Exploring Science and Religion with Richard Dawkins

Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses science and religion with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Eugene Mirman hosts, with guest Reverend James Martin. Plus, Bill Nye rants about rocks and evolution.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm the Frederick P. Rose director of The Hayden Planetarium, right here in New York City. And tonight's topic: Science and Religion. Ooh.

• 0:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've got with me my intrepid co-host, Eugene Mirman. Hello. Eugene, my comedic co-host. Yeah? Excellent. And we're featuring today my interview with the renowned evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins. He's like, primary atheist of the world. And so if you're gonna talk about science and religion, you need people like that to find out where are they thinking, where are they taking us, what's it all about? But we couldn't just feature Richard Dawkins. We need some other views here. And so we combed the landscape. And we found a Jesuit priest. This is the academic order of the Catholic Church. And we have with us Father Martin.

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 1:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have a business degree, apparently. Is that correct?

• 1:24Speaker 01

  I do. I went to the Wharton School of Business before I entered the Jesuit, so...

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we see priests, we just don't think of priests as doing all this other stuff. But you did.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  I did. And most of us do. Most of us enter the priesthood with a little life experience. Thank God.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Oh, thank God. He can say "thank God." That's cool. And the rest of us say, "Should we really do that?" But you have the authority to do so.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Feel free to say "thank God" as much as you want.

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There'll be more of that coming, for sure. I just wanted to give a shout out to the Jesuits. They're often portrayed as those who prosecuted Galileo, attacking his observations of the known universe that came to Galileo through his observations of the telescope. But I also know the Jesuits as an important scientific arm of the Catholic Church, and in fact, there were tremendous advances that the Jesuits contributed to the measurement of the universe, leading up to the Gregorian calendar, which was an improvement over the Julian calendar at the time, and it's the one we use today. So, congratulations to your ancestral brethren on that.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  I take that credit, and thank you for it.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I hate the Julian calendar, so thank you very much. So, just in case people didn't know, up until 1582, the Julian calendar was used worldwide, well, in the West it was used, and the Julian calendar, advanced by Julius Caesar, was a really good calendar, but it didn't quite get it right. No Wednesdays? So, what happens is, I don't know if you knew, but the total number of days does not go evenly into the duration of an Earth year. In fact, if you clocked it, you get an extra quarter of a day. Now, how do you make a calendar out of that? You can't have a quarter of a day in the calendar.

• 3:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what people did was ignore that quarter of a day for four years. And in the fourth year, you have four quarters, you add up, throw in a day. The leap day was born in the Julian calendar, February 29th. And so, that's cool, and that kept things matched up for a long while, but it turned out that the leap day overcorrected by a little bit. But the Romans didn't know this. And that overcorrection started accumulating days in the calendar. And what they noticed in the Catholic Church was that the first day of spring, which was previously March 21st, was drifting in the calendar, and it was becoming, later and later... And so, what do you do about this?

• 3:59Eugene Mirman?

  You kill Julius Caesar.

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 4:04Eugene Mirman?

  Problem solved.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the calendar was accumulating days that didn't belong there. And Pope Gregory says, "I have to solve this problem." Brings in Jesuit priests. Correct me if I get any of this wrong, I think I'm on this. You know much more about this than I do. I think I got this one. Yeah, you do. So, founds the Vatican Observatory. In so doing, the Jesuits figure out there are ten too many days in the calendar. That's how many days had accumulated. So in 1582, the Pope said, "Let's take ten days out of the calendar." February 15th followed February 4th in 1582. Which makes it complicated when you're paying rent. So now, now that you've jump-started it, you want to make sure that error doesn't happen again. What it means is, a leap day every four years over-corrects the problem.

• 4:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So every now and then you gotta take out a leap day. When do you do that? It turns out, every century is the time you take away a leap day that might have otherwise been there. Every century would normally be a leap year, because it's divisible by four, a century year. You take it out. The year 1900 was not a leap year. The year 1800 was not a leap year. The year 1700 was not a leap year. However, by doing that, you have now under-corrected it by a little bit. Now you're missing a day over an interval of time, you gotta put something back in. So every 400 years, you put the leap day back in. So, so, the year 2000 was one of those 400-year cycles.

• 5:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And most people, February 29th, 2000, said, "It's just an ordinary leap day." But it was so not, right? In fact, the last, the last time a century year had a leap day was the year 1600. Just a few years after the Gregorian calendar was put into place. So this over-correct, under-correct, over-correct, under-correct, will now keep the calendar in top, tip-top shape for millennia to come. And this is one of the many reasons why this calendar is used worldwide. It's one of the most accurate calendars ever devised. Congratulations to your peeps. Well...

• 6:04Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On behalf, on behalf of the Jesuit Order, you're welcome. Okay.

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So as we know, Richard Dawkins is very outspoken about sort of religiosity in the world and atheism. And he wants to convince people to think logically. Perhaps on the assumption that if you do, then you won't think religiously. Perhaps. I don't know if it's that easy. And when he dropped by my office, I snared an interview with him for a StarTalk. The first thing we discussed was the capacity of the human mind to think logically. Is any one subject that the most known people say, "I was never good at," insert a topic, it's gonna be math. And so I say to myself, if our brain were wired for logical thinking, then math would be everyone's easiest subject, and everything else would be harder.

• 6:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm kind of forced to conclude that our brain is not wired for logic.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  Many people are extremely illogical, but...

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, they get along just fine in life.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  But I think it's an interesting point that our wild ancestors, needing to survive in the presence of lions and drought and famine and things. You'd think logic would be pretty important for survival, wouldn't you?

• 7:25Speaker 03

  If not mathematics.

• 7:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it could be maybe early people who said, "Oh, there's a creature there with big teeth. Let me investigate it first."

• 7:35Speaker 03

  Yes, I mean, in a way, that's right. Being too scientific is a bad thing.

• 7:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Curiosity doesn't always work.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  My... I had a cousin who was a little boy, put his finger in the mains and got a shock. So he did it again just to make sure. He is a real scientist, but not very good for survival.

• 7:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so we wonder, is logic good for survival or not? Is there any occasion where thinking illogically, illogically, is ever a good thing? So let me ask you, the Pope, he's a Jesuit. He is. Is he the first Jesuit Pope? He is. Well, congratulations. Okay?

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it right, I was reading this, I said, he has a degree in chemistry? He does, he has a degree in chemistry and taught chemistry, I think. And taught chemistry, and then, this can't be right, that he worked as a nightclub bouncer? At a Tango Bar. At a Tango Bar, before becoming Pope? Yes, well, we would hope so.

• 8:35Eugene Mirman?

  He is no longer currently a bouncer at a Tango Bar.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He needs a little pin money from time to time. I know, right, right. So presumably he would be counted among the ranks of people who can think logically. Because so many people think logically all the time, and as I hinted there, they get along just fine in life, it seems. So, I wanted to bring that up with Richard Dawkins as well, and I did. Let's see where he takes it. I detach myself more from that battle than you do. You are on the front lines, and I'm way in the back line watching you do this. And I'm saying, sometimes people just wanna feel, rather than think.

• 9:12Speaker 03

  Yes, I keep pushing back to the evolutionary origins of this, and when you have to survive in a hostile environment, it may be that you do need a certain amount of illogical...

• 9:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gut.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Yes, it may be that you need to fear things which logic tells you... Well, maybe it's a matter of the odds that something is actually dangerous.

• 9:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or the cost to you, if it is.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  The cost to you. If you see, if you see a sort of rustling in the trees, it could be a leopard about to jump on you, but it's much more likely to be the wind, and the logical, rational explanation is probably it's the wind. But when your survival depends upon the remote possibility, well, not remote, a rather lower probability that it might be a leopard, the prudent thing is to be more risk averse than...

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The statistics justify it.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly.

• 10:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, do you think religion in general is something that emerges from rational thought? Or from non-rational thought?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  I think both. I think religion is based on people's experience of God. And religion is a way of relating to God and relating to one another and through that to God. But, you know, reason and faith are not inconsistent. Logic and faith are not inconsistent. But there are some times that you think illogically. When Professor Dawkins was talking, I was thinking about like falling in love. You might say, "I've fallen in love with this person. I want to marry this person." And you say, "Well, you know, logically, that doesn't stack up." Well, you know, in a sense, it's the heart that takes over in some cases.

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, but what you're saying then is, when it's not logic, it's heart or it's spirituality. And so, in that case, you're gonna say they're compatible? Or they're two completely different things, the way Stephen Jay Gould did? Non-overlapping magisteria?

• 11:13Speaker 01

  I would say that they could combine. So, there could be some logical reasons why you would want to get married to somebody, and there could be some illogical heart reasons. So, I don't see them as inconsistent at all.

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so how does one then get degrees in science and then become religious? Or is always religious? What is going on in their head? Do they have special experiences with God that Richard Dawkins hasn't had? And all he needs is a couple of those experiences and he'd convert like this?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  I don't know. It depends on him. I think a lot of times, experiences of God are the foundational ways that people have to start believing. But, you know, for example, for a Jesuit like Pope Francis, who starts with faith, he's naturally interested in the natural world. He wants to learn more about God's creation, and so why not study chemistry? So, once again, not inconsistent as far as I see it.

• 12:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can we think of this as a transformative time for the Catholic Church?

• 12:04Speaker 01

  I think so. But I think in terms of science, I think we need to see it as kind of a progression. I mean, we've been kind of building on these things. And once again, I think one of the reasons that people are listening to Pope Francis is because, in a sense, they like him more. And they're more open.

• 12:17Eugene Mirman?

  He's the first fun pope.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Well, right.

• 12:19Eugene Mirman?

  He's been to the Rolling Stones. He gets it.

• 12:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Richard Dawkins feels that religion maybe should have a lesser place in our international politics and culture. More on that when we come back to StarTalk.

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, the Hall of the Universe. Eugene Mirman, my comedic co-host, Father Martin, thanks for being here.

• 12:52Eugene Mirman?

  Please call him Jim.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Thank you, Father.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We were featuring my interview with Richard Dawkins, who's sort of a patron saint of atheists, if I can say that.

• 13:04Eugene Mirman?

  To us, you can.

• 13:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, he's... We're talking about big stuff. We're talking about science, we're talking about religion, how they've intersected or how they don't. As a Jesuit priest, you're representing one of the academic orders of the Catholic Church. So, of course, you were going to say that there's no conflict between science. I say "of course" only because you have to live that intersection. So, do you think others who don't think and feel this, we're just missing something here? Do we have to have some religious experience in order to think the same way as you do?

• 13:40Speaker 01

  That's a good question. I think religious experience is a kind of...

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't even know what that is, actually. I mean, I'm saying it because other people have said it, but I've had deeply, what I felt were deeply spiritual experiences, but I was not invoking deity to account for them. I'd be on a mountaintop, there'd be starlight, I'm alone, there's clouds below me, enshrouding cities.

• 14:02Eugene Mirman?

  You're describing Zeus's experience.

• 14:05Eugene Mirman?

  And then I remember throwing lightning at a kid.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  But then what happened? What did you feel?

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I felt connected to the cosmos, but I didn't, at the time, invoke deity. I was... It was a very private, personal moment, and nothing supernatural happened, but I felt very deeply, and I would call that a spiritual experience.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  I would too, and if you came to me for spiritual direction, probably one of the things I would say would be to invite you to consider if that's one way that God has of reaching out to you and speaking to you and touching you.

• 14:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but there are plenty of people who say God is speaking to them, and they go out and kill people.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  But most people do not.

• 14:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a good thing that most do not, but most don't have to do not, if only some do.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  But the question is, if you're...

• 14:48Eugene Mirman?

  Are you the Riddler?

• 14:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't even know if that was a sentence, but its meaning was completely clear.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Can you at least consider the possibility that this is one way for you, a scientist, you know, to have this experience, that God is kind of meeting you where you are and trying to invite you into a relationship with God?

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I'm open to anything, but when you start saying, here's the rest of the package of belief system that needs to go with it, otherwise you're not a devout Catholic or a devout Protestant, or then that complicates it.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  It sure does, but you don't take a person there. It's like started to teach someone, you know, science, you don't start with, you know, the Higgs boson particle, you know, you start with sort of basic elements and you take them there when you're ready. And also, God is beginning this conversation, so you respect that. You don't take them to where they're not ready to go or where they're not called to go right now.

• 15:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the people who are-

• 15:34Eugene Mirman?

  You don't need all the rules, like all the stuff-

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Well, the rules are important, I mean-

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And don't tell me you don't have rules. You got rules.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  And so does the scientific community.

• 15:42Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, but that's, sorry.

• 15:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, but my rules, I can break my rules if the act of breaking the rules brings me closer to the operations of nature. Can you break your rules?

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can. What's the last rule you broke?

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Hmm, is this confession?

• 16:00Eugene Mirman?

  So you can covet a neighbor's wife?

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, so if there are people who have private beliefs, but then they become a professional scientist, at some point, there's a line in the sand there.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Well, there may be, but I mean, I know so many Catholic scientists that are happy as Catholic scientists, or Christian scientists more broadly, and they find it, you know, a way of trying to understand the universe, in a way of trying to understand God's creation. And I, once again, I don't see it as inconsistent.

• 16:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Richard Dawkins has thought about this. Can they merge? Should they merge? Is that impossible? I've thought a lot about it as well, at some of this as being devil's advocate.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Sure. Feel free.

• 16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Does that make me the devil or the advocate of the devil?

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Not at all.

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay. Let's go to my next clip with Richard Dawkins in my office of the Hayden Planetarium.

• 16:47Speaker 03

  Imagine that you were going to consult a doctor. And I make him an eye doctor. But you happen to know that he privately doesn't believe in the sex theory of reproduction. He believes that babies come from storks.

• 17:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. I wouldn't go to that doctor.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  I'm guessing you would not go to that doctor.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I wouldn't.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  But I've met plenty of people, especially in America, who say, "It's none of your business what he believes below the waist." "He's an eye doctor. Is he a competent... Can he repair your cataracts?" And I don't think he should be employed in a hospital. Because what you're saying about that man is that he... He's got the kind of mind which is so adrift from reality that even if he's a competent eye surgeon,

• 17:34Speaker 03

  I don't think he should... he could be trusted.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's a fear fact, that creates a fear factor that overrides everything else. He's a good eye surgeon, he or she is a good eye surgeon.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there's that lingering risk that the stork theory of reproduction might somehow affect the scalpel.

• 17:54Speaker 03

  I don't think it... I'm not sure it needs to affect the scalpel. I think it's something to do with...

• 17:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so then you object on principle.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  I think so, yes.

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, not on practice. It's a principle thing.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  Or the professor of geography who believes in the flat earth but...

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But otherwise makes perfect globes.

• 18:08Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, quite. Yes, exactly.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where do you take that?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Well, I would say it's a kind of strange presupposition to say that there would be an eye doctor who believes in the stork because basically there aren't eye doctors who believe in the stork.

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, but I mean, he made it a very blunt example, but... But he's talking about people who might be evolutionary biologists by day but are certain that the whole earth got here 6,000 years ago by night.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  But then how could they be evolutionary biologists?

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, this is the point. This is the whole point he's making.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  But that's why I think it's kind of a false presupposition. I mean, because you can't be one and the other.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there are such people. I have met them. And they are, so they've drawn a line. You don't think such a line can or should exist then?

• 18:51Speaker 01

  No, I don't think you need to draw a line like that. I mean, I, you know, there's a great definition of theology, which is faith seeking understanding. And so the person starts with faith and says, there are certain things that I can understand, and that science can help us understand that. There's two different ways of understanding things, through scientific reason and through revelation, you know, what, what religion teaches us. I think they're basically coming together, you know, and the more we learn about the world, I think the more mysterious it becomes in a sense.

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there some example you can give where they're merging?

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Aren't there, and, and you would know better than I do, aren't there, uh, examples in physics where they say, well, actually, this, this particle is at one place and another place at the same time? Which you kind of take on faith.

• 19:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we measure that. We measure, we don't need...

• 19:33Eugene Mirman?

  With a space ruler.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  But, that's right. But does, but does, but does that not seem, does that not seem to the human brain that one would be in one place at one place and another?

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's completely, it, it, it boggles the mind. It is, it is mysterious.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Well, there you go.

• 19:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a quantum mystery.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That doesn't mean it's divine.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  But it's some, it is a mystery that you believe in. And so that in a sense is what religion is, right?

• 20:00Eugene Mirman?

  Ooh, I like that, a mystery you believe in.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When, when we come back, let's find out if logical thinking, it should be a natural part of our society, or maybe we should do something about it, when StarTalk returns.

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk, and I'm with my co-host Eugene Mirman. Eugene tweeting at Eugene Mirman.

• 20:27Eugene Mirman?

  I am, yeah.

• 20:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I have a living, breathing Jesuit priest in our midst here, Father James Martin. And you also tweet.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  I do.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At James Martin S J.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Society of Jesuits. Awesome. The tweeting priest. Well, I'll follow you, I'm gonna see what you've been about.

• 20:46Eugene Mirman?

  It's a great musical.

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tweeting priest.

• 20:49Eugene Mirman?

  Pretty good.

• 20:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've been featuring my interview with Richard Dawkins, who's like, I think of him as the patron saint of atheists. And he's just fun to listen to and he's, he's, he's... But we've got some other views here, and I just wanted to sort of tease that out. The Jesuits are the academic order of the Catholic Church. So, getting back to this point where there are scientific frontiers that are mysterious, there are even science that's not a frontier that's mysterious, like some of the phenomenon of quantum physics. But why must the mysterious require that there is a deity who's overseeing it? In your mind, it sounds like they must go together.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's not that they must go together, but they do go together. When I look at the universe, and I think of particularly something like the Big Bang, you know, the great question I always ask...

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The TV show? He's clearly talking about the TV show, yeah.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  That you start on.

• 21:39Eugene Mirman?

  How did something like that come to be? What could have created that?

• 21:45Speaker 01

  I always ask questions, which I think is a good question to ask atheists. Why is there something rather than nothing at all?

• 21:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I would say I have no idea. And I'm perfectly content in that ignorance. I'm not having to find an answer.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Well, and that's a, but that's a great example. There are religious people who can be content not understanding God completely, and not understanding the universe completely. And so, you know, if you can be content...

• 22:08Eugene Mirman?

  We'll call them creationists.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Well, no, no. If you can be content, seriously, in not having to understand that, I can be content in not having to understand God. I can believe in a God...

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, okay.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  No, no, I know, I know. But I'll just say this. I can believe in a God who I don't fully understand.

• 22:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm saying, it's not that I'm happy not knowing. It's that not knowing does not force me to then come up with an explanation I can't justify yet. And I'm gonna keep searching. And for me, that is a sense of wonder that excites me and draws me to the frontier.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Well, and me too, and it draws me to, and I'm trying to understand God better. So I think that, that's where I think that the two disciplines are actually closer than one more thing.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Richard Dawkins, one of his books, of his many books, highly readable and lucid books, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder. I had him just reflect on wonder. Let's find out.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  He thought that Newton was destroying the poetry of the rainbow by explaining the spectrum.

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or completely destroying the mystery of it.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  Destroying the mystery of it. And the message of my book is that you don't... By destroying the mystery, you increase the poetry. You don't decrease it.

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I try to go there in all of my work. Whether or not I succeed, that's my intent. I think there's no more reproduced image when people want you to think of God than a sunset with beams of light coming out. But I also know that the surface of the sun is 6,000 degrees and there's really scattering in the atmosphere. You have water droplets condensing to make clouds.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 23:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So where do you differ from this?

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Maybe I go a little bit further in the direction of good-natured ridicule of absurd ideas like astrology.

• 23:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're saying it's good-natured, but clearly the people who are on the other side of your wit and intelligence, are they saying you're being good-natured?

• 24:00Speaker 03

  Possibly not. I don't really care about that.

• 24:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Possibly not.

• 24:06Speaker 03

  No, I mean...

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I feel stupid next to you. And I know all this stuff, alright?

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Oh, come on.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  I have an eye to not just the astrologer that I'm talking to, but the, for example, the radio audience, whatever it is that are listening in. If you call somebody an idiot, you're not going to change his mind. But you may change the minds of a thousand people listening in.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so let me ask you something. But just flat out.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 24:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Flat out. I don't have a problem if people feel spiritually when they contemplate the cosmos. And I may even feel some of that as well. I'm really talking about, as religion manifests in the world, the whole other portfolio of things you're supposed to do, the rituals that derive from it, the rules that come down from revealed text. That's a whole other conversation than telling me that I'm experiencing an open door to God when I'm on a mountaintop.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  I think those are two different things. I think God and religion...

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I believe you that you see those as two different things, but most people who are vocal and active and politically motivated do not.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  But why should that keep you from God? I mean, if you have an experience of God, why should all the other stuff that distracts you keep you from that? I mean, like saying, you know, I ran into a, I took a terrible course in science once, and all the teachers were terrible. Well, does that mean you don't believe in science anymore? No, it means you don't believe, or you haven't had a good experience of the other things, of the human element of it.

• 25:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What I might ask is, which God are you, is it Zeus that I'm coming closer to? Because I am on the mountaintop where Zeus lived.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Athena did come out of his head.

• 25:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so, so, maybe there's a particular God that you would rather it be than other gods that have come before people of the past. But I also know that throughout most of the history of science, some of the greatest scientists have ever lived have been deeply religious themselves. More on that when we return for StarTalk.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back here on StarTalk, the Hall of the Universe, American Museum of Natural History. Father James Martin, Jesuit priest. We're talking about the relationship between science and religion. And you, as a modern Catholic, have no problem with evolution.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 26:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. I can't say the same about other theologians who walk this earth. So what does that mean?

• 26:40Speaker 01

  It means that-

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the world, in politics, in all of this.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Sure, well, it means that different Christians have different viewpoints on that. I'm a firm believer in evolution. There are some people who don't believe, but I'm not sure how you can't be convinced if you see the kind of archaeology and the sort of, the kind of history of the world. But there they are. So I can't account for ignorance.

• 27:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Isaac Newton was, being a Brit, he was an Anglican Christian, of course. And some have argued that the problem is not being religious, but what people do with religion in society. Would you agree with that?

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Of course, of course. I mean, well, of course, I mean, you say it in-

• 27:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm trying to have an argument with you. This happened.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, that's. Who would argue that religion is never bad? That's self-evident. I mean, because, you know, you see all sorts of religious fanaticism and things like that, and fundamentalism, and people who are kind of, you know, set in their ways. But, you know, all these scientists that you described are people who saw God's creation and wanted to explore it and understand it, which is a good impulse. So, none of this, I think, let's say, should be seen as in conflict.

• 27:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's see what Richard Arkus has to say about past scientists and their religiosity. I don't think he's gonna like it.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  Newton, Galileo, pre-Darwin, you couldn't not be religious pre-Darwin. At least, I mean, you could, but you would have to be very, very stalwart in your skepticism.

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  Because it's some, I look around the world, it kind of looks almost obvious. This is gonna get misquoted. It looks almost obvious that there had to be a designer, until Darwin came along. Who can blame Newton and Galileo? So I'm deeply unimpressed by that argument.

• 28:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, by that argument. Okay, so he's not impressed with religious scientists of the past?

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Well, I just wonder if he's impressed with religious scientists of current day.

• 28:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, well, I happen to have that clip.

• 28:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's see what he says about contemporary religious scientists.

• 28:43Speaker 03

  If you actually ask what they believe, they will talk about the mystery of the universe, and they have a sort of reverent attitude, which I have as well, and I think you have.

• 28:55Speaker 03

  But then if you say, "Do you actually believe in anything supernatural? Or you call yourself Christian, but you believe that Jesus was born of a virgin or rose from the dead?" Of course they don't. And so, you've got to kind of subtract them off, I suspect. You subtract off the Einsteinian.

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the Einsteinian is that Spinoza's god.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  Spinoza's god.

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If there's a god of the universe that is responsible for laws and things, and responsible for the universe that science observes. Which is kind of uncontrollable in some way.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't think it would even be responsible. I think it was just... God is the universe, which is a bit different from thinking that there's an intelligence that started it all. So, I think you want to subtract them off. Okay. Einstein unfortunately muddied the issue by using the word "God", Yeah. Rather freely. And everybody wants to claim, claim him for their... And people therefore want to claim Einstein, rather like you're afraid of being claimed. Well, I just want to make my own argument. Exactly. I don't want to use somebody else's argument. Einstein used God as a metaphor and he said things like, "What I really want to know is, did God have a choice in creating the universe?" He simply meant, "Is there only one way for a universe to be?" Or the phrase, "I want to know the mind of God." Yeah, that, yes, that's right.

• 30:03Speaker 03

  So subtract them off and then you are left with a few who actually do believe in the virgin birth, and I don't know what to make of that.

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so he's got his sort of science, scientist arithmetic. So, that clip led in with a pre-established fact that about a third of Western scientists or American scientists would claim themselves to be religious. These are active scientists who publish papers. And so he's challenging the point that they are as religious as the sort of right-wing religious community might claim for them. Have you seen any of this in your travels?

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Really, I mean, that's a, I'm not sure if that's anecdotal, I don't know where that, I mean, the one-third...

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, the one-third is that we measure that, that's real.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  But the idea that, well, they don't really believe all this stuff. I just want to say one thing, he did say basically that Einstein, when he used the word "God", didn't know what he was talking about. So, it is a strange thing to say that Einstein, you know, was kind of deluded or didn't understand what God was, so I think we need to...

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, but, no, if you read all of Einstein's references to God, it's very clear that God was metaphor for the laws of the universe, not in the way anybody else who's religious is invoking God.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Well, but I think that's assuming a lot, I mean, I think we can understand God in different ways.

• 31:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, not to put words in your mouth, but what you might be saying here in this conversation is that... For religion to go forward and not be in conflict with science, it needs to embrace what science finds about the natural world and not jump in the face of the scientists and say, "That conflicts with my interpretation of scripture, therefore you must be wrong."

• 31:39Speaker 01

  I agree, and I think most religious scientists, I'm not a religious scientist, would say that and would say, you know, this is helping-

• 31:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, they would, by the way. Yes, yes.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  This is helping me understand-

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The ones I know.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is helping me understand God's beautiful world. And I think what happens sometimes is, you know, religion gets caricatured. So obviously, if you're religious, you must not believe in evolution, which I think is a, you know, is false.

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's certainly true for some. You're saying it's not true for all.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Or some. I'd say for a few.

• 32:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, we're gonna find out if you have to give up your religion to believe in evolution. Clearly, the good father here doesn't. But how about others? When StarTalk continues.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, one of the great questions out there is, "How do we get more religions or more people who are religious on board with the moving frontier of science?" Recognizing that you don't have to give up your religion, unless perhaps your religion requires that there was no evolution. If it requires it, maybe you gotta sort of lose it, but-

• 32:39Eugene Mirman?

  That's probably pretty few religions, right?

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would think so.

• 32:43Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 32:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm thinking, right? I mean-

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Well, I, I hope so, uh, but, and I frankly, I have a confession to make, priest.

• 32:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is your second confession. I'm listening.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  I, I don't understand people who can't believe in evolution. I don't understand people who don't look at, uh, you know, the, the sort of, uh, carbon dating and things like that and fossils. I can't understand it, and I have a hard time understanding why people cannot accept the fact that God can work through evolution, that it's just as much of a miracle of creation if it takes 10 million years or 50 million years, as if it took seven days. So I don't understand that.

• 33:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so how about this? Uh, as you may know, atheists as a community are ranked last in who anyone would elect to high office. Last. After, you know, serial killers or something. I mean-

• 33:30Eugene Mirman?

  Is it because they're preachy?

• 33:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, there's, in some ways, a, a bias, a discriminatory force in society against atheists. Do, do you, have you thought of this? In fact, let me lead with the clip-

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 33:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then we'll get your reaction to it. Richard Dawkins in my office.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  I think you're exaggerating the desire of the secular movement to convert everybody to our point of view. We're not like missionaries knocking on the door and sort of saying, "Have you found Jesus?" or that sort of thing.

• 34:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or "Have you not found Jesus?"

• 34:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 34:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you lost Jesus yet?

• 34:10Speaker 03

  It isn't really like that. It's rather more, "We want to convert you not to atheism, but to the view that atheists should not be discriminated against." That there should not be...

• 34:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a purer message there.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  It's a purer message, and it's it's a very important one in the United States where atheists can't get elected to Congress. You don't have to say, "Yes, I'm converted. I'm now a born-again atheist," but you have to say, "I no longer will discriminate against somebody because of his lack of religion. When I when I vote, I will look at the record and vote on other grounds." There are real problems with young people coming out, just like there was coming out as gay, with their parents. I mean, you know, teenagers thrown out of the house because they've come out as an atheist.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I agree with him. Atheists should not be discriminated against. And I should say, you know, in the old saying, "Some of my best friends are atheists and agnostics," but I'd also say, you know, it's ironic, you know, he said he's not a missionary, but he does have a mission. I mean, his mission, he's written all of these books, and his mission is to convince people, not only the validity of atheism, but that, you know, religious people are basically...

• 35:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe he was thinking door-to-door missionaries.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but his mission, the thing that kind of compels him and sends him out is to convince people that not only that atheism is correct, but also that religious people are basically idiots, you know. So when we're talking about discrimination, we have to be careful. There are places where people who are religious, you know, are seen as basically insane or idiots. So there's that too.

• 35:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except you can't discriminate unless you have the power to do so.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  True.

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a well-known fact. So you can't say that atheists are discriminating against anybody when atheists are not in charge of anything.

• 36:00Eugene Mirman?

  They run some bars.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm not gonna claim discrimination, but you know, there have been places where I have been, you know, in social situations and, you know, public events, where people assume, you know, that you're basically, that I am basically, an idiot, or I don't believe in evolution, or I don't believe in science, or I'm small-minded, or I'm homophobic, or I'm sexist, or whatever, because I wear a collar, or because I'm religious. So there is that kind of-

• 36:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they started the conversation with that bias, against you?

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and so I do experience that, so-

• 36:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then you enlightened them.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Right, and I think, and-

• 36:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, that's why I don't associate with any label, other than that as a scientist. I don't even go there. I said, "You're gonna have to have the conversation with me-"

• 36:39Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "-and then formulate whatever the hell you wanna call me after that."

• 36:42Speaker 01

  And that's why I think it's-

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry, I used "whatever the hell," sorry.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  No, not at all. I think that's why it's difficult to say-

• 36:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever the heaven you wanna call me, after that.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  I agree, and that's why I think it's difficult, or we shouldn't say, "Religious people think this," or "Religious people think that," because it is a label that is applied to people, and often applied to make them seem uneducated, insane, or just idiots. And it's as if you have to check your brain at the door.

• 37:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you ever wonder whether there'd ever be a scientific test for God? We'll find out when StarTalk continues.

• 37:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk, the hall of the universe of the Rose Center for Earth and Space. I don't mean to boast, but I'm like buds with Bill Nye the Science Guy, just so you know. And he's taken on this topic in a big way. Recently published a book on evolution, and he actually debated the director of a creationist museum, where the entire premise is that there was no such thing as evolution. Let's check in on Bill Nye's weekly rant.

• 37:52Bill Nye?

  Can science and religion coexist? Well, sure. There are billions of deeply religious people all around the world who accept the laws of nature, as we discovered through the process of science. Most of the astronomy that we started with was developed in the Islamic world about a millennium ago, and the calendar that everybody uses all over the world was developed by Jesuit priests. Heck, the Vatican has its own astronomer, for crying out loud. But from time to time, you'll meet people who insist that the Earth is somehow six or 10,000 years old. Well, that's just not possible. When we look at rocks like this, we can find where radioactive elements have replaced non-radioactive elements that have the same chemistry.

• 38:35Bill Nye?

  And we've determined that the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old, not 1,000 years old. About half of what we learn, we learn informally in places like this, in museums. So I encourage you all to come to a museum like this one and listen to the rocks.

• 38:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill Knight, as always, telling it like it is.

• 39:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, here we go. We're featuring my interviews with Richard Dawkins and we have to ask the question, if there is a designer, if there is a God, can you test for it? Because as a scientist, that's what we do. If you're gonna make a claim, I wanna test it. These are the methods and tools of our trade. And so, I brought up this issue with Richard Dawkins. Let's see where he goes with it.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  There is a designer of the universe. That is a stupendous scientific fact. It's not something you can say, "Well, we only think about that on Sunday." It actually would affect your attitude to the expanding universe if you thought that there was an intelligence that set it all in motion. And we may differ a little bit about this because you've been quite eloquent about the about the need to separate all that and just simply not ask the question, but just do your science well. But don't you agree that astronomy would look, cosmology, would look very different if you thought that the whole thing, the laws of physics, had been planned in advance by an intelligence?

• 40:08Speaker 03

  Isn't that a gigantic scientific fact if it were true?

• 40:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would ask, if we, if it were true, how would we test for that? Or if we supposed it was true, how might we test for it? Yeah, so, do you have any thoughts on that? Because it, here's, let me pose it a different way. If in fact the universe is the the science fair project of a hyper-intelligent species?

• 40:38Eugene Mirman?

  That's pure energy.

• 40:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can we distinguish between that entity and what in your theology you would call God?

• 40:45Speaker 01

  I think the answer to that question is, I don't know. But I often say this, with the greatest respect for Mr. Dawkins, Professor Dawkins, I really do hope that when he comes to the end of his life, and he meets, and I believe this, and he meets God, I hope he will be pleasantly surprised. I really do.

• 41:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's been asked that question, and I can recite his answer, not verbatim, but in principle. You know what his answer is? He would ask God back, "Why did you create a world that was so convincing of your absence?"

• 41:18Speaker 01

  How about, "Because I wanted a little faith."

• 41:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, come back in.

• 41:25Eugene Mirman?

  I hope Richard and God do this for years.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Or how about this? Why did you insist on believing in something that you had to understand? Why could you not believe in something that was beyond you?

• 41:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, this would be like a tennis match up there.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Right, and you know what? I think God might win.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  There has to be, in all of these examples, there has to be what's called, and I'm sure you know it, the first cause. I mean, it is illogical to think that these things suddenly started to happen. There has to be what Aristotle called the un-caused caused, you know? The thing that caused everything, and by that, we call God, right? I mean, that's the name that we give God.

• 42:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Although you remove that requirement for God himself.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Right, God is the un-caused cause, right? And so there has to be something that begins this.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, I don't presume that everything has to have a cause. That's just how the world has manifested thus far.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  But that's, isn't that a scientific sort of cause and effect? Isn't that one of the basis of science?

• 42:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gotten us very far.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I don't, I-

• 42:27Speaker 01

  I mean, when you do an experiment, don't you look at cause and effect?

• 42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, but what I'm saying is, I don't then say the whole universe has to follow this rule. I'm open enough to other possibilities, that maybe the universe always was.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Right, but see, I, in that case, am probably being more logical and scientific. I would say that the human mind, as we understand it, presumes causes and effects. And at some point, you have to have this kind of un-caused cause. Because that doesn't make sense to have this infinite regress. And by that, I say that's God.

• 42:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A quote that I've uttered, that is now I've seen on t-shirts, but I'm happy to repeat it here, is that the universe- is under no obligation to make sense to us.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Neither is God.

• 43:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sounds like God. I think we've got to wrap it up there. Father Martin, thank you for being on StarTalk.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  It's been my pleasure.

• 43:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. Eugene, always great to have you as my co-host. You've been watching StarTalk here in the Hall of the Universe of the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and as always, I bid you to keep putting up.