Is Design Undeniable? – Doug Axe

[00:00:00] and now here’s your host Kevin Conover bring your time welcome to educate for

[00:00:07] life I’m your host Kevin Conover my website is educate for life o RG you can

[00:00:12] look up 40 online classes defending the truth of the Bible it’s a great resource if you’re the kind of person that wants

[00:00:18] to know that what you believe is true and you know what I found is a lot of people have a fear of sharing the gospel

[00:00:23] or inviting people to church and a lot of times that fear is grounded in not

[00:00:29] knowing the answers to questions people might ask like how do you know God exists and what about evolution and all

[00:00:36] the different subjects that our culture is dealing with and so my encouragement to you is that if you take the time to

[00:00:43] get answers to the questions that people have you will become more confident in your ability to share the gospel I like

[00:00:50] to say you know apologetics doesn’t save people but what it does do is it enables you to be more comfortable inviting

[00:00:56] people to church sharing the gospel and these sorts of things like that and you know yesterday I had the opportunity to

[00:01:01] go to lunch with dr. John Baumgardner he’s a geophysicist he knows so much

[00:01:07] about geology and the flood absolutely phenomenal scientists and also a dr.

[00:01:13] John Sanford I got to go to lunch with these gentlemen and really pick their brains talk to them and glean from their

[00:01:20] wisdom and their experience and their the the science that they’ve done John Sanford is a geneticist and the evidence

[00:01:27] he gives for the truth of God’s Word and that genetics actually matches up with

[00:01:33] the history recording the Bible is phenomenal if you don’t know him please look him up he’s all over YouTube and

[00:01:40] other resources and I reference him a lot in my curriculum my guest today is Doug axe and Doug axe is the author of a

[00:01:47] book undeniable and Doug when when did this book come out hardcover came out

[00:01:56] summer of 2016 and then paperback was 2017 about a year later and have you had

[00:02:03] a lot of positive response to the book I have and more positive than negative in

[00:02:08] Texas which is nice so lots of reviews on Amazon

[00:02:13] overwhelmingly positive like 4.5 stars which is pretty good yeah that’s what

[00:02:20] reviews it’s not that I know I’ve dated some people because I’ve recently had

[00:02:26] had several people review it it’s a site

[00:02:33] that’s hosted by Trinity Evangelical Divinity School I can’t remember the name of it they got several people from

[00:02:38] who are BioLogos affiliated through Hewitt and i know i’ve i’ve not got

[00:02:45] their enthusiastic support for the book but for our listeners can you tell them

[00:02:51] a little bit about who BioLogos is well so bile august i don’t remember when they were founded and people sometimes

[00:02:57] confused biologic institute which i directed by aloneness to two very different things BioLogos i was founded by or with the

[00:03:06] help of francis collins funded by the John Templeton Foundation Collins

[00:03:14] several years back wrote a book called the language of God I believe and he’s a

[00:03:19] proponent of the position is called theistic evolution so he’s a Christian and all of these vile Oh ghost writers

[00:03:26] and affiliates are Christians who thinks that Christianity should not should give

[00:03:34] up its quarrel with Darwinism accept Darwinism as the explanation for life

[00:03:39] and according to God so that so that these people think that Darwinian

[00:03:47] evolution is how God created life yeah so so what’s interesting here is you you

[00:03:54] give us a little bit of background for you know where you’re coming from as in you know did you grow up in a Christian

[00:03:59] family and I know you weren’t always you know so interested in biology you

[00:04:04] started off as an engineer give us a little bit of your background sure yeah I actually didn’t grow up in a Christian

[00:04:10] home didn’t start going to church until I was a teenager I was 14 when I became

[00:04:16] a Christian my whole family actually within the space of a few months was interested in the physical sciences back

[00:04:23] then and ended up studying Chemical Engineering is an undergraduate did at UC Berkeley wasn’t

[00:04:30] particularly interested in biology but when I started graduate school I started

[00:04:36] to take molecular genetics and biochemistry courses they gave me a

[00:04:42] completely different view of biology than I had as a high schooler which is the previous high school experience so

[00:04:48] how did it change how did your view of biology ecology turned me off because it was dissecting frogs and memorizing the

[00:04:56] names of the bones and things like that and I didn’t find it didn’t have a theoretical structure to it and it

[00:05:03] didn’t have a quantitative structure to it but when I learned more about

[00:05:08] genetics about the genetic code about sort of the engineering that you see at

[00:05:16] the molecular level when you when you start to examine how genes get turned off and on I saw an immediate connection

[00:05:23] to the engineering I’d studied as an undergraduate and I also saw a connection to computation beaking

[00:05:29] because you have this literal code not zeros and ones but a C’s GS and T’s and

[00:05:36] each of those has a value of like two years and ones encoding amino acid

[00:05:41] sequences for making proteins that all totally changed my view of biology I thought this is cool there’s an

[00:05:48] engineering beyond what human engineers had done and that really kind of ignited

[00:05:53] an interest in it not just for the sake of learning but for the sake of figuring

[00:05:59] out whether one could frame the sort of experiments that would be needed to show

[00:06:05] whether these things could happen by accident or not I was convinced that I was convinced that they couldn’t but I

[00:06:11] realized I really wanted to do work to it that would settle the matter once and

[00:06:17] for all one way or the other so that that’s really interesting to me because you know I first heard about what you

[00:06:24] were doing quite a while ago when Steven Mayer referenced you and the numbers on

[00:06:30] the possibility of a cell coming to a existence by itself so for those of you who are out there listening right now

[00:06:36] you know what Doug is kind of kind of cutting-edge science here in a sense he has looked at what is

[00:06:45] the possibility or what is the likelihood of life a single-celled organism coming to existence all by

[00:06:51] itself and the title of the book is undeniable you can check it out at undeniable design.com and Doug I’m sure

[00:06:59] there’s a lot of people you know that are non-believers that aren’t that are Christians that really are saying hey

[00:07:04] you know how can you title this book undeniable can you really have hard data

[00:07:11] that can demonstrate that that proteins

[00:07:16] and amino acids couldn’t come in to exist or it couldn’t arrange themselves by themselves is this really undeniable

[00:07:22] or is this just your opinion and do you really have hard data that can that can

[00:07:27] you know establish that that your idea yeah it’s a very reasonable question let

[00:07:33] me let me read the subtitle the subtitle is how biology confirms our intuition that life is designed so what I end up I

[00:07:41] start the book by saying hey we all have this intuition and this is not controversial that from say the age of

[00:07:47] four when we look at a butterfly we think of it as something that was made by a god-like designer and people who

[00:07:53] don’t believe in God have acknowledged this it’s psychology professor Alison Gopnik I quote her in the book and she’s

[00:08:01] referring to the work of another psychology professor at Boston University Deborah Kellerman so that’s

[00:08:07] not controversial these people think that it’s a wrong intuition but they acknowledge that we all have it I start

[00:08:13] the book with that intuition as a way of saying hey this is worth looking at the fact that we all have it even kids were

[00:08:20] brought up in atheist homes have this is interesting because it’s universal and

[00:08:26] can we step back and look at it as scientists and not just as technical

[00:08:32] scientists but as what I call common scientists so everyone does science at a

[00:08:37] simple level can we use the kind of common sense science that we all do to show that that intuition is correct or

[00:08:44] not and I argue in the book that we can and when we do that we find that the intuition is correct so it’s that

[00:08:51] intuition that I end up saying becomes undeniable not because all intuitions aren’t undeniable but

[00:08:58] because there’s a very simple common-sense way in which this one can’t be wrong so that’s what the book is

[00:09:03] about ovarian top of that so you acted behind you asked about technical demonstration and I do weave in I spent

[00:09:11] 25 years doing laboratory work on this mathematical work computational work and

[00:09:19] I came to the conclusion overwhelmingly and this is the work that Stephen Meyer refers to in in his books that these

[00:09:27] things cannot happen by accident you cannot evolve new enzyme systems which are needed for every form of life they

[00:09:36] need intelligence because someone had to know how you put these things together okay a book I do I don’t want to do

[00:09:43] spawn barred people its technical though I want to give people a simple on-ramp and then also give them little clinches

[00:09:49] a bit technical that’s fantastic my guest today is Doug axe and he’s the author of undeniable a

[00:09:55] fantastic book arguing that it’s undeniable that we’ve been designed that

[00:10:00] all the way down to the very cellular level there is design so stay with us

[00:10:05] we’re going to be right back and continue this conversation [Music] hi this is Jason hall president of team

[00:10:12] home loans a branch of synergy one lending I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank Kevin Kahn over for

[00:10:18] the profound impact he’s had on mine and my wife’s spiritual life as well as being an incredible teacher while our

[00:10:23] kids were his students his knowledge and passion have taught us all how important it is to be defenders of our faith it’s

[00:10:29] our honor and privilege to support kevin and his show is our sincere hope and prayer that you will continue to learn

[00:10:35] to be defenders of your faith through Kevin’s radio show and through his educate for life teachings thank you

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[00:12:48] [Applause] thanks for listening today this is educate for life I’m your host Kevin

[00:12:54] Conover my website is join da educate for life dot o-r-g if you’re interested

[00:12:59] in really looking at the evidence for the truth of the Bible and God’s Word and and in Christianity it’s a great way

[00:13:06] to get informed I cover all kinds of different subjects that people have questions about how do you know God

[00:13:12] exists how do we know Christianity is true why are there so many Muslims or people of other religions if if you know

[00:13:19] we’re claiming that Christianity is true there’s a lot of Buddhists and so forth and you know I’ve interviewed Buddhists on the radio show I’ve interviewed

[00:13:25] Muslims I think the best way to get at the truth is to really talk to lots of

[00:13:30] people you know really get informed understand what other people think and we are not all-knowing like God is so we

[00:13:36] have to use our minds and and hear what other people have to say in their ideas and then allow the truth to rise to the

[00:13:42] surface and I really think that when you pursue the truth you end up at Christ when you pursue Christ you end up at

[00:13:47] truth and he said I am the way the truth and the life he said I tell you the truth over 70 times in the New Testament

[00:13:53] he was really all about truth and so I think that and it to a large degree that’s what we should be about is hey

[00:13:58] let’s get to the truth and my guest today is Doug axe he is the author of undeniable you can check them out at

[00:14:04] undeniable design.com and Doug what is your what is your organization called

[00:14:10] I’m the director of biologic Institute and what what is it that you’re doing

[00:14:16] there in biologic well I’m a molecular biologist and computational biologist

[00:14:22] the idea the Institute was to bring together people from a variety of fields in the US and abroad in order to do

[00:14:30] collaborative research projects from a design perspective so there’s all kinds of people in universities in Europe and

[00:14:37] in the United States and elsewhere who are interested in approaching their

[00:14:42] fields from a design perspective it can often be lonely when you’re in that

[00:14:48] position yeah I don’t have colleagues in your own department and the idea the Institute was to give to make an

[00:14:54] academic home for people in that situation to work together and to think

[00:15:01] together and if somebody wants to is in trash and getting to know more about that how do they find out more about biologic

[00:15:08] Institute where they can go to biologic institute.org that’s our website that

[00:15:14] would be a good place to get a summary at the people who are involved in the sort of work that we do that’s great and

[00:15:19] so if there are if there are other people that are interested in approaching science from a design

[00:15:24] perspective is that something you’re actively looking for other other colleagues that can join with what

[00:15:31] you’re doing yeah it’s not intended biologic Institute isn’t intended for the general

[00:15:37] public it would be for people who are in academic positions were academically trained but certainly those people

[00:15:44] anyone who’s doing research basically in an academic level who’s interested in doing it from a design perspective I

[00:15:51] would love for them to get in touch with me and we can we can make be a part of it that’s great now for for you know

[00:15:59] most of our listeners are going to be the average person who’s you know maybe talking to a relative they’re talking to

[00:16:04] a friend at a party and and what what kind of what is somebody going to get

[00:16:10] out of this book that’s going to help them to be able to be more confident in the the fact that God exists and that

[00:16:18] we’re designed or that a designer exists do you approach this as God exists or do you are you strictly approaching this at

[00:16:23] from a designer exists well I start I don’t even start with God exists I start

[00:16:29] by inviting everyone to the table including atheists and in fact I quote

[00:16:34] extensively from Ethier stomache Nagel who wrote a great book called mind and

[00:16:40] cosmos why the materialist neo-darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly

[00:16:45] false he wrote that as an atheist so I invite everyone at the beginning and then I walk through this line of reasoning

[00:16:53] where we’re critically examining whether our intuition that life has to have been designed and we all have that intuition

[00:17:00] at least one more kids whether that’s true or false and by about 2/3 into the

[00:17:06] book I come to the conclusion that it’s true and then I go well beyond simply

[00:17:13] calling this person who designed as a designer and described my

[00:17:18] my own Christian belief and then give give evidence that in how the designer

[00:17:25] made life he has shown himself not just to be a designer but a personal Creator

[00:17:30] God so very interesting and so so again if you’re listening and you want to

[00:17:36] check out this book it’s called undeniable by Doug axe and Doug so when

[00:17:41] I was looking into this myself a while back and I was looking at Steven Myers

[00:17:47] he was quoting you and he’s talking about how a protein is formed and you

[00:17:54] have about 20 amino acids that make up the proteins of life and then you have I’ve what the number I’ve heard is

[00:18:00] around 250 proteins that make up your most simple living cell is and then the

[00:18:07] numbers that he was showing was one in 10 to the 164 I believe that a that

[00:18:14] amino acids could come together and then make a protein is that am i quoting the right numbers there the number he would

[00:18:20] have got from uh not sure the number he would have got from me would probably be one in 10 to the 74 or 1 in 10 to 77

[00:18:29] depending on what it was but then that’s for getting one chunk of a protein about

[00:18:35] a hundred and fifty amino acids and links that he was looking at multiple proteins that a number gets worse and

[00:18:40] worse I mean you add those you can add another 75 roughly for every equivalent chunk of

[00:18:49] protein so if you needed two of those would be like 10 to the 150 you said 10 to 1 64 well this the numbers he gave

[00:18:55] was he said it’s it’s considering all the different kinds of amino acids to build a protein by chances 1 in 10 to

[00:19:01] the 74 then he said it has to be a peptide bond which is 1 in 10 to the 405

[00:19:06] and then it has to be a left-handed amino acid well yeah he’s talking about slightly different I approached the

[00:19:12] problem assuming there’s life and then saying how would you get your protein given that there’s life in signature in

[00:19:18] the cell Steve Meyer is actually asking how would you get the first life okay so

[00:19:23] that’s much that’s even worse because not only do you have to get amino acids

[00:19:28] to linked up but there isn’t apart from life oh wait get all 20 amino acids in the correct

[00:19:35] form they’re either left-handed or right-handed in ordinary chemistry life only uses the left-handed ones so you

[00:19:42] have a much worse problem that you have to sort out things that aren’t sorted out apart from life so so is the premise of

[00:19:50] undeniable is the premise that hey statistically from a probability perspective this just isn’t going to

[00:19:57] happen is is that the overall kind of thesis it it’s not simply stating that

[00:20:03] it’s showing the reader why that is the case and there’s a difference between statistics here and probability

[00:20:10] statistics is what you use when you don’t know how something works and

[00:20:16] you’re just looking at results and trying to decide whether it fits one mall or model or another probability can

[00:20:23] be much more rigorous and that you start with your model and then say well if this is true then these are the numbers

[00:20:30] so I work with probability not with statistics start with the model that

[00:20:36] life happened accidentally you can then put numbers on the in probability of

[00:20:42] that happening which is much more rigorous than statistics although people often use those two terms

[00:20:47] interchangeably they’re actually different okay I hear what you’re saying so so if somebody were to you know the

[00:20:54] probability if somebody were to say to you well it could happen I mean is that how do how does somebody who is an

[00:21:01] advocate for evolutionary theory and and the idea that this could have all

[00:21:07] happened naturally by chance how do they respond to your book I mean how do they respond to that the evidence that you’re

[00:21:14] giving different depends on where

[00:21:19] they’re coming from we’ve had yeah not to my book but to the technical work that I described in the book we’ve had a

[00:21:25] number of responses we did laboratory work where we were looking at whether

[00:21:31] the evolutionary process could retool and ends on so an enzyme is a protein

[00:21:37] that does some chemistry whether it could can convert the the the enzyme to

[00:21:43] do say reaction a to reaction B you know we looked at two very similar-looking enzymes and we ended up

[00:21:49] finding the number of changes you would need to go from A to B is so large that this would never happen even in you know

[00:21:56] billions of years now interestingly the response from scientists on that has

[00:22:02] been to say well we never said that the a you picked turned into B we think they

[00:22:09] both came from some you know C that predated both of them we said very clearly in the paper where we or we

[00:22:15] demonstrated that a to B doesn’t work we’re not trying to replicate history we’re simply trying to show whether

[00:22:21] natural selection can get you a new function Hynson so it’s a very general

[00:22:27] question that we’re asking where we show that it doesn’t work the response should be oh no the whole theory is in trouble

[00:22:33] because we’re assuming you can get new functions when you have selective conditions that would benefit from new

[00:22:41] functions instead they say well that’s not the one no we don’t claim that that one ever happened we’re just claiming

[00:22:47] that lots of other ones happen okay so so I want to I want to actually talk a little bit more about natural selection

[00:22:52] and this is this claim that it can get you a new function and and here your your opinion on that or your weight your

[00:22:59] research on that we’re on a break here we’re coming up on a break and we’ll

[00:23:04] pick right back up here bring money I will bring my hi hi this

[00:23:14] is Kevin Conover will you please donate to educate for life so we can share the truth of God’s Word with kids in public

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[00:23:40] EF l oo RG hi this is Jason hall president of team home loans a branch of

[00:23:45] synergy one lending I just wanted to take this opportunity to think Kevin Conover for the profound impact he’s had

[00:23:51] on mine and my wife’s spiritual life as well as being an incredible teacher while our kids were his students his

[00:23:57] knowledge and passion have taught us all how important it is to be defenders of our faith it’s our honor and privilege

[00:24:03] to support Kevin and his show is our sincere hope and prayer that you will continue to learn to be defenders of

[00:24:08] your faith through Kevin’s radio show and through his educate for life teachings thank you Kevin

[00:24:13] from the hall family and team Home Loans hi I’m Marisa Conover and I would love

[00:24:19] to help you buy or sell your home I’ve worked as a realtor for more than 13

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[00:25:20] to educate for life I’m your host Kevin Conover my website is educate for life dot o-r-g in May I’m gonna be having a

[00:25:29] conference with Eric bjur and Danny Ray we’re gonna be talking about we’re going

[00:25:36] to be talking about your faith in schools in education we’re gonna be talking about the freedoms we have in

[00:25:42] California specifically but really around the country to be Christian in

[00:25:48] school there’s been a lot of misunderstanding about what it means to have separation of church and state and

[00:25:54] we just want to clarify some things and encourage those that are involved in education administrators teachers

[00:26:00] parents students about what’s actually legal in the state Education Code Eric

[00:26:05] Brewer is an expert on the state Education Code he is the founder of gateways to better education and a

[00:26:11] teacher for a very long time so we’re gonna be talking about that it’s May 15th I know that’s quite a ways away but

[00:26:17] we’re already starting to promote it so 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. please check it out IFL Danny ray you can register there if

[00:26:24] you’d like and that’d be fantastic if you could join us my guest today is Doug axe and we’re talking about something

[00:26:30] that generally is not taught in schools is this taught at the college level at

[00:26:37] all Doug what you’re what you’re talking about here well my perspective on it that it can’t happen by accident ya know

[00:26:44] you get you get the opposite that it can happen by accident I’m going against the

[00:26:50] text textbook orthodoxy and what if you get an education in the life sciences you’ll only get the textbook version and

[00:26:57] well I mean why is that why is it’s it’s kind of an echo chamber if there’s any dissent you’re you’re really kind of

[00:27:04] looked down upon is that changing is that going to continue and why is that happening in general well that I’m not

[00:27:12] an expert on that I can only guess yeah variants do it it is this echo chamber phenomenon I do

[00:27:19] in the book describe the book undeniable describe my removal from my position in

[00:27:24] Cambridge that was part of this whole phenomenon so I have been educated so to speak on how political the academic

[00:27:33] Enterprise is it’s not I think you know even we think that scientists are only

[00:27:38] about the truth and will happily acknowledge that they’re wrong if there’s proof that they’re wrong in fact

[00:27:45] the scientists are human and they behave like humans with the ups and the downs

[00:27:50] of that you see very political self self-interest

[00:27:55] playing itself out in the scientific community all the time so in one of the way go ahead I’m sorry go ahead

[00:28:00] well one of the ways it’s something that’s very similar to ordinary bullying and peer pressure that people are not

[00:28:09] free to say what they think in the scientific community because they fear the sort of mistreatment you get if you

[00:28:18] step out of line and there are a number of examples of this for people who thought they had the freedom to say

[00:28:24] something like I’m skeptical of this or I don’t think the theory is very strong

[00:28:30] and they can get really punished by their peers in various ways now you said

[00:28:36] you said that you yourself had experienced that I well I was removed from a position at the Medical Research

[00:28:42] Council Center in Cambridge in 2002 over the intelligent design can you tell us

[00:28:48] what happened yeah I there was a newspaper article I had been funded by

[00:28:54] the Discovery Institute for several years that was not an issue until in other words always in

[00:29:00] concealing it was known by the center there because they receiving funding from Discovery Institute it only became

[00:29:07] an issue when intelligent design became very controversial over there because of

[00:29:13] some schools that were teaching at alongside evolution in 2002 and suddenly

[00:29:18] became hugely controversial in february/march timeframe of that year

[00:29:24] 2002 and a newspaper article in March

[00:29:31] named me and my affiliation and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back I

[00:29:37] received an email not from the director of the Center where I was working but from his assistant saying no I’m not

[00:29:44] giving it true explanation but saying we’ve run out of space we need you to leave basically by the end of the month

[00:29:49] so that was the end of my position there and you’re convinced that that wasn’t because they actually ran out of space

[00:29:56] it was actually because of well it would have been a space with exactly the size of me is that saying the book no one else had to leave and in an interview

[00:30:04] later with New Scientist magazine I

[00:30:09] don’t remember the year here could been around 2008 2005 someone there the

[00:30:16] journalist interviewed me to write an article about biologic Institute which

[00:30:22] is the organization that I direct here in Seattle when the article came out it

[00:30:28] was evident she had also interviewed Sir Alan first who was the guy who fired me and he acknowledged in that in that

[00:30:35] article that he had been pressured by someone at the centre to remove me

[00:30:41] because of my affiliation with intelligent design and in the article he says I said that’s not the way we work

[00:30:47] around here and the article doesn’t actually get the facts right it describes me as having kind of stormed

[00:30:54] off but that’s not what happened so so so that’s thus why biologics

[00:31:02] exists is because you’re trying to provide a little bit of a safe haven for those who want to approach the research from an intelligent design perspective

[00:31:09] yes including myself oh yeah remove from there I needed a place to do

[00:31:14] science and to publish scientific work and a new nonprofit became the solution

[00:31:20] to that that’s great yeah I interviewed David Coppedge are you familiar with yeah yeah and his whole scenario yeah so

[00:31:30] so back to what we were talking about natural selection when we left off on the last segment you were saying that

[00:31:36] natural selection can’t provide what’s necessary in order to get to higher function can you expect they expand on

[00:31:42] that yeah well there’s an obvious problem with natural selection and I think when I describe it to people when

[00:31:50] I’m giving talks they can’t believe it could be that obvious in other words I think those people who believe in

[00:31:56] natural selection are smart surely they see this problem the obvious problem is that nothing gets selected until it

[00:32:04] works right so selection natural selection is is the benefit that accrues

[00:32:10] to a variant within a population if it

[00:32:16] has something that its peers don’t have and that something benefits its survival

[00:32:21] right but that only happens once it has the benefit already okay so the question

[00:32:27] that the problem that natural selection doesn’t explain is how that benefit first appeared and this has been

[00:32:32] recognized for a century or more I mean it’s been given the term someone quoted

[00:32:41] someone from I think 1904 I’m recalling saying natural selection may explain the

[00:32:48] survival of the fittest but it does not explain the arrival of the fittest and

[00:32:54] it clearly doesn’t it just logically doesn’t by the time something is selected it already exists which means

[00:33:00] so actually is not the explanation for how these things come to it but wouldn’t somebody wouldn’t a biologist say yeah

[00:33:06] that’s that’s where the mutations come come in the genetic mutations that provide the source of these advantages

[00:33:14] for the organism well you already have equivocation in that line of reasoning they may well but if you ask a biologist

[00:33:22] what is the saying what’s the blind watchmaker that Richard Dawkins described in 1986 it’s not mutation it’s natural

[00:33:29] selection because everyone realizes if mutation is random then problems like 1

[00:33:36] in 10 to the 74 can’t be solved so they appeal to something that’s not random which is natural selection the

[00:33:43] problem with not selection is it’s only after the fact so your choices go with something as random and clearly cannot

[00:33:49] solve cannot overcome these and probabilities will go over something that’s non-random but it only kicks in

[00:33:56] after the problem has been solved oh very interesting that’s really that’s really in a nutshell what the whole

[00:34:02] thing is about right there what you just said ok when we come back I’m gonna have

[00:34:07] Doug axe repeat that just cuz I feel like that is really the kind of the linchpin here holding or what we’re

[00:34:12] talking about why you have so many problems with evolution if you’re listening online please feel free to

[00:34:19] type me a question if you want this it’s not often that you get to talk directly to Doug axe so if you have a question

[00:34:25] for him he’s an expert on this so this is a great opportunity for you to bring up some questions you might have about evolution and his book undeniable we’ll

[00:34:32] be right back hi this is jason hall president of team

[00:34:39] home loans a branch of synergy one lending i just want to take this opportunity to thank Kevin Kahn over for

[00:34:44] the profound impact he’s had on mine and my wife’s spiritual life as well as being an incredible teacher while our

[00:34:50] kids were his students his knowledge and passion have taught us all how important it is to be defenders of our faith it’s

[00:34:56] our honor and privilege to support Kevin and his show is our sincere hope and prayer that you will continue to learn

[00:35:01] to be defenders of your faith through Kevin’s radio show and through his educate for life teachings thank you

[00:35:07] Kevin from the hall family and team Home Loans

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[00:36:41] [Music] welcome to educate for life I’m your

[00:36:48] host Kevin Conover if you’re just tuning in if you’re on Facebook and just joining us I see a couple people on there that have popped into the the live

[00:36:55] feed here so if you’re listening if you’re live and you have a question if you have a friend you want to ask a

[00:37:02] question who doesn’t know god or believe in a designer this is a great opportunity to talk to somebody who’s an

[00:37:07] expert in this he’s a molecular biologist Doug axe and he’s written a book called undeniable

[00:37:14] the website is undeniable design.com if you want to pick up a copy of the book it’s a fantastic tool to be able to

[00:37:20] share real hard evidence that we were designed and dug so you know what was

[00:37:28] the impetus behind you writing this book I mean as far as I know nobody has

[00:37:34] written a book quite like this and you you’re kind of cutting edge here is

[00:37:40] anybody else doing this type of research that you’re doing um I think you know an

[00:37:47] early book taking intelligent design perspective was Michael B he’s Darwin’s black box back in 1996 I think now he’s

[00:37:56] a bonafide biochemist he knows what he’s talking about he wrote a book that was

[00:38:02] not citing his own work but benefited from his experience as a biochemist and

[00:38:08] he wrote it for non-scientists so he would become an early entrant in the area

[00:38:13] I think what’s unique about my book a couple of things I hope are unique one

[00:38:18] is that I’m not just experienced by having worked in the field but I’ve actually worked on the problem of the

[00:38:25] mechanism of evolution and I spent decades on a minute so it benefits from direct experimental investigation of

[00:38:33] whether darwin’s theory works at the molecular level and the other thing that I think is special about undeniable is

[00:38:40] that I’m not simply trying to simplify a technical argument I’m arguing in the

[00:38:47] book that there’s a non-technical argument you don’t have to have a PhD to get that connects to your basic

[00:38:54] intuition that life is designed and if they correct so I do talk about some of

[00:38:59] my technical work but I do it in sort of a simple way and I only introduce it

[00:39:05] after I’ve already made the argument without having to do technical argumentation now now on a personal

[00:39:12] level how has your research impacted you how long have you been researching this subject matter about 25 years so so when

[00:39:22] you started did you hit upon things that you weren’t weren’t expecting or did by

[00:39:28] and large you get the results you expected well it’s an interesting question there was a paper that I

[00:39:36] authored there was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences back in 96 I think where I had

[00:39:47] randomized the interior of an enzyme by replacing really the the 20 different

[00:39:55] amino acids fall into different groups according to whether they’re salty or oily roughly speaking and the inside of

[00:40:03] these proteins are always early and the outside tends to be more salty water loving or water hating and I did a

[00:40:10] project where I randomized the interior of an enzyme and kept the I mean I said

[00:40:16] oily but otherwise let them change wildly and I found that these randomized

[00:40:23] versions a substantial fraction of them weren’t and it was a very surprising

[00:40:29] result I was surprised I expected that they would all be broken but they weren’t and that was a very well

[00:40:35] received paper a surprising result most people consider it to be a surprising result huh interesting

[00:40:42] so how has this research changed your personal you know view of God or

[00:40:48] anything or has it changed it it all has it affected your your relationship or your faith in God at all

[00:40:55] my faith came before the research mmm I think I went into it feeling like there

[00:41:03] isn’t clarity on this I think I know what’s right but if I’m right about what

[00:41:08] I think is right someone should be able to show that it’s right and so it did

[00:41:13] give me it gave me confidence that good science can be done and referring back to this 1996 project I thought after

[00:41:21] that well if if these things can be randomized on the inside maybe they can be randomized on the outside as well and

[00:41:27] it turned out that they couldn’t at all they totally broke on the outside so I ended up surprising myself and others by

[00:41:34] showing that the outside is as important is more important than people thought because people used to think the outside

[00:41:40] was not important it’s all about the inside of these enzymes it didn’t change

[00:41:47] it didn’t change my world view it I gained some confidence in the ability to

[00:41:53] answer hard questions with science but I also got a real education I described in

[00:41:58] the book on sort of the sociology of science on on the humaneness

[00:42:05] of science because I went to the internist expecting that if I got the right result and I was rigorous everyone

[00:42:11] would concede and it would be the end of Darwinism well that was extremely naive I didn’t get how human the whole thing

[00:42:18] is and if people don’t like your result it doesn’t matter that they’re scientists they’re human if they don’t

[00:42:24] like your result cuz it pushes against everything they’ve done then they won’t suppress it they don’t want to hear it and that’s as true in the scientific

[00:42:30] community as it is in politics or big business or anyone or anywhere else really yeah well yeah that’s absolutely

[00:42:37] true I I think um yeah people people don’t want to believe something and sometimes it doesn’t matter what

[00:42:43] evidence I had a user experience where I had a guy was debating he was an atheist in

[00:42:48] brought him to my church and we we did a little debate in front of the class and he said to me I was giving him all these

[00:42:53] scientific reasons that you know God exists and that God is true and he said

[00:43:00] to me you just don’t get it and I said what the one I get he said I’m not an atheist because because the science

[00:43:06] proves atheism I’m an atheist because I want to be an atheist and that really took me aback I was kind of like wait a second what that is very honest

[00:43:14] and that’s what Thomas and I referred to Thomas Nagel before that’s what he says he says I just don’t want there to be a

[00:43:19] god and I think that refreshingly honest atheist who says that because you have

[00:43:25] these other ones like Richard Dawkins who pretend that if you do science you’re pushed into atheism it and that’s

[00:43:31] just simply not true atheists are atheists because they don’t want to acknowledge God it’s not because

[00:43:37] someone has proven it but there is no God that’s nonsense so would you say that the scientific evidence as far as

[00:43:43] you’re concerned and I don’t know how much you go outside of your particular field your particular specialty but what

[00:43:49] do you say overall that the scientific evidence is more strong for the existence of God than not overwhelmingly

[00:43:58] so and my book is about a simple example of that but I give several examples of

[00:44:04] it in other words I reject the idea that only people with PhDs can figure out

[00:44:11] whether we are cosmic accidents or not I overwhelmingly reject it I think everyone can see the truth there and you

[00:44:19] can see the truth in simple scientific terms so nobody has to be intimidated by

[00:44:25] you know fist pounding atheist scientists with you know lots of degrees

[00:44:31] everyone who’s interested in this and we all should be can be very confident that

[00:44:37] life is designed just by doing some simple reasoning that’s what I described in the book oh that’s very good because

[00:44:43] yeah I think a lot of people are intimidated by hey I’m not this PhD scientist you know I had Lawrence Krauss

[00:44:48] on the radio not too long ago and I said so can you explain to me you know how

[00:44:54] you know what nothing is and how everything came the whole universe came out of nothing or we are definition of

[00:45:01] nothing and you know he very emphatically began to say it’s obvious

[00:45:07] that this is what happened and everything and I think a lot of people are intimidated by that because he’s got credentials through the roof and so my

[00:45:15] guest today is Doug axe and a big part of his book is on that the average person can feel confident about the view

[00:45:22] point their intuition that God exists so I want to expand about on that a little bit we have one segment left if you are

[00:45:28] if you are listening online if you’re listening on the on the stream please feel free to send some questions to Doug

[00:45:34] axe I’d love to hear what you’re thinking about what he’s saying and if you have some questions you’d like to

[00:45:40] ask them please feel free to do that we’ll be right back we have one segment left

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[00:47:23] hi this is Kevin Conover will you please donate to educate for life so we can share the truth of God’s

[00:47:29] Word with kids in public schools you can donate online at donate to EFL 0rg

[00:47:35] the Bible used to be read in public schools on a regular basis prior to the 1960s but today most kids are completely

[00:47:41] clueless when it comes to the content and the historical and scientific accuracy of the Bible please help us by

[00:47:48] donating online at donate to EF lar G hi this is Jason hall president of team

[00:47:55] home loans a branch of synergy one lending I just want to take this opportunity to thank Kevin Kahn over for

[00:48:00] the profound impact he’s had on mine and my wife’s spiritual life as well as being an incredible teacher while our

[00:48:06] kids were his students his knowledge and passion have taught us all how important it is to be defenders of our faith it’s

[00:48:11] our honor and privilege to support Kevin and his show is our sincere hope and prayer that you will continue to learn

[00:48:17] to be defenders of your faith through Kevin’s radio show and through his educate for life teachings

[00:48:22] Thank You Kevin from the hall family and team Home Loans

[00:48:28] [Applause] welcome back to educate for life I’m your host Kevin Conover my website is

[00:48:35] educate for life dot o-r-g and on May 15th if you’re interested love to have

[00:48:40] you join us for a big conference on education and Christianity and where the

[00:48:46] event is meant to inspire and encourage christians and education students parents administrators and teachers and

[00:48:52] you can register if you’d like on AFL danny Raycom danny ray is a world-famous

[00:48:58] illusionist and i’ve actually had him on the radio program he loves the Lord and he uses illusions to reach people that

[00:49:06] that are captivated by his sleight of hand and it’s amazing he did some stuff on on my program if you want to check it

[00:49:13] out on a previous show absolutely mind-blowing stuff and he’s gonna be sharing they’re sharing the gospel Eric

[00:49:20] Brewer is gonna be sharing on your freedoms and the state education code he is an expert in the education code he’s

[00:49:27] endorsed by chuck Colson Gary Bauer and many others and he’s gonna be encouraging teachers about their rights

[00:49:33] and what they actually can do and they don’t have to be afraid of sharing and where those lines are what when am i

[00:49:39] crossing a line what’s appropriate what’s not and I’m gonna be sharing also briefly on the historical accuracy of

[00:49:45] the Bible the Bible is an amazing book that is the most accurate ancient book in existence it’s absolutely phenomenal

[00:49:51] I actually got to talk to a gentleman yesterday who they have now found in fourteen tombs of the Pharaohs they have

[00:49:59] found artwork that represents the Exodus and the parting of the Red Sea with it’s

[00:50:06] just a phenomenal what he’s doing he’s gonna be coming out with a book in December of 2018 and should be

[00:50:12] absolutely incredible so my guest today is Doug axe and he wrote the book

[00:50:17] undeniable it’s undeniable design.com if you want to pick up a copy of the book

[00:50:23] he’s with biologic Institute if you are a scientist out there hey we need more scientists that aren’t afraid to to kind

[00:50:30] of stick their neck out there and say hey I’m not just going to go along to get along I’m I’m sold out that God is

[00:50:37] real and I want to continue to pursue research that confirms

[00:50:43] what we intuitively know to be true and Doug I wanted to kind of end our our

[00:50:48] last segment here talking a little bit about that so so when somebody is

[00:50:54] intimidated by somebody like lawrence krauss or a lot of the other scientists out there who Richard Dawkins and others

[00:51:00] who say and you’ll hear this frequently said you’ll hear somebody say hey all

[00:51:05] scientists believe in evolution if it if it wasn’t true they wouldn’t all believe in it and so what would you say to the

[00:51:13] average person and you even have people like Francis Collins who you mentioned earlier who you know as an expert on the

[00:51:20] human genome who believes in theistic evolution what would you say to the

[00:51:26] person who says hey I don’t feel equipped to be able to deal with this

[00:51:32] and I hope I’m right but I don’t feel confident that I am can you share expand

[00:51:38] a little bit on what you say in your books to encourage people like that yeah well it’s very understandable because

[00:51:43] this thing is discussed as though it’s a technical subject I’m talking about this

[00:51:49] thing being the question of whether we are cosmic accidents or whether we were made by a personal God at rock-bottom I

[00:51:58] believe it’s not technical I believe it comes down to basic simple facts what I

[00:52:03] try to do in the book is equip people to know that their intuition that life is

[00:52:10] designed is correct and I connect it to our we have an uncanny sense of coincidence as humans we we can easily

[00:52:18] look at things or hear stories and no that can’t be true because it’s too coincidental and what I do is I leverage

[00:52:25] that sense that we all have and show that remarkable functional designs

[00:52:33] things that have parts within parts and all the things are oriented toward

[00:52:38] providing a high level function so this is take out your smartphone don’t break

[00:52:44] it open but if you did you’d find thousands of parts and they’re all there to make the whole thing work as a smartphone that’s true of everything

[00:52:50] that we make that we invent as humans it’s true they’re written paragraphs the

[00:52:55] little things are the letters to make words to make sentences to make a paragraph little things within bigger

[00:53:01] bigger bigger things all serving the top-level function when you see things like that we automatically know that

[00:53:07] they can’t be accidental because someone had to know how to arrange them and you

[00:53:12] can do the math you don’t have to but you can do the math to show that in fact they are fantastically improbable as

[00:53:21] accidental occurrences they can’t happen by accident is this the is this the watchmaker argument essentially it’s my

[00:53:30] interpretation so I coined a term that’s called functional coherence which means and that refers to this state where you

[00:53:37] look at something and it’s got a bunch of parts within parts and all of them are serving a top-level function so yes

[00:53:43] that’s exactly what happens when you look at a watch it’s the thing that tells time well how does it tell time

[00:53:49] it’s got a whole bunch of things inside it that are all just so in order for it to work as a watch so Paley’s watchmaker

[00:53:57] argument is an early version of what I’m calling an argument from functional

[00:54:02] coherence we don’t do math as easily as we recognize unbelievable coincidence

[00:54:08] and so what I wanted to do is connect our natural intuitive sense of coincidence so that I can show people

[00:54:16] who don’t do math so well that one ever you see a coincidence of this kind you

[00:54:22] don’t even need to do the math because it always ends up being impossible for it to happen by accident and I do that

[00:54:28] by doing the math for just a few cases to show people why you always get the same result when you look at these

[00:54:34] problems that’s that’s interesting now is this related to William dem skis design inference is that is there a

[00:54:41] relation yeah and you can although I didn’t relate it in the book I think it

[00:54:46] gives you the way density argues this is a small probability with specification

[00:54:53] and it’s a slightly more technical notion because you have to understand what specification is I kind of get

[00:55:01] around that whole way of doing it by saying what do you need to have something that we recognize as an

[00:55:06] invention something clever and it turns out you don’t have to talk about specification if that’s where

[00:55:13] you started your analysis what are one of the things we consider to be clever that you need to know how in order to do

[00:55:19] they all have this property called functional coherence and if you look at the probabilities you always find things

[00:55:27] with functional coherence are staggeringly improbable as accidental outcomes they’re not improbable as

[00:55:34] intentional outcomes so we can easily write a paragraph or send a a text message but that’s because we know what

[00:55:40] we’re doing it would never happen by accident okay and you know Anthony flu you know he

[00:55:47] wrote that book there is a God before he passed away and he talked about integrated complexity is this also is

[00:55:53] this related to what you you’re writing about functional so the there have been several people have argued for design

[00:55:59] for Michael B Mia was irreducible complexity flu referred to was

[00:56:06] integrated complexity and dense keys

[00:56:11] design inference based on small probability and specification and there may be several others as well I think

[00:56:18] the reason you have lots of different ways to approach this is it’s true and it’s always been true and we’ve recognized this as long as there have

[00:56:25] been humans have been humans we recognize the work of someone intelligent I connect this to childhood

[00:56:33] because I think you know before you’re 2 years old you’re already noticing the things that

[00:56:39] people do because you want to do the things that people do and you’re basically noticing functional coherence

[00:56:46] things that you need to know how in order to do and those are the very things that don’t happen by accident

[00:56:51] I argue in the book that’s fantastic well we’re just about out of time here so Doug I just really want to thank you

[00:56:57] so much for being on the program today and for those of you who are listening

[00:57:03] this will also air this upcoming Saturday if you have a friend who needs to hear this kind of information please

[00:57:08] share it with them you can also check out the YouTube channel educate for life video on YouTube this will be up on

[00:57:15] YouTube also and I really appreciate you being here with us today and again Doug thank you very much thank you for having

[00:57:22] me absolutely so a if you’re interested in his book it’s undeniable you can pick it up it’s all

[00:57:28] over the place on the web but on design undeniable design.com is a great place

[00:57:34] to pick it up and if you are a scientist who wants to explore more about intelligent design please visit biologic

[00:57:41] instituto RG org biologic institute org and again thanks a lot for being here we

[00:57:48] will see you next time god bless you thank you did you miss part of today’s program

[00:57:54] don’t worry work Han mitad to helping you get the info you need okay that was dumb but for real visit educate for life

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