 Good morning. I've been thinking a lot about the shaking motif, and as we've heard from so many wonderful talks thus far, we are seeing things around us being shaken, in some cases shaken to bits. And over the last few years I've been reflecting on what will next year be 35 years of working in the field of Catholic apologetics in one form or another. And I've thought a lot about this, but from a somewhat different angle. So I'd like to begin my talk on different recent scientific discoveries that point to the existence of God by just thinking with you for a minute about what we've seen in the last 35 years or so. I've been thinking about them as waves. And the first wave, which was swamping the United States and other parts of the world, back in the 70s and 80s, was a challenge against the Catholic Church from Protestantism. Now those of you who remember those days, maybe at that time you might have been Protestant, or maybe you were a Catholic trying to deal with a Protestant brother-in-law, and there was a general dearth of information. There were no books, there were no conferences like this, there were no websites obviously, the internet hadn't arrived yet. You couldn't just go to a bookstore and buy a book that could show you how to respond to the arguments that were being raised against the Catholic faith by well-meaning, good-hearted Protestant folk. And seemingly out of nowhere, I know this because I was a bystander when this happened. Seemingly out of nowhere, God began to raise up the apologetics movement, people like Carl Keating and an obscure fellow from Joliet, Illinois, named Scott Hahn. Maybe you've heard of him. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, these people and then organizations, Catholic Answers and others began to spring up and satisfy this need that people had to know how to respond to this challenge against the authority of the Church. It wasn't a new challenge, but it was new for the people who were experiencing it. And I think this is one reason why the apologetics movement became so big so quickly because it was serving such an important need that was previously underserved. And many of you remember what that was like. Well, the next wave that was rolling in, although I didn't see it at the time, I was so busy working on these Catholic Protestant issues, as my colleagues were, that I didn't really notice that there was another wave in the distance that was coming closer and closer. And that wave broke in the late 90s, and that was the wave of atheism and the challenge to belief in God as such. And I'm sure all of you remember what that was like when you started seeing a great increase, an uptick in atheist efforts to evangelize, for lack of a better word, people who believe in God, especially Christians. And that second challenge, I think, we were able to somewhat deal with it at first. We got better and better as time went on. But we had a certain structure in place. We had a certain methodology in place. And apologetics had sort of gained its footing in the midst of that first challenge that came, the challenge against the authority of the church. Now we were being challenged to explain why we believe in God at all. And so, much to the credit of organizations like Catholic Answers and people who stepped forward and did the hard work and prepared the talks and wrote the books and responded to these arguments. And I believe decisively refuted them. That wave wasn't the only wave. And there was yet another wave coming, and that wave has now swamped us. And that is the challenge against reality itself in the form of the transgender movement as an example. Where you no longer have to believe in anything. All you really have to believe in is what you yourself think about things. And what you yourself think about things is the deciding factor on whether something is true or false. And you know this, if you have kids in school or grandkids in school or even if you just look around, you know how prevalent this ideology is. And I thank God that we had that time of preparation as Catholics were being shaken in their faith by the Protestant challenge and then shaken again in their faith by the Atheist challenge. And now shaken again when they see their 13-year-old daughters announcing at the dinner table that they think that they are bi or they think that they are a boy. And parents now are grappling with this problem. And I thank God that we had at least some time to get the ship aimed toward the wave that was coming in so we wouldn't be capsized. So that's the backdrop I think of the remarks I'd like to share with you today. I will admit to you right up front, when I was in school, I was not good at science at all. I didn't like science. I was kind of afraid of science because it involved math and things that I didn't really care for. So I didn't excel in science. And if somebody somewhere doxes me someday and gets my high school records, my transcripts, you'll see D's and C's when it came to my science classes, except for one semester. It was the second semester of my junior year and I had turned 16 and I wanted to get my driver's license and my dad said, I'll let you get your driver's license on one condition. He said, you have to get an A in chemistry. And if you get an A minus, no driver's license. B plus, no driver's license. It has to be an A or no driver's license. So this talk about the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, I wanted that driver's license more than I didn't want to study science. So I buckled down and I got an A in chemistry. And I got my license too. And I got my first speeding ticket about three weeks later too. But I was not good at science and I, as I say, I had a kind of fear of science. I loved languages. I loved studying Latin and French and Spanish and other languages. I loved history. I loved literature. Those things appealed to me so I didn't really have to work very hard because they came naturally. But the things that I had to work hard at to get a decent grade, I didn't bother to do so. I regret it now. I wish if I could go back in time that I could have been more assiduous in those fields because I see now all these years later how important it is to have at least a basic knowledge of science. Nowadays, scientism is a kind of religion, don't you know, where people, they worship at the altar of what they think at least is science. And often it's scientism which is not exactly science. Scientism is a substitute that is very common in which people think that just because a scientist says this is true or just because we've used the scientific method to determine something that that is the gospel truth. And more often than not, that is what propels people to lose their belief in God because they've substituted one religion for another. They've substituted faith in one God for faith in another God. So in my humble little talk today, I'd like to share with you some of the things that I have found useful to me in my work as a Catholic apologist, most of which takes the form of being on the radio every day. Scott mentioned I'm on relevant radio for three hours a day and I don't have guests, I don't do interviews. And you may say, well, what on earth can you talk about for three hours a day every single day? And the honest truth is it is amazing how fast the three hours go by. It's just you and me, we're just talking and the calls that come in and the topics of the day which very often revolve around science issues, it's inexhaustible. But what I have found is that there are so many people, and perhaps some of you feel as though you're in this category, there are so many people who feel flat footed and incapable of responding when somebody says, well, it's superstitious to believe in God, it's foolish, it's anti-scientific to believe in God. And not knowing where to begin, it can be very daunting and unfortunately some people, although their faith may not be shaken, their courage often is. And they sit back and say nothing. So what I'd like to do is just simply offer you in a short form here four or five things that I have discovered that are very handy talking points when I'm in a discussion with somebody who wants to use science as a weapon to beat me with. And I'll begin by just sharing with you a little background about the mindset that I've noticed among many atheists. They deny the existence of God and thus by denying the existence of God, they deny any notion of the supernatural realm. So there is no heaven or hell, there's no afterlife, you don't have a soul, there are no angels and devils. This is a meaningless universe, it's purely natural, there's nothing above nature. You didn't come from anywhere, you're not going anywhere. It's a meaningless universe. Now, this of course is something that we all balk at because we instinctively recognize that that's not true. There's more to it than that but for many people it's hard to articulate exactly how we arrive at that conclusion. Scott mentioned a book that I co-authored with my friend Ken Hensley. It's this book here, it's called The Godless Delusion and although you may not be able to see it, it shows an atheist sitting on a tree branch sawing the limb off between him and the tree. And we know what will happen there and just a little quote from that book. Atheists claim that there is no you apart from your body and in particular apart from your brain. You do not have a mind or a soul or a spirit because those are immaterial, spiritual and therefore impossible. The only things that exist are material. If this is the case then what exactly are your thoughts and ideas? Christians hold the common sense of you that our thoughts and ideas are the free activity of our minds. But what would your thoughts and ideas be if naturalism or atheism were true? In his 1994 book The Astonishing Hypothesis, Francis Crick, one of the most well-known naturalist molecular biologists and neuroscientists, he said he was also on the team that discovered the double helix formation of DNA. He said in his book, the astonishing hypothesis is that you, your joys and your sorrows and your memories, your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. The hypothesis, he said, is so alien to the idea of most people alive today that it can be truly called astonishing. And I would agree with him. This is a very alien idea. I'm not astonished by it. I dismiss it as bunk even though it came from a scientist. But people who hear that, such as yourselves, you intuitively recognize that there's more to you. There's more to your thoughts, your love, your memory, all those things that are with you all the time. There's something more to you than merely the chemically charged electrochemical reactions fizzing away in your brain matter. You are more than just the product of your brain chemistry, in other words. And this is something that touches upon the issue of truth itself. So a thoroughgoing atheist who says that there is nothing above nature, and nature of course is comprised solely of material things. If that's the case, then as we've seen here, what you think of as your love and memory, etc., are just the electrically charged chemical reactions in your brain matter, in which case that's all truth is. And you should point that out to an atheist. What do you mean by truth? You say it's not true that God exists, or it's true that something else is the case. What do you mean by truth? What is truth? Is truth something you can go get out of a can somewhere? I mean, if the atheist project is correct and the only things that exist are material, then truth itself must be material. But they'll say no, truth is a concept. And you'd say, I agree with you on that, but where is this concept located? Is it located solely in the electrically charged chemical reactions fizzing away in your brain matter or my brain matter? Or is it something that transcends nature? And if we can open the door to show that something as simple as truth transcends nature, which obviously it does, then you've got a little more footing now to be able to talk about how if truth can exist in some way that is not purely natural, in fact it's not natural at all as such, then what other things might be able to exist? And in my conversations with atheists and others who call the radio program, these are the kinds of issues that I bring up. So first of all, in looking at these scientific discoveries, we can say, we don't have to have, number one, lots of meticulous detail. In fact, I am so not a scientist that as I was reading and rereading the books that I'll be quoting briefly in this talk, I had to put it down on paper in front of me because I wanted to make sure that not only did I understand it, but I wanted to be able to adequately express it to you in this context. So normally as you know, I never use notes, but today I'm going to do so because there's some really rich and interesting material here that needs to be spoken accurately and clearly. So let's look for example at the issue of near-death experiences. Now this is a phrase we hear from time to time, the TV shows that sensationalize this issue. I think for many people it's considered as kind of a quackery. It's kind of a fringy, maybe even a new-agey kind of thing to talk about near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences. And yet, more and more scholars are applying the scientific tools that we have to study these phenomena and are coming up with some amazing results as a result of that. So for example, Chris Carter, who is the author of a book called Science in the Afterlife Experience. This is one of the first books I read in preparation and research to do this talk today. He says the doctrine of materialism, which of course is the atheist view, is one of the implications of taking classical physics to complete a description of all nature including human beings. It is essentially the idea that all events have a physical cause. In other words, that all events are caused by the interaction between particles of matter and force fields. It follows from this that this mind has no causal role. Your mind, in fact, has no causal role in nature, but it's merely a useless byproduct that's produced by the brain. And so in short, all that matters is matter. Considered as a scientific hypothesis, materialism makes a bold and admirable prediction. Psychic abilities such as telepathy simply do not exist. If they are shown to exist, then materialism or atheism is refuted. And he's right, which is one reason why although none of the four or five things I'll talk with you about today actually prove the existence of God. In my experience, they're very helpful in pointing toward the existence of God and usually that's enough. In a conversation, for most people who don't like I don't have at their fingertips a wealth of scientific knowledge that they can just rattle off. Some people do, some of you may, but most people don't. And yet with your own limited understanding of science or your own limited experience with science at an academic level say, you can still make great strides in your efforts to help people see that, yes indeed, God exists. And I can't prove it to you by pointing out some of the things that I'll do today, but I can make you think that it's a whole lot more likely that God exists by doing so. To me, that's more than enough if you can help somebody see this. So near-death experiences, as science develops ever more powerful tools to observe and study human brain activity, we've begun to see ever more clearly in a scientific context that something that people have for many, many centuries all around the world have talked about, have claimed to experience, namely the phenomenon of their souls living on for a time in a disembodied state outside of their body. Now that we have got the medical and scientific tools to measure such claims some astonishing results are coming out. In other words, after biomedical death has been determined by physicians, no brainwaves, no heart, no pulse, no breathing activity at all and a period of time goes by and suddenly now the person, quote-unquote, comes back, the question is, was the soul still there? Was the soul gone? If the body is dead, what happened? And this is not some recent phenomenon as far back as St. Teresa of Avila. In the 1600s, she reported having an out-of-body experience, a near-death experience, if we want to call it that, the basic outline of that story is that God gave her an opportunity to amend her life in the form of going into what to all intents and purposes appeared to be death. Her family and friends thought she had died. They had wrapped her in the winding clothes in preparation for burial. She was lying in state, so to speak, on the bed in the family's home and for several days there was no breathing, there was no activity, no heart rate, no pulse, nothing. They couldn't detect any sign of life and they were about to bury her when she came back to life and she recounted her out-of-body experience. And in that experience, God permitted her to go up to the gates of hell. She slid down this nasty, oily, gunky tunnel down to the flames of hell and she was given by God to understand that this is where she would go if she didn't amend her life. Now, she was not a gross sinner at all but she was sufficiently sinful by her own account that she deserved to go to hell. If you can imagine that, St. Teresa of Avila. She was in a convent already. She was a religious sister. So, in any case, she reported this. Now, there was no science in those days to understand exactly what this is. Eben Alexander, MD, he's the author of Proof of Heaven, a neurosurgeon's journey into the afterlife. He has conducted years of research in clinical practice at Massachusetts General Hospital. He's also on the faculty of Harvard University in neuroendocrinology, which studies the interactions of the nervous system and the endocrine system. He authored and co-authored more than 150 chapters and papers for peer-reviewed journals in the medical field. He presented his findings at over 200 conferences. So, I'm giving you his pedigree just to let you know that it's not just some guy who decided to write a book about this. He is an expert in the field. And as a physician and a scientist, it made him all the more expert when he himself wound up in a coma. Here's what happened to him. He says, the brain is the machine that produces consciousness in the first place. When the machine breaks down, consciousness stops. As vastly complicated and mysterious as the actual mechanisms of brain processes are, the essence, the matter is as simple as that. Pull the plug and the TV goes dead. The show is over, no matter how much you might have been enjoying it. Or as he says, this is what he thought before his own brain crashed. In November of 2008, he contracted a rare neurological illness that put him into a coma for seven days. And here's what he said about that. He said, during my coma, my brain wasn't working properly. It wasn't working at all. I now believe that this might have been what was responsible for the depth and intensity of the near-death experience that I myself underwent during it. Many of these NDE's near-death experiences reported happened when a person's heart has shut down for a while. In those cases, the neocortex is temporarily inactivated, but generally not too damaged, provided that the flow of oxygenated blood is restored through cardiopulmonary resuscitation. I was encountering the reality of a world of consciousness that existed completely free of the limitations of my physical brain. Mine was in some ways a perfect storm of near-death experiences, as a practicing neurosurgeon with decades of research and hands-on work in the operating room behind me. I was in a better than average position to judge not only the reality, but also the implications of what had happened to me. Those implications, he says, are tremendous beyond description. My experience showed me that the death of the body and the brain are not the end of consciousness, that human experience continues beyond the grave. Now, this is a scientist speaking, he's a physician, so obviously he's couching his finding in language of science, but for those of us who may not be scientists, but who yet believe in God in the immortality of the soul, that's very familiar to us, isn't it? Because you realize that what he's speaking about is when the soul and the body separate at death, the body goes to the ground, but the soul continues on for eternity. This is one of the cardinal tenets of our faith. So for us, this is nothing new, but what is new is that you now have scientists with impeccable pedigrees, impeccable backgrounds and credentials, who are actually now doing science on this topic that was considered for so long to be fringy and nonsense, and now they're saying, you know what, science that backs this up, something happens after death and what you think of as your mind, your soul, your memories, that continues. How does that happen if the world is purely material? An important question. The next topic I'd like to share with you is that of, well, it's actually about the Big Bang. I'll get to the Big Bang at the end, but the preceding part is what's known as the observer effect in quantum mechanics. Now, maybe some of you are practitioners of quantum mechanics in this room here, so I will tell you that as I studied this, I had to drink many cups of coffee as I read these books, so I want to make sure I understood it as best I could. So here are some of my takeaways from this. So one scientist or researcher at Arizona State University, Venkatesh Vaidyanathan, he says in his work called Observation Effects Reality, it's an article called What is the Observer Effect in Quantum Mechanics? He says, When you observe something in the world, a tree, a bird, or anything else, you know that regardless of where and when you observe it, it will always remain the same. However, what if I told you that time and the manner you looked at a particular bird would affect its appearance? When a quantum observer is watching, quantum mechanics states that particles can also behave as waves. This can be true for electrons at the submicron level, in other words, at distances measuring less than one micron or one thousandth of a millimeter. When behaving as waves, electrons can simultaneously pass through several openings in a barrier and then meet again on the other side. This meeting is known as interference. Now the theory is that this phenomenon is that it can only occur when no one is observing it. And this is an important part as I discovered. This idea that something like this can happen only when it's not being observed is the thesis here. Once an observer begins to watch the particles going through the opening, the obtained images change dramatically. If a particle can be observed going through one opening, it is clear that it did not go through another opening. In other words, when under observation, electrons are more or less being forced to behave like particles instead of like waves. Now one of the implications that I won't try to get into here, but it's part of the literature that I've been studying, is that this gets to the question of whether something actually exists or is it merely potentially able to exist. So the discussion about particles and waves, also from a philosophical standpoint, it plays into the question of could something actually not exist but could exist and would it only exist if it was observed? I know it sounds not like what you probably talk around the kitchen table, but maybe after this talk you'll start talking about it, I don't know. To demonstrate this phenomenon, the Weizmann Institute in Israel built a tiny device less than one micron in size that had a barrier with two openings. They sent current of electrons toward the barrier. The observer in this experiment was not human. Instead they used a tiny electron detector that could spot the presence of passing electrons. The quantum observer's capacity to detect electrons could be altered by changing its electrical conductivity or the strength of the current passing through it. Apart from observing or detecting the electrons, the detector had no effect whatsoever on the current. Even so, scientists found that the very presence of the detector or the observer near one of the openings caused changes in the interference pattern of the electron waves passing through the openings of the barrier. In fact, this effect was dependent on the amount of observation. When the observer's capacity to detect electrons increased, in other words, when the level of the observation went up, the interference weakened in contrast when its capacity to detect electrons was reduced and the observation slackened, the interference increased. Thus, by controlling the properties of the quantum observer, the scientist managed to control the extent of its influence on the electron's behavior, which raises the question he says, did the particle exist before it was observed? Was it real or was it only potential? It's like the old saying, if a tree crashes in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it make any sound? We've all heard that one. And I think the obvious answer is yes, of course it makes a sound, whether you're there to hear it or not. But the science in quantum physics, at least to the extent I understand it, is saying no, things cannot actually exist unless they're observed, which brings me to the big bang. There was nobody there to observe it, except for at least one person. God. So you can take something as, you know, dense and difficult as this and break it down and just simply say, all right, well if this is true, and for all I know it is true, I don't know, but if it is true or if it can be scientifically proven that it requires an observer in order for something to pass from potentiality into actual existence, then that would explain the big bang very neatly. It would explain everything very neatly that if God was there bringing things into existence, then that would actually prove this scientific hypothesis. How interesting is that? Okay, so we'll pass on from there. How about a fine-tuned universe? A fine-tuned universe. Maybe you've heard of the Goldilocks theory, and the Goldilocks theory is that planet Earth is situated just so. Remember the Goldilocks story? She breaks into the three bears house. The first porridge is too hot. The second one is too cold, but this one is just right. The first bed is too hard. The second bed is too soft. The third bed is just right. Well, the Goldilocks theory in this case has to do with if the Earth were situated in even just a slightly different way, there would be no possibility of life on this planet. And so as this has become a big part of intelligent design, which has a foothold in the world of science, although many scientists sort of scorn it, they call it pseudoscience, it really predates modern science altogether because this was part and parcel of philosophy. And the perennial philosophy of St. Thomas, for example, who took from Aristotle and refined it and purified it, and you might say weaponized it against atheism and other things like that. It's very interesting to see that the science is now looking into this and determining what exactly does this mean, that we live in just the right band of the galaxy to be able to live. I've got some specifics here. Richard, he has an article called List of Fine-Tuning Parameters. He says, Fine-Tuning refers to various features of the universe that are necessary conditions for the existence of complex life. Such features include the initial conditions and brute facts of the universe as a whole, the laws of nature, or the numerical constants present in those laws, such as gravitational force constant. Local features of habitable planets, such as a planet's distance from its host star. The basic idea is that these features must fall within a very narrow range of possible values for chemical-based life to be possible. Some popular examples are subject to dispute, and there are some complicated philosophical debates about how to calculate probabilities. Nevertheless, there are many well-established examples of fine-tuning, which are widely accepted even by scientists who are generally hostile to theism and design. For instance, Stephen Hawking has admitted in his book A Brief History of Time, quote, the remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers, the constants of physics, seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. He continues saying, Here are the most celebrated and widely accepted examples of fine-tuning for the existence of life. In his book The Privileged Planet, Guillermo Gonzalez in their book, The Privileged Planet, Guillermo Gonzalez and J. Richards, they identify 12 broad, widely recognized fine-tuning factors required to build a single habitable planet, like ours. All 12 factors can be found together in Earth. And he says there are more factors, but these are the ones that seem to be well-accepted among scientists. Number one, steady-state plate tectonics, I'm sorry, steady plate tectonics, with the right kind of geological interior, which allows the carbon cycle and generates a protective magnetic field. If the Earth's crust were significantly thicker, plate tectonic recycling could not take place. The second one, a right amount of water in the crust. That provides the universal solvent for life. Number three, a large moon with the right planetary rotation period. This stabilizes the planet's tilt and contributes to tides. In the case of Earth, the gravitational pull of its moon stabilizes the angle of its axis at a nearly constant 23.5 degrees. This ensures relatively temperate seasonal changes, a climate in the solar system mild enough to sustain complex living organisms. Number four, proper concentration of sulfur, which is necessary for important biological processes that lead to life. The right planetary mass, which allows a planet to retain the right type and right thickness of atmosphere. So in other words, if the Earth were smaller, its magnetic field would be weaker, allowing the solar wind to strip away its atmosphere like Mars. Also, number six, the inner edge being near the inner edge of circumstellar habitable zones. How often do you ever say that phrase in polite company? Well, since we're near the inner edge of circumstellar habitable zones, what's for dinner? This allows a planet to maintain the right amount of liquid water on the surface. If the Earth were just 5% closer to the Sun, it would be subject to the same fate as Venus, which has a runaway greenhouse effect and a 900-degree Fahrenheit daytime weather. You think it's bad in Steubenville at the summer conferences? Guess again. So I did a little calculation. So the Earth is average, 93 million miles from the Sun. So a 5% adjustment is about 4.6 million miles. And to give you an example, we're sending manned missions to Mars very soon. Well, the distance from Earth to Mars is 48.7 million miles. And Mars is a near neighbor to Earth. And what this science shows is that if the Earth were merely 5% closer or further away from the Sun, a distance of about 4.5 million miles, there could be no life on this planet. Low eccentricity orbit, outside spin orbit and giant planet resonances, which allows a planet to maintain a safe orbit over a long period of time. Number eight, a few large Jupiter-sized planetary neighbors because they absorb the comets that would otherwise destroy a planet like ours. They say if the Earth were not protected by the gravitational pulls of Jupiter and Saturn, it would be far more susceptible to collisions with devastating comets that would cause mass extinctions. Number nine, outside spiral arm of the galaxy, which allows a planet to stay safely away from supernovae, we hope, anyway. So where we're located on one of the outer edges of our galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy, it keeps us, this is saying, far enough away from the stars at the center of the galaxy that go supernovae and destroy everything in their path. Number 10, a near co-rotation circle of galaxy in a circular orbit around galactic center, which enables a planet to avoid traversing dangerous parts of the universe. Number 11, we're almost done to be within the galactic habitable zone, which allows a planet to have access to heavy elements while being safely away from the dangerous galactic center. And number 12, during the cosmic habitable age when heavy elements and active stars exist without too high a concentration of dangerous radiation events. So those are 12 of the scientific discoveries that point to this fine-tuning and the question then becomes, well, if it's finely tuned, who tuned it? How did it get tuned? Is it just happenstance? Is it just, you know, chance? Some would argue yes. But this is another way that you can point to, well, doesn't this sort of at least make it more plausible that God exists? Because rather than assuming that this finely tuned universe or the finely tuned place we have in the universe is merely a matter of chance, isn't it more likely that it is something that was intended by the person who designed it? Now, there's much more that I could get into on this topic, but given the time, I would refer you to some of these books that I've read if you're interested in gaining a greater detail, so that you too can converse about these issues, even if just at a basic level. The next one I'd like to talk about is DNA. We've all got it. It wasn't even really known to be in existence until the 20th century. It wasn't even discovered until the 20th century, and some incredible work has been done. I'm going to share with you some of the findings. This is by Stephen Meyer. He's author of a book that I... This is a science book that for me was a page turner, the first ever in my life. And as I read this book, it's like 600 pages densely scientific, but it's explained for people like me. And it was breathtaking to see what DNA actually represents, especially as it pertains to our discussion as believers with non-believers. So he has his PhD in the philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge. He's written many books. He's an academic. He's considered at the top in his field. He's controversial, too, because he's arguing for design, which you'll see why. He says the importance of information cannot be stated strongly enough. He said information cannot be the result of blind random forces working in an undirected way. These forces working against each other randomly. He says the importance of information in the study of life is perhaps nowhere more obvious than in the emerging field of genomics and bioinformatics. Since about the year 2000, scientists involved in these disciplines have begun to map character by character the complete sequence of the genetic instructions stored on the human genome and those of many other species. Francis Collins, scientific director of the project, described the genome as a book, a repository of instructions. He also called it the book of life. So scientists using terms that are very familiar to us who read the Bible. The human genome project, he says, perhaps more than any discovery since the elucidation of the structure of DNA in 1953, that's Crick and Watson, has heightened public awareness of the importance of the information contained in DNA and how important information is to living things. The National Human Genome Research Institute, which is described as the driving force for advancing genomics research at the National Institutes of Health, this is in the UK. The largest biomedical research agency in the world, they explain DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid is a molecule that contains the biological instructions that make each species unique. DNA along with the instructions it contains is passed from adult organisms to their offspring during reproduction. In organisms, DNA is found inside a special area of the cell called the nucleus because the cell is very small and because organisms have many DNA molecules per cell, each DNA molecule must be tightly packaged. This packaged form of the DNA is called a chromosome. During DNA replication, DNA unwinds so it can be copied. At other times in the cell cycle, DNA also unwinds so that its instructions can be used to make proteins and for other biological processes. But during cell division, DNA is in its compact chromosome form to enable transfer to new cells. Researchers refer to DNA found in the cells nucleus as nuclear DNA. In organisms, complete set of nuclear DNA is called its genome. So what is DNA made out of? DNA is made of chemical building blocks called nucleotides. These building blocks are made of three parts and it gets into the phosphates and the sugars, et cetera. And it talks about how these bond and bind. And it says that the, to give an example of a strand of DNA that's giving information, for example he says the sequence might be ATC-GTT and that might be the instruction for blue eyes, whereas ATC-GCT might be the instruction for brown eyes. A complete DNA instruction book or genome for a human contains about three billion bases and about 20,000 genes on 23 pairs of chromosomes. So all that information that's stored in the chromosome's river body, it's precise and specific. And when it's transmitted and the way in which the body then reads this and carries it out, it will produce arms and legs and eyes and ears and hair and blue eyes and brown eyes, et cetera. But if the genetic code is messed up, if there's a character missing or there's the wrong character there, then that would lead obviously to anomalies. Well the question is, how is it there in the first place and how is it so precise? I mean, could you imagine your computer running on just random bits of information that were fed into the computer? No, the computer program, the software is very precise. And those of you who have knowledge of computer coding, you know that if you get even one character wrong, you may well not be able to run the program. So here we're talking about an incredible complexity to the tune of hundreds of billions in one human body that are not only providing the information but reading the information, interpreting it and then carrying it out. Where does that come from? You might ask. Well, as a believer, I would say it comes from God. Now, I can't prove that this comes from God. I can't prove that God is the origin of DNA. But I think this is a very powerful question to ask your non-believing friend who may worship at the altar of science. Well, we know that DNA is information. Take this book for example. This book happens to be in English. It happens to have my name on it and it's spelled correctly. And it happens to have 226 pages of complex thoughts and ideas. If someone told you that this book was simply the byproduct of eons of time going by in which blind random forces of nature working against each other in an undirected way over time eventually produced this. You wouldn't believe that would you? No. You'd have to be really superstitious and really anti-scientific to believe that. On my Twitter feed, I have posted from time to time some pictures like at the beach for example of really meticulously, I can't imagine somebody taking the time to do this, but these really beautiful meticulous art sculptures that involve rocks and they're all by size and by color. And in some cases they're elaborate pictures that might take up large amounts of space on the beach and another example would be a very elaborate and large sandcastle with turrets and towers and all of the things you could imagine. And I just simply ask the question in my Twitter comment. I say, if somebody told you that this, you know, this highly arranged stack of rocks or a pile of sand, if somebody told you that this was merely the result of random blind forces working in an undirected way against one another over eons of time, would you believe it? The answer of course is no. And one guy started up with me. This guy I think was an atheist and he started up with me. Well, you just, you believe in God and I said, that's immaterial. Answer the question. If you saw this pile of sand that happened to look like a very intricate castle and someone told you it was just the result of blind forces, would you believe it? And he responded, no, I wouldn't believe it. Okay, I'm on to my last topic here. First of all, do you know what the oldest photograph in the world is? The oldest photograph in the world. You're thinking Abraham Lincoln, aren't you? Or sometime around there. That's what you're thinking, I bet, right? The oldest photograph in the world dates back to December 9th, 1531. And you're saying no way, way. Listen to this. The tilma of our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, which you can see with your own eyes. And we're going to talk about eyes here. The tilma in itself is an amazing marvel and I would argue a miraculous marvel because it's inexplicable according to modern scientific explanations. There's no way to account for its very existence because made of the very plant fibers that it was woven from nearly 500 years ago, it should have turned to dust long ago. It's still as supple and as pliant as it ever was. But even that is not the real issue. I want to talk about the eyes of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the tilma. Now, I'm sure you've heard about this and that's good because I'm happy that this information is getting out there but I want to share with you some more specific details under the umbrella of our question, you know, how do these things in the scientific realm of discovery, how do they point to the existence of God? So in his book, Guadalupe Mysteries, Deciphering the Code, He meticulously documents the extensive scientific inquiries that have been undertaken into the mysterious image of the eyes of our Lady of Guadalupe. Now, the reason this is important is because it wasn't until 1929 that somebody first noticed that when you look closely at the irises of our Lady in this tilma, if you magnify it sufficiently, you can see reflections in her eyes, just as if you're looking at me right now and you can see there's a glint in my eyes. Well, that glint essentially is the reflection of the lights and all of you. So if there were a photograph taken of me right now and then it was super enhanced and it was greatly zoomed in on by orders of magnitude of thousands of times, you would be able to see yourselves in my eye because this is the way the refractive properties of the human eye behave. So when St. Juan Diego visited Archbishop Zumarraga, who had asked him to provide some evidence that this woman that he claimed to be a Lady in light was appearing to him, he asked for some evidence and the evidence that Juan Diego thought he was bringing were the roses. But in fact, when he opened his tilma in which he was carrying these roses in the dead of winter, high up in the foothills of the mountains where it was snowing, that wasn't what caught the Archbishop's eye. It was the image of our Lady that was imprinted on the tilma. Now what's fascinating to say the least is that only in recent years have we been able to determine and discover that everybody in the room at that moment who saw this happen, they're in her eyes. The reflection of these 13 people including Archbishop Zumarraga himself are found in her eyes and with our modern scientific experimentation, what's the word I'm looking for? Our modern scientific instrumentation were now able to prove this. So here's a brief timeline. In 1929 Alfonso Gonzales, he was the official photographer for the Basilica of our Lady of Guadalupe, he took several high quality black and white photos of the tilma. He closely examined the eyes using a magnifying glass and for the first time he found the image of a bearded man reflected in the eye of our Lady. Now keep in mind that the size of her eyes on the tilma are less than one centimeter. So if you were to look at it just face to face, the eyes are very small and we're talking about microscopic images reflected in the eyes. So he was able to discern, hey wait a minute, there's a guy in there with a beard. And by comparing that figure later on with historical images of Archbishop Zumarraga, it was shown that this looks like him. So he was sworn to secrecy, I don't know why, but the powers that be, they said don't tell anybody about this so he didn't. And in 1951 Jose Chavez, he rediscovered this and he began the process of the scientific inquiry. In 1956 Dr. Javier Toroia, he was an ophthalmologist, he discovered the triple reflection in the eye. This is known as the Samson Perkinje effect. It includes the distortion of the reflected images. It also accounts for the curvature of the cornea. So they began to subject the eyes of the tilma to various instruments and measurements. They found that the eyes have a normal refractive characteristics of a human eye. In 1979 Jose Tonsman, he was a Peruvian scientist. He also studied the image of our ladies' eyes and using his experience with microscopes and satellite photographs, he was a scientist working at IBM at the time. So he applied the technology that IBM had in his own training and he began to discover even more things. So he widened the irises of the image of our ladies' eyes to 2,000 times the actual size and he undertook mathematical and optical procedures. He was able to make out the characters that were reflected in her eyes. So what did they discover? They discovered 13 people. The bishop, apparently there were several servants who were there. There was a family who was there. There's a mother with a baby in like a backpack on her back. And all of them were going, they're all looking at something. And what they were looking at was the very image of our lady herself. So the conclusion that they draw is that this was in the moment. This was an actual reflection of the event itself in the eyes of our lady. Now, not only did we not have the scientific ability to even see these things, we didn't know that this phenomenon even existed, where people and things are reflected in the eyes of a human being until the 20th century. So that leads to the question then, well if we didn't even know this existed as a phenomenon and we certainly didn't have the means to detect it, then how could 500 years ago somebody in a primitive land with no technology whatsoever, how could somebody actually do that? Now, does that prove the existence of God? No, but I think it does point to it. And I hope that these little tidbits of scientific information were helpful to you. Thank you. And listen to my radio show Monday through Friday on Relevant Radio. Thank you very much. God bless you.