The Fine Tuning Argument is Stronger Than Ever

Episode Transcript

Sean McDowell: [upbeat music] Does the argument for fine-tuning still stand, or has it been defeated? Our guest today, Dr. Jay Richards, is one of the world's foremost defenders of fine-tuning and the thesis that we live in a privileged planet. Now, we're gonna dive into this argument, consider some of the biggest objections against it. But before we dive in, thanks for joining me here at Talbot School of Theology at Biola to talk about this argument and the new movie coming out called The Story of Everything.

Jay Richards: Sean, so great to be with you. I mean, we've talked and known each other for years, but I don't think I've ever been in the studio with you, so this is a lot of fun.

Sean McDowell: This is the first time-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Which makes it cool in person.

Jay Richards: Definitely.

Sean McDowell: So appreciate you making the trip.

Jay Richards: Sure.

Sean McDowell: I'm eager to dive in.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: And I wanna start by asking, as I said earlier, you've been one of the most outspoken-

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm

Sean McDowell: ... And articulate defenders of fine-tuning. Take me back to when you first kinda encountered- ... An argument for cosmic design, and how did it affect you, if at all?

Jay Richards: So I had studied philosophy and theology, a sort of those things, so I knew about, Saint Thomas Aquinas's five ways, you know, one of those is a design argument, and was really interested, honestly, in arguments for God's existence. CS Lewis's apologetics in college were huge for me really. It's not that I fell away from the faith, I just doubted it and needed some serious answers.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

Jay Richards: And Lewis provided that, like he has for-

Sean McDowell: Good

Jay Richards: ... Probably hundreds of millions of people.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: And then I was doing a PhD in philosophy and theology at at Princeton Seminary. A guy named William Dembski, who's known-

Sean McDowell: Oh, man

Jay Richards: ... You know, was actually working on, I don't know, like, his 12th degree or something.

Sean McDowell: [laughs]

Jay Richards: He was working on a masters. And we got to be friends. And weirdly, the very first article I ever had published in an academic journal was about the fine-tuning argument. In fact, it was me, strangely, I mean, your audience will know the references, but I was taking Alvin Plantinga's, ontological argument for the existence of God and-

Sean McDowell: Okay

Jay Richards: ... And necessity and these sorts of things, and applying it to the multiverse theory, the idea that, yeah, you can sort of explain away the fine-tuning by postulating, you know, lots of universes, maybe infinitely many universes. And thought I found, okay, a sort of, a problem, that it ended up sort of leading to theism whichever way you went. And so that's what kinda got me interested in fine-tuning. Well, Bill Dembski was in this, part of this nascent intelligent design movement at the time. It was even, it was really before the program started at the Discovery Institute in 1996. And so really because of Bill, he invited me to Mere Creation. I'm just realizing, right here in 1996-

Sean McDowell: Yep

Jay Richards: ... At Biola University, that's where I met David Berlinski.

Sean McDowell: Oh, my goodness.

Jay Richards: I think I had met Steve. It was all the people, right? Mike Behe, it was, about the time his book was coming out. And ended up, honestly, these kinds of encounters change your life, and so that's how I really ended up working on this really full time for some years. It was that kind of coincidence. I don't remember who told me about the fine-tuning argument.

Sean McDowell: That's fair, yeah.

Jay Richards: I think it was The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by Barrow and Tipler. I think I had read that-

Sean McDowell: Oh, okay

Jay Richards: ... Now that I'm thinking about it. But of course Dembski and I being in the same place, I look back on that-

Sean McDowell: Oh, yeah

Jay Richards: ... I mean, it's so unbelievably providential. And of course he was just sort of focusing on the sort of formal structure of a design inference.

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm.

Jay Richards: I was honestly always very interested in these cosmic arguments, because you've got, you know, there's, I think there's evidence for design in the origin of life and the structure of life and the origin of the universe, sort of across, the created order. But I've always really been interested in these cosmic questions- ... Honestly just because I'm super interested [laughs] in astronomy.

Sean McDowell: That's a great reason-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... To do so.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: I that's one of the best reasons, you have a personal fascination with it.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Now, one more question before we dive into-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Some of the evidence in the case.

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm.

Sean McDowell: It sounds like you grew up in a Christian home-

Jay Richards: Yep

Sean McDowell: ... Went through a period of doubt.

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm.

Sean McDowell: So apologetics, intelligent design was presumably- ... Not a piece of the reason you are a believer-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... But maybe helped you hold on to your faith. Is that fair?

Jay Richards: That's right. That's a really good way to say it. And so I would say, if anything, I had, like a lot of kinda Christian intellectuals, I think in college I had come up with a way to sort of expl- okay, even if there's a kinda chemical evolutionary story for the origin of life- ... Even if the Darwinian story is sort of true insofar as it goes, it doesn't explain lots of other things. And so I didn't initially really even sort of look at those questions. I was actually interested in things like the reliability of the New Testament-

Sean McDowell: Okay

Jay Richards: ... Evidence for the resurrection.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

Jay Richards: Your dad, I'm old enough that-

Sean McDowell: Really? Okay

Jay Richards: ... Your dad's The Evidence-

Sean McDowell: I didn't know that

Jay Richards: ... That Demands a Verdict. I was at a very liberal-

Sean McDowell: Great

Jay Richards: ... College studying the documentary hypothesis of the Old Testament. And so, really, sort of a reader of apologetics. But what it really did is it wasn't that I was an atheist and a materialist and needed to ... Convinced of that. It's just that you end up in an academic setting where you sorta take the truths of the faith-

Sean McDowell: Sure

Jay Richards: ... For granted. I'm saying the Apostle's Creed every week, and then all of a sudden it's like, well wait, maybe that's just because I happened to grow up with this. But is there any sort of good evidence for it? And somebody gave me that six-pack of, books by CS Lewis, and that played a crucial role, and then-

Sean McDowell: Amazing

Jay Richards: ... You know, More Than a Carpenter. I'm sure you've been told this, but I mean, it's just now occurring to me. It was actually some of your dad's-

Sean McDowell: That's amazing

Jay Richards: ... Books that really shored up the questions about the, reliability of scripture.

Sean McDowell: Oh, that's super encouraging.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: And other people have told me that, but every single time it gives me goosebumps. So there's a lot of design arguments- ... You could have leaned into, could have developed.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: And right, that conference here in 1996.

Jay Richards: Yes.

Sean McDowell: I was a student in '96.

Jay Richards: [laughs]

Sean McDowell: I wasn't at that conference. I just wasn't there. I was probably playing basketball and-

Jay Richards: [laughs]

Sean McDowell: ... Doing whatever I was.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: It's amazing I missed it, but Like, why did you lean into the fine-tuning argument-

Jay Richards: Yes

Sean McDowell: ... And The Privileged Planet? We'll unpack a little bit more what that is.

Jay Richards: Sure.

Sean McDowell: But why did you say, "This is my contribution. I wanna develop- ... And defend this argument"?

Jay Richards: Okay, so I would say it's probably several things. One is honestly providence and just sort of connecting with a guy named-

Sean McDowell: That's great

Jay Richards: ... Guillermo Gonzalez. He's an astronomer.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: It turns out that Guillermo and I did not meet until about 1999 in person, but he was present at that Mere Creation conference as a postdoc, very quiet, introverted, so of course we didn't meet. And I was always interested in the fine-tuning argument, and especially the sort of cosmological argument because it holds whatever your theory of the sort of origin and history-

Sean McDowell: That's right

Jay Richards: ... Of life is, right?

Sean McDowell: Yep.

Jay Richards: It's like the whole show.

Sean McDowell: Like the age of the Earth-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Or all that.

Jay Richards: It's like I don't-

Sean McDowell: Yeah

Jay Richards: ... You know, it's like whatever you wanna think about that.

Sean McDowell: Yep.

Jay Richards: This one's really generalizable, I think is why I was really attracted to it. And I thought the argument was just, was great. I thought it could use some shoring up philosophically, and I've worked on that over the years. But really wanted to sort of say, "Okay, is there something new here?" And then I actually, I read an op-ed by this, at the time I think he was a postdoc at University of Washington.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: A guy named Guillermo Gonzalez.

Sean McDowell: Yep.

Jay Richards: This is, so this is the '90s when we'd just started detecting extrasolar planets, and so every extrasolar planet that would be discovered, there would be a news push, probably, you know, controlled by the communications operation at NASA, about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. And it just made Guillermo grumpy 'cause he said, "Look, it takes a lot more than just-

Sean McDowell: [laughs]

Jay Richards: ... To sort of ball around a star to get a habitable planet. So he wrote this piece in The Wall Street Journal. I happened to read it.

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm.

Jay Richards: University of Washington, that was literally three miles from where I was in downtown Seattle, working

Sean McDowell: With Discovery

Jay Richards: ... Discovery Institute.

Sean McDowell: Yep.

Jay Richards: Yep. And so I just looked up his number and I called him, and he said, "Well, you know, I've actually been wanting to call you guys at some point." [laughs]

Sean McDowell: Oh, okay.

Jay Richards: "I don't know if you want or not," you know.

Sean McDowell: [laughs]

Jay Richards: And so he said, "Hey, I've got this cool article about eclipses." and so I went down to the University of Washington and we had lunch. I still remember this vividly, and it was an article called, Wonderful Eclipses in Astronomy and Geophysics.

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm.

Jay Richards: And it was just about this interesting study that he had done. He thought, "Well, it's weird that from the surface of the Earth we can see perfect solar eclipses." So this needs a little setup. So an eclipse, of course, would be, you know, a solar eclipse is where you're just basically looking at the sun. You're on a platform. Something passes in front of the sun, in our case the moon, and it blocks out the light. People don't often think about it, but there's this weird coincidence that the moon and the sun have the same shape and size- ... In our sky-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... Even though they're totally different sizes and distances and all these things. And he just thought, "Well, that's kind of weird." Astronomers had noticed this, but just, they sort of treated it as weird. He thought, "I'll-"

Sean McDowell: Is the sun 400 times the size but 400 times the distance?

Jay Richards: Well, exactly.

Sean McDowell: Am I remembering-

Jay Richards: That's it

Sean McDowell: ... The ratio?

Jay Richards: Exactly.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

Jay Richards: Exactly.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: And they're both really, you know, quite spherical, at least to the-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... Naked eye. And so there's just this weird sort of alignment. And he thought at the time, of course he'd developed software that made these kind of calculations easier, and he thought, "I wonder what eclipses would be like from the other planets." [laughs] And so he did-

Sean McDowell: That's brilliant

Jay Richards: ... This calculation. I think it was 65 of the major moons initially. So Mercury and Venus don't have moons. The Earth is the closest planet to the sun with a moon, and then you've got Mars, which has a couple of little kind of probably captured asteroid moons, not very spectacular. It's, so it's really the giants when you get out to Jupiter and Saturn-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... That you get a lot of moons, and then the outer planets. And the long and the short of it is he discovered if you look at the 65 major moons, the one place where you really get perfect eclipses is the one place where there are observers. That is Earth.

Sean McDowell: Amazing.

Jay Richards: There's this one kind of exception. It's Prometheus, a potato-shaped moon. And, I think it's around Saturn, but it only lasts about a second, and it hardly counts. And so that's just weird. And he was talking about, this idea that, well, you know, we know about this fine-tuning argument that, things have to be very precisely set up in the universe in order for life to even be able to exist, right? To even have a planet where life can exist.

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm.

Jay Richards: But Guillermo, I mean, he was sort of speculating, but what if the universe is also fine-tuned for science itself, for discovery? Wouldn't you expect something like this? And what he was thinking was he was thinking as an astronomer about how the existence of perfect eclipses had been very important, in the history of scientific discovery. It's like a natural experiment set up, made it much easier to figure certain things out that we couldn't have otherwise. And so he thought, what if those things that are needed, in a planetary environment, so the so-called local fine-tuning, right? The type of star you're around, the size of your planet, stuff like that's really important for life in a planetary environment. What if those things also set up the best conditions overall for doing science? That would be a new argument, right? It would be a a, new thing, a new set of data, and that was probably, more than anything. I thought, "Okay, that would actually supplement all these other design arguments that are being developed," and it would actually, it works itself around. It circumvents certain objections, that people make against the regular fine-tuning argument that maybe we'll talk about in a minute. But that was really it. I mean, and so in some ways- ... I was, we were at the right place at the right time. I mean, other people could have figured out this argument, and we, when you do that, when you have a, what you think is an original idea, one day you're excited, and one day you think-

Sean McDowell: [laughs]

Jay Richards: ... You're crazy. That's why nobody ever thought of it, right? [laughs]

Sean McDowell: Totally.

Jay Richards: And so you go back and forth-

Sean McDowell: Totally

Jay Richards: ... Or you think, "Oh, this is so obvious," because I've been thinking about it for five years. Well, we found that Kepler, Johannes Kepler, who was a, ... Crucial figure in the history of astronomy, had suggested this, too, that it was important that the Earth rotate around the sun because it gives us this ability to calculate the parallax. It's this kind of mathematical calculation to be able to measure the distances to some nearby stars. And so his point was that God sort of set us up so that we could do science. So there were glimmers of this idea, but nobody had really sort of developed the argument in detail, in part- ... Because a lot of the evidence that we talk about in this book that came out, The Privileged Planet, was new. You know? We didn't have data about extrasolar planets-

Sean McDowell: Totally

Jay Richards: ... Until about the time we started writing.

Sean McDowell: I think I've told you this. We first met in 2004-

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm

Sean McDowell: ... At the Case for a Creator-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Conference.

Jay Richards: I remember that.

Sean McDowell: And it was amazing, hosted it when I was teaching high school full time. But The Privileged Planet is one of my favorite books. It was game changing for me. It's one thing to argue that the laws of physics are fine-tuned-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... To enable there to be life.

Jay Richards: Yep.

Sean McDowell: But then our place in the universe, we have to have the right kind of the right distance, of the right age.

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm.

Sean McDowell: We have to have surrounding planets. We have to have the right core. We have to have a moon at a certain tilt. Like, all these-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Things added up mathematically becomes impossible.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: But then you add the piece that says, wait a minute. These factors that enable us to survive also enable us to be in the best or an optimal position to make discoveries about the universe.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: That's where I was like, "Wait a minute here. This is, like, a tangible-" Evidence-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... For design, I think it's so compelling. Now, that's a whole conversation-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... We could have about that, and I love that. But maybe tell me before, one more question before-

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm

Sean McDowell: ... I'm gonna ask you to explain fine-tuning to us.

Jay Richards: Oh, yeah. Sure.

Sean McDowell: How have you seen the arguments in about, you said about the, so 1996, so it's been 30 years-

Jay Richards: Yes

Sean McDowell: ... Plus you've been tracking this.

Jay Richards: Yep.

Sean McDowell: How have the arguments, maybe as a whole, but more particularly in astronomy-

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm

Sean McDowell: ... Cosmology, and in physics adapted or changed over that time?

Jay Richards: So I would say, like, the kind of the philosophical precision of the argument has gotten better. In fact, a lot of people sort of, I'd say, on our side, like intelligent design- ... Friendly philosophers, pointed out some, there's some weaker and stronger ways to sort of formulate the argument like there is.

Sean McDowell: Sure.

Jay Richards: And so I think that's gotten much better. I would say if anything, the evidence has gotten much more solid. It's honestly, it's been iron sharpening iron for the last, 30 years in which, you know, people on podcasts can critique these things. And we've got, especially at the kinda level of the local fine-tuning, we have a whole lot more data. I mean, I think there were 100 or so, extrasolar planet discoveries when our book first came out, and it's over 5,000 now.

Sean McDowell: 5,000 now.

Jay Richards: Yeah. So, you know, it's a huge number.

Sean McDowell: [laughs]

Jay Richards: To, it's a, that's a lot of, additional data, and we made risky predictions-

Sean McDowell: You did

Jay Richards: ... In the 2004-

Sean McDowell: You did

Jay Richards: ... Edition. You know, so they said, "Okay, look, well, you've gotta prove that it's testable, right?" and so I'd say that's changed. There was a period of time in which publicly making intelligent design arguments, especially in biology, was extremely risky. In fact, if you're not tenured, it's usually a bad idea [laughs] to talk about it. But now, I mean, there are reasonable and respectable people that talk about these things. There are people that, you know, I'd I almost don't wanna mention names, but you know-

Sean McDowell: Yeah

Jay Richards: ... Tenured professors-

Sean McDowell: Sure

Jay Richards: ... Of cosmology that are, sympathetic and make these arguments. I don't think that- ... Was really true 30 years ago. What happened is you'd get academics or philosophers who are maybe a little, always a little safer to talk about these things. But it's, I think it's much more in the general public so that... One example. Charles Murray is a well-known conservative intellectual-

Sean McDowell: Yeah, interviewed him

Jay Richards: ... For decades.

Sean McDowell: Yep.

Jay Richards: Okay. Oh, yeah. ... You know, he was a well-known kinda conservative libertarian atheist, basically. Just sort

Sean McDowell: Total materialist. Yep

Jay Richards: ... You know, total materialist and atheist. Over the decades, he has this amazing story, of just realizing there's a heck of a lot more to the existence of God and to the claims of Christianity. And in his, in his new book where he talks about taking religion seriously-

Sean McDowell: Yeah

Jay Richards: ... He actually cites Steve Meyer's book [laughs] The Return of the God Hypothesis. In the book, he says, "Oh, if you wanna see some good arguments on this, here you go." famous years ago, of course, Anthony Flew, a longtime-

Sean McDowell: Yeah

Jay Richards: ... Atheist that became, I would say, a kind of a deist or a theist, before he died, really because of these design arguments. And then people like Thomas Nagel, another atheist, I'd say, we'd say at least-

Sean McDowell: Philosopher

Jay Richards: ... A philosopher.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: Yeah, or at least a naturalist, who both critical and skeptical of Darwinian materialism and also sort of realizes the force of this. And so I just think it's found its way into the culture, much more deeply than it was before. It was just sort of highly risky. It was like this-

Sean McDowell: Yeah. Yeah

Jay Richards: ... Loyal opposition of aca- crazy academics, you know, that are missing the gene that causes them not to take risks. Now it's, I'd say it's much more common to hear those kinds of things, though I do think the kind of citadels, the official spokesman for science, you know, they still, I think, feel like they kinda have to maintain the materialist thing.

Sean McDowell: Sure.

Jay Richards: But I just don't think the evidence is going in their favor.

Sean McDowell: And we'll get into some of that evidence.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: I just realized that my son is a sophomore here. He's 22 this month.

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm.

Sean McDowell: And I have a picture holding him in my right arm- ... And The Privileged Planet in my left hand-

Jay Richards: That's awesome. [laughs]

Sean McDowell: ... Reading it before that conference. Just brought that back to me. All right. We're, like, halfway in this interview, and I'm finally asking you-

Jay Richards: [laughs]

Sean McDowell: ... To define what's meant by fine-tuning-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... And maybe how you uniquely formulate the argument.

Jay Richards: Absolutely. So fine-tuning's a pretty basic idea. It's just imagine that there are all these things, at the cosmological level, so the cosmological fine-tuning, factors. They involve things called initial conditions, which has to do with, okay, what would the state of the universe at the very beginning need to be, have been like-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... In order to be where we are now? Those are initial conditions. Then you've got these constants, which are these these numerical values like G, or C, the speed of light, that take particular values within things that we call laws usually, which are usually-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... Formulated as differential equations. And the laws, the laws sort of just, okay, take for granted the universe and say, "Here's how things will change over time-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... Given the initial conditions and these constants." The idea of fine-tuning is that these constants and the initial conditions had to be very precisely set within very narrow, requirements in order for a universe to do anything that would allow for the existence of life. So I'm not talking about, okay, well, maybe there'd be fewer planets or something like that. Insofar as by life, we mean chemical life, so organisms that are made of chemicals that can transmit information. We can reproduce. We can build large three-dimensional molecules that code information in our proteins, things like that build our bodies. That's gonna require certain things. And so if you have something that's off, let's say- ... The G is too low, and so the gravity is not sort of strong enough so that at the beginning of the universe, the universe just doesn't ever hold together, right? So it can't form planets or stars or or elements. You're not gonna get life in that universe. That's the idea of fine-tuning. Think of it as a sorta multi-dimensional control panel, where all of these different factors in the universe, they had to be very precisely set. And if they were slightly different in various ways, you It's not that you'd just get a kinda different universe with a different kind of life. You wouldn't get a universe that could host life at all. That's the idea of fine-tuning.

Sean McDowell: Okay. So before we get to an explanation about what best accounts for fine-tuning-

Jay Richards: Right

Sean McDowell: ... Is the way you describe this about, say, gravity needs to be fine-tuned one times 10 to the 40th power-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Or so, is this largely and generally accepted within the scientific community? So the debate is over what explains

Jay Richards: Totally

Sean McDowell: ... Not is it.

Jay Richards: That's right.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

Jay Richards: Now, you might have some, a technical debate about some particular case, but there are really well-established cases, maybe we'll talk about in a minute, that I, so far as I know, no one seriously disputes. The question is, okay, what's the best explanation for it?

Sean McDowell: Okay

Jay Richards: ... Now, if you were to look at the literature, for a long time it would often be called the fine-tuning problem, which is sort of funny.

Sean McDowell: Oh.

Jay Richards: Yeah. So it wasn't like, okay, how do

Sean McDowell: Huh

Jay Richards: ... Sort of mess this thing up? It sort of, it's a problem because it seems intuitively like if the universe is fine-tuned, maybe it needed a fine-tuner. It was fine-tuned, right?

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: And that's a problem for, you know, a certain- ... Perspective. But the, yeah, the basic idea of fine-tuning, I is overwhelmingly and broadly held certainly by astronomers and physicists and cosmologists.

Sean McDowell: So I did a video with 100 apologists, and I think we interviewed you now to think about it. Ask them what they thought was the best argument for God. Creation was number one.

Jay Richards: Yep.

Sean McDowell: And that includes different arguments, but fine-tuning was one of the top. Second was the moral argument. I've wanted to do a video asking 100 atheists-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... What argument-- They obviously don't believe the argument works.

Jay Richards: Yes.

Sean McDowell: But if you had to pick one argument, which one maybe gives you pause and-

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm

Sean McDowell: ... Suggests God to you-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... The most? And I think it probably would be fine-tuning just-

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm

Sean McDowell: ... Based on my experience in hearing some people talk.

Jay Richards: That's right. Yep.

Sean McDowell: And if atheists are watching and you have a different take, tell me. I wanna know. I wanna get it right.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: But people like, Christopher Hitchens-

Jay Richards: Yes

Sean McDowell: ... Was like fine-tuning. So first off, it sounds like you agree with me. If

Jay Richards: Totally

Sean McDowell: ... What do you think it is about the fine-tuning argument that even people who don't believe maybe gives them a little bit of pause?

Jay Richards: Yeah. And you're right about Hitchens. In fact, I mean, I debated him in 2008. It was about God and science, and

Sean McDowell: Oh

Jay Richards: ... Camped out 'cause he's very rhetorically gifted, so I'm not gonna beat him there.

Sean McDowell: Super gifted. [laughs]

Jay Richards: So I just sort of camped out on, like, these empirical arguments. And he actually conceded, "Yeah, well, maybe there's something to that. Maybe deism is true." I mean, it was like-

Sean McDowell: Oh

Jay Richards: ... You know, right? So that's a concession.

Sean McDowell: Interesting. Okay.

Jay Richards: I think Richard Dawkins has admitted at different times that this is the one that maybe, you know, is, if he were gonna have to pick one.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: Right? I think it's probably, first of all, who discovered it, right? So it's not like it was a bunch of Christians, looking for evidence of, you know, God's activity. It was just physicists or atheists, people like, you know, Sir Fred Hoyle, that actually were able to anticipate and predict certain, features of fine-tuning based- ... Upon his observations. And so there's that. It ends up being sort of at the bottom of what most people take to be, in some ways, yes, the most abstract and reductionist in a certain sense, right? As particle physics or cosmology. But also really mathematical, what people think- ... In the kind of public imagination, the best kind of science would be something that's really robust mathematically, that you can build a model that can be tested. That's physics and astronomy, or physics and cosmology for sure. And so I think that's probably it more than anything else, is they realize, okay, this we call these the hard sciences people, and these are dis-discoveries from hard science, and they were discovered in the 20th century. They were literally new discoveries. They weren't some, you know, it wasn't just some kind of premise that people had always held. Nobody knew about the carbon resonance, right, in, [laughs] in the 17th century or the-

Sean McDowell: Yeah

Jay Richards: ... You know, or the initial conditions. I mean, even the idea didn't, wouldn't have made sense. So I think that's probably it. Recent discoveries, generalizable, based on hard science, and discovered by people that clearly didn't have any kind of theological agenda, at least any pro-theological agenda.

Sean McDowell: That makes total sense. I'd never pieced some of that together. So again, if you're an atheist and you're watching or you're listening to this, weigh in, tell us. Do you find

Jay Richards: Sure

Sean McDowell: ... Compelling at all? Would you add anything to the list-

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm

Sean McDowell: ... Of what Dr. Richard said? Take things away. But that makes sense. It's discovered by science. It wasn't Christians looking for it. In fact, tell us a little bit more about that. You said Fred Hoyle was one of the first.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: What was some of the first discoveries, and, like, how were people framing this when they first started to realize-

Jay Richards: Yes

Sean McDowell: ... "Wait a minute. What's going on here?" And maybe why was it so surprising?

Jay Richards: Yeah. So Hoyle, this is probably my favorite story on the fine-tuning.

Sean McDowell: Okay, good.

Jay Richards: And so in 1953, so this idea of, cosmic nucleosynthesis, so the basic idea is that you can get the elements that we learn in the periodic table, as long as you assume a few things about the sort of initial conditions at the Big Bang, right, and then the formation of stars and things that happen inside stars. So, you know, like our sun is using up hydrogen atoms and fusing them into helium atoms- ... In its core, and it eventually runs out of helium, and it works its way up the periodic table. But depending upon the size of the star, it, they can only do so much of this, and then you just, the elements get heavier and heavier, and this kind of process of fusion doesn't work. And so then you need other things like, neutron stars and supernovae and things like that in order to create these kind of physical conditions that can build the heavier elements in the periodic table. All right? So that's the idea of cosmic nucleosynthesis. And so if you look at the universe, it's actually mostly hydrogen and helium and then, the other stuff, you know. And so Hoyle was thinking about this when they sort of had a fairly strong understanding of the the math that would be required sort of in stars, the kind of astrophysics that would be requir-required for this. But then he noticed essentially that, okay, in order to have a universe with a lot of life in it, you need carbon. Carbon has these very-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... Particular properties.

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm.

Jay Richards: There's just nothing else like it. And there seems to be a heck of a lot more carbon, in the universe than there would be sort of on, in terms of common sense. And the reason is to get from helium, and then you get beryllium and and, lithium and boron in, to carbon. It's in the periodic table. So what happens is you need something to happen inside stars or these kind of stellar activities, in order to fuse certain parts of atoms to get carbon. And so what you can-

Sean McDowell: Gotcha

Jay Richards: ... Get is you've got helium, all right? And so you can sometimes get two helium nuclei, right? So that's this middle part of, you know, of these atoms. You can get two of them to kinda hang out-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... Together, but it's very unstable, and they, it will form something called beryllium-8, all right? Doesn't last very long, and you need a series of jumps in order to get carbon. 'Cause to get carbon, you actually need three helium nuclei to hang out together- ... For a long period of time, okay? And Hoyle said, "Okay, that's just not going to happen very often, and so you're not gonna get very much carbon." There must be a resonance, and so the resonance is just this kind of particular property in which- like imagine when you're swinging your child in a swing, right?

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: And so if you figure out, okay, they're moving this fast. If you do it right and you push them at the right speed, they can go higher and higher, whereas if you're off, right-

Sean McDowell: Yeah

Jay Richards: ... You can mess it up.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: That's a resonance.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

Jay Richards: And so imagine there's this thing, that sort of property of carbon in which there's a resonance in which things will happen more quickly. It's like a sweet spot. He predicted ahead of time, he said, "Given, the amount of carbon that we have, there must be a carbon resonance at this particular spot." All right? So he predicted it just based upon what would have to be, given the theory. Guess what?

Sean McDowell: It was

Jay Richards: ... They did that. They checked it in the lab, and he was exactly right.

Sean McDowell: That's amazing.

Jay Richards: So he discovered... And in fact, there's several of these resonances.

Sean McDowell: Wow.

Jay Richards: It just, it's... The problem with the, example is that it's so complicated, you know?

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: You kinda have to get chemistry and physics, but it's unbelievable. And, physicists know this story. And by the way, Fred Hoyle was an atheist who sort of late- he admitted it looked like this thing had been set up. But again, another person predicted this thing. It's like, okay, the common sense [laughs] way of explaining this is that, wow, things had to be really fine-tuned, even at a level that we didn't really even understand in order to get to where we are. But of course Hoyle wasn't, it wasn't like he was sort of open to fine-tuning. He just said, "Well, there has to be a resonance like this, or we wouldn't have really gotten so much carbon."

Sean McDowell: Didn't he say, like, a common sense interpretation is that somebody's been

Jay Richards: Monkeying

Sean McDowell: ... With physics?

Jay Richards: Exactly.

Sean McDowell: That was the way

Jay Richards: That's right. Yes, a super intellect has monkeyed with physics. That's the common sense explanation. I think it just is. It's just the natural human explanation- ... That we should feel comfortable in saying we're rational in believing that, unless you can give me a really darn good argument otherwise, 'cause this is the kinda reasoning we use every day quite reliably.

Sean McDowell: Okay, so people are tracking, and they're going-

Jay Richards: Yep

Sean McDowell: ... Okay, 1953.

Jay Richards: Yep.

Sean McDowell: An atheist is the one who comes up with this.

Jay Richards: This one thing.

Sean McDowell: But I'm not sure-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... I followed beryllium in the examples, et cetera.

Jay Richards: No, exactly.

Sean McDowell: Give us your favorite-

Jay Richards: [laughs]

Sean McDowell: ... Example when you're explaining

Jay Richards: Yes

Sean McDowell: ... To somebody who doesn't have a scientific background. [laughs]

Jay Richards: It's not that one. You asked me the chronology, Sean. That's the problem.

Sean McDowell: I did.

Jay Richards: Right?

Sean McDowell: No, you answered correctly. [laughs]

Jay Richards: Yes. You know, and so, and then, Martin Rees, Sir Martin Rees, and Brandon Carr- ... In the '60s and '70s started noticing things like the, particular masses of elementary particles and certain constants, right? And so people learn about the speed of light, for instance.

Sean McDowell: Uh-huh.

Jay Richards: And notice that actually those have to be really precisely fine-tuned. The so-called fundamental, constants, the four forces of gravity and electromagnetism and what are called the strong nuclear forces that all seem to have this weird... You know, the dial had to be set really precisely. But probably my two favorite, the first one is called the cosmological constant. And I'm, again, I'm thinking, okay, well, how to sort of simply [laughs] explain this.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: Think of the cosmological constant as like the properties of empty space. Like you, people often think, okay- ... If there was no atoms or, you know, planets, space is nothing. Well, space isn't actually nothing.

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm.

Jay Richards: It has these particular properties that can be described with, field equations and all these kinds of things. And Einstein's general theory allowed for the possibility of there being this thing called a cosmological constant, which is this-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... Like some value that's set to empty space itself, right? And so scientists, I think, were hoping it would just be something simple like zero, and the theory for a while actually predicted it was gonna be way too large. We finally were able to sort of figure out what it was. And it is really crazy. And the reason that this is important is that think of the cosmological constant as like space having a slight repulsive force, all right? That's the simplest way, I think, to think of this. It's sometimes called dark energy. And so you have a Big Bang, you have the universe expanding, and the assumption would be, okay, you've got this initial expansion, and then that's gonna slow down. So under the force of gravity, the universe itself-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... Will, the expansion will slow down.

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm.

Jay Richards: What we discovered, actually, it's weirdly accelerating.

Sean McDowell: The opposite, yeah.

Jay Richards: Right? This kind of thing. And so what you realize is that at a certain size scale, if there's this very slight repulsive force, just to space itself, right, then that might overtake the universe, like the attractive force of gravity at some point gets so weak that that very weak dark energy takes over and then creates this expansion. Well, it's, very precisely set.

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm.

Jay Richards: And so, it's one in 10, to the 20th, so that would be, right? So this is a sort of a or the one in 10 to the 120th.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

Jay Richards: Excuse me. One in 10 to the 120th.

Sean McDowell: That makes more sense. Got it.

Jay Richards: So it's one in 10 and then 120 zeros, all right? And so this isn't a number that you can comprehend, right? But it's very precise.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: Right? That's how precisely the cosmological constant needed to be set. So in other words, if it was just slightly different, right, you would get just an expansion that would just, you know, the universe would just blow itself out immediately. You'd never form any elements, or it'd immediately recollapse.

Sean McDowell: Okay, so this helps, is this force is enabling the universe to expand at just the right narrow speed-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... And rate.

Jay Richards: Yes.

Sean McDowell: Varied by one times 10 with 120 zeros after it.

Jay Richards: Exactly.

Sean McDowell: It expands too quickly or maybe crunches in on itself.

Jay Richards: No. Exactly.

Sean McDowell: And so you don't even have a universe in which-

Jay Richards: Exactly

Sean McDowell: ... There's stars and planets and life if it's-

Jay Richards: Exactly

Sean McDowell: ... Not within that narrow range.

Jay Richards: Exactly.

Sean McDowell: That's one example.

Jay Richards: That's one.

Sean McDowell: How many as a whole are you solid saying there's 50? Give us

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... A solid conservative estimate.

Jay Richards: Yes.

Sean McDowell: And if we add them together, how big would that number be?

Jay Richards: I mean, this is the problem, is, it's vis- people always ask these questions.

Sean McDowell: [laughs] I know.

Jay Richards: And I don't know, and I wrote this thing, you know, 10 or 12 years ago for Discovery Institute. It's like, "Here's the ones that we're sure of," and there was like-

Sean McDowell: That's fair

Jay Richards: ... 10, eight or 10. But there are-

Sean McDowell: Okay

Jay Richards: ... These parameters, in fact,

Jay Richards: you know, Luke Barnes and, Grant Lewis and-

Sean McDowell: Yeah

Jay Richards: ... Another philosopher actually just last year have a great, journal article where they talk about this, and I think they talked about, you know, there's conventionally something like 37 parameters. It kinda just depends on how you count these things.

Sean McDowell: That's fair.

Jay Richards: You know?

Sean McDowell: That's usually, I've heard about three dozen.

Jay Richards: Yeah, exactly. And I don't, you know, and I'd rather have really solid examples, and in some ways it's not like-

Sean McDowell: Totally agree

Jay Richards: ... I don't think there's anyone that says, "Okay, if you could just give me one more-"

Sean McDowell: [laughs]

Jay Richards: "... Then I would quit being an atheist," right? It's like, it's like, "Do you need more? I mean, I gave you that one," right? So it's one in

Sean McDowell: That's sufficient to me

Jay Richards: ... To the 120, right?

Sean McDowell: I agree.

Jay Richards: It's like if you're gonna, if that's not gonna do it, I don't know what to tell you. And then, the initial entropy. This is from Roger Penrose. So this ... One of, fine-tuning of, the initial conditions, and he calculates, so the initial entropy, in other words, basically how ordered would the initial conditions need to be precisely-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... So that you could get a universe like ours. And he calculated in this case it's [laughs] one in 10 To the 10th to the 123rd power. Again, if, to me, it's like, do you, why do we need more examples here, people?

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: Yeah, it's like-

Sean McDowell: That's fair

Jay Richards: ... Yeah, because what you're gonna get is all the same arguments about multiverses or whatever for one example or five examples.

Sean McDowell: Which we'll come back to.

Jay Richards: Yeah. And so in some ways, what I think the pattern is what's important, is that the more-

Sean McDowell: That's great

Jay Richards: ... We learn, if you'd been in sort of late 19th century and you thought, "Okay, well, cells are these little homogenous kinda globs of Jell-O," right? "And life is sorta easy. You get some lightning, and you stir things up, and you're gonna get these reproducing cells." and you kinda have these naive beliefs, and the general assumption also was that there wouldn't be this level of kinda precision required. Well, what's, what was the turn to the 20th century, was to just discover more and more examples of these until you get these mind-boggling numbers. And it's like, okay, well, how many of these do we need before ... Rethink maybe that Victorian materialism, that we're still sort of hanging onto from the 19th century, which is what I actually think's going on. That's the relevant thing. It's like- ... Look at the pattern historically. Don't-

Sean McDowell: That's good.

Jay Richards: Yeah, don't say, "Okay, I need just one more. If you give me 40 or 41, then that'll change my mind."

Sean McDowell: You mentioned the example by Penrose.

Jay Richards: Yes.

Sean McDowell: Steve Myers coming back on early May. And we're doing kind of an in-depth response to Penrose's model, so that's something to look forward to. And we will-

Jay Richards: Sure

Sean McDowell: ... Really nerd out on that one. Okay, so here's a few counterarguments-

Jay Richards: Okay

Sean McDowell: ... That I pulled from some recent books. And this is from, an atheist by name of Dan Barker.

Jay Richards: Oh, yeah.

Sean McDowell: And he's co-written a book coming out with Erdmanns this spring. I endorsed it, thoroughly enjoyed the book.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: They talk about fine-tuning. And he has a few objections to that.

Jay Richards: Okay.

Sean McDowell: But one he says I've heard a lot is that the universe is not fine-tuned for us, rather, we are fine-tuned to the universe.

Jay Richards: Okay, so there's a bunch of things happening here. And so the idea is that, well, life adapts to the conditions that it's around. And so let's say you're very generous with the Darwinian mechanism, and you think a given-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... You know, kind of basic conditions, life can, develop and adapt in all sorts of various ways, so let's just be super generous with that.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

Jay Richards: All right? Fine. That doesn't tell us anything about the origin of life. So you don't have adaptation-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... In the origin of life 'cause you don't have things reproducing. And so the fact that life under certain conditions can adapt to certain things doesn't mean that every set of conditions is compatible with life. That's the whole point to the fine-tuning argument, is that, when you're dealing with these fine-tuning arguments, certainly at the cosmological level, you're talking about what is needed for any kind of life.

Sean McDowell: That's right.

Jay Richards: At least any kind of chemical life. And so before you can get an origin of life, before you can get natural selection and random variation and differential sort of populations and things like that, you gotta get some basic things like being able to build [laughs] elements, being able to build something like chemistry or like carbon that, right, can build these molecules. And so he's sort of assuming that life has this infinite malleability so that almost any universe that exists- ... There'd be some kind of life in it. There's absolutely no reason to think that. And I, don't think any kind of serious physicist thinks that. And so that's the, I think, the fundamental difficulty with his argument. Even if you grant sort of the most generous assessment-

Sean McDowell: Right

Jay Richards: ... Of the Darwinian mechanism, which I don't, I think it's very good at tweaking around the edges, but I don't think there's any evidence that it does major things. But even if you're a committed Darwinian, you've still gotta deal with the basic reality that to have any kind of life, you're gonna have to have some basic physics and chemistry. There are certain preconditions for it, and that's just not gonna work.

Sean McDowell: That's a great answer, and it'd bring us back to the first cosmological example that you gave, cosmological constant.

Jay Richards: Yes.

Sean McDowell: That's not fine-tuned with one times 10 to the 120th. There's not even a platform-

Jay Richards: No

Sean McDowell: ... Or the possibility of life-

Jay Richards: Exactly

Sean McDowell: ... Developing, and that's one example, so well said. I like that. Okay. I know you're familiar with this one as well. It's called the weak anthropic principle. Says we couldn't observe ourselves in a non-fine-tuned universe.

Jay Richards: [laughs]

Sean McDowell: So we shouldn't be surprised that we exist in

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Fine-tuned universe.

Jay Richards: Okay. So the, as you said, it's called the weak anthropic principle, at least that's one interpretation of it. This one is the one that drives me crazy, Sean-

Sean McDowell: [laughs]

Jay Richards: ... Because it's such a terrible argument that I can't believe smart people make it, honestly.

Sean McDowell: Wow. I love it.

Jay Richards: Some of the arguments-

Sean McDowell: Okay

Jay Richards: ... It's like you gotta spend some time on, but it's just a confusion. It's confusing, okay, a necessary condition for observing an event with the event itself, with, like, the explanation of the event. And so, the the sort of famous example I feel like it maybe came from John Leslie or something, would be as if someone was, you know, subjected to a firing squad, and they were gonna

Sean McDowell: That's right. It was Leslie

Jay Richards: ... Executed. And you know, let's assume, let's take 100 sharpshooters, and they're just five feet away. They blindfold you, right? And you discover that the bullets make a perfect outline of the guy's body. They take the blindfold off, and ... Could say, "Well, I shouldn't be surprised to see this because if they had killed me, I wouldn't-

Sean McDowell: Great answer

Jay Richards: ... Be able to do that." It's just ridiculous. The question isn't why are you observing this. The question is, why did they miss, right? And so the question isn't why do we observe a universe that is compatible with our existence. That's a truism. It's a, tautology. Why does such a universe exist? That is, why, given how constrained and precise the fine-tuning had to be, why would it be that kind of universe that exists? 'Cause the implication of the fine-tuning is that sort of the set of possible universes that could host life is, however you wanna think about it or measure it, vastly smaller than the set where it doesn't work.

Sean McDowell: That's right.

Jay Richards: You know? And that's the thing that needs to be explained, and so it always surprises me that people, will make this argument as if it's sorta satisfactory. It's like, look, yeah, the fact that you're observing it doesn't, that's not the existence of the thing. And that, they would never, no one would ever make this mistake, I think, almost anywhere else, but they would make it here. It's like-

Sean McDowell: Oh, that's interesting

Jay Richards: ... You know, it's like, yeah, you know, it's like, oh, good, the bomb didn't go off that the mob was planting in my car, you know? But I shouldn't be surprised that it didn't go off 'cause if it had gone off, I wouldn't be here. Well, you, notice that somebody cut the wires, that's the explanation. [laughs]

Sean McDowell: [laughs]

Jay Richards: Right? And so nobody makes this mistake. And so this is, if someone is having it's such special pleading that they're using an argumentative form that they would never accept in any other area. That's usually a sign that something's off.

Sean McDowell: Seems to me it confuses necessary and sufficient conditions.

Jay Richards: Yes.

Sean McDowell: So to observe-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Myself-

Jay Richards: Right

Sean McDowell: ... I need to be in a fine-tuned universe.

Jay Richards: Exactly.

Sean McDowell: But that doesn't sufficiently explain-

Jay Richards: No, yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Where the universe came from-

Jay Richards: Exactly

Sean McDowell: ... Why it's fine-tuned, and why I'm here.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: I heard another example, and then we'll move on. I don't remember where I heard this one. But if I come home and my neighbor's in my closet, I'm like, "What are you doing in my closet?" It's like, [laughs] well, I gotta... Everybody has to be somewhere.

Jay Richards: We told this story in The Privileged Planet. I don't know who told it.

Sean McDowell: Is that where it came from? [laughs]

Jay Richards: But I don't know who, I don't know where I heard it, but this is right. It's like, you know, the guy-

Sean McDowell: That's where I got it, okay. [laughs]

Jay Richards: The guy comes home early, and there's a man naked in, his neighbor's naked in the closet, and he's like, "Well, everybody gotta be somewhere, right?"

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: It's like, yeah, no, that's not, that's not gonna work.

Sean McDowell: The question is why are you here?

Jay Richards: Here, yeah. [laughs]

Sean McDowell: And there's a pattern that requires explanation.

Jay Richards: Exactly

Sean McDowell: Okay, good. So let's move on. I have four for you.

Jay Richards: Okay.

Sean McDowell: So two more.

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm.

Sean McDowell: And by the way, folks watching, if you're like, "Wait a minute, there's a better objection to fine-tuning," write question in caps-

Jay Richards: Absolutely

Sean McDowell: ... Put it in, and we will address it.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: So I've heard some people suggest that there might be a theory of everything-

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm

Sean McDowell: ... We haven't discovered yet.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Maybe some kind of natural law that would explain why- ... The we exist in a fine-tuned universe.

Jay Richards: Okay, so, first of all, there's sort of laws, and there's explanations. And laws are... It's, we've gotten in this habit of talking about laws as if they're sort of causal agents, right?

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm.

Jay Richards: But what G is it's a kind of mathematical value that we learn from observation about what bodies do in space, right? It's not, there's not this force called G that's moving stuff around. And so I think there's often a category error in this idea that like, okay, if we come up with a theory of everything, I think the picture is that let, okay, we're gonna have a theory, and it's going to... Let's say it has one constant, and from this one constant, you get all these other constants that we observe around us, and so they all sort of ultimately, collapse into this one constant. It's not clear to me what that solves at all. It seems like it makes it worse. I mean, it would be like, okay, this guy is the best pool player you will ever see in your life. If he's allowed to break, the balls, he will be able to sink one ball after another, and you'll never get a turn. And then a guy shows up and says, "Okay, well, let me see what I can do. Can I break?" And then he hits the balls, and

Sean McDowell: Yeah

Jay Richards: ... Sinks them all on the first shot, right? [laughs] You wouldn't say, "Oh, okay, well, now there's nothing to explain." He would be the master, right? And so the fact that we would have some particular... It would have to be, it would have to be an equation. It would have to have constants in it. They would have to have particular values. They're not gonna be logically necessary truths. And so we'd still have to explain, okay, why that very precise thing? In fact, that would be extraordinary- ... That there would be a mathematical expression that could give rise to this. It wouldn't solve the problem of the fine-tuning. It just, it'd move the fine-tuning up to a sort of different location.

Sean McDowell: Okay, that's the key that I hear Stephen Meyer talk about a ton-

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm

Sean McDowell: ... Is that we come up with an explanation to explain away information-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Which comes from a mind.

Jay Richards: Right.

Sean McDowell: But then we muzzle in information-

Jay Richards: Right

Sean McDowell: ... And don't explain what needs to be explained.

Jay Richards: Yes.

Sean McDowell: So if there was some law that required or mandated or generated-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... It would still raise the question, why is the law the way that it

Jay Richards: That's right, yeah

Sean McDowell: ... That is resulting in fine-tuned universes?

Jay Richards: This is doing it. Exactly. And now I'll perfectly accept if somebody says, "Well, you gotta stop explanation somewhere." True. Everybody, like presumably every worldview, if it's gonna be consistent-

Sean McDowell: Sure

Jay Richards: ... Is gonna have some kind of fundamental, sort of mode of explanation, right? But there's no reason... It's not like, okay, so that's the one brute fact you're gonna accept is this kind of thing that we've not discovered, this mathematical expression? That doesn't sound like, doesn't even sound like a causal agent. At least if you're a materialist that believes the universe is eternal, you can say, well, the universe is at least is eternal, right? So it's always existed. Now, we can't really say that now. But this one is very strange to me because it it doesn't seem to do what you would even want an ultimate explanation to do. It does, it just ends up moving itself back. And that's why I think these design arguments, when you get to cosmology, ultimately beg theological questions, which require theological Okay, so what's the self-existing reality? Right? That's the question. And what's the best candidate for self-existence in, you know, eternality or necessary existence?

Sean McDowell: Okay, so let's talk about the multiverse-

Jay Richards: Yes

Sean McDowell: ... Which is the

Jay Richards: Biggie

Sean McDowell: ... Common objection. And couple weeks ago, had Tim Pigott-Vance. He's a philosopher- ... Colleague of mine here. We were responding to philosophical objections and questions-

Jay Richards: Right

Sean McDowell: ... About Meyer's scientific case from the origin of the universe.

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm.

Sean McDowell: And multiverse came up, and I said, "This is more relevant to fine-tuning, not the origin of the universe," 'cause if you have a multiverse, you still have to explain where it came from-

Jay Richards: Right

Sean McDowell: ... In the first place.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: But it is relevant- ... And it's a fair challenge to fine-tuning.

Jay Richards: Sure.

Sean McDowell: So maybe just explain briefly so people understand. There's not just one multiverse hypothesis.

Jay Richards: No.

Sean McDowell: Just give us a sense

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... What that means and what your response would be.

Jay Richards: Absolutely. And then so Steve, in The Return of the God Hypothesis, just lovingly chases all of these rabbits all the way down, [laughs] you know?

Sean McDowell: He does.

Jay Richards: It really does. In The Privileged Planet, we just dealt with them as we thought were relevant to our argument. But the basic idea of a multiverse is just that, the physical universe that we see and can experience and can detect is one of perhaps countless other universes. And the reason this comes into fine-tuning is this idea that, okay, if there is only one universe, it would be very strange that there would, the one that exists would be so precisely fine-tuned. If there's a lot of universes- ... Then, you know, maybe somehow by chance, one of them will just sort of end up, yeah.

Sean McDowell: If not an infinite number, then yeah.

Jay Richards: Yeah, now if you get, of course, if you get infinite, right, if you-

Sean McDowell: Yeah

Jay Richards: ... Somebody, if you can grant someone an infinite set of anything, [laughs] you can prove a lot of stuff, right?

Sean McDowell: [laughs]

Jay Richards: Really easily. It creates other problems. And so that's the idea is that you're just basically, you say, okay, well-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... The opportunities for chance to operate are greater. It's just like, you know, if you saw me flip a a quarter 30 times and get 30 heads in a row, you're like, okay, it's obviously two-headed or, something.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: But if somebody had been flipping it for years, and they got 20 heads in a row, well, that would happen by chance. So that's kind of the basic idea. The problem is, depending upon the theory, as Steve points out, right, in his sort of discussion in The Return of the God Hypothesis, either it doesn't answer the initial conditions problem-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... So it doesn't solve that problem, or it creates other kind of fine-tuning questions, and so then you move up and you need some kind of a universe-creating machine that has to itself be fine-tuned. And you it ends up not solving what you would think it's supposed to solve. If it's supposed to helps explain away the fine-tuning, if it ends up creating additional worse fine-tuning problems, it hasn't actually done what it's supposed to do. And then in some cases, it might actually even imply theism, depending upon how you interpret certain theories. And so it doesn't actually solve what it's supposed to do. If you think, okay, the multiverse explains away this evidence of fine-tuning, that's the kind ... Popular conception.

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm.

Jay Richards: But people that I think that, on all sides that really think about this realize, okay, it's not quite that simple. It just, it's one of those things that seems plausible as long as you don't spend a lot of time thinking about it, but it doesn't, it just doesn't ultimately solve the problem. If you have to, if you have to push the fine-tuning back, you've made the problem worse rather than better.

Sean McDowell: I did a full deep dive with Steve, I don't know, maybe two years ago.

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm.

Sean McDowell: Maybe it was less. And he talked about how, same as we talked, discussed before, that if you push up to a multiverse, you don't get rid of fine-tuning. And to even-

Jay Richards: No

Sean McDowell: ... Generate universes like ours that are fine-tuned, you still have, he calls it, like, what does he call it? The information cosmological problem, something-

Jay Richards: Yes

Sean McDowell: ... To that effect.

Jay Richards: Right.

Sean McDowell: I forget the title of it. And he pointed out, like, even in science fiction, I'm a big superhero guy-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... You have, like, these God-type figures between the universes-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Regulating them, which is almost a punt towards there needs to be a kind of mind-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... That we know, and of course, the science shows. Last question. This one is kind of broad.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Are there any newer objections to fine-tuning that you're aware of or you've seen outside of the multiverse that have kind of popped up that either are strong or either getting a lot of tension that are worth responding to?

Jay Richards: Well, I mean, it's, the there are ones that appeal to certain people that, but don't, will not appeal to scientists. So scientists, for the most part, are realists. So they actually think atoms are real, and planets.

Sean McDowell: [laughs]

Jay Richards: They really... Not only do they think we went to the moon, they believe that there's a moon.

Sean McDowell: [laughs]

Jay Richards: Right? That's how hardcore they are, right? And so they want arguments and evidence. And so for me, it's like, okay, well, we're arguing about the interpretation of evidence that's been uncovered by science and observation. I don't think that, I think that we're sort of in a loop of these sort of explanations. Now, if you're more into critical theory or something like that, and you get kind of a radical skepticism about scientific realism, and you do get those sorts of things, this idea that these scientific theories, they're so abstract, they're really just intellectual constructs developed by a particular culture at a particular time and place. That was actually kind of hot in the '90s, honestly, when Bill Dembski and I were in graduate school. I remember that post-modernism was sort of the thing. Everybody's reading the French post-modernists. That it digs in in certain university, departments, and it's usually if they end in the word studies, that's where you find this stuff.

Sean McDowell: [laughs]

Jay Richards: And so I've seen some arguments from folks like that, right?

Sean McDowell: [laughs] Okay

Jay Richards: ... Or from a kind of radical, empirical, empiricist theism in which our knowledge of God is so, inadequate, you know, that even being able to apply categories like design or purpose- ... Is anthropomorphic. I just find those super obscure, and I don't think that they're ultimately going to appeal, certainly not to scientifically trained people, but also I don't think to sort of ordinary people in the normal course of life. I mean, the design argument is powerful precisely because at bottom it just appeals to our basic modes of reasoning. We're really good at distinguishing, okay, that thing was clearly that's a setup. That probably just happened because, you know, the wind blew by. We don't always get it right, but we're very good at doing that. And so when you, see these same kinds of properties in the physical universe, I think it's just natural to infer design, so that if, only if you will not countenance the possibility of an intelligence, that is outside the universe, that even created and sustains it in existence. Now, if you just refuse to consider that's one thing. But if you're open to it, I think the evidence is quite powerful, that the evidence of the natural world- ... Points beyond itself to that kind of explanation.

Sean McDowell: That's the question I was gonna follow up with and ask, what kind of worldview implications would follow from this?

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: And in our conversation about cosmology-

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm

Sean McDowell: ... If the universe had a beginning, and the science seems to strongly point that direction-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... You have a spaceless, timeless, unchanging, self-existent-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Personal agent-

Jay Richards: Right

Sean McDowell: ... That brought it into existence.

Jay Richards: Yep.

Sean McDowell: Rules out things like naturalism.

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm.

Sean McDowell: Arguably rules out things like pantheism-

Jay Richards: Yes

Sean McDowell: ... Where there is no personal monotheistic-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... God or distinction between creation and creator.

Jay Richards: Right.

Sean McDowell: That doesn't really rule out deism necessarily-

Jay Richards: No

Sean McDowell: ... The cosmological argument.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: So it narrows things down.

Jay Richards: It does.

Sean McDowell: We talked about this a little bit with Doug.

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm.

Sean McDowell: And he was talking about arguments from DNA and what we could potentially-

Jay Richards: Exactly

Sean McDowell: ... Know about design.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: What does fine-tuning tell us about kinda what best explanation-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... We have for the universe? How close could it get us to a god or the Christian god?

Jay Richards: I think it, I think that as long as we can add a few plausible, assumptions-

Sean McDowell: Okay

Jay Richards: ... Right, and we can get a cosmological argument. I actually do think Bill Craig's arguments about the impossibility of an infinite regress work. But just the fact that we think the universe has an age, right?

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm.

Jay Richards: Whatever you think the age is, if you think it has an age, then that means it hasn't always existed.

Sean McDowell: Right.

Jay Richards: So that knocks it out, right? If the big question-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... Is something like some kind of theism, or teleology, right, that's not dependent on matter or a material universe, well, if all the evidence is the universe came into existence, it can't be the ultimate explanation, right? ... Unless you're just gonna say, well, the ultimate explanation just sort of popped into existence uncaused, out of nothing. Where, I mean, I guess you could have that if you want it. That's not really what anybody means by an ultimate explanation. And so in as long as we could think the material universe was eternal, the materialist could just sort of say, "Well, I don't need an additional kind of, explanation. I'll just stop with the brute fact of the universe."

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm.

Jay Richards: They can't do that now because we know the universe had a beginning, and that's in some ways why this whole conversation is happening. And so I would say insofar as theism at least says that you have an, a personal causal agent powerful enough to be able to bring a universe into existence and to sustain it into existence, we no reason to take that for granted. That's something like theism. Now, do no, that, we're not gonna get the Trinity, we're not gonna get, you know, the, [laughs] the two natures doctrine of Christ. We're not gonna know God's personal name. Why would we expect that? I mean, I think as a Christian, God has created a world that testifies to His existence as a creator, and that is sufficient at least to tell us that there's a moral law so that we're accountable, as Paul says in Romans 1. And that's knowable by reason. And we need special revelation. We need God to disclose Himself as a person in history and in the person of Jesus Christ, and Scripture teaches- ... Other things, but those are complementary things. And so I do think that if you sort of add up all the fine-tuning arguments, add a cosmological argument on top of that, in light of the contemporary evidence, circa 2026, I'd say you can get to a bare theism.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

Jay Richards: Certainly a deism.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

Jay Richards: Maybe a theism. And I think, especially if you take seriously, the kind of ongoing reality of teleology in life, and I mean, I think, honestly, I think God's deeply involved in the way through. And if you can add that, then you're not just talking about a god, like, creating it at the beginning, you're talking about a god that's intimately involved throughout it. That's theism, and tha-that's something, right? I mean-

Sean McDowell: Oh, my goodness, yeah

Jay Richards: ... If, like, the main intellectual impediment to Christian belief in particular is materialism, and you can get to theism, [laughs] that's a totally different ballgame at that point.

Sean McDowell: Oh, for sure.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: And what's different about this is sometimes I've heard, and this is a weaker argument, don't hear it a lot-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... But that fine-tuning could be explained by something within the universe. Like Prometheus, the alien movie-

Jay Richards: Right

Sean McDowell: ... Has a kind of fine-tuning. These aliens-

Jay Richards: Sure

Sean McDowell: ... Who seed a planet with life.

Jay Richards: That's right.

Sean McDowell: That could work for proteins in DNA in principle.

Jay Richards: In the universe.

Sean McDowell: Whether or not-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... It's the best explanation-

Jay Richards: Right

Sean McDowell: ... Separate issue, but in principle, it could.

Jay Richards: That's right.

Sean McDowell: Of course, fine-tuning is about the universe-

Jay Richards: Exactly

Sean McDowell: ... So nothing within the universe could explain it.

Jay Richards: That's right. Yeah.

Sean McDowell: It has the same implications as the cosmological argument would something beyond the universe-

Jay Richards: Exactly

Sean McDowell: ... That set it up.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

Jay Richards: And and there is, I mean, honestly, because of things like Prometheus, there's this popular idea that, okay, well, maybe it's not a god, or maybe what we mean by God is just a really advanced alien race from a previous universe, right? That then is now creating universes. Now, at this point, it's like, okay, yeah, but you've conceded design, you've conceded intelligence, and then it feels really ad hoc, right? It's like it's this alien race ... Because then you start getting into principle of parsimony and Occam's razor.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Jay Richards: A a single god is a much more, economical explanation. And, in fact, I think if you really think about it, you have... The fundamental sort of mode of explanation, that fundamental reality has to be something that's intrinsically a unity. It can't be made up of a bunch of sort of separable parts, or the parts would be fundamental. And this is, this is, I think, the kernel of truth in this complicated idea of divine simplicity, which sometimes it can go too far. But just this idea that the fundamental reality is gonna be something that unifies everything within itself. Well, an alien race that was in a previous, you know, previous universe, that doesn't do that. That just sounds to ... Like, "Okay, I gotta have something, and it can't be God, so I mean, [laughs] this is, I'll go with this." Even though we don't have any independent evidence of that.

Sean McDowell: I'd be curious what studying and developing this argument means for you personally.

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm.

Sean McDowell: And if you're like, "Sean, this is my ministry. This

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... My profession." I'm not fishing for something- [laughs]

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... [laughs] that's not necessarily there.

Jay Richards: Right.

Sean McDowell: But you've been studying this for a long time.

Jay Richards: Yep.

Sean McDowell: You've been doing debates. You've been writing journal articles.

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm.

Sean McDowell: You said this argument is stronger than it was in the past.

Jay Richards: Sure.

Sean McDowell: And I agree with you. Like, on a personal level, whether your spiritual life or just the way-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... How does studying this affect you personally?

Jay Richards: Gosh, that's a good question. I should say that, you know, our book came out in 2004, and then Guillermo and I wrote a, an, a totally revised and rewritten edition with the new evidence, came out in 2024 because of the total eclipse.

Sean McDowell: Yep.

Jay Richards: And so to revisit it, first of all, to discover that you weren't a great writer 20 years before [both laughing] or at least that you've gotten better, right? There's that discovery.

Sean McDowell: That's fair.

Jay Richards: But also that it's like, oh my word, we made a lot of risky predictions about Type II,

Sean McDowell: For sure

Jay Richards: ... You know, Type II supernovae and, you know, 1A supernovae and lots of stuff, that was risky that's panned out, and in fact, we've thought about some other examples that we added in the book- ... That we hadn't thought of initially. That's powerful 'cause it's like, it's like the natural world itself is sort of testifying to this. And I think, I mean, I don't know how everyone experiences it. I'll just speak for myself. But, like, sometimes you get yourself in a funk where it's like- ... I don't know, maybe I'm just making all this stuff up, and it's totally crazy. And I can almost get myself... I mean, this is the problem with philosophy, right? You almost get yourself in a state of doubt. But then I'll remember, oh, wait a second, but first of all the other alternatives are- ... Way worse.

Sean McDowell: Right.

Jay Richards: And what about this? And then, and it reminds me of it. And I'm, of course, intimately acquainted with the arguments and the evidence, so it it just sort of brings you back. That's why I think- ... It's important to study this stuff because, yeah, I mean, God has to move you, obviously, and, the work of the Holy Spirit in your life is crucial, but I think He wants to respect our reason, and we are, we're rational animals. And so, the fact that He's given us things that actually, they add up, they're confirmed by the best evidence of the natural world, that makes this, like, I think a really exciting time to be alive. I really think there's never been a better time to be a theist than in 2026, honestly.

Sean McDowell: I love that. I'm gonna clip that-

Jay Richards: [laughs]

Sean McDowell: ... Throw that on social media. I think you're right. For me, some of these arguments, like the... I remember I went through kind of a doubting period- ... When I was a student here.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: I remember reading this skeptic who said, "You know, why doesn't God just write 'made by Yahweh' on every cell?"

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: And then when I really studied DNA, I was like- ... Oh, my goodness. He kind of did.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: He kind of did.

Jay Richards: Right.

Sean McDowell: And I can't look at a solar eclipse the same. A few years ago, there was one in Southern California. And I was able to watch it with the glasses on.

Jay Richards: Yes.

Sean McDowell: And I'm thinking about, wait a minute, all the things that have to be lined up here are so mathematically improbable, and this enables us to understand the world, and it's beautiful on top-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Of that.

Jay Richards: Absolutely.

Sean McDowell: Some of this study for me has made me read passages like Psalms 19:1-2.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: "The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim his majesty."

Jay Richards: Yes.

Sean McDowell: "Day by day they spew forth knowledge."

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm.

Sean McDowell: "Night by night they display wisdom."

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: It's actually objectively true.

Jay Richards: That's right. Yes.

Sean McDowell: All right. So, well, I wanna ask you about the movie in a minute.

Jay Richards: Okay.

Sean McDowell: You're interviewed in this.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: It's fantastic. But before we get to that-

Jay Richards: Uh-huh

Sean McDowell: ... Do you have any sense about where debates about fine-tuning are maybe headed?

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Like, what would be your guess if you had to say, "Here's where I think things are moving," and maybe in light

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm

Sean McDowell: ... Some trends you've seen change in the-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Years leading up to today?

Jay Richards: The fact that for a long time, I hate to say this, the reality is it was hard to have these debates because of the- ... Intellectual orthodoxy that made it costly. It was not costly in the academy to be a materialist. It was like, "That's how you get tenure," right? It was costly no matter how careful you were. You know, my co-author Guillermo Gonzalez, he suffered in his career despite a stellar publication record, just simply because of being associated with this argument. I can remember, I asked him one time, I said, "Do you think it was a good idea to, you know, to write this book before you had tenure?" And he's like, "Well, the idea, it happened when it happened, you know? It's like we would've been suppressing this if we hadn't done it when we did. I haven't really suffered from it, you know?" and so I think that's changed, and so the things that worked in 2004 or '5 in in terms of trying to sort of sideline the argument, I don't think those are gonna keep working. And so I if I were a materialist at this point, I would be trying to figure out a way to accommodate all the evidence,

Sean McDowell: Right

Jay Richards: ... However I could, and then somehow sort of appeal to a type of agnosticism or something. Because the truth of the matter is, I don't think we're gonna get fundamentally different kinds of arguments. You're gonna get these multiverse arguments. You're gonna get brute fact arguments. You're gonna get, you know, attempts to debunk the, maybe the empirical details. It's very hard to imagine... You know, there are only so many kinds of arguments that you can construct in this way. And so I'd be really surprised if there was some fundamentally new kind of argument. I think what you'll get is new strategies. As the kind of awareness of this stuff settles in, it it would be much easier, certainly for me, I'm thinking if I were, didn't wanna cease being a materialist, I would wanna do my best to kind of accommodate all the best evidence for this, and then just try to find some kind of exit ramp. And it's, I'm not an atheist, so I can't quite-

Sean McDowell: Yeah, no, that's-

Jay Richards: ... Anticipate how that would work

Sean McDowell: ... That's totally fair

Jay Richards: ... But I think that's what I would be trying to do.

Sean McDowell: Yeah. That's fair.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: That makes sense. I think one of the big objections to intelligent design is it's not testable.

Jay Richards: Mm-hmm.

Sean McDowell: It's not falsifiable.

Jay Richards: Yep.

Sean McDowell: Doesn't make predictions. You guys made bold predictions

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... 2004, and, seems like most of them, if not all of them, came true-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... As a whole, which even if they didn't, would tell us that ID in principle is testable-

Jay Richards: Exactly

Sean McDowell: ... And it is falsifiable.

Jay Richards: If it's falsifiable, then it's testable.

Sean McDowell: So it's kind of a win-win.

Jay Richards: Absolutely.

Sean McDowell: But it turns out, I would guess you're gonna predict that maybe we will find even more examples-

Jay Richards: Absolutely

Sean McDowell: ... Of fine-tuning.

Jay Richards: More than happy. And I think-

Sean McDowell: Maybe in 10 years, we sit down-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... And there's 50,000 planets they've found.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Your thesis-

Jay Richards: There will be

Sean McDowell: ... You think we're gonna find that-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Earth is even exquisitely-

Jay Richards: Yes

Sean McDowell: ... Privileged.

Jay Richards: And we'll have a much better sense of what the, what the ratio is, right? We we we're absolutely confident the ratio of habitable planets to uninhabitable planets is very significant. In other words, you know, habitable planets, a very small number, and uninhabitable is very high. We don't know exactly what it is, and so the more planets we discover around different, in different systems, around different types of stars, the more numbers we're going to be able to add to that. And so that's what I would expect, is that we'll just, it will get empirically much tighter as we discover new things.

Sean McDowell: I love it. We'll have you back in 20 more years.

Jay Richards: Yes.

Sean McDowell: Actually, hopefully long before [laughs] then.

Jay Richards: [laughs]

Sean McDowell: So tell us about the movie, The Story of Everything.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: And I had a chance to see an early... Actually, I think it was finished, but on my laptop-

Jay Richards: Yes

Sean McDowell: ... They sent me a file. Fantastic. So well done.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: I've never seen a better movie on intelligent design. It deserves to be in the big screens.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: But tell us what's unique about this film and why people should go see it.

Jay Richards: Well, it it combines these evidences, and so, you know-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... When you're, you... The nice thing about doing a film like this is, of course, people watch it, and it's gonna be a bunch of experts, you know, sort of talking. But amazing animation, a narrative structure-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm

Jay Richards: ... So that you can actually see how these things connect. It's not like one little isolated piece of evidence about the origin of the universe. But there's a beginning of the universe. There's this fine-tuning at the fundamental levels. There's the origin of life. There's the complexity of life. There's the competing explanations. And what's beautiful about it is, of course, a lot of us have always wanted to focus on, like in The Privileged Planet, if a person reads The Privileged Planet, we were criticized for this. We don't make a theological argument. We don't go any farther other than to say, "Look, this, we think this is solid evidence for purpose." We just didn't wanna get out beyond the evidence. But as I just said a minute ago, I do think if you line the evidence up a certain way, and you can frame it in a certain way, you can get from the evidence of natural science to the existence of God, and that's what the film does. It it finally sort of, it's the full picture, and in some ways it's the full picture at the moment. Now, it's, now, and it's an hour-and-a-half film-

Sean McDowell: Sure

Jay Richards: ... So we can't pack everything into

Sean McDowell: Yeah

Jay Richards: ... Obviously. But it's really great. It's also great because there are people of actually different Christian traditions-

Sean McDowell: Totally

Jay Richards: ... Non-Christians, right, in the film, sort of all over the place talking about this, which is in some ways I think it's a sign of the maturity of the, research and the debate, that it's like, okay, look, lots of people are talking about this, guys, and so you can't say we can't have this conversation anymore.

Sean McDowell: It's amazing to think about the film Expelled that came out-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... What,

Jay Richards: 2008?

Sean McDowell: 2008.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: So almost two decades ago.

Jay Richards: Yes.

Sean McDowell: And it was like the ID was on the defensive-

Jay Richards: Exactly

Sean McDowell: ... And there had to be humor, and you need somebody like-

Jay Richards: Oh, yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Ben Stein to even get a voice. This is like a mature, thoughtful, here's the case-

Jay Richards: Absolutely

Sean McDowell: ... We're part of a conversation, test it. Like, we could almost do an analysis of those two films about-

Jay Richards: Let's do that

Sean McDowell: ... How culture has changed-

Jay Richards: Totally

Sean McDowell: ... And the debate about God has shifted.

Jay Richards: Yes.

Sean McDowell: And of course, that was in the height of the New Atheists when everybody-

Jay Richards: Yes

Sean McDowell: ... Was like attacking and going at.

Jay Richards: That's the key, that's the key thing. That was the peak of New Atheism. You know, that was... I, when I debated, Christopher Hitchens, it was at Stanford.

Sean McDowell: It was the same year. Yep.

Jay Richards: That, it was part of the kind of run-up to the film.

Sean McDowell: Got it. Got it.

Jay Richards: That's why Ben Stein was the moderator. And New Atheism was just everywhere. Well, I've got a... I won't mention them. I've got two friends that I'm very close with-

Sean McDowell: [laughs]

Jay Richards: ... That work on other issues. These guys were really active in New Atheism. That is deader than dead at this point, right? It's like that's just not where the action is. There's other stuff happening, but, you know, that was the impression, all these, you know, all this adulation about this kind of movement. And it it just petered out. And so I think that's a sign of, how things have changed since the sort of beginning, 'cause ID sort of emerged, alongside, the New Atheist movement. It's petered out.

Sean McDowell: It did, yeah.

Jay Richards: Yeah. We're still here. [laughs]

Sean McDowell: Yes, you are. Although you predated it in the-

Jay Richards: Yeah, exactly

Sean McDowell: ... '80s, if you go back, in the '90s.

Jay Richards: Walter... Yeah.

Sean McDowell: We're here arguably-

Jay Richards: Yes

Sean McDowell: ... Stronger than we've ever been.

Jay Richards: Yeah, totally.

Sean McDowell: Dembski and I, Casey Luskin are updating the book on

Jay Richards: Awesome

Sean McDowell: ... That we released. As I think about it was also 2008.

Jay Richards: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Understanding Intelligent Design.

Jay Richards: Yep.

Sean McDowell: So good things are happen-

Jay Richards: Yes

Sean McDowell: ... Happening, but it feels like a certain maturity that's come where we're just doing the work and moving forward-

Jay Richards: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... For those who want to engage.

Jay Richards: Definitely.

Sean McDowell: Folks, if you're watching this going, or listening and going, "Okay, wait a minute, you did not consider this objection," write it in. Write the word question in caps as succinctly as you can. In fact, if you don't have any objections, you can write in ChatGPT, "Give me the best objections to fine-tuning." [laughs]

Jay Richards: That's a good idea.

Sean McDowell: And if you care about that, load them in here. We will not ignore any that are on topic-

Jay Richards: Definitely. Mm-hmm

Sean McDowell: ... And are the best objections. Write it in so you can invite your Christian friends, your skeptical friends, whoever to participate. Check out the film, The Story of Everything. It's so well done. Go support it in theaters. When it's done, download it, watch it. And make sure you hit subscribe. And before we go, anything else you're working on that's coming up that you wanna tell us about? Or how can people follow you?

Jay Richards: Follow me at, X is... You know, I'm a Gen X-er-

Sean McDowell: Okay

Jay Richards: ... And so X is the main-

Sean McDowell: There you go

Jay Richards: ... Social media, but at @drjrichards. Dr. DR, and then my name, J Richards. And I'm actually working on questions, about health, and chronic disease actually at The Heritage Foundation, working on this, weird, reality that, American children are developing these crazy chronic diseases- ... Which actually has a tie-in to these questions.

Sean McDowell: Ooh.

Jay Richards: Yeah. And so this stuff, this isn't just sort of metaphysical and interesting. I mean, I think this, these ideas actually have a role to play in public policy and in our health, actually.

Sean McDowell: I love it. Well, let's have a follow-up conversation about that.

Jay Richards: Sure.

Sean McDowell: Jay, we'll see you Tuesday.

Jay Richards: Thanks, Sean. [outro music]