 Come on, guys, we don't want to be late. This is the gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. Today's gospel talks about what the Lord has to give us. He did so because we could not control our temptations. Kind of like a priest in a room full of naked boys. Okay, okay, let's try and have none of that today. In John 3.16, the gospel tells us how God so loved the world He gave to us His only Son. And a Catholic priest raped Him. Okay. That's South Park talking about what it's like to go back to Catholic Church today and the connection with today's interview with Rick DeLano, who has a really outstanding new science movie out called The End of Quantum Reality about the work of Dr. Wolfgang Smith. Well, the connection is that even though it's a great science film with beautiful cinematography, I can't stop laughing about the Catholic thing. You did a great job of educating us on something that we always know and that is how solid quantum physics is. Because one of the tricks that's been done here to get away from the philosophical implications of quantum physics is to make it sound woo-woo or fluffy. You just don't get it, Rick. I mean, you don't understand why non-Christians like me are just stunned how any really bright intelligent person that you are can buy into such a wacky cosmology. There is no remote point of congruence between the straw man on your screen and the actual content of Christian revelation. Any Christian knows that instantaneously. Welcome to Skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. I'm your host Alex DeCarris and today we welcome Rick DeLano to Skeptico. Rick is a guy who has a terrific new movie out called The End of Quantum Reality. It's a movie that explores the work of physicist Dr. Wolfgang Smith and it builds a very strong scientific base case against the biological robot meaningless universe meme that we talk about so much on this show. Here's a clip from the trailer of the movie. No one understands quantum theory, a multitude of competing theories have been advanced which strike the uninitiated as ranging from the more or less weird to the patently absurd. It's not just in physics, it's in everything. Everything is conspiring to what the physicists would call a singularity where things just break down and they can't go on the way they have been going on. It is time to take stock of what has befallen us. Time to break the spell. The world view of classical physics has been broken irretrievably. Okay, that might be a place where we could pause. Rick, welcome to Skeptico. Thanks so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me, Alex. Well, I have to say you are one talented guy. I was watching this movie which for anyone who saw it, the clip I was just playing is absolutely visually fantastic, beautifully well done, graphics, animations, cinematography. I'm watching it and I'm thinking, where did they get this guy to narrate this film? I'm serious. I'm serious. That was my first thought. And then I look, you were the writer, director, narrator. I mean, you is your baby. So I was dying to know a little bit about your background and how you came to do this. Well, it's really interesting. I am the writer and the narrator and the producer. My dear associate, Katie Thomas is the director. And I sort of fell into this, not by choice or by design, but a dear friend of mine had decided to make a film about the Copernican principle back in about 2010. And while I do have extensive experience in the music business, my friend thought that since I was a Hollywood producer, that bent I would know something about movies. No, I was a Hollywood music producer. Knew absolutely nothing about filmmaking. But one thing led to another and he could not find anyone that he really trusted to make the film. And that is how I became a film producer with the principle in 2014 was released in 2014. And the most remarkable thing happened for about three weeks if you came probably one of the biggest three stories in the world, which is highly unusual for an independently produced scientific documentary. But of course, we touched the nerve with that film. And that film was an examination of our science in the very large on the very largest scales of the world. We look at the cosmos and that is of course the science of cosmology. So the principle examined the very, very serious challenges to our present big bang world view that these latest observations of the cosmos have brought to light. And the other and I would argue even more profound paradoxes confronting our present world story are those which are found at the opposite end of the scale down in the very, very small, which is the realm in the domain of quantum mechanics. And so it seemed to me to be a necessary and logical next step to examine the paradoxes of science in the very small. And this, of course, led me to Dr. Wolfgang Smith and his profound work over decades on this so-called quantum reality problem, which has really bedeviled physics since the discovery of quantum mechanics. And so that is the genesis of the film the end of quantum reality. Well, yes, I mean, certainly in this is something we've talked a lot about on this show is the whole quantum physics thing really blows away this dumbed down materialistic, you're a biological robot in a meaningless universe thing. Your movie does a fantastic job of breaking that down and building it up from the ground up in terms of solid physics. And also, I think you did a great job of educating us, reeducating us on something that we always know. And that is how solid quantum physics is because one of the tricks that's been done here to get away from the philosophical implications of quantum physics is to make it sound woo-woo or fluffy or something like that. And what your movie really kind of nails, if it doesn't nail a lot of other things is that, hey, man, this has given us a more precise scientific measure of reality than almost anything else we've ever encountered. So do you maybe want to speak to speak to that in general? Yeah, it is one of the most important things to understand about Dr. Smith is that by the time the man was 14, he had been brought from Austria to escape the Nazis and had applied to Cornell University at age 14 for a study in physics, mathematics, and philosophy. And by the time he was 18, he had his degrees in all three. By the time he was 20, he had a graduate degree in quantum mechanics. And he was trained back in the, what I would call the golden age of quantum mechanics. He was literally at Cornell when Richard Feynman was at Cornell. These guys were trained in the most rigorous imagineable way. And of course, back then we didn't have this flourishing garden of the reality marketplace where everybody under the sun can advance a different interpretation of what quantum mechanics means. Excuse me, Rick, but the other thing we didn't have is computers. I mean, when you look at the pictures of Feynman, one of things that blows me away is it's that old school chalkboard as big as the room filled with formulas and you had to sit up there and you had to be able to do the math at a level that probably there aren't a handful of people in the world today that could do the math at that level. And you had to make it right because you had a room full of really super smart kids who would sit there and go, hey, over here, row three, line four, you missed this Dr. Feynman. Yeah, the rigor. You're absolutely right. The rigor of the formation, the necessity to do one's own calculation. Quantum mechanics is a quintessentially mathematical theory and the great question in the quantum reality problem is what do these mathematical operators in the theory, what do they mean? What do they mean in terms of the world that we experience every day and having to do these problems and understand precisely what each one of these operators actually means in terms of a physical prediction and the physical outcome. This I think had a great deal to do with Dr. Smith's early acceptance of quantum mechanics as the foundation of physics. The physics finally, after a 400 year search for the bottom of the pool, so to speak, had finally arrived at its fundamental level with quantum mechanics and the first thing to understand about this resolution of the quantum reality problem is that he absolutely accepts quantum mechanics as a correct physical theory. And anytime I bring to him one of these new articles where oh, we've made time run backwards. Oh, we've proved that there's other universes out there. He simply laughs and he says when they are able to falsify quantum mechanics, let me know. And until then, I really have nothing to say to them. So he is old school. He is an exemplar of the golden age of quantum mechanics and he is not easily bamboozled by some of the popular science that is retailed these days under the rubric of quote interpretations of quantum mechanics. Rick, the movie really is terrific and I encourage anyone who enjoys the kind of stuff we talk about on skeptico to watch it because it really does have this great breakdown of the way that you're talking about. But and you knew there was a but coming is actually a couple of butts coming and I did give you a heads up prior to the show and told you some of things. I'm going after and so one of them relates to again another part of the of the trailer actually. So let me play that and then I'll get your reaction. We all knew it was coming. Every pillar was wobbling at once political financial religious military and of course scientific looking back. It is as if we were hypnotized and we were no one understands quantum theory. So we have a great science movie here which is 90% of what the show is all about at the very beginning you have this kind of apocalyptic the world. I mean it's completely to me disconnected to the science and I'm into the science. I've interviewed a ton of physicists and quantum physicists and all those people. There's I don't get the connection to the apocalyptic stuff. Well it is fundamental to the film. So let me address it. The reason that we made the film is because it has become abundantly clear to Dr. Smith and to many other observers by the way that we are approaching a moment in history that has no precedent in at least the last four hundred years. And what happened four hundred years ago was that the entire world story of Western humanity was overturned when Copernicus came along and formulated the heliocentric cosmos. Newton came along and provided us a mathematical physics which would explain why the planets were actually moving around the sun etc etc. This was a probably the biggest change in the story that humanity tells itself about the world and its place in it since the gospel and for four hundred years that story has been elaborated on a greater and greater and greater scale. Remember four hundred years ago we were the center of the universe and everything revolved around us and that's a certain picture of the world beginning with the Copernican Revolution and basically all of science since then has been a successive demotion of our place in the cosmos to a less and less and less significant position and of course this demotion has been accompanied by magnificent scientific miracles. The accomplishments of the scientific enterprise have been so profound and the miracles our miracles come from fabrically and there have been quite a large number of them but as quite often happens just at the point that you reach out to grab the brass ring on this great project to reduce the world to that which can be described without residue by mathematics, by physics. The whole project collapses and collapses specifically and exactly with the discovery of quantum mechanics because this four hundred year arc of human history was based on one fundamental metaphysical assumption. The idea that when you get down to the bottom of the world you get these fundamental particles whether you call them atoms or quanta or whatever you want to call them all of physics over the past four hundred years has essentially been a reductionist research program to get down to the bottom of the world in these little fundamental particles and the equations and fields and forces that are associated with that. That project catastrophically fails at the beginning of the 20th century with the discovery of quantum mechanics. Now, I am sure Alex that at some point in your life you have encountered someone who has said to you at some point under some set of circumstances something along the lines of dude, that's your reality, right? You've heard that, right? Yeah, but you're not getting to the point of what I'm talking about. I mean, this is this is the shit I talk about all the time. This is in fact apocalyptic Alex. Once you have arrived at the point in the civilization's development where every single person on earth is entitled to their own reality such a condition is so far beyond near schizophrenia. It is so far beyond anything of pagan antiquity in its profound rejection of even the possibility of objective truth that as Wolfgang Smith very profoundly points out in the film, this is the end of the road for that 400 year arc of human history that has led us to these profound paradoxes in quantum mechanics. So the trailer says every pillar was wobbling at once. Well, I'll tell you when we made that trailer, the Dow was humming along. Everything was peachy came Marvy poo and we now look at a civilization that is literally collapsing in front of our arms. With all due respect, Alex, that's a big deal with all due respect. This is apocalyptic. We are reaching the end of one very profound arc of human history and it is happening directly in front of our eyes. Maybe I'm not I'm not a believer in that, especially when you look at the science, especially the S&P less. I looked is it 3000. I don't know how it's at 3000, but it's at 3000 after Corona and all the rest that but leave that aside for a second. The part that I don't get is I just put up on the screen the Solvay Congress but with all these great physicists a hundred years ago, we're getting together and are saying. Hey, we have this problem. We have this great philosophical problem that Wolfgang Smith is talking about. So this has been ongoing for 100 years without without stop. But I guess let me play some clips for you that will really drive home where I guess I'm coming from. I had a chance to interview the very excellent Caltech physicist Sean Carroll. Oh, God. I hate Sean Carroll. Please don't mention that. Okay. Don't mention that Caltech. I mean, no, I've interviewed Sean Carroll. What if it went but let's not I'm sorry. I like I like truth in the advertising very good. I had a chance to interview the very excellent Dr. Donald Hoffman called Caltech physicist and his book up there that I'm showing the case against reality and it is essentially wrestling with the same issues. He's about developing very rigorous mathematical models for consciousness, which will have to come back and I'll have to understand why you don't talk more about consciousness in the film because from all accounts everyone I hear who talks about quantum physics and the big misstep by materialist science is that they don't recognize consciousness or they want to claim that consciousness is an illusion, which is just an absurd idea. So these are some of the topics that I talked about with Don Hoffman. Let me play you some of these clips and I think that will kind of catapult us into an interesting discussion. I agree that the current theories of consciousness among my scientific colleagues really do drop the ball. They they start with an unconscious objective reality of space time and matter and they try to boot up consciousness from that. And of course I disagree with them because science requires mathematically precise theories and experiments at some point you can no longer fool yourself. You realize you just don't have the beef. Science made great strides using the assumption that space time and unconscious matter are the foundations and the technology that's come out has been stunning and it's raised humanity's level of life dramatically. So there's this feeling among the scientists that look the physicalist framework was our way of getting away from the the weirdness of the spiritual traditions and breaking free. Look what it's look what it's done. Let's pause there for a second because you don't object to any of that. I'm sure you're not infallible. But but he isn't talking about he isn't talking. He doesn't have a supportive film that shows kind of military people jumping out and doing crowd control and fires and burning in apocalyptic kind of stuff. That's not because he's that's because he's nowhere near as profound a philosopher as Dr. Smith and he shouldn't be expected to have been a student of history and of the history of ideas to the level that a man might Dr. Wolfgang Smith has done. I mean there's just no comparison. That's nothing against the good doctor. It's just we're talking about Wolfgang Smith here. This is a man who is profoundly profoundly familiar not only with quantum mechanics which he actually has a graduate degree in not only a doctorate in mathematics. He's taught at MIT for heaven's sakes. This is a man who is intimately familiar with every and school of wisdom of human antiquity and it's that kind of breadth of vision and that kind of intellectual background that enabled him to point out two and a half years ago in our trailer that sometime in the very near future the wheels were going to come off the present civilization. The mere fact that it has happened in the first week of the release of the film. I don't think he would claim that he had predicted that but it was abundantly clear to him and to those who had started that we were headed for this. There was no doubt about it. Yeah, I don't buy that the wheels have come off the civilization but let me play the next clip. Let me play that go ahead and stick keep watching garlics. Yeah, I mean I I'm just not an apocalyptic kind of guy but I don't believe it's going to get into theology real quicker. So let me play this next clip. Okay, one could make the case and I have in the show that the cultish practices that go hand in hand with Christianity really need to be viewed for their mind control aspects but the fact that we're doing that to kids especially is not exactly promoting free thinking. I know from my own experience being brought up in the Greek Orthodox Church and having to walk up to communion and kiss the hand of some old man as he dropped bread into my hand to feed me. I mean there's some deep symbology. There is for a lot of folks genuine deep programming. I grew through completely on that. I felt that the the institutions that I was subjected to were there not to help me to explore and find out who I am. They had the answers. I needed to understand their answers and and and believe their answers and to question anything that they said was to not be a believer and therefore be subject to help. So of course this is the Archilles heel of the film and this theology in general. It just kind of slips without warning. It slips from solid science and solid thinking of quantum physics into kind of this weird leap towards Catholicism and Wolfgang talks about how he's converted to Catholicism by his wife who's a Catholic and then there's this kind of strange but not fully detailed Christian apologetics that somehow links in some indirect way quantum physics to your theology. I mean I hope you understand how people see that as just completely disconnected disjointed. Yes, well it's been quite a long time since the the classical cosmology presented to us in the Christian tradition has been as powerfully vindicated as it has in the work of Dr. Wolfgang Smith. I would not expect any other reaction from I mean having heard what you said about your understanding of your brief orthodox upbringing in the form of mind control. I perfectly understand your uncomfortable reaction to Dr. Smith's contrary journey after all his journey is in the exact opposite direction. Here is a man who at 14 years of age applied to Cornell University and he was asked what do you want to study and he said physics and they asked him why do you want to study and he said because I am convinced that physics is the key to understanding the universe and if you will remember in the film he has a wonderful little pause followed by a self-deprecating little smile and then he looks at the camera and he says needless to say I have changed my mind about that. So Dr. Smith's progression is in the precise opposite direction that you and your guests have indicated to us that you have followed therefore it shouldn't become much of a surprise it's going to be some aspects of your work that rubbed you the wrong way on first hearing. Well it's not that they rub me the wrong way they're just completely disconnected with the science. There's no Jesus on the cross connection to quantum business. There's no Jesus on the cross in the film either Alex. So that's my point. That's my point. So why are so why are we introducing so what we have is essentially a straw man Dr. Smith's conversion story is a part of the profile of how his intellect developed over the decades of his life. There is no question of you must be a Catholic or you must be a Christian in order to understand his resolution of the quantum enigma but but and this is what I humbly propose that you might be missing. What we do have to recognize in Dr. Smith's resolution of the quantum enigma is a form of causation that is both unknown to physics and right in front of our eyes every time we measure a quantum system. Once that is understood we have no choice but to look outside of physics for the resolution to the quantum enigma. And then we can back into this outdated dogmatic crazy cosmology of Catholicism right that's where we're going to that's how we're going to leap and that's where we're going to leap to why why would we go there. Well because that's where the evidence leads us to Catholicism or no to vertical causality Alex. There's nothing about the resolution of the quantum enigma in Wolfgang's work or in the film that requires you to recite the nice scene Creed for heaven's sake it's a complete misrepresentation of both the film and of his work. Now what we do have to confront is a form of causality that is active and present in every measurement of a quantum system that does not reduce to any form of causality known to science. It is true that this form of causality is vertical rather than horizontal. It is true that a form of vertical causality puts us right back in a world that does not reduce to the equations of physics. Sorry that's just where we're going. There's there's nothing buddy. I'm totally on board. I'm totally on board with all that. That's why I'm playing Donald Hoffman. Well, let me jump to hold on. Let me go. Let me go to a different point here. I was watching an interview slash debate. You did with my friend of me the skeptic Dr. Michael Shermer who has been on the show and I think it was utterly destroyed in terms of his understanding of extended consciousness is inability to accept that we don't die after death and that's the best result that we can get from frontier science and it comes back over and over again and it directly contradicts his book. But he was hitting you pretty hard on the Catholic thing and I thought and listening to you now is you in a way you just don't get it Rick. I mean you don't understand why non Christians like me are just stunned how any really bright intelligent person that you are can buy into such a wacky cosmology. I have this interview. I want to read to you this clip from the very excellent Richard Smolley who wrote a book while back called How God Became God. What scholars are really saying about God and the Bible. Smolley is Oxford trained Harvard trained highly regarded all this stuff. Here's Richard Smolley in his interview that he did with my buddy Miguel Connor on and by Gnostic radio. He says what are we supposed to believe God got mad at the human race for eating a piece of fruit in Armenia 6,000 years ago. He got so mad that he condemned everybody to internal damnation except he kind of felt bad about this afterward. So he sent part of himself down to have it tortured to death which somehow made it all right except not really because if you don't buy this story you're still going to fry forever. Does that make any sense? Of course it doesn't. It's phrased in of course elaborate theologies rituals and doxologies but it's still a ridiculous story. That's the part that hold on. That's the part that take the movie aside for a second that you are making a connection between who we are supposed to hold up as this figure this bright shining light of physics and knowledge and yet he seems to be endorsing a cosmology that we all sit back and go well that's just insane. It's ridiculous. Well, let me first of all say he doesn't steam to be endorsing it. He most emphatically and certainly and unequivocally does endorse it. Now let's go back to your well-respected Oxford dawn and let me just say first of all that it's perfectly understandable that nobody would believe such nonsense. The problem is he is the one who concocted the nonsense. This is what we see in logic as the classic straw man argument. You concoct a complete fraud and alleged this to be the Christian message that is a lie. There has never been a Christian message remotely or approximately that which your Oxford dawn who is so well respected but part of that cosmology is not right out of the Bible. That is nonsense. That is not out of the Bible. That is out of the author of how God became God. In other words, the Oxford dawn who rather than deal with the actual Christian charigma reconstructs it as a straw man so that he has something easy. What is strong and what is wrong about this? Rick hard work of actually addressing the content of the revelation of the Catholic religion. But that's up to him. You keep throwing up this straw man stuff. What is straw man about this? This is the story that we've all been passed down with this story that the Oxford dawn corrected out of whole quaff so that he can do. Those correct it. Truly understained. Here's your opportunity. Rick tell us where Richard Smolley has created a straw man. No, there is no remote point of congruent. Between the straw man on your screen and the actual content of Christian revelation. Any Christian knows that instantaneously. So if we want to discuss Christian cosmology, let's discuss Christian cosmology. If we're going to discuss a straw man from your highly respected Oxford dawn, I simply laugh because it has absolutely no remote connection to the actual message of the Christian religion that Smolley is a Christian. He's no kind of a Christian that I would recognize. I suppose nominally anybody can call themselves Christian, but if that is his understanding of the Christian religion, I keep insisting that what this is such a bullshit skeptical thing to claim the straw man thing. It's like when they throw out these things. What what is incorrect about what Smolley's view? There is nothing that is correct about it. See, here's the thing, Alex. This is the Adam and Eve story. This is the Adam and Eve story. Isn't it? What's wrong about it? I can tell me when I can. Okay. Go ahead and finish whatever point you want to make because I have one I want. Well, please, please make it. But you keep claiming that there's a straw man. Tell us what the straw man is. Are you done? Can I talk now? Okay. Great. There is not a word, not a syllable, not a phrase, not a sentence in that entire straw man concoction that proceeds from scripture or tradition or the official teachings of the Catholic Church, not a word, not a sentence, not a syllable. It is a complete concoction, a confabulation of an enemy of that revelation. And instead of addressing the scripture, instead of addressing the father, instead of addressing the churches, the actual teachings of the church, he rewrites them in a stupid and intellectually, it's an insult to the intelligence of any honest researcher to consider that glop as having anything to do with the authentic revelation of the Christian religion. So I laugh at him. Do you have anything else? Well, I just have, again, I would go back to my earlier point. I don't have anything else because when I go back to my earlier point, here is my earlier point. People are going to listen to this little exchange and they're going to read Richard Smolley's quote up there or listen to me reading it. And they're going to go, yeah, that's what Christianity has always said. There was Adam and Eve and you ate the apple. So the wise man once said Alex, there's a very wise man once said, I just want you to recognize how many times you interrupt me. So you're in Ignatian at my interruptions of you, but that's fine. Go ahead. Your point. No, no, no, no, you make a good point. I will shut up and let you make the point. Go ahead. No, no, it's I enjoy the interchange. I just don't, you know, why? Okay. So look, here's the thing. I am happy to defend myself to anyone at any time under any circumstances without reservation. What I object to is having a completely ridiculous self constructed straw man put up on the screen as if that was my faith. It is not. It has nothing to do with my faith. And if we want to discuss my faith, I would at least insist that the arguments be predicated on the actual content of that faith. That is found in scripture and in apostolic tradition. I'm quite happy to defend both. Your Oxford Don wasn't intellectually honest enough to address those sources of the faith. He rewrote it as a straw man. And somehow this is supposed to impress me. I don't care if 90 million people think that's the truth. It's complete bullshit. And I have the greatest sympathy and poignant sadness for anyone who would mistake that garbage for the Christian religion. Well, let me take one more stab at this and I don't know if we're going to get through or not. I don't have any special connection to Richard Smolley. I just think you can diss him all you want or not respect him or you keep bringing up Oxford because I guess I brought it up. It's just to kind of have a touchstone of who this guy is. But my point that I was really trying to make Rick is I don't see I was brought up in the Catholic, not in the Catholic church, but as we mentioned in the Greek Orthodox Church, which is pretty damn close to the Catholic Church in a lot of ways. I immediately I understand exactly what Smolley is talking about. I'm not ignorant. That would explain why you're no longer in the Greek Orthodox Church. Well, that's now you're now you're talking about a your your interpretation of my theology, which you don't know. Well, you reject the Greek Orthodox faith because in many ways very close to the Catholic faith. Right. Neither one of them have the slightest thing to do with this straw man of Richard Smolley. Rick, but see, you keep you keep kind of throwing that out there. So number one, you don't because it happens to be true, Alex. It's a straw man. It is a concocted misrepresentation. Well, here, let me let me do it. Do let me make a point. Easier for the let me do let me make a point here, Rick, because you have just kind of repeated that thing over and over again. And what I was going to try and do is ask you to tell me since one, I was brought up Christian. I did investigate thoroughly and I probably have 50 shows, 50 interviews with leading religious scholars kind of all over the map, both Christian and non-Christian. I've investigated this pretty thoroughly. I can't think of one of them that would react the way that you have to Smolley's quote here. And I certainly don't react that way and I don't know any other Christians that would say that he is fundamentally misrepresented the Christian cosmology. So hold on. There's a question here and it's the question I keep coming back to what part of this are you reacting to so strongly to as not being part of your understanding of the Christmas Christian cosmology without just kind of blankedly saying this entire thing is constructed and it's a straw man. All this particular the entire segment is nonsense. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the authentic sources of what is the authentic. What is the authentic Christian cosmology Bible and the fathers and the councils for the Catholic and even for the Orthodox up to the seventh economical council. That is where you find the authentic. What is it? Tell us, Rick. Tell us what the Christian cosmology is. Well, it differs. Tell us how it differs from Smolley's because we could we could we could recite the nice increase, but it begins very, very simply. I believe in God, the father almighty maker of heaven earth that is the fundamental cosmological assertion of the Christian religion. The universe is not a self assembling collection of subatomic particles that somehow emerge from the void and voila given 13.8 billion years and a law of gravity. Here we are isn't that marvelous? So that is essentially a straw manning of the current cosmological picture and I don't publish a such a straw man because I wouldn't be able to let you live with myself. If I straw manned my opposition, the way that the Oxford dawn who wrote how God became God has straw man the Christian message, but the fundamental difference between my cosmology and the cosmology of the modern scientists is that he insists that the talk about that because we're going to agree on that what we're not going to agree on. What we're not going to agree on is small. He's just telling us the Adam and Eve story and you haven't told us what part of the Adam and Eve story. He's telling us his story. Well, so tell us, tell us what's wrong with it. Tell us what's wrong. Forget it. We're not getting is not the Adam and the story. The Adam and Eve story is found interestingly enough in the book of Genesis. In fact, in the second chapter of the book of Genesis. Now, if the author of how God became God, Richard Smolling had any actual interest in grappling with that story, the Adam and Eve story, he would have started out with the basic intellectual honesty of presenting the story as we have it in scripture, but that wouldn't work at all. He needs to rewrite that story. In other words, to straw man that story so that he can in the Voltarian sense, skewer it as ridiculous on its face. Well, it is ridiculous on its face the way he writes it. Of course, the problem is it's not ridiculous on its face. The way we find it in scripture, but it's so for reason that it is the most. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. That's the part you don't get. That's the part that you don't get that all Christians, all non Christians look at it and say it is ridiculous. It's been jammed down our throat. It's been used to control manipulate jamming down the throat. All due respect, Alex. I you claim to be you claim to be a student stuff doesn't appear anywhere in my thumb. It does not. You are correct throat here, Alex. You are correct. It does not appear anywhere in your very excellent yet 40 minutes of this interview has been dedicated to something that isn't even in the film. I ask in all honesty, sir, who is jamming? What down whose throat? Rick in fairness, right? We schedule. I scheduled this interview with you because your people sent me a thing and your people sent me of the trailer on the film and the one sheet on the film and it was about scientism and it was about quantum physics and I immediately said, this is fantastic. I'm all in. I watched the film and I said, this is great, but this Christian crap is just ridiculous. There's no connection to it and that overlay completely kind of destroys the message of the film. I immediately emailed you and said, Rick, we shouldn't do this interview because I don't think it's the kind of interview you want to do and then you turned around and made the entire interview about the very thing you said you didn't want to discuss. No, no, no, you just see again. See, you're not a good listener, Rick, because that's not what I said. It's not that I said I don't want to discuss it. I said you don't want to discuss it because I don't want to sit there and just talk about a few to discuss it Alex. I am more than happy to discuss it. The problem is as we attempt to discuss it instead of engaging with the actual content of the Catholic faith which I'm perfectly prepared to defend, you instead present this ridiculous straw man and as if I'm supposed to sit here meekly and allow you to jam that down my throat. No, you're not me. You're not me. You're not me. Anyway, look, here's the thing. We incorporated the biographical section of the story of Wolfgang precisely so that the remarkable intellectual journey of this man can be understood by the audience because it is an interesting thing. It is the exact opposite of your journey. In other words, you started out. I know what my journey is. How can you say such a thing? I know this much. I know you started out in the Greek Orthodox Church and you're not in it anymore. Okay. So that's all I need to know. That's all you need to know. That's all you need to know, my friend. Your story is the exact opposite of Wolfgang's because he started out outside the church and pursuing physics exclusively as the correct way to understand the universe. And his journey has led him precisely back to the place that you consider to be so ridiculous. Now, that's an interesting thing to me. I certainly, if I were making a documentary about you, Alex, I would incorporate whatever biographical portions I could find that would explain why you have departed from the worldview of your early years of the Greek Orthodox Church because it would be important to understand how you've arrived at the positions you have now. That's exactly what we do in the Wolfgang Church. Let me clarify. I stand 100%. You should because it's an awesome film and people should go and watch it because it's incredibly wonderfully done in terms of science. And let me go one step further because I would kind of re I would kind of reorient what you just said. The part about his conversion back to Catholicism doesn't interfere with the film at all. And I don't want to leave people with that impression. It's not like he gets up there and starts reading scripture halfway through the film or he's proselytizing or he's trying to convert. There's none of that. So the discussion we're having here really, if you I can understand why it could be a little bit off-putting to you because it really is not at all fundamental or even necessary part of the film. It's just the part that interests me because I'm so interested in consciousness and extended Alex. You had darn good interviewer and I'll tell you why because what this is where the rubber meets the road. Okay. And it's darn good that we should cross swords on this because you and I do not agree and you and Wolfgang Smith do not agree in your assessment of the meaning of the Christian revelation. It's perfectly legitimate for you to put the heat on for me here. I don't regret it or I'm not upset about it at all. It makes for fantastic media. It's a good spark filled conversation. Don't get me wrong. It's just that I'm going to defend that which I hold to be most important and Wolfgang will defend that which you hold most important just as you will and we're not going to agree on this point but I very much appreciate the point you just made about the film. If I had turned this into some sort of a platform for Wolfgang Smith to proselytize I'd be ashamed of myself because I'd be falsely advertising what the film is. Thank you very much for making the point that we do not introduce these ideas as central to the resolution of the quantum enigma. We introduce these ideas so that we can understand Wolfgang Smith and why he has been able to resolve this profound problem in our understanding of reality. Well said I think I might just want to kind of leave it there again folks our guest has been Rick Delano. I think you got a good enough view of where he's coming from but maybe I turned up the heat too much because he's fantastic in this movie. He's extremely well spoken and well versed on these topics the if anything if there's one thing about the movie that I would kind of warn you of is it's a deep dive into serious science so put on your big boy boots and buckle up and I think you really enjoy re-learning about quantum physics and our history of it and why it's so important to kind of dispel the absolute insanity that we find ourselves in with materialistic science as we know it. Rick tell folks in the little bit of time we have left when the movie will be out and what you're doing in connection with it to get people interested in it. Well the movie was released theatrically in January who are rolling along quite wonderfully and then COVID-19 came along and blew that entire business out of existence so we have just this past week this past Wednesday released the film digitally it can be found at www.theendofquantumreality.com and I must thank the audience most profoundly we're off to an amazing start and we hope that the film will prove to be worthy of serious consideration. What's next after this Rick? Ha that's a great question I always say after one of these films I'll never make another one because they almost kill me but I never thought I'd make this one so I don't really know I mean what I want to do more than anything else now is really establish Wolfgang's work as strongly as I possibly can in in as many areas as I possibly can we won't have him with us that much longer. I hope to have an international conference on vertical causation in physics next year and we hope to have a Helios Sophia initiative special edition of his collective works ready to go sometime next year to after that we'll just have to see if there's any movies out there that really need to be made that nobody else is going to take on. And finally Rick for anyone who might be interested in your first movie which I've just kind of dipped into looks extremely interesting will tell folks quickly about that. Well there's one idea that brings the modern world into existence and that is what we know today is the Copernican cosmological principle. This is the foundational idea that brings the modern world into existence and it can be stated very easily. The earth is not in a special central or privileged location with respect to large scale structure for the cosmos. This is the most widely believed assumption in the history of Western civilization and there are astonishing new observations of the cosmos on its very large scales that call this assumption into very serious question. We made a film about it. It's called the principle and you can access that film at www.theprincipalmovie.com. Rick it's been great having you on and thank you Alex. I enjoyed it very much and thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak with you. With your so that'll wrap it up Rick with your permission. I will edit slightly some of the combative stuff does turn people off. I want to leave some of it in but we just kind of we just kind of hash it again and again and that drives people away. There wasn't a single bit of it that I didn't love. The spark flying is part of what makes this cool. You're a tough interviewer but an honest one and ultimately a fair one. You got no problem from me and all my friends. Okay buddy you take care and let's let's stay in touch because I know you're going to have any time anytime anytime you want to talk we'll talk. Okay take care. Thanks. Bye. Thanks again to Rick Delana for joining me today on skeptical the one question I guess I'd have to tee up from this interview is is it fair to use someone's religion in particular someone's Catholic faith as a litmus test regarding their ability to talk about these deeper science questions and extended consciousness questions. Is that fair I guess that's the question of course I'd love to hear what you think I really really would I know that this is a complicated issue and I know it can really trigger a lot of people and I get that but I think we got to dive in check me out over there at the skeptical form or of course just visit the skeptical website or send me an email or reach me however you would like. Point is to connect with folks who are interested in this kind of skeptical stuff. Please stay with me have a bunch of great shows coming up and some other stuff I'm working on that I'm dying to tell you about until next time take care and bye for now.