two of these tribes get together and
realize that they're praying to two different gods and only one can be right, one represents
a mortal threat to their very belief system.
Because if they're right, it means you're wrong and you've been praying to some false
You've been praying to thin air, to some comic book creation.
And so we have wars.
And so we have wars.
And as we've seen, you spoke of 9-11, more than a random generator being misfired, what's being misfired is this biological impulse in us that is going to destroy the homo sapien.
I believe, more than any fear of a climatic change, or a meteorite hitting us, Or a shift in tectonic plates, or even some plague.
I believe the greatest threat to our species is the religious impulse in us.
Because it's like wildfire, and it creates a fervor that makes groups hate other groups with such fervor that they will kill themselves in the name of their God just to kill the enemy.
And if magically, That word again.
The god part of the brain were to disappear or be known and rejected.
Religion generally would be rejected.
It would be the power of publishing.
Worldwide it suddenly was accepted.
What a crushing realization.
Well then, what would point our moral compass, Matthew?
What would?
Well, we would have to basically rewrite the rule book.
We'd have to rewrite dogma.
A rule book?
Wait, wait, what do you mean a rule book?
We have the commandments.
We have the commandments.
We'd have to rewrite those?
Well, first of all, the ethics that we live by today, if we're basing this on various world religions, particularly Christianity, we live in a Western civilization, which is predominantly Christian.
Yes.
We're basing all of our conduct on a book written by a bunch of guys who got together one day who had visions of some supernatural reality and decided now they were now the moral compass for all people.
They were going to decide what's wrong and right for everybody.
Since that time, we've now developed a very methodical science That it can also be applied to the social sciences.
We apply it to our economic policies, our political policies.
Are sociological policies to education policies?
Why should we not apply these same sciences, these social sciences, based on methodology, on testing, on statistics, to our moral gate?
Okay, let's have some fun here.
Fine, let's envision the world where magic change has occurred and the rules have been rewritten.
My question to you is, what kind of world do you envision that we would have living under these new rules?
What would be different?
Well, the whole world would be my slave race, and I would live in a very big mansion.
Yeah, well, I didn't ask you about your fantasies.
Let me wake up here.
Yeah, wake up here.
And so, there'd be a new set of rules with what to make up these rules.
And how would they be...
I could never take on the responsibility of saying, I will represent all of the social sciences and therefore it would have to be based on such a broad reaching span of tests and controls and research and statistics.
Which would show us what is the best way, and we have such a thing.
In our country, because there is separation of church and state, we already have such a thing.
It's called the Constitution.
It decides our laws.
It decides what's just, what's unjust.
Then in your new, brave new world, science would write the rules.
Right.
Right.
Science would write the rules.
Right.
So I believe, for instance, that the United States Constitution It's probably one of the closest documents to based purely in social science.
One little problem here, though, Matthew.
Great on science, and I'm a firm believer, but too many times, Matthew, I pick up a story from the Associated Press, or I don't know, whatever your favorite magazine is, or Nature, or some scientific journal, and it starts out, scientists thought so-and-so.
It has been thought by science for thousands of years that so-and-so.
However, now it has just been discovered that.
I mean, that's the story of science.
First of all, the fundamentals of science don't get broken on a daily level.
I mean, I think the last time that science took a fall was when it had to realize that, you know, it had to embrace Copernicus' You know, heliocentric vision.
Perhaps of that magnitude, but they take daily falls, Matthew.
But that happened centuries ago.
It's only the last, like, two centuries that we've had a really adaptive scientific method that's been guiding the scientific community.
Now, obviously, in the search for anything, there are going to be mistakes made, there are going to be revisions and amendments to things, there are going to be essentially improvements.
However... But in a world... You know what?
Tomorrow, this is the proof.
This phone that we're talking on, the lights that are lighting up your office right now?
Yes, yes.
They're not going to go out tomorrow.
All of a sudden it's not going to be like headline news.
Electricity doesn't really work.
Well, you know there was a headline like that in New York not long ago.
Hell, they went out all over the place.
I bet they even went out in Matthew's house.
In other words, it happens.
They did.
I was in the dark for 12 hours.
There you are.
It happens.
Oh, come on.
That's not the science of electricity.
That's a couple people who pulled the wrong switches.
Maybe.
Because the electricity came back the next day, and there was no headline article saying, scientists realized electricity was a fluke mistake, worked for a hundred years, but now we realize that the fundamentals of the science of electricity and electron flow were completely mistaken, and there will never be an electric light ever again.
Why would I know that that will never happen?
Matthew, apply it to the world.
For example, let's say the problem was overpopulation.
And the solution had to come from science, and science was like religion.
It was the law, as in the world, that you're imagining for us, in a way.
The solution might be, well, all the people above a certain age have to proceed to the euthanasia chamber.
Everybody else will take birth controls on the following schedule.
You're asking me to presume that this would be the take The New Order scientific community... I'm giving you an example.
But I can't say that would be the solution.
That's the Ardell solution.
Yes, maybe if you were on the scientific board, that would be the solution, but I can't presume that that's what they would come up with.
That might well be the scientific solution.
I'm just trying to say, what kind of a world would we have if Matthew Alper You know what kind of world we'd have if it were led by theocrats, by the religious leaders?
We won't even have to wait for the world to be overpopulated.
We'll kill ourselves without that.
But imagine if the world were suddenly overpopulated and it were the religious leaders who had a say in, now how do we solve this crisis?
Well, that'd be easy.
Kill the people of the other religions and we'd bring down the world's population.
No problem.
Hold on, we're at a break point.
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Searing the Reaper, that's indeed exactly what we're talking about, or perhaps not doing it, and what kind of world would we have in a world where there was no fear of death?
The photograph of the Chupacabra on my webcam is now gone, and one very much like it, my own face, is replaced by it.
would make all the new rules but not part of the brain is a book that you out for the
man will be right back the photograph of the two comparable web cameras now gone
and one very much like in my own face is replaced by it
pop live webcam for a moment ago uh... listen
you're going to get an opportunity to talk about you and all i know you want
I'm well aware of that.
We'll begin that at the top of the hour.
So you're going to get your chance to talk to Matthew.
Not to worry.
Matthew, in the meantime, from Rochester, New York, Joe says, Why wouldn't evolution have removed the adapted fear part of the brain relating to mortality instead of creating The God part of the brain to mitigate its own adaptation.
Without fear, we would die in one generation.
We need fear.
Fear keeps us alive.
Fear repels us from those things that threaten our existences, whether it's fear of cold or heat or strangers or, you know, territorial enemies or wild animals.
You know, if we could walk in the woods without any sense of fear or acknowledgement of fear, you know, we'd walk up to a bear and shake its hand while it bit our head off.
Mmm, who have done that, actually?
Part of the Darwin Awards now.
Well, yes, I suppose we have to have fear.
Absolutely.
Fear is probably the most necessary ingredient for the preservation of any conscious species.
Nevertheless, back to the rules.
The rules have provided a unique chance for us, Matthew.
For example, in the Christian world in America, the rules, the original rules, you know, spit out on the tablets, were basically used to construct what we know as our Constitution now, and our Bill of Rights, and all the rest of that.
That's not really true.
Well, I mean, it's said to be true.
The U.S.
Constitution constructed those tablets from the bench in Alabama.
Well, I know, but still, the basics of it would seem to reflect... Well, thou shalt not kill is kind of a standard in every society.
I mean, if you don't have as one of the, you know, head rules of any community, thou shalt not kill, you're going to end up with one person and a bunch of beheaded people around him.
But, if there's no heaven and hell, why not kill?
Because that's not the only grounds, and shouldn't be the only grounds for why we are an ethical species.
The reason that I don't go out right now and kill someone, because I am an atheist, I'm certainly not fearing going to hell, but I might fear, A, the penalty of my community, even if I have no conscience.
But your fear as an atheist would be even a healthy one, because you would fear losing your life to a lethal injection.
Exactly.
So, A, on the most simple level, I would fear punishment from my peers, And then on a, you know, let's say, deeper level, or not even, on an equally scientific level, one could just apply the rule that sort of... What?
That life is sacred?
No, no, no, nothing like life is sacred.
No, huh?
The rules that protect my neighbor from me protect me from all my neighbors.
So it's like signing a mutual contract.
I agree.
I, Matthew Alper, agree not to harm my neighbor regardless of my beliefs in heaven and hell because by not doing so, they all sign the same contract and I don't have to worry about where I'm only one person.
You know, the four million other people that live in Brooklyn I'm not so sure you want to do that.
I definitely don't want to do that.
I've gotten some of the mail.
social compact contract with my neighbor you want to do you want to know you want
to test that out let's get out your address on the air haha that would be a
good time wouldn't it neighbors are better than others well yeah I'm not so
sure you want to do that I don't want to do that I've gotten some of the mail
have you have you on I always get a great deal of email after I've done a program with you and tonight I'm sure it'll be no exception.
How do you deal, by the way, just out of curiosity, with some of the more rabid responses?
I guess at the beginning it annoyed me and then it was like, oh, whatever, I'm not going to let this rile me.
It's silly stuff.
I mean, look, I know when I came out with this theory that the majority of people around me were going to disagree with it.
Many of them be offended, and all I can do is try and convey an idea.
One can embrace it or not, but certainly perhaps one will garner some value or some intelligent thought from it, or something that will challenge their own beliefs in a way that maybe they can gain from or strengthen their own beliefs.
And, you know, for those who contend that they won't accept, you know, other belief systems, including mine, and they would therefore want to harm or insult me, You know, all I can do is point to the Taliban and say, well, they're in good company, you know?
Well, let me try this one.
You've, oh, I don't know, it's been eight years now, I guess, that you have come to believe what you're talking about tonight.
And I do, by the way, certainly acknowledge that I fully believe that you believe it.
You're convinced.
So for eight years, you've had this point of view.
How has that, if you can get Introspective.
How's that affected your life?
Well, it doesn't help with dating, I can tell you that.
I'll bet it doesn't.
So what do you do again?
I write.
What do you write?
Well, it's a philosophy, cognitive science book.
Oh yeah, about what?
It's downhill right from there.
Sometimes, that definitely has happened.
But you know, I mean, I live in New York, which is a fairly secular community, so fortunately, you know, it's Not that problematic.
You live.
You continue to live.
But in other ways, though, your philosophy, your feelings about virtually... You know, earlier in your life, before the eight years, did you have any religions?
You know, the difference between me after I conceived of this notion and before was I simply went from being an agnostic to an atheist.
You know, at that point, I was like, you know what, I don't believe in any of these different contradicting religions that all claim they've got their finger on the pulse of truth, and they all contradict one another.
None of them make sense, they're all full of inconsistencies and loopholes, etc.
But, as much as I would like not to believe in any of them, I have no grounds for an alternate theory.
And at once this alternate theory came into the picture.
I said, ah, here it is.
Here's a physical thing that I can touch that explains why we have these thoughts.
And so I basically it just it reaffirmed my sense that there before there probably was no God.
Were you raised in a religious family?
No, I was raised in a pretty secular New York City household.
OK.
All right.
So so we don't have some In other words, there's not some Baptist background?
No, it was pretty much to my own to figure this stuff out.
That you're rebelling from?
Nothing like that?
No, I wasn't even rebelling.
If anything, I was just very curious, and I wanted to get to the bottom of, you know, is there life?
Really, for me, it was like, is there life after death?
I remember when I first conceived as a child of my own mortality, that like, I'm gonna die.
It shook me to the bone.
I couldn't, you know, I was hyperventilated in front of my mother for 10 minutes.
I couldn't catch my breath.
Do you honestly believe, Matthew, that you've given your nemesis, the paranormal, a fair study before rejecting it?
Well, it was one of the first things I did study.
I would think so.
It was a curiosity in me as a kid.
It's like, wow, is it possible that we can read each other's minds or I can levitate things?
Yes.
This was the most immediate fascination because it didn't even entail needing God to help me.
I might have had powers built within me.
To do these wonderful, magical things.
And as I explored them, I just found that not one of them held through, and I never saw one validated case of someone who could do any of these things.
Now, I wanted to point out, like before, you brought up this, you know, people who claim that there are experiments done that suggest that people have been healed from those who, you know, as an example of, let's say, a paranormal force.
I'm telling you, there have been studies, blind studies, where the people prayed for... Okay, and again, I don't know what your source is.
I just know that they've yet to make it to mainstream media.
Nevertheless, let me just point out possible inconsistencies with that theory.
For instance, it suggests that if a bunch of people prayed for someone, Then there are consequences, even if the person doesn't know.
So it's not based on that he feels loved or he feels that he's part of a community.
We're talking about like a paranormal force.
One of the problems with that is it would suggest that God's attentions are a popularity contest.
And it doesn't take into account at all the person that's being prayed for.
So for instance, if all of Germany during World War II were praying for the life of Hitler, Yes.
then god would play hey wait what what that i'm hearing i'm getting a lot of
both here down in germany there actually
millions of people all praying for the same guy yes let me let me help them out
here so basically appeals to god for help become a popularity
contest with like the loan thing
who lives in the desert who who you know uh... a a a a a a a a lance a lot whose pure
and incapable of then because he's alone in the woods and there's no one there to
pray for him God's not going to perk up his ears and save him.
So, A, it means that, A, it doesn't take into account the person that we're praying for, whether they're good and evil, which means that God is very susceptible to the voices of the masses, and doesn't have any gauge of morality whatsoever, because he doesn't care about the person, because these studies don't say You know, this was a good person that everyone was praying for.
It's just somebody who was liked by many people, but as we know, Bin Laden's liked by many people.
Originally, Matthew, I thought that a very good argument for creation was, and people will say this to you, look around you!
Look at the perfection of every leaf and tree and everything down to the atoms in the air we breathe, which is all perfect, and the birds and the animals and It's just impossible this could have just happened.
But then I realized one day that, you know, from our point of view today on Earth, mankind would of course look at it that way, except that it couldn't be any other way, because that's how evolution delivered it to us.
So of course it would seem Perfect, and that's sort of... First of all, it's a subjective term, perfect.
Well, perfect in that the environment is perfect for us, essentially, to be here.
Is it?
Why are some people dying of cancer because of radiation poisoning?
Why did a bunch of people die from hepatitis because they ate the wrong scallions the other day?
I mean, if anything, one could say, look at this world.
It's totally chaotic.
It's far from perfect.
It's pure lunacy.
But in terms of our Being able to survive.
Everything is just right for us to survive.
The oxygen mixture available, the water that we need, all our needs.
Even the oil in the ground.
People will point to everything and say it's too perfect.
It had to be by design, not a random anything.
Right, but again, to me, there's no sign to that.
That's an assumption.
That's like saying, my girlfriend's the most beautiful woman in the world.
Look at her.
She's perfect.
You know, that's a perfectly subjective comment.
Whether you say it of a person or the world around you, maybe that person lives in a shell and they haven't seen much of the world around them.
I mean, to say the world is perfect, you'd think someone would have to first see the whole world, which is impossible.
And B, most people probably haven't stepped out of their own backyards who would make such a claim.
So, there's no authority there.
If evolution then has... If we've already passed the point where we need the God part of the brain, then why hasn't evolution taken care of this for us?
Why hasn't it so modified it that we still have fear that we need to remain healthy and wealthy and alive, but that the God part of it would have faded away because Because, according to you, we don't need that anymore.
Well, I can't say definitively whether we need it anymore.
I know that it's part of our wiring.
I know that, therefore, I believe that probably a large number of the species, I couldn't pinpoint a statistic, but I'm sure that a very large number of people will always need God, will always need religion.
It gives them a sense of hope.
It gives them a sense of community.
All of these things which are essential to their mental survival, to their mental health.
Yes, but let's say then that the process is just underway, then the number of Matthew Alpers out there should be growing exponentially as evolution delivers.
But nature doesn't select that way.
I mean, it's not like all of a sudden a good idea comes around and those who don't believe it get weeded out.
First of all, because we're wired to believe The only way we could do that is if we started, like, tampering with our genes.
So, like, we said, okay, these people who are excessively religious, we're going to sterilize them.
And maybe after many generations, we could start to tamper the religious impulse so that maybe the more fundamentalist aspects could be weeded out.
You know, when we're talking about some serious tampering with, you know, with individuals.
Otherwise, nature's not going to select.
We're not a species that's going to be selected anymore, because we live in social communities.
We protect even the weakest.
We're no longer part of a species, whereas with others, if a kitten is born handicapped, the mother's going to carry it over to a corner and let it die.
Wouldn't there be ways, then, to tamper with the temporal lobe and cause somebody to become very, very non-religious?
Take a very religious person.
tamper in some way that you could experimentally determine with a temporal lobe and then all of a sudden they wake up and say, why did I believe all that stuff?
Yeah, well actually it's called when people suffer head trauma to the point that it changes your personality.
Yes.
Like people who've had accidents, they come out of it and for the rest of their life they're deeply depressed.
Even people who have become like Amoral, responsible people that have their frontal lobe damaged, and they're now finding that that's where, like, moral, our capacity for gauging moral behavior is designed within the frontal lobe of the brain.
All of these things can be altered if damaged, and there have been cases of people recorded who have had damage to their temporal lobe Where their religious attitudes have changed.
It's called the Organic Psycho Syndrome, and it was work done by a Dr. Sadwin at University of Pennsylvania, at the Neuropsychiatry Department, and he found that there were cases of people who were bumped in the head, who were extremely religious, whose families then came and complained after they recovered from their accident that they're not interested in going to church, they couldn't care less about God.
Suddenly.
Suddenly.
After like a car accident, as well as people who Have been in accidents and had the same head trauma, and the opposite happened, where the light went on, and they were completely secular.
Look, I might be doing the next show after my first car accident, and I'll be doing my show as a born-again, you know?
Because maybe that part of the brain will get jarred, and all of a sudden I'll get zapped, and all I'll be thinking about is God all day.
Again, it wouldn't contradict my theory, just I won't believe that any longer.
I will be enmeshed in a perception of belief, and there'll be nothing you could tell me.
You could show me my own book and say, you wrote this book, dude!
And I'll say, I was blind.
I didn't know what I was talking about.
That would be interesting, and I'd love to do that interview.
Well, you'll get it.
You'll get first dibs on that, on my born-again pronouncement to the world.
The wrong turn on a street there in New York, and the bus is going to nail you, and you're going to be born again.
Yeah.
OK, well, now, listen, audience, I'm about to turn Matthew after the break over to you.
And I understand there's going to be much opposition to what Matthew has said and believes.
And that's just spiffy.
Go ahead and oppose.
All I ask is that you be polite, because when you're not polite, then you sort of lose the argument before you've said another word.
So I will ask the audience to please Hold it in a little bit, if you can.
Make the best logical argument you can.
And be passionate, if you will.
But please, above all, try and be polite.
We'll see how that instruction plays out, coming up shortly, Matthew.
Stay right there, all right?
Okay, Matthew Alper and the God Part of the Brain.
Of course, his book, I'm sure, is still available.
Hey, Matthew, it's available around, right?
Uh-huh.
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all the usual.
All the usual stuff.
All right, hold on.
So there you go.
You might want to get a God part of the brain.
I'm Art Bell.
In the high desert, this is Coast to Coast AM.
To access the audio archives of Coast to Coast AM, log on to coasttocoastam.com.
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This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
It is indeed.
Good morning, everyone.
Matthew Alper is here.
His book, The God Part of the Brain.
Fascinating stuff.
And again, I'm going to ask you to come along, if you can, and intellectually challenge him.
I know there's going to be an almost irresistible temptation to simply call and express your belief and your faith.
Please don't do that.
For the sake of the continuity of the intellectual exercise that we're engaging in tonight, come at him intellectually, if you would.
And, if you can, tear him to pieces.
That'd be alright.
But let's do it intellectually, and above all, if possible, let's be polite.
Now, his book, The God Part of the Brain, indeed, you can get that in all the usual suspected places, like Amazon.com, and I really do suggest that you do.
Challenge yourself.
Read about it in detail.
The God Part of the Brain, Matthew Alper.
Incidentally, I was asked if I would do the New Year's Eve program this year, and I have accepted.
So I will indeed ring in the New Year with you here, dragging once again, presumably we saved them,
and I think we did, in the Bell Family Vault, the predictions made for the year.
In fact, what a year it was, huh?
Many predictions.
So, we'll read all of those and take new predictions.
Do all that on New Year's Eve, thought I'd let you know.
One other thing, we're here not just on special occasions now, but rather every Saturday and every Sunday, and so if your radio station does not carry all of Saturday and Sunday's program, call them up and say, hey, what's up with that?
Anyway, let's get it on.
And so, with all that in mind, here he is, Matthew Alper, once again.
Matthew, Amazon and, I suppose, other ways?
Well, Barnes and Noble.com are the Barnes and Noble stores, but for Amazon, I'm going to be signing the first 200 books that I ship out as a result of this radio appearance.
So, if anyone wants a signed copy, they should go to Amazon.
Only 200, huh?
Mm-hmm.
After that, my hand gets tired.
I Have 200 well, all right the first 200 only from Amazon
bearing that in mind you ready for your public Okay, then here we go first time caller line you are on the
air with Matthew Alpert hello Yes, mr. Alper. I would like your best explanation for
the phenomenon of memes and or jokes or There is a lengthy Google explanation, but wait a minute.
How does that?
Form that question so we can all get it the meaning of jokes in what context with regard to what he says
Well the context of our brains generating words that other people across the country around the world simultaneously generate within their own brains.
Like, uh, I could give an example.
It would sound ludicrous, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear it tomorrow.
But this phenomenon of communal jokes or thoughts or... Okay, all right.
I see what you're getting at.
In other words, Matthew, the fact that many people think of the same thing at the same time.
He's reaching out trying to say, well, here's an indication of some common Commonality of consciousness or something, you know, which is a paranormal category.
Okay, my explanation would pretty much for something like that fall under just pure coincidence.
I'm sure that right now if there were a computer that could, you know, statistically generate figures on such things that maybe there's 10,000 people right now saying the word cat in different languages.
Maybe there's 20,000 saying A more, you know, curse word that I can't say here on public.
Thank you.
A number of things that could be, you know, coincidence.
500 people telling the why did the chicken cross the road joke in 300 different languages.
Does that mean that somehow there's some connective consciousness?
I don't, personally, I don't think so.
I think that would be an example of coincidence.
A more general example that people sometimes thrown at me, something closer to You know, how do you explain the fact that the other day I was sitting in my living room thinking about a friend that I haven't seen or spoken to in 10 years and the phone rings and it's them?
Yes.
And I say to that person, think of the number of times you were sitting in your living room and through stream of conscious you thought of any number of people, any number of things and the phone didn't ring.
It's just a matter of time, just pure probability before Our mental life will coincide with the real world.
Alright.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity to talk tonight.
Sure, where are you?
I'm sorry, my name is Wesley and I live in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee.
Okay.
I'd just like to pose three things and I'll make them as concise and as speedily as possible.
The first one being that the Evolutionist would have me believe that we go from the simple to the complex in violation of the second law of thermodynamics.
He would have me believe that if I had a completely disassembled Rolex watch in a cigar box, and if I just put it in the right conditions with the right humidity and the right temperature and came back 300 million years later, I'd have a completely assembled Rolex watch in perfect working order.
Okay, but Matthew?
Well, first of all, I mean, to me that in itself is a ridiculous presumption.
Watches don't make themselves, but there are things inherent in the molecular makeup, in the positive and negative charges that are inherent in all matter, that are also inherent in organic matter, in the macromolecules that make up life, that do link things together.
All of a sudden, one molecule will, like glue, start to pull to the other one.
The spring does not necessarily magnetically pull itself to the coil of a watch piece.
So, to compare the two, to say if you shake up a chain of amino acids, and all of a sudden have a one-celled organism, doesn't necessarily mean that if you shake up the parts of a watch, that you're going to end up having a functional timex.
Caller?
No, that's okay.
You know, I'll let the second law of thermodynamics speak for itself.
In terms of programs, I find it interesting that a lot of the guests that you've had on that talk about experiences and contacting the dead and programs that talk about crossing over, that not one single time have I ever heard one of those deceased relatives speaking to their living relatives from hell.
They always seem to be in heaven.
Well, it may be that you don't get phone privileges in hell.
That's a good comment because, first of all, usually when they ask somebody to make contact with the deceased, it's not like, well, it only works one out of every ten times.
They generally say, okay, give me a thousand bucks and I'll get you to talk with the dead.
You know, it's just an amusing comment that, you know, they're never in hell.
They're always in some nice place and everyone's content.
Well, it's not really, because they would take your phone card to hell.
You know they would.
You're not getting down there with a phone card.
Heaven gives you a phone card.
You have communal privileges.
I'm going to have to introduce you to some of the EVP people.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hi.
Howdy.
Ben from Brookline.
Brookline Mass.
Right.
This is something that might reassure you, because I want to extend.
I agree completely with whatever Matthew said, but I haven't read his book yet, so I might have some questions.
I don't doubt it, because I'm a very curious guy, and I always kind of upset everybody with my questions.
I'll take your best shot.
Well, right now, as I say, I don't have a question, but I want to extend your thinking.
For instance, you mentioned remote viewing.
You've had guests on about remote viewing.
Indeed, yes, I'm sure.
A quick anecdote, because that's the only way I can get the message across, and that is, when I lived 24 floors up at Tremont-on-the-Common, overlooking the river, having sailed that afternoon with a young lady who was going back to Hong Kong, a Chinese girl who had just completed her Ph.D.
at MIT, and was very scientific and also an artist, which I am, so I can visualize things.
You're going to have to hurry this up.
Now, she said, with all your interest, I'm surprised you have never done remote viewing, and I almost scoffed.
You know, I said, remote viewing, what's that?
So she told me, and I said, okay, let's set up an experiment, empirically.
Right now, we go inside, knee-to-knee in a lotus position for about two hours, talking about what's on the river immediately, right now, not any other time.
Okay, now what was going to be on the river were boats, obviously, I said, and we'll have to name the exact positions, the kind of boat, and where it's headed.
And what happened?
Good.
And we actually, when we ran to the balcony, I said, yeah, there were the four community boats, about a boat length apart, headed for the Mass Ave Bridge, about a half a football field length away.
She said, what about the MIT boats, five of them going around the red marker buoy?
I said, yeah, I see it, because we were visualizing the river.
And then I said, what about the 20... And the end of the story is?
Well, that I've never been able to do it since he left for Hong Kong.
But you did do it.
All right.
All right.
Thank you.
Stop there.
Stop there.
All right.
Stop.
Stop there.
So, Matthew.
OK, well, first of all, I would say I have this ability.
Hold on, Matthew.
I have interviewed and the U.S.
government had a program for 20 years of remote viewing.
Yeah, they cancelled it because they got no results from it.
Wouldn't you say 20 years would be a while to be added if you had no results?
I don't think that's... Wouldn't you say if they had any results it would have gone now 30 or 40 years?
Why would they cancel a program like that that would have any results?
If there's a chance... Why would they continue it for 20 years, Matthew?
If one person had the capacity for remote viewing They would have tracked down Bin Laden.
They would have tracked down Saddam Hussein.
You need to spend some time with Ingo Swann.
You need to spend some quality time with Ingo Swann.
What's an Ingo Swann?
An Ingo Swann is probably the number one psychic who... I mean, the guy is incredible and he was the center in the beginning of the remote viewing program.
The father, even, of it, you might say.
And the man is absolutely remarkable.
I think that you have dismissed too quickly the proof, and there is substantial proof.
The proof is in the product, and I don't see any product.
I don't see the presence of... Thanks to Ingo Swann, our remote viewer, we have just captured Bin Laden.
If there are people who have these psychic abilities, then I'm sure they would be employed.
They would have incredible practical Almost everybody brings up the subject of Bin Laden, and you know what?
I agree.
Why hasn't they?
that they're living like in some small home having like you know the almost
everybody and bob yeltsin i got it i got it almost everybody brings up the
subject of bin laden and i a you know what i agree
why hasn't so i think it really could locate him they would have located him
by now or saddam hussein right Sure.
Or Lacey Peterson or any number of all these people that are missing on a daily level.
Well, they have located missing people.
What I'm trying to get through to you is you have not sufficiently honest... I can tell you haven't.
When you say something like, what's an Ingo Swann, you demonstrate to me that I'm sorry you haven't done much study in this area.
And what I'm saying to you is that you need to
well really do you need to give it up for look and if you if you're saying to me
what's in engel swan you haven't looked well i mean i've looked i've looked through
you know all the journal that that do research on the skeptic society at
better that do research you want every type of paranormal you start not only a
If you studied the skeptic society, Matthew, all you did was look at a bunch of people who actively go out and debunk the paranormal.
Debunk.
You know the meaning of the word debunk?
Yeah, but I also read Time and Newsweek and the New York Times And the major papers, and I listen to the major news channels, and when there's one instance, one positive instance of somebody proving the paranormal, we're now talking to Ingo Swann, or Steve Smith, or whoever it is, he can guess whatever number you're thinking.
And they'll take people, and they'll have all kinds of people come on the show, and they'll say, we're now with this celebrity, we're now with Senator Clinton, and she's going to try it.
Nevertheless, Matthew, you're squirming away from it.
If you don't know who Ingo Swann is, what an Ingo Swann is, an honest god, sorry, honest to goodness, you have not studied this enough, and I'm asking you to take a harder look.
Like I said, I've taken, I think, a sufficient look at every type of paranormal experience.
Can I tell you the name of the premier ghost hunter out there, the person who claims That they are the best at hunting ghosts?
No.
Can I tell you the premier necromancer, the person who supposedly is the best at communicating with the dead?
No.
Because I think they're all charlatans.
And I've pursued the study of the science itself, and I've seen zero results.
But you are making this judgment, my friend, in the blind.
You're making it in the blind.
We flip our light switch, and the light goes on.
So you know what?
I say, you know what?
Whoever these scientists are, whatever they figured out, They got it right.
There's a product here, and the proof is in the fact that the product works.
The trouble is, though, Matthew, you haven't gone to the switch to turn it to find out.
Well, all of society is looking for the switch, and if there's somebody who can turn it, they're going to be out there.
They're going to have their face planted dead smack on the cover of Time and Newsweek.
You're consumed by Time and Newsweek.
There are other writings.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hi.
Hi.
Art, it's been a long time since we've talked.
Well then, hi.
I'm so pleased.
First, I have a comment, and then I do have a question for Matthew.
Go ahead.
First, I would like to say concerning remote viewing, and first I have to say God is just incredibly awesome.
The Earthmaker is just unbelievably the revealer of mysteries, and the whole thing with When Ed Dames remote-viewed Satan and he said he was like this beautiful crystal type of thing.
Okay, let's stop here and go to the question from Matthew.
Okay.
The question I have is, Matthew, have you absolutely tested with your mind the reality of God?
Not let it enter from your mouth, but keep it in your mind and in your heart.
And ask him to reveal himself to you.
All right, Matthew, there it is.
I know I was going to get some of this, but did you really?
I mean, God come to me.
God, I need you, God.
When I was a child, I mean, I would speak to God.
I would, you know, I would I would appeal for his assistance.
I would ask him questions.
Why are things this way?
And I never got an answer.
And then as I got older and I started to see that there was a lot of darkness in the world and a lot of And then I started asking him, you know, gee, God, if you're so powerful and you're supposedly really good, why are all these evil, bad things happening to lots of innocent people all the time?
And then my questions got a little, you know, a little darker and a little more pointed until I was like, you know what?
There's no God.
I might as well be asking for Santa Claus' appeal.
But what about the God gave us choice argument?
I mean, that would account for suffering, and the evil doing, and the sin of man, and choice.
If there is a God, and he is truly omnipotent, and he's also all good, and all seeing, so he can see, he has prescience, he can see into the future, he can see into the past, he has knowledge of all things, which supposedly God does, why would he play a game with himself?
Alright, I'm going to create this creature, and I'm going to play a game with my own head, even though I know what the outcome is going to be.
And I'm going to create a creature, and he gets to make his own choices up, and it's kind of on a random thing, and every now and then, his choices, which are really my choices, because I'm creating him, I'm programming him, I'm making him the way I want him to be, because I make all things the way I want them to be.
So, I'm going to make him evil, but it's not really his evil, or it's not my evil.
You know what?
It's so full of logical loopholes, that if you ever try to take it to court, it'd be thrown out.
It's a ridiculous, this whole notion of, you know, God gave us choice, God gave us free will, then either God is retarded, or God is evil.
There's no other possibility.
Either God, with this foresight, created a creature knowingly that would be evil, and said, well, I'm calling it free will.
Call it what you will, if God made us however he wanted.
Well, not all free will is exercised as evil, come on now.
No, of course not.
But yeah, sure, there are good acts and there are bad acts.
There are good things and there are evil things.
But, again, if God is all-powerful and all-good, so either God's all-powerful and He's only good sometimes, so we're actually dealing with a fairly chaotic God who's all-powerful, but sometimes a little sadistic.
Or God doesn't know what he's doing.
He'd like to be good, but he's not that powerful, so sometimes he spazzes out a little.
All right, hold it right there.
We're coming up on the bottom of the hour.
Matthew Alper shall continue to be yours through the close of tonight's program.
You've got to admit, agree or disagree, and I sense a great deal of both out there, it certainly is interesting, and it's supposed to cause you to sit down and think really, really hard.
That's what we do in the night time.
It's called Coast to Coast AM.
From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
I'm a man of the desert.
There's really nothing we can do.
If we want to.
We could insist on the stars.
If it's so easy.
Oh, we gotta do.
The only thing we can do.
If only you believe.
Like I believe.
We could fly.
If only you believe.
We're close.
So would I.
Wanna take a ride?
Well, call Art Bell from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
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This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell on the Premier Radio Networks.
Oh, my guest, Matthew Alper, believes in miracles.
It's just that he calls them coincidences.
From Hugh in Richardson, Texas, a very interesting Fast Blast, who wants me to remind you, Matthew, of a segment, I think
it was on 2020, of a dog recognition study.
And this was a study in which the master of the animal, you know, the animal stayed home every day while the master was normally at work.
And they filmed these dogs, and just for the fun of it, or to prove something or another, they decided that they would have the master come home at an odd, unexpected time.
And in virtually every case, Matthew, the dog that they were watching suddenly got agitated, would start barking, jumping up at the door like It absolutely knew the master was coming home.
This implies some sort of mind connection between the dog and the master.
And they did this again and again and again.
What do you call that?
Well, first of all, I'd have to know all the variables involved, such as at what point did the dog react to the master coming home?
And the moment the master started coming home, The dog would react.
From where?
From 10 feet away?
No, from work.
In other words, they conducted a study in which they just suddenly sent somebody home to work while they were filming their dog.
And they did it at a totally random time.
And every time Matthew the dog reacted, it knew.
You know what, it depends.
Again, I'm a skeptic.
I'd have to see how the experiment was set up.
Maybe they turn the cameras on at the point where they decide they're going to start filming the dog to see its response.
And maybe the dog reacted where all of a sudden the camera went on and it was used to the camera going on when the master comes home.
So even though it wasn't at an ordinary time, you know, for me, I would just explain it that some sense, smell, sight, sound, or touch was triggered in the dog.
No extrasensory Perception, because I have yet to see adequate evidence to suggest that such a thing is real.
I'm open to the possibility.
But you're not, though.
I spend many an hour sitting on my suit with my friends saying, pick a number.
But you're not.
It's between, you know, being a skeptic is fine, but you're operating with blinders.
It's like you've got your head in a different pile of sand, and you won't look over at some of these proofs that are pretty compelling.
I mean, scientifically compelling.
And I think that you should do that, but we should also go to the phones.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hi.
Hi Art, this is Leah from Parkside, Pennsylvania, and I'm speaking to you on WDEL.
Way to go!
How are you?
Fine!
Fascinating show!
Thank you!
And I'd like to ask Matthew, as long as we're talking a scientific fact, we know that it's a scientific fact that when everyone dies they lose 21 grams.
If that's not the soul leaving the body, what do you think it is?
Well, what you've considered an accepted scientific fact, the scientific community, including the American Medical Association, Would have a bone to pick with you right there because they would not accept such a thing.
I think originally, Art, you probably know more about this notion because I'm sure that there have been guests of yours who've spoken on the topic.
Oh, actually, Matthew, I think it was one of my own previous programs, maybe even with you, when I brought forward the study, the actual medical study that did show a weight loss at death, an actual scientific study.
It was back in the 1800s.
We live in a modern day when it's very politically incorrect to put people, dying people up on scales, you know?
We don't do that, but back when they did, I do not believe that the reason that the statistics that we have on that are based on one individual from over 150 years ago as opposed to something that can be Validated today because we don't like weighing dead people.
We carve them up and take out their body parts to put into other people.
There's no reverence for a dead body.
You have seen that story, right?
I know that there were some scientists, like in the 1800s, who came up with that conclusion, but I've yet to see, again, the American Medical Association take on it.
I've yet to see them... Okay, ma'am.
All right, the AMA hasn't, you know, endorsed that.
No, they have not.
They have not verified that notion.
So for them to ask me to accept it, I'm going to tell you I can.
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you, and thank you very much for the call.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hi.
Hi, this is Matt from Ventura, California.
Okay, Matt.
I have a comment.
I'm really empathetic for you, Matt.
I believe exactly what you believe, except I think I have proof that, you know, we do have psychic capabilities, and I think that it also lies in our brain.
Like, there's a structure in our brain that can detect things without us actually seeing them with our other senses.
Alright, well Matthew, what about that as at least a possibility that the living human brain does in fact have abilities that we haven't yet scientifically found a way to measure and verify?
Until we do, it's hearsay.
Again, the guest could call and say, I have proof that there's a leprechaun in my backyard and he's going to take me over the rainbow to the pot of gold And all I can say is, look, I'm not in your backyard.
I can't witness what you're telling me.
I've yet to have the scientific community write it up and verify it for me.
So, all I can say is, you know, I can't base my beliefs on the faith of one individual.
And I'm sure if I spoke to a thousand individuals, each one would tell me with certainty about How they can prove that their grandmother's ghost lives in their house, or how they can prove that they know there are people who can lift things off the table with their mind.
There'll be a hundred people, or they'll be telling me the miracles of their religion.
They'll be telling me about the powers of some Hindu deity that they believe in as much as someone else believes maybe in remote viewing or clairvoyance.
And all I can say is, Until the scientific community tells me that, like, yes, there is a Zeus and he can throw lightning bolts.
You could believe it, but I don't.
Okay.
International Line, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hi.
Hi.
Good morning, Art.
Good morning.
Where are you?
Don calling from Balmy, Toronto, Canada.
Yes, sir.
The guard part of the brain is, I believe, supernaturally there, because God built in an area of our consciousness to receive.
and perceived his presence.
Would you not say that this is quite possible, Matthew?
Okay, well, let me... What kind of God would... Let's say, and there are... There's someone who wrote a book, The Transmitter to God, and, you know, kind of took a newfangled approach to this science that's emerging, saying, okay, yeah, there's this part of the brain, then God put it there like a little transmitter in our brain through which we can communicate or experience Him.
However, what kind of God would put this transmitter into the brains of our species and have us believe that he's a thousand different things, each one compelling us to kill our neighbor to prove that our version is the right one.
Again, he's either a spastic mechanic or he's no mechanic at all.
You know within yourself, Matthew, the difference between good and bad.
You have that perception.
Okay, well, I'll go with that for now, yeah.
You have free will.
Can you imagine God creating an entity, and then having control over that entity that He has created?
He's given them the free development, and then the free will... Well, Archon asked me about my take on free will, and I don't believe in it.
I don't believe that there's a good, benevolent, all-powerful God, but He gave us choice.
I don't believe in that whole methodology.
I'll put it this way, Matthew.
If mankind by choice has to put all his money on mankind, then God help mankind.
All right.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you.
First time caller on the line.
You're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hello.
You know, I think everybody, you know, in this discussion right now, we need to have a little bit more humility and a little bit understanding that, you know, we really can't know everything and we need to have an acceptance that To be able to live comfortable with the feeling that I don't know, that we don't know who God is.
I just think, like, the arguments against God, like, with atheism, are just semantics.
I mean, doesn't the existence of a material world prove that there is a God?
How?
I didn't create it.
How is it here?
Everything that's implied around it, like, I've always had the working assumption that, like, mathematics Well, why doesn't evolution account for all these wonderful things around us that are so perfect?
I would always think that evolution is just a self-organizing structure, you know, like with free will, I mean, we will it.
We will our existence.
I mean, we have the power to control our life.
I mean, we could end the world or we can continue and prosper.
I mean, we have that ability.
I mean, I really think, like, what God is, is what has power.
And you can't say that there's not a power out there.
I mean, gravity.
What goes up must come down.
Who set that law?
Why is that law?
Why is that... I mean, there has to be a God.
I mean, not... It doesn't have to be, like, a guy in a cloud with a beard.
I mean, we've got to get beyond, like, our... I want to put this in some kind of context.
A lot of people often ask me the essential question of, okay, you say there's no God.
Obviously, things exist.
How do you explain the existence of anything?
That's what he said.
Right.
My take on that is simply, first of all, we're presuming, we're projecting our very small vision of reality, which is based in terrestrial rules that made us a survivable terrestrial organism, and we make presumptions of the greater universe Based on the way we're designed to perceive things.
One of the ways humans are designed to perceive is to seek beginnings and ends.
To seek cause and effect.
And therefore we look out at the world and it's our natural inclination to say, there's an effect there, therefore must be a cause.
We have no, we will never have any conscious awareness of Like, the true makeup and design of the universe.
There could be dimensions within dimensions within dimensions.
We're just wired for a very small, three-dimensional sense of reality.
We anthropomorphize, so we have a tendency to project that if there is a cause, we can call it a he.
It must be personified.
It must have human-like qualities.
It must have human-like consciousness.
To me, it's just the forces of nature, the laws of thermodynamics.
Devoid of consciousness, devoid of any greater moral agenda, but just a series of forces at work that lent themselves towards existence, whatever that means, greater than my own perception of it.
So yes, by no means could I ever claim that I have knowledge of why things are here.
Just because things are here, I also don't make the presumption that there must be some humanoid-like, human-like conscious designer out there who made things.
That, to me, is just a short-sighted vision.
Well, why don't you allow for the possibility, though, and go back one step from atheist to agnostic.
West of the wild card line, I'm sorry, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Yes, good evening, guys.
Rick from Calgary.
Mr. Albert, you've kind of got me a little bit of a loss here because you use the words belief, faith, proof, science rather extravagantly.
You only have your limited amount of field.
To me, I'm not sure if you're actually an atheist or just a pure skeptic.
No, you say atheist.
You don't have a broader range of vision.
You limit yourself and individualize yourself.
We have enough separation now.
You also throw this out there, this connectedness.
You're dabbling back into quantum mechanics with superstring theory.
Everything is connected.
The consciousness is here, but you're singling yourself out and separating yourself even more.
Join in.
Well, first of all, I'm not looking to win any popularity contest with this book.
and I'm not looking to necessarily fit in, and just because the mean of my species
happens to be wired to believe that there's a supernatural force out there
doesn't make me feel like I need personally to comply.
If other people have that need and that they're built with that drive in them and that perception in them, so be it.
But as far as like worrying about whether I'm going to be alienated, I mean, you know, hey, that's
part of the responsibility that we could say we all take when we make personal decisions, whether it's
what God to believe in or not to believe in one at all.
Those are based on outside... I could point to any religion.
I could point to a Christian and say... I don't submit to those.
Your beliefs are limited.
You've alienated yourself from Muslims and Jews and Hindus and Buddhists.
We all at some point cling to some belief and we've alienated ourselves, therefore, from everyone who doesn't.
Ah, but you used the word belief again.
You're adopting, you're adapting, you're taking the side of a precept that you haven't verified for yourself.
I'm not criticizing you.
I'm also here to help you because you're raising very good questions.
I'm not sure what you're even saying.
You're going from string theory to the word belief and I'm not really sure even what Well, in a roundabout way, I think that he was saying essentially the same thing that I have been, and that is that you really have not come over, for all the investigation you've done, and as sound as your theory seems to you, you speak more like a skeptic than you do, frankly, an atheist.
You haven't come over and investigated that which you really sort of say you have.
I mean, that much I've got.
You really haven't made an adequate investigation yet of the paranormal, and you need to do that.
And you need to put that in your equation, and then once you've done that, if you want to reject it out of hand, then I frankly would respect that.
But I don't think you've done that investigation anyway.
Matthew, we're out of time.
It's absolutely been a pleasure and energizing to do this interview with you, and I want to thank you for being here.
I hope people go out and buy your book, and I hope they're challenged by it, and I hope they're electrified by it, and I think they will be, and they should take on what you have written in the way I'm suggesting to you.
You should take on that which you obviously haven't yet studied, and then we should get together again.
Well, it's a pleasure as always, and thank you again for having me on, Art.
You have a great Thanksgiving.
You too.
Take care.
All right, folks, that's it for this weekend.
It went very quickly indeed!
It has been such a pleasure to be with you, and as I mentioned a little bit earlier, Make a Node, I have been asked and have accepted the concept of doing the New Year's Eve program.
Assuming we all make it intact, and during that program, we will take your predictions for the year a-coming, and we'll review those of the year that went.
It's kind of a yearly event, and I'm honored to be asked back to do that.
In the meantime, I want to thank all of you for being here, and I'll see you not next weekend.
Remember, I'm going to take one week off.
Barbara Simpson will be here, and then the following weekend, I will bounce back with, well, who knows what.
Whatever it is we do here.
For now, here's Crystal with the right words to take us out.
Good night.
midnight in the desert shooting stars across the sky this magical journey will take us on a ride
filled with the longing, searching for the truth Will we make it till tomorrow?
Will the sun shine on you?
Midnight in the desert, and we're listening.
Ooh, we're listening to you.
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