# It's a Scary Time to Be a Scientist (with Dr. Kenneth Miller)

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 9 Sep 2025, 1 h 10 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/67631634/podcast825_kenmiller.mp3

Dr. Kenneth Miller is an American cell biologist, molecular biologist, and Professor Emeritus of Biology at Brown University. He has thoughts about the Trump administration's war on vaccines, public safety, and the scientific community. VIDEO of this discussion Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 1: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through the.
[0:13] Speaker 1: Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
[0:19] Speaker 1: tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not
[0:22] Speaker 1: because I put my hand on a book and made
[0:24] Speaker 1: a wish and working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 3: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
[0:32] Speaker 3: Truth Usian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:56] Speaker 3: Quick clarification and correction before I get into my conversation
[1:00] Speaker 3: with doctor Ken Miller, a world renowned cell biologist. This
[1:04] Speaker 3: guy is highly respected in his field, an educator, and
[1:08] Speaker 3: just he's the real thing. He is also religious. He
[1:12] Speaker 3: is a very public and professing Catholic, and so I
[1:17] Speaker 3: spent the first twenty minutes talking about the Church and
[1:20] Speaker 3: his faith and all those things, and around the five
[1:23] Speaker 3: minute mark I mentioned an official proclamation by the Church
[1:27] Speaker 3: that evolution was in opposition to sacred scriptures. And while
[1:34] Speaker 3: the Church has been wildly schizophrenic on evolution and all
[1:38] Speaker 3: kinds of other science, and has in many ways been
[1:40] Speaker 3: anti science. In my opinion, that particular quote, that reference
[1:45] Speaker 3: was poorly sourced, and that is my fault. So in
[1:48] Speaker 3: the video version you can actually see the corrective note
[1:51] Speaker 3: appear on screen that says my bad, but you can't
[1:55] Speaker 3: see it in the audio, and I want to do
[1:56] Speaker 3: the right thing. Accuracy is important. I referenced something that
[2:01] Speaker 3: was not properly sourced. I am now correcting the record
[2:05] Speaker 3: because that is what good science does. But the conversation
[2:10] Speaker 3: itself is fascinating, and I think you're going to enjoy it.
[2:13] Speaker 3: So here we go. It is a pleasure to speak
[2:19] Speaker 3: to my special guest today. Doctor Ken Miller is a
[2:24] Speaker 3: cell biologist. He is a molecular biologist and Professor Emeritus
[2:29] Speaker 3: of Biology at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He
[2:34] Speaker 3: also stands in opposition to the literal Biblical creation story,
[2:41] Speaker 3: and he lays out his case for an evolved human
[2:44] Speaker 3: being in his book Finding Darwin's God, Only a Theory
[2:48] Speaker 3: and the Human Instinct. Doctor Miller is highly respected even
[2:54] Speaker 3: in the atheist, skeptical, secular scientific community because he is legit.
[3:00] Speaker 3: I've also heard rumors he is a pretty swell guy.
[3:04] Speaker 3: Doctor Ken Miller, thanks for being here, my friend.
[3:07] Speaker 2: Happy to do that. I'll see how I can dispel
[3:10] Speaker 2: those rumors. But but let's.
[3:12] Speaker 3: Go true story. I was at a convention in twenty
[3:16] Speaker 3: eleven and I was there with my friend Abby Smith,
[3:20] Speaker 3: who's a virologist, and we were talking about Michael bah
[3:23] Speaker 3: and the Discovery Institute and those cats, and so she
[3:28] Speaker 3: was going hard at him and like, you got to
[3:30] Speaker 3: be kidding me. This is wrong, this is factually untrue.
[3:33] Speaker 3: This is a misrepresentation of the science. And your name
[3:35] Speaker 3: came up and she just lit up like a Christmas tree.
[3:39] Speaker 3: She's like, he's totally legit. And ever since then, I thought, well,
[3:43] Speaker 3: I sure would like to have a conversation with this guy.
[3:45] Speaker 3: But it only took fourteen years to make that happen,
[3:49] Speaker 3: but I'm glad it finally did. So you're on the
[3:53] Speaker 3: front lines standing up for science these days. We are
[3:57] Speaker 3: necked deep in the war on science. Before we talk
[4:01] Speaker 3: about that, I have to do my due diligence and
[4:05] Speaker 3: get in front of the whole Catholic thing. I just
[4:09] Speaker 3: have to ask the question. The Catholic Church has been
[4:12] Speaker 3: a bit you know, it's had multiple personalities on biblical
[4:17] Speaker 3: creation versus evolution until I think it was what eighty
[4:22] Speaker 3: eight when Pope John Paul the Second finally came forward
[4:25] Speaker 3: and said, hey, it's legit. I don't know, how do
[4:28] Speaker 3: you deal with Catholicism and evolutionary science.
[4:33] Speaker 2: Well, you're a bit out of date. It wasn't nineteen
[4:35] Speaker 2: eighty eight. It was nineteen forty eight.
[4:37] Speaker 4: And the first pope to write favorably about evolution was
[4:43] Speaker 4: Pious the twelfth and he made very clear that the
[4:48] Speaker 4: scientific story of human evolution was compatible with Christianity. So
[4:53] Speaker 4: that has been Catholic thinking for a long time. If
[4:56] Speaker 4: you walk into the beautiful Life Science building at Notre
[5:02] Speaker 4: Dame University, one of the country's great Catholic universities, you
[5:06] Speaker 4: will see inscribed on the floor a quote from Theodosius Dobzansky,
[5:13] Speaker 4: possibly the most eminent evolutionary geneticis of the twentieth century,
[5:17] Speaker 4: and the quote is nothing in biology makes sense except
[5:23] Speaker 4: in the light of evolution. So I think the attitude
[5:27] Speaker 4: of the Church in terms of embracing science. You're right,
[5:31] Speaker 4: has been back and forth over the centuries, but certainly
[5:34] Speaker 4: in the last several decades the Church has made no
[5:38] Speaker 4: bones about the fact that it supports science, it supports
[5:41] Speaker 4: scientific inquiry. And I can go back if you really
[5:45] Speaker 4: want me to. I can go back to Saint Augustine,
[5:48] Speaker 4: Bishop of Hippo talking about Genesis and how Genesis should
[5:53] Speaker 4: be interpreted in the light of science.
[5:55] Speaker 3: But wasn't there pushback when on the origin of species? Was? Probably?
[6:00] Speaker 3: I mean? And I think even in the mid twentieth
[6:02] Speaker 3: century the Church had called this, They'd called evolution opposed
[6:08] Speaker 3: to sacred scripture. And maybe this is just the clerics
[6:12] Speaker 3: being clerics, human beings disagreeing, as clergy often do when
[6:16] Speaker 3: it comes to the interpretation of their faith. Would that
[6:18] Speaker 3: be fair?
[6:19] Speaker 2: Well, I'm not sure where you get that quote about
[6:21] Speaker 2: it in being an affront it's a sacred scripture or
[6:24] Speaker 2: who might have said it. But the thing I can
[6:26] Speaker 2: tell you right now is that I've been, as you know,
[6:30] Speaker 2: I've been outspoken in the defense of evolution. I co
[6:33] Speaker 2: authored a high school textbook which makes evolution the centerpiece
[6:37] Speaker 2: of the study of biology. I was the lead witness
[6:40] Speaker 2: in the Kitsmeller trial in Pennsylvania twenty years ago on
[6:44] Speaker 2: the issue of intelligent design, and since then I've actually
[6:48] Speaker 2: received an embarrassingly large number of honors from Catholic institutions.
[6:53] Speaker 2: I can rattle them off if you want, but me
[6:55] Speaker 2: any list of honors is pointless. The fact of the
[6:58] Speaker 2: matter is that at the current time, and certainly over
[7:02] Speaker 2: the last several decades, the Church has done its best
[7:06] Speaker 2: I could get, you know, I can get a little
[7:08] Speaker 2: goofy about this and say that the Church realizes it
[7:12] Speaker 2: behaved rather badly during the whole Galileo thing, and they've
[7:17] Speaker 2: they've been trying to make up for it ever since.
[7:19] Speaker 2: And by the way, John Paul the Second actually convened
[7:22] Speaker 2: a panel which absolved Galileo. Now Galileo doesn't care much anymore,
[7:27] Speaker 2: I don't think. But one of the signals that John
[7:31] Speaker 2: Paul the Second gave to the scientific community was that
[7:36] Speaker 2: absolution of Galileo. And John Paul the second also convened
[7:42] Speaker 2: a meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which draws
[7:46] Speaker 2: really eminent scientists from all over the world, and wrote
[7:48] Speaker 2: them a letter basically pointing out that there was considerable
[7:52] Speaker 2: evidence in favor of evolution and that it really was
[7:55] Speaker 2: not a challenge to the faith. So I am as
[7:58] Speaker 2: a scientist, I feel very much at home within the
[8:03] Speaker 2: Catholic Church, a church that, by the way, has done
[8:07] Speaker 2: a lot of things to test my faith, but its
[8:12] Speaker 2: attitude towards science is not one of those things.
[8:14] Speaker 3: Okay, well, I mean I didn't bring you on to
[8:16] Speaker 3: go hard at Catholicism. That is a conversation I think
[8:19] Speaker 3: we can have. I mean, they were pretty late to
[8:22] Speaker 3: the party on Galileo, among so many other things. And
[8:26] Speaker 3: we talk about, you know, does someone who is a
[8:29] Speaker 3: professing Catholic, you know, does that give cover to the
[8:32] Speaker 3: abuses within the church. And there have been so many oh.
[8:35] Speaker 2: God, you know, And like I said, I have many
[8:37] Speaker 2: problems with the church, and I can One of the
[8:42] Speaker 2: things that I think people often underestimate is how absolutely
[8:47] Speaker 2: infuriating the clergy sexist abuse scandals have been two Catholics,
[8:53] Speaker 2: because those are our kids, and in that respect, it
[8:57] Speaker 2: really really hit home. And I've even seen that become
[9:02] Speaker 2: an issue in my own parish. And it's just extraordinary.
[9:06] Speaker 2: Like I said, the church is the church is a
[9:07] Speaker 2: human institution. And I don't mean to say that to
[9:11] Speaker 2: excuse anything. The sins and abuses of the church are extraordinary.
[9:16] Speaker 2: My father, who was really quite a religious guy, who
[9:19] Speaker 2: had actually studied for the priests for a couple of
[9:21] Speaker 2: years before, as he was to tell me later, he
[9:24] Speaker 2: decided to like girls too much. My father used to say,
[9:29] Speaker 2: there are popes in Hell, perhaps the majority.
[9:32] Speaker 3: Wow, well I'm not. I'm not giving covered to the
[9:36] Speaker 3: Catholic Church when I say that. A lot of what
[9:38] Speaker 3: we don't talk about beyond the Catholic Church across Protestant faiths.
[9:43] Speaker 3: So I think the statistic of abuse is pretty close
[9:46] Speaker 3: to the same, and yet we're not talking as much.
[9:48] Speaker 3: I guess we're talking about the Southern Baptist Convention quite
[9:51] Speaker 3: a bit these days because they think it's the year eleven.
[9:54] Speaker 2: But the whole sexual abuse thing is really an issue
[9:59] Speaker 2: of people in institutional authority. And I'll tell you another
[10:04] Speaker 2: institution with which I am proud to have been associated,
[10:07] Speaker 2: and that is the Boy Scouts. I love Scouting. I
[10:10] Speaker 2: was in well it's never in past tense. I am
[10:14] Speaker 2: an Eagle Scout and for several summers I was a
[10:18] Speaker 2: camp counselor in northern New Jersey, teaching scout craft and
[10:22] Speaker 2: swimming and life saving. And the Boy Scouts of America,
[10:28] Speaker 2: as you know, suffered tremendous sexual abuse scandals, had to
[10:33] Speaker 2: pay an enormous amount of money bankrupted itself. It's an
[10:36] Speaker 2: institution which I loved because scouting meant a lot to
[10:40] Speaker 2: me growing up, but it certainly hasn't covered itself with
[10:43] Speaker 2: honor with respect to policing sexual abuse.
[10:47] Speaker 3: I want to call you Ken and I, but I
[10:50] Speaker 3: want to respect the title. You know, doctor Kenneth Miller.
[10:53] Speaker 3: May I asked the next question, but I don't want
[10:55] Speaker 3: to be so formal about it.
[10:56] Speaker 2: But I have to tell you something, which is my
[10:59] Speaker 2: late mother, who by the way, was a nurse, once
[11:03] Speaker 2: heard somebody refer to me when they discovered I was
[11:05] Speaker 2: a college professor as doctor Miller, and my mother immediately
[11:08] Speaker 2: grabbed that person's arm and said, he's not a real doctor.
[11:14] Speaker 3: So are you a Ken or a Kenneth? Growing up?
[11:17] Speaker 3: Did you? Was it Kenny might be hot.
[11:21] Speaker 2: When I was growing up? I was Kenny, I decided,
[11:25] Speaker 2: and that was true in high school too, And I
[11:27] Speaker 2: decided when I went to college that Kenny was in
[11:30] Speaker 2: the past, that I was going to be Ken. So
[11:33] Speaker 2: so that's how my my college friend and friends and
[11:36] Speaker 2: professional associatesnomy is Ken.
[11:38] Speaker 3: So tell me about Pope Leo No I when Francis
[11:43] Speaker 3: came on board. I was a bit I don't know,
[11:45] Speaker 3: back and forth on him. Obviously, I'm, you know, those
[11:48] Speaker 3: on the gilded thrones in a world with so much suffering,
[11:51] Speaker 3: I do struggle with that. I struggle with their position
[11:55] Speaker 3: on like why aren't women in positions of leadership? And
[11:58] Speaker 3: then we get in here. But I you know, he
[12:00] Speaker 3: was more egalitarian. God loved everybody, and he I think
[12:04] Speaker 3: he was very supportive of LGBT people, and occasionally the
[12:08] Speaker 3: people conclave would have a heart attack when he would
[12:10] Speaker 3: speak his mind in these very humanistic ways, you know.
[12:14] Speaker 3: And then he's gone, and now Leo's in, and I'm like,
[12:18] Speaker 3: there's some stuff there that is a bit encouraging. He's
[12:21] Speaker 3: pushing back, i know, against some of the inhumanity and cruelty.
[12:24] Speaker 3: Do you have an opinion on this guy.
[12:28] Speaker 2: I'll tell you what I think any Catholic would tell you.
[12:31] Speaker 2: I can't believe we have an American pope. It just
[12:34] Speaker 2: absolutely I have to tell you something though. I'm a
[12:39] Speaker 2: baseball fan, and I was actually sitting at Fenway Park
[12:45] Speaker 2: and in between innings, I pulled out my cell phone
[12:49] Speaker 2: and I just punched the news button and then there
[12:53] Speaker 2: was a headline there that said American elected pope, and
[12:58] Speaker 2: I said, holy whatever out loud at a crowded ballpark.
[13:04] Speaker 2: Everybody around he said what happened because they wanted to
[13:08] Speaker 2: know if it was a disaster or something like that,
[13:10] Speaker 2: and I said, I can't believe this. There's an American
[13:12] Speaker 2: elected pub So, first of all, that's just incredulous. He
[13:16] Speaker 2: seems to be an extraordinary man who has an internationalist background.
[13:24] Speaker 2: I know that certainly people in South America don't automatically
[13:27] Speaker 2: think of him as being an American because during his
[13:30] Speaker 2: time there he's so blended with the culture. And I
[13:33] Speaker 2: think it's extremely important for the leader of the Catholic
[13:36] Speaker 2: Church to be an internationalist because the church is international,
[13:41] Speaker 2: and the greatest growth of the church is, i'm sure
[13:43] Speaker 2: you know, is in the developing world. I have high
[13:47] Speaker 2: hopes for him. He hasn't taken firm doct triantal positions
[13:51] Speaker 2: so far, but he speaks of humility, he speaks of service.
[13:57] Speaker 2: He does not seem to embrace a dogmatic and accusatory
[14:06] Speaker 2: version of the faith, but rather one that welcomes people
[14:09] Speaker 2: in as he should. So, you know, I think the
[14:11] Speaker 2: jury is still out. Ultimately, I absolutely loved Pope Francis,
[14:16] Speaker 2: and I really think that the fact that the cardinals
[14:20] Speaker 2: chose Leo to succeed Francis means that they want to
[14:25] Speaker 2: continue Francis's legacy, and I hope that's true.
[14:28] Speaker 3: Is some of that, do you think evolving to stay
[14:32] Speaker 3: relevant in what might be considered a less and less
[14:35] Speaker 3: religious world. I mean, if he's going to expand that,
[14:38] Speaker 3: does that mean he's going to expand it so that
[14:40] Speaker 3: women can serve in the priesthood and there can be
[14:43] Speaker 3: gay clergy, etc. Do you see that coming?
[14:46] Speaker 2: I would hope so, but I'm not sure. I'm not
[14:48] Speaker 2: sure that's going to happen. You know, I'd be simply
[14:53] Speaker 2: happy if priests were allowed to marry. My father probably
[14:56] Speaker 2: would have continued his own study for the priesthood if
[14:59] Speaker 2: marriage an option. And I've always thought that was one
[15:01] Speaker 2: of the problems with the church, which is the priests,
[15:06] Speaker 2: of course, take a vow of celibacy, and that doesn't
[15:11] Speaker 2: make them very good marriage counselors.
[15:14] Speaker 3: Yeah, I can imagine that.
[15:16] Speaker 2: About other things. And you know that, you know, ministering,
[15:21] Speaker 2: ministering to families is really the business of the clergy
[15:26] Speaker 2: and the limited experience of people and the priests in
[15:29] Speaker 2: that respect, I think is a problem.
[15:31] Speaker 3: So given that the National Catholic Register reported fifty six
[15:36] Speaker 3: percent of professing Catholics voted for Trump in the last election,
[15:41] Speaker 3: more than half. Yeah, this is the church representing I mean,
[15:46] Speaker 3: your faith, but they don't represent apparently your values at
[15:50] Speaker 3: least when it comes to Donald Trump. What's your take
[15:52] Speaker 3: on trumpers in the Catholic tribe.
[15:56] Speaker 2: Well, it's I think it's the same as a Trumper everywhere.
[16:01] Speaker 2: Believe me. I put I slathered my pickup truck with
[16:08] Speaker 2: an awful lot of Harris Waltz bumper stickers, making sure
[16:12] Speaker 2: that I parked it in a prominent place in the
[16:15] Speaker 2: church parking lot on Sunday. So I think you know, everybody,
[16:21] Speaker 2: everybody who saw them, and I'm not the only one
[16:24] Speaker 2: who were anti Trump stickers at the time of the election.
[16:29] Speaker 2: But I do think that Trump had, you know, has
[16:34] Speaker 2: made a number of explicit appeals to people of faith
[16:39] Speaker 2: and to Catholics, and many people took those at faith value,
[16:43] Speaker 2: face value, despite the fact that he has led a
[16:47] Speaker 2: life which is extraordinarily non Christian, you know. And I
[16:53] Speaker 2: can just rattle off the list of marriages, affairs, abuses,
[16:58] Speaker 2: his attitude towards the poor, his attitude towards immigrants, his
[17:02] Speaker 2: attitude towards social inequality, none of which are conversant with
[17:07] Speaker 2: anybody's idea of the teachings of Jesus. So I think,
[17:12] Speaker 2: you know, many people reflexively figure, Okay, he's a friend,
[17:19] Speaker 2: he's a friend of faithfulness, but he's a friend in
[17:22] Speaker 2: a very cynical way, simply because he wants their votes.
[17:25] Speaker 3: If I can jump in quickly. Though, I know that
[17:28] Speaker 3: many in my fundamentalist circle here it became a one
[17:32] Speaker 3: issue vote for them because the church takes a very
[17:34] Speaker 3: hard line on reproductive choice or lack of right. It
[17:37] Speaker 3: was about abortion. So in the minds of many fundamentalists
[17:40] Speaker 3: in my culture, it was no matter what else goes down,
[17:44] Speaker 3: got to stop the murder of babies, and all thinking
[17:47] Speaker 3: shuts down after that. And I would think that would
[17:50] Speaker 3: be rampant in the Catholic Church.
[17:52] Speaker 2: So well, I think it is certainly in the official church.
[17:56] Speaker 2: But I have to tell you, you know, one of the
[17:59] Speaker 2: interesting things to explain this to people. My wife and
[18:03] Speaker 2: I I've been blessed with a very happy marriage. We've
[18:06] Speaker 2: been married for fifty three years. And as I used
[18:09] Speaker 2: to tell people when we were younger and of a
[18:11] Speaker 2: certain age, that my wife and I love each other
[18:14] Speaker 2: very much. We continue to love each other very much,
[18:17] Speaker 2: but we only have two children. Figure that out. And
[18:20] Speaker 2: it turns out that confidential surveys show that Catholics actually
[18:25] Speaker 2: practice birth control at higher percentages than people in the
[18:30] Speaker 2: nation as a whole. So some of the churches teaching
[18:34] Speaker 2: on sexual practices and sexual morality so called, are really
[18:40] Speaker 2: honored only in the breach. And I do remember when
[18:44] Speaker 2: John Carey was running for president, our pastor gave a
[18:47] Speaker 2: sermon claiming that anyone who voted for Carrie was endorsing
[18:52] Speaker 2: murder and therefore was guilty of immortal sin. It was
[18:55] Speaker 2: one of the few times I made sure I was
[18:57] Speaker 2: the last one out of mass to speak to the pastor,
[19:01] Speaker 2: and I told him and I said, father, I will
[19:04] Speaker 2: come to you. You can confess many sins, but I
[19:06] Speaker 2: will not confess the sin of being a democrat. And
[19:09] Speaker 2: I resent you know what you said, because there are
[19:11] Speaker 2: a lot of issues on the ballot at that time
[19:14] Speaker 2: and now besides abortion, and I think, you know, I
[19:17] Speaker 2: think single issue voting on an issue like that is
[19:20] Speaker 2: a mistake.
[19:22] Speaker 3: You're not exactly selling me on the church. I mean
[19:24] Speaker 3: it sounds to me. I'm just saying you stand in contrast.
[19:28] Speaker 3: You know, what's that line, if you have to distance
[19:30] Speaker 3: yourself from fundamentalism, is there a problem with your religion's fundamentals?
[19:35] Speaker 3: And I think that's a fair question. Yeah, you know,
[19:37] Speaker 3: do you fear the institution has simply misunderstood or occasionally misrepresented,
[19:42] Speaker 3: what your faith truly is, because that's a pretty big
[19:45] Speaker 3: miss for the largest church in the world.
[19:48] Speaker 2: Well, I think there are two issues here. One is
[19:51] Speaker 2: I really think the church completely missed the vote on
[19:58] Speaker 2: contraception and when the pill. And I'm old enough to
[20:02] Speaker 2: remember when the pill first became available and came into usage.
[20:08] Speaker 2: Paul the sixth was the pope at that time, and
[20:11] Speaker 2: many of his advisers said, you know, this is something
[20:14] Speaker 2: the church can it, it should endorse. He did not,
[20:19] Speaker 2: and I think that was a terrible mistake. And I,
[20:22] Speaker 2: for the life of me, cannot find anything in scripture,
[20:26] Speaker 2: anything in the teachings of Jesus, anything even in church
[20:30] Speaker 2: tradition that would condemn contraception. To me, it makes absolutely
[20:35] Speaker 2: no sense unless the idea is you know simply well,
[20:39] Speaker 2: we want to have as many little baby Catholics as possible,
[20:42] Speaker 2: so we're not going to endorse not to endorse contraception
[20:48] Speaker 2: on the issue. On the issue of abortion, abortion, I
[20:51] Speaker 2: certainly understand the Church's desire not to endorse slippery slope
[20:57] Speaker 2: where tinkering with life becomes the no. But my argument
[21:02] Speaker 2: as to why I disagree with the Church on this
[21:04] Speaker 2: is basically that having the Church dictate the secular laws
[21:13] Speaker 2: that would apply to everyone is overstepping the boundary. It's
[21:16] Speaker 2: one thing to teach that abortion is a sin, as
[21:20] Speaker 2: the Church does, and I should add that the Church
[21:23] Speaker 2: also teaches the divorce is a sin and a whole
[21:26] Speaker 2: host of other things. But that does not mean that
[21:29] Speaker 2: we should lobby civil authorities to basically enforce our notion
[21:33] Speaker 2: of sinfulness and write it into civil law. And that's
[21:37] Speaker 2: certainly the way I feel about the Church's attitude sort
[21:39] Speaker 2: of abortion.
[21:41] Speaker 3: Coming up next, I'm going to talk specifically to doctor
[21:44] Speaker 3: Miller about this war on vaccines, and I want to
[21:47] Speaker 3: get some education on the mRNA vaccine, which seems to
[21:51] Speaker 3: be kind of a flashpoint for controversy. We're going to
[21:53] Speaker 3: get into that and more next I am being given
[22:04] Speaker 3: the honor of joining a host of other speakers and presenters, entertainers,
[22:08] Speaker 3: et cetera on the weekend of October eleventh and twelfth
[22:11] Speaker 3: in Sacramento, California for California Free Thought Day. We're going
[22:16] Speaker 3: to all be out there that weekend at the State
[22:19] Speaker 3: Capitol Building, and you are invited, so anybody out there
[22:23] Speaker 3: on the West coast, it's going to be huge. That's
[22:25] Speaker 3: October eleventh and twelfth. I'm going to be in Albuquerque
[22:28] Speaker 3: speaking for the Humanist of New Mexico October twenty fifth,
[22:32] Speaker 3: and then Secular Hub has invited me out to Denver
[22:35] Speaker 3: on December the sixth. All the details are on my
[22:39] Speaker 3: website just click on the speaking tab at Seth Andrews
[22:43] Speaker 3: dot com. Continuing now my conversation with cell biologist and
[22:50] Speaker 3: educator doctor Kenneth Miller. You've been so patient with me.
[22:55] Speaker 3: This is the kind of thing you and I could
[22:57] Speaker 3: price it down in a living room and just by
[22:59] Speaker 3: the way, everybody, this is how discourse is done. You
[23:03] Speaker 3: and I have both seen the Internet where it immediately
[23:05] Speaker 3: we'd be labeling each other and going hard. And I'm
[23:08] Speaker 3: a fan. I literally follow your stuff. I think you're amazing,
[23:12] Speaker 3: and I want to talk about vaccines for a little while.
[23:17] Speaker 3: Can we do that?
[23:18] Speaker 2: Absolutely so?
[23:21] Speaker 3: RFK Junior just canceled what half a billion dollars in
[23:27] Speaker 3: vaccine related contracts. What does that even mean? What are
[23:30] Speaker 3: the implications on this?
[23:33] Speaker 2: There also is a rumor, I don't know how much
[23:36] Speaker 2: credence to put on what I read in the Daily
[23:39] Speaker 2: Beast this morning, that he might be about he might
[23:43] Speaker 2: be about ready to remove authorization for all COVID mRNA vaccines,
[23:50] Speaker 2: which would be an absolute terrible tragedy.
[23:54] Speaker 3: Now, if I may, I need some definitions for me
[23:57] Speaker 3: and for the audience. What is an m RNA vaccine?
[24:00] Speaker 3: Lay it out in layperson's terms.
[24:02] Speaker 2: Well, mRNA stands for messenger RNA, and messenger RNAs are
[24:07] Speaker 2: small molecules that in general carry messages. That's why they
[24:12] Speaker 2: get the name. From the DNA sequence in the nucleus
[24:15] Speaker 2: of a cell into the rest of the cell, where
[24:19] Speaker 2: a protein synthesizing factory called the ribosome takes that message
[24:24] Speaker 2: and reads it out like a piece of tape and
[24:26] Speaker 2: assembles one amino acid after another into a long chain.
[24:30] Speaker 2: And that's how you build a protein. That's how you
[24:33] Speaker 2: build keratin that's in hair. That's how you build miasin
[24:36] Speaker 2: the muscle. Protein, that's how you build hemoglobin, the protein
[24:40] Speaker 2: that carries oxygen in the bloodstream. Well, what a messenger
[24:44] Speaker 2: RNA vaccine is is basically a way to trick our
[24:49] Speaker 2: own cells into producing material that will get the immune
[24:54] Speaker 2: system to respond. So specifically talking about the covid vaccine,
[24:58] Speaker 2: very early in the COVID pandemic, a Chinese scientist did
[25:04] Speaker 2: the complete sequence of the covid genome and published it,
[25:08] Speaker 2: very much against the wishes of the Chinese government, by
[25:11] Speaker 2: the way, and on this side of the pond, people
[25:15] Speaker 2: looked at that sequence and thought, ah, here's a particular
[25:19] Speaker 2: region in the viral genome that codes for a protein
[25:23] Speaker 2: on the surface of the virus. If we can coax
[25:27] Speaker 2: human cells to make a piece of that protein, which
[25:31] Speaker 2: is going to look foreign to our immune system, our
[25:34] Speaker 2: immune system will react to it and will make antibodies
[25:38] Speaker 2: against that protein. Then, if you're ever exposed to the virus,
[25:43] Speaker 2: at the instant that the virus enters your bloodstream, your
[25:47] Speaker 2: body will already have antibodies to neutralize them, and that
[25:50] Speaker 2: would produce vaccine induced immunity, and the messenger or any vaccines,
[25:57] Speaker 2: Almost all which most Americans have had at this point
[26:00] Speaker 2: basically consist of a little lipid fatty layer with a
[26:04] Speaker 2: little piece of messenger RNA inside it. Once they're injected
[26:08] Speaker 2: into the bloodstream, the lipid layer on the outside enables
[26:11] Speaker 2: them to fuse with the membranes of our cells, principally
[26:15] Speaker 2: muscle cells, as it turns out, and the cell can't
[26:19] Speaker 2: tell that messenger RNA from the one that it produces itself,
[26:23] Speaker 2: so it very simply follows instructions produces this fragment of
[26:27] Speaker 2: the viral protein. It has instructions on it that tell
[26:31] Speaker 2: the cell to release it into the bloodstream. So what
[26:34] Speaker 2: happens with a messenger RNA vaccine is our bodies get
[26:37] Speaker 2: a fragment of the virus in circulation. It doesn't do
[26:41] Speaker 2: anything bad, but it does prompt the immune system to
[26:44] Speaker 2: make those antibodies. It's a marvelous technology. The inventors of
[26:51] Speaker 2: this technique, not the vaccine percent, but the inventors of
[26:54] Speaker 2: this technique were awarded the Nobel Prize. And this technique
[26:58] Speaker 2: of using RNA to modify protein synthesis by our own
[27:04] Speaker 2: selves now shows promise in treating cancer. And a whole
[27:07] Speaker 2: host of other diseases as well as producing vaccines. It's
[27:11] Speaker 2: a fruitful area of scientific inquiry and to shut it down,
[27:15] Speaker 2: even partially, it is a crime. It's just terrible.
[27:19] Speaker 3: So a couple of Devil's Advocate questions that have been
[27:23] Speaker 3: fox newsed at us for the past several years. Hey,
[27:26] Speaker 3: that COVID vaccine was developed awfully quickly, Like, come on,
[27:30] Speaker 3: they didn't have time to they didn't have time to
[27:33] Speaker 3: properly that this who knows what we're injecting into our bodies?
[27:36] Speaker 3: And then came the conversations about the alterations of DNA, which,
[27:40] Speaker 3: as I understand it is impossible. Correct.
[27:43] Speaker 2: Yeah, let's take those one at a time. First of all,
[27:46] Speaker 2: developed quickly. The messenger or in a platform has been
[27:51] Speaker 2: developed over a decade and a half, so this has
[27:54] Speaker 2: been studied for a long time. So basically, the technique
[27:59] Speaker 2: of using message to potentially make a vaccine was well
[28:03] Speaker 2: developed and was tested, and fortunately was on the shelf
[28:07] Speaker 2: and was ready to go. What did happen very quickly
[28:11] Speaker 2: was it scientists at Fiser and Maderna took that published sequence,
[28:16] Speaker 2: which fortunately came very quickly from a Chinese scientific lab
[28:21] Speaker 2: immediately realized here's a weak spot for the virus. They
[28:24] Speaker 2: very quickly. It took them about three weeks to actually
[28:28] Speaker 2: produce the very first COVID vaccine. But then in terms
[28:32] Speaker 2: of speed, as you might remember, it was well you
[28:35] Speaker 2: might remember if you were following vaccine development, which I was,
[28:38] Speaker 2: it was more than a year of clinical trials phase one,
[28:42] Speaker 2: phase two, phase three, first of all to make sure
[28:45] Speaker 2: it did no harm. Secondly to make sure that it
[28:48] Speaker 2: was not just safe but also affected, and then finally
[28:51] Speaker 2: to try it on people of different ages, backgrounds, health conditions,
[28:56] Speaker 2: and so forth. All of that was done in mass trials.
[29:00] Speaker 2: The vaccine proved to be incredibly safe and also incredibly effective.
[29:07] Speaker 2: The speed with which it was developed shows two things.
[29:11] Speaker 2: One is that the mRNA vaccine platform was ready to
[29:15] Speaker 2: go at the time COVID burst on the scene. And
[29:18] Speaker 2: then secondly that this was a time of great urgency,
[29:21] Speaker 2: and people who basically pooh pooh the contribution to the
[29:25] Speaker 2: vaccines they've forgotten. They've forgotten about those refrigerated morgue trucks
[29:30] Speaker 2: parked outside hospitals in New York and other major cities,
[29:34] Speaker 2: just waiting to store the bodies of the dead because
[29:38] Speaker 2: this disease was ravaging people, particularly older people and people
[29:42] Speaker 2: with compromise conditions. And what happened is the vaccine opened
[29:47] Speaker 2: the society, it opened our schools, it took our masks off,
[29:50] Speaker 2: and it was an extraordinary development that we should celebrate.
[29:54] Speaker 3: And it's distorting our DNA and making mutant service not
[30:00] Speaker 3: at all.
[30:00] Speaker 2: And here's the reason. Messenger RNAs talk to any molecular biologists,
[30:04] Speaker 2: Messenger RNAs have a half life in the cell of
[30:08] Speaker 2: just a couple of hours. So that means all messenger RNAs,
[30:11] Speaker 2: including the ones that we make normally, are degraded in
[30:15] Speaker 2: just a few hours. And that's the same for the
[30:18] Speaker 2: messenger RNA that goes in with the vaccine. It is
[30:21] Speaker 2: not it is not reverse transcribed and inserted in the nucleus.
[30:25] Speaker 2: It doesn't cause any genetic changes. And as one religious
[30:28] Speaker 2: group asked me, is this true? And I said no,
[30:31] Speaker 2: it will not change your soul. All it will do.
[30:36] Speaker 2: All it will do is to get your cells, very briefly,
[30:40] Speaker 2: for just a couple hours, to make these fragments of
[30:43] Speaker 2: a protein to stimulate your immune system.
[30:46] Speaker 3: So there's a war on fauci of all people. Doctor
[30:50] Speaker 3: Anthony Fauci has become the villain in much of the
[30:54] Speaker 3: Magas story. I think I heard Mel Gibson on I
[30:59] Speaker 3: subjected myself to the Joe Rogan podcast on purpose Ken,
[31:03] Speaker 3: and I felt my own DNA being altered at the time.
[31:06] Speaker 3: It was just horrifying. But Mel was talking about Fauci
[31:09] Speaker 3: and gain of function and some of those protests. Are
[31:12] Speaker 3: you aware of those? Can you explain gain of function?
[31:15] Speaker 2: It basically means studying a virus to see what genetic
[31:19] Speaker 2: changes might make it more infectious or less infectious and
[31:24] Speaker 2: so forth. When you look at a viral genome, and
[31:28] Speaker 2: the one for COVID nineteen is pretty simple if I
[31:30] Speaker 2: remember right, it's about twenty five thousand bases compared to
[31:35] Speaker 2: our own genome, which is about three billion, you don't
[31:39] Speaker 2: immediately know you can see the individual genes within it
[31:43] Speaker 2: by reading the genetic code, because you all, you don't
[31:46] Speaker 2: really know what small changes here or there, which ordinary
[31:50] Speaker 2: mutational mechanisms can affect. You don't know what effect they're
[31:55] Speaker 2: going to have. So one of the things that you're
[31:58] Speaker 2: always interested in when you see a virus, say in
[32:00] Speaker 2: the wild, in a population of bats, for example, or
[32:04] Speaker 2: rodents or something else is are there any mutations that
[32:08] Speaker 2: might crop up that may enable the virus to spread
[32:13] Speaker 2: to humans? And many of the gain of functions research
[32:17] Speaker 2: that virologists do is to try to pinpoint where these
[32:21] Speaker 2: changes might take place. Now you could there's a kind
[32:24] Speaker 2: of a theoretical danger there, which is, if you actually
[32:27] Speaker 2: carry out that mutation, you might be making a genome
[32:30] Speaker 2: which is more infectious for humans. And therefore, all such
[32:34] Speaker 2: research in this country, and from what I understand in China,
[32:39] Speaker 2: was carried out in containment facilities because you know, people
[32:43] Speaker 2: doing this work they don't want to make themselves sick,
[32:45] Speaker 2: and they certainly don't want to make anybody else sick.
[32:47] Speaker 2: But gain of function work is basically a way of
[32:50] Speaker 2: exploring the genome of a virus to understand what it
[32:53] Speaker 2: is capable of so that we are better able to
[32:56] Speaker 2: fight it if it causes a health emergency. So I think,
[32:59] Speaker 2: as you have to be careful with it, but this
[33:01] Speaker 2: is very important research. One other thing about Fauci, and
[33:05] Speaker 2: I wouldn't say that Tony Fauci and I are friends.
[33:08] Speaker 2: I did have lunch with him once when we hosted
[33:11] Speaker 2: him to speak at the Cell Biology meetings. That's my
[33:13] Speaker 2: scientific field. I cannot imagine a less political guy than Fauci.
[33:20] Speaker 2: This is a dedicated public servant who went into the
[33:23] Speaker 2: public health service to try to try to alleviate the
[33:27] Speaker 2: burden of disease and suffering. He's done a marvelous job,
[33:31] Speaker 2: or he did a marvelous job leading the institute that
[33:34] Speaker 2: he did. And he stood really almost painfully as a
[33:40] Speaker 2: corrective voice alongside Donald Trump during the early stages of
[33:46] Speaker 2: the COVID pandemic, so he was a voice for sanity.
[33:50] Speaker 2: He also helped to lead the effort that produced one
[33:53] Speaker 2: of the major COVID vaccines that basically damp down the pandemic.
[33:57] Speaker 2: I think the world of Tony Fauci, and I think
[34:00] Speaker 2: he deserves prizes and plaudits, not persecution.
[34:03] Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's funny. The narrative has been he
[34:06] Speaker 3: made a squillion dollars and he, you know, is twirling
[34:10] Speaker 3: his mustache, which doesn't exist, by the way. But you know,
[34:12] Speaker 3: he had an ulterior motive during the COVID pandemic to
[34:16] Speaker 3: push the vaccine because he was getting kickbacks.
[34:19] Speaker 2: You know, seth that over and over again that the
[34:22] Speaker 2: people approving or regulating vaccines have an interest and one
[34:27] Speaker 2: of the things that I saw on the internet this
[34:29] Speaker 2: morning was that the panel that approved the COVID vaccine,
[34:33] Speaker 2: individuals on that panel made one hundred and eighty six
[34:37] Speaker 2: million dollars in royalties from vaccine companies. Here's where that
[34:42] Speaker 2: number comes from. It comes from a reference to a
[34:47] Speaker 2: physician at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia named doctor Paul Offitt.
[34:52] Speaker 2: Doctor Ofitt led a research effort at Children's Hospital to
[34:57] Speaker 2: develop a vaccine against rotavirus. Not of a famous virus,
[35:01] Speaker 2: but one which actually hospitalizes and sometimes kills an awful
[35:05] Speaker 2: lot of kids in their first couple of years of life. Therefore,
[35:08] Speaker 2: a vaccine is very, very important. Well, when the vaccine
[35:12] Speaker 2: was developed, he didn't get a dime from it, but
[35:15] Speaker 2: he assigned the patent to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia,
[35:20] Speaker 2: which is where he did the research. Children's Hospital then
[35:24] Speaker 2: sold the patent rights to a company to manufacture the
[35:27] Speaker 2: vaccine for one hundred and eighty six million dollars. That
[35:31] Speaker 2: didn't go to poll off It, that didn't go to
[35:33] Speaker 2: anybody on the approval committee, and Fauci didn't get wealthy
[35:36] Speaker 2: from vaccines either. This is simply diversion and it's nonsense.
[35:40] Speaker 3: No I saw the same thing with doctor Peter Hotez,
[35:42] Speaker 3: who is another scientific hero of mine. They're like, this
[35:45] Speaker 3: guy is you know, he's laughing all the way to
[35:47] Speaker 3: the bank, and he's like, well, where's my check man checking? Now?
[35:51] Speaker 3: I went to the mailbox. I don't see the kickback.
[35:54] Speaker 2: There was a stand up for Science rally in Providence
[35:57] Speaker 2: last year and I was one of the speakers, and
[36:00] Speaker 2: I saw on the outer because we had a very
[36:01] Speaker 2: good turnout, we had almost a thousand people, and I
[36:04] Speaker 2: saw one of the comments saying all these people were
[36:08] Speaker 2: paid by Soros, and I immediately, I don't usually comment
[36:12] Speaker 2: on the comment section newspaper articles, and I said, please
[36:16] Speaker 2: get me my check because the notion of demonstrators or
[36:21] Speaker 2: people at rallies like is being paid, that's that's simply
[36:24] Speaker 2: a diversion to basically slander people who are doing what
[36:28] Speaker 2: they're doing for authentic reasons.
[36:31] Speaker 3: Okay, well this isn't even in my prep, but I
[36:33] Speaker 3: got to say the words big pharma. One of the
[36:35] Speaker 3: other arguments about all medication, certainly vaccine, certainly codd vaccine,
[36:41] Speaker 3: is that well, it's in the interest of the big
[36:44] Speaker 3: power players Fizer, etc. To dole this stuff out for profit.
[36:49] Speaker 3: The books are being manipulated. I don't know how do
[36:52] Speaker 3: you deal with the big pharma charge.
[36:54] Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I find it truly ironic that
[36:57] Speaker 2: people who characterize them elves is anti socialists and our
[37:03] Speaker 2: enthusiastic supporters of capitalist free enterprise would attempt to slander
[37:08] Speaker 2: someone by saying that they were involved in capitalist free enterprise.
[37:13] Speaker 2: You know, this is extraordinary. You know, we live in
[37:16] Speaker 2: a country where and Donald Trump will tell you this,
[37:19] Speaker 2: if you're successful, you deserve to be rich. Then all
[37:22] Speaker 2: of a sudden, when somebody like a company is successful
[37:25] Speaker 2: because they have made a product, a drug or a
[37:28] Speaker 2: vaccine that basically saves lives or helps people with respect
[37:33] Speaker 2: to their health, is that so bad that they want
[37:36] Speaker 2: to recoup the research costs? The answer is, of course not.
[37:39] Speaker 2: Nobody likes big companies gouging the public, and neither do I.
[37:44] Speaker 2: But the fact of the matter is that the way
[37:46] Speaker 2: in which we do scientific research for products like drugs
[37:51] Speaker 2: and vaccines is through a capitalist free enterprise system. So,
[37:55] Speaker 2: for example, Maderna was a small startup in the Boston
[38:00] Speaker 2: area that immediately realized I shouldn't say immediately, about fifteen
[38:04] Speaker 2: years ago realized that messenger RNA, the messenger on a
[38:08] Speaker 2: platform would be very useful if a new virus or
[38:12] Speaker 2: other infection came along for which there was no vaccine,
[38:16] Speaker 2: precisely because it could be modified so quickly in order
[38:20] Speaker 2: to basically counteract that disease. When this happened, in coordination
[38:25] Speaker 2: with other scientists, they went ahead and did this, and
[38:28] Speaker 2: of course they make some money on it because they
[38:30] Speaker 2: put out a enormous amount of money basically to develop it.
[38:34] Speaker 2: There are a lot of abuses in the way in
[38:37] Speaker 2: which we produce and market drugs in this company, not
[38:40] Speaker 2: the least of which are the monopolies that many pharmaceutical
[38:44] Speaker 2: companies try to exercise on certain drugs. And that's apps.
[38:48] Speaker 2: I have a son in law who has Type one diabetes,
[38:51] Speaker 2: and it's it's shameful that insulin costs so much when
[38:58] Speaker 2: it's a product that basically has made very easily and
[39:02] Speaker 2: very cheaply through recombinant DNA techniques. So there are issues
[39:06] Speaker 2: with big pharma, but simply saying that the vaccines are
[39:10] Speaker 2: made by big companies, that's not a slander. That's simply
[39:14] Speaker 2: how we do things in this country.
[39:17] Speaker 3: Much more with doctor Ken Miller in just a second,
[39:20] Speaker 3: let's talk about brain drain. Scientists are looking around going a, oh,
[39:25] Speaker 3: it's a war on us and what we do? Let's
[39:28] Speaker 3: get out of dodge? Is that happening? And what kind
[39:31] Speaker 3: of price are we going to pay? I'm going to
[39:33] Speaker 3: ask the doctor coming up next. Thank you so much
[39:41] Speaker 3: for listening, and thanks for your supported Patreon that's patreon
[39:45] Speaker 3: dot com slash Seth Andrews. If you would like to
[39:48] Speaker 3: support the host and this show and the work that
[39:52] Speaker 3: is going on. Much appreciated. Doctor Kenneth Miller my guest today.
[39:57] Speaker 3: Do you have a few more I don't want ambolize
[40:00] Speaker 3: your time, but I have a few names I want
[40:02] Speaker 3: you to respond to. I'll RFK Junior. I just want
[40:06] Speaker 3: to talk about him. I'm just going to let you go.
[40:09] Speaker 3: I'm miss r f K Junior. What are your thoughts?
[40:17] Speaker 3: How broad can that umbrella question be? By the way,
[40:20] Speaker 3: how big can I make it?
[40:22] Speaker 2: Okay? I voted for his father in a primary for president.
[40:29] Speaker 2: The very name Robert Kennedy gets to my heart right away.
[40:35] Speaker 2: And to see RFK Junior pedaling the absolute nonsense that
[40:41] Speaker 2: he has pedaled, not just now but before he came
[40:45] Speaker 2: into office, is absolutely extraordinary, and I would echo the
[40:50] Speaker 2: things that his own siblings, his own family has said,
[40:53] Speaker 2: what are you doing? This is absolutely ridiculous. And the
[40:58] Speaker 2: fact that he canceled five hundred million dollars in grants
[41:01] Speaker 2: for Messenger RNA research is everybody should realize something, and
[41:07] Speaker 2: that is that the projects that were being involved that
[41:10] Speaker 2: were involved in this included things like trying to make
[41:14] Speaker 2: a universal flu vaccine using that technology so we wouldn't
[41:18] Speaker 2: have to get yearly flu shots. I have asthma, and
[41:21] Speaker 2: therefore I really don't want to get the flu. I
[41:23] Speaker 2: don't really really don't want to get any respiratory infection,
[41:26] Speaker 2: so I get my flu shots every year, and I
[41:28] Speaker 2: would advise all your listeners to do exactly the same thing.
[41:32] Speaker 2: But the idea of a universal one that you wouldn't
[41:34] Speaker 2: have to get every year would be great. It would
[41:35] Speaker 2: save lives. He canceled that sort of project. Other people
[41:39] Speaker 2: are using Messenger RNA basically, and a small trial just
[41:44] Speaker 2: published in the last month has shown great promise in
[41:47] Speaker 2: fighting pancreatic cancer, which is just an absolutely terrible killer
[41:52] Speaker 2: that's going to be canceled as well. I don't understand
[41:55] Speaker 2: how anybody can be motivated in this way. I think
[41:58] Speaker 2: you know he has. I have a one of my
[42:00] Speaker 2: best all time PhD students is a laboratory chief at
[42:04] Speaker 2: the National Institutes of Health. Every couple of weeks I
[42:07] Speaker 2: call her up and ask her if she still got
[42:08] Speaker 2: a job, for the very simple reason that he is
[42:12] Speaker 2: the greatest threat to American dominance in biomedical research that
[42:18] Speaker 2: we have ever seen. He is a positive force for
[42:22] Speaker 2: the destruction of American scientific competitiveness and it's an absolute
[42:27] Speaker 2: shame that he is exercising the authority he is in
[42:30] Speaker 2: this administration.
[42:31] Speaker 3: Have you gotten into the Andrew Wakefield thing with vaxed,
[42:35] Speaker 3: the pseudo documentary that came out a few years ago,
[42:38] Speaker 3: and the many lies that he was telling. I think
[42:40] Speaker 3: he was Wastn't he kicked out of the medical whatever
[42:45] Speaker 3: the establishment in Britain for the lies that he was telling.
[42:48] Speaker 2: Well, I do know that the papers that people cite
[42:51] Speaker 2: that he originally published have all been retracted by the
[42:54] Speaker 2: journals that publish them because it was very clear that
[42:58] Speaker 2: he had manipulated the data. There have been study after study,
[43:02] Speaker 2: many of them, most of them actually carry it in
[43:04] Speaker 2: this country looking for a statistical correlation between vaccination and autism,
[43:11] Speaker 2: and study after study after study have shown that there
[43:15] Speaker 2: is no correlation. So the claim that vaccines cause autism
[43:22] Speaker 2: or associated or aren't associated with it has been shown
[43:26] Speaker 2: to be false time and time again.
[43:28] Speaker 3: And yeah, but if I know doctor Miller, the more
[43:30] Speaker 3: you say that as a scientist, the more that people
[43:33] Speaker 3: are going to say you should be distrusted, right, I mean,
[43:36] Speaker 3: the whistleblowers are saying the establishment is lying to us
[43:40] Speaker 3: about the link between vaccines and autism. And what do
[43:43] Speaker 3: you even do with that?
[43:45] Speaker 2: Well, what I would do with that is say, what
[43:47] Speaker 2: is my motivation to lie? I have children, I have grandchildren.
[43:52] Speaker 2: My concern is for their health, and I have made
[43:56] Speaker 2: sure that you know, my my oldest grandson got all
[44:01] Speaker 2: his vaccines. If I thought there was even the slightest
[44:04] Speaker 2: link between autism and vaccination, would I have done it
[44:08] Speaker 2: for my children? Would I do it for my grandson?
[44:10] Speaker 2: The answer is, of course not. You know, in terms
[44:13] Speaker 2: of establishment, I'm sure somebody would say, well he gets
[44:16] Speaker 2: money from No, I don't get any money for this,
[44:19] Speaker 2: you know, I am I'm a retired cellular biologist. I'm
[44:24] Speaker 2: not getting paid for this at all. And the people
[44:28] Speaker 2: who work in public health in this country could make
[44:31] Speaker 2: a lot more money elsewhere, and they do it precisely
[44:35] Speaker 2: because they want to safeguard public health. I am old
[44:39] Speaker 2: enough to have been afraid of polio. When I was
[44:44] Speaker 2: a little kid, my mother would tell me and my
[44:47] Speaker 2: friends don't go down and play in that stream near
[44:49] Speaker 2: our house, which we did all the time, because you'll
[44:52] Speaker 2: get wet, you'll get a chill, and then you'll get polio,
[44:55] Speaker 2: and polio is terrifying. Two of my aunts were afflicted
[44:59] Speaker 2: by polio, and one of them was had a permanently
[45:02] Speaker 2: disfigured and withered leg because of polio is terrifies, terrifying.
[45:07] Speaker 2: The image of kids breathing and iron lungs was scary
[45:12] Speaker 2: when the first polio vaccine came out, and I didn't
[45:14] Speaker 2: like needles. When the first polio vaccine came out, I
[45:17] Speaker 2: think I was in third grade. I ran to the
[45:21] Speaker 2: elementary school where there was a vaccine clinic. I rolled
[45:24] Speaker 2: up my sleeve and I said, please give me this shot.
[45:28] Speaker 2: In part because I was afraid of polio, but the
[45:30] Speaker 2: other part was I no longer wanted my mother to
[45:33] Speaker 2: be able to tell me not to play in the
[45:34] Speaker 2: brook because they didn't have to worry about. You know,
[45:39] Speaker 2: it's it's not a plot. It's not big pharma, it's
[45:43] Speaker 2: not the scientific establishment. It's fact, its statistics, it's public
[45:47] Speaker 2: health data. Vaccines are some of the things that keep
[45:51] Speaker 2: us healthy, and we shouldn't have the added the conspiratorial
[45:54] Speaker 2: attitudes that are propagated by r RFK Junior and his friends.
[45:59] Speaker 3: Ken Do you remember the chicken pox parties they used
[46:02] Speaker 3: to have, Like one kid would get it and they're like,
[46:05] Speaker 3: you know what, let's just get it over with.
[46:07] Speaker 2: I didn't have to have one of those parties because
[46:11] Speaker 2: every year my brother got one of those diseases. He
[46:14] Speaker 2: got chicken pox, he got mumps, he got measles, and
[46:18] Speaker 2: of course we're sharing the same tiny room at our
[46:21] Speaker 2: tidy little house in Rallway, New Jersey. And what happened was, yes,
[46:25] Speaker 2: I caught it from ron every one of those times.
[46:28] Speaker 2: So I didn't need a party where all the mothers
[46:30] Speaker 2: got together to spread the infection. My brother did the
[46:33] Speaker 2: job himself. And here's the thing, Man Ronnie always seemed
[46:37] Speaker 2: to get sick about two weeks before spring break, so
[46:42] Speaker 2: that he missed school but had a wonderful healthy spring
[46:45] Speaker 2: break and could play outside and everything else. I came
[46:48] Speaker 2: down with those three infections during spring break, so rather
[46:51] Speaker 2: than have a vacation, I was sick three years in
[46:54] Speaker 2: a row with him.
[46:55] Speaker 3: So the idea, though, is that you then developed the
[46:58] Speaker 3: immunity early because you were So if you put fifteen
[47:01] Speaker 3: kids in a room and you let them play, one
[47:03] Speaker 3: of them's got chicken pox, you just get it over
[47:05] Speaker 3: with and then they're set for life. Bad idea, Oh,
[47:09] Speaker 3: very bad.
[47:09] Speaker 2: Idea, because that's predicated on the idea that the disease,
[47:14] Speaker 2: the disease in question, is just like a cult. Yeah, sniffles,
[47:17] Speaker 2: you sleeze a little bit, and then you're fine. A
[47:19] Speaker 2: lot of those diseases have serious consequences. Mumps can have
[47:22] Speaker 2: reproductive consequences for young men. Measles has a mortality rate.
[47:29] Speaker 2: Chicken pox can cause serious problems, especially later in life,
[47:32] Speaker 2: because it can cause shingle and shingles infections. So what
[47:37] Speaker 2: those immunization parties actually involved was trivializing the serious effects
[47:44] Speaker 2: of each of those diseases. The fact that we have
[47:47] Speaker 2: vaccines against these diseases basically means that, again, the vaccines
[47:53] Speaker 2: have prevented death and suffering, and that's an important thing.
[47:58] Speaker 2: The other thing, you know, the other thing that I
[48:00] Speaker 2: should point out about about all of these things is
[48:04] Speaker 2: that you hear people say I'd like my son or
[48:07] Speaker 2: like my young daughter to get the disease and so
[48:11] Speaker 2: to develop natural immunity as opposed to vaccine induced immunity.
[48:16] Speaker 2: There isn't any difference. What vaccines do is to stimulate
[48:21] Speaker 2: the exact same immune response that is produced by the
[48:25] Speaker 2: infection itself, except they stimulate it before you're exposed to
[48:30] Speaker 2: the pathogen, and that protects you against the harmful effect
[48:33] Speaker 2: of the disease. Rather than have any of my kids
[48:37] Speaker 2: go to a party to get sick, for one of those,
[48:40] Speaker 2: I much rather have them go to the doctor, get
[48:43] Speaker 2: the shot, and not get the disease.
[48:45] Speaker 3: Before I finish with the evolution here. Do you worry
[48:48] Speaker 3: about brain drain in this country? The war on scientists?
[48:52] Speaker 3: They can feel safe or welcome. You think they're just
[48:54] Speaker 3: going to bold and go to I don't know, greener pastures.
[48:58] Speaker 2: I was talking about this with my wife, and I
[49:01] Speaker 2: tried to remind her the sort of uncertainty and insecurity
[49:06] Speaker 2: I felt right after I earned my PhD and when
[49:11] Speaker 2: I was a very very junior faculty member where my
[49:15] Speaker 2: progress in the field. My position at the university I
[49:19] Speaker 2: was at, frankly depended on getting a research grant and
[49:22] Speaker 2: getting support from my research. So much has, you know,
[49:27] Speaker 2: so much has happened in the second Trump administration to
[49:32] Speaker 2: undercut that promise. And what I mean by that promise
[49:36] Speaker 2: is a promise to a young person that if they
[49:39] Speaker 2: go into science, they prove themselves as an investigator, they
[49:43] Speaker 2: have productive and promising ideas, there will be some level
[49:47] Speaker 2: of support for what they want to do. That sort
[49:49] Speaker 2: of promise has made this country the place to do
[49:54] Speaker 2: scientific research, and it's because of that that we have
[49:57] Speaker 2: attracted people from all over the world to come to
[50:01] Speaker 2: the US because this is where science is happening. What's
[50:05] Speaker 2: happened now is all of that has changed. And I
[50:09] Speaker 2: reminded my wife that very on the early part of
[50:13] Speaker 2: my career I had some very very influential research papers
[50:16] Speaker 2: that came out and I was offered a position at
[50:19] Speaker 2: Cambridge University in England, wonderful place. I would have loved
[50:23] Speaker 2: to have gone there, but the thought of uprooting my
[50:26] Speaker 2: family to go to another country, even one where they
[50:28] Speaker 2: speak English, was just too much, and I chose to
[50:32] Speaker 2: stay in the United States because, frankly, the research environment
[50:35] Speaker 2: here was good. I was on campus literally yesterday. I
[50:40] Speaker 2: talked to a young scientist who had just gotten tenure
[50:44] Speaker 2: in my department. I congratulated him, and then I asked him,
[50:47] Speaker 2: because he's chairing the graduate admissions committee, what's our new
[50:50] Speaker 2: crop of grad students look like? And he said, well,
[50:54] Speaker 2: they looked great, but we've now lost four of them
[50:58] Speaker 2: who are going to continue their scientific work their graduate
[51:02] Speaker 2: careers in other countries because of the cutback in fellowship
[51:06] Speaker 2: support in the United States. He also mentioned that there
[51:09] Speaker 2: are at least two of our newly minted PhDs who
[51:14] Speaker 2: were primed to accept postdoctoral fellowships to continue their work
[51:18] Speaker 2: in the United States, and they're both going to foreign
[51:20] Speaker 2: countries where the research support is more consistent. We are
[51:27] Speaker 2: killing We are savaging. Killing is the wrong word. We
[51:30] Speaker 2: are savaging an entire We're sacrificing an entire generation of
[51:34] Speaker 2: young scientists. And even if we can correct this when
[51:38] Speaker 2: there's a new administration in place in maybe three years,
[51:42] Speaker 2: it's not going to be correctable within a year. Within
[51:45] Speaker 2: five years or even ten, we're going to lose a
[51:48] Speaker 2: whole generation of creative scientists, and you know what, China
[51:54] Speaker 2: is going to host them, Europe will host them. We
[51:57] Speaker 2: will seed scientific leadership in the biomedical sciences and other
[52:02] Speaker 2: areas of science to other countries. That's a tragedy because
[52:07] Speaker 2: the scientific climate in the United States has been so
[52:09] Speaker 2: welcoming and it's one of the reasons we have dominated
[52:13] Speaker 2: the Nobel prizes in science five or ten years. That's
[52:17] Speaker 2: not going to be true and we are going to
[52:19] Speaker 2: be the poorer for it. People who say America first,
[52:23] Speaker 2: I don't understand why they have decided Nope, not in science.
[52:27] Speaker 2: We're not really interested in being first in science. And
[52:30] Speaker 2: that's a damn shame.
[52:32] Speaker 3: With Harvard, etc. In the news. Are the universities just
[52:35] Speaker 3: rolling over under pressure?
[52:38] Speaker 2: Well, it depends. It says a lot about this administration
[52:44] Speaker 2: that the way in which they have attacked American higher education,
[52:48] Speaker 2: which they despise on many levels, mostly because of what
[52:52] Speaker 2: they regard as dei political left wing politics and so forth,
[52:58] Speaker 2: the way they have attacked them is by going after science.
[53:03] Speaker 2: And that tells you how little regard they have for
[53:06] Speaker 2: science in the first place. That they regard science as
[53:09] Speaker 2: a vulnerability of these universities, and science itself is expendable.
[53:13] Speaker 2: That's a terrible shame. I would not want to be
[53:17] Speaker 2: the president of a university. I am pleased with what
[53:22] Speaker 2: my own university, Brown University, has done, although many people
[53:26] Speaker 2: on our campus are very critical of the deal that
[53:28] Speaker 2: they made. The first thing that Brown insisted on was
[53:31] Speaker 2: they weren't going to pay a dime to the federal government.
[53:34] Speaker 2: They didn't. They did commit to spend fifty million dollars
[53:38] Speaker 2: over ten years in workforce development in the immediate area
[53:43] Speaker 2: in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. I'm pleased with that because
[53:46] Speaker 2: I think universities have an obligation to help develop technical
[53:50] Speaker 2: and scientific workforces where they are, so that's not a
[53:53] Speaker 2: bad thing. They basically Brown had to promise basically to
[54:00] Speaker 2: provide a supportive environment for Jewish students, which it already does,
[54:05] Speaker 2: As many on campus have said, they also had to
[54:09] Speaker 2: follow the administration's dictum on transgender athletes in intercollegiate sports.
[54:16] Speaker 2: I think that's a terrible shame. But on the other hand,
[54:19] Speaker 2: we're part of the NC double A and that's already
[54:21] Speaker 2: NC double A policy, so the university did not have
[54:24] Speaker 2: an option. The university did extract from the federal government
[54:30] Speaker 2: an absolute promise that Brown will continue to control its hiring,
[54:33] Speaker 2: its promotion, and every aspect of its curriculum, which I
[54:37] Speaker 2: think is important. So I give Christina Packson, who's the
[54:40] Speaker 2: president of our university, kudos for that. I think she's
[54:45] Speaker 2: done the best she could. She has a university to run,
[54:48] Speaker 2: and we need to have that continuing committed research support
[54:52] Speaker 2: provided Columbia got taken to the cleaners, and I think
[54:56] Speaker 2: people on campus would do that. I'm not sure what's
[54:58] Speaker 2: going to happen at Harvard, except when I read quotes
[55:01] Speaker 2: from my colleagues at Harvard in The Boston Globe and
[55:04] Speaker 2: other publications, some of them wonder why can't we get
[55:07] Speaker 2: as good a deal as Brown did. But the very fact, look,
[55:12] Speaker 2: the American university system, regardless of what the people in
[55:15] Speaker 2: Washington these days say, the American university system is the
[55:18] Speaker 2: envy of the world. That's why we attract so many
[55:20] Speaker 2: foreign students. That's why we train so many foreign students
[55:25] Speaker 2: in the sciences, and that's why so many of them
[55:28] Speaker 2: stay here for their careers and add to our scientific
[55:31] Speaker 2: and technical workforce. That's a wonderful trick we play on
[55:34] Speaker 2: the rest of the world to take their best and brightest.
[55:37] Speaker 2: Bring them here, train them. They love it here, they
[55:40] Speaker 2: stay here. They add to the American scientific capability. This
[55:44] Speaker 2: administration is destroying that, and every American should know that.
[55:49] Speaker 3: This year marks the one hundred anniversary of the Scopes Trial,
[55:53] Speaker 3: also known as the Scopes Monkey Trial. For those who
[55:56] Speaker 3: aren't familiar with Scopes, can you just lay it out
[55:59] Speaker 3: and why it is important today?
[56:02] Speaker 2: Well, you can watch the movie Inherit the Wind to
[56:05] Speaker 2: get a dramatic version of the Scopes trial, but it's
[56:08] Speaker 2: not historically accurate. What had happened in the early nineteen
[56:13] Speaker 2: twenties is that a number of states, mostly in the South,
[56:17] Speaker 2: passed laws against the teaching of evolution, which at that
[56:21] Speaker 2: point had begun to seep into school textbooks, including a
[56:25] Speaker 2: book called Civic Biology by Hunter. Tennessee was one of
[56:30] Speaker 2: those states, and the law that forbid the teaching of
[56:33] Speaker 2: evolution was called the Butler Act. Well, the American Civil
[56:37] Speaker 2: Liberties Union thought that that act was unconstitutional, which I
[56:41] Speaker 2: think it was, and they looked for a test case,
[56:45] Speaker 2: and people in the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, managed
[56:49] Speaker 2: to conjure up a test case by persuading a part
[56:54] Speaker 2: time biology teacher named John Scopes, who I think also
[56:58] Speaker 2: was the football coach, to agree that he had taught evolution,
[57:03] Speaker 2: and therefore the district attorney agreed to indict him, and
[57:06] Speaker 2: they agreed to have a trial. They actually made a deal.
[57:09] Speaker 2: There's a picture of John Scopes signing the agreement to
[57:12] Speaker 2: say that he would stand trial for this. In part
[57:16] Speaker 2: because the city fathers thought it'd be really good for business.
[57:19] Speaker 2: It would attract a lot of reporters, a lot of media,
[57:22] Speaker 2: hotel business, restaurants, stuff like that, and that's exactly what
[57:25] Speaker 2: it did. The interesting thing about the actual Scopes monkey
[57:30] Speaker 2: trial is that the defense attorneys, well, one of the
[57:36] Speaker 2: reasons it's remembered is because of the antagonists. The most
[57:40] Speaker 2: famous defense attorney of the day, Clarence Darrow, showed up
[57:43] Speaker 2: and said that he would defend Scopes, and then the
[57:46] Speaker 2: formidable William Jennings Bryan several times a candidate for president
[57:50] Speaker 2: and a great orator, said that he would lead the prosecution.
[57:54] Speaker 2: So that alone made it a spectacle. One of the
[57:56] Speaker 2: things that people don't realize is there was a whole
[58:01] Speaker 2: a roster of scientists, distinguished scientists who showed up in
[58:06] Speaker 2: Tennessee to testify on behalf of Scopes. The judge, sort
[58:09] Speaker 2: of a no nonsense guy, said, we're not going to
[58:11] Speaker 2: hear any of that because the argument is not about
[58:14] Speaker 2: whether evolution is scientific or not scientific. The argument is
[58:18] Speaker 2: did John Scopes violate the law by teaching evolution? Scope said, yes,
[58:23] Speaker 2: he did. The jury convicted him. The judge assigned a
[58:26] Speaker 2: fine of one hundred dollars. Doesn't sound like a big deal.
[58:30] Speaker 2: The fine, by the way, was later set aside because
[58:33] Speaker 2: the jury didn't assign the fine and Tennessee law required
[58:36] Speaker 2: the jury to assign it. But the effect of the
[58:39] Speaker 2: Scopes trial was to chill the teaching of evolution. He was,
[58:44] Speaker 2: after all, found guilty. Chill the teaching of evolution in
[58:47] Speaker 2: this country for decades. And the textbook that I used
[58:52] Speaker 2: in high school in nineteen sixty three when I took
[58:54] Speaker 2: my first biology course basically did not have the word
[58:58] Speaker 2: evolution in it. It used a euphemism. It tried to
[59:02] Speaker 2: avoid the whole subject. All of that changed in the
[59:07] Speaker 2: late nineteen sixties and early seventies when evolution sort of
[59:11] Speaker 2: came back into the textbooks, and fortunately there was a
[59:16] Speaker 2: real revolution in the teaching of science when we realized
[59:19] Speaker 2: we were behind the Soviets. For example, the Sputnik shot
[59:23] Speaker 2: a shock led to an enormous increase in support for
[59:26] Speaker 2: teaching science and the schools, and I benefited from that.
[59:29] Speaker 2: But the key thing about the Scopes trial is that
[59:32] Speaker 2: it really chilled the teaching of evolution for more than
[59:35] Speaker 2: a half a century in this country.
[59:37] Speaker 3: Isn't evolution the foundation for all of biology?
[59:42] Speaker 2: Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,
[59:46] Speaker 2: and I think that's absolutely true. A number of years ago,
[59:50] Speaker 2: a former student of mine named Joe Levine called me
[59:54] Speaker 2: up and persuaded me how he did it as a
[59:56] Speaker 2: very long story. Persuaded me to agree to go into
[1:00:00] Speaker 2: writing a high school textbook on biology because we thought
[1:00:03] Speaker 2: the ones out there were not adequate. And we both
[1:00:06] Speaker 2: agreed that the central organizing principle of biology is in
[1:00:11] Speaker 2: fact evolution, and we were going to write our book
[1:00:14] Speaker 2: centering around evolution. And in fact, one of the most
[1:00:18] Speaker 2: profound compliments that was ever paid to our book was
[1:00:23] Speaker 2: ironically voiced by a member of the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania,
[1:00:29] Speaker 2: the scene of another famous trial called the Kissmuller Trial,
[1:00:33] Speaker 2: and the school board member complained about our book by saying,
[1:00:36] Speaker 2: from cover to cover, this book is laced with Darwinism.
[1:00:42] Speaker 2: And you know how authors sometimes like to put favorable
[1:00:46] Speaker 2: quotes on the back of their books to sell them.
[1:00:48] Speaker 2: Joe and I have joked about putting that quote on
[1:00:50] Speaker 2: the back of our textbook because the school board member
[1:00:54] Speaker 2: had discovered we didn't have a chapter on evolution. We
[1:00:58] Speaker 2: didn't just have a section on evolution. It was mentioned
[1:01:01] Speaker 2: everywhere in the textbook, as it should be.
[1:01:03] Speaker 3: Have you noticed how many critics of dogmund have never
[1:01:05] Speaker 3: read on the origin of species? Like, which part did
[1:01:08] Speaker 3: you take issue with? And they're just like they, I
[1:01:10] Speaker 3: think they. I was taught when I was a funding
[1:01:14] Speaker 3: evangelical to just make fun of it, to dismiss it. Right,
[1:01:18] Speaker 3: my grandfather wasn't a monkey kind of thing. And then
[1:01:20] Speaker 3: I at this moment going to come full circle back
[1:01:23] Speaker 3: to your Catholic faith and ask, how do you approach
[1:01:26] Speaker 3: then the Genesis creation story Humankind, Adam Eve, we were
[1:01:30] Speaker 3: created in our present form according to Genesis chapters one
[1:01:34] Speaker 3: and two. How does that jib? How does your faith
[1:01:36] Speaker 3: jive with evolutionary science?
[1:01:39] Speaker 2: Well, you might say that one advantage I have of
[1:01:42] Speaker 2: being a Catholic is that Catholics basically realize that many
[1:01:48] Speaker 2: parts and this is official Church teaching, many parts of
[1:01:53] Speaker 2: the Bible are allegorical in many respects. And I'm always
[1:01:57] Speaker 2: fond of telling everyone. There is one of the Psalms said,
[1:02:01] Speaker 2: O Lord, thou art my rock and my strength. Do
[1:02:06] Speaker 2: you take that literally? What kind of a rock is God?
[1:02:10] Speaker 2: Is he sedimentary, igneous or metamorphic? And of course, if
[1:02:15] Speaker 2: I tell that to someone one of my fundamentalist brothers
[1:02:19] Speaker 2: or sisters, let's say, oh, come on, you know the
[1:02:22] Speaker 2: poet who wrote that psalm as being allegoricon said exactly right.
[1:02:27] Speaker 2: So what you're telling me is that it's not actually literal.
[1:02:31] Speaker 2: And the fact of the matter is, let's be very clear.
[1:02:35] Speaker 2: Genesis was written not at the not at the moment
[1:02:38] Speaker 2: of the creation of the world. But it was written
[1:02:41] Speaker 2: during the Babylonian captivity, most Bible scholars say, and it
[1:02:45] Speaker 2: was written in a way that enabled the Hebrew people
[1:02:49] Speaker 2: in captivity to distinguish their own understanding of their God
[1:02:55] Speaker 2: from the gods of the Babylonians. That there was a
[1:02:58] Speaker 2: single God, that creation is all good. In the Babylonian mythology,
[1:03:03] Speaker 2: there were good, good gods and then there were evil gods,
[1:03:07] Speaker 2: and what we see today is a clash between those
[1:03:10] Speaker 2: two values of evil spirits and good spirits. The Hebrew
[1:03:13] Speaker 2: conception was no creation is good, God is good. Sin
[1:03:18] Speaker 2: comes about due to man's rejection of God's law. That's
[1:03:23] Speaker 2: really the purpose of Genesis. And I'm often fond of
[1:03:28] Speaker 2: telling people who insist it's literally true or historically true,
[1:03:33] Speaker 2: do the following. Take a pad of paper, draw a
[1:03:35] Speaker 2: line down the middle. Chapter one on the left side
[1:03:38] Speaker 2: of the line, Chapter two on the right side. Write
[1:03:40] Speaker 2: down what happens on day one, day two, day three,
[1:03:43] Speaker 2: all the way down to day seven. Then go to
[1:03:45] Speaker 2: chapter two and do exactly the same thing, and you'll
[1:03:47] Speaker 2: see they don't match. The events are not the same.
[1:03:51] Speaker 2: And that's because you had two separate accounts being merged
[1:03:54] Speaker 2: by the editors, I would say, of Genesis and the
[1:03:57] Speaker 2: other thing, I can tell you I was kind of
[1:04:00] Speaker 2: prepared for this question, Seth. If you don't mind, I
[1:04:04] Speaker 2: want to read you part of a quotation. Hopefully I
[1:04:08] Speaker 2: can find it here.
[1:04:10] Speaker 3: I'll take your time.
[1:04:11] Speaker 2: I'm good From Saint Augustine, and for those people who
[1:04:15] Speaker 2: are really not familiar with him, he was a bishop
[1:04:19] Speaker 2: in North Africa. He wrote a couple of marvelous books.
[1:04:23] Speaker 2: I think they're marvelous, one called The City of God
[1:04:26] Speaker 2: and the other one called Confessions and Confessions Confessions of
[1:04:31] Speaker 2: Saint Augustine that had an enormous effect on me as
[1:04:34] Speaker 2: a young man when I first read it. But he
[1:04:36] Speaker 2: also wrote another book called on the Literal Meaning of Genesis.
[1:04:43] Speaker 2: And I want to read you a very quick quote
[1:04:46] Speaker 2: from this out to put my glasses on, because I
[1:04:48] Speaker 2: don't want to read the whole thing. But here it is.
[1:04:51] Speaker 2: Here's what he wrote. Even a non Christian knows something
[1:04:56] Speaker 2: about the earth, the heavens, and other elements of the world.
[1:05:00] Speaker 2: Now I'm going to translate that into twenty first century language.
[1:05:06] Speaker 2: Even a non Christian knows something about geology, astronomy and biology.
[1:05:12] Speaker 2: And then here we go. And this knowledge he holds
[1:05:16] Speaker 2: to as being certain from reason and experience. And what
[1:05:20] Speaker 2: that means is even a non Christian can do empirical science.
[1:05:25] Speaker 2: Then he says, Now it is a dangerous and disgraceful
[1:05:28] Speaker 2: thing for an infidel, for a non believer to hear
[1:05:32] Speaker 2: a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking
[1:05:37] Speaker 2: nonsense on these topics. In other words, it's disgraceful to
[1:05:42] Speaker 2: hear a Christian, presumably saying what the Bible means, talking
[1:05:46] Speaker 2: scientific nonsense, and we should take all means to prevent
[1:05:51] Speaker 2: such an embarrassing situation in which people show up vast
[1:05:54] Speaker 2: ignorance in a Christian and laugh at to scorn. So
[1:05:59] Speaker 2: what Augustine is saying is if you take scripture and
[1:06:03] Speaker 2: presumed to gain from that to scientific knowledge about biology, geology,
[1:06:08] Speaker 2: or astronomy, and a non Christian can look at that
[1:06:12] Speaker 2: and say, wait a minute, man, that's scientifically wrong. You're
[1:06:16] Speaker 2: doing damage to the faith. And that was Augustine's point.
[1:06:21] Speaker 3: I used to be threatened by the idea of being
[1:06:23] Speaker 3: evolved just an animal. I think one of my favorites is, well,
[1:06:27] Speaker 3: we're not animals, were mammals. I remember hearing that one.
[1:06:30] Speaker 3: I was like, what that's true.
[1:06:32] Speaker 2: I once had a member of the Texas Board of Education,
[1:06:34] Speaker 2: during a break in a hearing there, pointing out a
[1:06:38] Speaker 2: picture in one of my textbooks in which we show kingdoms, plants, plants, animals,
[1:06:45] Speaker 2: and so forth. And among the animals, we had a
[1:06:47] Speaker 2: few animals in the animal kingdom, and one of which
[1:06:49] Speaker 2: was a drawing of a human being and He told
[1:06:52] Speaker 2: me he was offended by seeing the human figure among
[1:06:56] Speaker 2: the animals, And I said, what do you want me
[1:06:58] Speaker 2: to do? I can move you into the fungi if
[1:07:00] Speaker 2: you want. That'd be preferable.
[1:07:03] Speaker 3: But I used to think, how dare you reduce me?
[1:07:07] Speaker 3: And it's funny on the other side of the looking glass,
[1:07:10] Speaker 3: it's almost like a wonder I am connected to the
[1:07:13] Speaker 3: entire living world. It sounds like a freaking Hallmark movie.
[1:07:16] Speaker 3: But do you feel that? I mean, I guess this
[1:07:18] Speaker 3: is a Barbara Walters question, Ken, But I mean, you
[1:07:22] Speaker 3: are evolutionarily connected to all living things.
[1:07:26] Speaker 2: I think that is a grand and glorious view, that
[1:07:30] Speaker 2: we are part of the fabric of life that covers
[1:07:34] Speaker 2: this planet. I think that's absolutely amazing. I mean, right now,
[1:07:40] Speaker 2: my wife and I have a small farm in Massachusetts,
[1:07:43] Speaker 2: and I can look out and I can see our animals,
[1:07:47] Speaker 2: a couple of horses, and a couple of horses that
[1:07:49] Speaker 2: we take care for our friends. I got one of
[1:07:51] Speaker 2: my dogs lying here at my feet. The biology of
[1:07:55] Speaker 2: those animals, the biology of the plants that I see
[1:07:59] Speaker 2: looking right at my window, All of life, all of
[1:08:03] Speaker 2: life is one. In biology, we talk about the unity
[1:08:06] Speaker 2: and the diversity of life, and I think that fits
[1:08:10] Speaker 2: very well with evolution, but it also fits very well
[1:08:13] Speaker 2: with the spiritual idea of human beings being part of creation.
[1:08:19] Speaker 2: And for me, that doesn't cause religious conflict. For me,
[1:08:23] Speaker 2: that sort of confirms what a beautiful and privileged world
[1:08:27] Speaker 2: we live.
[1:08:27] Speaker 3: In, doctor ken Miller. Maybe one day we can sit
[1:08:31] Speaker 3: down in a living room and talk more theology. I
[1:08:33] Speaker 3: have a feeling the clock would just fly.
[1:08:36] Speaker 2: I'd much rather I'd much rather talk about scopes too,
[1:08:40] Speaker 2: which is the kits Miller trial, which is the twentieth
[1:08:42] Speaker 2: anniversary this year, And if you want to make a
[1:08:45] Speaker 2: date for that, happy to do it.
[1:08:46] Speaker 3: Thanks so whatever. You are a great storyteller of science.
[1:08:50] Speaker 3: I can see why my friend Abby was a big fan.
[1:08:53] Speaker 3: And I'm honored that you would take the time. I mean,
[1:08:56] Speaker 3: I went a little over with you. Hope that's okay,
[1:08:58] Speaker 3: but I was just like, oh my god, he's so free,
[1:09:00] Speaker 3: looking good. And I appreciate you being on the front lines.
[1:09:03] Speaker 3: I know you are taking a frontline stand against the
[1:09:06] Speaker 3: anti science in this country. It's, for lack of a
[1:09:10] Speaker 3: better word, of plague right. It is going. It is
[1:09:13] Speaker 3: getting people killed. And to see the scientists who are
[1:09:17] Speaker 3: out there banging the drum, you know, speaking in terms
[1:09:22] Speaker 3: of evidence and trying to quell the fears and ignorance.
[1:09:25] Speaker 3: You are greatly appreciated, sir, and I well, that's for
[1:09:28] Speaker 3: share to be in here.
[1:09:29] Speaker 2: That's very kind of you to say, But I think
[1:09:30] Speaker 2: it's a job for all of us.
[1:09:32] Speaker 1: Follow The Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
[1:09:35] Speaker 1: complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and
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[1:09:43] Speaker 1: pages and resources, and details on upcoming free thought events
[1:09:46] Speaker 1: and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com.

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