# The Privileged Planet: Designed for Discovery with Jay Richards - Part 5

An episode of [Bible Answer Man Podcast with Hank Hanegraaff](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/569236334), 10 Jul 2026, 28 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72840255/bam20260710.mp3

On today’s Bible Answer Man broadcast (07/10/26), we pick up where we ended on our previous broadcast and present more of an episode of the Hank Unplugged podcast. Hank is talking with 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 the importance of telescopes, Olbers’ paradox—a paradox that asks why the night sky is dark if the universe is full of stars, how our universe is fine-tuned for life, how the world has been set up for us to be able to understand it, if our size in relation to the universe matters, the myth of the Copernican principle, and the importance of reading.

## Transcript

[0:07] Speaker 1: From the Christian Research Institute in Charlotte, North Carolina. This
[0:11] Speaker 1: is the Bible answer Man Broadcast with Hank Canagraph. We're
[0:15] Speaker 1: on the air because truth matters, Life matters. More on
[0:20] Speaker 1: today's special edition of the Bible Answerman. We pick up
[0:23] Speaker 1: where we ended on our previous broadcast and present more
[0:27] Speaker 1: of an episode of the Hank Unplugged podcast. Hank is
[0:31] Speaker 1: talking with philosopher Jay Richards, co author of the twentieth
[0:35] Speaker 1: anniversary updated and revised edition of The Privileged Planet, how
[0:40] Speaker 1: our place in the cosmos is designed for discovery. Let's
[0:44] Speaker 1: now join Hank Canagraph and Jay Richards in their conversation.
[0:49] Speaker 2: Another interesting thing, and I think you point this out
[0:51] Speaker 2: in your book as well. That's probably where I got
[0:53] Speaker 2: this from. But there's a lot of talk on the
[0:55] Speaker 2: internet about how telescopes have undermined Big Bang cosmology.
[1:03] Speaker 3: Yeah, and I don't sort of get this because there's
[1:07] Speaker 3: always a kind of skepticism because of the James Web
[1:11] Speaker 3: Space Telescope, because what it's allowing us to do is
[1:13] Speaker 3: basically so to remind listeners. So when you're looking into
[1:18] Speaker 3: the distant universe, you're not looking at it at something
[1:23] Speaker 3: at this moment because light has a finite speed, and
[1:27] Speaker 3: so what you're seeing is you're sort of sampling different
[1:30] Speaker 3: time periods in the universe. And so, because the universe
[1:34] Speaker 3: is large, were able to visually sample different time periods.
[1:37] Speaker 3: James Web allows us to sort of reach farther back,
[1:41] Speaker 3: and so lots of cosmologists had these models of galactic evolution,
[1:47] Speaker 3: as it's called in cosmic evolution, in which the models assumed, Okay,
[1:52] Speaker 3: how long did it take from the Big Bang and
[1:54] Speaker 3: the decoupling and the sort of formation of elements in
[1:58] Speaker 3: order for us to get galaxy these like we see now,
[2:01] Speaker 3: And the assumption was that it takes a really long
[2:03] Speaker 3: time to get that. And so then all of a sudden,
[2:06] Speaker 3: we're discovering what we're considered to be mature galaxies. And
[2:10] Speaker 3: so some people say, oh, that totally undermines the evidence
[2:14] Speaker 3: of a big bang, that is the evidence of the
[2:16] Speaker 3: finite past. No, not at all. What it undermines is
[2:19] Speaker 3: these models. It just it looks like, gosh, things had
[2:25] Speaker 3: to be really fine tuned beyond what we thought, because
[2:28] Speaker 3: it's surprising how quickly you can get galaxy formation once
[2:32] Speaker 3: you get the elements in place. It's sort of like
[2:35] Speaker 3: finding life on Earth almost as soon as life could exist, right,
[2:41] Speaker 3: That tells you something. And so people, in some ways,
[2:43] Speaker 3: they were so attached to their theoretical models of how
[2:47] Speaker 3: this was supposed to have happened that when we finally
[2:50] Speaker 3: get some direct evidence of it, it's like they get
[2:52] Speaker 3: totally skeptical and said, they need to go back to
[2:54] Speaker 3: the drawing board, because clearly they got something wrong about
[2:58] Speaker 3: what happens when galaxies form early in the history of
[3:01] Speaker 3: the universe.
[3:02] Speaker 2: I want to ask you a question that one of
[3:03] Speaker 2: my grandkids might ask me. They might say something like,
[3:07] Speaker 2: why is the night sky dark? Papa? But that's something
[3:11] Speaker 2: you addressed.
[3:11] Speaker 3: In your book absolutely, and it's called Ober's paradox. This
[3:16] Speaker 3: is in some ways, you know, I said earlier that
[3:18] Speaker 3: we just in the twentieth century finally having empirical evidence
[3:21] Speaker 3: that the universe had a beginning because of the cosmic
[3:23] Speaker 3: background radiation, the cosmic expansion. In fact, we've always had
[3:27] Speaker 3: evidence of that. The fact that the night sky is dark,
[3:30] Speaker 3: it means that the universe is not infinite in expanse,
[3:33] Speaker 3: and it hasn't always been like this, because if the
[3:36] Speaker 3: universe had always been like this, same basic kind of density,
[3:40] Speaker 3: and they're an infinite number of stars, then at every point,
[3:43] Speaker 3: from an infinite amount of time ago, there should have
[3:45] Speaker 3: been a star pointing in our direction, and so the
[3:49] Speaker 3: night sky should not be the night sky. It should
[3:52] Speaker 3: be as bright as the surface of the sun. The
[3:54] Speaker 3: fact that it's dark is itself evidence that the universe
[3:58] Speaker 3: is not infinite. They're in space or in time, which
[4:02] Speaker 3: is a really remarkable thing. The other thing is that
[4:05] Speaker 3: it's only because of the night sky that we're actually
[4:07] Speaker 3: able to see a lot of stuff. You can't see
[4:09] Speaker 3: distance stars and things like that during the day, and
[4:12] Speaker 3: so the evidence was always there. It was called Ober's paradox, though, Hank,
[4:16] Speaker 3: because it's only a paradox if you assume the universe
[4:19] Speaker 3: is eternal and infinite. If it's not, it's not a paradox.
[4:23] Speaker 3: You said, well, yeah, of course maybe this. Yeah, the
[4:25] Speaker 3: night the sky is dark. I guess the universe must
[4:29] Speaker 3: not be eternal. That would have been the kind of
[4:31] Speaker 3: more natural inference.
[4:33] Speaker 2: Wow, good answer. And you know one of the things
[4:36] Speaker 2: that you point out in your book, and I mean
[4:37] Speaker 2: maybe this is as basic, not in the sense of unimportant,
[4:42] Speaker 2: but basic and important, is that our universe is fine
[4:48] Speaker 2: tuned for not only discovery, but for the existence of
[4:53] Speaker 2: life itself.
[4:55] Speaker 3: That's right, and so everything we've talked about so far
[4:58] Speaker 3: is like think of it as fine tuning and the
[5:00] Speaker 3: stuff you need to get right at the local level.
[5:03] Speaker 3: But then you have the question, okay, well, what about
[5:05] Speaker 3: the universal properties of the universe, the stuff that's true
[5:08] Speaker 3: everywhere that govern the structure of molecules and the elements
[5:12] Speaker 3: and planets, and so there's sort of basically three of
[5:15] Speaker 3: these kind of universal properties. So there's the initial conditions.
[5:20] Speaker 3: So what that would be is, okay, how do things
[5:22] Speaker 3: have to be set up right at the beginning in
[5:24] Speaker 3: order to have a universe like we have now. Then
[5:28] Speaker 3: there are the laws, so like the law of gravity
[5:32] Speaker 3: that people will learn in physics, and then within the laws,
[5:35] Speaker 3: they're these sort of variables that might be M or
[5:39] Speaker 3: C or something in their constants, and so these are
[5:42] Speaker 3: their constant. What that means is there's literally constant the
[5:44] Speaker 3: same everywhere, and so these kind of mathematical properties of
[5:48] Speaker 3: the universe that are true absolutely everywhere. Well, physicists in
[5:54] Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties started realizing, okay, so you've got the
[5:57] Speaker 3: gravitational force constant, so that's that kind of big force.
[6:00] Speaker 3: You've got electromagnetic and the strong and the wheat nuclear forces.
[6:05] Speaker 3: So these are called the four fundamental forces. This is
[6:07] Speaker 3: where it was first noticed, and some physicists said, you know,
[6:09] Speaker 3: it's weird because if you fiddled with the electromagnetic constant
[6:14] Speaker 3: and made it different, or you fiddled with the gravitational
[6:16] Speaker 3: force constant, you would not get a universe that had
[6:19] Speaker 3: life in it. In fact, you probably wouldn't get a
[6:21] Speaker 3: universe that had planets or galaxies. As it happens, it's
[6:25] Speaker 3: like these constants are very precisely tuned for the existence
[6:30] Speaker 3: of life. If it's called the fine tuning problem, well,
[6:33] Speaker 3: it's only a problem if you don't really like the
[6:36] Speaker 3: idea that the universe having been fine tuned. But if
[6:39] Speaker 3: you just let's just say, okay, if it quacks like
[6:41] Speaker 3: a duck, it looks like a duck, maybe it's a duck.
[6:43] Speaker 3: If the universe looks fine tuned, maybe it is. If
[6:45] Speaker 3: it looks fine tuned for life, maybe it is. And
[6:49] Speaker 3: that's that's again, a basic discovery of twentieth century physics
[6:54] Speaker 3: that confirms the theistic worldview. Lots of physicists have spent
[6:58] Speaker 3: decades trying to find loopholes to get around in it.
[7:02] Speaker 3: But it's an extraordinary thing, and it's strong enough that
[7:05] Speaker 3: it actually has led some atheists just itself. Like the
[7:09] Speaker 3: late Anthony flu was persuaded by the fine tuning and
[7:12] Speaker 3: the evidence for design and DNA to move from atheism
[7:15] Speaker 3: to deism and keep it. Even my debate way back
[7:18] Speaker 3: in two thousand and eight when I debated the late
[7:21] Speaker 3: new atheist Christopher Hitchens at Stanford, was about God and science,
[7:26] Speaker 3: and he ended up pivoting to deism right because he realized, Okay,
[7:31] Speaker 3: that does the argument for fine tuning does sound like
[7:34] Speaker 3: there's some purpose in the universe. So we said, yeah,
[7:36] Speaker 3: maybe deism is true, but God doesn't care anything about us,
[7:40] Speaker 3: which I thought was kind of an interesting concession. It's
[7:42] Speaker 3: really not a good time to be an atheist if
[7:45] Speaker 3: you are honest with the evidence from physics and cosmology.
[7:49] Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I want to read a quote from
[7:51] Speaker 2: your book that caught my attention. I wrote it down
[7:53] Speaker 2: here on a piece of paper. But this in the
[7:56] Speaker 2: context of features of our universe that allow us to
[7:59] Speaker 2: discover the laws of nature. You say the universe is
[8:02] Speaker 2: an excellent tutor. It has not been so demanding as
[8:07] Speaker 2: to ensure failure, but instead has presented us with worthy
[8:13] Speaker 2: challenges that we can meet with diligence. And when I
[8:17] Speaker 2: read that, I immediately thought of Proverbs, chapter twenty five,
[8:20] Speaker 2: verse two. It is the glory of God to conceal
[8:23] Speaker 2: a matter. It is the glory of God's people to
[8:28] Speaker 2: search out a matter.
[8:31] Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, I mean, and we've known that. I mean
[8:35] Speaker 3: anyone that studies scripture like you have for a lifetime.
[8:38] Speaker 3: You can read Genesis one and a seven. You can
[8:40] Speaker 3: read Genesis one to a seven year old. It's sort
[8:42] Speaker 3: of simple and easy to get and it's it's bottomless
[8:47] Speaker 3: though the text when you especially get into the Hebrew.
[8:50] Speaker 3: That's how the created order is and weird. We're talking
[8:54] Speaker 3: there specifically about the way in which, okay, if you
[8:57] Speaker 3: had to go from say one hundred gatherer state when
[9:00] Speaker 3: you don't have a written language, and to figure anything
[9:03] Speaker 3: out scientifically, you needed Einstein's general theory of relative but
[9:07] Speaker 3: E's there's no way to get there from here, right.
[9:10] Speaker 3: But as it happens, it's like the world has been
[9:13] Speaker 3: set up so that fairly difficult, it takes work, but
[9:17] Speaker 3: we're able to figure things out and then from each
[9:20] Speaker 3: theoretical stage helped us to understand some things, and then
[9:24] Speaker 3: it gave us a platform to discover the next stage.
[9:28] Speaker 3: So you needed Kepler to get Newton, and you needed
[9:32] Speaker 3: Newton to get Einstein. And if you had to go
[9:35] Speaker 3: straight to Einstein without the intermediate steps, you wouldn't have
[9:39] Speaker 3: gotten there theoretically. And that was something that honestly, we
[9:43] Speaker 3: kind of realized late in the book, this stare stepping
[9:47] Speaker 3: of physical discoveries and then theoretical discoveries, and then Christian
[9:51] Speaker 3: philosoper Robin Collins has actually has developed this more beyond
[9:54] Speaker 3: what we did in terms of the kind of the
[9:56] Speaker 3: theoretical stare stepping in which God has set stuff up
[10:00] Speaker 3: so that if we're diligent, we can discover these things.
[10:03] Speaker 3: But it's still a worthy enterprise. It's not like some
[10:06] Speaker 3: kind of fake game that you know, a parent will
[10:09] Speaker 3: give to their six year old so that they're sure
[10:11] Speaker 3: to win. It's something that is a genuine accomplishment when
[10:15] Speaker 3: we discover these things.
[10:16] Speaker 2: We hear this little phrase over and over again and
[10:19] Speaker 2: various context. Size matters coming on. Size is our mark
[10:24] Speaker 2: of smallness. A symptom of disrepute is our puny size
[10:29] Speaker 2: in comparison to the universe, something that denigrates the greatness
[10:33] Speaker 2: of Earth.
[10:35] Speaker 3: I don't know why. I mean, clearly, would the fact that,
[10:40] Speaker 3: you know, let's say, a star just a big lump
[10:42] Speaker 3: of a giant lump of hydrogen gas or something that's
[10:47] Speaker 3: a light you're a cross, Okay, spatially, that's huge compared
[10:51] Speaker 3: to the Earth or compared to an individual human being.
[10:54] Speaker 3: But surely a single human being is much more magnificent
[10:58] Speaker 3: than just this kind of cloud of hydras.
[11:00] Speaker 1: Stay right there, We'll be back soon to rejoin Hank
[11:04] Speaker 1: Hanagraf'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 thousand, croi.
[11:44] Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven thousand CRI or go online
[11:49] Speaker 1: to equip dot org. That's equip dot org. Has God Spoken?
[12:07] Speaker 1: Are the words of Scripture merely human in origin? Or
[12:10] Speaker 1: are they, in fact the very words of God himself?
[12:15] Speaker 1: Three years in the making and based on two decades
[12:18] Speaker 1: of research and reflection, Hank Henagraph's monumental book Has God
[12:23] Speaker 1: Spoken answers what is surely the most important question facing
[12:27] Speaker 1: our world. In Has God Spoken? Memorable proofs of the
[12:31] Speaker 1: Bible's divine inspiration, Hank counters the contentions of the Bible
[12:35] Speaker 1: attackers and clearly shows that belief in the Holy Scriptures
[12:38] Speaker 1: is not a guess or wishful thinking. It is the
[12:41] Speaker 1: only logical conclusion after an honest examination of overwhelming evidence.
[12:46] Speaker 1: Order Has God Spoken from the Christian Research Institute by
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[12:54] Speaker 1: equip dot org. Equip dot org. The Complete Bible answer
[13:02] Speaker 1: Book Collector's Edition is the comprehensive collection of the most
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[14:51] Speaker 1: Once again, that's equip dot org. Here again are Hank
[15:08] Speaker 1: catagraphed as guest philosopher J. Richards as they continue their conversation.
[15:14] Speaker 3: Surely a single human being is much more magnificent than
[15:18] Speaker 3: just this kind of cloud of hydrogen. So size is
[15:21] Speaker 3: not a specially good measure in the abstract for significance.
[15:27] Speaker 3: But as I mentioned earlier, and we actually do the
[15:28] Speaker 3: calculation in the book, that the irony is that on
[15:31] Speaker 3: a kind of logarithmic scale, the Earth, the sort of
[15:35] Speaker 3: human Earth size scale, is actually in the middle of
[15:40] Speaker 3: size scales that we know in the universe. So if
[15:42] Speaker 3: you think of the universe as a whole as the
[15:43] Speaker 3: big scale, and you go all the way down to
[15:45] Speaker 3: say quarks on the small scale, the human Earth size
[15:49] Speaker 3: scales in the middle, which is interesting. So we're not
[15:52] Speaker 3: tiny and we're not huge, but that's where you'd want
[15:55] Speaker 3: to be for scientific discovery as it happened. So if
[15:57] Speaker 3: we were just to say an order of magnitude smaller
[16:00] Speaker 3: or the size of ants, most of the universe would
[16:03] Speaker 3: have been inaccessible to us. They're kind of just basic
[16:06] Speaker 3: physical dynamics in terms of the kind of instruments you'd need,
[16:10] Speaker 3: what you'd need to be able to control fire, the
[16:13] Speaker 3: size of lenses you'd need for telescopes, these kinds of things.
[16:17] Speaker 3: In order to see large structures, you need to be
[16:19] Speaker 3: about our size scale. On the other hand, if we
[16:22] Speaker 3: were much larger, it would have been very hard for
[16:24] Speaker 3: us to detect things at a very small scale. So
[16:27] Speaker 3: for scientific discovery, we're actually right in the sweet spot,
[16:32] Speaker 3: but it would be really easy to miss that if
[16:34] Speaker 3: you somehow thought are middling size compared to a blue
[16:38] Speaker 3: super giant, somehow made us unimportant.
[16:41] Speaker 2: Is that constrained to optimization again, because one of the
[16:44] Speaker 2: points you make in the book is that our size
[16:47] Speaker 2: is perfect for the adaptation of technology.
[16:51] Speaker 3: That's right. It's absolutely constrained optimization. And our friend and
[16:55] Speaker 3: colleague Michael Denton has actually taken this farther. In fact,
[16:58] Speaker 3: he has a series Discovery Institute, Press and the Privileged
[17:01] Speaker 3: Species that it's kind of technological stuff, which we talk
[17:04] Speaker 3: a bit about in the book, but so much of
[17:07] Speaker 3: technology depends upon our ability to control fire. And you know, look,
[17:11] Speaker 3: ants can't control fire because of their side. So there's
[17:16] Speaker 3: this is kind of weird interlocking features of this thing.
[17:20] Speaker 3: When you really start analyzing it, they get, as you said, eerie.
[17:24] Speaker 3: And people that get the argument, Hank, like really early on.
[17:28] Speaker 3: I think the first time is we even presented this stuff.
[17:30] Speaker 3: You almost spoke at a conference feeling. It's around two
[17:32] Speaker 3: thousand or two thousand and one at Yale. I was
[17:35] Speaker 3: there and a guy named Scott Minnick at the University
[17:37] Speaker 3: of Idaho. It was there, and he heard our discussion
[17:39] Speaker 3: about eclipses. It kept him awake all night. I mean,
[17:43] Speaker 3: but this is a smart guy, a scientist who he
[17:45] Speaker 3: got it right away, and he started running out the
[17:48] Speaker 3: implications of this in his mind, and he thought this
[17:51] Speaker 3: was the eeriest thing I'd ever heard. Just eerie in
[17:54] Speaker 3: the sense of like, wow, this is like a cosmic
[17:58] Speaker 3: conspiracy that I didn't know anything about, which we think
[18:01] Speaker 3: that's actually the right response.
[18:04] Speaker 2: Well, this discussion wouldn't be complete if we didn't talk
[18:07] Speaker 2: about the Copernican principle. You know, it's a myth, and
[18:10] Speaker 2: like all great myths, it's a mixture of truth and falsehood,
[18:14] Speaker 2: and you go through in your book why this myth
[18:19] Speaker 2: is perpetuated and how we can actually defend the truth
[18:25] Speaker 2: in light of this mythology.
[18:27] Speaker 3: Absolutely, and so of course it's called the Copernican principle.
[18:31] Speaker 3: So you'd think, okay, well, what's based on Copernicus. Copernicus
[18:34] Speaker 3: is the scientist who wrote the book on the Revolution
[18:38] Speaker 3: of the Heavenly Spheres at fifteen forty three, in which
[18:40] Speaker 3: you propose kind of mathematically that in fact you can
[18:43] Speaker 3: you understand the movement of the Moon and the Sun
[18:46] Speaker 3: and the planet's better if you think of the Earth
[18:49] Speaker 3: as another one of the planets, with the Moon rotating
[18:52] Speaker 3: around us and the Earth rotating on its axis and
[18:55] Speaker 3: the movement of the Sun, then it's just merely apparent,
[18:58] Speaker 3: whereas we're one of the plant and that's actually orbiting
[19:01] Speaker 3: the Sun. And he said, actually, this makes the movements
[19:04] Speaker 3: make more sense than the previous idea, the pre Copernican
[19:08] Speaker 3: idea called the Aristotelian Ptolemaic view, which is that the
[19:12] Speaker 3: Earth is this sort of stationary center and all the
[19:14] Speaker 3: other everything else that we see literally kind of goes
[19:17] Speaker 3: around us. And so the Copernican principle, the myth is that, well,
[19:22] Speaker 3: what Copernicus discovered is that we're not in the center.
[19:25] Speaker 3: That is, we're not in the important part of the universe.
[19:28] Speaker 3: We're just a mere planet. And so what Copernicus did
[19:31] Speaker 3: he cast us into this position of mediocrity. Science has
[19:36] Speaker 3: continued for several centuries. Every new scientific discovery just relegates
[19:40] Speaker 3: us to a less and less important place. Okay, so
[19:43] Speaker 3: that's the myth. But if you actually look at the
[19:45] Speaker 3: history science, that story appears in the nineteenth century, not
[19:50] Speaker 3: in the fifteen hundreds or the sixteen hundreds. The reason
[19:53] Speaker 3: is because it completely gets the details wrong about what
[19:57] Speaker 3: the pre Copernican cosmology was. Anybody that knows Aristotle is
[20:02] Speaker 3: going to know that Aristotle's physics, the Earth wasn't in
[20:04] Speaker 3: the center because that was the important place to be.
[20:07] Speaker 3: It's because it's one of the elements. It's the heavy element.
[20:10] Speaker 3: That's where stuff falls, and so you're going to get
[20:12] Speaker 3: the heavy earth in the center. It's really the bottom
[20:16] Speaker 3: of the universe. But it's also where death and decay are.
[20:19] Speaker 3: It's where the detritus of the universe collects. The really
[20:23] Speaker 3: important stuff is in the moon and above. It's made
[20:26] Speaker 3: of this quintessence of this fifth element, of this kind
[20:30] Speaker 3: of perfect, eternal, immutable matter that's separate from the earth.
[20:36] Speaker 3: And so it wasn't that the center was a sort
[20:39] Speaker 3: of position of pride of place. And then if you
[20:43] Speaker 3: take Dante's Christian interpretation of that, you read the Divine Comedy,
[20:47] Speaker 3: the surface of the earth is where humans live. We
[20:49] Speaker 3: can die, right, and we can ascend to the heavens,
[20:51] Speaker 3: but we might also we might go to Hell. And
[20:54] Speaker 3: if you're reading the Divine Comedy and you get to Hell, well,
[20:57] Speaker 3: the center of the universe, the center of the earth,
[21:00] Speaker 3: that's Satan, right, that's the real that's the center of
[21:04] Speaker 3: the universe. And the kind of christianize pre Copernican cosmology.
[21:07] Speaker 3: So in other words, the center of the universe Forkernicus
[21:12] Speaker 3: was not the most important place to be. And it's
[21:16] Speaker 3: only by reinterpreting that and counting on people not to
[21:19] Speaker 3: understand the history that they could think that, oh, when
[21:21] Speaker 3: Copernicus told us we weren't in the center of the universe,
[21:24] Speaker 3: that meant we were were unimportant. It's a terrible kind
[21:28] Speaker 3: of bungling of the details of science. CS Lewis Arow
[21:31] Speaker 3: a wonderful book describing all this called the discarded image.
[21:36] Speaker 3: And and so if you read Copernicus and then later Galileo,
[21:39] Speaker 3: Galileo actually says, you know, he thinks being a planet,
[21:42] Speaker 3: we're reflecting the light of the Sun, and that that's
[21:46] Speaker 3: a that's a kind of glorious thing. And then Kepler
[21:49] Speaker 3: realized later that actually, because we move, then we're not stationary.
[21:55] Speaker 3: There will be a way for us to figure out
[21:57] Speaker 3: the distances to some stars using a pair of lacks
[22:00] Speaker 3: measurement and trigonometry, which we actually did, so we're able
[22:03] Speaker 3: to measure the distances to some stars just based upon
[22:06] Speaker 3: their slight movement six months later. So we're on one
[22:11] Speaker 3: side of the Earth, are the Sun, and we measure
[22:14] Speaker 3: a star where it is on the sky, and then
[22:16] Speaker 3: measure it again six months later when you're on the
[22:17] Speaker 3: other side of the Sun. And if there's a slight variation,
[22:20] Speaker 3: with some trigonometry, you can figure out how far way.
[22:22] Speaker 2: That star is.
[22:24] Speaker 3: So there's so much wrong with the Copernican myth. Nothing
[22:29] Speaker 3: wrong with Copernicus in what he discovered, but he did
[22:32] Speaker 3: not show us that we are insignificant by moving us
[22:34] Speaker 3: from the so called center. And there's nothing of the
[22:38] Speaker 3: actual discoveries of science have not done that either. Yeah,
[22:42] Speaker 3: the universe is a lot larger than maybe we imagined
[22:44] Speaker 3: or realized, but that doesn't answer the question that we're
[22:49] Speaker 3: most interested in, which is the significance of us here,
[22:54] Speaker 3: both as creatures, living creatures, but also as discoverers. If
[22:59] Speaker 3: you ask the question right, well you get a very
[23:00] Speaker 3: different answer.
[23:01] Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean this is very important to you devoted
[23:04] Speaker 2: chapter twelve and thirteen to eight principles that discredit this
[23:09] Speaker 2: idea of mediocrity. But you also mentioned something, and I
[23:13] Speaker 2: want you to make a pitch here if you would.
[23:15] Speaker 2: You mentioned something a number of times throughout the podcast,
[23:19] Speaker 2: and it was if you read if you read this,
[23:23] Speaker 2: if you read that, if you read this, make a
[23:26] Speaker 2: pitch for reading again in our generation. Do you think
[23:29] Speaker 2: that's even possible.
[23:31] Speaker 3: It's certainly possible. And I'm you know, I'm optimistic about
[23:35] Speaker 3: the fact what I have seen. And so, just as
[23:38] Speaker 3: the education system generally keeps getting worse and worse and
[23:41] Speaker 3: worse and worse, there's also pockets of light. I mean,
[23:45] Speaker 3: they are amazing private schools. There are homeschool co ops
[23:48] Speaker 3: that we've been part of. The classical school movement is
[23:52] Speaker 3: a wonderful development. The really good classical schools are actually
[23:56] Speaker 3: designed around reading primary texts and helping for and kids
[24:01] Speaker 3: not to listen to our long lectures, but to have
[24:03] Speaker 3: to synthesize and articulate and analyze text. You can only
[24:07] Speaker 3: be good at that if you learn to read, you
[24:09] Speaker 3: learn to read deeply or able to synthesize, and you're
[24:12] Speaker 3: able to focus for a long periods of time. And
[24:15] Speaker 3: so I think that's how we renew the culture is
[24:20] Speaker 3: by preserving and renewing and recovering those habits which were
[24:25] Speaker 3: just the kind of basic thing that everybody got that
[24:28] Speaker 3: was educated until a century or two ago. It's easy
[24:32] Speaker 3: to notice all the stuff that's collapsing and easy not
[24:35] Speaker 3: to notice these sort of pockets of light. We've been
[24:38] Speaker 3: blessed to have been part of several of those movements
[24:41] Speaker 3: and so seeing what it does to kids. But honestly,
[24:44] Speaker 3: think anyone that's listening to us, that has kids or
[24:47] Speaker 3: has grandkids, if it's in your power, make sure that
[24:51] Speaker 3: they have those kinds of educational options. They need to
[24:54] Speaker 3: know the truths of the faith, the truth of the creeds.
[24:57] Speaker 3: They need to know the scriptures like the back of
[24:59] Speaker 3: their but they also need intellectual habits. They need discernment,
[25:03] Speaker 3: They need the ability to focus and to read and
[25:06] Speaker 3: to pay attention. Without those skills, none of this other
[25:10] Speaker 3: stuff can work.
[25:12] Speaker 2: Again. It is a fantastic book, as the twentieth anniversary
[25:16] Speaker 2: edition of The Privileged Planet. How Our Place in the
[25:20] Speaker 2: Cosmos is designed for discovery and it is available for
[25:25] Speaker 2: all of those who stand shoulder to shoulder with us
[25:27] Speaker 2: in the battle for life and truth in gear copy
[25:29] Speaker 2: on the web equipped dot org.
[25:31] Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the special edition of the
[25:34] Speaker 1: 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,
[25:47] Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Our firm
[25:51] Speaker 1: commitment here at the Christian Research Institute is to defend
[25:55] Speaker 1: the faith once for all, delivered to the Saints, and
[25:58] Speaker 1: equip believers to become true disciples of Jesus Christ. In
[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
[26:11] Speaker 1: send you the twentieth anniversary revised and updated edition of
[26:15] Speaker 1: the Privileged Planet. How our place in the Cosmos is
[26:18] Speaker 1: designed for discovery. Just call a resource consultant at eight
[26:22] Speaker 1: eight eight seven thousand CRII eight eight eight seven thousand CROI,
[26:29] Speaker 1: or visit our website at equip dot org, dot's equip DOTRG,
[26:36] Speaker 1: or you can write to CRI at Post Office Box
[26:39] Speaker 1: eighty five hundred, Charlotte, North Carolina, zip code two eight
[26:43] Speaker 1: two seven one. The Bible Answerman Broadcast is funded by
[26:48] Speaker 1: listeners like you. We're on the air because truth matters,
[26:52] Speaker 1: life matters more. Has God Spoken? Are the words of
[27:08] Speaker 1: Scripture merely human in origin? Or are they, in fact
[27:11] Speaker 1: the very words of God himself. Three years in the
[27:16] Speaker 1: making and based on two decades of research and reflection,
[27:20] Speaker 1: Hank Henagraph's monumental book Has God Spoken answers what is
[27:24] Speaker 1: surely the most important question facing our world. In Has
[27:28] Speaker 1: God Spoken? Memorable proofs of the Bible's Divine inspiration, Hank
[27:33] Speaker 1: counters the contentions of the Bible attackers and clearly shows
[27:36] Speaker 1: that belief in the Holy Scriptures is not a guess
[27:39] Speaker 1: or wishful thinking. It is the only logical conclusion after
[27:43] Speaker 1: an honest examination of overwhelming evidence. Ordered has God Spoken?
[27:48] Speaker 1: From the Christian Research Institute by calling eighty eight seven
[27:52] Speaker 1: thousand CRII, or go online to equip dot org. Equip
[27:57] Speaker 1: dot org

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