Aliens, Sci-Fi, and Christianity | The Dr. Jeff Zweerink Interview
On The Babylon Bee Interview Show, Kyle and Ethan talk to Dr. Jeff Zweerink about aliens, accurate Sci-Fi movies, and being a scientist and a Christian. Dr. Jeff is a senior research scholar at Reasons To Believe. He holds a Ph.D. in Astrophysics and has debated Ken Ham on the age of the earth on the Unbelievable radio program. He struggled earlier in life with how to reconcile his biblical training and love for science. But when he first heard Hugh Ross, President & Founder of Reasons To Believe and an astrophysicist, speak at Iowa State University, Dr. Zweerink began to think he could combine science and faith together with his life's work. If you're hopelessly fascinated by the world of celebrity relationships, you can find Young & Holmes podcast episodes every two weeks on the podcast platform of your choice. You can also visit youngandholmes.com for more info.Kyle and Ethan find out when Dr. Jeff accepted Hugh Ross into his heart. Dr. Jeff talks about his origin growing up in Mississippi with science and Christianity in the same household. Kyle and Ethan dig into the questions submitted from our subscribers that go into what aliens would do to his theology, the realism of Sci-Fi movies, and Dark Matter. Kyle finds out what it's like being a Christian in the science world. In the Subscriber Portion, Kyle and Ethan find out more about that Ken Ham debate and what flat earthers believe. Dr. Jeff goes into if he's afraid of the multiverse and if we should be as well. He also goes into what is happening with artificial intelligence and what our possible future will be with it.
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Oh, hey, everybody.
Welcome to the Babylon Bee Interview Show.
And today me and Kyle interviewed Dr. Jeff Zwierink.
Kyle, is that the proper enunciation of his weirink?
All right.
He's a senior scholar at Reasons to Believe.
He holds a PhD in astrophysics.
What do you think of that?
Astrophysics, Kyle?
It's really smart.
He's an old earther.
I don't know.
Kyle's not down with that.
Are you, Kyle?
He works with Hugh Ross at Reasons to Believe, like I mentioned.
And he spoke at Iowa State University.
And he began to think he could combine science and faith together for his life's work.
That's a cool story, right, Kyle?
He debated a flat earther in this super entertaining YouTube channel production.
There's a link.
There'll be a link for that.
You like that video, Kyle?
And then Zwirink debated Ken Ham, the Ken Ham on the Age of the Earth on the Unbelievable Radio program.
So you can check that out.
And he's written some books, too.
Like, for instance, oh, he gave a TED Talk too.
Jeez, TED Talk?
You like TED Talk, right, Kyle?
Right.
Escape from the Beginning, Confronting Challenges to the Universe's Origin.
Dr. Jeff Zwierink.
Is there life out there?
Ooh, a little book on aliens.
You believe in aliens, Kyle?
Of course you do.
For some reason, when I search his name on Amazon, I get a lot of metamusil coming up.
I don't know why.
That could be my own search history.
How do we know the universe had a beginning?
Dr. Jeff Zwirink.
So we got Flat Earth.
We got Multiverse, he talks about.
He goes into all this stuff.
So we're going to talk Dr. Jeff Zwierink right now.
And Kyle, I hope you choose to be more talkative when our guest is here because so far, you're a little quiet.
All right, everybody, let's welcome Dr. Jeff Zwirink.
Welcome.
Come on, Kyle.
Pay attention.
All right.
Well, welcome, Dr. Jeff.
Is that what they call you?
I don't know.
Sure, that works.
They call me lots of things.
Well, thanks for joining us.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
I don't know.
Do we call astrophysics fun or is that?
I do.
I like astrophysics.
Yeah, it is fun.
All right.
So how old were you when you accepted Hugh Ross into your heart as your Lord and Savior?
Do you want to tell us your salvation story?
Well, we can talk about Hugh Ross and my salvation story.
Those are two surfaces.
No, they're different.
I thought maybe my dad is a big Hugh Ross fan, so he has the moment, you know, that he went forward.
Is that like a science guy?
Hugh Ross is my boss.
Oh, at the boss Ross.
The reasons to believe.
Well, I actually do know when I met or first met Hugh Ross.
It was when I was a sophomore in college.
I was involved with Campus Crusade, which is called Crew these days, but they had invited this guy to come speak.
And so I went and listened to him.
He gave a couple of different talks.
I went and listened to him and had a due to some questions that I had, I got together with him in his hotel room.
And he and a friend of mine or a friend of mine went up and talked with him.
So he actually changed the way I approached science and Christianity in a lot of ways.
And so, you know, I forget the exact date, but I know it was in 1998, which is when I was a sophomore in college.
You don't have the date like written in your Bible or no, I don't.
I have other dates written in my Bible, not that one.
How do you figure out which hotel room he was in?
That's Texas sleuthing, probably.
Well, I asked him.
Oh.
So I went to a college that was more, more of the professors were on the young earth side.
And when my mom and my dad were dropping my brother off at the school, at the college, you know, the first day they met one of the professors.
And my mom didn't really know this whole like young earth, older thing, like, you know, what side everybody's on.
So she goes up to one of the professors and she's like, this is my husband.
And he loves Hugh Ross.
And this stuffy, like, young earth, you know, Old Testament professor goes, well, that's unfortunate.
All right, all right.
Most of the most of my professors didn't have that reaction.
You know, I ended up going to graduate school at Iowa State.
So my major professor was a very strong Christian and actually encouraged me to, when I came out to moved out to California, he had actually moved out about six months before I graduated and said, hey, there's this ministry out here you ought to get connected with.
And so I went and did some training with them.
And that actually led to, over the next seven or eight years, me joining staff.
Okay.
So you said that this whole thing kind of changed your view on how science and faith and science and the Bible interact.
So what did you mean by that?
Well, so a little bit of my background is, you know, my dad is a chemist.
So one of my earliest memories, though, is of watching my mom and dad get baptized in the 102 River outside St. Joseph, Missouri, where I grew up.
And so Christianity was just a big part of our home.
I mean, they were growing in their understanding of Christianity.
They were teaching my brothers and I what that meant.
And, you know, we moved up to Ames, Iowa for a year.
My dad did a sabbatical.
I went to an Iwana program or I was involved in an Awana program.
And during one of the council times, presented the gospel.
And so I, and the particular thing that stood out is like, you know, this is a choice you have to make.
And so they kind of said how to do that choice.
And so I did that.
And being, you'd never know it, but being a little shy, I, they said, you know, you ought to go talk to your leaders about this.
Well, I didn't want to go talk to my leaders.
So I told my parents when I got home.
And so they were talking to me about that.
They were excited about that and was baptized later that year.
But, you know, though, growing up in the church and learning about Christianity, it wasn't until my senior year of high school or after that, I went on a summer mission trip with a group called Royal Servants where I really began to own my Christian faith and learn and what does this mean?
And so when I went to college, I started regularly studying the Bible.
And somewhere in there, somewhere in that first year and a half, I started reading through Genesis and the inerrant footnotes in my Bible say these have to be 24-hour days.
And so, all right, well, if that's what the Bible says, that's where I live.
But yet I'm a physicist.
And it's like, I know that science says the earth's older than that.
And so I started wrestling, you know, kind of had these, had this intuitive sense that what the Bible says and what science says have to both agree, but didn't really know how to reconcile it.
And so, you know, that come my sophomore year, Hugh Ross is there.
I get to ask him this question.
And it's like, his answer helps me see that there's more to the picture than what I know.
And so rather than this being a fundamental conflict, this is, I just got to go out and study more.
And so that's kind of been my approach to science-faith conflicts, if you will, for since that point in time.
It's like, okay, there's something I don't understand here if this doesn't work together.
So we got our subscriber system and some questions.
And Neil Hibley asks, you know, and I want to know this too, what is an astrophysicist?
So I barely know what a physicist is.
Well, the way I describe it, I'm a physicist at heart, and a physicist likes to know why things work.
So we design experiments, you know, I mean, all sorts of things.
Like I remember when I was in high school, my ballpoint pen, I'm like, how does, you know, you click on it and it goes out and you click on it and it goes in.
You do the same action, you get two different things.
How is that?
So I take it apart and realize there's this cool little device in there where it's got different size holes in it.
And so you click it up and it moves over to the next hole.
So I liked, I figured out why in the world this pen worked.
You know, that's the sort of way my mind works.
So a physicist just goes and says, all right, how does this work?
How do we, how can we figure that out?
Well, an astrophysicist, in my assessment, is someone who does that with a telescope.
So I am far more physics than I am astro, but I use a telescope to figure out how the universe works.
When I was in high school, I didn't know how pens worked and I accidentally sucked all the ink out of one during a test.
A little different approach to how.
That would have been good for me to be more intuitive.
So you're pretty much a physicist.
I was on my way.
On your way.
That's how you got started.
Went off the rails.
Instead, I drew.
So, okay.
So space.
So, I mean, space.
Just to be honest, especially Patrick here, he wants to talk about aliens really bad.
So let's talk about aliens.
We think.
What would you like to know?
Pro or con?
Like for or against aliens.
Oh, sorry.
If I'm a betting man, I don't think there's any out there.
It wouldn't surprise me if God created aliens, though.
Okay.
Now, whether we will ever interact with them, there are a whole lot of things that argue there's even if they're out there, they can't get here because space is really, really big.
And it's not a particularly environment particularly amenable to life.
So you can take Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel, everything you want that makes it look so easy, and it just really isn't.
And so, yeah, I think it's a fascinating scientific question.
You know, is there life out there?
How would we go about detecting it?
What are the signatures?
And, you know, it gives some great scientific projects to work on.
I think it's a fascinating theological discussion as well.
And what I've looked at is that Christians throughout history have been very interested in this conversation.
I mean, you go back even Galileo is kind of the original astronomer, if you will.
Well, the first one to use a telescope, or at least in that class.
And, you know, Galileo thought that Earth was the only place that hosted life.
Well, one, and, you know, a very devout Christian as well.
Kepler, who was one of his contemporaries, thought God had created life on all the different planets.
And so every planet was filled with life.
So here you've got two devout Christians equally interested in studying the universe who have very different perspectives on what we're going to find.
And so I think it's just a great thing to go out and study.
But as a Christian, it doesn't bother me to think about this because Christians have been thinking.
I honestly think Adam and Eve might have had that argument in the Garden of Eden somewhere.
Nay, Eve.
Laying out there looking at the sky.
So yeah, so aliens show up.
You don't like immediately abandon your faith or anything like that.
No, in fact, you know, there's always, there seems to be this assumption that people make.
It's like, okay, aliens land on the White House lawn.
That just means all the world religions are along, or at least the ones that talk about a personal God.
Well, there's an assumption in there is that, you know, so what happens if these aliens land?
The presumption is they're going to get out and they're going to say, who is this God you're talking about?
We've never heard of them.
You know, so What they say, they're going to have to advance beyond our petty religious things that we do to something bigger.
Well, if we get there, if the aliens show up on the White House lawn and we ask them about God, they say, Well, yeah, there's this God who's in control of the universe and has provided a plan of salvation for us.
To me, that's potent, that would be potent evidence for the truth of Christianity.
You know, so we assume that they're not going to have any knowledge of the God or that they wouldn't be suppressing that knowledge of the God like we do.
You know, so there's a whole lot more to that conversation that would have to happen.
But I think, like every scientific discovery as we've probed into it, it has actually solidified my confidence in the truth of Christianity, not detracted from it.
What if they're Mormons, though?
Then, is that an issue?
Well, again, it wouldn't, I don't know that I would expect it, but it wouldn't surprise me in some sense because if it Christ came and lived and walked here among the earth, and yet we still find ways to say he doesn't exist or he isn't God.
Why would it surprise me that aliens have done the same thing?
You know, it's it's I it's kind of portrayed as this very simple, simplistic if they exist, God doesn't exist or whatever.
It's like there's a whole lot more that we would have to investigate, and that doesn't discount all the data that we already have, you know.
So, it would be part of a part of the data that goes into a very, very big, very complicated equation of does God exist or not.
So, right.
A follow-up question by our subscriber, David the Florida man.
He says, What movie is more realistic, Star Wars or Star Trek?
Ah, that's kind of like asking, well, I can't even think of the analogy because they're both unrealistic.
Um, you know, the idea to me, Star Trek is based on like socialism being this utopia, so it's the most unrealistic.
Well, I was just going with the technology, I wasn't getting into the political implications of that, but no, I do really, you know, the idea that there's this holodeck where you can go do anything in there and nobody's done adult movies in there or something.
It just that's Bobbles.
I mean, you know, something we've gotten we've gotten humanity wrong if we think that would happen or wouldn't happen.
But, um, but uh, there was never an episode where maybe I just got cut.
I don't know, but I don't know.
It's you know, you said you got this idea where you can instantaneously travel around, so you got faster than light travel because you're going to have to have that to get to various places.
But even, I mean, you know, you're talking warp nine, so that's nine times the speed of light.
That means it only takes instead of four years, it takes just under six months to get to the next closest star.
And yet at warp nine, it takes them eight hours to get somewhere.
You know, so there's something there's a lot more to that picture.
I don't think any of them, yeah, I don't think any of them are realistic.
They are close enough that I can that I enjoy watching both of them because you're kind of having to suspend a little bit of judgment.
Uh, I know people get really worked up about whether Star Wars, Star Trek, for a whole slew of reasons.
I actually like them both.
I don't think either of them are realistic, but I'm not really looking for realistic when I watch those movies.
What is the most realistic sci-fi movie?
That's a good question.
One point, Ethan.
I never get the good questions.
I don't have extensive enough what I liked the Martian because that's close enough to being plausible.
I mean, you know, like there's stuff beyond what can happen, but it really wrestles with there's just a hostility to life on other, you know, you go to Mars and it's we're not designed to be there.
It's not designed to host life, and so there's all these things you have to do to manage.
Um, I liked that one because it seems like oh, that might actually happen.
Um, total recall, too.
Same, same message.
Yeah.
That is true.
Yeah.
Well, except for the fact that there were aliens who had built this thing that made it habitable that we forgot how to use.
Oh, it was aliens?
I missed that part.
You listened to that.
Well, which total recall are we talking about?
Are we talking about the one that came out in the 80s or the remake?
Yeah, Arnold.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There was this big.
I hope that's not a spoiler.
It's been around long enough.
I think you're safe.
I've seen that movie so many times and I completely missed that point that aliens made the giant dome that they all live in.
No.
No, they made the dome, but aliens had made the thing that went down into the ice and evaporated all the ice and made the atmosphere.
Oh, yeah, they turned back on at the end.
That's right.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I forgot about it.
Which just barely saved him because he went out just late enough that his brain didn't explode when he was out there without an atmosphere.
Right at the last second.
Yeah.
Which still doesn't solve the problem of Mars isn't large enough to hold onto that atmosphere.
So it'll stick around for a while, but just repeatedly evaporate away.
Do you say all this stuff while you're watching movies with friends and no, I intentionally of all things, the funniest one I had with that, and I think this was Field of Dreams, which again dates me a little bit of what movies that I know, is I'm sitting there watching that with my dad.
And there's this scene where they're driving through St. Louis and going somewhere.
And my dad drives a lot.
We're very knowledgeable of maps and stuff like that.
So they're driving along and they're going.
I forgot, I don't even remember where they're going, but my dad goes, that's not how you get there.
But no, I intentionally don't do that because I find it annoying when people do that.
What's like a really wild night with a bunch of astrophysicists look like?
A wild night with a bunch of astrophysicists.
That may be a contradictory question.
Everybody just loosens their neckties a little bit and goes crazy.
So what I would say, what I like about being an astrophysicist, I mean, I love learning about various things.
I mean, and we could talk if you wanted to.
You know, I do gamma-ray astronomy, and I'm right now doing high-energy astrophysics, which is the technology used to build gamma-ray instruments or the instruments that can detect gamma rays from other objects is very similar to high-speed particles and how you detect them.
And so we're using that to build an experiment to try and figure out what dark matter is.
It's a balloon experiment that will fly in Antarctica.
So, I mean, I like talking about that.
And I love the physics concepts in there.
But what I really enjoy about physics is that there are things that are true.
And so you are always anchored by does the data support that or not?
And a good science education will teach you to think well about things.
So it's like, you know, can you actually say that?
Does the data support it?
Is that a logical extrapolation from where you are?
What would you take to do that?
And so it's not so much that we get in and yak about, oh, did this star blow up or when do you think it's going to be?
It's that we take that sort of principle and whatever question gets asked, you just kind of get in and wrestle with it.
And I remember having a discussion, you know, like I said, my dad's a chemist and we were sitting around one night and it had something related to quantum mechanics.
That's just, I remember that was the discussion.
And so we were talking about what it meant.
So we ended up having this long dialogue.
You know, I'd say something and he'd think about it for 10, 15 seconds and he'd say something.
You know, I'd give his, you know, and so we were kind of sitting and dialoguing and arguing about something.
And it was one of those cool things because it was one of the few times where I think I actually beat my dad in an argument, you know, which was.
Not physical.
No, no, I got it.
I actually won the argument, or at least I had the stronger position.
But it was just the list, being able to articulate a point, thinking about how to say it well, hearing the response is like, okay, so now what do I do?
It's that mental exercise of how do you respond?
Is this a good argument?
Is that not?
Oh, no, and that doesn't work.
That's what's fun.
Or I enjoy that part of it, which sometimes works in a marriage, sometimes doesn't.
Yeah, is it hard to be around normal people that don't think that much?
I don't know the answer to that because most of the people I'm around tend to think.
You don't have to be a scientist to think well, but I tend to gravitate to people who think well.
So in other words, is it hard to talk to us?
I don't know.
Until you guys show me otherwise, I assume you know how to think well.
You're playing 40 chess and we're playing two-dimensional tiddly winks over here.
Most asleep.
Never wasn't.
Never was any good at tiddly winks.
I don't know what it is.
Flicking the lens.
Okay, Burt Macklin, FBI, asks, since you mentioned dark matter, what's the deal with dark matter?
Seems like a catch-all for anything we can't explain.
Well, that would be, I mean, there is, so dark matter at its root, so a little bit of science history here, science lesson, is that if you want to figure out how much mass there is around something, you look at the things that orbit.
So if you want to weigh them, if you want to weigh the Earth, look at the moon's orbit because the moon's orbit tells you how much mass the Earth has.
If you want to weigh the Sun, look at the Moon's or the Earth's orbit because that tells you how much mass the Sun has.
And so we can go out and look at various things like galaxies and map out the stars and see their rotation and say how much mass is there.
And then we can count up all the stars and say how much mass can we see.
And lo and behold, the amount of mass that's there is more than the amass that we can see.
So astronomers came up with this creative name called dark matter.
So it's actually, it's not just some catch-all of, well, we don't know what's going on.
It's like we can tell how much mass is there.
We can count, we can see this amount of mass.
There's a discrepancy.
And so we see dark matter in clusters of galaxies.
We see them in galaxies.
We see them inside our solar system.
So we've got this gravitational measurement of this mass that we can't see.
But as of right now, and we've known this for 80 years, we've seen this evidence for 80 years, and it's gotten stronger and stronger and stronger.
But what we don't know is what is the stuff that comprises dark matter?
So I can say there's mass in the center of our solar system because I can see what the planets do, but I can look and say, oh, the sun is that mass.
So I can identify what the matter is.
We can't identify what the dark matter is.
We think it's a particle.
That would be the most obvious choice because there's particles explaining most everything in the universe.
The question is, what kind of particle?
What sort of features does it have?
So the balloon experiment we're building is looking for a particular signature that if we see that signature, it will say this kind of particle is the dark matter.
And then other people will go out and say, oh, yes, we see that same kind of particle.
I hurt my brain almost cramped towards the end there.
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So do you get picked on by all the other astrophysicists for believing in God?
Like, do they shove you in lockers and stuff or wedges and stuff?
No, being six foot four helps out a lot.
No, I don't.
So there are, you know, we tend to think of scientists as being this rational, incredibly objective all the time.
And the reality is scientists are people.
What being a scientist does is that it teaches you how to think a certain way.
And so, I mean, you go talk to scientists and you're going to find liberals and you're going to find conservatives.
You're going to find people who are timid, people who are bold.
I mean, you're going to find the same group of people and they're going to have the same struggles that every other person does.
Typically, the difference in a scientist is that when they hold a position, it's typically they can articulate why and they've thought it out.
So in my experience of being a scientist, I have, as I've told people about my faith, some have said, that's stupid.
Why would you believe that?
Some have said, oh, yes, I agree with you.
Some have said, oh, I can see why you're a Christian.
I just think you're wrong.
So you get the spectrum across there.
I gave a talk over at UCLA where I was talking about one of Hugh Ross's books that somebody had mailed all the faculty and gave a talk about it.
And the people in the audience, I had a couple who said, why are we even talking about science and religion?
Like, the kind of a non-linear response, if you will.
A lot of people just were about, this doesn't interest me.
I'm wanting to, I like this other topic.
And then I had people come up and talk to me.
I see why you're saying that.
I just think Buddhism is a better explanation.
Or I had a fellow come up and said, I'm a Christian too.
I just don't think you've got the right answer here.
So my experience has been, if I do good science, my views have a place at the table.
And I need to be able to defend them.
I need to be able to articulate them and talk about them well.
But there's nothing that people say, oh, you're a Christian.
You can't be a good scientist.
Well, no, my work says I'm a good scientist.
And so I've got a place at the table to have a discussion like everybody else does.
Well, it's interesting, too, that some of the work you're talking about isn't specifically like apologetics related.
You're not always just going out, like, I'm trying to prove God exists or something.
Like you're studying physics and astrophysics.
And that seems like a good model for Christians that are in any field, like do good work.
It really is.
I mean, I've interacted with enough people who are missionaries and it's like, you know, they're going in and we want to build something, you know, build a business that actually benefits the community.
Well, if you do that, people in the community will say, hey, this is good.
And they'll want to know.
So I mean, it's kind of, there's two errors.
One is, well, I do that a lot where there's two errors.
But, you know, one is that you never talk about your faith.
And the other is that you only talk about it and don't actually live it out.
And so my experience as being a scientist is as I do good scientific work, we get to talk.
And if I talk about Christianity, they may agree or disagree.
I don't get to, just because I do good science doesn't mean everybody's got to agree with me when I talk about it.
But I've run into very little place where you say, oh, you just can't, that doesn't belong here.
Get it out of here.
You know, I've got to be, like I said, got to be prepared to defend it.
And I think there are good reasons why Christianity is true.
And that's why I do apologetics.
That's why I'm at Reasons to Believe is because I think they help provide some of those good reasons.
What have been some of the big breakthroughs in astrophysics in recent times that maybe we haven't heard about or maybe we haven't just, it's not our world.
I don't check the astrophysics column in the market.
I don't get the newspaper every week.
You don't?
Or have there been?
I guess maybe I ought to get you connected so that you get those, get those in your invitation.
Or like, what's the last time some big thing came?
Like, oh my gosh, whoa.
Well, so there's that question is a little hard to answer for this reason is that most or a lot of times where we are, we've been doing physics long enough or astrophysics long enough that the questions you're trying to pursue are very complicated questions.
So, for example, within the last five years, I think, I may be a little wrong on the time scale, there was some data out of CERN that they found evidence for the Higgs boson.
Well, I mean, this is something they've been searching for for decades, building experiments, trying to get, you know, getting up to it where they found it.
So actually finding it, you know, there's, can you get enough data?
Is the signal strong enough that you're kind of, you know, there's a whole lot that goes into that.
But there's also, as you're getting close, there's little signs that you're getting close.
So the actual discovery is really cool when it comes out, but you've had this kind of forewarning that you're going to get the discovery at the same time.
And so.
So it's not like we uncover a treasure in the desert or something.
Right.
And, you know, I mean, you know, I was talking about dark matter.
I mean, people have been the first evidence for dark matter showed up 80 years ago.
People have been studying it, finding more and more.
If the experiment I'm working on actually detects it, that will be, you know, the person, the head of our project will probably get a Nobel Prize at some point.
It's that level of discovery.
But other people will have to come along and say, oh, yeah, our experiment validates that as well.
And so I would say probably one of the bigger discoveries, and again, this is, you know, go back to 92, discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation, or sorry, the ripples in the cosmic microwave background radiation, because the radiation was discovered in the 60s, if I remember correctly.
That's correct.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
But it's like we know there needed to be some sort of structure in this or else we can't explain the galaxies.
Well, we find out and it's like, oh, that validates that our Big Bang model is pretty accurate here.
And it at least allows us to explain that.
And we find that the universe has a flat geometry, which helps us explain why inflation seems to produce a flat geometry.
But all of our measurements seem to indicate we were about 30 to 50 percent of flat or 10 to 30 percent of flat.
And so that was one of those big ones.
I think when the WMAP results came out in the early 2000s, I actually remember being one of my colleagues at UCLA worked on that or was one of the major principal investigators of that.
And they came and gave the talk and he kind of outlined it and he said, yeah, okay, here's all the results.
And it just lined up with everything we thought.
And I remember in the room, there was kind of two responses.
One was, yeah, we got, we're good.
That's right.
And the other one's like, oh, man, there's nothing new there.
There's nothing that doesn't make sense because the doesn't make sense means there's a cool problem to solve.
And so it gives us something to work on.
So I would say probably the Higgs boson is the biggest one that's happened where we've known it.
We're pretty confident it's out there, but finding it has been hard.
I'm kind of optimistic that within the next 10 or so years, we'll probably figure out what dark matter is.
I think the discovery of the dark energy, that there's this for there's this stuff, a principle of the universe that causes it to expand faster and faster as it grows.
That was entirely unexpected again, back in the 90s.
And so we spent 30 years even trying to figure out what in the world this stuff is or how to even work it into our theories well.
So I don't, that didn't quite answer your question, but those are some of the bigger things that have happened in the last 10, 20 years.
You're locked on an elevator for a minute with an atheist.
What's the first, what's the argument you make for God's existence from astrophysics?
I would probably ask him, what do you do with the evidence that points to the universe having a beginning?
You know, if the universe began to exist, then you need an explanation for that beginning.
Quite honestly, I would probably spend more time asking him or her, why don't you think God exists?
What about this isn't compelling to you?
Because there's something.
If I don't know what their position is and what they're thinking, I don't know.
I see apologetics as a set of tools.
It's like, here's a tool that can help me address whatever you're wrestling with.
Until I know what they're wrestling with, maybe they just really don't give a rip and don't even want to think about it.
So no tool I have really can deal with that.
Or it may be there's some psychological hurt somewhere else than a scientific tool.
It may be that they have just this, I don't really understand how all this works.
Christianity doesn't make any sense.
Well, now apologetics, there's a whole slew of tools I have that can work with that.
What if you're on the elevator with him and he goes, man, if someone could just give me an argument from astrophysics that God exists, then I'd be.
And he's just kind of talking to himself.
What do you say?
I would say the idea that there's a beginning to the universe, not only is there a beginning to the universe or that there's strong evidence in support of that.
We live in a universe that's expanding.
We live in a universe that's governed by constant laws of physics that is decaying.
And that that is the description of the universe given by the Bible.
And so, you know, it's great if you believe in God, but I think the God of the Bible is the one you want to believe in because the scientific description and our biblical description align.
That's potent evidence to me that the biblical authors were ultimately inspired by the one who created it all.
I guess that kind of goes into a question that I had.
Science-y stuff, I think you can get to a creator and be pretty rationally go, I think there's a creator behind all this.
But then there's the leap to a specific faith.
And so I guess that's a question.
My question is, does science lead you to a specific faith or do you science get you here and then the rest goes, I don't know, leaping?
Or if you're looking at other things, you're looking at soul and heart and romance and art.
Yeah, the way I think about that is I think there are arguments.
You know, if there's a beginning to the universe, that points to a God.
Or an alien.
Or an alien.
Well, no, the alien would be part of the universe.
Right.
So there's something outside the universe that caused it.
Is there a different kind of universe that makes universes?
I don't know.
Well, I mean, it could be that our universe is just a big simulation run by complex aliens.
So the God of the Bible isn't the only supernatural, if you will.
There's critters out there that are running simulations that are, that's still beyond our natural world, if you will.
The idea that the universe is fine-tuned to support life.
I mean, what it takes to make carbon.
I mean, there's a whole slew of arguments you can talk about that show that our universe seems a little unique or bizarre in that it's capacity to support life.
So you can talk about all that.
I think that does get you to the idea there's a creator.
Now, and that to me is why it's important to show not just that there's a creator, but what we find scientifically aligns with what the Bible has said.
Because if scripture says, hey, this is the way the universe is, and we go and measure it and it's not, and that's a genuine contradiction, that says, okay, I can't really trust what the Bible has to say.
But if scripture or if science, as we find it, aligns with and validates what scripture says, then I can be confident to trust what scripture says.
That to me is the connection between God in general to here's a specific God, because the Mormon God and the Jewish God and the Islamic God and the Hindu God, they're different.
And so it's not just God.
It's like, which God are we talking about?
And You can talk about it scientifically, but that's true historically.
That's true philosophically.
That's true psychologically.
Which, you know, all of those things are things we can study of how this world works.
Does the Bible give a good description of that?
And I think every Christian ought to be able to say, yes, here's how the Bible describes our world.
Well, and then other people of other faiths have to be able to articulate that.
They articulate the way they do.
And I think my conviction is, as Christians, because I think Christianity really is true, that at the end of the day, it's going to win out because it's true.
Good question, Ethan.
Well, thanks.
So work hard, succeed, be happy asks, howdy, Jeff, do you think it would be possible to escape a black hole and therefore based on relativity travel back in time?
I'll take my answer off the air.
Do you think it would be possible to escape a black hole?
I think they're probably just asking about the ending of interstellar.
I think that's one of those movies that's a little implausible.
Well, okay, so you've got this dilemma, or not dilemma, but what a black hole is, is where you've got enough mass concentrated that the velocity it takes to escape exceeds the speed of light.
So you can't exceed the speed of light.
And so therefore nothing can escape.
So in principle, you cannot escape a black hole.
Now, there are these ideas that you can have places where black holes rupture the fabric, connect with others, and presumably you can move through those.
Makes for good science fiction.
There's some interesting science behind that discussion, but it's not clear to me that you can actually transmit anything through those.
So at least, you know, in the same way you tell, you know, every first grader, no, you can't divide by zero.
No, you can't escape a black hole.
You know, when you get into college, you realize you can do calculus and there are ways to divide by zero if you know how to do it right.
So maybe when you mess with black holes, if you do it right, there is a way to escape.
But as a good first principle, no, you can't escape from a black hole.
So the ending of interstellar should have been Matthew McConaughey going into the black hole and just getting crushed.
And his head just goes.
Well, it wouldn't be crushed.
It'd actually be ripped apart and then crushed.
So a little more painful that way.
Actually.
Great ending.
That's what we should have done in this episode.
We should have just played interstellar and just sat down with him and watched it.
You actually do that comment on commentary.
Like mystery science.
Well, so again, I hesitate.
Well, I mean, assuming people have watched the movie, so I'm not spoiling anything.
Somewhere in there, somehow people, some being beyond what humans could know now, figured out how to do all that.
So there are beings who know how to manipulate space and fold it and do other things.
And if you can do that, then some of my restrictions that I am dictated by the laws of physics here on Earth no longer, or in this universe, no longer apply.
Because if you can manipulate space at that level, then that's a whole different capability than what we have.
Ephesus asks, listening to the Ken Ham debate, you didn't address your thoughts on death before the fall.
Could you articulate your theology on that?
This is a popular, we get the Young Earther guys in here, and that's when they got me with that one.
So I'm assuming that's referring to the discussion I had with Ken Hammond on the Justin Briarly Unbelievable Show.
And so read the question again because it struck me as odd.
You didn't address your thoughts on death before the fall.
So the idea that in an old earth idea, there's all this death before Adam and Eve and all that even happens.
But it seems that scripture says that death didn't really enter the world until the fall.
So, okay, so yeah, because I actually, one of the points I was trying to make in there is that regardless of how you deal with death, ultimately that's on God.
And the point or one of the things I was trying to do is that you have different Christians, very devout Christians who take a different view on old earth, young earth.
And so this is not something that has been a definer of Orthodox Christian thought.
But what my contention was, is this, is that we live in a universe where there's death.
Now, how we explain that, we need to do very carefully, because if we don't do it very carefully, we end up in a wrong view of who God is.
And I think this is an accurate statement.
And I think actually Ken Ham articulated it in our discussion there, is his view is God created this perfect world, humanity messed it up, and therefore death came into the world.
So in that sense, death isn't on God.
It's on humanity.
I don't think that actually gets God off the hook because God created the world knowing that humanity was going to sin.
And so God created the world.
Either way, you either end up in God not being omniscient and sovereign, and therefore humanity is messing up what God created, which is a problematic idea for me.
To me, the way to look at that is that God is omniscient, omnipotent, sovereign, can do, you know, and he has created this world because it is the best way to accomplish the purpose that he is.
He created this universe knowing that Adam and Eve were going to be tested by Satan.
Nothing about him caught him off guard with that.
In fact, one of the things that I find fascinating, you go look at Job and you think, oh, wow, Job had all this really bad stuff.
God instigated that.
You start off reading there, it's like God's saying, hey, did you see my servant Job over here?
Look how good he is.
Satan's going, well, let me, well, I'll take care of that.
But, you know, it's not like Satan was like, who can I let me go out and test this guy?
No, God's saying, hey, God instigated all that.
So when it comes to humanity, God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in this idyllic set of conditions.
I mean, there is no one.
I mean, you couldn't get a better environment.
And yet God allowed Satan into the garden to tempt them.
And God put the means of rebelling against him in front of them.
And he made it beautiful and attractive because everything God makes is beautiful and attractive.
And in spite of everything that God had provided for Adam and Eve and giving them the choice, they chose to rebel.
So the beautiful message of Christianity is not, to me, is that in spite of us rebelling, God made a way for us to be in relationship with him.
So in my theology, God in eternity doesn't need, he didn't need to create anybody.
He's not like, oh, man, it'd be nice to have some folks worship me for a while.
He didn't need anything.
He's in and of his nature.
He's sufficient and content and relational.
I mean, he doesn't need anything.
So he creates for our benefit.
He creates so that we can enjoy relationship with him.
And he cared so much about allowing us to have that relationship.
He created a world knowing that his son was going to die on the cross to redeem us.
That he valued our relationship or our ability to relate to him that much that he was willing to create that kind of universe.
So unless you're going to argue that there's something external to God that can affect and change his behavior, this universe and all it is is ultimately on him.
You know, he's created these beings.
He's created humanity.
He's given us the choice.
Throughout history, people have said that's on God.
And I think God has big enough shoulders to carry that.
Just because it doesn't make sense, or I don't like the way God does it.
The fact that there's death and suffering in this world, I don't see that as something that is, wow, God's awful for letting that because there's so much beyond.
It seems to me that's just part and parcel of having free will.
If humanity can't genuinely rebel against God, then we don't really have free will.
And I think Adam and Eve actually had free will.
We're constrained by our natures at this point.
But Adam and Eve genuinely had free will and they chose to rebel.
And God, through Christ, redeemed us.
And that's incredible.
That's a long-winded answer for your question.
So like when they, like, in the young earth guy's view, if there's no death in the world, like when they ate fruit and stuff, did it stay alive in them?
I don't know if that included it.
It kept growing and stuff.
So again, at least if you're talking about Ken Ham, he doesn't see fruit as being alive in that.
There are certain animals that are alive.
But they didn't eat animals.
Well, we don't, do we know?
They would argue that you did not eat animals.
That's correct.
You know, and I would too, at least until the fall we weren't supposed to, or not until the fall, sorry, after the flood were we allowed to eat animals.
That's when that became okay.
Hey, you, are you enjoying this interview?
Oh, I know I am.
Oh, I sure am.
I'm actually probably sweating trying to think up new questions right now at this very moment.
But if you're enjoying it, you should become a Babylon B subscriber because the interviews are much longer.
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Related question.
Have you ever been to Ken Ham's Ark?
I have not.
My parents have.
It's just a little hard because it's like 2,000 miles away.
I think it'd be interesting to see.
I'm not real that interested in paying any money to go see it, partially because I'm cheap.
Ken Ham, if you're listening.
Free ticket for Dr. Jim.
But I think if, I mean, if I were out there in the area, I think it would be interesting to see.
I don't agree with how he's portraying Christianity, but I think it would be fascinating to see what's done.
I think it's a pretty big event.
I mean, you've got to admit, the young earth view is cooler.
You know, you've got raptors, like, you know, people riding around.
He's got a whole diorama of raptors fighting and a gladiator.
Oh, yeah.
That's much cooler.
I mean, I just.
You got nothing on that is what I'm saying.
But I don't know.
As a, well, I guess having it for human entertainment, I can't get that.
I'm glad the raptors were out there fighting.
We just didn't need to watch them.
I was just not in a gladiator arena.
I heard that he's building the Tower of Babel now, and that seems to me to be an extraordinarily bad idea.
I don't know whether that's a joke or not.
No, he is.
He is, really.
Oh, wow.
Isn't that the whole thing?
It's a cautionary tale.
He's like, don't do this.
It's like trying to build Jurassic Park or something.
The whole story is about not doing that.
So it's a little hard to replicate at least part of that story because part of what building the Tower of Babel was is that humanity was deciding we're just going to stay here and reach our way up to God instead of spreading out and filling the earth, which was their command.
God commanded them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, rule over it, and subdue it.
And so we've already kind of spread out and filled most of the earth, at least the parts that are relatively easy to inhabit.
And we even live down at the South Pole, and that's nothing's easy about habiting that part, inhabiting that part.
Doesn't the South Pole have like one six-month day and one six-month night like all year?
Because that's insane to me.
And I read about it and I was like, there's no way that's true.
It's a little more complicated, but yes, they do have, it's like the sun never goes below the horizon for the heart of summer and it never gets above the horizon for the heart of winter.
And it's not like a six-month day and a six-month night, but it's you know, the sun never gets above about 10 degrees off the horizon, or maybe it's 30 degrees, 23 degrees on the horizon.
So it's always just floating around the horizon instead of going overhead.
That sounds fake to me.
That sounds good.
Well, if you take a globe and put it out here, put the sun over here and just say, okay, I'm down here and you're always looking out at the sun.
You can see that as the globe spins, it just never goes below the horizon.
Whereas when up here, you can see it going.
I actually did that lab in my class that I was teaching a couple of semesters ago.
So it does work.
It's not just hocus-pocus.
There's actually a good reason why that happens.
I would watch a TV show with you, like Dr. Jeff, the astrophysics guy.
Okay.
For kids.
Zerink.
I don't know.
I'd watch it.
That'd be a harder one to rhyme with than Bill Nye.
Yes.
How do you rhyme that?
I'm not sure.
I don't know how to rhyme with Zwirink.
Not that I'm aware of.
Well, swearing, but that's not quite appropriate.
Swearing guy.
Dr. Zwierink makes you think.
There we go.
Hey, that's pretty good.
Copyright, Ethan Nichols.
All right, okay.
I can't use that one now, or I got to hire him to run it.
So one of the two.
All right.
Well, are we ready for our subscriber portion?
Do we want to move on?
Yeah, we'll throw some more subscriber questions at you, dismantle your views.
Okay.
Yeah.
Let's go for it.
Ready?
Let's do it.
Coming up next for Babylon Be subscribers.
In fact, I wrote a book on that called Who's Afraid of the Multiverse?
And the answer is not me.
Okay.
Well, because these are the kinds of questions.
So is there life out there?
That's one of the books I wrote.
Because I don't know, did God create life out there or not?
Is there a beginning to the universe?
Will we create AI?
So Flat Earth.
Yes or no?
I think there's...
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