Point of View June 9, 2026 – Hour 1 : Alien Life and Evolution

[00:00:04] Across America Live, this is Point of View and now Liberty McArtor. Alright, thanks for joining me on Point of View today. Truly, we leave no topic untouched here on Point of View and we want to help you apply a biblical worldview to all of it. So here's what's on the menu today. We're going to be talking about intelligent design.

[00:00:34] This is so important for Christians to understand the scientific arguments for intelligent design because it is just, it's so crucial. Everywhere in the culture everybody is pushing the theory of Darwinian evolution, but guess what? The science just doesn't hold that theory up. So we're going to get into some of that and put an interesting twist on it. At the bottom of the hour I'll be interviewing Casey Luskin. He's a scientist with the Discovery Institute. He's been on Point of View in the past and you might recognize his name from previous studies.

[00:01:04] He's been on Point of View in the past and we have highlighted his articles. But of course, as you know, with the movie Disclosure Day from Steven Spielberg coming out later this week and all of these UAP files that the government has released, talk of aliens has been more in the news. Now before you think that I'm going to be putting on a tinfoil hat, I actually want to talk about this because I think it opens up a great opportunity for both apologetics and evangelism.

[00:01:27] So Casey is going to help us with that and help us walk through a lot of these claims that we're hearing and some of the claims about extraterrestrial life and evolution and things like that. But put in the framework of intelligent design and what does the science actually point to and how that aligns with the biblical worldview. It's going to be a fascinating discussion. In the second hour, I'm going to be talking with Patty Garibay.

[00:01:50] If you have been listening to Point of View, then you probably already know that the scouting institutions and organizations that so many people have loved for so long, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, they have really just gone in a wayward direction. But instead of just complaining about it over 30 years ago, Patty did something about it. She started something new, which is American Heritage Girls. And now there's actually a brother organization as well, Trail Life USA.

[00:02:13] So we're going to be talking about a lot of the challenges that Christian families face today when they want to raise Christian kids and how she's responding to that. And we'll discuss other things, too, including what factors help kids retain their faith. There's some new research out on that and so much more. So that's what's on the menu today.

[00:02:29] I hope you're able to stay with me for the entire show. But as always, you can go to pointofview.net and read the articles that we're discussing today or always look at the Point of View Radio Talk Show podcast after the broadcast so that you can listen to everything on your own time. First, let's dive into some news of the day. A week ago, California had their primary elections. And we talked about this last week on the roundtable. And Richard Lim was on.

[00:02:54] And he's in California. And we were talking about maybe some common sense is prevailing with some of the candidates that seem to be pulling ahead as the primary results were coming in, including Spencer Pratt. Of course, the reality TV star turned mayoral candidate in Los Angeles. And it looked like he was actually going to be one of the top two contenders. So in California, whoever the top two people are who win a primary election go on to the general, regardless of party.

[00:03:22] Well, results have continued to pour in. It has taken a long time. And it looks like things are kind of flipped right now. So prospects for Pratt not looking too good. In fact, today is the deadline for California's ballots to arrive by mail. So let me just dedicate a few minutes to try to break down why does it take so long for these results to come in? What are some of the problems with the system in California? We have a lot of listeners in California.

[00:03:52] And President Trump, of course, has been posting on Truth Social. He had a bit of a contentious interview with Meet the Press over the weekend that you may have seen or seen clips of where he accused the election in California of being rigged, accused the election of being crooked, of California's voter system as being crooked. Now, I just want to say, I think we have to be really careful with this because point of view, we talk about voter fraud and we're not afraid to talk about that because there are examples of it happening.

[00:04:21] But we also do need to be careful, too, and not just throw the baby out with the bathwater, because overall, we should still be very thankful for the system that we have in the United States of America. And I know in the past there were a lot of people who actually were so discouraged by the voter fraud, a solemn election lines that they were hearing from Republicans that they just didn't even want to vote.

[00:04:46] So we need to be able to talk about problems in the systems or in various states and what those are and how they might make a state vulnerable to election fraud without saying, oh, it's all just pointless and election integrity is completely gone. We don't want to say that because there's not evidence for that and we don't want to discourage anybody from voting. So let's look at what what the process is in California.

[00:05:10] So about 80 percent of Californians vote by mail and only 40 percent of those ballots arrive or 40 percent arrive after Election Day. And we also know that California is the nation's most populous state. So there's a lot of people are voting. The voter ID laws are very loose, as you probably know. In fact, you don't have to show a voter ID to register to vote in California elections.

[00:05:36] You are supposed to show a voter ID when you vote in a federal election. But that just doesn't always happen. They also allow third parties to do what is called ballot harvesting. So whenever all of these votes come in and you see, whoa, I thought, you know, for instance, Spencer Pratt was ahead and now he's way behind and this other candidate is ahead. Well, that's because there may be an organization that is harvesting these ballots and dropping them all off at once.

[00:06:03] People who lean left and people who are younger tend to be the more likely to vote by mail. And mail in ballots are sent to every registered voter in California. So some of those delayed results that come in and that are mailed in and counted afterward, they can start skewing the results because people who might lean more conservative or who are older are more likely to vote for a certain candidate or more likely to vote on Election Day instead of mailing their votes in ahead of time.

[00:06:32] So this is an article posted at Point of View dot net from the Daily Signal by Fred Lucas, where he does a good job, I think, just going through some of the ways that the election process actually works in California. And he says there is no evidence of impropriety, but the procedures do negatively impact voter confidence. And we have seen this even from the quotes from President Trump this week.

[00:06:55] So the Wall Street Journal editorial board also took this on writing an article yesterday. Is California's election rigged? Of course, responding to Trump's accusations on truth social and in his Meet the Press interview. And so they even kind of take a stronger note on this, even in the Daily Signal did, and include several examples of fraud that has taken place in California.

[00:07:20] So here's here's one where this has to do with the federal ID laws. Federal prosecutors last month indicted a California woman for paying homeless people on Skid Row to register using her former address. So ballots were sent there. She actually pled guilty on that. There are other situations where officials aren't required to check whether a voter is a citizen and they say or even a person.

[00:07:50] Because another woman from Orange County was charged last fall with registering her dog to vote and submitting the ballots on her dog's behalf. And the only reason it was caught is because she reported herself. Man, so Wall Street Journal ends with this. There's no evidence so far that fraud has affected the results of the L.A. mayoral race. But the delayed results are a disservice to democracy.

[00:08:14] The states lose voting rules and dilatory counting fuel distrust in elections. So, again, we need to look at examples where there may be voter fraud. And maybe there are some laws that should tighten up so that voters have the confidence to go to the polls and know that their vote actually counts. Let's talk about a little bit more news when we get back.

[00:08:39] If you thought that teens were distracted in schools by social media, it is so much worse than you think. And we're going to dive into some of that evidence right after this. This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.

[00:09:06] If you look at the American economy, you will see a high and a low. The stock market is at a record high while consumer sentiment is at the lowest ever measured. In fact, Americans feel worse about the economy than they did in 2008 during the great financial crisis and worse than they felt when locked in their homes during COVID. The consumer sentiment just hit 44. To put that in perspective, the previous record low was 50, which occurred when the post-pandemic inflation was listed at 9%.

[00:09:34] We smash through that number in a survey that has been taken since 1952. One part of the American economy is high while the other part is low. This is what we call a K-shaped economy. The upper leg of the K represents a growing economy for people who own tangible assets. The lower leg represents an economy that isn't helping working Americans. Put simply, this is the difference between Wall Street and Main Street. Now here is a troubling fact from history.

[00:10:02] The last time we had such an economic divergence was in the year 1929. You know what came next. I'd like to be optimistic, but let's look at the facts. We're living in a world that already has an inflation rate of 3.8% and are experiencing shortages of oil and other commodities because the Strait of Hormuz has been closed for months. Low-income Americans are maxing out their credit cards.

[00:10:24] One analyst documented that Americans spent more on lottery tickets than they spent on movies, books, concert, and sports tickets combined. The political theme of affordability is certain to resonate with American voters. You will likely see lots of ads and hear lots of politicians talk about it this year. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my Point of View.

[00:10:49] Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net. That's pointofview.net. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. You know, Jonathan Haidt is a sociologist and an author that we often cite here on Point of View. He wrote The Anxious Generation, The Coddling of the American Mind.

[00:11:14] He has recently been warning schools' parents, don't be fooled twice. He uses that old adage, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, and says that we were fooled by ed tech, meaning education technology. The big push for one-to-one devices, meaning every child in every school has their own laptop, by tech companies and social media companies trying to push their way, quote-unquote, partner with teachers in the classrooms.

[00:11:43] And we've seen the effects of so much screen time and social media use and screen addiction and distraction on kids for the past decade and more, really. Really, you see that decline start in like 2012, and we've talked about this a lot. So, and Jonathan Haidt, again, look him up. He has blogs and sub-stacks and articles and books where you can look at all of that research.

[00:12:08] I bring that up because we are still learning just how fooled everybody really was by a lot of these big tech companies that really did not ever have our best interests in mind, definitely not kids' best interests. So this is an article, again, posted at the website, pointofview.net. It's from the New York Times, you can read, and it's a deep dive investigative report based on lawsuits.

[00:12:38] So documents that have emerged from lawsuits that were filed by over 1,400 school districts against Meta, that's the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, of course, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube. Because there is a backlash. A lot of this research is coming out. Kids who were raised on these devices are old enough to speak out about the detrimental effects. So here's just how the article opens.

[00:13:05] Snapchat was sending phone alerts to kids during school hours, urging them to share and post on Snapchat what was happening in their classroom. Meta actually paid teen ambassadors to promote Instagram and even hand out Instagram swag to their friends at school. TikTok actually partnered with the national PTA, gave them millions of dollars to throw school events about online safety.

[00:13:35] That's a little ironic coming from TikTok. So we see that when you look at these internal documents, employees knew what was going on. There are notes and internal memos and messages and analysis from these companies over the last several years when they would roll out these programs. In fact, the headline from the article is a quote from one of those memos that they discovered in all these lawsuits. Teachers are going to hate it.

[00:14:05] That was from a TikTok employee who was responding to efforts to actually notify teens more, specifically during school hours. They said kids already have a smartphone addiction in class. Teachers are going to hate this. But they were ignored because, according to these internal documents, the leadership at TikTok said, well, we know that kids are already spending time online. They're already on social media. Even in class, we'd rather them be on TikTok.

[00:14:35] So it was really a race between all of these social media companies to see who could get kids' attention during the school day more. In fact, there was evidence from YouTube that noticed that on Saturday, their viewership was way higher than it was, for instance, on the middle of the week on a Thursday. So they realized that that was because kids weren't watching YouTube in school. So YouTube started a big push to integrate YouTube into the classroom by partnering with teachers.

[00:15:03] But there was one parent on here who said she realized her son watched well over a thousand non-school related videos on YouTube on his Chromebook, which is the school issued laptop during school hours over just the course of a few months. And even though YouTube says, well, we've limited that now, we've, you know, cut off the algorithm for our school devices, kids are getting around it. So anyways, there's so much more I could dive into. And I might revisit it a little bit later in the program with some more of those details.

[00:15:31] But just look at it for yourself and realize let's not be fooled twice. There are AI companies, Anthropic, OpenAI, that are already, I know specifically with college students, but they are trying to partner with college students, do the same kind of thing that Meta did, create ambassadors and influencers, giving college students discounts to use their products, which we already know they're using to cheat on their schoolwork.

[00:15:54] So their goal, these big companies, is to hook users and get you to stay on their platform as long as possible. Think about it. You're not paying to use the platform. That means you're the product. You're not the customer. They're paying to keep you on as long as possible so that they can show you ads.

[00:16:11] And it starts when you're a kid because there's evidence that's in this article from these internal documents from the lawsuit of kids as young as nine doing things on Snapchat that we can't even talk about on the air because they were being notified during the school day from Snapchat to, hey, jump on the platform and film what's happening in your class. So check that out for yourself. But I do want to talk about intelligent design for a few minutes before we start our interview with Casey Luskin. Again, he's from Discovery Institute.

[00:16:40] But, you know, I grew up in a Christian home and heard the evidence for intelligent design and God creating the universe. But it really became personal for me when my oldest son just developed a huge interest in all things science, geology, especially dinosaurs. Okay. And I know he's not unique in that. You may be nodding along if you have a kid or a grandkid who's obsessed with dinosaurs. It's like a stage that they go through. But his has lasted.

[00:17:10] And look, every single book that you buy out there that's targeted for kids, especially on anything science related, it's Darwin. It's Darwin. It's Darwin. And even if you are homeschooling your kid and even if you are just trying to allow them to read widely and be well educated about this, they can't get away from that. It really is like a gospel.

[00:17:32] And even when with things that are kind of related otherwise, like he has this geography program he listens to because he loves geography. And the other day I was listening with him and realized that the geography program, I think they were talking about Africa. I've got my continents right. They were talking about the discovery of Lucy, the apparent missing link. And that has actually been debunked.

[00:17:55] In fact, this other article I posted from Christianity Today goes to the evidence for how it's been debunked that Lucy, the supposed missing link from apes to humans, is actually majority ape. And we only have 40 percent of her bones anyways. But they're still talking about that on resources made for kids today and just not acknowledging all the science that debunks it.

[00:18:16] So this is from Christianity Today, from the Marvin Olasky, who is the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today Now, but he founded World News Group, longtime friend of Point of View. He was involved in teaching journalism at my alma mater, Patrick Henry College, and just wrote this excellent feature on three men that he highlights in this feature who are at the top of their fields in scientific study.

[00:18:40] And what the headline says, they didn't get the message, meaning they didn't get the message that they were supposed to bow down to Darwinian evolution. Their stories are really inspiring, and they highlight how important it is for Christians to get involved in all fields of study, including the sciences. So one of the examples is Vern Poitras. He's now 80 years old. He's got a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard. He's written over 26 books. So he is a chemist.

[00:19:08] He's really critiqued this idea, again, of the missing link or the transitional link. And so he talks about now, because the evidence for that missing link is weakening, they've kind of just quietly shifted over to population genetics, which is the theory that there's so much genetic diversity in the world's population today. There's no way it could have come from only two people trying to debunk Adam and Eve. Well, guess what?

[00:19:36] There is more recent research that is showing that it actually is possible mathematically for that much genetic diversity to come from two people. So even that newer theory is starting to be debunked. But one of the things he says in the article is that when he was reading papers on this, having his background in mathematics and science, he's able to look at the footnotes of these articles and really dig into what they're arguing.

[00:20:00] The average person is not going to read the footnotes, but he's able to read the footnotes and realize that this evidence that they are saying debunks the Christian theory, debunks intelligent design is based on a lot of assumptions that are not, in fact, based in science. James Tour is at Rice University since 1999, another man featured in this article.

[00:20:23] And the way that Alaska breaks this down is that his research has brought so many millions of dollars in grants to Rice and has been cited in so much other research by other scientists that it's like hitting 500 home runs in Major League Baseball. So if his field of study was baseball, he would be in the Hall of Fame because that's how well known he is. But he is a Christian. He believes in intelligent design.

[00:20:53] And when he gets into these arguments, people aren't able to push back on him. But a lot of times that means that he is the target of very ugly attacks. And he talks about in this article how his faith helps him to stay strong because he said that Jesus challenged his community and he feels called to challenge the scientific community with scientific evidence.

[00:21:15] He says it's actually a greater leap of faith to believe in Darwinian evolution than it is to believe in intelligent design based on the science. And we're going to get into that more with Casey Luskin when he joins us right after this break. The Bible tells us not to worry. And yet there is a lot of worrying stuff in our world today. Thankfully, the Bible doesn't stop at telling us not to worry.

[00:21:46] God gives us a next step. He says we need to pray. But sometimes even knowing what to pray can be difficult. And that is why Point of View has relaunched our Pray for America movement, a series of weekly emails to guide you in prayer for our nation. Each week, you'll receive a brief update about a current issue affecting Americans, along with a written prayer that you can easily share with others.

[00:22:16] We'll also include a short free resource for you in each email so you can learn more about the issue at hand. Will you commit to pray for America? Go to pointofview.net. Click on the Pray for America banner at the top of the page to subscribe. Again, that's pointofview.net. Click on the Pray for America banner.

[00:22:43] Let's pray together for God to make a difference in America. Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station.

[00:23:12] And now, here again, is Liberty McArtor. All right, Casey Luskin on the line. He's a scientist and attorney with a Ph.D. in geology from the University of Johannesburg and a law degree from the University of San Diego. He also holds degrees in earth sciences and is a California licensed attorney.

[00:23:33] He works at the Discovery Institute where he assists and defends scientists, educators, and students who seek to freely study, research, and teach about the scientific debate over Darwinian evolution and intelligent design. Casey, thanks so much for joining us on Point of View. Oh, great to be with you. Thank you for having me. Yes, I know we've been working on getting a chance to talk either on the podcast or here on Point of View.

[00:23:57] And so I'm glad it's worked out because you had this article last month in Town Hall saying alien life would challenge materialistic evolution. So obviously, as people know, this is timely. It's been in the news. We had the U.S. government promise disclosure on UAPs, unidentified aerial phenomenon. So we have seen two sets of files released. I think the general consensus is that there are some interesting videos and files in there, but definitely nothing definitive.

[00:24:25] A lot of it was already in public domain. But combined, you know, that caused a lot of stir in the media for sure. And then later this week, another Spielberg movie on the theme of aliens is coming out, Disclosure Day. And so it provides an opportunity for us to talk about this as Christians from a biblical worldview. And then you bring the scientific perspective into that. So I want to get into the details about the ID, the intelligent design stuff as we go on.

[00:24:53] But first, can you just tell me, as a Christian, what would you think if there was hypothetically definitive evidence of some kind of extraterrestrial life? Yeah, so I personally don't know if ET, physical extraterrestrial life from other planets exists. But as a Christian, if that did, if that was discovered, it wouldn't really bother me.

[00:25:18] The Bible doesn't say that God did or did not create life elsewhere on other planets. And so really there's nothing in the Bible that officially says, oh, we're the only life in the universe. I don't know. I don't try to put God in a box and tell him what he can or cannot do. If God wants to create life elsewhere, he can do that. That being said, as a scientist, I also would argue that the existence of aliens, if they do exist, would not threaten belief in God. And we can get into that.

[00:25:48] But I think both theologically and scientifically, I just don't see it as a challenge to our Christian faith. Yeah. So I do want to get to that question of would it challenge our belief in God? But first, just kind of on the statistical chance that they exist, a common argument you hear,

[00:26:05] or even former President Obama said this recently, that just the universe is so vast that statistically it just seems likely that somewhere out there other life is present or has evolved. So from a scientific perspective, how do you respond to that claim? Yeah, it's a very common argument we hear, Liberty. People will say, oh, the universe is so big. Life must exist elsewhere.

[00:26:30] I remember when I first heard that argument, it was when I saw the movie Contact in 1997, and Jodie Foster's character says, the universe is a pretty big place, and if it's just us, that seems like an awful waste of space. So this argument actually has very deeply embedded evolutionary assumptions that often go unstated. And it's important to understand that when people are making this argument, what really are the underlying assumptions being made?

[00:26:56] And the underlying assumption is that it's assuming that life arose naturally via chemical evolution on Earth, and therefore it follows that if there are the right conditions elsewhere in the universe, that life, statistically speaking, should evolve in other places. All you need is to get the conditions right, and life should evolve through natural, unguided evolutionary processes. And the problem I have with that argument is that there is no evidence whatsoever, no good evidence,

[00:27:24] that life arose and evolved naturally here on Earth. So why should we assume that, therefore, if the universe is big enough, then statistically speaking, we should be getting life elsewhere in the universe? And we can talk about why I don't think life evolved here on Earth, and therefore life could not evolve elsewhere in the universe, but that's the basic assumption behind that argument and why we have to be very careful when we make it. Okay, so yeah, let's go ahead and get into that,

[00:27:51] because I think there have been warnings again in the media, lots of headlines about this, like, oh, there's going to be this big disclosure, and it's going to rock Christian's world. And yet you actually say that this cold conversation really challenges materialistic evolution. So why is there that challenge there? Yeah, it's funny, Liberty. Steven Spielberg has been kind of on a media campaign about his new movie that's coming out this week,

[00:28:19] and he's saying, oh, if aliens are real, and he thinks they are, he thinks this movie is actually revealing, you know, telling a true story in a sense. He says if aliens are real, this should challenge traditional faith and challenge the Christian worldview. I totally agree with that. Sorry, I totally disagree with that. But if aliens do exist, they did not evolve naturally, and they had to have been intelligently designed. And here's the reason why, Liberty. Any life that we know of, any life that we can even envision,

[00:28:48] has to be built upon a complex information-rich molecule like DNA. Okay, so life is basically a highly ordered phenomenon that's built on an information-rich genetic code that then programs these 3D-printed nanoscale molecular machines in our cells. And the efficiency of these machines dwarfs anything that has been produced by human technology. So we're in our experience with things like information-rich genetic code

[00:29:17] or 3D-printed nanoscale molecular machines. In all of our experience, these kinds of things come only from an intelligent agent. Intelligent agents regularly produce things like language-based code and machines, but we have no experience whatsoever of blind natural mechanisms producing these kinds of extremely complex features. So if life does exist elsewhere in the universe, you can take it to the bank. It is there because it was intelligently designed.

[00:29:46] It is not there because life somehow evolves naturally whenever the conditions happen to be right. We have no experience with this kind of complexity arising. And, in fact, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Venki Ramakrishnan, said, how life began is one of the great remaining mysteries of biology. Evolutionary scientists really have no explanation for how life arose. So why are they justified in going around claiming and assuming that if life exists elsewhere,

[00:30:13] somehow that is evidence that life can evolve naturally wherever the conditions are right in the universe? We have no evidence that that is actually true. Yeah, that's so fascinating. I want to talk more about some of just the amazing design that's so complex. But another thing we hear, and I think Richard Dawkins, you right, has even postulated this, that, well, maybe aliens are the intelligent designer.

[00:30:38] Because if people are realizing, hey, evolution doesn't really explain the complexity that we now understand is inside the human body and all of creation, maybe we do need an intelligent designer. But, oh, maybe aliens explain that. Is that a viable explanation? Yeah, there's definitely going to be folks that are going to be tempted to then claim that aliens are our designers. And you're right. Richard Dawkins actually, in the documentary Expelled that came out years ago, he said that he would be fine with intelligent design,

[00:31:07] provided that it was aliens. Even the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Francis Crick, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for co-discovering the structure of DNA, he proposed directed panspermity, the idea that aliens somehow seeded life throughout the universe. But the problem with that argument, Liberty, is it just kicks the can down the road. It never actually explains where the aliens came from. And then there's some other very important data that invoking aliens cannot explain. And, namely, that would be the origin of the universe.

[00:31:37] Really, the consensus view in cosmology is that the universe had a beginning, and that it began from this infinitely dense, infinitely small singularity sometime in the deep past. That is no job for an alien. Okay, what the origin and beginning of the universe suggests is that there had to be some supernatural first cause that exists outside the universe. But aliens, of course, live inside the universe, right? Aliens can never be the first cause to get the universe going.

[00:32:07] What we need is some super powerful, supernatural first cause that exists outside the universe. And that generally is the description that we would give for God, right? God is this supernatural, super powerful cause, first cause that got the universe going. But it gets even worse for those who want to invoke aliens. And that's because it turns out what modern physics has discovered is that the laws and concepts of nature are finely balanced on a nice edge.

[00:32:34] If they were just slightly different, then life could not exist in the universe. Another Nobel Prize winning physicist named Charles Towns, he said that intelligent design seems to be quite real because if the laws of physics weren't just the way they are, we couldn't be here. And so, again, if you want to invoke aliens, aliens are subject to the physical laws of the universe. They cannot explain why this amazing, vast universe is exquisitely fine-tuned for life.

[00:33:02] You need to invoke some transcendent creator outside of space and time who crafted the cosmos, its laws, and its inhabitants. Whether they're aliens or humans or something else, there has to be a transcendent creator outside the universe, and no alien could fulfill that role. Wow. So much amazing information, Casey, and so much evidence that really the science does point to intelligent design, and no, aliens don't provide the answer.

[00:33:29] It's interesting, though, that a lot of people are more willing to believe in aliens than they are to believe in God. But we'll talk about that and some more scientific evidence when we get back after this short break.

[00:33:58] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Okay, back with Casey Lefkin talking about intelligent design and aliens. We've debunked a lot of things that we often hear. For instance, that statistically our universe is so vast it's likely that life evolved somewhere else. We debunked the idea of life evolving in the first place.

[00:34:21] We talked about how it doesn't make sense to say that aliens are our creators or the ones responsible for intelligent design, even though you do hear that, and we'll probably hear that more often. But before we get into a few more of the questions related to your article, Casey, I just, I mean, in the last few minutes, you listed so many Nobel Prize winning scientists talking about the evidence for intelligent design,

[00:34:46] the complexity that they are discovering, about the way that our bodies are really filled with machines that is so complex that it's more than we can ever expect to have naturally evolved. So why isn't that the prevailing theory, even if people don't want to bring God, the God of the Bible into it? Why, for instance, I mentioned earlier on the show, my son loves science. So we try to, you know, foster that love.

[00:35:14] And even on, you know, something that he's listening to about geography, it's talking about Lucy as the missing link, which has like been debunked. Why are people still talking about Darwinian evolution as if it's the authority, when clearly the science seems to be on the side of intelligent design? Well, I mean, that's a very interesting sociological question you're asking right now. Darwin's theory was invented in the 19th century, okay?

[00:35:43] So we literally have 19th century science that serves as a reigning paradigm in biology today. Think about that for a minute, all right? There's a historian of science named Thomas Kuhn who basically found, when you look at the history of science and the way that science works, that scientific paradigms are often very hard to dislodge from scientific fields. Science is, at the end of the day, it's a human endeavor. People are committed to paradigms, and they're committed to explanations.

[00:36:13] They invest their careers in these things, their reputation, their funding, their life's work, and it can be very, very difficult for people to abandon ideas, even if the evidence goes against them. This problem, this sort of intolerance of new ideas like intelligent design or this unwillingness to abandon old scientific theories that are just not holding up anymore, it's not specific or peculiar to just the evolution debate. This is actually something that we've seen over and over again in the history of science.

[00:36:43] And as science over the last, you know, I would say 15 or 20 years has become more and more politicized, you can see how it is even harder and harder for scientists today to question the neo-Darwinian status quo. One of the things that I think you mentioned when you introduced me, one of the things I do at Discovery is we help to defend scientists who are facing discrimination or persecution, if they challenge the Darwinian paradigm or if they support intelligent design. This is very real.

[00:37:10] We've seen quite a number of cases over the years of scientists who have faced discrimination or, you know, they've lost their jobs, they've been denied tenure, they've been threatened to be kicked out of their graduate programs. You can go down the list. They've been blacklisted from being able to get jobs once they speak out in favor of intelligent design or challenge Darwinian evolution. But, you know, you can see actually that there are some prominent scientists who are willing to speak out. It's interesting actually.

[00:37:35] Why is it that we have, and there's a couple other Nobel Prize winners I could cite who have expressed sympathy towards intelligent design. Why is that? Well, this is my theory on this, Liberty. In science, people who are basically in sensitive or vulnerable positions in their careers, they're often afraid to challenge the evolutionary consensus. But when you win a Nobel Prize, you've kind of reached that stage where people are going to respect you

[00:38:03] no matter what you do, no matter what you say. So occasionally we will see Nobel Prize winners who actually are willing to say, hey, I think intelligent design is not crazy because they feel safe enough once they've reached that very prestigious stage in their career to actually, you know, express support for ID. Now, I'm not saying that, you know, there's a vast conspiracy, that there's all these scientists out there who are conspiring to suppress ID.

[00:38:28] No, this is actually very normal paradigm defense and intolerance of ideas that challenge the status quo that is very well documented throughout the history of science by folks like Thomas Kuhn and many others. So there's no vast grand conspiracy theory here. This is just sort of normal sort of intolerance and viewpoint suppression that is very common in the scientific community. And if you're a scientist, everybody's got a story.

[00:38:56] I mean, I've got stories of this, of, you know, people basically harassing you or, you know, giving you, you know, rejecting your papers because you're challenging some sacred cow in the scientific community. Unfortunately, this happens a lot more than we would like to think. Wow. Wow. And it's just, it's so amazing. And I'm so grateful that there are people like you and organizations like Discovery that give people a place

[00:39:20] because as Christians, we should want people to want to study and explore God's world and his universe. And so it's just so sad that often they feel, I think Christians maybe feel afraid because of all the reasons that you mentioned. But I want to talk a little bit more about singularity because I think that's so important for people to understand. And I learned a little bit more about it when I recently saw the story of everything in theaters, which was just awesome. I think it's coming out to Amazon.

[00:39:49] So people, if you haven't seen it, you have to see it. But there is something in there about just how fine-tuned the universe is, like mathematically speaking, to just, I don't know, can you talk about that a little bit more, just the singularity in the first cause and why that explains why creation had to come from outside of the universe? Yeah. So I'm so glad that you are mentioning the story of everything.

[00:40:14] And you're clearly on top of this issue because this was actually just announced in the last couple days that, yeah, the story of everything, it's a film that basically follows the life's work of Dr. Stephen Meyer and interviews many scientists and scholars who support the idea of intelligent design, looking at the evidence for design in both physics and cosmology and also in biology. And that, as you mentioned, it actually is going to be coming out streaming on Amazon in the very near future,

[00:40:43] which is really, really exciting. It was in mainstream theaters around the country last month and did very well. But, yeah, so the basic idea is, look, what mainstream physics and cosmology has discovered is that the universe had a beginning. Now, a lot of folks call this the Big Bang model of the universe. That is sort of the standard view. But I think that there's a lot of sort of concerns in the Christian community, and maybe even sometimes I would say that the Big Bang model is almost a misnomer.

[00:41:10] Because when we hear the words Big Bang, we think of an explosion. When we think of an explosion, we think of something chaotic and random. And so immediately people sort of reasonably infer that the Big Bang suggests that all the complexity of life and the universe came out of a random chaotic explosion, and that sort of supposed to suggest, you know, people will think of some materialistic worldview, some atheistic worldview where everything came from nothing.

[00:41:36] That is really not even what modern physicists would argue happened with the Big Bang. The Big Bang, I would say, is better described as a finely tuned and carefully controlled expansion event. And all we're really talking about here is the idea that the universe had a beginning. And one of the main lines of evidence for this is when you look at many of the galaxies and you study the starlight coming from other star systems and other galaxies,

[00:42:05] there is a shift towards the red end of the visible light spectrum of light. Red has a longer wavelength. And what's actually going on is with light there's something like the Doppler effect. If you think about when you have an ambulance coming. You've got about a minute left, Casey, just FYI, but keep going. Okay, I'll wrap this up quick. Basically what this shift to the red light shows is that all of these galaxies are moving away from us.

[00:42:29] And if everything is moving away from each other, then what you can do is you can rewind sort of the motion of the galaxies and they all collapse back to an infinitely small, infinitely dense point in space and time where the universe all exploded out from that. And that requires, again, this super powerful first cause to compress all the matter and energy that's now in the universe into an infinitely small point. And that suggests there's something outside the universe that's infinitely powerful, but got it all going.

[00:42:58] And that's why you need God. Amazing. Casey, thank you so much for being with us on Point of View. Please go to pointofview.net, read his article, check out Discovery Institute, look at the evidence for intelligent design. It's just amazing. We'll be right back. Will the American experiment endure? Sure. As we approach the 250th anniversary for our nation, we must recognize the answer to that question largely depends on us.

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