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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and Welcome Back with Michael Newton Keys. We

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Speaker 1: will take calls with Michael next hour. His book is

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Speaker 1: called Unbelievable. Seven Myths about this history and Future of

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Speaker 1: science and religion. And Michael, let's go through those seven

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Speaker 1: myths if we can, one by one, and I shall

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Speaker 1: let you begin. Okay, So the first myths we covered averybody,

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Speaker 1: which was that a big universe is a problem for Christianity.

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Speaker 1: It's not. The second myth is there were these dark

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Speaker 1: ages during the medieval period when Christianity held that cultural

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Speaker 1: progress it didn't. Christians invented the university, which has been

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Speaker 1: the primary home for teaching and doing research and science.

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Speaker 1: The third myth, which we haven't talked about yet, is

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Speaker 1: kind of a subset of the second one. It's it's

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Speaker 1: the idea that people in the Middle Ages in Europe

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Speaker 1: sought the earth was flat. Yeah, and it was because

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Speaker 1: of Christianity that they thought this, because you know, the

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Speaker 1: Bible teaches that supposedly the Bible actually doesn't take any

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Speaker 1: view on the shape of the Earth. It only describes

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Speaker 1: the world as it as it appears to the senses,

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Speaker 1: but there and furthermore, after teaching astronomy for a quarter century,

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Speaker 1: I found that when students first come into my class,

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Speaker 1: they have fewer rational grounds for believing in a round

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Speaker 1: Earth than most medieval students. Most students they believe it

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Speaker 1: because they see in a picture that could be photoshop.

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Speaker 1: Now I'm not into conspiracy theories about but but students

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Speaker 1: should know that, you know, like, for example, medieval students

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Speaker 1: knew that if you look up at the moon during

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Speaker 1: a lunar eclipse, you see the shadow of the Earth

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Speaker 1: going across it, and the edge of that shadow is

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Speaker 1: curved its current. They could rattle off about a half

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Speaker 1: dozen of these arguments, and modern students usually can't. So

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Speaker 1: those are the first three myths. And well, and when

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Speaker 1: you look at the moon, it's round. You look at

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Speaker 1: the sun, it's round. You look at everything out there,

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Speaker 1: they're all round. I mean, one would have to deduce

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Speaker 1: that Earth was round. Yeah, that's an argument from analogy

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Speaker 1: and it has some power. But yeah, medieval students could

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Speaker 1: give you evidence, you know, observations that are best interpreted

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Speaker 1: as a round earth. So that's the third myth. The

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Speaker 1: fourth myth was about Bruno which we covered. The fifth

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Speaker 1: mess is about Galileo, which we've covered. The sixth myths

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Speaker 1: we haven't talked about, and it's really important. The sixth

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Speaker 1: myths I call the Copernican demotion mess. Now, that's the

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Speaker 1: idea that when Copernicus came up with this theory with

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Speaker 1: some pretty good arguments that Earth moves around the Sun

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Speaker 1: and it is not in the Earth is not in

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Speaker 1: the center of the universe, but the Sun is. Well,

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Speaker 1: that would supposedly an action that demoded humans from the

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Speaker 1: privilege center and therefore discredited religious views of human importance

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Speaker 1: where you know, we're in the center of God's plan. Well,

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Speaker 1: it turns out that even though a lot of new

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Speaker 1: atheists like Christopher Hitchens and when he was with us

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Speaker 1: and others have have trotted this out as you know,

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Speaker 1: Christianity's greatest failure, when you look at the real history,

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Speaker 1: it turns out that that at the time of Copernicus,

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Speaker 1: the going because of views of Aristotle and Plato and

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Speaker 1: throughout the Middle Ages, people at the time of Copernicus

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Speaker 1: still thought of the center of the universe as the

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Speaker 1: bottom of the universe, not the place of honor, but

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Speaker 1: the place of dishonor. And so when Earth was re

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Speaker 1: positioned as a planet as moving around the Sun, that

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Speaker 1: was conframed as a promotion by folks like Galileo and

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Speaker 1: Johannes Kepler, the astronomers that came just after Copernicus who

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Speaker 1: were arguing for copernicus view. So so this this idea

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Speaker 1: that well Copernicus demoted humanity and undermine religion is just

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Speaker 1: doesn't set the history. For example, Copernicus himself said the

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Speaker 1: cosmos was created for our sake. Now that even overstates

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Speaker 1: the what Christianity specified. But you know, but it's clearly

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Speaker 1: he wasn't demoting humanity. And of course the seventh, oh,

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Speaker 1: the seventh myths, Okay, right, we have short on time here.

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Speaker 1: Let's you know, these the six myths kind of is

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Speaker 1: a setup for the seventh one. Because if if you

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Speaker 1: believe the sixth myths that well, humans were demoted, were

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Speaker 1: not important, and owe all that other religious stuff that

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Speaker 1: we've talked about earlier, if it looks anti science, then

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Speaker 1: that leaves a significance gap and people want dearly to

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Speaker 1: fill it with something. And so in recent years many

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Speaker 1: leading astronomers and philosophers have been filling that significance void,

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Speaker 1: which is only a perceived void, you know, left by

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Speaker 1: these myths that really aren't true after all. But if

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Speaker 1: you think they're true, then you're searching for some substitute

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Speaker 1: for our significance. And that the leading one right now

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Speaker 1: is what I call the extraterrestrial enlightenment myths. Now, this

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Speaker 1: myth is not, well, aliens exist, No, that's a myth. No,

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Speaker 1: this myth is about what would the significance if they're

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Speaker 1: worth to be contact, if aliens were to arrive on

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Speaker 1: the planet. And here's what the myth says. And here

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Speaker 1: I use the myth in the sense of a worldview

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Speaker 1: shaping story, in this case, a futuristic myth, and it

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Speaker 1: goes like this, any et, any alien that arrives on

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Speaker 1: the planet Earth would have to have technology indistinguishable from magic,

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Speaker 1: and would also, due to billions of years of evolution

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Speaker 1: prior to us, would have highly evolved moral, spiritual insights

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Speaker 1: that would trigger religious reorientation on our planet. And a

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Speaker 1: lot of this myth is this expectation is built on

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Speaker 1: what we think, what some people think that artificial intelligence

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Speaker 1: can do, that we can bring about, you know, conscious

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Speaker 1: computers that will be doing things indistinguishable from magic, but

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Speaker 1: leading AI experts like Rodney Brooks who's at MIT, says,

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Speaker 1: in fact, I quote him here, he says that, and

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Speaker 1: if it becomes if this AI you know, projected in

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Speaker 1: the future, becomes indistinguishable from magic, anything one says about

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Speaker 1: it is no longer falsifiable, that is no longer testable

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Speaker 1: in a rigorous way, and leads to kind of a

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Speaker 1: blind faith as you imaginatively think about the future, which

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Speaker 1: is great for sci fi, but not so great when

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Speaker 1: you're thinking about, you know what, what should we expect?

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Speaker 1: And here's here's the real kicker. Richard Dawkins has said,

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Speaker 1: and I quote him, there are very probably alien civilizations

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Speaker 1: that are superhuman to the point of being godlike in

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Speaker 1: ways that exceed anything a theologian could possibly imagine. This

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Speaker 1: is Richard Dawkins talking Earth's leading atheists, right, and he's

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Speaker 1: And what's ironic about that is some of this story

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Speaker 1: sounds scientific, but if you want, I can explain why

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Speaker 1: it isn't. Yeah, please, Okay, here's my critique of this story. Okay,

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Speaker 1: and I and I follow part partly the work of

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Speaker 1: Rodney Brooks. M I t AI, one of the Founding

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Speaker 1: Fathers of AI. Again, he says that it's when once

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Speaker 1: you extrapolate imaginatively into the future and you start talking

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Speaker 1: about technology that's like magic, there's really no way to

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Speaker 1: test that. I mean, he thinks that AI can do

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Speaker 1: a lot of great things, but it's never going to

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Speaker 1: become conscious and super powerful and you know, to the

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Speaker 1: point of being magical or or equivalent to magic. But

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Speaker 1: let's just imagine for a moment that there is that

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Speaker 1: there is an event on Earth that seems like, okay,

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Speaker 1: some conscious, superintelligent creature has just arrived on the planet

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Speaker 1: and has magical powers. Well, what's what's weird about this

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Speaker 1: is that atheists like Dawkins would have no way of

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Speaker 1: helping undecided people to distinguish between the natural and the

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Speaker 1: supernatural interpretation of the creature, because, according to Dawkins and

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Speaker 1: many other atheists, the natural explanation that is an alien,

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Speaker 1: it would look identical to a supernatural creature like some whatever,

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Speaker 1: whether a good or a bad, spiritual creature arriving on

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Speaker 1: the planet claiming that they're going to save us and

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Speaker 1: you know, from holocaust and bring peace and you know,

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Speaker 1: revised religion, etc. And so I don't think that this

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Speaker 1: view is very scientific because it's more based on inspiration

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Speaker 1: from science fiction than science. Because you know, as I mentioned,

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Speaker 1: I followed the Harvard astronomer named Howard Smith. I quote

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Speaker 1: him in my book, and he shows that, look, technology

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Speaker 1: can become sophisticated, but technology never can overcome the laws

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Speaker 1: of nature, and the speed of light is one of

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Speaker 1: those for the absolute fastest you can communicate or travel,

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Speaker 1: and even travel, you know, as you approach the speed

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Speaker 1: of light, a lot of weird things happen and make

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Speaker 1: it kind of impractical. So this ET salvation story sounds scientific,

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Speaker 1: but isn't because technology can't overcome natural laws, and there's

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Speaker 1: and the whole story makes the abilities distinguished between the

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Speaker 1: natural and the supernatural virtually impossible. That sounds like a

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Speaker 1: faith position of Dawkins, not a scientific one. So that's

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Speaker 1: why I'm very skeptical of this ET enlightenment myth. And Michael,

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Speaker 1: why does so many people think that the ets at

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Speaker 1: a higher level are more moralistic than what we should be.

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Speaker 1: How do we know they don't get worse, not better? Exactly?

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Speaker 1: In fact, you know, when Darwin published his book in

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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy one about the evolution of humanity and morality.

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Speaker 1: This is long after his original book on the Origin

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Speaker 1: of Species. You know, he wanted to believe that that

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Speaker 1: being nice to each other, what we call altruism, is

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Speaker 1: the highest evolved trait. But look, if there is no god,

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Speaker 1: and if if morality evolves randomly with you know, along

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Speaker 1: the lines of natural laws, then you know, there is

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Speaker 1: no really good and evil. It's just stuff happens, and

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Speaker 1: and creatures from outer space that have been around for

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Speaker 1: a billion years, they might be real badasses and want

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Speaker 1: to you know, not want to help us, might want

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Speaker 1: to destroy us exactly. Obviously this is all played out

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Speaker 1: in science fiction, and there's no way to from an

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Speaker 1: atheistic perspective to know what kind of you know, if

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Speaker 1: these creatures would really be morally superior and spiritually superior

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Speaker 1: to us, Well, they probably know that. You know, the

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Speaker 1: longer a civilization lasts, the more resources they're going to

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Speaker 1: use up. And they you know, one of the things

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Speaker 1: they probably say is, you know, they don't get better,

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Speaker 1: they get worse. We're going to take what we need now. Okay, Yeah, again,

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Speaker 1: a lot of this is imaginative thinking about the future,

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Speaker 1: and but again I am a skeptic of the ET

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Speaker 1: Enlightenment myths, because again, the point here is not whether

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Speaker 1: ET exists or not, is whether is whether ET is

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Speaker 1: our savior or not. That's the meth that I'm going after.

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Speaker 1: This is pretty remarkable in that it's realistic and it's

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Speaker 1: very probable, isn't it. Well? I think that the as

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Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, the likelihood of aliens existing is pretty low,

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Speaker 1: and likelihoods of aliens living within contact distance of us,

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Speaker 1: I think it's extremely low. So that makes so if

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Speaker 1: there is a quote an appearance event or something that

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Speaker 1: looks like an alien appearance, you know, I think people

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Speaker 1: ought to be open to both naturalistic and supernatural interpretations

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Speaker 1: of that event. Is it an alien or is it not?

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Speaker 1: Is it some kind of subnatural creature? An open minded

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Speaker 1: person should be open to both of those probams. Oh sure, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: there's no question. We've talked about dimensional other universes. Who

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Speaker 1: knows they are all possible. When Dawkins of course says

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Speaker 1: he's a you know, atheist, right, so he obviously doesn't

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Speaker 1: believe in spiritual beings. But what's what's ironic is latter

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Speaker 1: day atheism is becoming harder and harder to distinguish from

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Speaker 1: the occult, and a lot of these UFO stories sound

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Speaker 1: very demonic, and so atheists have no way of really

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Speaker 1: helping people who are like undecided about whether this is

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Speaker 1: spiritual or whether this is natural. Do you have to

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Speaker 1: have much of a scientific background in order to grasp this, No,

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Speaker 1: and my book after teaching non science major's science for

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Speaker 1: a quarter century, my book is very accessible to the

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Speaker 1: ordinary guy, and I get into the cool stuff like

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Speaker 1: the history of science fiction, how science fiction effects, how

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Speaker 1: we even evaluate theories like this et enlightenment story. Listen

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Speaker 1: to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one

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Speaker 1: am Eastern, and go to Coast to Coast am dot

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Speaker 1: com for more