# Best of BAM Q&A: The Privileged Planet: Designed for Discovery with Jay Richards

An episode of [Bible Answer Man Podcast with Hank Hanegraaff](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/569236334), 18 Jul 2026, 28 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73033088/bambof20260718.mp3

On today’s Bible Answer Man broadcast, we present an episode of the Hank Unplugged podcast. Hank’s guest is Dr. Jay Richards, co-author of the 20th Anniversary Updated and Revised edition of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery. Hank and Dr. Richards discuss if machines can ever truly replace humans, panpsychism, the hypothesis of The Privileged Planet, and why the Earth is the best place in the universe for discovery.

## Transcript

[0:07] Speaker 1: From the Christian Research Institute in Charlotte, North Carolina. You
[0:11] Speaker 1: are listening to the best of the Bible answer Man
[0:13] Speaker 1: Broadcast with Hank Annigraph. We're on the air because truth matters,
[0:18] Speaker 1: life matters more. On today's special edition of the Bible
[0:23] Speaker 1: answer Man Broadcast, we present a previously recorded episode of
[0:27] Speaker 1: the Hank Unplugged Podcast. Hank's guest is doctor j Richards,
[0:32] Speaker 1: co author of the twentieth anniversary, updated and revised edition
[0:36] Speaker 1: of The Privileged Planet. How our place in the Cosmos
[0:40] Speaker 1: is designed for discovery. Here now is Hank Cannagraph.
[0:45] Speaker 2: Welcome to another edition of the Hank Unplugged Podcast, a
[0:48] Speaker 2: podcast that is absolutely committed to bringing the most interesting,
[0:53] Speaker 2: informative and inspirational people directly to your earbuds. And today
[0:59] Speaker 2: I have a guest who is a hero of mine.
[1:01] Speaker 2: I've known him for a long time. I've done a
[1:03] Speaker 2: lot of podcasts with him, and this podcast is on Well,
[1:08] Speaker 2: let me just introduce it quickly. It's the twentieth anniversary
[1:13] Speaker 2: edition of The Privileged Planet. We've talked about the Privileged
[1:18] Speaker 2: Planet on this podcast before, but this is a very
[1:22] Speaker 2: important update. And of course Jay answers the question as
[1:29] Speaker 2: to whether or not Earth is a privileged planet. You know,
[1:33] Speaker 2: there are some scientists who are speculating that the Earth
[1:39] Speaker 2: is merely an insignificant spec of soil that is aimlessly
[1:45] Speaker 2: adrift in a meaningless universe. But evidence, and you'll hear
[1:52] Speaker 2: that evidence today refutes the principle of mediocrity and its dead.
[2:00] Speaker 2: It demonstrates that our Earth will it's singularly privileged, and
[2:08] Speaker 2: it's a planet that is designed for discovery. And Jay
[2:13] Speaker 2: gives a lot of reasons for that, and all formally
[2:17] Speaker 2: introduce him in just a moment. I'll even mention his
[2:21] Speaker 2: last name. But the first of those reasons is that
[2:25] Speaker 2: there are unique conditions that are necessary to support intelligent life,
[2:30] Speaker 2: and they turn out to provide the best overall conditions
[2:34] Speaker 2: for scientific discovery. A second reason, and I put this
[2:40] Speaker 2: in a memorable format in one of my books, But
[2:43] Speaker 2: the second reason is that we live in the best
[2:47] Speaker 2: overall age of the universe. Think about that, the best
[2:50] Speaker 2: overall age of the universe to do cosmology in our time,
[2:57] Speaker 2: the cosmic background radiation that is leftover from the Big
[3:01] Speaker 2: Bang is readily observable. But here's the key. It won't
[3:07] Speaker 2: always be like that, and that radiation confirms that the
[3:13] Speaker 2: universe is not eternal, but it began in the finite past.
[3:18] Speaker 2: And let me give you one more reason. I like
[3:21] Speaker 2: to do things in threes. From habitability to discoverability, and
[3:26] Speaker 2: these are two key words in this book, from habitability
[3:31] Speaker 2: to discoverability. Earth status in the universe is surely, absolutely
[3:38] Speaker 2: beyond a doubt, one of privilege. And if you were
[3:42] Speaker 2: to reduce that to an accident of cosmic evolution, you
[3:47] Speaker 2: would be shortsighted. But if you recognize it as privileged,
[3:53] Speaker 2: well that's sublime. And that's precisely why this book is
[3:57] Speaker 2: titled The Privileged Planet. It is one of my favorite books.
[4:01] Speaker 2: And this is the twentieth anniversary edition and it has
[4:07] Speaker 2: many additions to it that are important. So this is
[4:11] Speaker 2: a book that you can get on the web at
[4:12] Speaker 2: equipped dot org. You can write and post office box
[4:14] Speaker 2: eighty five hundred, Charlotte, North Carolina, zip code two eight
[4:18] Speaker 2: two seven one. It's for those who stand shoulder to
[4:21] Speaker 2: shoulder with us in the battle for life and truth. Well,
[4:24] Speaker 2: let me give you Jay's last name. If you followed
[4:26] Speaker 2: the podcast, you already know what his last name is.
[4:29] Speaker 2: It's Richards. J. W. Richards and he is director of
[4:35] Speaker 2: the Divace Center for Life, Religion, and Family at the
[4:41] Speaker 2: Heritage Foundation. He is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute,
[4:49] Speaker 2: and he's the executive editor of The Stream.
[4:52] Speaker 3: Now.
[4:53] Speaker 2: Jay is incredibly credentialed. If I want over all of
[4:56] Speaker 2: his credentials, it would take a while. But he is
[4:58] Speaker 2: a PhD and philosophy and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary,
[5:06] Speaker 2: among other things. I'm not going to go through the
[5:09] Speaker 2: other things. He has contributed to many articles on the
[5:12] Speaker 2: Christian Research Journal, and he's the author of fourteen incredible books.
[5:17] Speaker 2: Maybe it's more by now, maybe it's fifteen. I don't know.
[5:19] Speaker 2: Fourteen or fifteen incredible books, including the New York Times bestsellers, Infiltrated,
[5:27] Speaker 2: an Indivisible and a book titled Money, Greed in God,
[5:31] Speaker 2: which was one of my favorites. Had also won a
[5:34] Speaker 2: twenty ten Templeton Enterprise Award. He wrote a book that
[5:39] Speaker 2: I followed religiously for a long period of time. But
[5:42] Speaker 2: I don't anymore. I need to get back to. When
[5:45] Speaker 2: I'm looking at Jay, I'm thinking I need to get
[5:47] Speaker 2: back to this book. It's titled Eat Fast and Feast
[5:51] Speaker 2: and then a book that is incredibly relevant to this age.
[5:56] Speaker 2: It's titled The Human Advantage, the Future of America and
[6:00] Speaker 2: Work in an Age of Smart Machines. I mean, that's
[6:04] Speaker 2: an incredible book, and I want to ask Jay a
[6:06] Speaker 2: question about that in just a moment. But the book
[6:08] Speaker 2: that we're talking about today is The Privileged Planet, and
[6:12] Speaker 2: we're going to focus on that remarkable work. It's just
[6:15] Speaker 2: come out not long ago in the updated, revised format.
[6:19] Speaker 2: And so Jay, as always, I love having you on
[6:22] Speaker 2: the podcast, and you are one of my heroes. You're
[6:25] Speaker 2: someone that not only does incredible writing and speaking, but
[6:31] Speaker 2: you do the research that's necessary to be able to
[6:36] Speaker 2: demonstrate that what you're talking about is not your own
[6:39] Speaker 2: vivid predilections, but it is faith founded on a refutable fact.
[6:44] Speaker 2: So thanks for being on the podcast again.
[6:46] Speaker 3: Oh thank you, Hank. It's so great to be with you.
[6:48] Speaker 3: So fun. I mean, we probably talked about the book
[6:51] Speaker 3: twenty years ago, which is kind of scary to think,
[6:54] Speaker 3: but you know, Karamo Gonzalez and I when we were
[6:57] Speaker 3: writing it, we actually realize, Okay, the book's coming on
[6:59] Speaker 3: tow thousand and four, there's going to be a total
[7:02] Speaker 3: solar eclipse. In the US in twenty twenty four, So
[7:04] Speaker 3: maybe we'll do a twentieth year anniversary edition and we'll
[7:07] Speaker 3: update it. But of course that's something you tell yourself,
[7:10] Speaker 3: and then that's actually what happened. And one of the
[7:13] Speaker 3: most important things that I learned in the process was
[7:16] Speaker 3: that you're a lot better writer twenty years older. It's
[7:22] Speaker 3: when you read it's like, gosh, I've spent twenty years
[7:24] Speaker 3: writing and trying to translate stuff for broader and broader audiences.
[7:28] Speaker 3: And so we thought would just be an update in
[7:30] Speaker 3: some references ended up really being a rewrite, not to
[7:33] Speaker 3: change the argument, but just to hopefully make it more accessible.
[7:38] Speaker 2: Before we get into the Privileged Planet, I did want
[7:40] Speaker 2: to ask you a quick question on the human advantage.
[7:42] Speaker 2: We're going to be in Athens in a month's time,
[7:45] Speaker 2: and in this book you talk about the future of
[7:47] Speaker 2: American work in an age of smart machines. A lot
[7:49] Speaker 2: of people think that it is possible for machines to
[7:53] Speaker 2: replace human beings. You make the argument in that book
[7:56] Speaker 2: that that will never happen.
[7:58] Speaker 3: Why Because we're not machines, That's the simple answer. And
[8:01] Speaker 3: so for something to entirely replace us, they would have
[8:05] Speaker 3: to be everything that we are. Now you might say, well, okay,
[8:08] Speaker 3: but the things we do that air machine like that
[8:11] Speaker 3: has everything to do with our work, and so therefore,
[8:14] Speaker 3: the meaningful work that we do will ultimately be replaced
[8:17] Speaker 3: by machines. And so part of this is a metaphysical claim, right,
[8:21] Speaker 3: but part of it is a kind of empirical claim.
[8:23] Speaker 3: And so when I wrote the book it came out
[8:25] Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen, I wanted to give the other side
[8:28] Speaker 3: as much credit as possible. So, in other words, I
[8:31] Speaker 3: basically said, Okay, let's assume that anything that can be
[8:35] Speaker 3: automated using a combination of AI and robotics will be automated. Moreover,
[8:40] Speaker 3: let's assume that that's going to happen in our lifetimes.
[8:43] Speaker 3: What does that mean? And the books really, though there's
[8:46] Speaker 3: a lot of philosophy in it, it's really designed to say, Okay,
[8:48] Speaker 3: if that happens, here's what you need to do to prepare.
[8:52] Speaker 3: And my argument is that in fact, machines will do
[8:54] Speaker 3: a lot of stuff that humans are doing right now,
[8:57] Speaker 3: but there's a lot of other stuff that they won't do.
[8:59] Speaker 3: And as long as we pivot to the things that
[9:01] Speaker 3: are uniquely human, we will be able to do profound things,
[9:04] Speaker 3: important things that are meaningful, that are work. It's just
[9:08] Speaker 3: that it will look different than what it looks like now,
[9:11] Speaker 3: just as the way we farm now looks different than
[9:14] Speaker 3: the way it looked one hundred or two hundred or
[9:16] Speaker 3: five hundred years ago, or the way we write. If
[9:19] Speaker 3: technology permanently replaced people, that is it permanently created massive
[9:24] Speaker 3: but employment, all of human history would be this really
[9:27] Speaker 3: depressing story of more and more people finding that they
[9:31] Speaker 3: don't have anything to do. But that's not what happens
[9:33] Speaker 3: at all in different technological stages. What that does is
[9:36] Speaker 3: maybe something that we need a lot of labor for.
[9:38] Speaker 3: At an earlier period, we're able to automate or develop
[9:42] Speaker 3: machines so that you know, it only takes five people
[9:44] Speaker 3: to do what it took five thousand people to do
[9:46] Speaker 3: in a previous era. That doesn't mean there's nothing left
[9:49] Speaker 3: to do. It means that, you know, we'd creatures made
[9:51] Speaker 3: the image of the creative God. We find new and
[9:54] Speaker 3: important and hopefully dignifying things to do that presuppose all
[9:59] Speaker 3: the technology that sort of went before us. And so
[10:01] Speaker 3: there's a bit of metaphysics in this water. Humans can
[10:05] Speaker 3: we be reduced to machines. There's a good bit of economics,
[10:08] Speaker 3: and then there's also some predictions about what I thought
[10:11] Speaker 3: was and was not going to happen. And I thought,
[10:14] Speaker 3: for instance, a long automated long haul trucks that would
[10:17] Speaker 3: be easier to pull off than say a housekeeper that's
[10:21] Speaker 3: entirely robotic, because that involves complex movement through space. I'd
[10:25] Speaker 3: say the biggest surprise is probably how powerful these chatbots
[10:29] Speaker 3: large language models are, how good they are. But it
[10:34] Speaker 3: doesn't prove that we're machines. It doesn't mean these things
[10:37] Speaker 3: are going to become conscious. It just means that we're
[10:39] Speaker 3: able to develop systems that can call and sort and
[10:43] Speaker 3: run probabilities on all the intelligent choices that we make.
[10:48] Speaker 3: And so everything you see in CLAUDE or in chat
[10:50] Speaker 3: GPT is it the self. It's itself the result of
[10:53] Speaker 3: human intelligence, and the data it's trained on is all
[10:57] Speaker 3: information that's the result of human intelligence.
[11:00] Speaker 1: Stay right there, we'll be back soon to rejoin Hank
[11:04] Speaker 1: Hanagraft's conversation with doctor j Richards in the twentieth anniversary
[11:09] Speaker 1: revised an updated edition of The Privileged Planet. How our
[11:13] Speaker 1: place in the Cosmos is designed for Discovery, Astronomer Gillermo
[11:17] Speaker 1: Gonzalez and philosopher Jay Richards lay out remarkable evidence showing
[11:22] Speaker 1: that our Earth is a privileged planet designed for discovery.
[11:27] Speaker 1: To receive the twentieth anniversary revised and updated edition of
[11:31] Speaker 1: the Privileged Planet, how our place in the Cosmos is
[11:34] Speaker 1: designed for discovery. For your gift to the ongoing work
[11:38] Speaker 1: of the Christian Research Institute, call eight eight eight seven
[11:42] Speaker 1: thousand CROI. That's eight eight eight seven thousand CRI. Or
[11:48] Speaker 1: go online to equip dot org. That's equip dot org.
[12:01] Speaker 1: The number of wolves surrounding the Christian flock is growing,
[12:04] Speaker 1: and they relish nothing more than docile's sheep, utterly incapable
[12:08] Speaker 1: of defending themselves from militant secularists at home to militant
[12:13] Speaker 1: Islamists abroad. The assaults on Biblical Christianity are growing dangerously,
[12:18] Speaker 1: but Christian Research Institutes Support Team members aren't in favor
[12:22] Speaker 1: of feeding these wolves. Instead, each day they're making possible
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[12:34] Speaker 1: What's more, Support Team members are equipping themselves with criis
[12:38] Speaker 1: equipping essentials, a handpicked collection of the best apologetics tools around.
[12:43] Speaker 1: Your selection of resources are just our way of saying thanks.
[12:48] Speaker 1: To learn more about the benefits of membership, simply visit
[12:51] Speaker 1: equip dot org. Once again, that's equip dot org.
[13:01] Speaker 4: Truth Matters, Life Matters More details Hank Hanagraf's personal pilgrimage
[13:06] Speaker 4: from his long defensive truth to his discovery that life
[13:09] Speaker 4: matters more. Essentially, two books in one. Part one equips
[13:13] Speaker 4: Christians to defend the essential truths of the historic Christian faith.
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[13:21] Speaker 4: That the map is not the territory, the menu is
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[13:28] Speaker 4: the full through union with God in Christ. Is there
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[13:34] Speaker 4: Truth matters, Life matters More unveils the unexpected beauty of
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[14:00] Speaker 1: The Complete Bible answer Book Collector's Edition is the comprehensive
[14:04] Speaker 1: collection of the most often asked questions Hank Hannigraph has
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[14:11] Speaker 1: answer Man broadcast. With more than half a million copies
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[15:07] Speaker 1: Here again are Hank catigraphed as guest philosopher Jay Richards
[15:11] Speaker 1: as they continue their conversation.
[15:14] Speaker 3: So everything you see in claude or in chat GPT
[15:17] Speaker 3: is it the self. It's itself the result of human intelligence,
[15:20] Speaker 3: and the data it's trained on is all information that's
[15:24] Speaker 3: the result of human intelligence. And so I just think
[15:26] Speaker 3: that's the kind of fundamental reality. And the nice thing
[15:29] Speaker 3: is there's this metaphysical claim the transhumanists make that machines
[15:33] Speaker 3: will surpass us. The best we can do is upload
[15:35] Speaker 3: ourselves to the machines. They give specific dates, and so
[15:39] Speaker 3: I said, okay, great, let's make some empirical claims and
[15:42] Speaker 3: see who's right and who's wrong about this stuff.
[15:44] Speaker 2: Yeah. So what about the panpsychism, the idea that somehow
[15:49] Speaker 2: or other there's a materialistic way in which you can
[15:51] Speaker 2: explain consciousness.
[15:54] Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems so strange to me because, of course,
[15:57] Speaker 3: as you said, panpsychism, in some ways that would be
[16:00] Speaker 3: the philosophically consistent way that transhumanists could sort of do this,
[16:03] Speaker 3: that every bit of matter, you know, sort of has
[16:06] Speaker 3: a little consciousness in it, and when you combine it
[16:08] Speaker 3: into larger and larger structures like a human. Right, we're
[16:11] Speaker 3: made up of all sorts of different cells, then there's
[16:15] Speaker 3: kind of this emergent consciousness for matter. That's an interesting argument.
[16:19] Speaker 3: I don't think it finally really works, because we all
[16:23] Speaker 3: pretty much we recognize that there's just the constituents of
[16:26] Speaker 3: matter are not themselves agents in the ways that humans
[16:29] Speaker 3: or even say animals are. But what's interesting is that
[16:32] Speaker 3: almost all the transhumanists don't go that route. They're not panpsychists,
[16:35] Speaker 3: they're not pantheists. They're materialists. And so you get someone
[16:38] Speaker 3: like Ray Kurzweil, who in a sense really believes that
[16:41] Speaker 3: we're machines. And so he thinks, look, you get computers
[16:44] Speaker 3: working fast enough and sophisticated enough, they really can become
[16:47] Speaker 3: everything we are. And then you say, okay, well, so
[16:52] Speaker 3: what are you talking about? What about our consciousness? What
[16:54] Speaker 3: about our agency? What about the fact that we're persons?
[16:57] Speaker 3: And he will either say, well, that's something that can
[16:59] Speaker 3: be uploaded by which he ends up meaning a brain pattern,
[17:02] Speaker 3: or he says, well, who's to say that we're conscious,
[17:04] Speaker 3: Maybe we're just that's an illusion or something, which to
[17:07] Speaker 3: me is Okay, you're making an argument that our consciousness
[17:10] Speaker 3: an agency is an illusion. That's a pretty good argument
[17:13] Speaker 3: that whatever you're thinking is seriously wrong. Right. If that's
[17:17] Speaker 3: your conclusion, I doubt your premise. But that's the kind
[17:20] Speaker 3: of dilemma if you're a committed materialist, you're sort of
[17:24] Speaker 3: stuck because it's not like you could say, well, I
[17:26] Speaker 3: believe that humans are a unique hybrid of body and soul,
[17:30] Speaker 3: and the soul can somehow be detached from the body
[17:32] Speaker 3: and uploaded. They never appealed to that, So they never
[17:35] Speaker 3: going to deal to a Christian anthropology. They never really
[17:37] Speaker 3: even appealed to panpsychism. They're just materialists, and they're inconsistent.
[17:41] Speaker 3: And I think the reason they're inconsistent is because all
[17:44] Speaker 3: of us, no matter what our kind of metaphysical views,
[17:47] Speaker 3: if in fact human beings or thisique, we're unique creatures
[17:52] Speaker 3: that are the dust of the earth and the breath
[17:55] Speaker 3: of God. We are fully human, are fully material, fully spiritual.
[17:58] Speaker 3: At the same time, if your anthropology doesn't get that right,
[18:03] Speaker 3: then you're going to go off the rails somewhere, but
[18:04] Speaker 3: you're never ultimately going to be able to deny it.
[18:07] Speaker 3: So even the materialist who really doesn't have a basis
[18:10] Speaker 3: for believing he has freedom or agency or consciousness, nevertheless
[18:14] Speaker 3: presupposes it when he's not thinking about it, and so
[18:16] Speaker 3: he ends up being inconsistent. And so materialists almost always
[18:20] Speaker 3: end up kind of metaphysically schizophrenic. Which is what I
[18:22] Speaker 3: think you have. You certainly have this in transhumanism, you
[18:25] Speaker 3: have it in gender ideology, where the person is treated
[18:28] Speaker 3: as a kind of disembodied gender soul that might get
[18:31] Speaker 3: stuck in the wrong body. All these attempts to kind
[18:34] Speaker 3: of account for humanity, but without getting the Christian and
[18:38] Speaker 3: the Biblical understanding of the richness of what the human
[18:41] Speaker 3: person is. If you don't get that, you still have
[18:44] Speaker 3: to be confronted by it because you are yourself a
[18:46] Speaker 3: human person and all of its fullness, but your metaphysic
[18:50] Speaker 3: doesn't really and can't really account for it.
[18:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to get right to the privileged planet.
[18:58] Speaker 2: You know, we did do the first broadcast on this
[19:01] Speaker 2: back in two thousand and four. As you mentioned, I
[19:03] Speaker 2: had hairback then, you still have here twenty years later.
[19:06] Speaker 2: But what is the privileged planet hypothesis.
[19:10] Speaker 3: You summarized it. It's basically here's the claim is that
[19:13] Speaker 3: those rare places in the universe where life can exist,
[19:16] Speaker 3: that is, the most habitable places in the universe, are
[19:20] Speaker 3: also the best places overall for doing science, for scientific discovery.
[19:24] Speaker 3: So observers, complex observers like ourselves find themselves in the
[19:29] Speaker 3: best places overall. For observing, and so this is multiple
[19:34] Speaker 3: parts of this argument are required. The first is this
[19:36] Speaker 3: whole idea of habitability that not just any old place
[19:39] Speaker 3: is going to be good for life. Almost everything we
[19:42] Speaker 3: learned and everything frankly we've learned since in the last
[19:45] Speaker 3: twenty years, I think shows that you got to get
[19:49] Speaker 3: a lot of stuff at the local level, that is
[19:53] Speaker 3: the level of the planetary system, just for right, in
[19:57] Speaker 3: order to have a planet that can even host life.
[20:00] Speaker 3: About life itself, we're just talking about a planet in
[20:02] Speaker 3: which life can can exist and persist, and so that's
[20:05] Speaker 3: interesting on its own. But you could ask this other question. Okay,
[20:09] Speaker 3: if you were if you needed to do science, you
[20:11] Speaker 3: needed to discover whether the universe had a beginning. That's
[20:14] Speaker 3: got to be the biggest question. How old the universe is,
[20:17] Speaker 3: how it works, what the stars are, what the world
[20:20] Speaker 3: is made of, what fundamental principles govern the movements of matter,
[20:25] Speaker 3: All these kinds of questions you need to ask, you know,
[20:27] Speaker 3: if you're going to do science, and then you say, okay,
[20:30] Speaker 3: and you could pick only one place to be, where
[20:32] Speaker 3: would that be? And you run the analysis of what
[20:35] Speaker 3: you discover is the best place to be is the
[20:37] Speaker 3: one place where life can exist. That's an astonishing discovery.
[20:42] Speaker 3: It's one thing to say that habitable planets are very
[20:44] Speaker 3: rare in the universe. It's another thing to say that
[20:47] Speaker 3: there's this pervasive pattern in which the things you need
[20:51] Speaker 3: to build a habitable planet also set that planet up
[20:55] Speaker 3: for doing science, and science in that place can be
[20:59] Speaker 3: done a lot better than the less habitable places. And
[21:02] Speaker 3: it's that coincidence, that combination of the needs for life
[21:07] Speaker 3: and the needs for scientific discovery together that we think
[21:10] Speaker 3: that forms a strong design argument. It's like, Okay, look,
[21:14] Speaker 3: if the universe is designed for discovery, that's exactly what
[21:17] Speaker 3: you would expect if you're a materialist that thinks everything
[21:20] Speaker 3: is the result of blind chance and necessity. This is
[21:24] Speaker 3: just there's really no explanation for it. It's just a weird,
[21:26] Speaker 3: brute fact that you can to count for. So, yeah,
[21:29] Speaker 3: maybe this isn't a deductive proof for God's existence, but
[21:31] Speaker 3: it's a pretty darn strong argument for design of the
[21:36] Speaker 3: universe by an intelligence that transcends it.
[21:39] Speaker 2: So explain what your argument is not, Because a lot
[21:42] Speaker 2: of critics say that you're making the claim that Earth
[21:46] Speaker 2: is unique and therefore it is designed that's not really
[21:50] Speaker 2: your argument, is it.
[21:52] Speaker 3: Not at all? And in fact, whether or earthlike planets
[21:56] Speaker 3: are common or rare in the universe is metaphysical ambiguous.
[22:00] Speaker 3: So you put it this way, if there's a transcendent God,
[22:02] Speaker 3: as we believe, God could create the universe in a
[22:05] Speaker 3: lot of ways. He could have made it just our
[22:07] Speaker 3: solar system with life on Earth. He could have made
[22:09] Speaker 3: it where there's habital planets everywhere. All those things are
[22:13] Speaker 3: sort of possible for God. And so it's not like
[22:16] Speaker 3: theism entails either that life be rare or life be common.
[22:20] Speaker 3: And so just because you discover that, okay, we've got
[22:23] Speaker 3: a really big universe, maybe ten to the twenty two
[22:27] Speaker 3: observable stars in the universe, the observable universe, that's a
[22:33] Speaker 3: big place, a lot of potential planets around those stars.
[22:37] Speaker 3: It could be for instance, if you're a materialist, you
[22:39] Speaker 3: might say, okay, well, maybe it's just really really hard
[22:42] Speaker 3: to get the conditions for life. But in a universe
[22:44] Speaker 3: that's large enough, one will happen to have the conditions
[22:48] Speaker 3: that life needs. It's like vast cosmic lottery. And in
[22:52] Speaker 3: that one place, life will you know, presumably evolve or
[22:56] Speaker 3: appear and that's kind of the materialist assumption, and so
[22:59] Speaker 3: a materialless be fine with life being rare in the universe,
[23:03] Speaker 3: even though most materialists for some reason go the other way.
[23:06] Speaker 3: They think, well, you know, whatever happened here must have
[23:08] Speaker 3: happened countless times elsewhere because there's nothing special about the Earth.
[23:12] Speaker 3: That's the general kind of drift in the debate. Nevertheless,
[23:16] Speaker 3: Gammel Ganz also and I say, look, really, kind of metaphysically,
[23:19] Speaker 3: it could go either way, and so we want to
[23:21] Speaker 3: know empirically whether that's true or not. And so we
[23:23] Speaker 3: just think that it would be a bad argument to say, Okay,
[23:26] Speaker 3: well gosh, it's earth like planets or habitable planets are
[23:30] Speaker 3: really rare in the universe. Therefore God had to do it,
[23:32] Speaker 3: because that's just not a great argument. I mean, no
[23:37] Speaker 3: way else to put it. But that is what people
[23:40] Speaker 3: very often thought the argument was going to be, because
[23:42] Speaker 3: it takes a bit of time to explain that. No,
[23:45] Speaker 3: we're building an argument on this remarkable coincidence of the
[23:50] Speaker 3: needs for life and the needs for scientific discovery. We
[23:53] Speaker 3: needed the rarity in order to see the pattern that,
[23:56] Speaker 3: in fact, you know, compared to most of the other
[23:58] Speaker 3: places and the other planets where that we actually know exist,
[24:03] Speaker 3: there's just a few that actually made, only one that
[24:06] Speaker 3: we know of so far that that can possibly host life,
[24:08] Speaker 3: And so it's very interesting to discover that those very
[24:11] Speaker 3: rare places are also the best places for doing science.
[24:15] Speaker 2: Yeah, so your argument is about the fact that Earth
[24:19] Speaker 2: is habitable and it's also a perfect place for scientific discovery.
[24:28] Speaker 3: That's right, Yeah, or perfect in the sense that it's
[24:31] Speaker 3: the sort of condition. Yeah, if you think of these things,
[24:35] Speaker 3: there's lots of trade offs of course that have to
[24:37] Speaker 3: be made. So the best overall place, like in other words,
[24:42] Speaker 3: if you can only pick one place and you need
[24:44] Speaker 3: to know things, say about the recent past, you need
[24:47] Speaker 3: to know things about the distant past, You need to
[24:49] Speaker 3: know some stuff about physics, whether the universe had at
[24:51] Speaker 3: the beginning, all these kinds of things. Turns out there
[24:53] Speaker 3: you got to there's complicated trade offs because there's kind
[24:56] Speaker 3: of competing conditions. So, for instance, if all you wanted
[24:59] Speaker 3: to do was discover the background radiation, okay, well, the
[25:02] Speaker 3: best place to detect that would be between galaxies, probably
[25:05] Speaker 3: an intergalactic space, but you would optimize your situation to
[25:10] Speaker 3: discover that one thing that would be a terrible place
[25:13] Speaker 3: to discover the laws of gravity, or what happened in
[25:16] Speaker 3: the recent past, or to do chemistry. And so what
[25:19] Speaker 3: you want is to optimize for all these kinds of
[25:22] Speaker 3: competing conditions. And when you get that, that's the argument
[25:26] Speaker 3: that in fact what you get is an earthlike planet.
[25:28] Speaker 3: You get the planet that we have.
[25:31] Speaker 1: We'll have to stop here for today's special edition of
[25:34] Speaker 1: the Bible answer Man Broadcast with Hank Canagraph and his guest,
[25:38] Speaker 1: doctor j Richards. To hear this Hank Unplugged podcast interview
[25:43] Speaker 1: in its entirety, just go to equip dot org, iTunes,
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[25:51] Speaker 1: commitment here at the Christian Research Institute is to defend
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[26:02] Speaker 1: appreciation for your vital gift to help strengthen and expand
[26:07] Speaker 1: CRI's mind shaping, life changing outreaches, Hank would like to
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[26:15] Speaker 1: The Privileged Planet. How our place in the Cosmos is
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[26:22] Speaker 1: eight eight seven thousand CRII eight eight eight seven thousand CROI,
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[27:03] Speaker 1: a war going on, not just on traditional morality, civility,
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[27:12] Speaker 1: And the enemy isn't just the onslaught of fake news,
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