Episode 77

God versus Nature

Published on: 5th December, 2023

Today we're delighted to interview author Frederick Seiler, author of God Vs Nature, an overview of the historical conflict between reason and faith. Between science and religion. Let it be noted that this book is different in that it uses Ayn Rand's epistemology to make the case that yes, there is a conflict and that we in the West are losing our freedom's due to the lingering poison of religion in the hysterically non-rational movement known as Environmentalism. If you are even remotely interested in history, or philosophy, Buy This Book.

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Show notes with links to articles, blog posts, products and services:

Episode 77 (60 minutes) was recorded at 2100 Central European Time, on November 2, 2023, with Ringr app. Martin did the editing and post-production with the podcast maker, Alitu. The transcript is generated by Alitu.

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Transcript
Blair:

Well, here we are again, ladies and gentlemen, in the bunker of the secular fox

Blair:

hole.

Blair:

Today we have a great guest.

Blair:

His name is Frederick Seiler, and he has an Ma in the history of science and degrees in

Blair:

electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon and Rensalar Poly Ethnic Institute.

Blair:

And he is the author of the book we are here to discuss today, god versus Fred.

Fred:

Hi. Hello.

Blair:

Fred, you know this book.

Blair:

In your preface, you point to two historical

Blair:

works that guided your thinking.

Blair:

What were they and what was your goal in

Blair:

writing the book?

Fred:

Yeah, first of all, thank you for inviting me.

Blair:

Oh, you're welcome.

Fred:

Yeah, about 25 years ago, I was at Indiana University studying history of

Fred:

science.

Fred:

And in my sort of random explorations at that

Fred:

time, I discovered two books that were written by Americans in the late 19th century that had

Fred:

to do with religion and science.

Fred:

And one of them is John William Draper's book

Fred:

history of the conflict between Religion and science.

Fred:

He was a scientist himself, American scientist.

Fred:

And the other book is by an educator named Andrew Dixon White.

Fred:

And his book was, if I remember the title, history of Warfare Between.

Fred:

I can't remember the exact title, but it has to do with warfare of science and religion and

Fred:

Christendom.

Fred:

And both of these books were very popular when

Fred:

they came.

Fred:

Mean John William Draper's book selled

Fred:

extraordinarily.

Fred:

Well, it was translated into at least maybe at

Fred:

least a dozen different languages, so it was very popular.

Fred:

And also, Andrew Dixon Dwight came out, like, a little bit later, not as popular, but much

Fred:

more detailed.

Fred:

A long book, like at least eight or 900 pages

Fred:

long, going into lots of detail about science, conflicts between science and religion.

Fred:

Both of these books the main theme of the book is conflict, conflict between science and

Fred:

religion throughout history.

Fred:

And when I discovered the books, I discovered

Fred:

that there were issues with the books.

Fred:

Certainly they were written over 100 years

Fred:

ago, so we've discovered more.

Fred:

And our understanding of a lot of issues in

Fred:

history is a lot better in many ways.

Fred:

But certainly I discovered that modern

Fred:

professors in history of science and otherwise look at these books with absolute contempt

Fred:

that these books they consider completely worthless.

Fred:

I think the main issue is well, there are two issues.

Fred:

One issue that the issue that they keep bringing up is that, well, they get a lot of

Fred:

facts wrong.

Fred:

And, yeah, there are facts.

Fred:

If you look hard, you can find a number of facts here and there things that at least

Fred:

things we know, we're confident about, about history that we know today that these guys got

Fred:

wrong.

Fred:

And there were certainly issues with these

Fred:

books.

Fred:

And both of these authors were inconsistent.

Fred:

They were philosophically inconsistent in certain ways.

Fred:

And at various times, they said in their books, they said, oh, I'm not against

Fred:

religion.

Fred:

Religion is a good thing.

Fred:

They would say things like that.

Fred:

And then they would come out at some point in

Fred:

a later chapter and they would say faith and religion are absolutely at war and they're

Fred:

completely opposed to each other, completely in all their forms are opposed to each other.

Fred:

And so if you just read just on their own terms, they're a bit contradictory sometimes

Fred:

they just didn't go far enough, in my opinion, in terms of attacking or explaining what's

Fred:

wrong with religion.

Fred:

But I think today's historians of science

Fred:

really unfortunately, they really don't know how to deal with abstract issues like science

Fred:

versus religion.

Fred:

That's a very abstract issue in terms of a lot

Fred:

of these professors of history.

Fred:

They're comfortable with a lot of very

Fred:

concrete facts.

Fred:

So if you ask them about to describe the

Fred:

relationship between this type of Protestantism and this kind of science within

Fred:

this decade of the 17th century, they will talk to you for hours and they'll be very

Fred:

confident what they say.

Fred:

But if you start talking about, well, science

Fred:

and religion in general, they will start saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is all abstract

Fred:

terms.

Fred:

This is a lot of hot air.

Fred:

You're just going way beyond what's justified by any kind of rational study of the past.

Fred:

So in my opinion, there's a lot of concrete bound thought in a lot of historians of

Fred:

science, okay? And on the other side, there are a number of

Fred:

historians of science who are just very sympathetic to religion for one reason or

Fred:

another.

Fred:

They really don't like some of them religious

Fred:

raised with religious backgrounds, and they just don't want to attack religion.

Fred:

So a lot of them will come out and say, well, there's this thing called the conflict thesis.

Fred:

The conflict thesis is that science and religion are at war throughout history and

Fred:

they say, well, today we know the conflict thesis is wrong.

Fred:

And they say, well, then they start.

Fred:

Tons of books have been written about this in

Fred:

the last 40 years.

Fred:

It's amazing how much has been written on this

Fred:

by academics.

Fred:

And basically they sort of dance around the

Fred:

subject and they basically say, well, sometimes science religions seem to work

Fred:

together.

Fred:

There are all these scientists in history who

Fred:

were religious, right? Look at Gregor Mendall and his was the Monk

Fred:

and he did all this work on Peapods and Isaac Newton believed firmly in God.

Fred:

And so they give all these examples and then they say, well, yes, there were certain

Fred:

conflicts and then they said, well, there must be really a complex relationship.

Fred:

So now they're saying, well, what, we should replace the conflict thesis with what they

Fred:

call a complexity thesis? In my opinion, they're very confused and I

Fred:

really just don't know how to deal with abstractions as such.

Blair:

This is sort of an off the cuff question, and if you want to delay the answer,

Blair:

you certainly can.

Blair:

But I think the core issue what is the

Blair:

difference between belief and proof.

Blair:

Does that make any sense?

Fred:

Belief and proof.

Blair:

If you believe something, even if it's not true, but you believe it and then proof, I

Blair:

see that this is true.

Fred:

There might be different ways of using the word belief.

Fred:

Sometimes the word belief can imply some sort of religious belief or non rational, right?

Fred:

But then there's the idea of having a rational conviction or certainty.

Fred:

So, I don't know, you could quibble about the right definition of the word, the right way to

Fred:

use the word belief.

Fred:

You could talk about beliefs in the sense that

Fred:

a belief could be correct, could be justified or not.

Fred:

I don't have a firm opinion on that, although I tend to try to avoid the word belief because

Fred:

it just sounds a little bit too much like a religious view.

Martin:

Yeah, and in Swedish it really does that when we say true.

Martin:

So that's really a belief like faith almost in Swedish language.

Martin:

So I say the same, but I joke now.

Martin:

And we come back to your first question that

Martin:

Blair had.

Martin:

Why do you write the book?

Martin:

But we really get it from the big gecko here that it's so important, why it is to write

Martin:

this kind of book.

Martin:

But we could say that we believe in reason and

Martin:

then if people listen to us, then you could not joke about it because it's serious issue.

Martin:

But again, as Blair said, to understand the concepts and the words meaning and so on.

Martin:

But on the other hand, as you said, to really get to the point.

Martin:

So yeah, please continue.

Fred:

Sure. I mean, to get back to Blair's question, answering his question, I guess, why

Fred:

did I write this book? What was my motivation?

Fred:

And my motivation was basically I thought nobody has come along since Draper and White

Fred:

and really done a decent job on this subject.

Fred:

So it's been 130 years probably about since

Fred:

these books came out and I don't think anybody has really done a decent job.

Fred:

And I also thought that Ein Rand, in her philosophical work, especially regarding the

Fred:

nature of reason and her metaphysical view about the nature of reality, I thought that

Fred:

Einrand had some really important insights that really need to be brought bear on this

Fred:

subject.

Fred:

And I think it really helps illuminate the

Fred:

history of science, the history of the conflict between science and know throughout

Fred:

history.

Fred:

So my main goal was sort of come up with an

Fred:

updated, very readable version of a book like what Draper and White did, just making sure I

Fred:

get all the facts right and also getting a really good historical perspective and

Fred:

bringing in some philosophical insights from yes.

Blair:

Thank you for that.

Blair:

And you also mentioned in both the ancient and

Blair:

modern worlds, where did science take root, like in ancient Greece, what were some of

Blair:

their achievements? Or was there even science before that?

Fred:

Yeah, I mean, historians will debate exactly where the definition of where science

Fred:

really began and where do you draw the line? Because there is kind of fuzzy places there.

Fred:

Certainly in ancient Greece there are some fuzzy places where you could arguably draw the

Fred:

line slightly different places.

Fred:

The chapter of the book, basically is if I got

Fred:

it right for the second chapter excuse me.

Fred:

Of the book is about the birth of science in

Fred:

ancient Greece, as I argue, and that there were things that were being done before the

Fred:

Greeks, that Greeks learned from the Mesopotamians, were doing work in a lot of

Fred:

astronomical work, certainly recording positions of the stars and things like that.

Fred:

And in Egyptians also, there was a lot of mathematical and other things being done in

Fred:

those cultures.

Fred:

But I argue that it was with the ancient

Fred:

Greeks where a real scientific mindset really started.

Fred:

And with thinkers like Thales.

Fred:

Thales is kind of an outline border case, but

Fred:

you can see it to some extent with was he before him, everybody was really talking about

Fred:

the gods as causes and they were looking for supernatural type of explanations for things.

Fred:

And that was pretty much any kind of abstract explanations of anything always went to gods

Fred:

and things like that.

Fred:

But with Thales you see evidence at least that

Fred:

he was trying to get a more naturalistic view of the world.

Fred:

And I gave one well known example with Thales is he believed that water, everything is made

Fred:

out of water, is in some sense the universal stuff.

Fred:

And we can talk about that.

Fred:

But that's another issue why the ancient

Fred:

Greeks like to look for one of the fundamental stuffs or reduce everything in the world to

Fred:

like one or a few different kinds of things.

Fred:

And he ended up thinking of water, but he

Fred:

thought people were wondering about earthquakes and where did earthquakes come

Fred:

from, what was the cause of earthquakes? And Thales said, well, there must be a lot of

Fred:

water underneath us where the solid earth we're living on is maybe resting on something

Fred:

which is not so solid, some sort of water that's beneath us.

Fred:

And so when there are waves in that water that's causing the earthquakes we're

Fred:

experienced.

Fred:

And the fact that he came up with that

Fred:

explanation as opposed to there were some supernaturalistic explanations that were

Fred:

common at that time, then that sort of points to that naturalistic view.

Fred:

And if you look at other Greek thinkers, you see a lot of the similar kind of things going

Fred:

on.

Fred:

They were really looking for more naturalistic

Fred:

ways of looking at the world.

Blair:

Right? Well, obviously the Greeks, I'm going to say

Blair:

in my personal view, they were the first philosophers, if you will.

Fred:

Yes, definitely.

Blair:

That's why they took a more naturalistic view or this worldly view.

Blair:

Yeah, that's cool.

Blair:

Now, near the end of the Roman Empire, of

Blair:

course, sadly, Christianity takes root.

Blair:

And you have a section titled the Murder of

Blair:

the Remnants of Pagan Philosophy.

Blair:

Can you delve into how that happened?

Blair:

What did happen?

Fred:

For a bit, sure.

Fred:

Throughout the Roman period, there was a

Fred:

gradual sort of decline in philosophical thought.

Fred:

It seemed to be more descending, getting more otherworldly in terms of I mean, the ideas

Fred:

stoicism became really big throughout the Roman period and an element of that was trying

Fred:

not to worry so much about the physical world.

Fred:

And the Romans themselves weren't really ever

Fred:

particularly pro science.

Fred:

They were very focused on certain practical

Fred:

issues, but philosophically they really tried to stay away from any kind of abstract ideas.

Fred:

In the Roman period, figures like people talk about the persecutions of the Christians under

Fred:

the Romans, and these persecutions did happen, and some of them were horrendous.

Fred:

And the Diocletian, the Emperor Diocletian is probably the worst of the Roman emperors in

Fred:

terms of persecuting Christians.

Fred:

However, they were not that universal in Roman

Fred:

history and were often long periods of time in which there wasn't any real Christian

Fred:

persecutions.

Fred:

And it wasn't until the Emperor Constantine

Fred:

I'm trying to remember 313, I believe, he basically officially recognized sort of

Fred:

Christianity as a valid view of the world, a valid religion, and basically decided for

Fred:

political reasons, basically, he said he was going to accept Christianity.

Fred:

He needed to unify all of Roman, basically under a single religion.

Fred:

That's what he decided he wanted to do, and it would be Christianity.

Fred:

He basically decreed Christianity is correct and it's acceptable, but it turned out to be

Fred:

more than that.

Fred:

People talk about it was good for religious

Fred:

freedom, but at that point there are basically more and more steps that the Roman government

Fred:

took in order to basically give an edge to Christian churches.

Fred:

And basically there's a lot of government money from Rome went to Christian churches

Fred:

supporting Christian churches, and nothing else.

Blair:

Is this historically documented?

Fred:

I'm pretty sure it I reckon the best source that I know of on this is a book by the

Fred:

British historian Charles Freeman, and he wrote a book called Closing of the Western

Fred:

Mind.

Fred:

He's written a number of books on this and on

Fred:

these types of issues, but that's probably the best on this particular issue.

Fred:

And he goes into a lot of detail on this.

Fred:

There were a lot of government resources given

Fred:

to Christian churches and support to them.

Fred:

And basically bishops, Christian bishops were

Fred:

given extra powers.

Fred:

They were basically made into legal

Fred:

magistrates and arbitrating legal disputes and things like that.

Fred:

So this went on for a while and basically gradually the Romans basically started to

Fred:

stamp out anything that was not Christianity.

Fred:

And I think it went on gradually, but over

Fred:

time it became clear that this was the only religion that was acceptable in the Roman

Fred:

Empire.

Fred:

And at a certain point, all other Christians

Fred:

were made illegal.

Fred:

I think it might have been Theodosius it was a

Fred:

later Roman Emperor.

Fred:

He said any views, philosophical or pagan

Fred:

views outside of Christianity are illegal.

Fred:

And he actually issued the death penalty for

Fred:

teaching or promulgating other views like these.

Martin:

And then you see the faith and force.

Martin:

It's very fascinating how you and scary how

Martin:

you talk about this.

Martin:

And then fast forward to today's.

Fred:

Absolutely.

Martin:

It's like a detective work here that you have done.

Martin:

Fred.

Martin:

So, yeah, please continue, Fred and Blair,

Martin:

with questions.

Martin:

Yeah.

Blair:

Now, in the I guess in the early days or certain period of time, they were

Blair:

Aristotelian, but obviously Islam is no longer associated with Aristotle.

Blair:

So Islamic Faith Versus Reason and Philosophy is one of your titles, I think, on the.

Fred:

Exciting I mean, this is part of a very exciting part of the history of Western

Fred:

civilization, how Aristotle's ideas and the ideas of ancient Greece and the positive

Fred:

philosophy of the pro science philosophy of Aristotle, sort of.

Fred:

It got going in Greece, of course, and then it declined during, basically, the fall of Rome

Fred:

and the Dark Ages.

Fred:

But then in the Islamic world, there were

Fred:

certainly elements of the Islamic world that rediscovered Aristotle and a lot of this other

Fred:

ancient Greek thought about science especially, and really did exciting work with

Fred:

it.

Fred:

And then later that all got there was a

Fred:

translation movement that was supported by certain people, like in Baghdad, and that got

Fred:

a lot of translated, a lot of these works from ancient Greek into Arabic.

Fred:

And then you had these whole schools, a lot of scholars in the Islamic world really studying

Fred:

this stuff and then actually mastering a lot of the ancient Greek work in astronomy and

Fred:

medicine and then going beyond it and just extending it further.

Fred:

And that's part of basically considered the golden age of Islam.

Fred:

Yeah.

Martin:

And that's interesting.

Martin:

Fred and Blair and that's the know was it

Martin:

called Aristotle Adventure?

Blair:

Yes.

Martin:

And I had the poster also, and it's so fascinating to see that.

Martin:

And this is really important, I think, and maybe that's fast forward again.

Martin:

But do you know any scholars or any studying that now in this area of the world right now?

Martin:

Because it's fascinating if you could find the light or the fire or the science and get it,

Martin:

of course, here in the Western world is really crucial also.

Martin:

But think about that.

Fred:

So is your question people studying how Aristotle influence area in the Middle East.

Martin:

Or is it totally locked down, forgotten?

Fred:

Oh, in the Middle East?

Blair:

Yes.

Fred:

Oh, I'm pretty sure it's follow.

Fred:

I don't really follow that much lately, but I

Fred:

don't have any reason to think that it's survived there no, not at all in the Islamic

Fred:

world that I'm aware of in any pockets.

Blair:

So, again, staying in the Islamic world, who was Al Ghazali, is that correct?

Fred:

Yeah. Al Ghazali yeah.

Fred:

I mean, he's probably the most famous and

Fred:

revered Islamic scholar in history, and I understand he's still really revered today.

Fred:

He came along and wrote about he was very critical about the ideas that had come in from

Fred:

ancient Greece and ideas of Aristotle and pro reason ideas and talking about causality in

Fred:

nature.

Fred:

And he basically came out explicitly and said,

Fred:

this is all limiting God's power.

Fred:

This is all antireligious, in a sense, because

Fred:

what's most important is God's will.

Fred:

And God's will is everywhere and is beyond, is

Fred:

the ultimate.

Fred:

And that is what's important.

Fred:

And that's the only real explanation of anything.

Fred:

And he basically came out and said, who are you to say that if you have a match and you

Fred:

bring a match, a piece of paper, and the paper starts burning, he sort of said, who are you

Fred:

to say that the match causes the paper to burn?

Fred:

It's not that.

Fred:

It's that we see the match, we bring it to the

Fred:

paper, and of course, it's God doing everything.

Fred:

God is basically causing the paper to burn.

Fred:

And we just happen to see these things that

Fred:

look like they go together, but everything that happens is God's will.

Martin:

But that's Blair's questioning.

Martin:

And how could you prove that then?

Martin:

How could he prove that that's happened?

Fred:

Yeah, proof was not a concept he was interested in.

Blair:

It's not really funny, but.

Fred:

Al Ghazali was sort of part of a tradition in the Islamic world, the Asha

Fred:

Rights.

Fred:

There were sort of philosophers, theologians

Fred:

who had these ways of thinking.

Fred:

There was conflicts between the Islamic world,

Fred:

between the Mutazalites and the Asharites, and where the Mutazalites were slightly better,

Fred:

were more rational, and they talked about, well, the ultimate cause of everything is God.

Fred:

But we should also talk about more causes which are more connected to the things we see.

Fred:

And we can look for kind of scientific laws, in a sense.

Fred:

But the Asherites basically said they you know, that's really limiting God much too, you

Fred:

know, al Ghazali, his ideas triumphed in the Islamic world.

Fred:

So that's the big catastrophe.

Fred:

Yes.

Fred:

Although, I mean, scholars also debate about the extent of his influence and at what point,

Fred:

because the decline of science in the Islamic world was not sudden.

Fred:

It was very gradual.

Blair:

Sure.

Fred:

And there were elements of scientific work being done beyond after Al Ghazali, but I

Fred:

think in terms of the broad trend of what was going on, it's yeah, yeah.

Blair:

Now, as objectivists, we know that we certainly give credit to St. Thomas Aquinas,

Blair:

who reintroduced Aristotle.

Blair:

And I found interesting, you claimed or you

Blair:

said that he created a, quote, a protected area for reason unquote.

Blair:

Can you describe what you meant by that or what he meant by that?

Fred:

Yeah, this is idea that I think this is after aristotle's ideas had been to some

Fred:

extent rediscovered in the European world, and they were getting back thanks to figures like

Fred:

maybe Abelard and Albert the Great were before.

Blair:

Yeah, there are others certainly before others.

Fred:

But I think Aquinas gets a lot of credit because he's the grand systematizer and he's

Fred:

the one who really basically tried to synthesize Christianity and Aristotle into one

Fred:

big system.

Fred:

And he talks about reason and faith and to he

Fred:

likes reason, so he's a real defender of reason.

Fred:

So he argues that they're basically reason and faith are both valid forms of knowledge.

Fred:

And he argues that there are certain areas, in most areas they do not overlap.

Fred:

And those places where there's a small area where they do overlap, he basically said

Fred:

they're going to give us the same knowledge.

Fred:

And those areas that they do overlap, he

Fred:

talked about the fact that God exists.

Fred:

He thought that could be proven by reason.

Fred:

And some of God's attributes, like that God was all good, or that he was somehow infinite,

Fred:

he thought that could be proven by reason.

Fred:

But he was basically saying reason is fully

Fred:

valid and in the domains for which it applies.

Fred:

And in that day and age that was a big deal.

Fred:

And he became very influential for.

Blair:

And and thank you.

Blair:

Thomas yes.

Blair:

Now of course, in your book, now we come to Galileo and the Church.

Blair:

Certainly I've heard modern historians say, oh, that's not really what actual what really

Blair:

did happen between Galileo and the Church.

Fred:

Maybe if you gave me like 2 hours you will come back.

Fred:

Fred, it's very complicated.

Fred:

There's a lot of history here and the Catholic

Fred:

Church has saved so much paperwork on this.

Fred:

So historians had a field day trying to figure

Fred:

out all of the complexities of what happened and what didn't happen and who did what to so

Fred:

that's why a lot of books have been written on this subject.

Fred:

I mean, the bottom line is, I think that Galileo was trying to defend the Copernican

Fred:

worldview and the Catholic Church basically came along and said, this is contradictory to

Fred:

certain lines in Scripture.

Fred:

And at a certain point the first issue, I

Fred:

think was in 26 excuse me, the year 1616, that Galileo had sort of a conflict with the Church

Fred:

and somebody denounced Galileo.

Fred:

And it's been a while since I worked on this,

Fred:

so I'm a little forget some of the details.

Fred:

But basically he was told not to defend the

Fred:

Copernican view anymore, not to formally, not to say the Copernican view was true.

Fred:

And he promised, he said, okay, I'm not going to do that.

Fred:

That was in 1616.

Fred:

But then years later that things started

Fred:

changing.

Fred:

The politics of the Catholic Church seemed to

Fred:

be changing in some ways that could be favorable to him.

Fred:

There were certain key figures who died and an old person friend.

Fred:

If somebody, a Pope who had actually seemed to be Galileo's friend and supported him, the

Fred:

person became Pope who had previously been supportive of Galileo in certain ways.

Blair:

I remember this.

Fred:

So at this point, Galileo thought maybe it's safer for me to try to promote these

Fred:

ideas, but just in a careful way.

Fred:

So he basically wrote this dialogue on two

Fred:

chief world systems in which he had three people arguing together about these views of

Fred:

the Copernican view of the world, the old what's called the Ptolemaic view of the world,

Fred:

which is the view of the earth at the center of the universe that was accepted by the

Fred:

Church.

Fred:

And so Galileo probably wasn't quite as

Fred:

careful as he should have been, and he was just a little too vociferous, basically.

Fred:

He couldn't help himself, and he had to make the case for the Copernican view stronger seem

Fred:

stronger than the other cases.

Fred:

And then certainly at the end of the book,

Fred:

there were some words that the Church had told him.

Fred:

You have to put if you're going to say something good about the Copernican view, you

Fred:

have to say something about well, there was a certain sentence or a set of sentences you had

Fred:

to say, which sort of had to qualify everything and basically say, well don't

Fred:

really know anything and God can do anything.

Fred:

And he basically took those words and he put

Fred:

them in the voice of the person of the story, who was really kind of a simpleton Simplicius,

Fred:

I think was Simplicius.

Fred:

That's it.

Fred:

Yeah, that's the character.

Fred:

Simplicius.

Fred:

So that's what basically led to more denunciations.

Fred:

And then the Pope getting absolutely furious when he learned what happened.

Fred:

And then he was dragged before the Inquisition and forced to recant, basically.

Fred:

And then put under initially was meant to be imprisonment for life, and then it was later

Fred:

commuted because the many powerful people tried to help Galileo at this point.

Fred:

And at that later, it was commuted to house arrest in his home know, in Arquetry IBLI.

Fred:

But I mean, the big conflict, of course know, how much is this Galileo thing, the Galileo

Fred:

affair? How much does it tell us about if there are

Fred:

conflict between science and religion? Because a lot of historians today have come

Fred:

out and said, well, this doesn't say that there's a real conflict between science and

Fred:

Galileo.

Fred:

He just didn't know politically what was going

Fred:

on.

Fred:

He just overstepped his bounds a little bit.

Fred:

He could have finessed his way better through this, things like that.

Fred:

It was a bad political situation for the Church and so forth.

Fred:

And certainly Galileo, he certainly was very assertive, and he loved to ridicule his

Fred:

enemies, and so he had made a number of enemies.

Fred:

There's a lot of debate about that.

Fred:

But in my mind, this still comes down to

Fred:

ultimately the fact that he was arguing for the truth of the Copernican system based on

Fred:

evidence and trying to give rational arguments for it.

Fred:

And the Church was basically using force against him to censor him.

Fred:

That is the main issue, and a lot of historians just don't want to.

Blair:

See that that's true.

Blair:

Now, in keeping with the theme of your book,

Blair:

what was Francis Bacon's warning about not mixing God's?

Blair:

Two.

Fred:

I mean, I thought this was interesting because it don't I don't think I've ever seen

Fred:

anybody explicitly make this connection.

Blair:

Yeah, I never heard clear.

Fred:

Francis Bacon and he wrote a lot and in numerous places.

Fred:

Francis Bacon in his advice, talking about science and how to do science, he basically

Fred:

says do not mix God's two books.

Fred:

He said you should study there are two books

Fred:

from God that we have.

Fred:

There's the Bible and there's the natural

Fred:

world around us and we can study he says you should study both, study the Bible and you

Fred:

should also study the natural world.

Fred:

So these are God's two books.

Fred:

And he says but he says whatever you do, do not mix them because you're going to cause all

Fred:

sorts of problems if you do mix them.

Fred:

And he said this repeatedly in his writings.

Fred:

And Bacon was very influential, certainly all the British thinkers after him.

Fred:

I think Bacon wrote a lot of his work around the year a little after 1600, 1620 was his

Fred:

book on logic, 16 five, I believe, was one of his books about the grand project of science.

Fred:

But he was very influential on a lot of people at this time, a lot of people looking into

Fred:

trying to learn about scientific type things.

Fred:

But I saw God's.

Fred:

Two books.

Fred:

This whole idea of God's two books and you

Fred:

shouldn't intermingle them struck me as very much as coming from probably very indirectly,

Fred:

but coming from Aquinas and his idea that there's reason here and that works and there's

Fred:

faith here.

Fred:

And there's not much little overlap between

Fred:

the.

Blair:

Talked about or we mentioned Isaac Newton before, so let's jump to evolution now.

Blair:

I wasn't aware, although this makes sense when I think about it, I wasn't aware that prior to

Blair:

Darwin there was other theorists looking at evolution.

Blair:

And so can you delve into a couple of those people and how did Darwin capitalize on that?

Blair:

If you would, another two hour discussion.

Fred:

No, I can try to do it mean, even Darwin's own mean, erasmus Darwin actually

Fred:

wrote a short work and you sort of speculated about filaments of life and that life had

Fred:

somehow changed.

Fred:

In fact, I think even if you go to the ancient

Fred:

Greeks, there's at least one ancient Greek thinker who actually did some wild speculation

Fred:

that somehow things gradually life, living things gradually changed over time.

Fred:

And they originally came out of the water, out of the sea.

Fred:

But if you look at so there was some here, people who speculated wildly here or there

Fred:

about the mean.

Fred:

But the first person who really came up with a

Fred:

solid theory was Jean Baptiste Lamarck.

Fred:

And so this was like, I think it was in 1809,

Fred:

he wrote he published a book, I forget his exact, exact position, but he was within the

Fred:

French government.

Fred:

He was supported by the French government in

Fred:

some way doing his studies.

Fred:

And he came out with his theory of, I guess

Fred:

what's now known as Lamarckism or the idea that inherited certain characteristics can be

Fred:

inherited.

Fred:

And the famous one we hear in school when.

Fred:

We learn this is about the giraffes, right? Why do giraffes have such long necks?

Fred:

Is because at a certain point, trees were getting within a certain area, trees were

Fred:

getting sparser, and more of the leaves were higher up.

Fred:

So these animals, the precursors to the giraffes, kept on having to stretch their

Fred:

necks to get to the food.

Fred:

And the act of their stretching their necks to

Fred:

get to their food basically got into their system in such a way that the children of

Fred:

these giraffes basically had longer necks because of the striving that they had to find

Fred:

to reach the food.

Fred:

So anyway, Lamarck did have he thought that

Fred:

there is a kind of natural must be some natural process by which living things over

Fred:

long periods of time slowly get more complex and change over time.

Fred:

He actually thought that living things must have somehow emerged out of nonliving things

Fred:

and that somehow there's some spontaneous generation that went on and maybe he thought

Fred:

still goes on, that in the world around us, there's always some.

Fred:

If you look at pond water and take a piece of pond water, you'll see that there's little

Fred:

things that start growing in it.

Fred:

So he saw that as evidence.

Fred:

Well, there must be things, living things come from non living things.

Fred:

And then as they get more people were looking also at all the fossils, and that's a fossil

Fred:

record.

Fred:

And they could know if you go back much

Fred:

further in time, the fossils become simpler, the organisms are somehow simpler.

Fred:

So that's where Lamarck his ideas came from.

Fred:

So his ideas were not super popular.

Fred:

And then after Lamarck, there were other figures.

Fred:

There's a Scotsman named Robert Chambers who wrote a book basically saying that somehow God

Fred:

created the world so that all living creatures evolve in a certain way.

Fred:

But his book, while very popular, was also mocked by so many people because Chambers

Fred:

didn't really have any evidence whatsoever for this idea.

Fred:

And then Darwin came along and he was doing his research, and it took him I mean, after

Fred:

doing a lot of research with the certainly he went on this long boat trip with the HNS

Fred:

beagle and basically did a lot of observations of tons of different animals and similarities

Fred:

and differences in animals.

Fred:

So it was basically looking at the kinds of

Fred:

similarities and differences among animals in different places that could possibly explain

Fred:

something about more fundamental about where they came from or that they've changed over

Fred:

time.

Fred:

But, yeah, he noticed things like he noticed

Fred:

kinds of similarities and differences between different animals that did not quite make

Fred:

sense if you would think that God designed every different organism to be perfectly fit,

Fred:

its exact environment right there, which was the predominant view among a lot of scholars

Fred:

of scientists at that time.

Fred:

So that didn't make sense, basically because

Fred:

of the similarities of different animals.

Fred:

Things like the fact that Marsupials, you only

Fred:

find them in certain parts of the world close to where Australia is in that area.

Fred:

But even though those identical types of environments, if you know, in the new world,

Fred:

if you look in almost places which have almost exact identical environment, you have

Fred:

something different.

Fred:

So it made sense that certain animals might

Fred:

have migrated nearby to different places and changed in that migration.

Fred:

And then eventually he came across this idea.

Fred:

He started thinking about how animals, when

Fred:

it's difficult for animals to live in a certain environment, a lot of animals die and

Fred:

there's a lot of variation.

Fred:

He was also impressed by how much variation

Fred:

there is among when animals reproduce.

Fred:

And if you look at the children of a certain

Fred:

group of animals and if you look at their descendants, how much every little attribute

Fred:

that they have seems to be a little bit different, and that he was basically by

Fred:

looking at that fact and looking at the fact that a lot of these don't survive in

Fred:

challenging environments.

Fred:

Perhaps most of them don't involve survive.

Fred:

Then he looked at, well, this must be some sort of natural selection.

Fred:

And he was aware of what was called artificial selection, that breeders, when they wanted to

Fred:

treat, get the right kind of dogs to use, they were always selectively deciding which dogs to

Fred:

breed with which other dogs in order to try to change their dogs in a certain way.

Fred:

And that clearly worked.

Fred:

So clearly, the dogs we had somehow people

Fred:

over thousands of years, we have changed dogs.

Fred:

The nature of dogs.

Blair:

True.

Fred:

Significantly so.

Fred:

He was impressed by that and many other

Fred:

countless other animals that breeders have changed.

Fred:

So basically, that's how we came up with natural selection.

Blair:

Okay, that was a great summation, frankly.

Fred:

Thank you for that.

Fred:

Thanks.

Blair:

And of course, now to counter evolution, we have creationism and intelligent

Blair:

or intelligent.

Martin:

Design, so called intelligence.

Blair:

Yes. Right.

Blair:

Who are the hucksters today promoting that?

Blair:

And Christianity.

Blair:

They say that Christianity actually laid the

Blair:

foundation for the birth of science, and science and faith are compatible.

Fred:

Oh, well, that's tying two very different things together.

Fred:

Let me talk a bit about intelligent design first.

Fred:

Sure.

Fred:

The idea of Darwin's theory of evolution, but

Fred:

first it had a few ups and downs, certainly since he first came out.

Fred:

In fact, Darwin himself, backpedaled on know, after Lord Kelvin, had basically looked at the

Fred:

Earth, the nature of the Earth and the heat flow within the Earth and concluded that the

Fred:

Earth couldn't possibly be that old because assuming Earth was molten anyway, there were

Fred:

certain ups and downs.

Fred:

And at a certain point, genetics, the idea of

Fred:

Mendel's discoveries had to be brought into the fold.

Fred:

And that didn't happen later.

Fred:

So there wasn't the clear idea of evolution as

Fred:

a whole.

Fred:

And the whole Darwinian was called the

Fred:

Darwinian, the synthesis of Darwin into a really complete theory of evolution that

Fred:

probably didn't happen until the 1920s.

Blair:

Oh, I see.

Fred:

And then at a certain point during the 20th century, people started discovering more

Fred:

of these ideas about evolution and then you have this reaction against it among a lot of

Fred:

people against evolution because of course, it certainly challenges the whole biblical view

Fred:

of the origin of humanity and Adam and Eve and all that.

Blair:

Just a bit.

Fred:

Just a bit.

Fred:

Yes, of course.

Fred:

The most recent thing which had come back up in the I think it was bigger in the 1990s was

Fred:

this idea of intelligent design.

Fred:

Earlier, I guess there was what was called

Fred:

scientific creationism, which basically tried to portray these views of God creating

Fred:

everything as somehow being scientific.

Fred:

The idea of intelligent design was that I

Fred:

think it comes down to what one scientist called it irreducible complexity.

Fred:

He said that evolution is good.

Fred:

It can explain things if you're talking about

Fred:

small, very small changes over a certain period of time.

Fred:

But if you look at certain mechanisms, biological mechanisms, and some of them seem

Fred:

so complicated, there does not seem any conceivable way that very small changes over

Fred:

time could possibly have led to these changes.

Fred:

And one of the most famous ones was the

Fred:

bacteria flagellum.

Fred:

So this is kind of like a tail on certain

Fred:

bacteria that can wiggle and propel the bacterial cell, propel it around.

Fred:

And this thing has kind of a it has kind of a thing which allows it to rotate.

Fred:

So it's like a little bit amazing little mechanism, kind of a motor.

Fred:

And so one scientist, I think his name was Michael Behe, if I remember correctly,

Fred:

promoted this idea and he talks about this.

Fred:

He said, well, this is obviously too

Fred:

complicated for evolution to do.

Fred:

This is an example of there must be some

Fred:

intelligent designer that designed this to be the way it is now.

Fred:

Other people after that came along and looked at it and said, well, yes, the flagellum is

Fred:

pretty complicated in this way, but if you look carefully, look at the pieces.

Fred:

His famous example also was the mousetrap.

Fred:

He said if you look at the pieces of a

Fred:

mousetrap, you have the piece that holds the cheese and you have the piece that the big

Fred:

spring that flips over all these pieces.

Fred:

If you had a process which could just change

Fred:

one piece at a time, there's no way you could actually create something as complicated as a

Fred:

mousetrap because it's only valuable if it's a complete mousetrap.

Fred:

If you have half a mousetrap, it's not going to catch any mice.

Fred:

If you have the pieces, if you have all the pieces except one in a standard mousetrap,

Fred:

it's not going to work at all.

Fred:

So this was the idea where the bacterial

Fred:

flagellum was like was supposed to be kind of like this mousetrap type thing.

Fred:

But other people, other biologists came around and said, well, wait a minute.

Fred:

Just because a mechanism seems to let me see how they argued this.

Fred:

They basically said just because a particular if you look at the bacterial phagellum, it has

Fred:

a couple of parts, and it turns out some of these parts actually have use for other

Fred:

purposes for certain bacteria.

Fred:

So there's actually the piece which is sort of

Fred:

the rotating motor part is very pointy.

Fred:

Well, it turns out there are other organisms

Fred:

which have a piece which is almost just like that, and it doesn't rotate at all, but it's

Fred:

used to inject itself into a cell of something it's trying to attack, and it's injecting

Fred:

itself.

Fred:

So basically the idea is that Beh wasn't

Fred:

looking hard enough to try to explain where these things came from, where these parts came

Fred:

from, and that these pieces, even though you might not have had to complete all the pieces

Fred:

that led to the flagellum that each other pieces could be seen as actually useful and

Fred:

actually life enhancing for that thing, but not necessarily doing the same thing.

Fred:

I don't know if I've butchered that.

Fred:

Does that make sense?

Martin:

In a really great sense.

Martin:

And we definitely have to do follow up.

Martin:

It's so fascinating to listen to you, Fred.

Fred:

I'm sure with some more time, I could explain that a lot better.

Blair:

That's fine, but you're doing fine.

Blair:

You're doing fine, really, honestly.

Blair:

And so the second part of that question was, who are the hucksters today promoting that

Blair:

Christianity laid the foundation for science or at the birth of science?

Blair:

And so, yeah, I think one of them is like is his name Rodney Stark or stark, yes.

Fred:

Yeah, rodney Stark.

Fred:

I think he's one of the worst.

Fred:

He's an academic.

Fred:

And others like him have basically tried to

Fred:

argue that it was Christianity which was necessary for the birth of modern science and

Fred:

you needed the Christian worldview in order for science to be born at all.

Fred:

Well, first of all, he says he actually tends to minimize or deny that there was any such

Fred:

thing as science in ancient Greece.

Blair:

Oh, really?

Fred:

Yeah.

Blair:

Okay.

Fred:

And he says, well, basically that doesn't really count as science.

Fred:

What really was important for science is the modern development of the modern scientific

Fred:

method, which somehow was based on this idea of a biblical law, or it was based on the idea

Fred:

of a natural law.

Fred:

But if you think of a law well, law, what does

Fred:

the word law come from? Well, it comes from things that people make.

Fred:

It comes from people write laws.

Fred:

Right.

Fred:

That's where the word law comes from.

Fred:

So he thought the idea of God writing these

Fred:

laws that the rest of the world must sort of fall in line with is inherent in the whole

Fred:

idea of a natural law that scientists are trying to find.

Fred:

And if I think I can find just look, find a quote from him.

Blair:

I will find take your time, please.

Fred:

Yeah. He writes that he says, Christianity depicted God as a rational,

Fred:

responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being in the universe as his personal creation, thus

Fred:

having a rational, lawful, stable structure awaiting human comprehension.

Fred:

So that's what he writes and he argues.

Blair:

But he skipped over the Old Testament.

Fred:

Yeah, exactly.

Fred:

And he also gives example.

Fred:

He certainly likes to quote certain scientists from the scientific revolution, I mean,

Fred:

including Isaac Newton or Robert Boyle, the chemist, people like that did like to I'm they

Fred:

talked about how religious they were and they talked know, they were excited by God's

Fred:

creation and they were studying God's creation.

Fred:

And some of them even said studying the natural world is a religious experience.

Fred:

For me, different people said that.

Fred:

But if you look at what were they really doing

Fred:

when they were studying the natural world? They were making observations, they were using

Fred:

logic to trying to understand these observations.

Fred:

They were putting together plausible hypotheses and trying to test them.

Fred:

And if you look at what they're doing, doesn't have any real connection with the religious

Fred:

worldview.

Fred:

The Bible presents God as somebody who likes

Fred:

to act a lot and likes to intervene a lot and does all sorts of things.

Fred:

And so I think Stark really doesn't have an argument to stand on.

Blair:

Agree. I agree.

Blair:

We're coming up on the hour mark, so let's

Blair:

end, if we can, with a positive.

Blair:

Now, of course, Martin and I are both longtime

Blair:

objectivists and we admire Ms. Rand and Dr.

Blair:

Peacock and others.

Blair:

But her identification of the primacy of existence versus the primacy of consciousness,

Blair:

I think is going to be, if it isn't already, a breakthrough in science.

Blair:

What do you think of that?

Fred:

Oh, absolutely.

Fred:

In a breakthrough of way that we think about

Fred:

reason.

Fred:

True.

Fred:

And how reason works.

Fred:

Certainly among my target audience, I think

Fred:

that is probably the most controversial view of my book, because the main sort of thesis of

Fred:

my book is that the conflict between science and religion ultimately is well, it's reason

Fred:

versus faith, which is widely accepted and known.

Fred:

But I think more fundamentally, it comes down to the primacy of existence versus the primacy

Fred:

of consciousness.

Fred:

And that a faith based view of the world is

Fred:

basically accepting the primacy of consciousness, that God's consciousness, that

Fred:

some consciousness has created the existing world, whereas the scientific, the reason

Fred:

based view ultimately is based on what Einran calls the premise of existence.

Fred:

That existence exists, and it's the starting point for everything.

Blair:

Right.

Fred:

And that consciousness, it's an awareness of things that exist.

Fred:

And ultimately consciousness doesn't create things that exist.

Fred:

I mean, it guides our minds.

Fred:

Our consciousness guide us in taking action in

Fred:

the world, which in that sense changes existence.

Fred:

But it has to start with an acceptance of things as they are, existence itself.

Blair:

Yes. I don't know if I want to call it a rebirth, but certainly there's a burgeoning

Blair:

interest again in Aristotelian ideas in some universities, unfortunately not very many.

Blair:

But do you see any positive signs of this yourself?

Fred:

I'm not personally aware of it.

Fred:

But I've heard that too, that certainly in

Fred:

certain philosophy departments, certain scholars have more interest in Aristotelian

Fred:

approaches and Aristotelian ideas in philosophy.

Fred:

And I think that's to the extent that is occurring that's wonderful.

Fred:

Yeah.

Fred:

I do not know how much of an impact that's

Fred:

happening anywhere outside of those philosophy departments then.

Blair:

That's true.

Blair:

What do you conclude or what is your

Blair:

conclusion about science in the 21st century? That'll be my final question as we look ahead.

Fred:

Yeah, I'm not sure if I have any firm conclusions about where it's going at this

Fred:

point.

Fred:

The good news is that for the last century or

Fred:

so, most scientific work has in some sense been decoupled from religion.

Fred:

So there's a lot of scientific work being done which is not being impeded by a religious

Fred:

approach which has been basically going on for maybe about two centuries.

Fred:

Although you could certainly argue there are certain sciences which have religious

Fred:

influences on them.

Fred:

There are some mystical interpretations of

Fred:

modern physics that happens, although I don't think many physicists today take any of the

Fred:

mystical approach very seriously.

Fred:

So that's good news.

Fred:

And then certainly in terms of medicine and medical ethics, that's where there's more of a

Fred:

threat to religion.

Fred:

The religious approaches are still used a lot

Fred:

there a lot of people are using religion as their framework for understanding any kind of

Fred:

issues in medical ethics and of which many more will come up in the future.

Fred:

And also I have a chapter talking about certain what I call religious like elements of

Fred:

the environmental movement.

Fred:

And I think that's probably going forward

Fred:

that's probably the most of the threat that I see going forward where people are looking at

Fred:

untouched nature apart from human interaction.

Fred:

Untouched wilderness, wilderness in itself.

Blair:

Environmentalism?

Fred:

Yeah, the whole environmental view of intrinsic value, the intrinsic value of an

Fred:

untouched world.

Fred:

That seems religious in an important sense.

Blair:

It's a major threat, actually.

Fred:

I see that as a big threat going forward.

Fred:

Yeah.

Martin:

And I think you definitely have to come back and talk about that.

Martin:

And as Blair said, we will end on a positive note.

Martin:

So please, Fred, please say where the listener could find your works and where you are in

Martin:

cyberspace.

Fred:

Yes, sure.

Fred:

Well, first let me mention I do have a substac

Fred:

blog just called Sileronscience.

Blair:

Very good.

Fred:

Substack.com. That's Siler. That's S-E-I-L-E-R.

Fred:

That's where I'm writing now.

Fred:

Try to come out with something new at least

Fred:

once a month.

Fred:

Don't always succeed.

Fred:

And my book again is God Versus Nature the conflict between religion and Science and

Fred:

history.

Fred:

And it's being sold on Amazon and there are

Fred:

also electronic copies.

Fred:

I believe it's available.

Fred:

It's available, I know, in Kindle and also some other forms of ebooks.

Fred:

I believe I saw it on books.

Blair:

Good, good.

Fred:

And so I think there are some other places that's available.

Blair:

Well, all right, ladies and gentlemen, today our guest has been fred Seiler, author

Blair:

of God Versus Nature.

Blair:

Fred, thanks for manning the Foxhole with us

Blair:

today.

Fred:

Okay, well, thank you for having me on.

Fred:

It's been a pleasure.

Martin:

Thank you very much.

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The Secular Foxhole
Separation of Religion and State
As a freethinker, are you looking through binoculars out at the world in the safety of a foxhole? Get fuel for your soul and intellectual ammunition by listening to The Secular Foxhole podcast, in order to fight for the separation of religion and state.

Blair chose this name (The Secular Foxhole) to dispute the myth that there are no atheists in foxholes, but also as a place to share ideas and defend Free Speech. The co-hosts both advocate the separation of Church and State, but also Economics and State. In short, Liberalism, Individualism, and Capitalism.
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Blair Schofield

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I'm a 'lapsed' blogger who turned his blog into a podcast. Now the task is to keep both up to date! My co-host Martin Lindeskog and I have already celebrated our one year anniversary, with the podcast.

Martin Lindeskog

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Creator, ✍🏻 Tea Book Sketches. Indie Biz Philosopher ⚛️ & New Media 📲 Advisor, TeaParty.Media. Blogger since 2002 and podcaster🎙since 2006. First podcast: EGO NetCast. Latest podcast: High Five for Hemp. Support 💲My Work and 🗽 Freedom of Expression: https://bio.link/lyceum