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Speaker 1: Life audio. I had no reason to think that there

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Speaker 1: was anything wrong or that my life was going to

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Speaker 1: change absolutely dramatically, you know, in the matter of the day.

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Speaker 1: When I woke up the next morning, I wasn't in

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Speaker 1: my bed. I wasn't even in my house. I was

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Speaker 1: in an ambulance. I learned later that about four in

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Speaker 1: the morning or so, Candy, who wasn't sleeping well because

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Speaker 1: she was very pregnant, heard me sort of scream and

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Speaker 1: she was like, what's wrong. She turned on the light

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Speaker 1: and I was seizing, unconscious and seizing, foaming at the mouth,

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Speaker 1: you know. Went to the hospital, picked up the radiology results.

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Speaker 1: It said, you know, there's a brain tumor. And the

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Speaker 1: best I can describe it is like if someone taps

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Speaker 1: your kneecap and your knee birks. It's like, you didn't

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Speaker 1: tell your need to do that. It's just doing it. Well,

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Speaker 1: now my whole body's doing this.

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Speaker 2: Our guest today, neuroscientist Josh Brown experienced a dramatic healing

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Speaker 2: from a tumor through prayer twenty years ago. What happened?

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Speaker 2: What do you find when you began applying his scientific

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Speaker 2: expertise to studying the empirical effects of prayer, and how

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Speaker 2: has his research both surprised him and changed his life.

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Speaker 2: You're about to find out. Doctor Josh Brown is professor

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Speaker 2: of Psychological and Brain Sciences Indiana University and the author

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Speaker 2: of the new book Proving a Miracle, which I had

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Speaker 2: a chance to endorse. Welcome to the show.

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Speaker 1: Well, thanks, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for

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Speaker 1: having me.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, your book is super interesting. I've been covering so

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Speaker 2: much supernatural phenomena on my channel, and the moment your

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Speaker 2: book came out, I was like, I want to read

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Speaker 2: this and I want to have you on now. Before

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Speaker 2: we get to the story of your healing from a tumor,

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Speaker 2: can you paint the picture of your life personally and

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Speaker 2: professionally before you got sick.

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Speaker 1: So I was thirty years old and I had recently

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Speaker 1: finished my PhD. I was starting my second post doctoral

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Speaker 1: fellowship at Washington University in Saint Louis, and I was

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Speaker 1: doing a combination of functional brain imaging and humans and

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Speaker 1: computational neuro modeling. So I was deeply engrossed in trying

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Speaker 1: to figure out how the mechanisms of the brain work

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Speaker 1: and how they work together to produce cognition and basically

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Speaker 1: how to understand how it is that we think, and

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Speaker 1: especially things like higher cognitive function, Like we have goals,

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Speaker 1: we understand if we make a mistake, and I want

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Speaker 1: to understand how you go from like a hundred billion

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Speaker 1: neurons to that kind of function, How do they all

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Speaker 1: work together? How does that work? And so at the time,

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Speaker 1: I just finished my first post doctor fellowship doing monkey neurophysiology,

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Speaker 1: recording from brain cells of monkeys, and so now I

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Speaker 1: was doing it humans. And I had at the time

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Speaker 1: just published one paper in Science magazine, which if you're

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Speaker 1: a scientist, Science and Nature like the two sort of

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Speaker 1: top journals that you were to published in. And so

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Speaker 1: had my first paper in Science, and so things were

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Speaker 1: looking up, you know, like my career was going well.

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Speaker 1: I was enjoying my work, and my wife, Candy was

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Speaker 1: nine months pregnant with our first child, so we were

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Speaker 1: excited at starting a new family, and so professionally things

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Speaker 1: were going well. I mean personally things we're looking pretty good.

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Speaker 1: I had no reason to think that there was anything

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Speaker 1: wrong or that my life was going to change absolutely dramatically,

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Speaker 1: you know, in the matter of a day.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like things were on the up and up.

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Speaker 2: Especially at thirty years old, one does not expect the

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Speaker 2: kind of news that you received. Now, one more thing

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Speaker 2: before the diagnosis, for a couple of things, were you religious,

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Speaker 2: What did you think about miracles happening? And did kind

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Speaker 2: of your science training shape the way you expect then

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Speaker 2: to occur, And whether or not we could like empirically

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Speaker 2: test them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So I feel like it's kind of an interesting

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Speaker 1: thing to be like a practicing scientist, you know, professionally,

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Speaker 1: and also a Christian. And so I grew up in

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Speaker 1: a church, basically an evangelical kind of church, and so

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Speaker 1: I learned the Bible. I even went to Christian schools,

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Speaker 1: elementary school, high school, and and so in this church

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Speaker 1: setting I grew up in, there was very much this

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Speaker 1: focus on the Bible, the Word of God, but there

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Speaker 1: was not really a framework for miracles apart from what

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Speaker 1: happened in the Bible. In other words, there's no framework

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Speaker 1: for miracles today. And so, you know, by the time

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Speaker 1: I got to college, I had sort of a crisis

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Speaker 1: of faith, and it became a question of you know,

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Speaker 1: I'd grown up with you know, these Christian schools and

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Speaker 1: teaching and here I was reading Nietzsche and uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: doing the Survey of Western civilization, you know, which is

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Speaker 1: all part of the curriculum, and so you know, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't doesn't take long where you get exposed to that,

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Speaker 1: you know, like the documentary hypothesis of you know, the Bible,

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Speaker 1: and and so I went through all of that, and

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Speaker 1: at a certain point I had this crisis of faith,

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Speaker 1: and I thought, well, you know, here's all these professors

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Speaker 1: and they're saying that, you know, all all these Christian

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Speaker 1: beliefs are you know, well, let's say, not not exactly

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Speaker 1: what I was. You know, I'd learned as a kid.

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Speaker 1: And so what happened is a lot of books on apologetics,

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Speaker 1: and I think probably the single most influential work was

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Speaker 1: your father's book Evidence of the Verdict. So I spent

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Speaker 1: a lot of time reading that, thinking through it, and

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Speaker 1: I even went and looked up some of the original historians,

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Speaker 1: the Jewish and Roman historians at the time, read their work,

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Speaker 1: and in the end I had kind of I considered

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Speaker 1: all that, and I decided that I found the evidence

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Speaker 1: for the resurrection of Jesus compelling, and everything kind of

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Speaker 1: hangs on that. And so I found that that sort

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Speaker 1: of intellectual framework that made faith then irrational conclusion for me,

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Speaker 1: and so I kind of lived like that. But at

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Speaker 1: the same time I was I was. I remember at

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Speaker 1: a certain point, this is probably my third year of college,

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Speaker 1: after I had sort of passed through this time, and

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Speaker 1: I was praying and I said, God, if you know,

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Speaker 1: if all this is true, there just there has to

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Speaker 1: be more. There's no way there cannot be more. It's

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Speaker 1: not possible that you're God, You're this powerful, and there's

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Speaker 1: just and I don't see it in the day to day.

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Speaker 1: And so I was praying, I was fasting, and I

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Speaker 1: didn't even know what four and it was the next year,

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Speaker 1: this was now nineteen ninety four. I just happened to

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Speaker 1: get you know, I'd done well in school, got good grades,

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Speaker 1: and I got some pretty nice scholarships and fellowships and

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Speaker 1: one of those paid for a year abroad. So I

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Speaker 1: had a year broad all expenses paid. So I went

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Speaker 1: to the University of Edinburgh and this was in fall

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Speaker 1: of ninety four. And as soon as I got there,

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Speaker 1: and maybe I'll step on some toes with this, but

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Speaker 1: the Toronto Revival people, you know, this that had all

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Speaker 1: broken out just a few months earlier, and yeah, well

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Speaker 1: I knew nothing of it. So they all went to

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Speaker 1: Edinburgh where I was, and some new friends of mine

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Speaker 1: since I was an international student, said oh, hey, you

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Speaker 1: know we're going to this revival service. Why don't you

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Speaker 1: come along? And I thought, well, that's weird. We didn't

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Speaker 1: do that kind of thing in the church I grew

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Speaker 1: up in. And you know, so I went and like,

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Speaker 1: I don't know what to think about this, but you know,

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Speaker 1: I'll check it out, because I mean, I've been praying

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Speaker 1: and asking God for you know, something more. I don't

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Speaker 1: even know what. But so I went to this meeting

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Speaker 1: and I watched with a bit of like a mix

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Speaker 1: of fascination and horror as I saw people get prayed

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Speaker 1: for and fall over and roll around and laugh and

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Speaker 1: cry and and I thought, you know, it was definitely weird.

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Speaker 1: But I thought, well, what if it's God. You know,

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Speaker 1: if it's God, I don't want to miss it. So

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Speaker 1: I thought, well, I'll go a little closer and check

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Speaker 1: it out, and I'm gonna listen to what they're praying,

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Speaker 1: and you know, the slightest whiff of hair, see, I'm

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Speaker 1: out of here. So so I went up and I

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Speaker 1: listened and they prayed things like, you know, bless this person, God,

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Speaker 1: show them your love, fill them with your Holy spirit.

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Speaker 1: And I thought, well, that doesn't seem too scandalous, so

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Speaker 1: so I went up and got prayed for. And you know,

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Speaker 1: the scripture says, I take it out of context, A

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Speaker 1: thousand may follow your right hand, you know, but it'll

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Speaker 1: not come near you. And that's exactly what happened. I

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Speaker 1: got prayed for. I felt nothing. Everybody around me's falling

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Speaker 1: over and you know, laughing and such, and I thought, well,

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Speaker 1: I'm just I'm a rational type, so you know, I'm

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Speaker 1: just not the type to be swayed by that sort

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Speaker 1: of thing. And so I left. And a few days

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Speaker 1: later I was in my dorm room late at night,

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Speaker 1: you know, right, you know, just a few hundred yards

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Speaker 1: down from the Edinburgh Castle was where my dorm room was,

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Speaker 1: and I was praying one night and about to go

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Speaker 1: to bed, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere,

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Speaker 1: the love of God just hit me. And it was

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Speaker 1: this intense It's like when you have a crush on somebody,

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Speaker 1: but it was so powerful, it was unmistakable, like nothing

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Speaker 1: I'd ever experienced, even close. It was like the presence

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Speaker 1: of God, the love of God was just there. It

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Speaker 1: just it overwhelmed me and to the point that I

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Speaker 1: you know, you see people falling over and I thought, well, okay,

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Speaker 1: you know, get a hold of yourself. And I found

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Speaker 1: that with great effort, I could try to pull myself together.

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Speaker 1: But it took. It took a huge effort that I

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Speaker 1: just didn't really feel like exerting. And so I just

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Speaker 1: I lay on the floor and I cried and I laughed,

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Speaker 1: and I had no language to describe I had this

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Speaker 1: experience and all I knew was that up to that point,

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Speaker 1: you know, with all the study of apologetics, I had

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Speaker 1: a rational foundation for faith. But now I found that

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Speaker 1: there was a power and I was experiencing God in

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Speaker 1: a direct, personal way, in a way that it felt

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Speaker 1: like in some ways the thing that I was asking for,

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Speaker 1: without knowing what I was asking for. And so anyway,

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Speaker 1: the Toronto people laughed. Within a week, and you know,

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Speaker 1: there was sort of this aftermath of like, okay, now,

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Speaker 1: what you know, what do I do with this? Like

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Speaker 1: I don't even know what happened. I don't know how

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Speaker 1: to describe it. All I know is that God loves me,

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Speaker 1: and that I had this experience of the presence of

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Speaker 1: God and it changed me, like from that day, it

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Speaker 1: just changed me profoundly. And so I finished the year

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Speaker 1: abroad and I went back. That was what late nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety four, and and so you know, I went I

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Speaker 1: moved to Boston, started graduate school, met Candy, we got married,

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Speaker 1: we both got our PhDs, and spent a year in Nashville, Tennessee,

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Speaker 1: and then moved to Saint Louis. And now she's pregnant

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Speaker 1: and here I am. And so I think at that point,

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Speaker 1: to come back to your question, I'd had these experiences.

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Speaker 1: I had a rational foundation for faith. I had this

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Speaker 1: direct spiritual experience of God, which it was years later.

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Speaker 1: So I was describing it to someone. They said, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we all had that too. It's called the you know,

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Speaker 1: filling of the Holy Spirit. And I was like, oh, okay,

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Speaker 1: I guess that's what you call it. Then, all right.

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Speaker 1: So but at that point, so I had these experiences,

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Speaker 1: but I still had no framework for miracles, you know,

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Speaker 1: miracles happening. I'd never seen one. I don't know that

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Speaker 1: I'd even so much just heard of that sort of

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Speaker 1: thing happening. So so that was the personal and spiritual

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Speaker 1: place I was in when you know, when I suddenly

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Speaker 1: got this diagnosis.

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Speaker 2: That is so interesting and not where I thought you

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Speaker 2: were going to go with the story. So ninety four,

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Speaker 2: you're basically graduating high school roughly that's when I graduated

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Speaker 2: for about the same age. So if you're thirty, this

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Speaker 2: is like ten roughly a decade later, get your PhD,

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Speaker 2: get married, settle in professionally, believe rationally and God, experience

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Speaker 2: laying God. But you're not experiencing miracles regularly and a

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Speaker 2: part of the faith that expected to see them. That's

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Speaker 2: why I think this seems like it was a little

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Speaker 2: bit of a surprise for you. So take us to

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Speaker 2: that moment when you got that diagnosis and how you

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Speaker 2: and your family responded.

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Speaker 1: So it was August two thousand and three, and I

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Speaker 1: went to bed one night, as I always do, and

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Speaker 1: when I woke up the next morning, I wasn't in

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Speaker 1: my bed, I wasn't even in my house. I was

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Speaker 1: in an ambulance. And I learned later that about four

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Speaker 1: in the morning or so, Candy, who wasn't sleeping well

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Speaker 1: because she was very pregnant, heard me sort of scream,

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Speaker 1: and she was like, what's wrong. She turned on the

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Speaker 1: light and I was seizing. I was not I was

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Speaker 1: not asleep, not awake, just unconscious and seizing, foaming at

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Speaker 1: the mouth. My arm had like shot up, and so

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Speaker 1: Candy called nine to one one and the paramedics came

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Speaker 1: and they took me to the ambulance and they gave

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Speaker 1: me an oxygen mask, and once I got oxygen, that

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Speaker 1: kind of brought me back around, but I was still

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Speaker 1: kind of like I didn't remember things because the seizure

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Speaker 1: sort of messes up up your immediate short term memory.

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Speaker 1: So so they took me to the er and did

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Speaker 1: a CT on my head to looking for things like

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Speaker 1: heematomas and you know, things that are immediately life threatening.

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Speaker 1: And they said, well, there's nothing immediately life threatening. You know,

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Speaker 1: tested me for all kinds of drugs, relieved to know

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Speaker 1: I wasn't taking any drugs, and then they they so

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Speaker 1: they sent me home, and then four days later, Candy

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Speaker 1: went into labor. So so we go to the hospital.

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Speaker 1: At this point, the doctor has told me I couldn't

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Speaker 1: drive since I'd had a seizure, So I get a

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Speaker 1: ride from a friend who takes us both to the

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Speaker 1: hospital and so Candy's in labor gives birth to our daughter,

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Speaker 1: and then I go over to the other side of

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Speaker 1: the hospital, the radiology and have a follow up MRI

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Speaker 1: done on my head. So we're both basically in the

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Speaker 1: hospital at the same time. And so we go home

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Speaker 1: and the doctors say, Okay, now we need to do

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Speaker 1: some follow up tests, and so they do. And when

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Speaker 1: my daughter was two and a half weeks old, I

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Speaker 1: get the results back. I I, you know, went to

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Speaker 1: the hospital, picked up the radiology results and read them

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Speaker 1: sitting in my car in the parking garage, and it said,

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Speaker 1: you know, there's a brain tumor. And as a neuroscientist,

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Speaker 1: I'm not a good patient because you know, I know

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Speaker 1: what that means. And sure, so I was quite upset,

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Speaker 1: and I went home and you know, told Candy, here's

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Speaker 1: what's going on. So we prayed and and so that's

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Speaker 1: how I was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

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Speaker 2: Tell me a little about what happened next and why

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Speaker 2: you were confident that there wasn't just some natural explanation

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Speaker 2: for this, but the healing was a result of prayer.

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Speaker 1: Well, so this is where if what I've told you

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Speaker 1: so far doesn't sound weird. This is where it gets

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Speaker 1: a little weirder. So I was so, you know, over

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Speaker 1: then I think it was the next night or two, well,

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Speaker 1: Candy had been Candy was up praying, and she remembered

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Speaker 1: that about a month before I had the seizure, she

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Speaker 1: had a dream in which she saw this evil looking

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Speaker 1: face and heard a voice saying, I'm going to kill you.

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Speaker 1: And and she felt that God spoke to her and said,

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Speaker 1: you can choose how you're going to meet this, whether

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Speaker 1: with fear, with faith, and your life depends on it.

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Speaker 1: And none of that made sense at the time. But

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Speaker 1: so it turns out that this neighborhood we were living in,

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Speaker 1: you know, there were there are issues, and we, along

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Speaker 1: with some people in our church, had been walking the

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Speaker 1: streets praying for the neighborhood, praying for people, and there

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Speaker 1: was there was a group that was trying to set

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Speaker 1: up a presence. This was I wouldn't consider it a

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Speaker 1: Christian group. They were they were trying to start some new,

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Speaker 1: you know, initiative for their spiritual movement in the neighborhood.

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Speaker 1: And so we were we were praying, we were rebuking

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Speaker 1: all kinds of spiritual powers and and basically, you know

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Speaker 1: what what you'd call spiritual warfare, in the sense of

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Speaker 1: we were asking God to uh to sort of you know,

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Speaker 1: open things up spiritually, and you know, for the whole

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Speaker 1: neighborhood we were living. And so anyway, we'd run into

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Speaker 1: this group that was sort of out trying to gather

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Speaker 1: to their spiritual cause and uh. And it turns out

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Speaker 1: so Candy in her dream and heard this thing say,

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Speaker 1: you know, this is my name. It gave this weird

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Speaker 1: proper name, and so she googled the name later, you know,

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Speaker 1: after I'd had the seizure, and it turns out it

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Speaker 1: was the name of the codebook of this group that

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Speaker 1: was trained to set up shop. And so anyway, the

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Speaker 1: next morning, I was just waking and I'm not a

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Speaker 1: morning person, so you know, I sort of woke up

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Speaker 1: and Candy said, hey, you know, I was letting you sleep,

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Speaker 1: but I can tell you this. But there, you know,

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Speaker 1: I heard this ed this dream a month ago, and

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Speaker 1: this thing told me its name. And she says, does

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Speaker 1: this name mean anything to you? And I said, well, no,

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Speaker 1: I han't really heard that, but as soon as she

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Speaker 1: said it, I felt really agitated and I said, you know,

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Speaker 1: let's just pray, and and so we started praying, and

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Speaker 1: she said, well, you know, I don't know, but if

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Speaker 1: there's some spirit named this thing, then just leave us

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Speaker 1: alone in Jesus' name. And as soon as those words

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Speaker 1: left her mouth, I I would say jump, but it

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Speaker 1: was more like launched out of my bed and landed

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Speaker 1: on the floor and started thrashing around and and I

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Speaker 1: was fully conscious. This wasn't a seizure. And the best

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Speaker 1: I can describe it is like if someone taps your

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Speaker 1: kneecap and your knee jerks. It's like you didn't tell

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Speaker 1: your need to do that, it's just doing it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: well now my whole body's doing this, and and so

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Speaker 1: Candy says, well, you know, tell it you belong to Jesus.

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Speaker 1: And I said, well, you know I belonged to and

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Speaker 1: my throat locked up and I couldn't say Jesus. And

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Speaker 1: so then Candy was like, you know, you leave him

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Speaker 1: alone in Jesus' name, and my head it was like

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Speaker 1: this uncontrollable reflex. It just whipped around at her and

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Speaker 1: screamed now. And I was like, like, I didn't I

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00:19:40,560 --> 00:19:45,040
Speaker 1: didn't mean to do that, and and so we continued

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00:19:45,080 --> 00:19:48,239
Speaker 1: to pray, but you know, we didn't neither of us

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Speaker 1: had any idea what to do. We're like, well, if

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Speaker 1: it's a demon, where do we send it. We don't

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Speaker 1: have any pigs, what do we do? And you know,

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00:19:56,240 --> 00:19:59,600
Speaker 1: because Jesus said it as a pig, so we're like, well,

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Speaker 1: we we've got a house cap. But you know, I

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00:20:02,040 --> 00:20:05,199
Speaker 1: don't know. It seems like a bad idea. So you know,

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00:20:05,320 --> 00:20:07,879
Speaker 1: maybe maybe I don't know, hangout in the squirrels or something.

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00:20:07,920 --> 00:20:10,560
Speaker 1: There's a lot of squirrels outside, so you know. But

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00:20:10,640 --> 00:20:14,320
Speaker 1: that's how cluelessly were, like we had no idea, uh

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Speaker 1: you know what? And of course this was this was

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Speaker 1: new like and I'm here like, wait, I'm a Christian.

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Speaker 1: If anyone's in Christ, old things are passed away, all

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Speaker 1: things are become new. So I don't even know what

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00:20:26,840 --> 00:20:29,639
Speaker 1: to do with this. I don't have a theological framework

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00:20:29,760 --> 00:20:33,480
Speaker 1: for it. And and yet here I am and Candy

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Speaker 1: and I are both watching this. I'm conscious, and so

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Speaker 1: you know, is this is this a demon? Is this

355
00:20:42,000 --> 00:20:47,840
Speaker 1: like some kind of temporal lobe epilepsy phenomenon? Like what

356
00:20:48,119 --> 00:20:51,800
Speaker 1: is going on? And so anyway we went We were

357
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Speaker 1: going to this, uh, this church that was you know,

358
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Speaker 1: also evangelical, not particularly charismatic or Pentecostal, but one of

359
00:21:00,200 --> 00:21:03,119
Speaker 1: the people there was kind of like this closet charismatic type,

360
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Speaker 1: and he was like, there's a prayer meeting across town.

361
00:21:05,840 --> 00:21:07,920
Speaker 1: You should go check that out. They can probably help

362
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Speaker 1: you with that. So I'm like, well, you know, and

363
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Speaker 1: at this point, you know, just to be clear, the

364
00:21:14,359 --> 00:21:18,200
Speaker 1: kind of brain tumor I have is such that there's

365
00:21:18,280 --> 00:21:22,960
Speaker 1: not much you can do, like the chemo radiation surgery,

366
00:21:23,920 --> 00:21:30,959
Speaker 1: it doesn't statistically prolonged lifespan, and so I was basically

367
00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:34,600
Speaker 1: I went from having a promising career to looking at

368
00:21:34,640 --> 00:21:37,159
Speaker 1: being dead within a few years and there's nothing anyone

369
00:21:37,200 --> 00:21:41,159
Speaker 1: can really do about it. So that was the situation

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Speaker 1: as I understood it. And so I was desperate. You know,

371
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Speaker 1: I was already desperate because I didn't want to die,

372
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Speaker 1: and it seemed like we're reaching the limits of what

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Speaker 1: medicine can do for me. And also now it seems

374
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Speaker 1: like there might be this demonic thing going on. And

375
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Speaker 1: so when this friend of ours said, well, there's a

376
00:21:57,520 --> 00:21:59,400
Speaker 1: pro group and they know how to you know, pray

377
00:21:59,440 --> 00:22:01,720
Speaker 1: with people for healing, I said, well, it appears I

378
00:22:01,760 --> 00:22:04,359
Speaker 1: have at least some spiritual problems, so I should probably

379
00:22:04,400 --> 00:22:07,879
Speaker 1: look for a spiritual solution. And so I went to

380
00:22:07,960 --> 00:22:10,320
Speaker 1: this meeting and they, you know, they're kind of casual.

381
00:22:10,320 --> 00:22:11,879
Speaker 1: They're like, well, you know, we heard you had a

382
00:22:12,520 --> 00:22:14,080
Speaker 1: you know, I heard you had a demon. Yeah, we

383
00:22:14,119 --> 00:22:17,399
Speaker 1: can help you with that. And I'm like, uh, is

384
00:22:17,440 --> 00:22:20,360
Speaker 1: this is this gonna hurt? Like should I be worried?

385
00:22:21,359 --> 00:22:26,480
Speaker 1: Because you know, I don't know? And they were so

386
00:22:26,640 --> 00:22:32,120
Speaker 1: they they were gentle and firm. So they said all right, well,

387
00:22:32,119 --> 00:22:33,919
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna pray with you. We're gonna lead

388
00:22:33,920 --> 00:22:37,240
Speaker 1: you in some prayers, and we're gonna you know. And

389
00:22:37,359 --> 00:22:39,720
Speaker 1: so I spent about three hours and they would say

390
00:22:39,720 --> 00:22:42,200
Speaker 1: things like all right, in Jesus' name, you know this

391
00:22:42,200 --> 00:22:45,720
Speaker 1: this this type of spirit leave him now. And I

392
00:22:45,760 --> 00:22:48,879
Speaker 1: would sit there like I don't feel anything, you know,

393
00:22:49,280 --> 00:22:51,399
Speaker 1: nothing going on. And then they would say, okay, now

394
00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:54,520
Speaker 1: this other kind of unclean spirit leave him. And as

395
00:22:54,520 --> 00:22:57,560
Speaker 1: soon as they said that, I started like shaking, and

396
00:22:57,600 --> 00:23:00,359
Speaker 1: I broke my glasses and I vomited even I didn't

397
00:23:00,359 --> 00:23:03,160
Speaker 1: feel sick, and so this is all going and I'm

398
00:23:03,280 --> 00:23:08,800
Speaker 1: still fully conscious, right, So like it's hard to overstate

399
00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:13,760
Speaker 1: how utterly weird, to the point of absurdity, this all

400
00:23:13,800 --> 00:23:17,240
Speaker 1: seems to me. Like here I am, I'm a neuroscientist,

401
00:23:17,760 --> 00:23:21,840
Speaker 1: I study the brain. I have a brain tumor. And

402
00:23:21,880 --> 00:23:26,439
Speaker 1: now apparently there's some kind of demonic thing that's troubling me.

403
00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:31,359
Speaker 1: What do you do with that? And so this group

404
00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:34,000
Speaker 1: spent like three hours praying with me, and at the

405
00:23:34,080 --> 00:23:36,879
Speaker 1: end of that I felt this tremendous sense of peace

406
00:23:38,080 --> 00:23:41,320
Speaker 1: and I started laughing, and they said, well, what demon

407
00:23:41,440 --> 00:23:44,280
Speaker 1: is laughing? And I said, well, I think that's just me.

408
00:23:44,480 --> 00:23:47,520
Speaker 1: I mean I just feel really peaceful now. And they said, okay, well,

409
00:23:47,560 --> 00:23:50,680
Speaker 1: you know, I think we can call it a night.

410
00:23:51,560 --> 00:23:57,879
Speaker 1: So and that began really a five month long process

411
00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:01,840
Speaker 1: of me just traveling around and you know, across the city,

412
00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:05,159
Speaker 1: than the US and then other parts of the world,

413
00:24:06,480 --> 00:24:09,959
Speaker 1: looking for some kind of prayer ministry, some kind of

414
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:13,240
Speaker 1: help because I was desperate, and so I got a

415
00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:16,600
Speaker 1: lot of prayer ministry. I had a lot of remarkable

416
00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:22,359
Speaker 1: experiences through that, and and the whole demonic thing seemed

417
00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:25,280
Speaker 1: to end finally about five months later. So I was

418
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:28,040
Speaker 1: back with this original group that had prayed for me.

419
00:24:28,080 --> 00:24:30,800
Speaker 1: I was, I was playing guitar. We were, you know,

420
00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:36,760
Speaker 1: singing some worship songs and and at a certain point

421
00:24:36,760 --> 00:24:38,800
Speaker 1: I set the guitar side and kind of slumped over,

422
00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:41,480
Speaker 1: and the guy who was leading the group came over

423
00:24:41,520 --> 00:24:44,159
Speaker 1: and he said, basically, I've had enough of this, you

424
00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:46,560
Speaker 1: know you spirit, and he named the name Candy had

425
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:51,080
Speaker 1: gotten in her dream, leave him now. And as soon

426
00:24:51,080 --> 00:24:54,280
Speaker 1: as he said that, I just put the guitar side,

427
00:24:54,359 --> 00:24:58,400
Speaker 1: ran to the bathroom and immediately vomited profusely, even though

428
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:01,280
Speaker 1: I didn't feel sick at all. And I came back

429
00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:03,919
Speaker 1: to the meeting after a few minutes and I said, oh,

430
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:05,840
Speaker 1: sorry about that. I had to run out, and they said,

431
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 1: did you smell that? Like as soon as you ran out,

432
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:14,359
Speaker 1: the entire building smelled like a sewer exploded, like the

433
00:25:14,520 --> 00:25:16,280
Speaker 1: entire building. And I was like, I don't think that

434
00:25:16,359 --> 00:25:18,119
Speaker 1: was me, and They're like, no, it couldn't possibly have

435
00:25:18,160 --> 00:25:23,040
Speaker 1: been you. This was. But the thing is, the last

436
00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:25,959
Speaker 1: seizure I had was just a few days before that,

437
00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:29,239
Speaker 1: and after that event, I had no more seizures, and

438
00:25:29,280 --> 00:25:32,679
Speaker 1: I had no more of these sort of demonic like things.

439
00:25:33,040 --> 00:25:36,159
Speaker 1: So it seemed like from that day that was the

440
00:25:36,280 --> 00:25:39,359
Speaker 1: end of that, and so I continued to get prayer

441
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:44,480
Speaker 1: for healing, but that whole process sort of threw me

442
00:25:44,640 --> 00:25:48,159
Speaker 1: head first into this whole question of like what do

443
00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:52,160
Speaker 1: we make of deliverance? Like what do we make of exorcism?

444
00:25:52,240 --> 00:25:55,119
Speaker 1: What do we make of this idea of the demonic

445
00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:58,760
Speaker 1: doing things today? Because when you look at the stories

446
00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:03,159
Speaker 1: throughout the Gospel and healed people, it says, you know,

447
00:26:03,240 --> 00:26:06,480
Speaker 1: he he cast out evil spirits with a word and

448
00:26:06,560 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 1: healed all the sick. And you see this, this dealing

449
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:15,240
Speaker 1: with unclean spirits and physical healing going hand in hand

450
00:26:15,320 --> 00:26:18,679
Speaker 1: throughout Jesus ministry. And of course I read that, you know,

451
00:26:18,760 --> 00:26:21,600
Speaker 1: any number of times when I was younger, and I thought, okay,

452
00:26:21,640 --> 00:26:24,399
Speaker 1: well that's sort of interesting. File that away under you know,

453
00:26:24,440 --> 00:26:28,479
Speaker 1: who knows. But then, you know, I started, you know,

454
00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:31,600
Speaker 1: that this was my life. And and as I began

455
00:26:31,680 --> 00:26:35,160
Speaker 1: to travel with different groups you know who would offer

456
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:38,960
Speaker 1: healing prayer, I began to see more of this, and

457
00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 1: you know, to the point where it became somewhat common.

458
00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:46,320
Speaker 1: And as I was experiencing things so anyway, that was

459
00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:49,600
Speaker 1: you know, this was not at all how I envisioned

460
00:26:49,600 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: my life going. I was going to be a good scientist,

461
00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:54,399
Speaker 1: to go to church Sundays and you know, be a

462
00:26:54,440 --> 00:26:56,639
Speaker 1: good Christian and you know, sort of live my life.

463
00:26:56,680 --> 00:27:00,159
Speaker 1: This was not at all how how I imagine and

464
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 1: things going.

465
00:27:01,680 --> 00:27:04,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could definitely not see this the trajectory that

466
00:27:04,880 --> 00:27:08,440
Speaker 2: you were planning to go on. So let's circle back.

467
00:27:08,440 --> 00:27:10,440
Speaker 2: You made you made a statement of the very beginning

468
00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:12,639
Speaker 2: about how sometimes I don't remember the wording, there's like

469
00:27:12,720 --> 00:27:16,160
Speaker 2: a tension or it's difficult to be a scientist and

470
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:20,200
Speaker 2: a person of faith. A lot of people say today

471
00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 2: we should keep the two separate. I'm curious how you

472
00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:27,680
Speaker 2: would respond to that kind of objection. And what do

473
00:27:27,720 --> 00:27:30,639
Speaker 2: you think science can reveal about faith? What is the

474
00:27:30,760 --> 00:27:33,640
Speaker 2: role of science as we think about these faith questions?

475
00:27:34,840 --> 00:27:37,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, great set of questions. And really the first

476
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:41,159
Speaker 1: probably third of my book, well maybe first quarter is

477
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:45,680
Speaker 1: sort of frames a lot of what follows in light

478
00:27:45,720 --> 00:27:48,480
Speaker 1: of those issues. But I think the short version is

479
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:52,840
Speaker 1: historically there's certainly a lot of there has been a

480
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:55,679
Speaker 1: lot of tension between the faith community and you know,

481
00:27:55,760 --> 00:28:00,119
Speaker 1: Christians in particular and science. And this goes back at

482
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:04,600
Speaker 1: least a Galileo and certainly by the time of Darwin. Now,

483
00:28:05,119 --> 00:28:08,600
Speaker 1: Darwin sort of creates this intellectual framework where you can

484
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:11,480
Speaker 1: be sort of an intellectually fulfilled atheist, as it were,

485
00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 1: and that, of course creates tension. And by the time,

486
00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 1: by the you know, nineteen twenty five, you have the

487
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:22,680
Speaker 1: Scopes Trial, and up and up through the nineteen eighties,

488
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:26,399
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties into the early two thousands, you have

489
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:32,160
Speaker 1: this ongoing sort of culture war, creation, evolution, intelligent design,

490
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:36,120
Speaker 1: and and so you know, I followed all of that,

491
00:28:36,440 --> 00:28:40,360
Speaker 1: and and I think by the by nineteen ninety seven,

492
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:43,440
Speaker 1: you have people like Stephen J. Gould arguing for this

493
00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 1: non overlapping magisteria. So people like Gold talking to undergrads

494
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:52,320
Speaker 1: who are wrestling with you know, how do I be

495
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:55,479
Speaker 1: a person of faith and a person of science. And

496
00:28:55,680 --> 00:28:59,000
Speaker 1: Gold basically saw these decades of culture war and said,

497
00:28:59,040 --> 00:29:02,400
Speaker 1: you know it, just keep them separate. And you can

498
00:29:02,400 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 1: see where that comes from. But I think what's interesting

499
00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:08,760
Speaker 1: is in the history of it. By the time you

500
00:29:08,800 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 1: get to two thousand and five, you have the Dover

501
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:14,600
Speaker 1: Panda Trial, which was sort of like the big showdown

502
00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 1: over you know, intelligent design and evolution, and that I mean,

503
00:29:21,920 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 1: that was basically the end of you know, I would

504
00:29:24,680 --> 00:29:29,960
Speaker 1: say the that the the intelligent design movement really being

505
00:29:29,960 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: in the limelight, and of course there's still people working

506
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:36,960
Speaker 1: on it. But but after that, I think in a

507
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:40,440
Speaker 1: way there was kind of a reduction in this this

508
00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:45,800
Speaker 1: friction in a way that ironically allowed for more of

509
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:54,400
Speaker 1: a reproachment between science and Christianity in particular, and I

510
00:29:54,400 --> 00:29:58,000
Speaker 1: think faith even more generally, because also what was going

511
00:29:58,080 --> 00:30:02,160
Speaker 1: on at that time was the development of cognitive neuroscience

512
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:06,120
Speaker 1: methods like functional brain imaging, which made it possible to

513
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:10,440
Speaker 1: study things like religious faith from a neuroscience perspective. And

514
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:13,200
Speaker 1: so by the early two thousands, you have, for example,

515
00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:19,040
Speaker 1: John cabot Zen Richie Davidson, people who are heavily influenced

516
00:30:19,040 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 1: by various Buddhist traditions in particular, who basically said, well,

517
00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 1: why shouldn't we study our practices with neuroscience methods, and

518
00:30:30,640 --> 00:30:33,080
Speaker 1: they proceeded to do so. And so now you have

519
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:37,239
Speaker 1: Richie Davidson's paper in the early two thousands looking at

520
00:30:37,240 --> 00:30:40,840
Speaker 1: the effect of Buddhist meditation practices, or I said, I

521
00:30:40,880 --> 00:30:48,160
Speaker 1: guess more properly, my influence based stress reduction on immune

522
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:53,040
Speaker 1: system function and on overall, well, being, and from that time,

523
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 1: by about two thousand and five, I was as a

524
00:30:57,160 --> 00:31:01,040
Speaker 1: neuroscientist attending the annual Neuroscience conference in Washington, d C.

525
00:31:01,200 --> 00:31:04,560
Speaker 1: There's about twenty thousand neuroscientists there, and the keynote speaker

526
00:31:05,080 --> 00:31:09,480
Speaker 1: at that meeting, with probably at least seven thousand neuroscientists

527
00:31:09,560 --> 00:31:13,360
Speaker 1: in the audience, was none other than the Dali Lama. Interesting,

528
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:17,040
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, wait, what just happened here? Because

529
00:31:17,080 --> 00:31:19,760
Speaker 1: the last I checked, there was kind of this animosity

530
00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 1: between science and faith, and how is it that the

531
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:26,960
Speaker 1: neuroscientists have welcomed a major world religious leader as a

532
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:32,080
Speaker 1: keynote speaker, Like what just happened here? And what happened

533
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:37,720
Speaker 1: is the people who were so like Richie Davidson, people

534
00:31:37,720 --> 00:31:41,600
Speaker 1: who had formed the Mind of Life Institute, basically said,

535
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:46,280
Speaker 1: you know, let's use scientific methods to study the effects

536
00:31:46,320 --> 00:31:52,720
Speaker 1: of these practices. And the Dali Lama himself supported the effort.

537
00:31:53,040 --> 00:31:58,240
Speaker 1: And so the framing of the question was our goal

538
00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:01,880
Speaker 1: here is not to prove that our faith is true

539
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:06,520
Speaker 1: by brain science in some cosmological sense. The goal is

540
00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:10,040
Speaker 1: to understand empirically, what are the effects of these practices

541
00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: on things like well being? And so what happened then

542
00:32:15,160 --> 00:32:19,280
Speaker 1: is from about the mid two thousands, you have this growth,

543
00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 1: this massive growth of people using these newly available cognitive

544
00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:28,880
Speaker 1: neuroscience methods, and this new reproachment of sort of faith

545
00:32:28,960 --> 00:32:32,320
Speaker 1: in science in general, because there's a sizable percentage of

546
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:36,360
Speaker 1: scientists today who are people of faith. And so it's

547
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:39,400
Speaker 1: now I think, in the last twenty years, become increasingly

548
00:32:39,480 --> 00:32:45,440
Speaker 1: acceptable to study the effects of religious and spiritual practices

549
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:49,760
Speaker 1: on brain activity, on health, on well being, but as

550
00:32:49,800 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 1: empirical questions, so in other words, from an empirical perspective

551
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:58,520
Speaker 1: rather than apologetic perspective. And I think what's happened also

552
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:01,840
Speaker 1: is that the Christian community in a lot of ways

553
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:04,720
Speaker 1: is still living in this sort of pre two thousands

554
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 1: kind of ethos where it's now difficult. You know, there's

555
00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:11,840
Speaker 1: still the sense of all, we better not engage too

556
00:33:11,920 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 1: much in science, you know, we might lose our faith,

557
00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:18,520
Speaker 1: or you know, we might sort of trespass Gold's non

558
00:33:18,520 --> 00:33:23,560
Speaker 1: overlapping magisterial boundary or something. But meanwhile, you have people

559
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:27,600
Speaker 1: of other of different faiths who have embraced science and

560
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 1: who are doing scientific research and I think generating real results.

561
00:33:33,080 --> 00:33:35,440
Speaker 1: You know, these are empirical results that I think, you know,

562
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:38,720
Speaker 1: I respect that kind of work, and so which is

563
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:41,480
Speaker 1: not to say that every study is, you know, as

564
00:33:42,560 --> 00:33:44,840
Speaker 1: is at the level of rigor that maybe it needs

565
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:47,400
Speaker 1: to be. But at least, you know, people are engaging

566
00:33:47,440 --> 00:33:50,960
Speaker 1: with it. And I think, you know, when I look

567
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:54,320
Speaker 1: at the Christian community, it kind of surprised me and

568
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:57,680
Speaker 1: I began to wonder, so, why aren't the Christians engaging? Right?

569
00:33:57,720 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 1: I mean, the culture War is sort of receding in

570
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:03,360
Speaker 1: a way and ways, and that creates opportunity to study

571
00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:07,680
Speaker 1: empirical effects. Why aren't we doing that?

572
00:34:07,680 --> 00:34:10,680
Speaker 2: That is one of the most helpful summaries of how

573
00:34:10,719 --> 00:34:13,959
Speaker 2: the conversation has shifted that I've heard in a long time.

574
00:34:14,040 --> 00:34:15,640
Speaker 2: That's one of the things that I loved about the

575
00:34:15,680 --> 00:34:18,560
Speaker 2: beginning of your book is going back to the nineties

576
00:34:18,600 --> 00:34:22,239
Speaker 2: and early two thousands, there very much was this antagonistic,

577
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:27,920
Speaker 2: kind of new atheist kind of religion versus science. And

578
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:30,479
Speaker 2: then you see this subtle shift, and now you're talking

579
00:34:30,480 --> 00:34:32,800
Speaker 2: about this in terms of prayer. We see it in

580
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:36,440
Speaker 2: terms of miracles. I just got a book from the

581
00:34:36,480 --> 00:34:38,839
Speaker 2: Netherlands called The Self Does Not Die, and it's one

582
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:43,680
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty eight verified cases of near death experiences.

583
00:34:44,360 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 2: And I'm leaning into this a lot on my channel.

584
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:50,360
Speaker 2: I find it so interesting, but there's so many people

585
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 2: that are afraid of this for legitimate questions. Does it

586
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:57,839
Speaker 2: lead to universalism? Does it lead towards new age? I

587
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 2: understand those questions. I think we want to be a

588
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:04,279
Speaker 2: part of the conversation rather than shy away from it.

589
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:07,680
Speaker 2: And I think it does make sense within a Christian worldview.

590
00:35:07,680 --> 00:35:09,400
Speaker 2: And I think you're right that we can engage us

591
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:12,520
Speaker 2: in a way that's not directly apologetic, but it does

592
00:35:12,719 --> 00:35:20,800
Speaker 2: have apologetic implications, more indirectly than directly. Now, you talked

593
00:35:20,800 --> 00:35:24,200
Speaker 2: about with the Dali Lama. The idea where you and

594
00:35:24,239 --> 00:35:28,440
Speaker 2: I would resonate is this idea that like prayer and

595
00:35:28,520 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 2: our thoughts and meditation can actually change the brain itself. Now, yeah,

596
00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:38,400
Speaker 2: you and I would argue that's a piece of evidence

597
00:35:38,440 --> 00:35:41,680
Speaker 2: for the reality of the soul, that I'm material and

598
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:46,160
Speaker 2: I'm immateial and actually that cause a relationship. I would argue,

599
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:49,480
Speaker 2: you can go both ways. But if that's true, if

600
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:54,160
Speaker 2: like healing can change the brain healing prayer, then how

601
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:57,840
Speaker 2: do you know your kind of healing prayer wasn't just

602
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:01,800
Speaker 2: this natural interaction between you your soul and your body

603
00:36:01,880 --> 00:36:06,520
Speaker 2: and relieving the stress or whatever caused your tumor to

604
00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:09,200
Speaker 2: be in your brain. How would you answer that kind

605
00:36:09,200 --> 00:36:11,880
Speaker 2: of placebo type challenge.

606
00:36:12,360 --> 00:36:14,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's a great question. And I think the

607
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:17,799
Speaker 1: word place ebo is often treated as a kind of

608
00:36:17,920 --> 00:36:22,520
Speaker 1: dirty word. So for for biomedical scientists, a placebo effect

609
00:36:22,600 --> 00:36:24,880
Speaker 1: is this nuisance that you want to try to control

610
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:28,600
Speaker 1: for and get rid of. And for the Christians, the

611
00:36:28,680 --> 00:36:31,800
Speaker 1: suggestion that well, you know, maybe the miracle that someone

612
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:35,480
Speaker 1: claimed to have experienced was somehow you know, a placebo effect.

613
00:36:35,640 --> 00:36:39,080
Speaker 1: You know, maybe it wasn't quite real in some sense,

614
00:36:39,400 --> 00:36:44,880
Speaker 1: and thus does that devalue their spiritual experience? And I

615
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:53,680
Speaker 1: think the placebo effect and other mind body effects are

616
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:57,960
Speaker 1: ones that first of all, they're real that they do have,

617
00:36:58,160 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 1: and you can measure them. In fact, if I you know,

618
00:37:02,120 --> 00:37:05,200
Speaker 1: if I let's suppose I say, okay, I'm gonna rub

619
00:37:05,200 --> 00:37:07,839
Speaker 1: this hand lotion on you, and this hand lotion is

620
00:37:07,880 --> 00:37:10,560
Speaker 1: gonna make it hurt less when I apply a small

621
00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:15,240
Speaker 1: electrical shock later, and you know, me doing that would

622
00:37:15,280 --> 00:37:19,720
Speaker 1: would cause you to experience less pain about seventy roughly

623
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:23,839
Speaker 1: seventy five percent of population will experience less pain if

624
00:37:23,840 --> 00:37:26,320
Speaker 1: they're you know, if you rub this you know lotion,

625
00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 1: just ordinary hand lotion, has no active ingredients whatsoever. You

626
00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:32,160
Speaker 1: just rub it on and you tell them this will

627
00:37:32,160 --> 00:37:35,080
Speaker 1: relieve your pain, and they will experience less pain. Okay.

628
00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:38,680
Speaker 1: And not only that, but if you know, if someone

629
00:37:38,719 --> 00:37:43,160
Speaker 1: has an opioid overdose, the antidote is narcan, right, which

630
00:37:43,160 --> 00:37:45,680
Speaker 1: is this drug called nloxone. And if you give someone

631
00:37:45,719 --> 00:37:49,560
Speaker 1: an oloxone, that will reverse the opioid overdose and it

632
00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:53,120
Speaker 1: can save their life. And it does that by blocking

633
00:37:53,239 --> 00:37:57,800
Speaker 1: these opioid receptors in the brain. And in that way

634
00:37:57,920 --> 00:38:02,200
Speaker 1: it prevents the opioids from how their overdose effect and potentially,

635
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:04,759
Speaker 1: you know, stopping someone from breathing. But the thing is,

636
00:38:04,760 --> 00:38:08,160
Speaker 1: if I take that same drug Narcan, and I administer

637
00:38:08,320 --> 00:38:11,120
Speaker 1: that to you, and then I rub this cream on

638
00:38:11,160 --> 00:38:13,040
Speaker 1: you and says cream is going to relieve your pain,

639
00:38:13,440 --> 00:38:19,120
Speaker 1: it will lessen the placebo pain relieving effect of that cream. Okay.

640
00:38:19,120 --> 00:38:22,640
Speaker 1: So in other words, the placebo effect is biochemically real

641
00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:27,160
Speaker 1: because you can block it with certain other chemicals. So

642
00:38:28,360 --> 00:38:33,000
Speaker 1: I think when you have claims of miracles, I mean

643
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:36,719
Speaker 1: my basic position is that I think there are there

644
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:40,239
Speaker 1: are cases within the Christian community where the case for

645
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 1: a miracle is overstated. In other words, I think, you know,

646
00:38:44,239 --> 00:38:46,040
Speaker 1: the first thing you have to do is define even

647
00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:48,440
Speaker 1: what do you even mean by a miracle? What do

648
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:51,879
Speaker 1: you mean by a miraculous healing through prayer? And if

649
00:38:51,880 --> 00:38:55,640
Speaker 1: by that you mean that there's no possible natural explanation, well,

650
00:38:55,640 --> 00:38:58,439
Speaker 1: I think in a decent number of cases, I think

651
00:38:58,480 --> 00:39:02,800
Speaker 1: there is there are possible natural explanations. And the Global

652
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:06,720
Speaker 1: Medical Research Institute, which I helped co found and now direct,

653
00:39:07,360 --> 00:39:12,320
Speaker 1: focuses in part on investigating these claims and trying to

654
00:39:12,440 --> 00:39:19,120
Speaker 1: understand medically speaking, scientifically speaking, what actually happened, and especially

655
00:39:19,120 --> 00:39:23,200
Speaker 1: by looking at medical records what actually happened as someone

656
00:39:23,480 --> 00:39:27,279
Speaker 1: claims to have experienced a miraculous healing, And I think, so,

657
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:29,080
Speaker 1: you know, coming back to what I was saying earlier,

658
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:31,040
Speaker 1: my basic position is that I think there are some

659
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:34,799
Speaker 1: cases where people claim a miracle but you can explain it.

660
00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:40,120
Speaker 1: And I think, but there are also cases where there

661
00:39:40,160 --> 00:39:45,080
Speaker 1: are miracles that meet strong criteria that, in other words,

662
00:39:45,160 --> 00:39:49,040
Speaker 1: the strongest definition of a miracle. I think those cases meet.

663
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:51,239
Speaker 1: And you know, here I refer to example of the

664
00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:54,799
Speaker 1: Lamborghini criteria, which the Catholic Church has developed as sort

665
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:58,560
Speaker 1: of a set of criteria for evaluating whether something qualifies

666
00:39:58,600 --> 00:40:02,880
Speaker 1: as a miracle. And for that, the essence is the

667
00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:08,040
Speaker 1: person has to have an unambiguous diagnosis of a condition

668
00:40:08,200 --> 00:40:11,240
Speaker 1: for which there's no hope of a cure, and yet

669
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:17,680
Speaker 1: following the intervention, the person is healed completely, permanently and instantly,

670
00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:22,000
Speaker 1: and there's no possibility that some natural process could have

671
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:25,200
Speaker 1: accounted for that. Now that's a strong definition.

672
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:25,520
Speaker 2: High standard.

673
00:40:26,239 --> 00:40:29,839
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are cases that we've run across that,

674
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:36,160
Speaker 1: do you know, after we've consult with multiple academic specialists

675
00:40:36,200 --> 00:40:38,640
Speaker 1: trying to explain it any way we can, there are

676
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:43,560
Speaker 1: cases that still resist all attempts at explanation, and so

677
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:46,719
Speaker 1: those I would say, those are miracles. And we've we've

678
00:40:46,719 --> 00:40:49,200
Speaker 1: seen a number of those documented, a number of those

679
00:40:49,239 --> 00:40:54,680
Speaker 1: published them in medical journals where we've had, you know,

680
00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:58,640
Speaker 1: multiple academic medical specialists say, yeah, there's no way you

681
00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:01,279
Speaker 1: can explain that. That simply can't happen, and yet it did,

682
00:41:01,719 --> 00:41:04,279
Speaker 1: and it happened right after the person was prayed for

683
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:08,799
Speaker 1: in the name of Jesus. So now I think the

684
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:12,960
Speaker 1: challenge for I think the Christian community is partly to

685
00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:18,760
Speaker 1: engage with science and to recognize where there are natural explanations,

686
00:41:19,320 --> 00:41:22,360
Speaker 1: Because if you're going to claim that something's a miracle,

687
00:41:22,960 --> 00:41:26,800
Speaker 1: that claim has to be falsifiable in a sense. And

688
00:41:28,360 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 1: so if you claim everything as a miracle and it

689
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:34,360
Speaker 1: turns out that you can explain some of this without

690
00:41:34,360 --> 00:41:39,720
Speaker 1: too much difficulty by natural means, it reduces the credibility

691
00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:43,120
Speaker 1: of the situations where you do claim a miracle. And

692
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 1: so I think, you know, I dedicated my book to

693
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:50,840
Speaker 1: the believers who doubt and to the doubters who believe,

694
00:41:52,120 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 1: because I think ultimately these are empirical questions. In other words,

695
00:41:56,960 --> 00:42:00,120
Speaker 1: the question is really what does the evidence say? And

696
00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:02,440
Speaker 1: if and if the evidence is such that you can't

697
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:04,799
Speaker 1: rule out a natural explanation, then I think we need

698
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:07,319
Speaker 1: to be honest about that. But if the evidence is

699
00:42:07,360 --> 00:42:13,160
Speaker 1: such that there is no explanation that's that's in any

700
00:42:13,200 --> 00:42:16,319
Speaker 1: way plausible, then I think we can acknowledge that too.

701
00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:22,080
Speaker 1: And so, you know, from the apologetics perspective, I think

702
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:25,399
Speaker 1: if you're going to make a claim, right, you want

703
00:42:25,400 --> 00:42:27,880
Speaker 1: to make it based on the strongest evidence, and you

704
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:31,680
Speaker 1: don't want to make claims that are basically not supported.

705
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:37,719
Speaker 1: So now, at the same time, when when someone has

706
00:42:38,200 --> 00:42:43,280
Speaker 1: a spiritual experience they experience a healing, I celebrate that. Okay.

707
00:42:43,400 --> 00:42:45,759
Speaker 1: So if someone you know, someone's in pain, they had

708
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:49,919
Speaker 1: a disease and now they're healed, that's I mean, that's great, right,

709
00:42:50,080 --> 00:42:52,560
Speaker 1: I want people to be healed. And so I think

710
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:56,560
Speaker 1: we can we can sort of support that while at

711
00:42:56,560 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 1: the same time maintaining a standard of intellectual rigor about

712
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:03,680
Speaker 1: what constitutes a miracle. If we're going to claim and

713
00:43:03,719 --> 00:43:07,600
Speaker 1: start making apologetics and you know, theological arguments on the

714
00:43:07,640 --> 00:43:11,120
Speaker 1: basis of that, we want to stick to the strongest evidence.

715
00:43:11,480 --> 00:43:17,839
Speaker 1: So so I think that's that's basically how I see

716
00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:20,280
Speaker 1: a lot of that. And I think what I hope

717
00:43:20,520 --> 00:43:23,880
Speaker 1: is that the Christian community will see the value of

718
00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:29,080
Speaker 1: engaging with science, engaging with empirical questions, wrestling with them,

719
00:43:29,520 --> 00:43:34,320
Speaker 1: because the thing is, honestly, the Christian communities behind relative

720
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:37,720
Speaker 1: to other faith communities. I think the Buddhists, for example,

721
00:43:37,719 --> 00:43:40,799
Speaker 1: have invested way more in scientific research, have way more

722
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:46,040
Speaker 1: evidence the effect of you know, for example, mindfulness meditation

723
00:43:46,280 --> 00:43:51,239
Speaker 1: practices on health outcomes, and Christians just don't have much

724
00:43:51,360 --> 00:43:54,080
Speaker 1: like that. I mean, my group has a paper coming

725
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:58,680
Speaker 1: out and I think around May, I'm told that looks

726
00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:02,239
Speaker 1: at the effect of a brief healing prayer intervention in

727
00:44:02,280 --> 00:44:05,880
Speaker 1: a medical setting with a randomized controlled trial, and we

728
00:44:06,000 --> 00:44:12,040
Speaker 1: find significant reductions in pain and anxiety for weeks relative

729
00:44:12,120 --> 00:44:15,040
Speaker 1: to a control group that listened to instrumental music for

730
00:44:15,080 --> 00:44:18,120
Speaker 1: the you know, same few minutes. So there are there

731
00:44:18,160 --> 00:44:20,719
Speaker 1: are studies, you know, we're doing studies like this. There

732
00:44:21,160 --> 00:44:24,600
Speaker 1: is some other research, but there's relatively little. And I

733
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:27,879
Speaker 1: think if the Christian community wants to make claims that,

734
00:44:28,360 --> 00:44:30,839
Speaker 1: you know, what we're doing is effective, then we have

735
00:44:30,880 --> 00:44:34,520
Speaker 1: to have empirical data. And so you know, I looked

736
00:44:34,520 --> 00:44:37,880
Speaker 1: around and really didn't see much going on in that space,

737
00:44:37,920 --> 00:44:39,680
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, if nobody else is going to

738
00:44:39,760 --> 00:44:43,279
Speaker 1: do it, and you know, let's do it. So that's

739
00:44:43,280 --> 00:44:43,880
Speaker 1: what we're doing.

740
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:47,080
Speaker 2: I love it. That is such a good, important call

741
00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:51,759
Speaker 2: that I want every Christian and especially apologists and scholars

742
00:44:51,800 --> 00:44:54,919
Speaker 2: to hear. I would love to see more Christians enter

743
00:44:55,000 --> 00:44:59,799
Speaker 2: into space of afterlife apologetics, enter the space of miracles,

744
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:04,719
Speaker 2: enter the space of prayer, and be bold about this,

745
00:45:04,880 --> 00:45:08,040
Speaker 2: because if Christianity's true, we have nothing to be afraid

746
00:45:08,080 --> 00:45:11,080
Speaker 2: of of where these these tests point towards and where

747
00:45:11,120 --> 00:45:17,160
Speaker 2: the evidence indicates. So I love that call. Your point

748
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:21,680
Speaker 2: about miracles is I appreciate that high standard, and that's

749
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:25,759
Speaker 2: a really high standard that Catholics have for a testing miracles.

750
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:28,279
Speaker 2: And the key I don't want viewers and listeners to

751
00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:31,840
Speaker 2: miss is it's not just that somebody is praying, but hels.

752
00:45:32,239 --> 00:45:37,520
Speaker 2: Those healings are instantaneous and they occur at the moment

753
00:45:37,680 --> 00:45:41,560
Speaker 2: someone prays in the name of Jesus. This is where

754
00:45:41,640 --> 00:45:46,160
Speaker 2: we're ruling out naturalistic explanations in this case. Now, there

755
00:45:46,239 --> 00:45:49,359
Speaker 2: might be a lot of cases where God does miracles

756
00:45:49,760 --> 00:45:53,560
Speaker 2: and somebody's healed, but it has less evidential value and

757
00:45:53,600 --> 00:45:56,520
Speaker 2: we just can't show that it's a miracle in the

758
00:45:56,560 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 2: same way doesn't mean it's not a miracle. There's just

759
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:02,240
Speaker 2: less evidence that it is a miracle. So that really

760
00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:05,200
Speaker 2: careful nuancing is important. Let me ask you this. I

761
00:46:05,200 --> 00:46:08,279
Speaker 2: had a chance to interview your remarkable wife who wrote

762
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:11,719
Speaker 2: the book Testing Prayer, which is I think maybe ten

763
00:46:11,800 --> 00:46:15,560
Speaker 2: or twelve fifteen years ago with Harvard University Press, also

764
00:46:15,719 --> 00:46:20,040
Speaker 2: such a careful scholar. How does your work compare and

765
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:23,439
Speaker 2: contrast with what she did and she is doing.

766
00:46:24,280 --> 00:46:31,720
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Candy's a first class, top flight scholar, you know, bachelor's, master's, PhD.

767
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:36,760
Speaker 1: All from Harvard and with a focus in American studies,

768
00:46:36,760 --> 00:46:44,000
Speaker 1: American religious history. Candy is an historian and currently a

769
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:48,080
Speaker 1: professor of religious studies. And you know, the journey is

770
00:46:48,120 --> 00:46:51,399
Speaker 1: one that we've shared together now for I guess it'll

771
00:46:51,480 --> 00:46:55,880
Speaker 1: know coming up to thirty years before too long. But

772
00:46:56,280 --> 00:46:59,640
Speaker 1: her training and expertise is more on the humanity side,

773
00:46:59,640 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 1: and my training and expertise is more on the science

774
00:47:03,640 --> 00:47:08,160
Speaker 1: science side of things. And so so in her book

775
00:47:08,239 --> 00:47:14,160
Speaker 1: Testing Prayer that was twenty twelve, I think from Harvard Press,

776
00:47:14,440 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 1: that book is well, let me back up there. Within epistemology,

777
00:47:21,200 --> 00:47:24,360
Speaker 1: there are different branches. They are different kinds of epistemologies,

778
00:47:24,600 --> 00:47:29,120
Speaker 1: and you can roughly delineate a scientific epistemology from an

779
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:33,120
Speaker 1: historical epistemology. And what I mean by that is, if

780
00:47:33,160 --> 00:47:37,840
Speaker 1: I ask you does a bar of dove soap float

781
00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:41,760
Speaker 1: in water at room temperature? You can repeat the event.

782
00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:45,400
Speaker 1: You can create the conditions and you can repeat the

783
00:47:45,440 --> 00:47:50,720
Speaker 1: event and get the same result. And that's the scientific epistemology, right.

784
00:47:51,320 --> 00:47:54,480
Speaker 1: But if I asked you, you know who was the

785
00:47:54,520 --> 00:47:58,600
Speaker 1: sixteenth president of the US, was it Abraham Lincoln. That's

786
00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:01,560
Speaker 1: not a repeatable event, yet you can establish it as

787
00:48:01,680 --> 00:48:06,520
Speaker 1: true using an historical method, an historical pistemology, which is

788
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:09,480
Speaker 1: not the same as the scientific epistemology. You can't repeat

789
00:48:09,520 --> 00:48:14,240
Speaker 1: the event in which Lincoln becomes president. And so I think,

790
00:48:14,360 --> 00:48:19,160
Speaker 1: for I mean, what Candy has done in testing prayer

791
00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:25,480
Speaker 1: is to thoroughly investigate all kinds of aspects of prayer practice,

792
00:48:25,600 --> 00:48:29,839
Speaker 1: practices of prayer for healing around the world, looking at

793
00:48:29,880 --> 00:48:33,200
Speaker 1: medical records, look at the looking at the effect on individuals,

794
00:48:33,239 --> 00:48:37,880
Speaker 1: the effect on communities, looking at and of course with

795
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:41,319
Speaker 1: medical records. So we also collaborated on the study in

796
00:48:41,360 --> 00:48:46,080
Speaker 1: Mozambique and Brazil where we we've tested people's hearing and

797
00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:48,480
Speaker 1: vision before they got prayed for and after, and we

798
00:48:48,520 --> 00:48:52,120
Speaker 1: measured dramatic improvements and so that that gets a little

799
00:48:52,120 --> 00:48:55,480
Speaker 1: bit into scientific epistemology. But I think a lot of

800
00:48:55,480 --> 00:48:58,840
Speaker 1: our work focuses on the historical side of things, Whereas

801
00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:02,600
Speaker 1: for me, because of my background and training as science

802
00:49:02,640 --> 00:49:09,160
Speaker 1: and neuroscience, I've focused more on sort of the scientific method. So,

803
00:49:09,320 --> 00:49:12,839
Speaker 1: for example, this paper we have coming out looked now.

804
00:49:12,840 --> 00:49:15,920
Speaker 1: I've also looked at medical records as a way of

805
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:19,480
Speaker 1: investigating claims of miraculous healings. That's actually more of an

806
00:49:19,560 --> 00:49:24,000
Speaker 1: historical pistemology, because a miracle is not something you can reproduce.

807
00:49:24,080 --> 00:49:26,400
Speaker 1: You can't set up the same conditions and get the

808
00:49:26,440 --> 00:49:29,880
Speaker 1: same miracle necessarily. So I've done a bit of that,

809
00:49:30,719 --> 00:49:34,719
Speaker 1: but mostly I've looked at the scientific literature, and so

810
00:49:35,080 --> 00:49:39,240
Speaker 1: my book is has a bit over two hundred scientific

811
00:49:39,320 --> 00:49:43,400
Speaker 1: references in it, so it's just chock full of science basically,

812
00:49:44,480 --> 00:49:47,120
Speaker 1: you know, in a bit of my personal story as well.

813
00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:50,960
Speaker 1: So I think that's the basic difference. But you know,

814
00:49:51,280 --> 00:49:53,239
Speaker 1: we're very much on the same page and how we

815
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:56,879
Speaker 1: approach things, which is that we're both Christians, but we're

816
00:49:56,920 --> 00:49:59,960
Speaker 1: also trained academics, you know, who are trained to think

817
00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:03,520
Speaker 1: critically and analyze stuff and not necessarily take things at

818
00:50:03,520 --> 00:50:04,480
Speaker 1: face value.

819
00:50:05,000 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 2: And a young just Christians listening, we need people to

820
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:10,799
Speaker 2: follow what Josh and Candy Brown are doing. Go get

821
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:14,600
Speaker 2: great training in philosophy, great training in science, great training

822
00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 2: in history, humanities, and then apply that to do research

823
00:50:18,840 --> 00:50:23,239
Speaker 2: that intersects with a Christian faith, but top level careful

824
00:50:23,520 --> 00:50:26,360
Speaker 2: quality research that can be peer reviewed.

825
00:50:27,040 --> 00:50:28,120
Speaker 1: That's what we need. Now.

826
00:50:28,160 --> 00:50:30,319
Speaker 2: You talked about a number of cases that kind of

827
00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:34,360
Speaker 2: meet this high criteria of being a miracle. We just

828
00:50:34,400 --> 00:50:37,360
Speaker 2: share one with us and we can link to the studies.

829
00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:40,080
Speaker 2: You don't necessarily have to give all the details. But

830
00:50:40,160 --> 00:50:42,160
Speaker 2: one study that you've looked into and you walked away

831
00:50:42,160 --> 00:50:45,239
Speaker 2: and you're like, this one is documented, and I think

832
00:50:45,280 --> 00:50:47,520
Speaker 2: the best explanation is by far miracle.

833
00:50:48,520 --> 00:50:52,399
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we've got a bunch of these on our

834
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:56,200
Speaker 1: GLOBALMRI dot org website. But one I would point out

835
00:50:56,440 --> 00:51:01,759
Speaker 1: is case of a woman who, at age eighteen, gradually

836
00:51:01,840 --> 00:51:04,960
Speaker 1: lost her eyesight over the course of about three months,

837
00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:11,759
Speaker 1: and she was blind. She went to a neurologist who

838
00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:15,080
Speaker 1: examined the back of her eyes and wrote in her

839
00:51:15,120 --> 00:51:20,000
Speaker 1: medical records that there's dense areas of damage in the

840
00:51:20,040 --> 00:51:21,719
Speaker 1: back of both eyes. So this is a part of

841
00:51:21,719 --> 00:51:24,879
Speaker 1: the eye that converts the light into nerve signals that

842
00:51:24,920 --> 00:51:28,960
Speaker 1: part was damaged. Now that part, when it's damaged, it

843
00:51:29,000 --> 00:51:33,400
Speaker 1: does not regenerate, and so she was diagnosed with juvenile

844
00:51:33,400 --> 00:51:39,319
Speaker 1: macular degeneration. And so she then went to school for

845
00:51:39,360 --> 00:51:42,520
Speaker 1: the blind. She walked with a chain she read braille.

846
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:46,480
Speaker 1: She met her husband and got married, having never seen him.

847
00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:52,399
Speaker 1: She had a kid, had never seen her daughter, and

848
00:51:53,719 --> 00:51:56,960
Speaker 1: so about twelve years later, she had gone to she

849
00:51:57,000 --> 00:51:59,959
Speaker 1: and her husband had gone to a healing prayer meeting

850
00:52:00,160 --> 00:52:03,840
Speaker 1: with a well known sort of healing minister at the time.

851
00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:10,600
Speaker 1: This was probably around early nineteen seventies, I want to say,

852
00:52:11,440 --> 00:52:15,759
Speaker 1: and she wasn't healed. A little while later, they're back

853
00:52:15,800 --> 00:52:17,600
Speaker 1: at home, they're about to go to bed. They prayed

854
00:52:17,640 --> 00:52:21,200
Speaker 1: together before bed, and her husband, who's a pastor, praise

855
00:52:21,239 --> 00:52:23,319
Speaker 1: a brief prayer like, well, God, we know you can

856
00:52:23,360 --> 00:52:25,160
Speaker 1: heal her. Would you heal her tonight? You know? And

857
00:52:27,120 --> 00:52:31,200
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not really expecting anything. But so she

858
00:52:31,280 --> 00:52:35,760
Speaker 1: opens her eyes and she can see and she looked

859
00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:40,359
Speaker 1: around and she's she looked at her husband and she's like, well,

860
00:52:40,400 --> 00:52:43,120
Speaker 1: the girls said you were pretty handsome, but they weren't lying,

861
00:52:44,480 --> 00:52:48,040
Speaker 1: which you know, of course, that's that's what, you know,

862
00:52:48,080 --> 00:52:52,279
Speaker 1: the response you'd hope for. And then she sees a

863
00:52:52,320 --> 00:52:54,520
Speaker 1: picture of her daughter on the dresser and she's like,

864
00:52:54,600 --> 00:52:57,560
Speaker 1: that's my daughter, and you know, then she sees her

865
00:52:57,640 --> 00:53:00,799
Speaker 1: daughter for the first time in her life. And and

866
00:53:00,920 --> 00:53:05,839
Speaker 1: so from that day, her eyesight was fine. And so

867
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:09,239
Speaker 1: then by the time we came across her, this is

868
00:53:09,280 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 1: now decades later, she her eyesight had been fine for

869
00:53:12,320 --> 00:53:15,960
Speaker 1: like forty plus years, and we said, well, can we

870
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:18,040
Speaker 1: look at the back of your eyes, And so we

871
00:53:18,080 --> 00:53:22,400
Speaker 1: had her go to the doctor, which who took pictures

872
00:53:22,400 --> 00:53:24,319
Speaker 1: of the back of her eyes, and then we had

873
00:53:24,400 --> 00:53:29,360
Speaker 1: those those pictures read by a professor of ophthalmology, and

874
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:32,520
Speaker 1: the professor of optomology looked at them and said, I

875
00:53:32,560 --> 00:53:35,480
Speaker 1: can see where there's a tiny bit of scarring where

876
00:53:35,480 --> 00:53:37,719
Speaker 1: it looks like there used to be damaged, but they're

877
00:53:37,719 --> 00:53:45,399
Speaker 1: not damaged anymore. And so and basically that was it

878
00:53:45,480 --> 00:53:48,160
Speaker 1: she had. By that time, she was well advanced in

879
00:53:48,239 --> 00:53:51,640
Speaker 1: years and had a little bit of age related macular degeneration,

880
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:54,960
Speaker 1: but her vision was still basically fine, and you know,

881
00:53:55,080 --> 00:53:57,239
Speaker 1: had been for forty seven years at the time we

882
00:53:57,280 --> 00:54:02,120
Speaker 1: published the article and the medical journal. So uh. And

883
00:54:02,560 --> 00:54:06,040
Speaker 1: to be clear, she had been examined by doctors multiple

884
00:54:06,080 --> 00:54:08,680
Speaker 1: times while she was blind, and they all said that

885
00:54:08,920 --> 00:54:11,440
Speaker 1: the back of her eyes is racked, you know, and

886
00:54:11,520 --> 00:54:14,480
Speaker 1: that's it, Like there is zero hope that the eyes

887
00:54:14,520 --> 00:54:18,080
Speaker 1: will ever regenerate or you know, restore themselves, there's no

888
00:54:18,160 --> 00:54:22,759
Speaker 1: hope whatsoever, and yet she was healed exactly at that

889
00:54:22,880 --> 00:54:25,360
Speaker 1: moment while they were praying for healing after, you know,

890
00:54:25,400 --> 00:54:28,560
Speaker 1: shortly after they visited this healing per meeting. And so

891
00:54:29,520 --> 00:54:31,799
Speaker 1: I think, you know, in terms of the apologetic side

892
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:33,799
Speaker 1: of it, I think part of the claim is that

893
00:54:33,840 --> 00:54:36,440
Speaker 1: the healing sort of fit the criteria for miracle. But

894
00:54:36,480 --> 00:54:39,160
Speaker 1: the other part is the coincidence, that is that this

895
00:54:39,280 --> 00:54:44,120
Speaker 1: happened exactly at the time that they were praying for healing.

896
00:54:44,680 --> 00:54:47,319
Speaker 1: So and and there are many others. I mean, We've

897
00:54:47,320 --> 00:54:50,439
Speaker 1: got a whole TV series now with Angel Studios called

898
00:54:50,520 --> 00:54:54,640
Speaker 1: Miracle where we document some of these cases. We sort

899
00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:57,960
Speaker 1: of dramatically recreate them, and you know, I narrate some

900
00:54:58,080 --> 00:55:02,919
Speaker 1: of them, and so we you know, you can see

901
00:55:03,800 --> 00:55:08,040
Speaker 1: several of these cases now that we've investigated, uh sort

902
00:55:08,040 --> 00:55:10,680
Speaker 1: of brought to life, you know, interviews with the actual

903
00:55:11,000 --> 00:55:15,560
Speaker 1: people who who were healed. And so, I mean, there

904
00:55:15,840 --> 00:55:18,000
Speaker 1: are more stories I can tell, but these are the

905
00:55:18,000 --> 00:55:21,279
Speaker 1: these are the kinds of cases that we look for.

906
00:55:21,680 --> 00:55:25,759
Speaker 1: And and I think you know that having having a

907
00:55:25,800 --> 00:55:29,400
Speaker 1: case where the medical evidence is unambiguous and clear, it

908
00:55:29,440 --> 00:55:34,040
Speaker 1: meets the Lamborghini criteria. Those are the kinds of cases

909
00:55:34,080 --> 00:55:38,000
Speaker 1: we look at and and I think those those demand

910
00:55:38,640 --> 00:55:45,040
Speaker 1: some kind of explanation. And you know, I so I

911
00:55:45,080 --> 00:55:48,279
Speaker 1: think you can, you can wrestle with them, you can,

912
00:55:49,360 --> 00:55:52,879
Speaker 1: you know, think about them. But I think ignoring them

913
00:55:53,000 --> 00:55:56,680
Speaker 1: is you know, they're basically a sign, right, you know,

914
00:55:56,760 --> 00:55:59,120
Speaker 1: people talk about signs and wonders. It's it's a sign

915
00:55:59,160 --> 00:55:59,920
Speaker 1: that makes you wonder.

916
00:56:00,960 --> 00:56:02,480
Speaker 2: That's a good way to put it. So let me

917
00:56:02,560 --> 00:56:06,560
Speaker 2: make sure. Obviously I'm not a medical doctor, but when

918
00:56:06,560 --> 00:56:09,960
Speaker 2: I think about being regenerative, describing this part of the eye,

919
00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:13,600
Speaker 2: like there's a difference between if I cut my leg,

920
00:56:13,920 --> 00:56:19,080
Speaker 2: it's going to regenerate under normal procedures. Even muscles don't

921
00:56:19,080 --> 00:56:21,839
Speaker 2: regenerate themselves, but if you work out and eat, you

922
00:56:21,880 --> 00:56:25,840
Speaker 2: can regenerate them, versus like chipping a tooth. There's no

923
00:56:26,080 --> 00:56:30,759
Speaker 2: built in mechanism to regenerate or fix a tooth by

924
00:56:30,800 --> 00:56:34,600
Speaker 2: doing anything apart from outside coming in, and then it's

925
00:56:34,640 --> 00:56:37,400
Speaker 2: still not gonna be the same tooth it was. Is

926
00:56:37,440 --> 00:56:40,640
Speaker 2: it more comparable to like muscle being regenerative or a

927
00:56:40,680 --> 00:56:44,960
Speaker 2: tooth being regenerative? The kind of healing that took place

928
00:56:45,120 --> 00:56:47,440
Speaker 2: in the eye for this case.

929
00:56:48,520 --> 00:56:50,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's more like the tooth. I mean, it's not

930
00:56:50,680 --> 00:56:53,319
Speaker 1: all that different from an amputation, right, I mean, if

931
00:56:53,360 --> 00:56:58,000
Speaker 1: someone has a hand amputated, doesn't just grow back. Right. Likewise,

932
00:56:58,160 --> 00:57:00,680
Speaker 1: if the back of the eye is the maculate is

933
00:57:01,520 --> 00:57:05,760
Speaker 1: severely damaged, it just doesn't grow back. Not in humans,

934
00:57:07,080 --> 00:57:10,759
Speaker 1: not in a number of animals. So so that's it's

935
00:57:10,800 --> 00:57:12,920
Speaker 1: the kind of situation where, yeah, it just you know,

936
00:57:12,960 --> 00:57:15,360
Speaker 1: there are some things like you get muscle damage, you

937
00:57:15,360 --> 00:57:18,720
Speaker 1: get a cut, it'll heal. You can like get physical therapy,

938
00:57:19,160 --> 00:57:22,760
Speaker 1: you know, bring it back. But but yeah, that that

939
00:57:23,080 --> 00:57:25,120
Speaker 1: just never heals on its own.

940
00:57:25,800 --> 00:57:29,080
Speaker 2: So unless you're Wolverine or Deadpool, and we all know

941
00:57:29,160 --> 00:57:34,480
Speaker 2: that's fiction, it's not going to regenerate itself. Okay, So

942
00:57:34,600 --> 00:57:37,160
Speaker 2: two last questions and will wrap up. I'm curious how

943
00:57:37,240 --> 00:57:42,640
Speaker 2: your research has been received in the scientific community publicly

944
00:57:43,360 --> 00:57:46,320
Speaker 2: and privately, and of course you have to mention any names,

945
00:57:46,360 --> 00:57:49,120
Speaker 2: but just the kind of feedback or criticism or support

946
00:57:49,160 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 2: that you get as a whole in this world.

947
00:57:53,840 --> 00:57:57,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think for the most part, it's it's not

948
00:57:58,000 --> 00:58:04,960
Speaker 1: something I've talked about with other scientists colleagues, and up

949
00:58:05,040 --> 00:58:09,640
Speaker 1: until I'd say a couple of years ago, I really

950
00:58:09,680 --> 00:58:12,600
Speaker 1: just kept a low profile because I thought, you know what,

951
00:58:13,360 --> 00:58:16,120
Speaker 1: I just mostly want to just go to work and

952
00:58:16,280 --> 00:58:18,400
Speaker 1: you know, do good science and be a good professor.

953
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:22,120
Speaker 1: And you know, why should I poke a hornet's nest?

954
00:58:22,840 --> 00:58:26,400
Speaker 1: Like what why should I? I mean, and in a sense,

955
00:58:26,560 --> 00:58:28,320
Speaker 1: like you know, I have a job to do at work,

956
00:58:28,360 --> 00:58:32,000
Speaker 1: I do it. I think I do it well. And

957
00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:37,160
Speaker 1: I think in the conversations I've had, which have generally

958
00:58:37,200 --> 00:58:40,240
Speaker 1: been one on one with people who know me fairly well,

959
00:58:40,960 --> 00:58:43,520
Speaker 1: the sense I get is that, well, that's kind of interesting.

960
00:58:43,960 --> 00:58:48,480
Speaker 1: And and I haven't I haven't gone around like the

961
00:58:48,880 --> 00:58:52,280
Speaker 1: way we present the results. I haven't taken a strong

962
00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:56,640
Speaker 1: apologetic position because I don't feel that that's my role. Honestly,

963
00:58:56,720 --> 00:58:59,640
Speaker 1: I feel my role is to do science and generate

964
00:58:59,640 --> 00:59:04,160
Speaker 1: evidence and make that evidence available for anyone who wants

965
00:59:04,200 --> 00:59:07,800
Speaker 1: to see it. So so, from my perspective, if you

966
00:59:07,840 --> 00:59:12,000
Speaker 1: want to argue that the miracles we've documented point to

967
00:59:12,120 --> 00:59:15,920
Speaker 1: the existence of God, great, I mean I think that.

968
00:59:16,600 --> 00:59:19,320
Speaker 1: I think that's a reasonable position. But if you want

969
00:59:19,360 --> 00:59:21,360
Speaker 1: to argue and say, well, no, I don't think those

970
00:59:21,400 --> 00:59:23,360
Speaker 1: are real, or I don't think you know, I don't

971
00:59:23,360 --> 00:59:27,400
Speaker 1: think that means God's real, then you can have that debate.

972
00:59:27,960 --> 00:59:33,480
Speaker 1: I think debate is healthy. And and so because I've

973
00:59:33,520 --> 00:59:37,320
Speaker 1: taken a position that what I'm doing is mainly about

974
00:59:37,360 --> 00:59:42,480
Speaker 1: empirical evidence, I think it it sort of removes some

975
00:59:42,640 --> 00:59:46,840
Speaker 1: of the I don't know, confrontational sting to the whole thing.

976
00:59:47,320 --> 00:59:51,640
Speaker 1: So you know, now, what do I personally believe. I mean,

977
00:59:51,920 --> 00:59:54,320
Speaker 1: I could tell you hours of stories of all the

978
00:59:54,360 --> 00:59:56,760
Speaker 1: places I've gone around the world where I've seen blind

979
00:59:56,760 --> 01:00:01,480
Speaker 1: people get their eyesight back, tumors dissolve, people start hearing,

980
01:00:02,480 --> 01:00:06,240
Speaker 1: demons getting cast out dramatically. I mean, I've seen all

981
01:00:06,240 --> 01:00:08,040
Speaker 1: of that to the point where for me there's no

982
01:00:08,320 --> 01:00:12,200
Speaker 1: question that Jesus is who he says he is. He

983
01:00:12,360 --> 01:00:16,360
Speaker 1: was really raised from the dead, He's still in the

984
01:00:16,360 --> 01:00:21,840
Speaker 1: business of miracles, still healing people today. And you know,

985
01:00:21,920 --> 01:00:26,200
Speaker 1: that's my personal perspective. But I think when you're when

986
01:00:26,240 --> 01:00:30,080
Speaker 1: you're having a discussion with someone, what if you can't

987
01:00:30,120 --> 01:00:32,680
Speaker 1: agree on matters of faith, you can agree on the

988
01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:36,560
Speaker 1: importance of empirical evidence. And so I think that's where

989
01:00:37,160 --> 01:00:40,760
Speaker 1: that's kind of where I where I come to. And

990
01:00:40,840 --> 01:00:44,200
Speaker 1: so you know, I'm absolutely a Christian. I absolutely believe

991
01:00:44,240 --> 01:00:49,960
Speaker 1: the Bible. But I think I think within Christianity, you know,

992
01:00:50,000 --> 01:00:52,720
Speaker 1: it's like we were talking about earlier, like we haven't

993
01:00:52,720 --> 01:00:56,240
Speaker 1: really engaged with science in a way that I think

994
01:00:56,240 --> 01:00:58,720
Speaker 1: we could, and I think it would It would benefit

995
01:00:58,760 --> 01:01:02,560
Speaker 1: the Christian community and cause greatly to engage more with science.

996
01:01:02,760 --> 01:01:05,520
Speaker 1: So that's so, you know, I find as long as

997
01:01:05,560 --> 01:01:10,120
Speaker 1: the conversation goes in that direction, and that's I think

998
01:01:10,160 --> 01:01:13,880
Speaker 1: that that's gone pretty well. And otherwise I haven't. I

999
01:01:13,880 --> 01:01:15,440
Speaker 1: don't know, we'll see. I mean, like I said, it's

1000
01:01:15,480 --> 01:01:18,120
Speaker 1: only the last few years that i've actually you know,

1001
01:01:18,120 --> 01:01:20,400
Speaker 1: now I'm right written a book that's coming out, and

1002
01:01:20,520 --> 01:01:23,400
Speaker 1: you know I've got more public So yeah, I don't know.

1003
01:01:23,480 --> 01:01:24,960
Speaker 1: Check back with me a couple of years. I'll let

1004
01:01:25,000 --> 01:01:25,200
Speaker 1: you know.

1005
01:01:26,320 --> 01:01:28,560
Speaker 2: I guess we'll find out. I can imagine some people

1006
01:01:28,600 --> 01:01:31,240
Speaker 2: would be critical saying use your platform to be more

1007
01:01:31,240 --> 01:01:35,760
Speaker 2: explicit and evangelize. And I understand where some people are

1008
01:01:35,760 --> 01:01:39,600
Speaker 2: coming from. But as an academic looking at the work

1009
01:01:39,600 --> 01:01:41,880
Speaker 2: you're doing, I thought you do a great job of

1010
01:01:42,000 --> 01:01:44,760
Speaker 2: just kind of staying in your lane saying I'm a neuroscientist,

1011
01:01:45,200 --> 01:01:48,360
Speaker 2: here's where I'm trained, Here's the questions I can ask

1012
01:01:48,480 --> 01:01:53,120
Speaker 2: and what science as a tool actually shows, but not

1013
01:01:53,400 --> 01:01:56,320
Speaker 2: shying away from saying I'm a Christian and here's how

1014
01:01:56,360 --> 01:01:59,960
Speaker 2: I personally interpret that. So I think it's a great model.

1015
01:02:00,240 --> 01:02:02,880
Speaker 2: I mean, you've created a series miracle and by the way,

1016
01:02:03,440 --> 01:02:05,880
Speaker 2: you and your wife sent my family some gear that

1017
01:02:05,920 --> 01:02:08,320
Speaker 2: says miracle on it. I love the sweatshirt. My youngest

1018
01:02:08,320 --> 01:02:11,240
Speaker 2: son wears it all the time. So you're using the

1019
01:02:11,240 --> 01:02:15,600
Speaker 2: opportunity also to engage skeptics and to encourage Christians. So

1020
01:02:15,720 --> 01:02:18,040
Speaker 2: I think you're doing great work and wish you the

1021
01:02:18,080 --> 01:02:21,600
Speaker 2: best with this book. Tell us maybe at the end,

1022
01:02:21,680 --> 01:02:24,600
Speaker 2: who you wrote Proving a Miracle for and what you

1023
01:02:24,760 --> 01:02:25,880
Speaker 2: hope it accomplishes.

1024
01:02:27,800 --> 01:02:31,000
Speaker 1: Well. I think, like I said the dedication, I wrote

1025
01:02:31,040 --> 01:02:34,040
Speaker 1: it for the believers through doubt and the doubters who believe.

1026
01:02:34,280 --> 01:02:37,280
Speaker 1: And the way I see that is there are Christians

1027
01:02:37,320 --> 01:02:40,280
Speaker 1: who are asking hard questions about what's real, like I

1028
01:02:40,480 --> 01:02:44,160
Speaker 1: was when I was in college, you know, reading Nietzsche

1029
01:02:42,920 --> 01:02:48,240
Speaker 1: and Freud and asking hard questions about faith. And I

1030
01:02:48,280 --> 01:02:52,440
Speaker 1: think for those who are asking, you know, our miracles

1031
01:02:53,280 --> 01:02:55,560
Speaker 1: of healing that happen after prayer in the name of

1032
01:02:55,640 --> 01:02:58,960
Speaker 1: Jesus are real? Do they really happen. The answer is

1033
01:02:59,040 --> 01:03:03,360
Speaker 1: very clearly yeah, yes, And so I think that's what

1034
01:03:03,440 --> 01:03:07,640
Speaker 1: the book sort of ends on. But I also wrote

1035
01:03:07,680 --> 01:03:10,440
Speaker 1: it for the doubters who believe that is, there are

1036
01:03:10,480 --> 01:03:14,280
Speaker 1: people who are not necessarily of faith or a Christian faith,

1037
01:03:14,600 --> 01:03:17,560
Speaker 1: or really any faith, but who are interested in what

1038
01:03:17,600 --> 01:03:20,640
Speaker 1: the empirical evidence has to say. And there's a lot

1039
01:03:20,640 --> 01:03:23,320
Speaker 1: of empirical evidence that I review in the middle part

1040
01:03:23,320 --> 01:03:26,560
Speaker 1: of the book about the ways in which spiritual practices

1041
01:03:26,600 --> 01:03:29,720
Speaker 1: and beliefs are good for our health. And that's just

1042
01:03:29,800 --> 01:03:32,000
Speaker 1: empirically true. And I'm not the only one to have

1043
01:03:32,080 --> 01:03:35,880
Speaker 1: said that. And so I think just from the perspective

1044
01:03:35,920 --> 01:03:40,439
Speaker 1: of someone looking to improve their health, looking to live

1045
01:03:40,440 --> 01:03:44,080
Speaker 1: in greater health, and who are opened, you know, who

1046
01:03:44,240 --> 01:03:47,600
Speaker 1: will not consider something that comes from a Christian perspective

1047
01:03:47,640 --> 01:03:53,960
Speaker 1: as categorically suspect. Perhaps I wrote that to provide evidence

1048
01:03:54,040 --> 01:03:56,920
Speaker 1: for people who are interested in looking at that empirical

1049
01:03:56,920 --> 01:04:01,440
Speaker 1: evidence on its face. And so I hope that the

1050
01:04:01,520 --> 01:04:05,360
Speaker 1: book will will find interest among people who have questions

1051
01:04:05,400 --> 01:04:08,480
Speaker 1: about faith, who have questions about health, and just to

1052
01:04:08,600 --> 01:04:11,880
Speaker 1: have general interest in neuroscience and what you can learn.

1053
01:04:11,680 --> 01:04:16,320
Speaker 2: From Well, it's interesting because you have carefully documented cases,

1054
01:04:16,360 --> 01:04:19,280
Speaker 2: but you tell your story throughout it and I think.

1055
01:04:19,200 --> 01:04:20,320
Speaker 1: Really draw the reader in.

1056
01:04:20,520 --> 01:04:24,560
Speaker 2: So proven a Miracle is an excellent book. Highly recommend it.

1057
01:04:25,160 --> 01:04:28,520
Speaker 2: Check out the series Miracle with Angel Studios and you

1058
01:04:28,560 --> 01:04:33,120
Speaker 2: can see some of these miracles really explained and dramatized

1059
01:04:33,160 --> 01:04:35,720
Speaker 2: and illustrated. And these are the ones that really passed

1060
01:04:35,760 --> 01:04:39,840
Speaker 2: the careful, rigorous tests that you're talking about. So watch

1061
01:04:39,920 --> 01:04:43,040
Speaker 2: me their kids share them. It's a wonderful series, doctor

1062
01:04:43,120 --> 01:04:47,960
Speaker 2: Josh Brown. Give my love to your wonderful, incredibly thoughtful

1063
01:04:48,120 --> 01:04:50,520
Speaker 2: wife as well to the two of you. You're quite

1064
01:04:50,520 --> 01:04:54,960
Speaker 2: the dynamic duo. Keep it up, be encouraged this important

1065
01:04:54,960 --> 01:04:57,520
Speaker 2: work and we'll definitely have you back.

1066
01:04:57,360 --> 01:05:00,720
Speaker 1: On Okay, great, thanks so much for Michew.

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Speaker 2: My pleasure. All right, friends, before we click away, make

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Speaker 2: sure you hit subscribe because we've got some other shows

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Speaker 2: on the supernatural coming up, on near death experiences, more

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Speaker 2: on miracles, plus the evidence for Christianity and a host

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Speaker 2: of other topics. You don't want to miss it. And

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Speaker 2: if you actually want to study apologetics, we would love

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Speaker 2: to have you join us at tap School Theology in

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Speaker 2: person or in distance, and we have a class on

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Speaker 2: after life apologetics where we are studying some of these

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Speaker 2: very things. Information below. If you're like, I'm not ready

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Speaker 2: for Masters, we actually have a certificate program for some

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Speaker 2: of the top apologists in the world, and we will

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Speaker 2: walk you through that. There's a huge discount below. All right,

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Speaker 2: doctor Brown, We'll do this again. Thanks for coming on.

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Speaker 1: Okay, great, Thanks son.

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Speaker 2: Hey friends, if you enjoyed this show, please hit that

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Speaker 2: fall button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning

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Speaker 2: in haven't done this yet, and it makes a huge

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Speaker 2: difference in helping us reach and equit more people and

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Speaker 2: build community. And please consider leaving a podcast review. Every

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Speaker 2: review helps. Thanks for listening to the Sean McDow Show,

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Speaker 2: brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University,

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Speaker 2: where we have on campus and online programs in apologetic,

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Speaker 2: spiritual Formation, marriage and family, Bible, and so much more.

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Speaker 1: We would love to