Dark Matter with Art Bell - The God Part of our Brain - Matthew Alper
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Be inside the sound, smell the touch, the something inside that we need so much.
The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound, or the strength of an oak leaves deep in the ground.
The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up through tarmac to the sun again.
Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing.
To lie in a meadow and hear the grass sting.
To have all these things in our memories whole.
from the user to help us survive Yeah!
Ride, ride like she saw Take this place on this trip just for me
Bye!
Take a free ride, take my place, have my seat, it's for free.
I worked like a slave for years, worked so hard just to rid my fears,
loved you with my life before my hands, but by now I know I should have grown.
Wanna take a ride? From the high desert and the great American Southwest, exclusively on Sirius XM Radio, this is
Dark Matter with your host Art Bell.
Now, here's Art.
Good evening, and welcome to Extra Terrestrial Radio.
This is Dark Matter, and I am Art Bell.
It's great to be here.
Um, I want to... I want to say right away that if your religious sensibilities are offended easily, please leave.
Just turn off the radio and go away.
If, um, on the other hand, you're intellectually challenged, and your faith can take a little challenge and hold up, well, stay where you are.
You know, if you're gonna cry like a baby.
Run.
That's just a little warning before the show tonight.
A few things, actually quite a few things before we get to Matthew Alper.
I got an email which I kind of liked.
Art, I had a dream or a nightmare after last night's show.
Art, it was that a meteor was heading straight for Earth and NASA developed a plan to change its trajectory just by enough To make it miss Earth by a few miles.
But about ten minutes before it was going to pass Earth, NASA notified the world that they'd screwed up on their original calculations and the meteor was actually going to miss Earth with no interference from man.
But, because of their error in calculations, it was now going to impact Earth.
So it was going to pass on by, but since we screwed with it, we all died.
It was a big flash, and then I woke up.
Bad nightmare.
Good show, though, Art.
Sorry about that.
And this I was shocked, surprised, and happy to see.
The way the planets influence the flow of dark matter into the sun now may explain one of the biggest mysteries in science, say, particle physicists.
The sun's 11-year cycle is one of science's greatest mysteries.
Astronomers have watched in fascination for centuries now as the number of sunspots increases and then decreases over a regular cycle of almost exactly 11 years.
More recently, they seem to have discovered that at the same time, the sun's visible light luminosity changes about 10 to the minus 3, while its X-ray luminosity changes by a factor of 100.
So anyway, They're saying that Sunspot's coming and going, the 11-year cycle, is all produced by what else?
Dark matter!
Go dark matter!
Here's somebody listening to Showstack, Seth Showstack last night, reminds me of something I've read about Thomas Jefferson.
Back in his day, nobody understood meteors, and scientists didn't believe that, uh, didn't believe even first-hand reports.
At some point, a couple of scientists from Harvard, I believe, tracked a meteor, recovered it, and proceeded to tell everybody about it.
Jefferson's response was, I'd sooner believe two Harvard doctors are lying than to believe rocks fall out of the sky.
I value SETI.
But, you know, they're searching time as well as space, and they don't know what they're looking for.
Thinking that advanced societies use lots of energy is kind of like a 19th century cowboy wondering about the horse poop problem in 21st century New York.
I had a lot of wormhole stuff about Seth not believing in UFOs and all the rest of it.
That's okay, I'm on the show stack.
Alright, you now have a very good reason to go to Artbell.com I've really got a good story up there for you.
You remember the other night I mentioned that two hydrogen bombs had been mistakenly dropped on North Carolina?
Didn't go off.
Save for one little safety feature that had three or four bolts in the right way and didn't change.
There were four safety things that would keep a bomb from going off after a B-52 disintegrates in midair and the bombs drop.
And three of the fail-safes Failed?
Well, the whole story was sent to me by a listener early today, and I've had Keith post it at Artbell.com.
Imagine that.
All those years later, they say, oops, we dropped a couple of hydrogen bombs.
Now, hydrogen bombs are really big.
These would have been about 200 times bigger than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So, in other words, goodbye, a lot of the East Coast, and goodbye forever.
Or at least, you know, many, many, many generations.
You were about three volts or four volts separated from eternity.
You can read about it on my website if you want to.
Oh, the 90-minute cutoff.
Well, this continues to be something that AsiriusXM is working on.
They said they will look into it for you.
I even had somebody say, you know, I downloaded something on demand or whatever it was and it still cut off.
That's really crazy.
So, we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
They're working on it, doing the best they can.
Remember I said that I think people are afraid of comets because it's in our DNA.
I do believe that, by the way.
I think that we have an innate fear of comets and I think it's from something that happened to man long ago and it's in our DNA.
Matthew Alper will like that concept because he thinks God is in our DNA too.
Now somebody writes, aren't being scared of things we don't quite understand or things out of the ordinary is a trait left over from evolution for survival.
Our ancestors from eons ago needed things like this to stay alive.
Weird-looking animal with big fangs?
Stay away.
Mountain man shooting flame?
Flaming hot liquid?
Strange.
Stay away.
Another one is kids being afraid of the dark.
What do you mean, kids?
I still don't like the dark.
Anyway, what is that?
Well, way back when, when things still went bump in the night as if they don't now, If an infant was left alone in the dark, they should be so scared they remained silent.
And then I really want to note this.
The best book I ever read in my life was called Gravity.
It was by a gal named Tess Gerritsen that I interviewed here on the air.
Long-time listeners, you'll remember it.
A lot of you, I bet, read that book.
And a lot of you probably now are thinking, Wow!
It was made into a movie!
No.
Uh-uh.
Uh-uh.
There is a movie coming out called Gravity.
And strangely, it has a female up in a space station, just like the book we read.
And yet, it is not Tess Gerritsen's book.
Just so you know, ahead of time, and you don't go running in to see it because you read Tess's book, not the same.
Hmm.
Hmm.
The Navy Yard Gunman says that it was ELF that made him do it.
Extremely low frequencies.
We know that low frequencies do affect humans.
However, he was also, I had heard, hearing voices.
So I'd worry more about the hearing voices part of it.
As Al-Qaeda linked terrorists through grenades, oh I'm switching over here to Real News, and fired automatic weapons, the three plainclothes Kenyan Police officers, lightly armed, wearing no bulletproof vests whatsoever, helmets, no other protective gear, worked their way to the roof of Nairobi's Westgate Mall and led a group of frightened shoppers to safety.
Some malls around the world, by the way, have been scrambling now to add security.
Mall guards.
You have to wonder, more mall guards.
The Iranian president declares he's ready to talk about nuclear stuff.
The earthquake in Pakistan, 7.7 I believe it was, raised an island.
People were up and walking around on it today.
They say it may stay or may not stay.
It was stone and bubbling gas that came up out of the seabed.
Interesting times we live in, right?
With a few words in a largely conciliatory speech to the United Nations, Iran's new president took aim at an Israeli fear, Israeli fear, that international pressure on Iranian nuclear programs could lead to scrutiny of Israel's own secretive nuclear facilities.
And I'm, you know, speaking of things nuclear, how's this for a headline?
Nuclear experts, colon, Fukushima Unit 4 has shown signs of collapsing.
Underneath buildings, it's become saturated.
Known fractures in soil.
Large structure already went down at plant.
Afterground was super saturated and had mudslide in March of 2011.
So, if Number 4's holding apparatus should collapse, that's really, really, really bad news.
For all of us, potentially.
We're going to have some more guests on that kind of thing.
What's going on at Fukushima?
I have this definite sense, and I'm sure you do too, that we're not being told the whole story.
What do you think?
Well, all right.
Coming up in a moment, Matthew Alper.
I want to tell you about the, and I'm going to pronounce it correctly or else, CENTA Ally.
Umpadre.
The CENTA Ally.
What is this?
It's the hardest thing to sell because, I don't know, it's hard to describe.
You can go to the C-Crane website and see it.
It's about 9 inches long.
It's a portable, stereo, oval, cylinder speaker.
Powered with rechargeable batteries that last about 10 hours.
And it sounds glorious!
Wonderful!
You will go, I don't believe it.
I simply don't believe the sound coming out of this thing.
Now here's a cool part.
It's Bluetooth.
What does that mean?
It means if you've got a bunch of tunes on your iPod or your cell phone, as long as your cell phone has Bluetooth and they all do, you just match it up to the center And all your tunes come out sounding like you're in a concert hall.
That's really the bottom line.
You can take it to picnics.
You can take it out back with you.
You can put it in another room.
Bluetooth will still feed it.
And so anything that comes out of your phone, that's not all you can hook it up to, of course.
You could hook it up to, say, a satellite radio.
A tablet.
An iPad, whatever.
It comes with FM radio built-in.
I mean, this device is just scary good.
You show it to a friend and you're going to be lucky if they don't walk away with it.
That's how good it is.
$69.95.
$69.95.
Man, that is just unbelievable.
and 95 cents $69.95. Man that is just unbelievable. The prices for what you get here, I don't know.
You've got to trust me on these things.
When I tell you this is good, it's really, really good.
Call C. Crane at 1-800-522-8863.
That's 1-800-522-8863.
The C. Crane Company and the Center Ally.
How was that?
I think I got it right.
Yes, this is nice.
That's 1-800-522-8863, the C. Crane Company and the Centa Ally.
How was that?
I think I got it right.
Yes, it was nice.
Coming up in a moment, it's Matthew Albert.
And Matthew will challenge your beliefs.
So, as I said at the beginning of the program, if you don't want your beliefs challenged,
you should go away now.
There's a lady who's shy, and she's got a lot of money.
There's a lady who's sure, all it glitters is gold.
And she's got a lot of money.
It's XM, baby, and we're very serious.
To call Art Bell, please manipulate your communication device and call 1-855-REAL-UFO.
That's 1-855-732-5836.
Well, alright.
Here we go.
You've been warned.
Matthew Alper attended Vassar and graduated from sunny Stony Brook with a B.A.
in philosophy.
He worked as a history teacher, that's right, a history teacher in the Brooklyn Projects, a tutor in the Philippines, we'll have to talk about that, and this one we'll really have to talk about, a truck smuggler in Central Africa.
That's where his career peaked.
And a produced screenwriter in Germany from once he returned to New York City to write what he considered to be his life's work, The God Part of the Brain.
Since its initial publication in 1996, Alper's work has been applauded by prominent scientists, academics, and Pulitzer Prize winners.
He has been cited in numerous magazines, appeared on a variety of radio and TV shows, lectured all across the U.S., and can be seen in the acclaimed featured documentary, The Nature of Existence.
His book is now in seven languages!
and has a fan base that extends around the globe.
Moreover, The God Part of the Brain is the first book written on the subject and is considered a pioneer work in the new field of study known as neurotheology.
And of course I want to congratulate him on his recent conversion to becoming a Southern Baptist.
What a shock!
Matthew, welcome to the show!
Thanks for having me.
I expected more.
Southern Baptist, right?
Well, I've been doing a lot of speaking in tongues, so... Actually, Matthew is an atheist.
Am I right?
This is correct.
Yeah, an atheist.
Matthew, at the beginning of the program here... Uh-huh.
Well, first of all, it's great to hear you.
I guess I ought to get that in.
It's been... Same here.
Like a lot of years, right?
A lot of years.
13, 14, 15 years ago.
A third of my life ago, we spoke.
Oh my God, was it that long?
It was.
All right.
All right.
Define for me... Uh-huh.
Atheist.
Well, actually, there are numerous interpretations.
I take a kind of hard-line approach.
My definition of atheism is someone who not only does not believe in God, but does not believe in a spiritual realm, period.
See, I've gone to, like, atheist conventions and spoken, and You get a lot of, like, rah-rah down with religion, down with the Church and the Pope and whatnot, and even down with God.
But then if I start probing and asking, like, well, who here thinks that they have a soul, hands will still go up.
And I'm like, eh-eh-eh-eh, that's not my atheism.
So, okay, so your hard line, atheist, means no spiritual stuff at all, zero-zip, Buddhist, go away, everything, I don't care what religion you are, you're not interested.
Well, I basically believe in the physical realm.
I don't believe that there's any type of transcendental reality that supersedes the physical.
Are you sure?
Hey, are you sure about the physical?
Well, I mean, ultimately I have to go with Socrates, all I know is I know nothing at all, but if I know, if I even know anything of anything, I would say that I do believe that there's a physical reality.
But sure, this could all be a dream.
Yeah, if you found out the whole thing was a matrix, I bet you'd be ticked off.
I mean, I could wake up tomorrow and find out I'm Art Bell.
Ha ha ha!
I didn't say nightmare, I said...
Alright, so you believe in essentially nothing.
That's fair to say.
Nothing spiritual.
So then when you wake up in the morning, what gets you going?
Well, that's an easy answer.
Coffee.
Next question.
Okay.
Um, gee, where to go from there?
You blew everybody away.
All right.
The reason you're here, I mean, we're going to break tonight into two parts, I guess, because you wrote another book.
Am I correct?
Yes.
Though, you know, we can sort of sum that one up more easily.
You know, there's so much to cover.
It took like eight shows together, three to four hours each to get through the God part of the brain.
I'm all revved up and ready to tackle that one, but I'd be glad to discuss Icarus of Brooklyn, a spiritual quest gone wrong.
Basically the prequel to God Part.
How I came to writing this book.
My own sort of spiritual journey gone awry.
There's a couple things I do want to cover before we get to that.
One is, you were a tutor in the Philippines?
Where in the Philippines?
Um, mostly in Zamboanga City, which is... Really?
Hey, have you seen what's going on there in Zamboanga?
Not recently.
This was years ago.
This was, like, even before, you know, before I wrote God Part or anything.
But even then, it was one of the bases for Abu Sayyaf, which was al-Qaeda in the Pacific.
Well, right now, there's a full-out battle going on there, buddy.
Refugees are pouring out, the army's in, they're trying to It's horrible.
It's just a mess right now.
Right.
Well, even then, the papers were like every day there was, you know, an ongoing beheading.
Abu Sayyaf would kidnap the son of some rich family, hold them for ransom, and whether the ransom was paid or not, they would still behead them just to get the reward.
I call it head chop country.
Yeah.
How long were you in the Philippines?
Like five months.
Not too long.
I was there for years.
And then you went from being a tutor, which was nice, teaching English I'm sure, right?
Yes, tutoring the son of the family that I was staying at.
I was to be the Aristotle to his Alexander.
I see.
We've got to talk a little bit about this truck smuggler thing in Central Africa.
How did you come to that?
Well, that was after I was teaching fifth grade in Brooklyn and decided to take off for a year with a friend of mine.
And I had gone on a journey after college where I started in Egypt and ended up in Sudan and there was a meningitis outbreak, had to sort of turn around and never finished the trip which was supposed to be to South Africa.
It kind of weighed on my mind that it was something that I would eventually like to complete.
And I was able to convince a friend that it was a wise thing to do.
So we took off for a year and we hooked up with some Brits and started in London.
And by the time we got to Burkina Faso, I ended up meeting these Dutch people.
We bought a 1952 fire engine from them.
And me and my friend Ben decided to continue the journey on our own.
And about four countries later, in Togo, the truck was breaking down, we were breaking down, we realized there was no way the two of us were going to make it to South Africa, so we started looking around for buyers.
And the next thing we knew, we were dealing with these black market characters from Nigeria, and it kind of went from there.
Yeah, I know a lot of fifth grade teachers that have gone on to smuggle trucks in Central Africa.
Yeah, I know.
No, it's an old story.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Jeez.
Well, that's, uh, you've had some adventures in life, and I have too.
It makes life a lot more interesting, doesn't it?
Exactly.
Whether there's a God or no God, adventures make life worth living.
Your phone line is wonderful, but you're kind of coming and going.
Try and stay fixed.
I haven't moved, but you let me know.
I want to sound loud and clear.
Yeah, oh, it is loud and clear.
It just sounds like you get louder sometimes and then you get away from the phone a little and then... Ah, okay, okay.
Alright, so I guess we ask how you first came to write a book like this?
Well, and again, to refer back to this new book, Icarus of Brooklyn, which is broken into three parts, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, which is really Early adulthood.
The book actually only takes me to my 20th year.
And it was basically about myself on a quest, because I was a curious child.
And the moment I kind of put together the fact that, you know, we're all going to die, I had questions.
And I was very driven by those questions, probably more than most.
And, you know, ended up with a degree in philosophy, which really didn't answer any of my questions.
Um, but, uh, yeah, so it was sort of my life's quest, like I'm sure many people, and I eventually resigned myself to the fact that my life quest probably had no answer, at least one that I would ever resolve within my lifetime.
But I continued, I was, I persevered, and I continued, I was leaning towards the sciences at that point, and I continued reading as much science as I could get my hands on from Atomic physics to microbiology to cosmology.
I wanted to, you know, leave no stone unturned.
And somewhere around like age 29, 30, I sort of had a little bit of an epiphany.
Did this quest that you were on through college, and then as you just described, did it include investigation of religion?
Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
I was studying World religion, world mythology.
I was dropping every psychedelic drug under the sun to see if I could transcend.
I was meditating.
It's helpful in seeing something, I guess.
I don't know.
But I'm not sure that it'll lead you to God.
Right.
It led me to altered states of consciousness, but it never led me to anything that seemed like a definitive proof.
Actually, again, at about age 30, at that point, I was living in Germany, working as a screenwriter, and things were going well, but there was always that thorn in the back of my head, just sort of nagging, like, you still haven't figured out God, and you probably never will.
But I actually kind of stopped asking.
I was just like, alright, philosophies for children, time to put all that aside.
And, like, become a member of society, get a roof over my head, pay bills and whatnot.
And one night I was working on a screenplay and I was sitting at the computer and I don't know, for whatever reason, I was like, you know what, it's been probably a good five years since I gave any attention to this question.
So I thought, you know what, maybe every five years I'll come back to it.
So I typed that on the computer in the last five or so years.
Have I come any closer to coming across anything I could say definitive about God?
You know, and I realized there wasn't really anywhere to go with that.
I was like, no, I haven't seen any miracles, you know, no visions, none of the above.
In other words, to believe you were going to need, I don't know, parting of at least a big lake.
Something like that, at least a big lake.
And then I had my moment where I looked at the sentence and I said, Aha!
There is something I can say definitive about God.
And that is?
It's a word.
It's sitting on the computer in front of me.
It can be read.
In Braille, it can be touched.
It can be heard.
And moreover, it's a word that seems to exist in every culture on this planet.
So I thought to myself, Okay, I've got all this science under my belt.
Let's go back a step.
What does science have to say about words?
Well, they're a human concoction that comes from the brain.
And here's a word that comes from the brains of every culture, from the beginning of man, no matter how isolated.
People found in caves, people out in the jungles of every continent.
They look up to the sky and they pray to something.
So I said, okay.
But I would think, initially, that would push you toward an investigation of why almost the whole world is worshipping one way or the other.
Absolutely.
Well, right, the universality was an important factor.
So I said, okay, well, what does science say about words?
Well, they come from the brain.
And what does, moreover, what does science say about words, or anything for that matter, that exists Cross-culturally.
Well, it's an inherited instinct.
And thus began the quest for the God part of the brain.
The part of the brain that compels us to believe in and perceive some transcendental quality in the world, basically as a coping mechanism.
To help us survive our unique awareness of death.
Now, I'm jumping ahead of myself here, but... No, it's all right.
I mean, that's the very center of what you're talking about here.
You think that our brain concocts God, or that we may be genetically disposed to do so, as a result of the innate fear, the overwhelming fear of mortality.
Well, what I'm suggesting is that, basically, With the evolution of self-conscious awareness, which was the trait that made humans the most powerful species on Earth, it's what distinguished us from all other animals.
Now, there are a few things that distinguish us from all other animals.
There's our language abilities, our musical abilities, our math abilities, a variety of functions that emerged in the neocortex during the hominid evolution.
However, the one that stood out to me as the most interesting And the most compelling was self-conscious awareness.
We're the only animal that recognize our own reflections, that can contemplate the meaning of existence and our place in it, that are aware of our own destinies and our own mortalities, that basically can experience existential angst, the knowledge that we and all of our loved ones are one day going to die.
But again, you're saying it is that fear, the fear of mortality, of dying, that causes us to reach out somehow or another and latch on to the concept of God.
Okay, close, but not totally the picture, because what I'm saying is that as we were evolving as an animal during the hominid evolution, the various stages we went through of primitive man, from homo erectus and australopithecus and all of those sub-creatures that came before us, that as we were evolving, and we evolved this sense of self-conscious awareness, that once we became aware of our own mortalities, even though, again, it made us the most powerful species on Earth, which is an important part of the formula, because it enabled us the power of self-modification, because from now on, because we are aware of ourselves, let's say it gets cold, we don't have to wait
Like all the other species, and sit back dumbly and wait for natural selection to give us a thicker coat of fur five million years later, we can say, ooh, I'm cold, and we can sew ourselves a coat in an hour.
So, we've been able to transform the planet as a result of that one trait, self-conscious awareness, but the drawback was it made us aware of our mortalities.
And the anxiety that came, the existential angst that came with that awareness, I'm suggesting, was so powerful, so overwhelming, that it may have wiped out the species had nature not selected a cognitive modification.
Basically, a part of the brain that compels us to believe that there's this other realm out there, so that we now feel that even though the physical body will die, that this other part, this spirit, We'll persevere and live forevermore.
So, basically, it's a coping mechanism.
It alleviates the horror of knowing that we're going to lose everything we have.
With other species, they can fight or flee their fears.
There's nowhere to run or fight against death.
So, I'm suggesting that we are now hardwired.
Our species has parts of our brain that are responsible for Musical consciousness, language intelligence, that if you damage those parts, you'll lose your musical ability or your language ability.
Our abilities are connected to the brain.
I'm suggesting that there are parts of the brain that, just as physical, compel us to have this belief that there's this other realm out there, which is basically what has birthed every religion and mythology from the history of man.
So, it's not like it compels us to believe our brains, it's wired into us, it's part of the software in our heads.
To have this sensibility, like you were talking about the Matrix, if there was one of the plugs in the Matrix that was like the religion plug, that basically had us perceiving reality from this peculiar bend, that there's something else.
And it kind of allowed us to deal with death and move on, and you know, so...
So that's what I'm suggesting, that it's wired into us.
It's not like a decision we make.
Alright, there have been a lot of years that have gone by since you presented this.
Now, I think it's fair to ask you, MRIs, various ways of looking at the brain when people pray, when they're in meditative states, there must be some, by now, physical evidence for this God part of the brain, right?
Heaps of it.
I'm ready with all of it.
My arsenal is prepared.
Oh, well, then put something into the bow and let go.
Okay.
Well, I basically break the argument into four major points, or at least the proofs for it.
The sociobiological, the neurophysiological, the genetic, And what I call the ethnobotanical.
Oh, that all sounds really complicated.
No, no, I'll simplify it.
No, no, no.
Simplify it after the break.
We're going to take a quick break here.
Actually, about five minutes.
So relax and come back with your proof.
All right?
That's Matthew Alper.
And I warned you.
Remember, I warned you.
On top of everything else, he's got a New York accent.
So beware of the Alper.
by the way this is for you matthew hello
i really wanna see you really wanna believe in you
really wanna see you love well it takes so long my love
i really wanna see you i really wanna see you
i really wanna see you music
sweet dreams are made of this who am i to disagree
i travel the world and the seven seas everybody is looking for something
some of them want to use you some of them want to get used by you
some of them want to abuse you some of them want to be abused
wanna take a ride?
To initiate a dialogue sequence with Art Bell, please call 1-855-REAL-UFO.
That's 1-855-732-5836.
Some of them want to convert you.
Hi everybody, my guest is Matthew Alper, and he has written a book some time ago called Sweet dreams are made of this.
No.
The God part of the brain, it's fascinating.
And the reason I'm having him back is I don't completely disagree with him.
Nor do I completely agree with him.
Actually, to make myself clear, my attitude is this.
I kind of believe in God.
However, you know, I'm 68 years old now.
Contemplating my own mortality could occur any minute.
And I sort of feel this way.
If there's a God, that's cool.
And I'm looking forward to it.
If there isn't, then I'll never be disappointed.
I'll never know anything.
It'll just be blackness.
Kind of like when you go to sleep, right?
You're in a good deep sleep and there'll be nothing.
So either there's a God and It's time for a party on up, or there's not, and I won't miss a thing.
Matthew, that's kind of where I stand.
Now, you stand firmly on the, no, there's no God, nor even spiritual stuff is out.
Actually, all of it's bunk.
So, we were getting to the proof part of this, so proceed.
know the proof part of this and so proceed okay I may have thrown out a few
fancy words If I do, I will make sure to explain them.
They're easily simplified.
So let's start with the sociobiological argument.
Sociobiology is basically, it's a science, it's a sort of modern twist on basic Darwinian evolutionary theory.
And it basically suggests, whereas Darwinian theory says that any trait That's fair.
universal to any species must have a genetic component. So the fact that all
cats have whiskers or a tail or that humans have a nose in the middle of
their face, it's not a coincidence. It's because it's in our genetic
code. Somewhere in our chromosomes are what we could call nose genes or
basically, you know, every part of us. Skin genes, eye genes. That's fair. Okay.
Right, otherwise it would all be chaos.
It would just be an accident.
We'd all be jumbled up, and there wouldn't be such a thing as species.
So, sociobiology basically just says the same thing is true, the same principle applies to universal behaviors.
So, for instance, the fact that all dogs bark, or cats meow, or beavers build dams, or honeybees build hexagonal-shaped honeycombs, all of these very specific behaviors from the Zigzag dance of certain fish, which is a 37 degree angle, and then they turn a 41 degree angle, and that's how they mate.
Very specific behaviors that are universal to these species, again, suggest that these are built into the animals, part of the genetic code.
What was that?
That was 41 degrees, was that?
Yes, 41 degrees.
41 degrees.
I sometimes make it 41 degrees.
I think that's the stickleback.
Yeah, okay.
Okay, maybe your parts stickleback.
So, essentially, the rule applies for any universal behavior of any species, it means that there must be a part of the brain, because that's where behavior comes from, that generates that specific behavior.
And if there's a part of the brain, that would mean there must be genes responsible for making that part of the brain.
So, for instance, the fact that all cats meow.
Even if you took a kitten away from its parents at birth, Okay, okay.
Here's the problem I see with this theory.
Okay.
You're the problem.
Okay, well that's nothing new, but how so?
Well I mean, you're suggesting to me that no matter what These genetic traits are going to drive you to do certain things, or to be a certain way, or to look a certain way, whatever.
You're making this absolute argument.
Well, here comes Matthew Alper, and you're not living up to it.
Well, how so?
Well, basically what I'm suggesting... What do you mean, how so?
Come on!
I'm trying!
You don't believe any of this!
You're saying everybody is driven universally?
Okay, we'll get there, we'll get there.
Alright, well, so get there.
We've been rounds ahead of the picture here.
Let's start with sociobiology.
Well, I had to complain a little.
Okay.
So, essentially, let's take, for instance, with humans, the fact that every human culture, no matter how isolated, is communicated through language.
Basically suggesting that we are a linguistic animal.
It's part of our makeup.
Well, now with the development of the neurosciences, we can look into the brain and we know exactly where the language centers of the brain are.
It's the Wernicke's area, the Broca's area, the angular gyrus.
You damage one of those parts, you bang your head, you get a tumor in that area, you'll lose some part of your linguistic ability.
It's called an aphasia.
So, proof that these behaviors are generating from within the brain.
So, I took that principle and applied it to the fact that every human culture, from the dawn of our species, no matter how isolated, has believed in some form of a spiritual realm.
Sun, the moon, something.
Something.
Spirits, whatever.
Some form of a spiritual reality has prayed to something.
So, suggesting that It must be built into us that somewhere in the human brain, there must be parts of the brain, what I informally refer to as the God part of the brain, that compels us to have these spiritual beliefs and to create religions around those beliefs.
So, again, so the universality is actually one of the proofs that there must be a part of the brain that generates these perceptions.
Okay, so then, there's the neurophysiological proof.
I don't know if that, listen, I don't know if that boils down to proof.
That boils down to, here's what Matthew thinks.
Okay, fine.
Well, in scientific terms, the science is basically, you use sociobiology as a validation.
If you can find a behavior that's universal in an animal, Most scientists will say that that's generally a sign that it's built into that creature.
It's an inherited reflex.
Yeah, but I could use the same argument, Matthew, to say the universal nature of it makes the other argument as well.
Okay, and again, we'll go there.
This is all a warm-up.
I'm just building up the argument here, and then we can discuss, sort of, in detail.
But yes.
Yeah, but when you say proof, I want to feel cinder blocks falling on my feet.
Okay, here come some cinder blocks.
All right.
Okay.
The next part is the neurophysiological argument, and this is now connecting.
So here I am just building up to suggest that maybe this is in our heads, that maybe the fact that it's so universal would suggest that it's coming from part of the brain.
So, in the last 20-odd years or so, people have started putting people in the midst of prayer in MRIs.
They've done it with Franciscan nuns, Buddhist monks, and basically, at this point, the hyper-religious of every belief system out there.
And what they find is the same thing happens if you meditate or pray, or you are in the midst of what you might call a religious or mystical experience.
Okay, what happens if you're having one of these experiences, based on the findings of MRIs, is that a couple things happen.
One, for instance, your brain's amygdala, part of the limbic system which is responsible for generating fear and anxiety, gets a decreased blood flow.
One of the universal descriptors of a spiritual experience is a sense of euphoria, bliss, tranquility.
Normal fears and anxieties are dissipated.
It relaxes us.
So we kind of have like a built-in drug in our heads if we think about God.
Stop for a second.
You said a decreased blood flow to the amygdala.
All right.
What would science predict?
What effect would science predict that a decreased blood flow to the amygdala would have?
Well, the amygdala is the part of the limbic system.
It's part of our brain that generates fear and anxiety.
Okay.
Exactly.
Okay, that's one of the symptoms.
Another is the brain's parietal lobe, which is responsible for generating spatial and temporal consciousness, also gets a decreased blood flow.
So we're left feeling this ethereal sense of timelessness and spacelessness.
Our normal boundaries of reality start to wane, and we're left feeling... Another symptom, the brain's right frontal lobe also decreased blood flow.
They found that that's where, generally, where ego, where personality is generated.
People who suffer from something called Pick's Disease, which is a deterioration of that part of the brain, lose their normal sense of self, their taste change, their sense of identity is altered.
So, when that part of the brain gets a decreased blood flow, our normal ego boundaries are dissipated.
We no longer feel like me, we feel like one with the universe.
So, again, these are all physical things that happen if we meditate or pray that leave us feeling a certain way.
So the brain is geared towards these behaviors to leave us in a certain state, to alter perception.
Alright, I'm willing to concede these changes that you have described in the brain, however, what's wrong with suggesting that when you get in that state, when you get in a spiritual state, whatever it is you worship, that that entity is not producing these changes in your brain that are causing you to feel this way?
Well, which entity?
Because they've done these experiments on people from every religion.
So, it would mean that basically, any belief we can come up with, if I believe in the great Big Bird in the sky, he must be real, because I'm having the same effect as someone who's praying to Allah or Jesus.
Hail Big Bird!
Hail Big Bird!
So, okay, that's point one.
Then you've got this guy, Dr. Ramachandran at UCLA, who found, he was doing research on epilepsy, and he found that there was a group of epileptics Who suffered from what was called Temporal Lobe Epilepsy.
And people who suffered from this specific type of epilepsy, first of all, 25% of them tend towards hyper-religiosity.
So we were finding that people who had Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, one out of four of them were somehow coincidentally hyper-religious people.
Moreover, they were reporting that during their seizures, they were having intense religious experiences.
And as a matter of fact, Reading from their Bible, or hearing things that in any way reminded them of their religion, choir, choruses, or whatever, could stimulate the seizure.
In which case, they would come out of it feeling like that they had a religious experience.
To support that, there are two scientists, two doctors, Saver and Raven, Also at UCLA, who were neuroscientists and historians and started looking back and doing some research and finding that a lot of the world's prophets suffered symptoms that seemed to indicate that they were potentially epileptics, from Joan of Arc to the Apostle Paul to Muhammad.
In historical writings, there seems to be evidence that they suffered from epilepsy.
Dostoevsky, for instance, who was an epileptic, he wrote in his book, The Idiot, he wrote, and I quote, I have really touched God.
He came into me.
You healthy people cannot imagine the happiness we epileptics feel seconds before we suffer from one of our attacks.
Again, all suggesting That this is a brain state.
Not like God's literally entering these people, but that their brains, which, albeit a little bit broken, somehow in that breakage, it's prompting, it's inducing a religious experience.
But it's coming from a dysfunction.
I also believe, and I hate to help you here, but it is true that scientists have been able to electrically Stimulate brains in certain areas and produce religious-slash-spiritual experiences, right?
Yes.
Even near death?
Yes.
Well, that's a different phenomenon.
What you're talking about is a transcranial magnetic stimulator, which electromagnetically stimulates specific points in the brain.
And if you pointed at, like, the temporal lobe, for instance, and some of these other parts, it can induce a religious experience.
Which eventually I'm going to get to with the whole that ethnobotany, the last proof I'll go to, which is when people take certain drugs or plants to do the same thing.
Again, suggesting it's all chemical in nature.
But back to the neurophysiological, the same person who was going around with his transcranial magnetic stimulator was also interviewing people, and in his interviews with high school students, he found that one out of five of them Who reportedly, you know, said that they were very religious, had also reported that they suffered some type of traumatic brain injury during their lives.
This coincides with the work of a Dr. Arnold Sadwin, the former chief of neuropsychiatry at University of Pennsylvania, who was doing research on something called organic psychosyndrome, basically People who suffer from traumatic brain injuries and it alters their behaviors or their perceptions.
He found that there were people, and he was one of the first people who wrote to me after hearing me on your show, saying, you know, I've been doing this research for years and you made it make sense.
Because I could never understand why families of people were saying, yeah, he suffered a head injury and suddenly he's super religious, or he was super religious and now he doesn't go to church or couldn't care less.
Right.
That people can suffer from religious organic psychosyndromes, or if you're banged in the head, it can suddenly turn you into a hyper-religious person or a non-religious person, depending on where you started from.
Again, all suggesting that these are just based on the mechanics of the brain, as opposed to some That it's all an extension, a manifestation of what's going on inside of our heads.
So, more or less, and, you know, I could keep going, but that's generally the work that's been done to suggest from a neurophysiological standpoint that, again, God is in your head and not outside of it.
Have you done any research at all into why it is that people from New York, and specifically Brooklyn, irritate the hell out of people in the rest of the country?
It's an ongoing investigation.
I'll let you know when we get results.
It really is true.
I mean, on top of everything else, I remember on the old shows we had, I would get these emails afterwards raging And then, at the bottom, they'd always put, and besides, I can't stand his New York accent!
Yeah, well, sorry about that, people.
Deal with it.
You separate, you separate, right, religious and spiritualism.
Religion and spiritualism.
Basically, I write that there are two distinct instincts going on here.
Two separate regions in the brain that are doing two separate things.
So I basically break it into the spiritual instinct and the religious instinct.
So spirituality and religiosity are two separate things.
So yeah.
Separate part of the brain or same?
Separate parts of the brain.
So for instance, most of religiosity, people who really talk about their religion or God, like these temporal lobe epileptics, It seems to be coming from the temporal lobe, whereas the spiritual experience, which is a different thing, it's that sense of calm, of oneness with the universe, God-consciousness, etc.
That's based in a combination of like the amygdala, the parietal lobe, it's a different experience.
So basically there's two things coinciding at work here.
You've got the capacity for us to have these experiences Where our normal ego boundaries are reduced and we feel one with the world, one with the universe, maybe one with God.
So through these experiences, we're left feeling that we're connected to something higher.
So based on these feelings that prompt beliefs, we then, through the religious instinct, which is more responsible for creating political institutions, for creating laws and rituals and customs, for mythologies, for basically solidifying Those spiritual experiences we have, which are more sensory in nature, and consolidating them into sort of a, you know, mythical paradigm, which has politics and customs and rituals and rules we have to abide by, which give us a sense of community, a sense of belonging, and a sense of purpose.
So, that's why you can have people who might report that they're very religious, They're very involved in going to church and the rituals, but they wouldn't necessarily describe themselves as spiritual, and you have other people who say, I'm highly spiritual, but I'm not at all religious.
A lot of people say that.
Yeah, so meaning they can connect with the experience of like the oneness with the universe, and that if they meditate or pray, it relaxes them, they feel, you know, again, they feel one with God.
Alright, they cannot embrace God, but they can embrace some form of spiritual Well, in some cases it might be God.
It doesn't mean that spirituality negates God.
It just means that you believe in some aspect of a spiritual realm, but you might not abide by any particular rituals, you might not feel you need to go to church, or confess to a priest, or any of the above.
But you still feel that you're connected to the spiritual realm.
Alright, so if we were to examine your brain, we would find your amygdala flooded with blood constantly, right?
You'd probably just be like Bugs Bunny chasing a turtle.
You know, I'm actually not really trying to be funny here.
It seems to me that if you can prove one thing, then you should be able to take somebody such as yourself, a true non-believer, Well, aren't you?
And prove the other, and show the blood flow continues as normal.
There's no lessening.
You're not relaxing.
You're going 100 miles an hour, as usual.
You only lead me to Chapter 12.
Why are there atheists?
All right, let's jump to Chapter 12.
Okay.
Why are there?
Basically, for every physical trait we possess, we fall into a bell curve.
You take any given population, let's say a random sample of a thousand people, and you measure them, let's say, a physical trait like height.
Basically, the majority will fall into the category of what we will call average height, the bulge of the bell curve.
And on the tapering extremes, there might be 10%, let's say, who are Shorter than the norm, and 10% that are taller than the norm.
Again, a bell curve.
I have a bulging bell curve.
I'm sure that makes your wife very happy.
No, that's not that one.
Anyway.
Okay.
Anyway, so, let's take something, you know, a more abstract trait, like musicality.
Same thing.
You take a random sampling of a thousand people from any culture, And you investigate their musical abilities.
You'll find the same bell curve will ensue.
That the average person, the majority of people that you poll, will have what we would call average musical intelligence or musical ability.
They can hum a tune.
If you clap in rhythm, they can copy you.
But on the tapering extremes, there are going to be, let's say, 15% on either side who are going to be either tone-deaf on one end And musical savant on the extreme of the other.
All right, I don't think it makes any difference.
Now, for example, I have zero musical talent, Matthew.
However, I would report to you this.
When I listen to music that I love, I have something that approximates a spiritual experience.
Okay, I fall into a similar category.
But again, musicality, it's a complex trait.
It's not just one thing.
So there's I'm saying it's kind of like a spiritual experience.
be someone who's a genius as a music critic, but he'll never play a tune.
You know, you give him a guitar and he might as well give it to my cat.
I'm saying it's kind of like a spiritual experience.
It really is very close to it.
It changes your outlook on life.
You can sit and listen to music and go from an angry state to a relaxed state to perhaps even a joyous state.
Well, I'm not an expert on musical consciousness and musical intelligence, but there are whole books written on it.
They've done the same kind of MRI experiments and absolutely music changes the brain.
There you go.
You listen to a John Philip Sousa march, and you get people riled up, and they go out and they fight for you.
You play some more peaceful, contemplative, classical music, and it relaxes people, or they feel sad.
So music can generate all these various emotions, but generally speaking, let's say in terms of musical talent, the same bell curve emerges.
Again, it's a physical trait.
It comes from a part of the brain.
And it's a result of genetic variance.
We're all different.
We all, you know, but we fall within a curve for every physical trait.
The same thing applies to spirituality and religiosity.
So, though the majority of the world, of our species, has what we could call average spiritual slash religious intelligence, an average capacity to believe in something, to pray to something, On the tapering extremes, you have a portion of any given population who are going to be hyper-religious.
They're going to be the people, you know, giving heartfelt sermons at the pulpit at 10 years old.
They've got the spirit born into them.
And then on the other extreme, you're going to have people who just are religiously tone-deaf.
They don't get it.
They don't care.
It doesn't play any interest in their life.
They're more interested in going fishing, fixing their car engine, whatever it is that turns them on.
But they don't get God, and they couldn't care less.
So again, because of the physicality, the physical nature of this perception, not everyone is religious.
Just like not everyone is musical.
It's part of our nature.
But whatever our nature is, not everyone is any one thing.
I'm curious about something, Matthew, and you may not have the answer to this, but You are, as your own description, a hard-line atheist.
How many people, like yourself, in this country do you think there are?
I mean, we know, for example, how many Catholics and so on.
So, how many people like you... Well, there's me, there's Steve, there's this guy Jimmy down the block.
No, I was honestly searching.
Yeah, they've done studies and... Percentage of population, how about that?
Yeah, but they say that the percent in America that the percentage of people who claim to be atheists is something like eight percent.
Eight percent?
Yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah, which would kind of fall into the bell curve, but with most developed Western nations, we are on the low end.
Whereas most European countries would report something closer to between 20 and 30 percent of atheism.
Is that so?
Yeah.
Yeah, as far as developed countries, we are the most... How about the Asian countries, out of curiosity?
A lot of them are not believing in one specific religion, they have ancestor worship, all kinds of things... Right, right.
Well, they're as spiritual as everyone, and even, for instance, in China, where religion is condemned, you know, religion is the Communist Party.
You're not allowed to have a church there.
Nevertheless, as much as you might try to suppress it, Same thing as they did in Communist Russia before that fell, and is now soon to re-emerge.
But even in China, they're reported as being some of the most superstitious people on Earth, so they've repressed religion, and this tendency, this need to believe in some type of transcendental alternative reality has emerged through superstition.
They are heavy into numerology, The luck of numbers, having the right numbers, etc.
So, it's like, you know, you can only suppress instinct so far.
Eventually, the animal in man will emerge somehow.
And this is part of the animal man, to be a religious animal.
You've got your first love letter here.
T wants to know, I'd like to know, is it a prerequisite of atheism to be such a condescending, self-righteous ass?
No, that's just me.
No, that's just you.
You know, people, you know that you make people very angry, right?
Well, I mean, what I'm suggesting here essentially would invalidate anyone's beliefs, whether you believe in The power of the crystal at your bedside?
I agree.
It does them all in.
I absolutely agree.
I agree.
All right.
Hold on.
We're going to take a brief break here and think about all this.
Think really hard about all this.
When we come back, we'll talk about near-death experiences.
That should be an interesting one.
What do you think?
The light?
Do you see the light?
End of the hall.
And to the hall, there's a light.
Oh, she tried her heart to recreate what had yet to be created.
Watching her life, she musters a smile for his nostalgic tear.
Never coming near what he wanted to say, only to realize it never really was.
The End The End
you Strange world design, make foolish people.
I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you.
I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you.
No, I don't wanna fall in love.
No, I don't wanna fall in love with you.
You're listening to Dark Matter with Art Bell.
For you to really matter, please dial 1-855-REAL-UFO.
That's 1-855-732-5836.
I wonder if falling in love is like a spiritual experience.
I wonder if falling in love is like believing in God.
I wonder if falling in love is a spiritual experience.
Matthew, what do you think?
Well, and I do, though, again, the God part of the brain mostly focuses on religious and spiritual consciousness.
I do go into certain peripheral items here and there, like music or love, for instance, and I think on one of the first shows You asked me, well, what about love?
Is that also just the mechanics of the brain?
Are you saying that there's nothing spiritual about that?
And I said, well, give it time, and eventually they will find it's the mechanics of the brain, and since have.
So, basically, you've got a woman, Dr. Helen Fisher at Rutgers, and kind of her specialty, she writes on the neuromechanics of the experience of love, and basically has found that even though Lust is governed by the hormones of estrogen and testosterone.
The feeling of what we call love, of being bonded by another person, is guided by our neurotransmitters, particularly those of oxytocin and vasopressin.
So, for instance, after we have sex with someone, our bodies flood with oxytocin and vasopressin, these two neurotransmitters that make us feel very connected, or what we might call in love, with The person we were just with, which was all chemical, all chemical, which would explain why two people who might be utter strangers met drunk in a party one night, and after a night of passionate lovemaking, woke up looking each other's eyes like we found the one, even though they might not know each other's last names, maybe even first names, because it's just our chemistry manipulating us and making us have these feelings.
Sometimes they end up right at the altar after a spiritual experience.
That's right, with Elvis.
Moreover, for instance, if you stimulate a woman's nipples, it will also cause the secretion of these neurotransmitters, not just for the sex act, but also if an infant child is suckling at her breast, It will cause the secretion of these neurotransmitters, which will make the mother feel bonded to her child.
I'm sure there's other areas we could get to, but I'd rather not.
Let me go to near death.
I have interviewed so many, Matthew, who have near-death experiences, and they all have sort of the same story.
I mean, they clinically die, no more heart pumping, no more anything, some for as long as an hour or more.
I mean, serious periods of time, and they come back with similar stories uh... and i'm a little bit light at the end of the
the long tunnel or whatever it is i refer to relatives who have passed uh...
before and i refer to messages that are given to them in these states now
it's pretty strong evidence of frankly something or another what do you think it's evidence of
well uh... again based on research that's now being done
uh... in this field on the sort of the brain science behind religious
perception uh...
there's a guy doctor jansen who his specialty is near-death experiences
and he studied the brains of you know basically people having these
experiences and essentially a near-death experience what it is is
First of all, no one has ever clinically died, unless you're a mythical character from Homer's Odyssey.
Your heart might have stopped, but your heart's just a pump.
It's just an organ that's a pump, like a bike pump.
All it's doing is getting oxygen to your cells.
If your brain has stopped, if your brain has not received oxygen for, let's say, ten minutes, And then you came back and you can tell a story.
Oh, Matthew, it's happened.
I'm sorry, it's happened.
Absolutely, it's happened in longer than ten minutes.
Alright, well, the medical community would probably disagree, but fine.
Regardless, this guy Jansen has found that what happens is if your body is getting, if you are getting a decreased blood flow to the brain, so you suffer a heart attack, your heart starts pumping that blood, you You're in an accident.
You're gushing blood, so you're not getting the same amount.
You have low oxygen levels to your brain.
Your brain will secrete a neurotransmitter called glutamate.
Glutamate is very similar to the drug ketamine, which is a psychedelic.
Thank God for glutamate, right?
Huh?
Thank God for glutamate.
Glutamate, yes.
Well, what it does is, it does a few things.
One of the things it does is it makes your body start pumping out endorphins, so it relaxes you.
Right.
So, let's say you are in an accident and you've been gassed somewhere and you're losing blood, your heart will relax.
Instead of panicking, your heart pumps faster, you die quicker, you relax, your heart slows down, you don't lose blood as quickly.
So, it's all just the mechanics of the body trying to keep us alive.
You know, nice little evolutionary trick.
But, not only have they found that this is what happens with the secretion of glutamate, but they have used ketamine to induce the same experience, because the chemical bond of ketamine is similar to glutamate.
And if you give people glutamate, you can induce a near-death experience.
And one of the things he found, for instance, When the brain secretes glutamate, the optic nerve is triggered.
So basically, whether your eyes are closed or not, you see a white light.
Your being is filled with a sensory perception of white light.
And then probably what's going on is the rest of the neuromechanics involved in religious experience.
Maybe your temporal lobe is being stimulated, so you're having experiences of God and religion and But, one thing, so, a couple things.
One thing is the universality, the fact that the descriptors are the same regardless of culture, would lead me to believe that it's a facet of our biology.
Moreover, you could have ten people from ten different religions, and they'll tell you at the end of their tunnel, they saw Allah, and the next guy saw Jesus, and the next guy saw Moses, and the next guy saw Zeus, and the other guy saw Odin.
So, are all of them real, or is it just the way that the brain operates that it triggers in our heads to have these perceptions of what we were taught that God is?
So, again, for me, the argument falls in favor of that it's all neuromechanical.
It's not like We're actually getting a visitation like some, you know, the holy ghost out there of every religion knows that you're on the brink of death and comes and visits you by, you know, suddenly you see white light.
Yeah, I think that's a fair comment.
I mean, that each religion sees its own savior.
It's true.
Right.
So either they're all real or none of them are real.
Well... And again, so then that must mean that, you know, the great big bird is also out there, because that's who I see when I Shoot up ketamine for recreational reasons.
You really see Big Bird?
Well, no.
But it makes good radio.
Out of curiosity, idle curiosity, what do you see?
Have you had any experiences?
Well, and again, this is all stuff that I discuss in Icarus of Brooklyn, the prequel follow-up to God Part, in which I discuss My drug experiences.
There's a chapter, Drugs and Meditation, and the chapter after that is called LSD.
So, yeah, I was exploring all sorts of psychedelics with the hopes.
Again, you know, not that I expect this to curb the flow of love letters, as you call them, but, you know, I want people to realize that I was just a guy looking like anyone else to find God.
I was hopeful that he was out there.
I mean, Heck, if right now I had the option between immortality in another 30 or so odd years, and then nothingness forevermore, I mean, heck, I'll take eternity.
That could be interesting.
You know what?
Part of me hears a little bit of kink in your armor.
Okay.
You know, like, you kind of wish you would discover it.
Yeah.
Is that there?
Do you admit to a little?
Well, you know, I wish it was there.
I wish I could find it.
Well, no, I don't believe I will, because I believe that I've done ample research in this direction, and I am convinced, just as I am with most of the principles of scientific theory, be it ever... Can one ever do enough ketamine?
Do enough ketamine?
Meaning what?
Honestly, I don't play with ketamine.
No?
No, no.
Maybe if I were younger and it were out there, it didn't come out.
What you said, I'm sorry.
No, no, I was done with my experimentation at age 19.
I ended up having a very bad LSD trip that basically landed me in a mental hospital.
So, you know, and I learned a lot about the chemistry of the brain while I was there.
Well now, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Let's go back to an earlier segment.
You said you had a bad LSD trip, landed you in a mental hospital.
But you also said that when people get damage to their brain, That suddenly they can come out thinking an entirely new thing, not believing in God, or suddenly believing in God, or having a total conversion.
Let's talk damage here, LSD damage.
Right, well first of all, I mean generally, with organic psycho syndromes, they're usually not chemical, they're usually like head trauma, like being bashed in the head, like a fall or a car accident.
Chemically induced changes, I don't know if there's really much... I don't think that there's... Oh, come on!
We're nothing but chemistry!
But that's not how it happened to me anyway.
It's not like I had a bad LSD trip and suddenly I woke up and I was an atheist one day.
No, when I finally came out of this bad trip, with the help of psychopharmacological drugs, You know, I was basically restored to my old self, which was a guy who was questioning, and I continued to question thereafter, but I now had a little bit more information about how the brain works and the chemistry of the brain.
Well, I had to ask.
Sure, sure, sure.
No, it's a good question.
It's a very good question.
Bear with me, I'm not very reverent.
Okay, so anyway, on near death.
You're saying it's all chemical?
It's just purely chemical?
Well, basically, I'm saying all of our religious and spiritual experiences are chemical in nature.
They're all coming from the neurochemistry, the neuromechanics of the brain.
So, for instance, I was going through my initial proofs or arguments to validate this notion of a God part of the brain, and I went through the sociobiological and neurophysiological But I didn't get to finish, so let me, if I can quickly stick those in there.
There's also the genetic argument, and like I said, what I call the ethnobotanical.
The ethnobotanical is relevant at this point, because basically, ethnobotany is the study of cultures and their use of various plants, and for any number of reasons, including part of their religious experience.
Various cultures have used what are called entheogens.
Substances which are used by different cultures to induce a religious experience.
So you have everything from, you know, the Scythians using cannabis, to the Africans using ayahuasca, to the Aztecs using mescaline, which they refer to as the food of the gods.
All to induce a religious experience.
And this is, again, a universal.
So, again, basically suggesting that if you can take a substance and it can make you see God, that would suggest that it's the chemistry of that substance that altered the brain in a specific way, not like you had a visitation.
Like, God came from a cloud up in the sky.
He saw that you popped a pill or ate or chewed on a plant.
And decided to come down, whether it be in the form of Zeus, or Odin, or Allah, or the Great Spirit Bird, whatever you want to call it.
Again, this is all, I would believe, validation that it's coming from the neuromechanics of the brain, as opposed to an actual visitation from our spiritual realm.
All right, but just because you took a shroom and suddenly you feel very, um, Religious, or you feel very spiritual, that doesn't negate the possibility of there still being a God, and the shroom just caused you to appreciate it more, and it was just an aid to what's already there.
Okay, and again, you know, I'll bring up again the fact that these chemicals have been used to induce Religious experience of a variety of religions.
But that might be alright, I just might be in age.
Smoking a little pot makes music sound better, right?
Absolutely.
And I agree, but the thing is, the burden of proof, you can never, look, nothing that I write or say or investigate could ever, with absolute certainty, negate the existence of a spiritual realm.
So for instance, right now as I speak, There might be some magical, invisible leprechaun dancing on my head.
And I could never prove that there isn't.
But the burden of proof should lie in that there is.
Because it's an, you know, it's an absurdity to expect... Again, one can't, through proof, negate the existence of things.
You can only prove the existence.
So, you know, if I were going to believe in something, if I were going to dedicate my life to the belief in something, I wouldn't, you know, put the burden of proof saying, well, why do I put all of my energy into believing, let's say, in the dancing leprechaun?
Simply because you can't prove he's not there.
I would hope that you could, that I'd be able to say, well, let me tell you 50 ways where I can prove, not say I felt him, or I saw him, but I can prove, just like I can prove 1 plus 1 is 2, or that if I turn the key on my car ignition, the car starts, You know, so again, absolutely nothing I say will ever negate the existence of God.
These are just... Well, and having said that, how can you not admit to a little chink in what you said was absolute?
In other words, sure, you're an atheist, but some... Well, these are just like necessary disclaimers.
I mean, even in the sciences, I mean, Look, you know, we use science for... all of our technologies are built on science.
We go to doctors, we take medications, we get heart transplants, we fly on airplanes.
Right now, on the phone we're using, it's a scientific technology.
If it weren't for science, we wouldn't be talking right now.
So, nevertheless, within the sciences, there are only five laws.
The laws of thermodynamics.
Everything else is considered a theory.
So, the theory of electromagnetism gave birth to the phone that we're on.
So, it's all theory.
So, as a scientist, I have to allow for the disclaimer that, look, as Einstein said, it takes a million proofs to prove a theory right.
It only takes one to prove a theory wrong.
So, for instance, if tomorrow the sun does not set in the West, boom, there goes the whole theory of the Earth turning around the sun, etc.
It just takes one to make it go wrong.
Again, as a scientist, I feel responsible to put that disclaimer out there, but still, just as much as I believe that when this phone rang and I pick it up that Art Bell's going to be on the other end, or at least that the phone's operating, or if I flip this light switch next to me that the light will go off, I have faith that the light will go off.
But, before I flip it, if you say, do you know 100% absolutely that the light will go off, I'd say no, I feel 99.9999% that the light will go off.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Are both your parents alive still, Matthew?
Yes.
They are, okay.
How about your grandma?
No.
All of my grandparents are gone.
Alright, so if you were to suddenly seize up, drop on the floor, see the light, Talk with your grandmother, who would sit you down and say things to you that she never said when she was alive, and you came back.
I guess when you revived and you felt a little better, you'd say, damn chemicals.
I'd say cool hallucination.
I felt the presence of grandma.
It sounded like she was talking to me.
She told me some story about You know, the time she played poker with Aunt Leah.
So, that wouldn't be enough?
Well, just because I had that perception, I don't even know if she played poker with Aunt Leah, you know, but in my brain, that's what happened.
Now, if I passed out, and came out of a coma, and said, you won't believe this, I had this wild hallucination, and they stopped me and said, yes, we saw it too, we were at your bedside, And suddenly the spirit of grandma appeared, and she told us about how she played poker with Aunt Leah.
Then I'd be like, okay, this just got crazy.
I got a better one, Matthew.
How about you die, your grandma says she lost her house to Aunt Leah years and years and years, decades ago.
She actually lost her house, and you had no knowledge of that.
You came back, and you related your experience.
They said, oh yes, she lost her house.
Never told you about that one.
How about then?
I would, then I would just say either I don't recall when she told me that, or somewhere sitting in my subconscious was the realization that she sold her house, and I kind of forgot about it until I had this hallucination.
But, you know... You know what I think?
I think that atheism for you is more than atheism, it's a religion.
No, it's a lack of belief.
Well, for you to say you wouldn't react, you'd somehow write it off.
Okay.
Now that's not logical, Matthew.
Look, there are people every day, let's just say, now every society has their own mythology, so let's just say in the Christian world, Christians who truly believe in the word of the Bible, so who are true creationists, and in their Conscious reality, creationism, is the way that the world came about.
That 5,000 years ago, or whatever it was, in seven days, God created the world.
That is as real to them as you're suggesting the hallucination, or, you know, this fact that my grandmother came to me, or that it's somehow a faith for me.
The faith for me isn't atheism, it's science.
And science represents the lack of that belief.
So, for instance, you could say... Yeah, but how would your belief in science dismiss the fact that you had received some information that you could not possibly have received in any other way?
Again, because I wouldn't put that much faith in not possible to receive.
Again, our heads are full with so much subconscious information, stuff that we forgot, that if we're reminded of today, we might think it was new.
Or I might just distrust the person who's saying it.
Maybe they want attention, so they're going to say, yeah, I know that I died and I had a visitation by my grandma.
But you could say, for instance, evolutionary theory.
The opposing belief over creationism, you could say, oh, well, I think that's your religion.
And I'd say, no, it's not.
It's just something I have faith in because it follows a certain logical order that I have put my faith in.
So just because I don't believe in creationism, it doesn't mean, which for some people, that is their religion, that is their belief.
Just because I don't believe in their belief, it doesn't mean my belief becomes a religion.
Well, it almost does, Matthew.
When you say that you would ignore the science of having received a fact you could not have received any other way, you would ignore it and have faith in your atheism.
No, I would have faith in the fact that... Because you'd write it off.
You'd write it off, right?
You'd find a way to dismiss it.
What are the odds that grandma lost her house and you hallucinated that information that you didn't know?
I mean, come on!
I am just like I'm so convinced by evolutionary theory over creationism, so convinced that nothing could happen that would make me believe in creationism.
Obviously, obviously.
Right, okay.
For the same reason And again, based on all of this very thorough research that I've done, I have such faith in this notion that it's all based in our brain, it's all perceptual, that even if it was something as specific that I came out of a coma and was like, I don't know, numbers 8, 7, 5, and let's say listed a length of 20 numbers, and my mother turned to me and said, oh my god, that was your grandmother's
Social Security number and her something else number.
How did you know that?
I don't know.
When I was out cold, grandma came to me and she told me those numbers.
Let's add to it then.
Let's say you take those numbers, after disclaiming it all, and you go down to the corner store and you bet those numbers and you hit the lottery for about $800 million.
I would just say that that was a tremendous luck.
In other words, there is nothing, there is nothing that would cause you to change your root belief system.
And that's a religion, buddy.
If God sits me on his lap, signs his autograph, and The members of the Supreme, all the Supreme Court Justices stand around observing it and notarize the autograph as authentic.
I'll think about it.
Alright, alright.
Hold on, Matthew.
After going there, I have no idea where I can go.
The man just doesn't believe.
And even if he were hit over the head by Grandma, And then he hit the lottery with the numbers Grandma gave.
He still wouldn't believe.
He's a tough case, alright.
I should have a good love letter for him here, too.
We'll get to that when we get back.
From the high desert and the great American southwest, this is Dark Matter.
Dark Matter is a cosmic phenomenon that occurs when a star is hit by a powerful meteor.
It is a phenomenon that occurs when a star is hit by a powerful meteor.
Dark Matter Dark Matter
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In the morning with the night, I'll play in the shadows.
I'll watch you at night, till the morning light.
To be part of Dark Matter this night, please direct your finger digits to dial 1855-REAL-UFO.
That's 1-855-732-5836.
That's what we're doing, running with the night, playing with the shadows.
Listen, I got a wormhole message a little while ago from somebody who had just bought the Sea Crane Wi-Fi antenna.
And they were saying, Art, oh, we were so frustrated.
The computer we have was dropping constantly in the middle of your show and dropping and dropping and dropping.
Turns out it was because of the Wi-Fi signal.
So listen to me.
Please listen to me.
The Super USB Wi-Fi Antenna 3 will end those troubles.
Whatever you get for a Wi-Fi signal now, this'll like triple it.
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All you do is plug this baby into the USB port of your computer.
Add a little software.
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You are seeing Wi-Fi signals from far away.
If you're a trucker, it's just a rod with a 15-foot wire on it.
So, you know, it's got a couple of little suction cups and you stick it to your window.
And now you're seeing Wi-Fi really far away, and of course, what you're near, you're going to get so well.
So whether it's at home, or you're in a truck, I don't care where you are, the USB Wi-Fi antenna, Sea Cranes version of it, will put everything else into the dirt.
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I know what I'm talking about.
They know what they're doing.
Order it.
You can go to the C-Crane website, C-Crane.com, or you can call them right now.
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Order one, you'll be a happy camper.
All right, Matthew, here we are again.
Here we are.
Here we are.
I thought you sell that antenna like someone who has faith in science.
Makes me wonder.
I do have faith in science, Matthew.
Believe me, I do.
I do.
I'm so totally into science.
But that doesn't... It isn't where it stops.
I mean, for you, it's like there's a wall there.
Science is science, and then there's a wall, and you don't even look on the other side of it.
Believe me, I have looked.
I have looked over that wall.
It's just that there's nothing there.
I've spent a good portion of my life looking over the wall, looking through the wall, under the wall, into the wall, Brain damage.
Must be.
All right, let's talk for a second.
I mean, on this program I talk a lot about the possibility, or even probability, of extraterrestrial life.
Whether we'll hear from it.
I did a show last night on that.
Whether we're going to hear signals eventually or not.
Whether we are being visited here on Earth.
People have seen a lot of things, Matthew.
People have been abducted.
People have met these creatures.
You know, I'm curious.
What's your take?
Well, first of all, even just the languages.
People have been abducted.
The way I would phrase it, people have claimed to be abducted.
Think of all the claims people make on a given day.
That if you buy their product, they'll make you live longer.
Or any number of things.
There are prisons full of people with claims of things that aren't real.
And there are people out of prison who are full of claims of things that aren't real.
That's the nature of man.
And then some claims are real.
Yes, and some claims are real.
When they can't be backed up by like, and here we have in this cage, the actual alien!
Meet Fred, the alien!
And we get to speak to him, or the spaceship lands in New York City and we all get to see it.
We all get an equal anal probe.
Not just Jimmy in the cornfield.
I hope it does land in New York.
Why not?
So in other words, you reject... So in other words, you reject Anything of the sort?
No.
No, I do not.
Alien life, to me, does not fall within the guidelines of spiritual reality.
As we know, organic forms do appear, such as us.
So it's within the realm of the possible.
Can't deny that.
Well, I'd go beyond that.
We're finding exoplanets everywhere now.
In other words, planets like Earth.
And the odds of life evolving elsewhere scientifically, Matthew, are pretty damn high.
Well, we've yet to find one.
So as much as it might be speculated, at least within our own solar system, we've yet to find definitive life.
So, okay, here's my take on alien life.
Do I believe that somewhere in the universe organic forms have emerged besides man?
I would probably say yes.
Do I think intelligent life has formed comparable to man?
Even possible.
Do I think we will ever meet any of them?
That I do not believe.
And here's my reasoning.
Uh, just based in the physics.
Now, of course, you can negate all of this with time travel and space machines and magic wands that make you move from galaxy to galaxy in a second, but based on physics as I understand it, based on the principles of thermodynamics, this is the problem that I see.
Let's take the closest star to Earth, Alpha Centauri.
Alpha Centauri is 4.2 light years away, and it's the closest star.
So it's the closest possible solar system where other life could have emerged.
Is it likely that it's emerged?
Coincidentally, the nearest star to us?
Probably not.
But let's even take the nearest star and work with that.
4.2 light years away.
Well, light travels 186,000 miles.
per second, making a light year equal to approximately 6 trillion miles.
That makes Alpha Centauri approximately 25 trillion miles away.
The closest solar system to Earth, to our solar system.
At that distance, if you were to take the fastest spacecraft that
humans have created, which was the Voyager,
at the speed of the Voyager, it would take 75,000 years for a craft to go from Earth to Alpha Centauri.
And again, this is giving a leap that we're giving to say, let's say there's life on Alpha Centauri in one of the planets in its solar system.
Probably not.
Even intelligent life.
Right, probably not.
But even, let's even, I'm just going to give the benefit of the doubt.
Super intelligent life.
Smarter than us.
Maybe even capable of space travel.
They're bouncing around the planet in their solar system.
For them to get here, again, at a super fast pace, it would take 75,000 years.
Let's say it's a species, I'm going to even give another stretch, let's say it's a species that happens to have great longevity.
Each individual lives to be 5,000 years old.
Let's look at another species, because I already know where you're going with that one.
Let's look at a species that's been on Earth for a billion years longer than we have.
Quite likely, actually, when you consider Things.
A billion years, longer than we have.
Look at what has changed for us, Matthew, in the last hundred years.
Now, project another billion years.
Now, let's start to assume that they found a way to travel faster than light, or they found a way to fold back space and jump from point A to point B. In other words, they can figure out... Right, well, like I said, and I knew, you know, anyone where I would present this can go there, that yes, There might be, again, I can't debate imaginary technologies that could do magical things.
Yes, absolutely.
Only magical because we don't understand them.
Not even magical, just super technological.
That was your word, not mine.
I know, I'm taking it back.
Okay.
Super technological.
Major advances beyond our capacity.
Agreed.
All of that's possible, but I do believe that the speed of light is a constant.
I don't believe we will ever travel at it.
I don't believe that molecules, like in Star Trek, that they'll ever be, you know, where we can project a human from one place to another in an instant, where molecules will dissipate to be sent through space beyond the speed of light, and
then re-emerge.
I don't, personally I don't think, again, and this is all just based on my understanding
of the laws of physics, maybe what we know today will one day be, you know, antiquated,
and yes, we'll travel at the speed of light.
I don't see it, but in the meantime, from what we do understand, yes, it would take
like 20 generations of a very long-living species to travel here.
So, even let's say they can bend space, it's still going to take a lot of work, and there's probably a lot of risk involved.
So, why would a species risk to bend space, come to Earth, do a few anal probes, maybe cut a few circles in the crops, It's like, would you travel a gazillion miles to ring someone's doorbell and run?
Like, why aren't they here?
Why aren't we hanging out with them?
Why haven't they dominated us, made us their dolls to play with?
That's all fair comment, I suppose, and I don't have an answer for it.
I think that the other argument, that they are out there somewhere, and that there's somebody millions or billions of years ahead of us, is a reasonable argument.
And so we could be visited.
You know, you can't just blanketly deny it.
By the way, I want you to hear this love letter, and this is one, too.
Ian says, Hey Art, I just wanted to say, as a former Christian, and now an atheist, I agree with Mr. Alper, and I want to voice support for his views.
I feel A far more spiritual feeling looking at pictures from Hubble than I do from the Bible.
Thanks for having them on.
Excellent.
One for Matthew.
Make you feel warm and fuzzy and begins to take a little blood away from the amygdala or what?
Well, thank whoever sent that.
Uh, Ian, yes.
Ian, thank you, Ian.
Right, okay.
Now, let's talk about humans evolving.
Let's look another, I don't know, thousand years from now.
I would assume we'll take another evolutionary leap of some sort.
What do you expect as evolution continues to grind away?
Okay, well, again, an opinion that probably isn't all that popular.
With the folk, but I believe... Throw it in the bucket.
The bucket's already full.
I believe, while it's about to overflow, I believe that humans are done evolving.
Contrary to all of the alleged science articles showing, depicting humans with giant foreheads to fit their bigger brains and longer fingers, etc., etc., This is it, huh?
This is it.
We're done.
And I can tell you why we're done.
Are you sure you're not speaking on a purely personal level now?
Well, I'm always speaking on a personal level, but I'll tell you why.
This is my personal belief.
And it kind of goes back to the theory again that basically with the evolution of self-conscious awareness, Humans have transcended the process of natural selection.
Let me explain.
So, up until humans, let's say there's a shift in the Earth's axis and the temperature of the planet drops 100 degrees.
Well, what happens?
The environment changes and all of the animals that exist on the planet suddenly have to adapt.
So let's say, for instance, The creature with the furriest coat tends to survive and reproduce long enough, live long enough to reproduce, whereas the others in its species start to die off.
Five million years later, we've got a furrier species, such as the woolly mammoth.
Now, humans come along, and that's how evolution has worked from the beginning of organic matter, 3.2 billion years ago.
So, now all of a sudden, man comes into the picture, And because of our capacity for self-conscious awareness, the temperature drops, as I said before, it gets colder, we don't sit passively back like every other animal, we can say, I am, I am cold, and we have the digits and mathematical and engineering capacity
To manufacture a coat of fur in an hour.
And that applies to every possible technology.
If we look up at the sky and say, oh, look at those lucky birds.
Think how advantageous it would be to fly.
Boom!
We build wings.
We want to go underwater like the fish.
Boom!
Submarines.
Whatever we want, basically, we can manufacture it.
We can travel.
Unlike any species, we can migrate to any portion of the planet and we can create a synthetic environment in which we can survive.
Meaning, that no matter what changes take place, because that's what forces evolution.
An environment changes, there's a climatic change, there's a new animal introduced into the area.
Whatever the case, the tectonic plate shifts, and suddenly the Earth's surface is different.
It's hotter, it's colder, there's lava pools involved, whatever the case may be.
With humans, we can migrate to any environment, and we can synthesize it to suit our needs, so that We won't change anymore, but basically we will change our environment way sooner than the environment will change us.
So we're done naturally selecting.
We now modify ourselves to suit our environment in any way possible.
Our imaginations are seemingly limitless.
So basically, we're done.
How long ago do you think we got done?
We got done when we got born, which was about 100,000 years ago at the dawn of Homo sapiens.
Our species, and our species alone, none of the pregenitors of man, not Homo erectus and Peking man and Australopithecus, none of them had all of the potential that we do.
But when man got cooked, done.
Game over for natural selection.
Wow.
Yep.
Wow.
That really is a wow.
Okay.
Just for the sake of time here, let me move on.
Okay.
There have been study after study after study showing, interestingly, that when a group of people pray for somebody, it has a measurable, actual effect.
Now, these are double-blind studies, and I wonder how that information I would put it into the category of charlatanism.
Anybody who suggests that there's a study that if everyone prays, there are consequences, would not explain the fact that every one of us continues to die.
And you tell me one person who prays that isn't praying that we live longer.
Oh, please don't take my father.
Please don't let this one die.
Real scientific studies, when people have no idea they're being prayed for by these groups.
There really are these studies, Matthew.
Again, I would not believe in any of them.
And any guess that would come onto your show and suggest that there are, I would just say is a charlatan selling snake oil.
Because, you know what, for every case where, like, little Jimmy, who was diagnosed with cancer, and the doctor said has three months to live, and the community prayed, and he lived, and, well, what was it?
Of course it was a miracle.
There's no other explanation.
For every little Jimmy, there's 50,000 Jimmies who are dead, because everyone in the community still prayed for him.
They didn't pray any less hard, but Life has a way of killing people.
Okay, but you're still, you're whizzing by my argument, and that is that there have been controlled studies of people who don't know they're being preyed for versus those who are not being preyed for, and the recovery rate is significantly different.
Right.
Again, you know, you can pass this off as just New York City arrogance based on, and I've done my research too, I would say that's charlatanism.
People making false claims.
Alright, here's Rick who says, what a stretch!
What biological function would put a fake God awareness in our brain?
He's assuming a cause and effect.
The MRI of the brain could be reacting to God, not the other way around, that he assumes just because he wants to disbelieve.
Well, again, I would have to go with the argument about what God, which God?
The great big bird in the sky?
The snake spirit?
How can a belief in such disparate realities cause the same thing, and then one argue that there must be a God?
So if I believe in the snake spirit, or the raven spirit, or, you know, the Norse wolf spirit, or any number of gods, Buddha, Krishna, Moses, Jesus, Allah, etc., etc., the list goes on, and they all produce the same effect, How is that evidence that all of those characters exist?
Where do you go with that?
Do you believe in the devil?
Of course not.
Okay, well that's something.
What about the existence of evil on earth?
And I mean real evil.
We've had lots of recent examples of serious evil.
Evil's a great word.
There's some evil people out there, but when I refer to evil, I put it in quotes.
Because just as I don't believe in God, I don't believe in evil.
Because evil would signify, the way you're suggesting it, that there are forces at work.
As if there's, like, a spiritual good and a spiritual evil.
And again, I refer back to the brain.
I believe that good and evil are categories.
by which we are wired to perceive certain aspects of human behavior.
So, it's our nature to look at people who, let's say, commit destructive acts against the community and be repulsed by them, to come up with words that indicate evil and that they should be punished.
These are universals in every culture.
Of course, it's necessary that we judge those who want to hurt us in a negative way, and this is the language of Basically, keeping us alive as a social organism.
Moreover, to again refer back to the brain, there have been numerous studies done on moral reasoning and its relationship to the brain.
So, for instance, Well, the first indication was a man, Phineas Gage, in 1848, worked in the railways, there was an explosion, a metal rod penetrated his head, pierced his right frontal lobe, a portion of the brain that's now referred to as the Brodman 10 region.
He went from an upstanding, church-going, hard-working man to a vagabond, thief, lying cheat.
Left his family, left his job, roamed the world, stealing and cheating and lying.
Total mystery.
And then until 150 years later, when they could now do neuroimaging, and found that others who live today who've suffered similar damage to the Broadminton region of their brain become sociopathic.
And that they've done studies, MRIs of people on death row, and a good portion of people on death row, regardless of what prison you go to, have suffered trauma to their Broadminton region in the brain.
You've got Dr. George Mole, the head of Neurology and Neuroimaging in Rio, who has done experiments basically putting people in an MRI and asking them a variety of questions.
What's your favorite color?
Who do you think is a funnier comedian?
And then sticking it in between questions that dealt with moral reasoning.
You know, is it okay for a man to steal from someone just because he's stronger?
Et cetera, et cetera.
You get the idea.
Let's talk for a second about morality since you brought it up.
Okay.
I'm wondering if you actually managed to convert everybody.
Yeah.
And this country suddenly became atheist coast to coast.
Aren't you at all worried about the sudden lack of moral behavior that would ensue?
In other words, bad as it may be now, without the control of the belief in God and some sort of ultimate punishment for doing wrong, you might have to start carrying a gun.
Well, you might carry a gun anyway, actually.
I don't.
Well, first of all, they'd be minion slaves of my cult, and they would do as I tell them.
But those who disobeyed... No, essentially, I don't believe... See, I'm part of a community that refer to themselves as secular humanists.
The humanist community.
And humanists don't believe that morality is based in religion, which would explain why a lot of religious people are highly immoral.
And you can't argue that.
No, no, no, and I'm not going to even try, but what I am going to say is, if you manage to convert all these people, those who have been relatively moral because they believe in the hereafter, would suddenly... But I don't believe that makes people moral.
I don't believe there's one person out there who, because he believes in the hereafter, made them a little more honest, a little less deceptive, a little less apt to, like, smash someone over the head with a bottle.
Because, and again, because I believe these are all facets of the human condition, of the way we are hardwired to perceive reality.
Religiosity is one part of the brain.
Moral consciousness is another.
Some people are born Highly moral, or with a propensity to be highly moral, regardless of their upbringing.
And some people are going to be born with a propensity towards sociopathy, again, regardless of how they're raised.
You could raise someone with a predisposition to sociopathy by Mother Teresa and some other holy person, and Gandhi, and they'll still go out and be Jeffrey Dahmer, because they were born broken, because it's just...
But Matthew, if you took the support of religion and faith away from the masses, you really would have a different situation on your hands.
Now, to you, you might think it would be an ideal world, but I don't think so.
I think that religion does, in fact, control people in a positive way.
Really?
Is that why we're at religious war now and throughout human history have never not been?
Religion is just as apt to send people to go kill in the name of their God as to then preach, be good to others.
And again, I don't buy it.
How often do you see it?
It is true that everybody goes to war saying, God's on our side.
Right.
I believe that true moral reasoning should be taught, not because, should be taught in a way based in social science, Not as a threat that the only reason you shouldn't go stab your neighbor and take his belongings is because you'll burn in hell.
I think that teaches a primitive moral sensibility, whereas if you teach a more sophisticated moral sensibility, like you don't not kill your neighbor, well, there's a couple reasons.
And there's someone, there's a psychologist named Kohlberg, and he kind of put moral consciousness into different levels.
The reason for doing good out of fear of punishment is the lowest level of moral reasoning a human can have.
It's attributed to a child's thinking.
Nevertheless, if it achieves the behavior, then you have to imagine, if it were taken away, what you would end up with.
Listen, hold on.
We need to do a couple things here, Matthew.
One is, we need to open up the lines.
Okay.
So that's what we're going to do.
We're going to open up the phone lines.
Right now.
Okay.
And would love to have you call now.
I am going to go to the extra little extra mile here to ask you to be polite.
In other words, argue with Matthew all you want, but try and be civil.
Alright?
Here are the numbers for Dark Matter, and I'm sure you would like to get to Matthew.
The number, get this Matthew, is 1-855-REAL-UFO.
I say again, 855-REAL-UFO.
Or, 855-732-5836.
So, there you have it.
Come get them, Matthew Alper.
We'll be all yours.
I've had them for a couple hours now.
seven three two five eight three six so
there you have it come get a matthew alper will be all yours i've had a
couple hours now it's your turn
from the high desert the great american southwest dark matter raging
in the night time Oh
Oh, the night, it's my world.
City lights, painted skirts.
In the day, nothing matters.
It's the night, ta-la-la-la.
In the night, no control Through the wall, something's breaking
Wearing white, out to walking The Night
The Night The Night
The Night It's XM, baby, and we're very serious.
To call Art Bell, please manipulate your communication device and call 1-855-REAL-UFO.
That's 1-855-732-5836.
UFO. That's 1-855-732-5836.
Somebody fairly high up earlier in the day in XM, they said that all of you have been
somewhat unexpected.
In other words, the turnout here has been kind of over the top and way more than what they thought it would be.
So, now you know.
If that has contributed to some of the server problems and some of the rest of it, there you go.
And all kinds of new stuff at Artbell.com.
Make sure you take a visit.
Man, there are some really good stories up there, including the Hydrogen bombs dropped on North Carolina.
The real story is up there.
It's amazing to me that our government can do something 50 years ago like that, and then think, well, it's okay.
You know, once 50 years has passed, the fact that they dropped a couple of hydrogen bombs that came within three volts of blowing up the whole East Coast, It's OK to tell that after 50 years.
Makes you wonder what we're going to hear 50 years from now.
Matthew, welcome back.
Thanks for having me back.
You think you're prepared to speak to the masses?
I am.
I am ready, set, go.
Well, we'll see.
OK, let's give it a shot.
Dark Matter, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hello.
Hello?
Going once.
Going twice.
Oh, wait a minute.
Maybe I didn't hit the button.
There we are.
Or maybe, maybe somehow I'm not connected properly.
Let me check that out.
Art?
Uh, yes, you're on the air.
Go ahead.
Massive Roswells, Art.
Massive Roswells.
Thank you.
I just want to thank you for having Matthew back.
I think you've clearly packed these early days with some of your most extraordinary guests you've had over the years, so thanks for that.
Well, a lot of people did not exactly consider Matthew to be an extraordinary guest when I first had him on, I can guarantee you.
It's still a very... But he is extraordinary, and if he doesn't make you think, then your brain dead.
Well, the United States, you know, is still, in its own way, highly religious in a very straight, creationist way, I think, for about, what, 60%, 70% of the population, so that's only to be expected.
But, you know, I enjoy the way that he forces us to think about different areas, parts of our brain, ways we interact, and to challenge, you know, if you're not challenged, that'll be the end of us if we don't keep challenging ourselves to consider these issues.
But I wanted to push him a little on the question of You know, this sort of Buddhistic way of looking at things, the oneness of all things, you know, every single particle and wave that makes up the existence as we know it, at least the visible universe, at one point, if you, you know, take it back to the so-called Big Bang, was all together, every bit was all together in one infinitesimally small point, something like 10 to the negative 40.
I hope you'll meditate on that concept and answer me this.
When it comes to the big bang, was it either... For me, it came down to either two ways to go.
I hope you'll meditate on that concept and answer me this, when it comes to the big bang,
was it either...
For me, it came down to either...
Two ways to go.
Either you...
Matthew, you're breathing hard in the phone.
He's talking dirty to me.
Well, let's put it this way.
So you either have a straight creation event where an outside force creates that universe, either at that moment in time, or if the universe as we know it is the result of a white hole coming out of a black hole, still you have to take it back to that earliest point.
So you either have a creation event, or you have to contemplate that it's all what I would call this infinity, and infinity a holographic infinity where everything is a one-to-oneness
which you know is a very, you know, on a spiritual level that for me was where the science, just like in the Tao of
Physics you know if you take a look at that book, you have this
recognition that everything on the sun... I'm sorry is there a question at
the end of this?
Yes.
Do you believe that the Big Bang was an initiated event, or do you believe in infinity, which itself speaks of a higher level of spirituality that I'd like to address.
Okay.
It's a valid question, because even if one is a scientist, they still have to explore the origins of the universe, and Big Bang theory is the predominant theory at the moment.
Personally, I believe that We're basically going through a series of infinite cycles of Big Bangs.
There's expansions, contractions, basically like a pulse in space that is ongoing.
And oscillating universe theory.
That I talked about before, I think, on the show years ago with Art.
So the question is, what started it?
Right.
Okay, now here's where we go back to the brain.
I believe that it's a matter of the way humans are hardwired to perceive reality.
That part of the functioning of our cognitive capacities are to seek cause and effect.
It's again, we're projecting onto the universe things that are beyond the universe.
It's just our personalized way of trying to make sense of the universe.
So we look for where froms and where tos.
So we project onto this universe that we will never understand.
I won't even understand it.
Well, you've got to admit, I mean, the Big Bang, that really is an event that seems to stump and stop science, and they cannot explain it, but they know that it occurred, Matthew.
Well, probably they can't explain it, it's just that no one, look, no one can explain, it's sort of a metaphysical question, no one will ever be able to answer, like, why is there anything?
Why is, period.
Why is there everything, is the question.
Okay, anything, everything, all of it.
Time, space, why?
And again, I believe that's just us anthropomorphizing the question.
It's in our nature to ask why, how, when.
So we project onto the universe.
I don't think why, how, and when have really any bearing.
They have bearing on us as terrestrial beings, because we evolved to be able to function on planet Earth in a specific way, where why, how, and when matter in the greater universe.
I don't think why, how, and when matter.
I think there's probably dimensional stuff going on that's, again, beyond us.
So for us to even inquire as to why doesn't, and again, none of it necessitates the existence of An external power.
I believe that all of these things, called the Big Bang, called the matter, the beginning of matter, the end of matter... Actually, the Big Bang necessitates the maker.
I don't believe that.
I believe it necessitates something that we would call nature.
Okay, that's an opinion.
That is an opinion.
Well, not really, because you can't prove that there's a conscious being that oversees nature.
No, I didn't endeavor to prove that.
I simply said, you're just stating an opinion.
You're not proving anything.
I'm saying that in my mind, and it's my opinion, that the Big Bang necessitated a maker.
Okay.
Again, to say necessitate, that becomes more than an opinion.
That becomes a belief.
It's just my opinion that nature doesn't necessitate a god.
All right.
We've got to get to these folks.
You're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hello.
Oswald Art.
Thank you.
I noticed at one point he mentioned Americans falling on a bell curve in 8% in atheism.
And then he mentioned in Europe that it falls like it's like 30% in atheism.
Well, it depends on the country, but... You're actually speaking to him, so, you know, go ahead.
Okay, so, Matthew... Yes?
So, it's 30% atheism in Europe.
So, if it all comes down to physical brains and, like, grey matter parts, then why that difference in the bell curve?
Well, again, a good question.
There's a chapter in my book, Why Is America So Religious?
A Bio-Historical Hypothesis.
And essentially, there's UN reports on the correlation between a number of things, development in a nation, literacy statistics, and religiosity.
And essentially, the less developed a country is, the lower the literacy rate, the higher religiosity.
There tends to be.
More people going to church, more people claiming they believe in God, that it plays a strong role in their life.
America is an anomaly, because here we are, a developed country with a relatively low, you know, high literacy rate, and yet we rank very high in the religiosity curve.
And how do you account for that?
And I account for that in my chapter, A Biohistorical Hypothesis, that basically America was a rare experiment in migration.
Essentially, what represents today's Americans, and we're not talking about the indigenous Indian population or native population, but American settlers, America was initially made up of the world's zealots and fanatics, people escaping persecution and inquisition.
And you're claiming that has changed?
No, well, what I'm claiming is there's something, one of the ways that evolution occurs, it either occurs through, there's a couple of ways.
One is natural selection.
So, for instance, it gets cold and those with the less furry coat die off and the furrier coats reproduce, so you end up... Yeah, earlier you said we were done evolving.
That's right!
You did!
We're not, but there's something called the Pioneer Effect, which is another way that life evolved, and when you have migrations of small communities, like when Darwin studied the finches, he found that on all these islands, you had a slight variation of finches, and that's because The Pioneer Effect.
Let's say five finches fly to another island, start reproducing, based on, let's say, the genetics of the alpha male.
Let's say it has a slightly longer tail.
So in the last 200 years, we don't read enough, but the Europeans read more, so they have more atheism.
No, no.
I didn't say that at all.
What I'm saying is...
Genetically speaking, you ended up with a community of hyper-religious people founding this nation.
Quakers.
Quakers was one example.
We're not all Quakers.
No, but the original settlers, the original community, by 1700, the Europeans referred to America as the Bible Commonwealth, and it had one of the highest levels of religiosity in any society ever, because it was founded by They had a high literacy rate as well, though.
Didn't they?
Yeah, but that's not the point.
The point is, what happened was... No, you're saying your point is that we didn't read enough.
You're not letting me say my point.
And we became atheists.
We became atheists.
What I'm saying is because of the genetic nature of religiosity, it can actually be passed Okay, but what about all the religious stuff that happened in Europe?
They had the Crusades and all the rest of it.
That was... I mean, they shouldn't be atheists now.
No country in Europe was created the way America was by founding fathers of every American community was made up of zealots escaping persecution.
People who were hyper-religious.
Imagine that all of, let's say music was condemned.
All of Europe was governed by the police.
Let's say music was condemned by the world, and the most musical people, musical geniuses,
people who would not let go of their musical heritage and decided they're willing to cross
the seas in the most dangerous conditions to preserve their sense of musicality.
So all of the musical savants and geniuses of the world all settled on an island.
Do you believe that 300 years later... I kind of see what you're saying.
But still, there's plenty of religion in Europe.
There always has been.
The Pope ruled that place for, like, then founded it and all the rest of it.
Absolutely!
That's the premise of my book, The God Part of the Brain.
Humans and animals are hardwired for religion.
It will never go away.
We will always be religion on Earth.
But there's a difference between Europe and America for some weird reason.
You said 30% in Europe, 8% here.
Our brains shouldn't be all that much different in 200 years of genetics.
like it's not a while you just got involved in you just can't he did that no they are there are there are kids
instances of genetic isolation so like for accurate for instance among certain groups of oscar nazi
jews because they have isolated themselves a they can they can get something
called pay fax disease
The Amish can get something called Cotard Syndrome, where they have polydactyly, where they can get extra toes and fingers.
You know what, though?
That doesn't really follow, because there's like plenty of genetic mix here in America.
We haven't all descended from Quakers.
I've got about six different strains running in me.
Absolutely, but initially the foundation of this country was made up of fanatics, people who were hyper-religious, who had religiosity in their genetic code.
The natives as well.
And all brought into one island.
The natives too?
No, but how much influence do the natives have on present-day politics in America?
Well, you're not talking politics, though.
You're talking about genetics and religiosity.
I'm saying I've got some native in me.
Like, that's not Quaker blood that makes me religious.
Like, I don't really... Because you're trying to simplify the point.
These are statistical mechanics.
You can't apply them to any one individual.
When you do scientific studies that involve statistical mechanics, you're talking about, like, 83% of a population.
Now, you could have one person say, that's absurd!
I don't like vanilla, and yet this study says 83% of my... I don't like vanilla, neither do my friends, so this study's dumb.
You can't point, in statistical mechanics, you can't point to your experience,
your friend's experience, Joey's experience, up the block.
These are the...
Hold on, but you know, that's what you said about...
...religious experience against...
Hold on, that's what you said about the prayer study.
That what?
You just threw it out!
Yes, sure, but look, there are people making claims every day.
People wander off the streets.
I spoke to God.
Do you concede to every one of those claims?
No, he may or may not have.
He probably can't produce proof of it.
As long as he's being harmless enough, he's okay to have his belief there.
I'm not saying he cannot believe.
If you want to believe that UFOs live in your home, go for it.
I don't care what people believe.
I don't care at all.
All I'm doing is laying out a hypothesis for a theory that suggests that human beings We are genetically hardwired to perceive a spiritual reality, and that's where all of our belief systems come from.
And it's an evolutionary adaptation that makes us a more survivable animal in a world in which we know the terror of death.
That's all I'm saying.
I didn't say it's bad.
You believe whatever you want.
If it makes you happy, again, believe in the great big bird.
Believe in sea monkeys, Ronald McDonald.
I don't care if it makes you happy, if it floats your boat, awesome!
I would never condemn anyone.
I would only condemn people if they try to push their views into my legislation.
So if somebody comes out there and says, well, we represent the majority, so you have to believe in the great big bird, too.
And you have to do rituals that suggest you believe.
And you have to wear the color red, because that's the color of our belief system.
That's where I'll stand.
I think from our side, though, that we're worried that your side may try and do that.
By what?
By saying that, like, you shouldn't pray at school?
No, by saying that everything comes down to statistics and then we should all run our lives based on what some guy's seen under a microscope and says that your brain produces this and therefore we should all do this.
I think that you should allow people to have their ways a bit as long as... He does.
I do, I just don't believe you can legislate I agree with you.
In a multi-faceted community like America is supposed to be, the majority shouldn't rule.
So if 10 out of 15 people believe in the Great Big Bird, in our particular nation, they should not be able to force the other 5 to, when they go to school, to pray to Big Bird.
Or to have to have Big Bird in every storefront.
Because it would be, you know...
An insult to the Big Bird if we didn't have it there.
That's all I'm saying.
Don't believe in Big Bird when you go to your church.
Pray to Big Bird when you're at home.
Decorate the walls with Big Bird.
No, well, I think we should all pray to the pharmaceutical companies, right?
I don't remember advocating that.
No, I think you would.
Thank you, Mark.
Thank you, Matthew.
You bet.
Okay.
That was a good one.
I enjoyed that.
All right, let's go here.
Dark Matter, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Thank you very much, Art Roswell.
Thank you.
I'm new to this late-night stuff, and I have found this to be quite fascinating.
In fact, I look forward each night to getting on Sirius Radio and listening to Dark Matter.
It's a shame that people can't just listen to what you're trying to say.
I don't really have any argument for you.
I have found what you've said to be really fascinating.
I'm not buying into all of it, but I do have a question for you, and I am interested in trying to learn a little bit about this.
I am a recovering alcoholic.
I have had what I call a spiritual experience.
And I guess my proof is that I once could not stop drinking and now I have stopped.
I have recovered from that disease, which I believe now, Dr. Silkworth, is a disease.
how would you explain then what i bought into a higher power
how would you explain them uh...
where how that and i'm on basically how we explain you stop drinking
The higher power gave you the ability to stop drinking, is that fair?
Or yes, or at least that there's an existence of a higher power.
Okay.
Well, there's a chapter 16 in my book that's called Religious Conversion.
And it's basically about, you know, people who go through religious conversions.
Which generally happens to the majority of people between ages 15 and 21, but it can happen at any point in our lives.
The interesting thing is that pretty much predominantly, like 97% of people who have religious conversions are undergoing some life crisis, often related to an addiction problem, for instance.
A vast majority of those people, and I'm not saying this applies to you, but again, this is all just statistics.
The majority of these people have suffered some type of abuse as children, some type of poor upbringing.
They were either physically abused, psychologically abused, or somehow neglected.
That doesn't necessarily, like I say, apply to you, but statistically speaking.
So these are people who are suffering and at some point, that pain is going to surface in the form of some type of addiction issue or some type of unhealthy behavior.
And what seems to happen is, For a number of these people who are, like, at rock bottom, the brain changes.
They go through a phenomena that's cross-cultural.
The same thing happens whether you're in Australia, or Germany, or Ecuador.
People at this point in their life suddenly have a religious conversion.
Their brains switch, hit a switch, and they become hyper-religious.
Their life revolves around religion, their life revolves around their faith in God, And basically it's like a backup support system that the brain offers us when we're in such crisis that basically we're on the brink of self-imposed suicide.
We're about to kill ourselves whether intentionally or not.
I want to ask you a question.
That does make sense.
Where do you get the figure 8% here in the US, 30% in Europe?
Where does it come from?
That statistic was from, there's a, if you go on the UN report, basically the UN has studies and statistics on religiosity and the extent of belief in every nation in the world.
That's an amazing stat.
Alright, thank you very much.
Hold it right there.
We're out of break.
And I can use it too.
This is real radio, folks.
Dark Matter.
In the night time, Matthew Alper is my guest.
Has your brain yet exploded?
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
No, no, leave me this way.
I can't survive.
I can't save a life without your love.
Oh baby, don't hold me back Oh baby, don't hold me back
Some velvet morning Oh baby, don't hold me back
Some velvet morning when I'm straight I'm gonna open up your gate
Oh baby, don't hold me back Oh baby, don't hold me back
And maybe tell you about Phaedra And how she gave me life
And how she made it in Some velvet morning when I'm straight
Flowers growing on our hill Dragonflies and daffodils
Learn from us very much Look at us but do not touch
Phaedra is my name Coming to you from Geosynchronous Orbit at the speed of
light This is Dark Matter with Art Bell
To call Art, please light up the lines at 1-855-REAL-UFO.
That's 1-855-732-5836.
Real UFO. That's 1-855-732-5836.
Well, you certainly have lit up the lines.
They're blazing, and so we're going to get right back to it.
Matthew Alper is my guest.
His book is one that you're going to want to check out.
If you're not afraid to be challenged, then I would say that God, part of the brain, is for you.
Matthew, where is your book available now?
Any Barnes & Noble, that accounts for around the world, going into Russian this week, actually.
Now available to 600 million more people.
Or you can go online to Amazon or Barnes and Noble.com.
You wouldn't happen to know the percentage of atheists in Russia, would you?
No, I wouldn't.
But it's fairly high, particularly since they just came from a communist regime that enforced atheism as the national religion.
Exactly.
Okay, alright, back to the phone.
So wherever you can manage to get the book, get it, Barnes & Noble, whatever, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hello?
Hello, hello?
Oh yeah, thanks for taking my call.
You're very welcome.
Alright, yeah, I got a question.
Was it my, did I hear it right when I heard that no Hypothetical near-death experience would cause Matthew to believe in a higher power?
Certainly is what he said, yes.
Okay, as a fellow 8 percenter, I guess, I just came up with something that would actually make me believe.
Okay.
If I had a near-death experience and the great big bird showed me a machine that would fold space or whatever, do time travel, and showed me how to build it, And then I came back, and I built that machine, and it worked.
As so, I would believe in the... Well, let me... I haven't... Haven't you heard many instances of people saying, like, well, where'd you come up with that idea?
In a dream?
People come up with inventions in dreams.
The imagination, subconscious and otherwise, is a very powerful force.
So if...
I woke up from a dream, and I actually have done it several times, where my dreams kind of gave me a good idea, and I used it in my writing, or I used it in my life, or I, you know, maybe made something up.
And I hear it all the time.
Inventors, like, yeah, I had this crazy dream where I saw myself, blah, blah, blah, and they said, I decided to try and see if you could actually make it, and that's where their technology came from, or their scientific discovery.
Again, for me, that wouldn't cut it.
All right, well, thank you.
I was just thinking, you know, beam me up kind of thing.
Okay, good try.
It was a good try.
Quite a new angle to wiggle in there, but... No, it was a good try, and Matthew, really, you are so closed-minded that you've been... I mean, some of the examples you've been given Really would turn anybody's head, I mean, and change anybody's mind.
Okay, listen, you say I'm closed-minded, but anyone who's religious is an atheist for a million other religions.
So, like, if you're a sworn Christian, and you might say, look at that guy, at least he's not closed-minded, he believes, but when it comes to all the other religions, he's as hard-lined as I am.
But you wouldn't criticize him for that just because he believes in his one thing.
I might.
I might.
I'm more open-minded than you think.
You're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hello?
Hello?
Hello.
Extinguish your radio, please.
It is.
Okay, good.
Hi, Art Roswell.
Hello, Matthew.
Hello.
Why do atheists attack Christians more than any other religion?
And this is a personal question for Matthew, and please ask yourself seriously.
Are you more offended By Christian symbols, then you are any other symbol of religion.
Not in the least.
I believe that, well, first of all, you're projecting because you're talking about in America, or at least in the West.
Now, why would that be true?
Because Christianity dominates in the West.
So, if there's a group that doesn't believe in a popular religion, in our space, it's going to be Christianity.
So, there Instinct is going to be to attack the religion that's popular for the day, the one that's trying to enforce their views and their legislation.
So, yes, American atheists, for instance, or Western atheists in general, the Europeans as well, are most critical of Christianity.
If you go to China, they couldn't care less about Christianity.
If they're protesting because they want to They want to have their beliefs, they're protesting against the Chinese Communist government.
If you tell them about, well, what do you think about Christianity, they'll be like, I don't care.
I've got one for you.
You spent some time in the Philippines, right?
Yes.
Very Catholic.
Never in my life have I seen a group of people, Matthew, who are, they're very, as you know, very Catholic.
I think the country's like, I don't know, 90% Catholic, something tremendous like that.
But they are dirt poor.
These folks are dirt poor.
And what I'm talking about now is happiness.
I'm telling you, brother, I've seen these people in such poor situations, hungry, not able to get a full belly every day by a long shot, flooded out, wading through water, but happy as can be.
And they attributed it to, what do you think?
I'm going to guess God.
Look, well, that's why we evolved this function, because it comforts us, because life is painful.
And life is full of misery and suffering and pain.
But really, when you were there, you observed this phenomenon?
Well, yeah, I observed the same as I would in, like, a South American country, that people are very Catholic and down to, you know, the Catholic paradigm.
Because sure, when they were conquered by the Spanish, it was enforced upon them.
And they went from believing in primitive... Yeah, but Matthew, I'm talking about truly happy people here.
Right, but then you'd have to make the argument that basically religiosity equals happiness.
Well, I am making that argument to some degree.
I mean, look at us.
Yes, we're a very rich country, but are we a happy country?
Are we as happy as, for example, what you observed in the Philippines?
I think not.
Yeah, but if you look at the list of happiest countries, for instance, A lot of them are Scandinavian, for instance.
They have the highest rate of atheism on the planet.
Go look it up.
Highest rate of atheism is in Scandinavia and Northern Europe.
And you're right.
You're right.
Those are some of the happiest countries in the world.
It's a good point.
All right.
You're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes.
Hello.
I can't tell.
Am I on the air?
Yes, you are.
I do have a question for Matthew.
First off, I wanted to quote something out of the Bible, which I have been studying for about 36 years, because I had one of those experiences he's talking about.
Please don't quote from the Bible, but please go ahead and tell us about your experience.
Uh, well, his argument is basically against the Bible, so I'm wondering why... Well, it's against every Bible.
It's not just the Christian Bible.
It's against the Bible of every culture.
Well, okay.
No, there is only one Bible.
The Holy Bible.
As you see it, but you know what, listen, excuse me, miss?
All in all due respect, if you were born, let's say in, I don't know, Iraq?
You'd be swearing by the Koran.
You From a man that was an atheist.
His name was Dr. Hugh Ross, and he received his PhD in astronomy from the University of Toronto, and did his post-doctoral research at Caltech on quasars.
On this particular DVD that I've got, he presents his scientific evidence for skeptics, he says, putting creation to the test, in other words, He says that, I mean, he has unshakable confidence that God's revelation of himself in Scripture and in nature do not, will not, and cannot contradict, has become his hallmark, his unique message.
It says he scouts the frontiers of origins, research to share with scientists and non-scientists alike, The thrilling news of what's being discovered and how it connects with Biblical knowledge.
Okay, what do you want me to do with this?
Now, what I'm saying now is this man is just as educated as I'm sure as Matthew and probably maybe even a little bit more substance.
He is actually an astronomer and an astrophysicist.
He says that the reason that... Listen, there are plenty of really, there are Nobel Prize winners who believe in God.
Is that your proof of God that you point to a guy who lives?
No, no, no.
My proof of God is that, believe me, because I'm 66 years old, almost 67, okay?
I don't know how old you are, but I pray that you still have time.
I'm 142 years old.
Well, you may be, but I tell you what, you will never be, you will never ever ever find true happiness and you will never ever find wisdom.
You will never ever find wisdom unless, listen to me a minute, unless you open up The Holy Bible of God Himself, Jehovah God.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
You've inspired me, and I'm now reading the works of Homer, and I've turned to a new religion.
Unfortunately, it's not the New Testament.
Alright, she said you'll never find true happiness.
Right.
Well, will anyone?
And we were just on the subject of happiness.
So, you know, it's a pretty good question, actually, in a lot of ways.
Do you think that you have found as much happiness as you can here on earth, Matthew?
Well, I mean, it certainly wouldn't hurt if someone waved a magic wand and put a hundred million dollars in my bank account, for instance.
Now, can I control that?
No, but for the best of my ability, I have worked fairly hard on trying to Make for a happy existence, because I do believe that this is my only shot at it, so I might work extra hard at trying to seek out happiness, whatever that might mean to me.
What it means to me might be different for you.
Well, indeed.
It sounds like what it means to you is that you squeeze every buck you can out of atheism, and you're getting happier and happier.
Not at all.
I don't squeeze bucks out of anything.
You had me on in, like, 1998 the first time.
Sounds right.
And for about two or three years, I was on semi-regularly.
I was on once or twice a year.
Right.
There was no book written on this subject.
And it took about ten years to sink in.
This book started spreading, and scientists started talking, and academics started talking, and people were using my book to teach in their colleges.
And it took about 10 years, but 10 years after you had me on, all of a sudden the cover of Newsweek is Man the Spiritual Animal, the cover of My Magazine, are we wired for God?
There are now 150 books on this subject.
You can go to Columbia University in New York and be a neurotheology major.
Even as ironic as it might be, as much as you might protest my theory, you helped give birth to a new science.
Oh, and I meant to, buddy.
I meant to.
I think you're maybe more interesting now than you were then.
I believed you were a good guest to have on then, and I believe it all the more now.
So, you know, that's why you're here, because what you've got to say carries weight.
You're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hey, Matt.
Hey, I just have one question.
Okay, turn your radio off, please.
Come on, everybody.
When I answer the phone, you know.
I mean, you can hear the show when you're on the phone, so turn the radio down when you get through.
Okay, go ahead.
Caller?
He turned the phone and the radio off.
Apparently.
Next.
Next.
Hi, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Yes, how are you doing, Art?
I'm doing okay, sir.
That's great.
I'm a truck driver.
My name is Carl, and I've been a long-time listener of you forever, and my son, who's 22, has been listening to you since he was 10, and he's inspired by you to be a talk show host, just like you, hopefully someday.
But anyways... It's a tough way to go.
Yeah, I'm also a June 17th baby, just like you.
I just wanted to let you know that.
And my question is for Matthew.
I'm pretty much leaning towards his point of view pretty much completely.
And I've always searched myself through all different religions just to get a good idea of the way... Your question is?
Well, my question is...
Okay, I'm pretty much an atheist too, but the near-death experience, like you pointed out Art, the people seeing the white light and whatnot, I'm wondering about the ones that see above the operating table that they say they're floating above an out-of-body experience at that point, and they're looking down and they're seeing their body And the doctor's talking, and they can repeat exactly what they said once they are off the table.
Okay, I can answer.
So, again, you get any number of hallucinations.
However, the only experiment that I can point to is University of Virginia did a study where they set up an LED screen on a little slit over the beds in hospitals at their clinic.
And for a year, they registered people having near-death experiences who reported just that because one of the phenomena of a near-death experience is an out-of-body experience.
They sometimes go hand-in-hand, which I also... There's been studies that show that it can be connected to a brain region in the angular cingulate, a part of the brain, and that basically it's a type of hallucination that we are capable of having.
Um, they set up an experiment where they put up an LED screen with a message aimed upward at the ceiling, and they wanted to see over the course of a year with, you know, a certain number, maybe 3% of people, inpatients who were, you know, surgery was done on, Who claimed to have near-death experiences, and as well as out-of-body experiences, if one of them would report more than just they looked down on themselves on the operating table, saw the tops of the doctors' heads, etc., but who would have also been able to say, and then I read this crazy LED screen that was going that said, the cow jumped over the moon.
Not one person was able to recount And they said, did you see any type of message, maybe?
They're like, what, what, what?
Did you see any letters, like maybe an LED screen?
And they're like, nope.
So, not the only experiment that I can point to where people sought to invalidate.
Because again, to me, one person saying they experienced something isn't validation.
Because we all experience reality differently.
Well, look, if you were on an operating table, you were under, and there was, let's say, only about a 20% chance you were going to survive the operation, would you be concentrating on The doctor saying, you know, this guy's circling the drain here, and I don't think he's going to make it.
Or would you be just sort of idly reading the LED screen?
Well, if I were claiming that in actuality, I transcended out of my physical body, floated to the top of the room and can tell you in detail
what I saw.
What people are saying, Matthew, is that they're relating the conversations that went on,
what the doctors and nurses said at a time when they would have been out, like lights.
Well, again, these are reports.
I'm not familiar with these reports.
If anyone truly had that experience, and I would say that the conversation seeped into their subconscious, it's not like plugs were put in their ears.
The only one you know about is the LED thing, and I'm saying, look, if you're in a life and death situation, you know, what are you going to be concentrating on?
Right, but if you're having this type of experience where you're claiming you are actually floating above the table, Because it seems to be an above type of experience.
And people will even say, I can tell you the doctor, the back of his head, he was bald.
Like I saw, I looked down from the ceiling and watched them operate on me for half of the procedure.
If there's a flashing screen, just bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep in your face, if you were up there for one second, you would notice it.
And someone saying, I watched the procedure for an hour, and I can tell you conversations, and I can tell you what the back of that nurse's head looks like, but I can't tell you anything about the LED screen, I would say just like in a dream, sometimes dreams feel really real.
And you can say, you know, so that's my interpretation.
All right.
Dark Matter, you're on the air with Matthew.
Hi.
Hey, Art, it's good to hear you again.
I want to give you two Roswells and a Groom Lake, just for giggles.
Thank you.
I'm not a strong believer, but I do have three real quick questions.
One of them is directly aimed at his whole Theory of the Godfraid part.
Okay.
Well, you mean my lack of belief in an afterlife?
is, does your belief of the afterlife solely exist because of your lack in
belief of God? Well, you mean my lack of belief in an afterlife? Because I don't
believe in an afterlife. Well yeah, that's what I meant. I mean, is that lack of belief of an afterlife solely based
on your lack of belief of God?
No.
The answer is no.
My lack of belief in an afterlife is because I don't believe, not in God, but I don't believe in a soul.
So I believe that consciousness, who we are, who makes up Matthew, is not contingent on some ghost in the machine, but literally the machine.
And that when the machine breaks down, meaning when my brain stops functioning, That consciousness will come to an end.
I don't even have to die.
I could, within my lifetime, I could suffer a brain injury, I could get Alzheimer's, and I, Matthew, as a conscious entity, will cease to exist, or will be a compromised version of me.
So I believe that when the brain stops, consciousness stops, meaning that when I'm officially dead, there won't be some conscious version of me either burning in hell or playing the harp with the angels.
So, it has nothing to do necessarily with the belief in God, it's more related to my belief in relation to souls versus consciousness.
Okay.
That's a real good answer there.
Okay, the next one, now this one has to go with his theory of the whole existence of
the God part of the brain, which you've done a very good job of describing it, you know,
all scientifically, but if your theory that the God part of the brain does exist, and
what it's exactly supposed to do, doesn't that then make a lack of the belief of God
and mental illness?
No, would somebody who's not musically inclined be mentally ill?
If somebody isn't great at math, are they mentally ill?
Those are learned skills though, those are learned skills, the God part of the brain.
No, no.
It's like a cat meowing.
No, look, learning how to play the guitar is a learned skill.
Having the capacity to learn the guitar is innate.
Half of our talents, and pretty much this is standardized in genetic science, half of what we are is what was in our genes, the other half is what was nurtured into us.
So, nobody, for instance, can be taught to be a musical genius.
That has to be partly innate.
Just like if you took someone who's tone deaf And you spent your whole life... If Mozart and Beethoven got together and said, God damn it, we're going to teach this guy how to play the violin.
If it takes the life out of us, they'll both be dead before that guy will be playing a violin.
Because he's innately incapable.
Now, would you call him brain damaged?
No!
He might be a mechanical genius, or a brilliant writer, or any number of things.
Just musically, he's disinclined.
So someone who is Religiously disinclined isn't brain damage, they just represent one set of the standard deviation in religiosity.
I must say, I was terribly shocked to hear you use God's name in that way.
Or at all.
Or at all.
I put it in quotes.
I didn't see those.
I'm making the quote signs over here.
Hold on.
Matthew Alper is my guest.
His book is The God Part of the Brain.
If you're curious, and you should be, you should go pick it up and take a read.
I'm Art Bell.
This is Dark Matter.
The imaginary lovers will never turn you down.
When all the others turn you away, they're around.
It's my private pleasure.
Midnight fantasy.
Someone to share my world You get a shiver in the dark, it's raining in the park, but
meantime yeah
Sound of the river, you stop and you hold everything.
A band is blowing Dixie, cover for all time.
You feel alright when you hear the music play When I step inside but you don't see too many faces
Coming in out of the rain, they hear the jazz go down.
Competition in all the places.
But the horns, they blow in that sound.
Way on down south, way on down south, London town.
Space, the new frontier for Art Bell's Dark Matter.
To call the show, please dial 1-855-REAL-UFO.
That's 1-855-732-5836.
You see how calming the music is?
It's like taking a break for a moment, letting your mind sort of drift off just a little from some of this hard stuff.
And it is hard!
katherine matthew uh... says the following art i'm curious
if matthew was raised with any type of religious affiliation was
uh... his parents were his parents religious he comes across as being a
very angry apis this is deep rooted hate
how do you respond to that well i was raised in a weird satanic worshipping call
I was drinking my blood as a child.
They're all going, I knew it.
Yep.
No, seriously now.
Serious question.
First of all, listen, I have no... This is the thing.
I will support my theory with great conviction and not be swayed by those who have altering beliefs.
Nevertheless, I have no grudge, for the most part, against anyone's beliefs.
I mean, I do believe that religiosity has spawned a lot of very destructive and hostile and antagonistic, you know, behaviors, which we see again.
And, you know, we just looked right on the news today and we see it.
All right, that's responding to the deep-rooted hate part, but the question was, how were you raised?
I was raised in a predominantly secular upbringing, meaning religion played no role.
My family was Jewish, but not at all religious.
So, like when I was five, we had a menorah, and by six Everyone agreed that was boring, and then we had a Christmas tree, and then by 8, it was like, you're too old to believe in Santa Claus, so... Plus, you get presents every time you go to the store, so enough of this, like, cashing in on Christmas nonsense.
And then that was the end of pretty much religion, except we would all get together for Passover dinner and still do to this day.
Really just as an excuse for the whole family to get together.
Basically we celebrate Thanksgiving and Passover as the two excuses for the family to get together and eat.
But everyone in my family is in mixed marriages.
My one cousin is married to a Hindu.
My sister is married to an Irish Catholic guy.
Okay.
All right, well, your mom and dad have had, I'm sure, ample opportunity either to hear you on my program and to read your book, right?
How have they reacted?
Well, oddly enough, my parents are two of the least spiritual people I know.
Like, they just couldn't care less.
They're kind of materialistic, not like they're out seeking material wealth or goods or care about name brands.
They're just not spiritual.
They don't pray.
They don't meditate.
They don't care about spiritual things.
It was really never mentioned in my house.
If anything, I was like the headache in the home because I was constantly asking questions.
What's this?
What's that?
Who's gone?
I bet you were.
You know?
I bet you were.
Alright, you're on the air with Matthew Alper, Dark Matter.
Hi.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes, hello.
Is this me?
It is!
No, it's someone else.
Every time I hear hello, I don't know if it's me or not.
Right, I understand.
Okay, I'm not an atheist, but I, you know, take Pascal's bet.
I'm pretty much an agnostic, though.
Catholic in his forties and all that.
Here's my question for Matthew.
About the life and life force, because I actually sat with my father-in-law as he passed away, and one minute you could tell he's not dead yet.
Matthew, if you can avoid breathing into the phone, that'll help.
And so your dad passed.
Yeah, my father-in-law, he was passing away.
One minute, it's like we're all Gather around the next minute, everybody's like, oh, he's not here anymore.
Goodbye.
And it makes me very curious, because like I said, I'm agnostic, like the Who song.
I'm a seeker, but I really don't care.
But it's these little things that make me, you know, re-question what it is.
Well, what little thing?
The fact that one minute your father was alive and then he was not alive?
Well, it's that we could all tell.
We could all tell, you know, we're gathered around and then it's like, well, he's not here anymore.
Let's go.
Well, you could tell what, though?
You could tell that the life force was leaving his body?
Did you have some experience?
It's not that we could see that.
It was more that, I mean, because he was on morphine and whatnot and, you know, we're dabbing his lips with water and all that.
I'm just not sure what you're saying.
Well, so suddenly you see the chest stop moving up and down.
But that happened.
That happened many a time.
This was over 14 days.
Pancreatic cancer.
And so, you know, but we always knew, okay, he's there.
And like I said, I'm agnostic.
I really don't.
But these things make me stop and go, hmm.
Okay, are you saying that when he actually did finally die, there was a difference that you detected?
In other words, soul leaving the body, whatever?
Well, we didn't see anything, but now it's like, oh, there's a shell sitting there.
Okay, so basically you all kind of came to the realization, whoops, he's now dead.
Yeah, yeah.
But I don't, you know, I guess that kind of happens, right?
We're trying to figure it out.
I can take it another notch up.
Okay.
I've talked to plenty of people Who have said they have felt the soul of the person passing pass through them.
Right.
Okay.
So again, my take is I don't care what anyone tells me.
I don't care if you're a Nobel Prize winning scientist and you tell me anything until a valid scientific experiment is set up with a hypothesis and a control and a series of You know, subjects that are tested on... You know what, Matthew?
In this PC world, you can't do that anymore, but back in the 1800s, they actually weighed people at the moment of death and detected a change in weight.
I can't give you a modern example.
Listen, they can do that now.
They could have someone on the show.
I know they can do it.
They don't do it, is what I'm saying.
We live in a very PC world.
You know that.
Yeah, people don't lose weight.
This notion that the soul weighs 28 grams.
Again, it's all...
Yeah, sure.
You could say 300 years ago, all sorts of things happened.
300 years ago, someone stumbled out of the saloon and said he saw God, and next thing you know, he had his own cult.
And people followed him to Utah, or whatever happened, you know.
I mean, these things happen.
But again, I would never put faith in Any individual expressing anything he tells me happened to him.
If a group of scientists say, we've done this experiment, here's the experiment, here's the control, and this is what happened to him, then I'll listen.
I mean, kind of like in the prayer experiments that were scientific.
Yeah, but listen, I follow this stuff.
You never saw him, right?
Exactly, and I follow this stuff, and I know what's out there, and I know what's considered scientifically valid, and generally those are the kind of things you'll only read in books by people who have titles like, you know, proof of the afterlife, etc, etc.
Let me tell you another very, very interesting thing for you to ponder.
I have interviewed legitimate scientists who have hypnotized people and taken them, Matthew, back and back and back and back and back until they ran into another life.
Sure.
Well, there's all sorts of dead.
They're people who make claims for past lives.
No, these are not just idle claims.
Now, when they got to this... What's the difference between a claim and an idle claim?
Bear with me.
When you get to this other life, you begin asking details.
Who are you?
Where did you live?
Who were your friends?
And, you know, detail upon detail upon detail, and they came out, they got checked out, and it was real.
Okay, what you call real, my version of real is, if I see it convergently on the cover of, you know, Time Magazine, Newsweek, the New York Times, etc, etc, and they're all reporting this story about, you know, the person whose soul was witnessed, or the ghost, or any of the near-death experience, or any of these claims, Then I'll start to look into it.
When it seems like a team of scientists did valid research, but as long as one person is making claims that they're calling real, I ain't buying it.
And you said the same thing to me.
Well, I don't see your theories on the cover of Time Magazine.
And you know what?
It took 10 years, and I said it would, and they were.
All right.
All right.
You're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hey, Megan Roswell, sir.
Thank you.
Mr. Halpern, I'd like to thank you for asserting your views here tonight.
I take your interest.
Some of it I can agree with, but I have a question.
The way you describe this, and I have a degree in psychology, you seem to set this up like this is in our DNA, like it is a reflex.
Correct.
What about the issue of choice?
It's been my experience that in order to attain spiritual knowledge, a person has to make a choice to pursue it.
Now, what happens to these people who do not do that?
Do they live in conflict?
Do they live sad lives?
Is their lives in turmoil because they're in conflict with their DNA, as you put it?
First of all, if I haven't made enough enemies tonight, let's make some more.
I don't believe in free will.
So you talk about choice.
I don't believe we have choice.
I believe we're wind-up toys in a universe where we never had a choice.
Let me ask, did you have any say in who you were going to be born as?
He's not there anymore.
You don't believe we have choice?
No.
All of our decisions are based on two sets of things.
Basically, all of our decisions are based on who we are.
And who we are is based on two variables.
Nature, nurture.
Our genetic makeup, the hardware we're born with, and nurture, the software that's programmed into us, just like a computer.
And basically, how much say did you have that you were going to be born Art Bell?
That you were going to be born a white male, with whatever health you have, whatever conditions you have, in this century, or the last century, to the family you were born?
Let's say you were born, we wave a magic wand, and now you're born a crippled black woman in 4th century B.C.
Zambia.
Blind, born to abusive parents.
Are you going to grow up to be Art Bell?
No, you will not.
You will be making whole different choices and decisions.
Your whole reality will be completely different than the one it is now, based on things that you had no control over.
Because you had no control over your genetic makeup, and you had no control over into the environment into which you were born.
Those are the variables That make you who you are, and who you are is what decides the decisions you are going to make in your life.
So that's my... Okay, so you're suggesting that those decisions as we go through life are all pre-programmed?
Well, they're not pre-programmed, they're partially pre-programmed.
No, no, the nurture element will then alter the pre-programming.
So, for instance, you could have two identical twins.
Well, that'd be called choice.
In other words, as I grow up, Art Bell, I can make lots of different choices.
I could go be a truck smuggler in Africa.
Yeah, but that ability to choose, to me, is another illusion.
It's the illusion of self.
Really?
Yes.
All right.
It's the caller's turn.
You're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hello.
Hello there, I'm really glad to be on the air, because what I hear Matthew saying is that if we don't have choice, and the underpinnings of his argument is that by understanding how the mind works, we can negate meaning.
That the experience of human beings, if it can be explained, ...in some scientific way, and predict it, and even manipulate it, then there is no meaning.
So there is no meaning to our existence, or to existing.
That is correct.
There is no meaning for existence.
Wow.
Wow.
You are a meaningless being in a vast void of a universe.
Your life is... Otherwise, otherwise, sir, have a nice day.
Yeah, have a nice day.
Exactly.
Well, I think the problem with that is that the organism, the life force within human beings, rejects that notion that we will not go quietly into the dark, because to really accept what you're saying, to take that in, and to consider that as true, a true representation of reality, is to cease to exist.
The life force would wither within us, because there would be no I agree.
Nature's smarter than I am.
That's why nature wired us to be given an innate sense of purpose and meaning in an otherwise meaningless universe.
So then you aren't then without meaning to be an agent of evil, because if your theory and if your knowledge and if your logic were to take hold within humanity, you would be the best male in our existence.
No, because see, this is the thing.
I believe religiosity will be the death knell of our existence.
I believe that the tribalistic effect that comes with this instinct is what will destroy us.
We will never be at peace.
Eventually, one paradigm is going to unleash the weapons that will destroy the civilization as we know it.
And I believe that's inevitable.
So I'm hoping to somehow channel these energies in a less destructive way by informing people
that they're behaving on an impulse that maybe isn't necessarily in their best interest.
Well, in the short term, what you're saying could be true, but the problem with the horizon is that in the short term, if we're going to exist in the future, we have to overcome the very pressures that you say.
We can't evolve past that.
There are plenty of people fighting for that to happen.
But in the end result of knowledge, if knowledge is the thing that will destroy it, in a thousand years, if we can detect every particle of the brain and create consciousness on our own, Then that knowledge alone will render us nothing but sparkles in the water.
We will realize that we are nothing, and there will be no need to go on.
Well, you know what?
That depends.
I don't believe that there's any ultimate meaning, but that doesn't mean that that inhibits me from experiencing joy in life.
I can still experience the joy of Friendship, of love, of sex, of art, of music, of play, of any number of things.
Yes, there'll be someone just like you who will come back and explain to us that the chemical reaction of what we're feeling is how it happens, and we can, you know, put a wire in our brain and masturbate ourselves, in a sense, mentally, Yeah, it's called the Internet.
We have it.
But it doesn't, it hasn't, it has yet to stop people from interacting.
It might slow them down a little.
They might find themselves a little more hermetic in their own apartments living in their fantasy world through a computer screen.
It seems like we still have the need to interact, that it's not going to completely curb that instinct to be with other people.
But what you're describing is the Internet, and people are hooked on it like a drug.
They carry around their smartphones, and they're addicted to texting, and they are basically, we're one step away from being wired into the Matrix.
It is a frightening aspect, but, you know, living without meaning, I mean, even if the personal meaning, because the other problem is that you're telling the population of the planet that they do not, that they have a mental illness, that they perceive something, they desire something that's not true, and that they should just accept the meaninglessness of life, and what is the result of that?
In fact, that is what you're saying, yes.
Right, but he just made an important distinction, because he said He mentioned personal meaning.
What I'm talking about is ultimate meaning.
Like, does my existence matter in the ultimate universe?
Like, a billion years ago from now, will I be anything other than cosmic dust?
A blink in the eye of time that played no ultimate, significant role in anything, and that's true of all of us, that I believe.
Personal meaning, though, that's what gets us through the day.
That's what still makes life, you know... Worth living?
Yeah, worth living!
Well, I guess that's true, but you've got to have mystery.
You've got to have something to drive you forward.
And right now, I have to approach science a lot like an acolyte of a religion, because I don't have an atom smasher.
I don't have a telescope.
I can't verify anything that scientists are telling me.
I have to accept by faith That these group of men, that can be just like the group of men in the Vatican, are telling me what the nature of reality is.
That's not true.
It's not just faith.
Because, like, for instance, the phone that you're talking into right now was developed by those scientists.
So, they're creating real things.
But the person who gives you faith, and I'm an agnostic to be honest with you, but the person who gives you faith gives you the ability, just as valid as this phone that I'm talking on, the ability to endure the hardships that you're talking about.
The problems of life, the people in the Philippines who are happy in the midst of their squalor, that in itself is even more valuable and even more important than the electronic device that I'm speaking on.
The ability to live your life and to seek pleasure and flee from pain and if you can't change your environment to be able to create your own environment in your head is extremely important.
Yeah, but you're making the assumption that atheists can't be happy.
That people who don't believe in God are incapable of happiness.
And I disagree.
Okay, well obviously.
Alright.
We're going to take a break here.
You're listening to Dark Matter in the nighttime.
I'm Art Bell.
I can see her lying back in her satin dress In a room where you do what you don't confess
Sundown, you'd better take care If I find you been creeping round my backstage
Sundown, you'd better take care If I find you been creeping round my back...
Sundown, you'd better take care Sundown, you'd better take care
From the area of 51, this is Dark Matter with Art Bell.
To join the show, please call 1-855-REAL-UFO.
That's 1-855-732-5836.
My guest is Matthew Alpert, and his book is The God Part of the Brain.
You can get it most anywhere.
All you've got to do is go out and look a little bit.
So if you're challenged, By what you've heard, I would think you'd want to read and read very, very carefully.
Matthew, I've got a very... I had no idea that the wormhole worked this well.
The message says, he needs to have his own NDE.
Simple.
Changed me forever, and I'm a wicked.
My death was suicide, and yes, I went to heaven.
Awesome.
Yeah, I think so too.
Really working well.
Okay, we don't have a lot of time, so you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hello.
Hello, how are you doing?
Glad to see you, Mark.
Thank you.
Matthew?
Yes?
Why do you still carry an ancient Jewish name if you're so anti-religious, no matter what the denomination may be?
Well, A, I didn't name myself.
Well, yeah, but you can change it legally.
Anybody can.
But beyond that, When you were talking about the- Alright, call me Ezekiel instead.
Say what?
Or Big Bird.
But, when you were talking about the body dying, and then, taking evolution, that the physiology came in to slow down the heart, and the brain, and everything, how does a dying body pass on any information to the next generation?
And beyond that, even, do you have- I guess maybe if you had a little religious in the family, you'd think a little differently about it, because you say you looked over the wall, under the wall, through the wall.
I think you need to look a little closer, because the Bible, like any good book, has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
And it all builds up to the end.
And I grew up carrying the candle, carrying the crucifix, helping with the sacrament.
But you know what?
To me, it was just part of growing up.
Well, what caught me, and years later, when I was reading the end in the Revelation, Christ said, That this generation will not pass the one that sees... Is this an ad for Christianity or do you have a question?
No, no, no, no.
It's an ad for everybody because it comes out of the Jewish faith like Islam did, Christianity did, and a lot of other faiths based there.
Alright, well I'm an atheist of course.
Alright, all he's asking is, is there a question, hold on, is there a question at the end of this?
Okay.
Christ said that when Israel regained its promised land for the third time, which it didn't, as we all know, there is no other thing that's more strong than any other prophecy.
Okay, sir, your question is, I'm sorry, we're short on time.
I don't.
It's that everybody is going to come to what they believe individually, not collectively, Each person sitting in that church comes to their belief individually.
And for you to write a snake oil book and try to influence so many people to the negative outlook that you have because of your experiences, I think does more harm than good.
Okay, that was a scintillating question, thank you.
Yeah, that was just a statement and a bash, so you never did have a question.
That's unfair.
Hello there, you're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hi.
Hi, can you lay you off, please?
Okay, the radio's off.
This is the first time I've listened to your show.
My husband's listened for years, so you've been driving home.
And I'm very intrigued by your guest that you have there, Matthew, and I was just wondering, since I don't know much about him, what his thought was on evolution, the Big Bang Theory, what exactly he believes in as How, you know, we got here.
How we got here, right.
We kind of covered that, but okay, sure.
Matthew?
I believe in the physical evolution of life.
That 3.2 billion years ago, 1.2 billion years after the creation of planet Earth, that molecules formed that were able to replicate themselves and basically give birth Die, etc.
That's it.
Okay.
Molecules at work.
Yes.
My name's Jordan.
I called earlier.
I wanted to talk about psychic ability.
No.
One one call per customer, Jordan.
My goodness gracious.
All those people you've got in place.
You're on the air with Matthew Alper.
Hello.
Hello.
This is James.
I'm a... Oh, let me tell my radio.
Oh, yes.
Listen, folks, when you get on the line, you can hear the program there.
You don't need the radio.
Turn it off as soon as you're on hold.
Go ahead.
Happy Roswell, Mr. Hart.
Thank you.
I'm a mystic, and I have had a direct experience with the Infinite.
And there's a lot of truth to what Matthew is saying.
I would like to suggest something to him, though, about all the fanaticism of religion, Once I had that experience, I saw the truth to that.
He's really telling the truth.
But, about the soul... Let me get this straight.
You had a mystical experience that revealed that what Matthew's saying is the truth?
That's funny.
I had the same mystical experience.
In regard to religion and the fanaticism involved in that.
And I can prove it.
It's easy to prove.
That's what I would like to suggest to him.
Is that life is about itself.
Life is the infinite.
Life is what people call God.
Life is the infinite of a creator.
Actually, that's kind of what he's saying, I think.
Well, I forgot what I was saying.
Well, I mean, that life is The totality of the answer.
Life itself.
Well, I don't even think there's a question, so I don't even know if I believe there's an answer.
Well, like I said... Like who's asking it?
Right, well, what I'm suggesting to you, and my question is, do you perceive this?
The part about the soul, the soul is just another word for what people call God, what I'm calling the infinite.
What this whole conversation is about is about what you believe and what other people don't believe.
And what I'm trying to point out to you and everyone in the program, including our audience, is that life isn't about what you believe and what you don't believe.
All that is based on what you think.
All that is based in thought.
And life is an expression of the infinite.
Just like I'm using words, we're all using words in exchange.
Okay, listen, I would essentially agree with you.
The only difference, probably, is that I don't ascribe any mystical sentiment to the infinite.
To me, the infinite is just like a quality of nature, that it's timeless.
But I don't believe that that has any mystical properties.
You put words in my mouth.
I didn't say anything about the infinite being mystical.
I said, I am a mystic.
And I was just using a word To say that I'm not of any particular religion.
That's all I was saying.
In regard to what people call God, I was describing that not as anything mystical.
So what's your mysticism?
I'm just curious.
You're a mystic.
What's your mysticism?
I'm just pointing out that I'm not of any particular religion, that's all I'm using.
That's okay, that's okay, but what is your mysticism?
Do you fly?
Do you have psychic abilities?
No, no, no.
This is what it is, and I've already said it, is to share with people, like you are sharing with people, you want the world to be at peace, and this is your approach.
And what I'm sharing with you and everyone is that once you realize The truth.
The truth is life itself.
All of us are expressions of the one infinite life in the same system.
I'm giving you an example.
All right, listen, Kohler, I'm sorry.
We're way out of time.
I think he was saying that, you know, the whole thing is that the whole point of life is life.
I don't know.
What point of life is life?
It's been a pleasure having you on the program again, Matthew.
It really has.
It's been a whale of a radio show, and I think that's the whole point.
It's been a true rollercoaster ride.
Thank you for having me on again.
Again, the name of the book is The God Part of the Brain.
You can go to www.godpart.com if you want to read about it, or just look up my name.
I'm all over the place.
And I hope you all enjoyed.
Take care, my friend.
We'll do it again.
Okay, great.
Thanks, Art.
Good night.
That should have caused a bit of thought.
Well, listen everybody, we are out of time.
Thank you very much.
Good radio is good radio, but time's up.
Later.
I've been looking for the answer.
All my life I've held you there.
As the world we live in threatens Are we heeding oversight?
Have we lost our intuition?
Are we running out of time?
Midnight in the desert And we're listening Ooh, we're listening And we're listening