The Story of Everything (2026) Movie Script

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[Music]
[Music]
SARAH SALVIANDER:
There are those in science
who say the exquisite
nature of the universe,
the exquisite laws
of the universe,
are evidence of a designer.
Does that view
make sense to you?
[Music]
STEPHEN MEYER: For 2,500
years, there have been two great
competing stories about
reality in Western culture.
According to one of these
stories, the universe, our planet,
the life it contains,
and especially all of us,
are products of a
pre-existing intelligence,
a purposeful mind or creator.
JOHN LENNOX: People
like Galileo, Kepler,
Newton were all
believers in the existence
of an intelligent designer
behind the universe.
GUEST: Newton, Boyle,
Kepler, the great founders
of modern science, thought
that nature had secrets to reveal.
There were patterns
there to be revealed
that we could understand
because our minds had been made
in the image of the
same rational creator
who had built
rationality and design
and lawful order into the world.
But according to another
story, matter and energy interact
and evolve in a
completely mindless,
undirected way and
arrange themselves
into everything
we see around us.
SPEAKER: World famous atheist
Richard Dawkins inspired millions
by popularizing
evolutionary biology.
RICHARD DAWKINS:
Once you've got life started,
once natural selection,
Darwinian natural
selection has got going,
then we pretty much
understand the four billion year
history of what's
given rise to us
and all other living creatures.
SPEAKER: And that's the
story I want to tell you about.
The things that we hold dear,
including our very existence,
are in a cosmic accident.
SPEAKER: It seems so obvious
that if you've got a garden,
there must be a gardener.
But what science has now
achieved is an emancipation
from that impulse to attribute
these things to a creator.
STEPHEN MEYER: And
this view became popular
because of scientific theories
developed in the 19th century.
SPEAKER: Scientists like
Pierre Laplace, Charles Darwin,
and Thomas Henry Huxley
each tried to explain events
in the history of the
universe, like the origin
of the solar system, the
origin of new forms of life,
and even the origin
of the very first life.
STEPHEN MEYER: By
the end of the 19th century,
a seamless story of the
origin of nearly everything
could be told as a
consequence of slow, gradual,
and purely
naturalistic processes.
JAY RICHARDS:
By the 19th century,
science had come
to be associated
with a larger philosophical
idea called materialism,
in which you just
presuppose that the material
universe is all there is.
STEPHEN MEYER: And that's
why many leading scientists
have claimed that science
undermines belief in any intelligent
or purposeful creator
behind the universe.
SPEAKER: Yes or
no to this statement.
Science refutes God.
SPEAKER: 500 years of science
have demonstrated that God,
that vague
notion, is not likely.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON:
I have no problems if,
as we probe the
origins of things,
we bump up into the bearded man.
If that shows up,
we're good to go.
OK?
Not a problem.
There's just no evidence of it.
JOE ROGAN: How
do you respond to that?
GUEST: It's not what Darwin
thought in the 19th century.
It's a new day in biology.
Things are much more
complex than people thought
when they formulated
these evolutionary ideas.
JOE ROGAN:
There's a lot of people
that adopt philosophies
that mimic religions.
GUEST: If you can
show that life arose
by a completely undirected
evolutionary process,
you're going to be more inclined
toward a more
materialistic worldview.
STEPHEN MEYER:
And that view, if true,
has profound consequences
for whether our lives
have any ultimate
meaning or significance.
PIERCE MORGAN: Have
you thought about what happens
when your life ends?
GUEST: Have I thought
about what happens?
PIERCE MORGAN: Yeah.
GUEST: Of course, I die.
PIERCE MORGAN: Yeah.
What do you think happens?
GUEST: I think I get
buried or cremated.
PIERCE MORGAN: And that's it?
GUEST: Nothing after that.
You have a brain which decays.
There's just nothing.
SPEAKER: Here we
are, like mites on a plum.
And the plum is
this little planet,
and it goes around an
insignificant local star.
And that star is on the obscure
outskirts of an ordinary galaxy,
which contains 400
billion other stars.
And this galaxy is
just one of something
like 100 billion other galaxies.
So, the idea that
we are central,
that we are the reason
there is a universe, is pathetic.
STEPHEN MEYER: This
bleak view of the universe
troubles many people.
If we are the products of
purely impersonal materialistic
forces, and if eventually the
universe will experience a heat
death, leaving only cold,
dark matter as scientists tell us,
then there can't be
any lasting meaning
or purpose to our existence.
DAVID BERLINSKI:
But is that true?
How likely is it
that this panorama
that appears to me
every time I open my eyes
does not have some very
good reason for its existence?
JAY RICHARDS:
So, we have two great,
competing stories about reality.
One posits a purposeful
creator behind the universe.
The other envisions
mindless processes
producing everything we see.
But which of these
stories is true?
What explains all of this?
What's the story of everything?
SPEAKER: You can say, "Look,
you can go back as far as you want,
but somehow the stuff of
the universe had to come
from somewhere, and
isn't that what God did?
But that's only true if
the universe was created.
If the universe was always here,
if the universe
was infinitely old,
then there's nothing
for a creator to do.
STEPHEN MEYER:
How did the universe start?
It's an ancient question
that goes back all the way
to the ancient Greeks.
Has the universe always
been here, or is it finite?
A philosophical question
that science began to address
and answer in the
beginning of the 20th century.
And it starts with a
relatively unknown
astronomer named Vesto Slipher.
Slipher is looking
through telescopes,
and he's looking at these nebular
phenomena in the night sky.
ROBERT SHELDON: Fuzzy
things that never focused
in your telescope.
STEPHEN MEYER:
But what Slipher was able
to discover was
that the light coming
from these nebulae is
shifted in the red direction
of the electromagnetic spectrum.
You shine light through a prism,
it will separate into the
different colors, red to violet.
The red light corresponds to
light with longer wavelengths.
SARAH SALVIANDER: We
call it redshift because light
that has a longer wavelength
tends to be more red in color.
Let's say that you've got
a firetruck going past you
with its siren on.
And as it goes past,
the pitch changes.
So [imitates siren].
As something is
moving away from you,
whatever kind of
waves it's emitting,
whether it's sound
waves or light waves,
are going to be stretched out.
So, since the nebula that
Slipher observed was shifted
in the red direction, it
meant that the nebula
was moving away from us.
STEPHEN MEYER:
Now, a nebula, at the time,
was thought to be just a
gas cloud within our galaxy.
There were some astronomers
who thought it might be at a galaxy
beyond, but that was a debate.
Then, in 1924, the debate
was effectively settled
when Edwin Hubble
used some new techniques
for measuring
astronomical distances.
Hubble started looking at the
Andromeda nebula and realized
that it was at least 900,000
light years away from us,
and yet the distance
across our whole
galaxy was only
300,000 light years.
And so, he realized
that those nebulae
must be separate galaxies.
[Music]
And then, as he was
looking at the galaxies
with this wonderful
new dome telescope,
he was also then able to
see the beautiful structure,
not just a gaseous smudge
on a photographic plate.
And Hubble then began to study
not just the Andromeda Nebula,
but many of these nebulae, i.e.
galaxies, and discovered
they were all shifted
in the red direction, meaning
they were all moving away from us.
ROBERT SHELDON: So, it looked as
if space-time itself was
expanding and stretching...
STEPHEN MEYER:
Like a balloon blowing up.
There's a uniform
expansion of almost
all the galaxies moving outward.
SARAH SALVIANDER: But what
do you do when you mentally run
that scenario in reverse?
STEPHEN MEYER: As we
begin to wind that clock backwards
and think of what the universe
would have been like a thousand
years ago, or a million years
ago, or a billion years ago,
or however far back you go,
eventually you're gonna get
to a place where all of
that expanding material
would have congealed
in the same place,
marking the beginning
of the expansion.
And arguably, the beginning
of the universe itself.
SPEAKER: But there
was something else.
Several years earlier, the
physicist Albert Einstein made
a breakthrough in our
understanding of gravity,
one that also pointed to a
beginning of the universe.
But he found this implication
of his theory so disturbing
that he dismissed
it out of hand.
STEPHEN MEYER: In 1915, he
developed a revolutionary new theory
of gravity called
general relativity.
ALBERT EINSTEIN: The
largest change in man's view
of the universe
since Isaac Newton.
Nobody could
foresee its implication.
STEPHEN MEYER: It
implied that massive bodies
in space literally
curved space itself...
in much the same way that a
bowling ball changes the shape
of a trampoline.
ALBERT EINSTEIN: The
distortions of space due
to a massive body like
the sun shaped the course
of lesser objects
like the planets.
ROBERT SHELDON: That
discovery was so powerful
that Einstein went from
being a nerdy physicist
to a worldwide sensation.
STEPHEN MEYER: His theory
not only changed our understanding
of the present
structure of the universe,
it also had profound implications
for a long-standing question
about the origin
of the universe.
ROBERT SHELDON:
Einstein's theory implied
that in addition
to gravity, there
must be an outward
pushing force.
STEPHEN MEYER: Because
if gravity were the only force
in the universe, everything
would have congealed
into one big black hole.
But we don't live in
that kind of universe.
We live in a universe
where there is empty space
between massive bodies.
There must be some
sort of anti-gravity force
or some sort of
outward pushing force
that creates the empty space.
ROBERT SHELDON: He
struggled and struggled with it.
And finally, he said,
"I'm going to need to put
in an anti-gravity term into my
general equation of relativity,
and he called it the
cosmological constant.
STEPHEN MEYER: And
physicists today accept
that there is a
cosmological constant.
There is an outward
pushing force.
But Einstein made
a further move.
He simply chose
an arbitrary value
for this outward
pushing force, one
that was exactly balanced
to the force of gravity,
to suggest that the
universe was static,
neither expanding
nor contracting,
and is therefore
eternal and self-existent.
However, theoretical
physicists began
to work with
Einstein's equations.
And one of the physicists
was the Belgian priest,
Georges Lematre.
They realized that the
most natural implication
of Einstein's equations was
that the universe was expanding.
But Lematre was also
aware of the data coming
from Vesto Slipher
about the red shift.
So, Lematre pulled those
two lines of evidence together
and formulated what is now
known as the Big Bang Theory.
JAY RICHARDS: Einstein,
for various philosophical
or theoretical
reasons, was trying
to avoid the
implications of his theory.
STEPHEN MEYER: But
Lematre and Einstein met
at a conference in 1927.
They had shared a
taxi cab ride together,
where Lematre
apparently informed Einstein
about the redshift evidence
that the universe was actually
expanding despite Einstein's
attempt to depict it as static.
Einstein tells him that your
mathematics is impeccable,
but your physical
intuition is abominable.
Einstein accused him of
formulating this, deductively drawing it
from the Christian doctrine
of creation rather than
from the evidence.
Lematre bristled at
that, showed, no, actually,
I have the evidence on my side.
The universe is expanding.
And your equations, when
solved, point to a beginning.
And so, in 1931,
Einstein went out
to the Hooker Telescope
at Mount Wilson...
and viewed the evidence
of the expanding universe
through Hubble's telescope.
And then, a week or two
later, he does an interview
with the New York Times
and acknowledges that Hubble
and his colleague
Humason had shown
that the universe is not static.
And later, he acknowledged
that his fine-tuning
of the cosmological constant...
was the greatest blunder
of his scientific career.
BIJAN NEMATI: From
roughly the 1920s till the 60s,
astrophysics
proceeded with a lot
of brilliant people
doing a lot of great work,
but a lot of it was focused
on avoiding the notion
of a beginning.
ROBERT SHELDON: That
view of the universe was debated,
and many people
argued against it.
Fred Hoyle was a famous physicist
who said, "I'm a Democritean.
He said, "I believe nothing
comes from nothing.
His argument was there can't
be a beginning to the universe
because that would be
something coming from nothing.
FRED HOYLE: I
don't like the idea
that something is dependent
on a cause that I can never verify.
BIJAN NEMATI:
Hoyle was, in fact,
so opposed to the
notion of a beginning
that I think he was the
one who coined the name
Big Bang as a sort
of a derogatory name.
BRIAN KEATING: Fred Hoyle,
who was, for much of his life,
a secular atheist, he
believed that cosmologists
were being too influenced
by the Genesis 1:1 narrative.
STEPHEN MEYER: And so,
he formulates another model.
It's called the steady state.
He imagines there's
always been matter,
there's always been energy,
there's always been space and time.
The universe is
infinitely old and
has been creating
matter continually.
BRIAN KEATING:
So, in the mid-1900s,
there was really a battle
between two rival cosmologies.
ROBERT SHELDON: Both
theories make predictions,
and Hoyle's prediction was
that no matter how far back
in time you look, it will
look exactly the same.
STEPHEN MEYER: If the universe
was eternal in time and space,
then there was no
beginning and no time
when all of the galactic material
would have been concentrated
into a single, hot, dense point.
But the Big Bang
predicts that there
would have been such a point.
BRIAN KEATING: When
that Big Bang exploded,
the universe was in a
very dense and hot state.
And as it got bigger, it cooled.
And when it cooled far enough,
light was allowed to escape.
SARAH SALVIANDER: So, if
the Big Bang theory was true,
there should be some
evidence of this light in the form
of leftover radiation spread
throughout the universe.
BRIAN KEATING: You
can think of it as a glow,
as a fossil left over from
the creation process.
ROBERT SHELDON:
People looked for this radiation,
couldn't find it.
But then, two Bell Labs
physicists were trying
to create a microwave link
from the ground to a satellite.
They'd point this big horn
antenna at the satellite
and record the data.
Well, they were
getting noise and static
and couldn't explain it.
And wherever they
pointed their horn antenna,
they got the static,
and they said,
"There's something
wrong with our antenna.
SARAH SALVIANDER: In their
desperation to figure out the source
of this signal, they
thought it might have come
from pigeon droppings
that were on this antenna.
They're scraping it off.
Nothing works.
ROBERT SHELDON: And then,
one of them went to a seminar down
at Princeton by a physicist
named Robert Dickey.
And Robert Dickey
said, "We're looking
for the glow of that
Big Bang radiation.
And today, it would have
cooled down into the microwave.
That would be the wavelength
of light corresponding to that.
Penzias and Wilson looked
at each other and said,
"I think we found it.
They wrote up a paper that
they had discovered the radiation
left over from the Big Bang,
and it was such a sensation.
They got the Nobel Prize,
and I would say at that point,
90-some percent of
the physicists all agreed
that the Big Bang model
was the working one.
Hoyle never did.
He insisted that the
steady-state model was better,
and he was going to get
it fixed one of these days.
BIJAN NEMATI: We scientists
have our predispositions.
And in this case, the predisposition
was to avoid a beginning
to the universe.
And that has been going
on for about a century now.
And yet it's as if, you know,
we are being forced to accept,
by the observations, that
the universe is evolving
and it had a beginning.
STEPHEN MEYER:
Now, in the 1960s,
this whole question of the
implication of general relativity
for the beginning of the
universe was revisited.
And it starts with
Stephen Hawking.
[Music]
He's studying in Cambridge.
And in the middle of the
PhD, he is diagnosed with ALS,
Lou Gehrig's disease.
Debilitating
neurological disorder.
He's so discouraged that
he might just quit the PhD,
but he's encouraged by people
near him to press on, and he does.
Quite a heroic story, actually.
He's working on
black hole physics.
SARAH SALVIANDER:
Black holes, extremely massive,
but compressed down into an
unimaginably small amount of space.
These things are warping
space and time in ways
that you can't even imagine.
STEPHEN MEYER: It's
causing space around that matter
to curve so tightly that
even light can't get out.
But then, Hawking's
thinking about the history
and origin of the
universe itself.
He realizes that if the
universe is expanding outward
in the forward
direction of time,
then matter is getting
more and more spread out.
And he starts
thinking about, well,
what happens in the
reverse direction of time?
If the matter is more diffused
in the forward direction of time,
it means it's more
concentrated in the reverse
direction of time.
Then, according to Einstein's
theory of general relativity,
the space around matter
should get more tightly curved.
So, as you go back in time,
as matter gets more densely
concentrated, the space
gets more tightly curved,
and you eventually
get to a limiting point
where the matter gets
so densely concentrated
that the space gets
so tightly curved
that eventually you
can't go back any further.
And this, Hawking
calls the singularity,
a point of infinite density
and infinitely tight curvature.
[Music]
In his PhD thesis in
1966, Hawking presents
an initial defense of that idea.
He gets incredible
praise from his examiners.
The idea of a
space-time singularity,
a beginning to the universe,
that's a mind-blowing conclusion.
But there's a problem.
FRANK TIPLER: As you're going
back toward the very beginning
of time, the volume of the
universe is going to zero.
There's no space
to put anything.
Zero size is not something
that can exist in space and time.
Rather, the singularity is the
point outside of space and time.
It's not in space and time.
STEPHEN MEYER:
Before the beginning of time,
there's no universe.
The universe comes into
existence out of the singularity.
There is no matter.
There is no space.
There is no time.
There is no energy.
There's no material stuff
there to do the causing.
JAY RICHARDS: Physicist
Robert Dickey said,
"An infinite universe would
relieve us of the necessity
of understanding
the origin of matter
at any finite time in the past.
Notice that verb, relieve.
That's not a scientific term.
What does Dickey mean?
Well, if the universe
is eternal and infinite,
then we don't even have to ask
the question where it came from.
So, if an infinite universe
relieves us of the necessity,
what does a finite universe do?
TIMOTHY MCGREW: We
now know the universe began
to exist finitely long
ago, but whatever begins
to exist is caused to
exist by something else.
STEPHEN MEYER: Now,
because we're talking about the origin
of the universe itself, by which
we mean the origin of matter,
energy, space, and
time, any entity capable
of causing the universe to come
into existence must be external
to or separate from
the universe itself.
It must exist
independently of matter
and transcend space and time.
JAY RICHARDS: And so,
whatever explains the finite
physical universe must
be itself non-physical.
Whatever explains
the finite material
universe must
itself be immaterial...
to get in this way to the
philosophical stopping point
of the first cause.
STEPHEN MEYER: I
first witnessed astronomers
and cosmologists wrestling
with this problem of the first cause
at a conference
early in my career.
SPEAKER: It may not
be the ultimate truth.
STEPHEN MEYER:
At that conference,
I encountered
the work of a great
cosmologist named Allan Sandage.
He was well known
for being a hard-bitten
scientific materialist.
But he'd worked closely
with Edwin Hubble
on verifying the
expansion of the universe
in all quadrants of the sky.
And at this conference,
he announced
that he had come
to a theistic belief,
not in spite of, but because
of the scientific discoveries
concerning the origin of the
universe and its fine tuning.
And I can remember him looking
into the camera and saying...
ALLAN SANDAGE: Here
is evidence for what can only
be described as a
supernatural event.
STEPHEN MEYER:
Super natural event.
And there was a
kind of a beat, a pause
between the words
super and natural.
ALLAN SANDAGE: There's
no way that this could have been
predicted within the realm
of physics as we know it.
STEPHEN MEYER: Another
astronomer at the conference
who was particularly
distressed by the problem
of the first cause
was Robert Jastrow.
ROBERT JASTROW: National
Aeronautics and Space Administration.
STEPHEN MEYER:
Though he was an agnostic,
he had recently
published a book called
"God and the Astronomers".
Later, he did a
number of interviews
about the conclusion
of his book.
ROBERT JASTROW: One
of the things that interests me
that I find most puzzling
in this astronomy we've
been discussing is the fact
that there was a beginning.
The mystery of creation.
If there were no beginning,
we wouldn't have to ask
what happened
before the beginning.
And we wouldn't have to worry
about who created the universe.
But the fact the universe sprang
into being at a definite moment
seems to me theological...
and nothing that could be
answered within science.
SPEAKER: There always
has to be a cause for any effect,
and then that cause becomes
an effect of a cause underlying it.
But in the case of the Big Bang,
that calls for an
uncreated creator,
and that would answer to
some people's definition of a god.
ROBERT JASTROW: I'm
an agnostic, not a believer,
but not an atheist.
Suppose you try to get away
from the theological explanation.
Is there something
else that we can imagine
that would lay these
questions to rest?
Some...
I can't see it.
ROBERT SHELDON: The last
paragraph of Jastrow's book says
that the natural
scientist or the physicist
has scaled the
peak of ignorance.
As he pulls himself
over the last boulder,
he finds the philosophers
and the theologians
sitting there waiting for him.
The point Jastrow is making
is no scientist wanted there
to be a creation
to the universe.
He wanted it to be eternal.
But that was inevitably
where science was taking us
to, that point where
we had to acknowledge
there was a beginning.
STEPHEN MEYER:
Hawking proves the singularity,
doesn't much like
its implications,
because it seems to point
to a kind of creation event.
So, he spent much of the
rest of his career attempting
to circumvent the
conclusion of his own proof.
And in the process, he
developed these quantum
cosmological ideas
through a tiny loophole.
Hawking and other
physicists recognize
that they can only back
extrapolate to almost the singularity.
They can get to
1E-43 of a second
after the beginning
of the universe.
To say it's a blink of an
eye is a huge exaggeration.
Before that time, they thought
gravity might have worked
differently, according
to quantum mechanics,
the physics that applies
to the tiny subatomic realm.
So, they attempted to develop
an alternative cosmological model
that they called
quantum cosmology.
The hope among some of those
cosmologists is that this model
would eliminate the need
for a beginning of the universe
or would somehow explain
the origin of the universe
without any need to
posit an external creator.
JOHN LENNOX: I can recall
Stephen Hawking at Cambridge,
just when the beginnings
of Motor Neurone Disease
were being seen in
his difficulty in walking.
When I was given a pre-
publication edition of his book,
"The Grand Design", I
was quite amazed to come
across what appears to
be a central statement.
STEPHEN HAWKING: Because
there are laws, such as gravity,
the universe can and will
create itself from nothing.
JOHN LENNOX: I had an
immediate visceral reaction.
What could that possibly mean?
Because there is a
law such as gravity,
that is because
there is something,
the universe can
create itself from nothing.
And that appears to me
to be a flat contradiction.
Nothing is certainly
not nothing.
STEPHEN MEYER: Hawking
is saying that the universe
has come out of some
sort of pre-existing laws
of physics that are expressed
as mathematical equations.
The implication of this is
that out of math comes matter,
space, time, and energy.
But these mathematical
equations don't describe anything
yet because there is no
universe yet to describe.
Math has no causal
power by itself.
And one of the developers
of quantum cosmology,
the Russian physicist
Alexander Volinkin,
has reflected deeply on
this kind of paradoxical result.
He says, "In the
absence of space, time,
and matter, what tablets could
these laws be written upon?
Hawking was sensitive
to the same concern.
He said, "What is it that
breathes fire into the equations
and makes a universe
for them to describe?
In our experience,
math is conceptual.
It exists in a mind.
So, if we're saying the material
universe came out of a set
of mathematical equations,
are we really saying
that the material universe
came out of a mind?
[Music]
JAY RICHARDS: The basic idea
of fine-tuning is that the universe
is just so, that its properties,
the initial conditions,
the so-called constants of
physics, the laws of nature,
rest on a razor's edge so that
if they were slightly different
than they are in
the actual universe,
the universe would
not be habitable.
That is, it would not
be compatible with life.
STEPHEN MEYER: Physicist
Sir John Polkinghorne used
to have an excellent
visual illustration
to convey the idea
of the fine-tuning.
He used to ask people
in the audience to imagine
that they were on a
spaceship that had docked
at a space station.
And upon entrance
to the space station,
they discovered
there was a great room
with a huge universe-creating
machine inside.
And it had dials and
knobs and sliders,
each representing one of the
fundamental physical parameters,
where each one of the dials
was set to a very precise value.
Imagine what would
happen if you changed one
of the dials one
click this way or
that, or move a slider
one notch this way or
that, that life in the
universe would suddenly
become impossible.
But it was none other than
Fred Hoyle who first discovered
that our universe is
actually fine-tuned for life.
FRED HOYLE: I'm going to
tell you today a story which,
if you hear it, may
seem very strange to you.
STEPHEN MEYER:
Hoyle was trying to show,
as part of his work on the
steady-state cosmology,
where carbon could
have come from.
FRED HOYLE: And certainly it
would have seemed strange to me,
some 20 years ago, when the path
which led to this work
began to be followed.
STEPHEN MEYER: When
he himself made a discovery
that shook his
personal philosophy.
FRED HOYLE: So, let me
begin then without more ado.
STEPHEN MEYER: So, Hoyle
is trying to explain the abundance
of carbon in the universe
because he recognized
that you needed
carbon to build life,
but he can't figure
out for the life
of him how it could
have been built.
BRIAN KEATING: Hoyle reasoned
that the Big Bang couldn't do it,
the Quasi-Steady State
universe couldn't do it,
and the only other
laboratories for doing
so were in the bellies of stars.
DAVID SNOKE: The understanding
now is that all of the elements
that we have, carbon,
oxygen, so on, were synthesized
inside of stars.
When that star
exploded, goes supernova,
then that gets spread
throughout the universe.
Then, that gets to be
re-accumulated back
into new stars and planets.
STEPHEN MEYER: He
developed numerous ideas
about how carbon might form
from simpler atoms inside stars.
But for various reasons,
none of them would work.
But then, he comes up with a
theory that works with the physics.
His theory envisions
two elements,
beryllium with an
atomic weight of eight
and helium with an
atomic weight of four,
combining to make carbon
with an atomic weight of 12.
But there's a catch.
When he did the math, the
resulting carbon would have a higher
energy state than
the ordinary carbon
that we have around
us in our solar system.
And this higher energy version
of carbon would have to exist
for beryllium and
helium to come together
to form carbon
in the first place.
LUKE BARNES: So, if you
have a wine glass and you flick it,
it will have a certain
note that it puts out there,
a certain frequency.
If I sing that frequency
back at the wine glass,
it will absorb that sound
much more effectively than
if I just sing some other
random note at the wine glass.
There's a way that a
carbon nucleus could sing,
could wobble
around, could vibrate
and oscillate in
just the right way...
that it would live long enough
to sort of hold itself together
in time to make a stable carbon
nucleus rather than a couple
of things falling apart.
Without this singing
frequency in a carbon atom,
the process just won't work.
[Music]
STEPHEN MEYER: Hoyle
realized that there must be a version
of the carbon atom capable of
vibrating at a precise frequency
that would allow it to
absorb the combined energies
of the beryllium and helium
so that carbon could form.
After which time, it would settle
into the stable form of carbon
that we see all around us today.
LUKE BARNES: Now, what
Hoyle did was to say, "All right, well,
if that's the way that carbon's
got to be made in the universe,
carbon better sing at
just this energy level,
otherwise this whole
thing's not gonna work.
STEPHEN MEYER: So, he
contracted with a physicist out
at Caltech named Willie Fowler.
WILLIE FOWLER: So,
Hoyle was invited to Caltech
to give a lecture on
the steady state theory.
The next day, he
came into the laboratory
and began asking us
questions about the energy levels
of the carbon-12 nucleus.
And we kind of gave
him the brush off.
"Get away from us, young fellow.
You bother us.
See, we didn't know
him all that well.
And there was this funny
little man who thought
that we should stop
all this important work
that we were doing
otherwise and look for this.
He convinced Ward
Whaling, who was an assistant
or associate professor at
that time, to give it a whirl.
And sure enough...
the energy he got was almost
exactly what Hoyle had predicted.
It was really quite
a tour de force
that a man had
walked into the lab,
predicted the existence
of an excited state
of a nucleus from
astrophysical arguments.
We then took
Hoyle very seriously.
STEPHEN MEYER: That
confirmed Hoyle's suspicion
about how carbon
might have been made,
but it turned out to be
the tip of the iceberg
of a deeper problem.
LUKE BARNES: The
fact that carbon sings
at just this energy level itself
depends on other properties.
STEPHEN MEYER: The
fine-tuning of the energy levels
was the whole cascading effect
of other fine-tuning parameters
that were discovered
that had to be just right.
Each one of these
different parameters falls
within a very narrow tolerance.
SPEAKER: We can
put fairly precise values
on how finely tuned
they have to be.
The probability of the strength
of gravity being just right,
one part in 10 to
the power of 35.
SPEAKER: The odds of the
weight of a proton to an electron.
SPEAKER: One part in 1,000.
SPEAKER: The ratio between
the gravitational attraction
and the electromagnetic
attraction.
SPEAKER: One part
in 10 to the power of 4.
SPEAKER: The
gravitational force compared
with the weak nuclear force.
SPEAKER: One part
in 10 to the 10,000.
SPEAKER: One part
in 10 to the 21st power.
SPEAKER: Initial expansion
rate of the universe.
SPEAKER: One
part in 10 to the 17.
STEPHEN MEYER: Not too
strong, not too weak, not too fast,
not too slow, not too
heavy, not too light.
Everything's got
to be just right.
The Goldilocks universe.
JAY RICHARDS: It's not just
that life would be different or
that history would be different,
but that the universe
would not be compatible
with any sort of
chemically based life.
STEPHEN MEYER: The
probability of getting these specific
parameters right is
infinitesimally small.
FRED HOYLE:
Unless it's also claimed
that instruction happens
by sort of divine providence,
ex machina, to be just such.
I felt obliged to take
seriously the proposition
that life is a cosmic
phenomenon.
STEPHEN MEYER: By
a cosmic phenomenon,
Hoyle meant that life in the
universe was a consequence
of the precise fine-tuning
of the physical parameters
of the entire universe.
FRED HOYLE: So, the concept
of life as a cosmic phenomenon,
if it's correct, should
have many consequences.
The question then was
what does one do about it?
STEPHEN MEYER: And at
the end of this investigation,
Hoyle shifted.
And he attributes his conversion
from an aggressive form
of scientific atheism
to affirming some kind
of intelligent design
behind the universe,
to his discovery,
his own discovery
of these fine-tuning parameters.
He's later quoted as saying that
a common-sense interpretation
of the evidence suggests that
a super-intellect has monkeyed
with physics and chemistry
to make life possible.
[Music]
LUKE BARNES:
Think of it like this.
Suppose that I'm a detective
arriving on the scene of a crime.
I'm at a bank, and
there's been a heist, OK?
The safe is open,
all the money is gone,
and I say, "All right, let's
have a look at security footage.
And I'm watching
on the little screen,
and the burglars come in,
and they walk up to the safe,
and there is a 12-digit
code, and they walk up
and punch in the correct code.
Opens up, and off they go.
Here's two possible
explanations.
Maybe these are
really lucky robbers,
but they just guess the first
12-digit code that comes to mind,
and hey presto,
they take the money.
Here's another option.
It's an inside job.
Someone who already
knew the code told
the robbers what the code is.
Let's pause the video just as
the lead thief puts his finger up
in order to put the code in.
What would we expect
to happen according
to the first hypothesis,
the they got lucky?
Well, if they're just
guessing the code,
then we'd expect them
to put in the wrong code.
We can't really predict
what code you would put in,
but we can predict
with a high degree
of certainty you put
in the wrong one.
And so, our expectation
there that naturally forms
from that scenario doesn't
match with what actually happens.
On the other hand, if we
knew it was an inside job
and we stopped the video
just before they put in the code,
we would expect them
to put in the right code
and get into the vault.
STEPHEN MEYER: It's
possible by random means
that some process
would have stumbled
on exactly the parameters needed
to create a
life-friendly universe.
But our overwhelming
expectation,
if we consider the odds,
is that without guidance,
we would get a
life-unfriendly universe.
But that's not the kind
of universe we see.
Instead, we see the kind
of universe we would expect
if it had been
intentionally set up for life,
suggesting that it was intended.
Fine-tuning
implies a fine-tuner.
JAY RICHARDS: But there's
another type of fine-tuning.
And that's the fine-tuning
of the initial arrangement
of matter at the very
beginning of the universe.
If you thought the idea of a Big
Bang was one of order emerging
from chaos, get
that out of your mind.
It's exactly the opposite.
What we have is
an initial moment
of exquisite
precision and order.
LUKE BARNES: One of the
remarkable things about the universe we
see around us is there's a
direction, so to speak, of time.
This fact that
processes go one way
but not the other is captured
in a physical quantity called
entropy, which very roughly,
in a sort of hand-wavy way,
measures the amount
of disorder in a system.
BRIAN KEATING: The more chaotic,
the more random the
distribution, the higher the entropy.
The more ordered the
system, the lower the entropy.
You have a glass of coffee,
and you have a glass of milk.
It's highly ordered.
Then, you mix them together.
They're completely
disordered and random.
We see things happening
seemingly only in a way
that entropy increases.
LUKE BARNES: No one has
ever put a spoon into coffee
and stirred it and separated
the milk out from the coffee.
Never happened.
What's going on
with all of this?
DAVID SNOKE: Since entropy
is increasing continuously,
that means that if
we go into the past,
entropy had to be decreasing.
JAY RICHARDS: To allow
things to be this orderly now,
how orderly must the universe
have been at the beginning?
LUKE BARNES: This is where
a very interesting argument
from Roger Penrose comes in.
What Penrose worked out was, OK,
if we consider the
full set of possibilities
for the way you
could start a universe,
our sort of universe is an
extraordinarily small piece
of that set of possibilities.
STEPHEN MEYER: He has calculated
that initial entropy
fine-tuning as one chance
in 10 to the 10th power
raised again to the 123rd power.
It's called a
hyper-exponential number.
LUKE BARNES: What that's
telling us is there's something
remarkably special about
the start of our universe.
There has to be something
about the arrangement of the stuff,
whatever the stuff was,
very early in the universe,
which is not the typical way you
would expect a
universe to start.
STEPHEN MEYER: You could
understand this by analogy.
In the old days, when civil
engineers were building a tunnel
through a mountainside, they
would configure a charge just right
to make sure that the
blast removed the rock
where they wanted
it to be removed.
And very small adjustments
in the initial positioning
of those explosive charges
would make very big differences
in where the hole appeared
in the mountainside.
Analogously, that's what's
going on with the fine-tuning
of the initial entropy
of the universe.
You can just
think of it this way.
The amount of disorder is
so small that it's nearly perfect.
There's a famous passage in the
"General Scholium
to the Principia",
which is an epilogue
that Newton wrote in
one of the later editions
to his great work on
universal gravitation.
He's describing the beautiful
balance of the planets,
the sun, the comets that
create this stable order.
In this passage, he says, "This
most beautiful system of sun,
planets, and comets could
only proceed from the counsel
and dominion of an
intelligent and powerful being.
JAY RICHARDS: Even in
a highly fine-tuned universe,
you still need a heck
of a lot more to go right
in a planetary environment in
order for not only complex life
in general, but human
life in particular to exist.
BIJAN NEMATI: Our solar
system, especially in view
of what we now have learned
about other solar systems,
really ends up looking
quite remarkable.
Our solar system has
terrestrial planets...
in neat, circular orbits.
And then, you get
to these gas giants...
that are also in
neat, circular orbits.
JAY RICHARDS:
They serve as guards.
They serve as sentinels for
our solar system so that they,
very often, take hits for
us from these comets...
that if they were not
there would find their way
into our neighborhood and
have an unfortunate tendency
to sterilize life on our planet.
BIJAN NEMATI: For example,
the comet Shoemaker-Levy,
it ended up in Jupiter.
JAY RICHARDS:
Jupiter and Saturn,
these planets that for a long
time were associated with Greek
and Roman gods, actually
do play a role in protecting us.
BIJAN NEMATI: And
all of this around a stable,
energetic, metal-rich star.
Just these makes the
solar system pretty unique.
Beyond that, our own planet
within the solar system is situated
in what we call the
circumstellar habitable zone.
BRIAN MILLER: If we were
too close, radiation would kill us.
If we were too far away, our
planet wouldn't have the right
materials to support
life in the way it does.
It's the right tilt
and has the right
rotation rate so that
we have seasons.
JAY RICHARDS: You
need a large moon in order
to stabilize the
planet's tilt on its axis.
BRIAN MILLER: In
addition, what the moon
does is that recirculates
the ocean through the tides
to allow oxygen to
get to deeper levels.
JAY RICHARDS: You need
the right kind of atmosphere,
the right thickness
of the atmosphere,
the right mass for the planet
in order to hold the right kind
of atmosphere in
place, and then you
need the right kind of geology.
BRIAN MILLER: We have a molten
magma in the Earth that rotates.
That creates a magnetic shield.
That has an
important consequence
because the magnetic field
of the Earth is our blanket,
our shield against dangerous,
deadly cosmic radiation
that would otherwise
modify our DNA,
preventing us from
perhaps ever coming to exist.
JAY RICHARDS:
It's not at all obvious
that that necessarily
has to happen.
In some ways, Mars
is the perfect example
of how precisely things
have to be fine-tuned
at a local level in
order to have life.
Remember, Mars is the
most Earth-like planet known
in the universe.
Mars is in an otherwise
habitable solar system.
It's very close to the
Goldilocks zone in its orbit.
It's close to the
same mass as Earth.
It has many of the
same materials.
And yet a few things
didn't go quite right.
And as a result,
it's lifeless while
Earth is suffused with life.
It's a remarkably
exquisite system of design
in which all of these pieces
have to work together in order
to produce a small abode on
the surface of a single small planet
where life can exist.
[Music]
TIMOTHY MCGREW: One
of the most curious attempts
to get a round
inference to design
in the universe is to push
it all off onto the concept
of a multiverse.
STEPHEN MEYER: The idea
that there are billions and billions
and billions of other
universes out there,
which had different combinations
of fundamental
physical parameters
and different
initial conditions,
and we just happen
to be in the lucky one.
JAY RICHARDS:
Given enough universes,
presumably at least one or a
few of those universes will exist
in such a way that
complex life can exist.
LUKE BARNES: The nice thing
about the multiverse explanation
is it shows that this
fine-tuning business seems
to be pointing beyond
the universe as we know it.
There's got to be
something else.
There's got to be a
bigger story out there.
BIJAN NEMATI: The multiverse,
as an appeal to a materialistic,
naturalistic explanation, loses
any of its original attraction.
Anything that's outside
of this nature is essentially,
manifestly supernatural.
And so, we're appealing
to something supernatural
to avoid the supernatural.
STEPHEN MEYER: Leonard Susskind,
a prominent physicist
at Stanford, says, "Look,
if we don't posit this kind
of a multiverse model,
we're hard pressed to
answer the arguments
of the ID proponents as to
how to explain the fine-tuning.
But there's a problem with that.
For the multiverse
explanation to work,
there must be some kind of
universe-generating mechanism,
a kind of common cause of
all the universes so that we
can portray each of the
universes as the outcome
of a kind of cosmic lottery.
And these
universe-generating machines,
where they're constantly
generating universes
with slightly different
parameters and laws of physics.
And this is the sleeper.
All the speculative
cosmological models
that have been invoked to
explain how you might generate new
universes, whether those
models are based on string theory
or something called
inflationary cosmology,
all those models
require exquisite,
prior fine-tuning in the
universe-generating mechanism
that is proposed.
JAY RICHARDS: If a
monkey clicked on a typewriter
for an infinite amount
of time, in theory
it would eventually
type out Hamlet.
But if the typewriter
didn't have the letter H,
then it wouldn't stand a chance.
Just as the parts of the
typewriter need to be fine-tuned
to include all the
letters of the alphabet
to make possible typing
different words and sentences,
so too, all proposed
universe-generating mechanisms
would require fine-tuning
to make it possible
to generate different
universes with different
initial conditions
and laws of physics.
STEPHEN MEYER: The
multiverse doesn't actually get rid
of the fine-tuning or explain
the origin of the fine-tuning.
You really just push the fine-tuning
problem back one generation
without solving it.
And yet we know of one cause
that does produce fine-tuning
in our experience.
Whenever we see
what we call fine-tuning,
we always trace that type
of a system back to a mind,
whether we're talking about
a finely tuned French recipe,
a finely tuned internal
combustion engine,
or a finely tuned radio dial.
LUKE BARNES: The ability
to look at a set of possibilities
and to choose an outcome is
almost by definition intentional.
It's something that
a mind does that sort
of mindless matter doesn't do.
STEPHEN MEYER: So, given
that the multiverse doesn't actually
provide an ultimate
explanation for fine-tuning,
the best explanation
for fine-tuning
is still intelligent design.
PETER THIEL: The multiverse
is like this gateway drug.
Once you're lost
in the multiverse,
you might as well
be in a simulation.
BRIAN MILLER: Some
people have argued
that our universe is
actually a simulation,
that there's perhaps
some extraordinary
computer that's
running a simulation.
We're part of that simulation.
DAVID BERLINSKI:
The simulation theory?
That belongs in the movies.
Come on, that's ridiculous.
We're not living
in a simulation.
There's no evidence of
a discrete film being run
in the background.
This is not what
I would consider,
or what you would consider,
sophisticated discourse.
Has nothing to do with science.
PETER THIEL: I think what all
these things have in common,
the simulation
theory, the multiverse,
you can't trust what's
in front of your eyes.
DAVID BERLINSKI: The
multiverse, simulation hypothesis,
we're living in a computer,
all those sorts of things,
there's nothing
wrong with any of this.
It just shouldn't be
mistaken for anything serious.
STEPHEN MEYER: We're not
only seeing evidence of design
at the macroscopic
scale of the entire universe
and in the fundamental
parameters of physics
that affect the
whole of the cosmos,
but we're now seeing
design in the microcosm
and the tiny recesses
of living cells.
[Music]
MICHAEL BEHE: Back in
the middle of the 19th century,
the cell was thought to
be a little piece of jelly,
so it seemed to
be pretty simple.
STEPHEN MEYER:
Thomas Henry Huxley said
that the living
cell is a simple,
homogenous globule of
undifferentiated protoplasm.
It's just a simple
enclosure with some Jello
or goo on the inside.
MICHAEL BEHE: But
modern science has shown
that the cell is an enormously
complex nanoscale factory.
And when you study biochemistry,
you come across machinery,
literally molecular machines.
One of my favorites is
the bacterial flagellum.
It is quite literally
an outboard motor
that bacteria use to swim.
It's got a propeller, this
long whip-like strand.
And the propeller is
attached to the drive shaft
by something called the U-joint,
which is attached to the motor.
And the motor is hooked
onto the cell membrane
by something called the stator.
The stator requires
bushing to push up
through the
membrane of the cell.
And altogether, there are
30 parts that are needed for it.
STEPHEN MEYER: In some
species, the flagellar motor is rotating
at 100,000 rpm, and
it can change direction
in a quarter of a turn.
It's an absolutely amazing piece
of high technology
in a low form of life.
MICHAEL BEHE: Another great
example of a molecular machine
in the cell is the ATP synthase.
STEPHEN MEYER:
It's a true turbine
that generates energy
for use in the cell
in much the same way a turbine
in a dam generates electricity.
MICHAEL BEHE: It's an engine
with a barrel-shaped rotor made
of protein subunits.
As the rotor spins, it turns
a drive shaft with a specially
placed bump that opens a
specifically shaped compartment.
Once opened, this compartment
receives two molecules
and combines them to form
another energy-rich molecule
called ATP, the
power plant for the cell.
SPEAKER: And
there's a whole host
of molecular
machines inside cells.
Turbines, rotary
engines, sliding clamps,
machines for copying
digital information.
We've got kinesin
motors that are running
along that are basically UPS
trucks that are delivering things.
Motor proteins that walk step
by step as they tow vesicles
of material along tracks
made of other special proteins.
MICHAEL BEHE:
Darwin knew nothing
of these sophisticated multi-part
machines in the 19th century,
and his theory is not
equipped to explain them.
Darwin himself said, "If
it could be demonstrated
that there was any system
that could not be put together
by numerous, successive,
slight modifications,
my theory would
absolutely break down.
In the bacterial
flagellar motor,
if you take away
the drive shaft or
if you take away the propeller
or the U-joint, it's broken.
If any key component of
the flagellar motor is removed,
it stops functioning.
This means simpler evolutionary
precursors wouldn't have worked.
So, natural selection
wouldn't have preserved them,
halting evolution
before the fully
functional motor could develop.
On the flip side, when you
see a system that's put together
with a number of components
matched to each other,
you recognize that's
the product of a mind.
STEPHEN MEYER: The
Darwinian mechanism of mutation
and selection, which has
long been posed as a kind
of designer-substitute mechanism,
cannot build those systems.
Then, perhaps they look designed
because they really
were designed.
But there's an even
deeper consideration
that points to intelligent
design and biology.
SPEAKER: One of the
most brilliant theories
of modern science was formulated
by an American, JD Watson,
and an Englishman, FHC Crick.
FRANCIS CRICK:
As soon as we met,
we found that although we
had very different backgrounds,
we had a lot of
things in common.
STEPHEN MEYER: Francis
Crick was a PhD student
at Cambridge University,
working in physics,
not even in biology.
He teamed up with a 23-year-old
American named James Watson.
JAMES WATSON:
Neither of us were trained
for what really
interested us now.
We both wanted to find the gene.
We weren't organic chemists.
We weren't anything else.
STEPHEN MEYER: And they
began to work on what was at the time
deemed to be kind of the
holy grail of biological research.
By the early 1950s, many
scientists were suspecting
that DNA had something
to do with the transmission
of hereditary information,
but didn't know
what the structure of DNA was.
And so, Watson and Crick
began a kind of odyssey
to try to crack this problem.
And by the spring of 1953, they
had actually formulated a model
that elucidated the structure
of the DNA molecule.
They showed that it had a
beautiful double helix structure.
And along the spine
of the molecule,
on the interior, there were
chemical subunits, four of them.
SPEAKER: One, two, three, four.
STEPHEN MEYER: Now represented
with the letters A, T, G, and C.
SPEAKER: A would pair with T.
And then, you have
two other genetic letters.
C would pair up with G.
So, you had the double helix.
So, the discovery of
the structure suggested
that one strand of DNA had
a complementary strand...
that could in turn function
as a template for rebuilding
or copying the original strand.
And this suggested
a duplication process.
[Music]
FRANCIS CRICK: I don't think
I worried too much about what
the structure might tell us.
I just thought we
ought to find out.
And when we had
found out, of course,
it struck us with a
tremendous impact,
just how beautiful
and exciting it was.
Because there before
us was the answer to one
of the fundamental problems in
biology, how do genes replicate?
And it was very simple,
and you couldn't miss it.
We used to occasionally
just, Jim and I,
just sit and look
at the molecule
and think how beautiful it was.
STEPHEN MEYER: Interestingly,
Crick had been a code breaker
in World War II.
In 1957, he then formulates
something called the sequence
hypothesis, which in many
ways, I think is a more significant
achievement than even the
original elucidation of the structure.
Crick realizes that the four
chemical subunits along the spine
of the double helix, on
the interior of the helix,
are functioning like alphabetic
characters in a written text.
That is to say that it's
not the physical properties
of these subunits.
It's not their molecular
weight or their shape,
but rather it's their
arrangement in accord
with an independent
symbol convention
that molecular biologists
eventually elucidate,
called the genetic code,
that gives them their ability
to transmit information.
RICHARD STERNBERG:
What also happened
around the same time
was Gamow had shown
that you could take those
letters, As, Cs, Gs, and Ts,
and you could represent them
in binary code, zeros and ones.
So, it had an uncanny
resemblance to a digital bit string.
It looked very much like
an information carrier.
But for what?
DOUGLAS AXE: Crick
anticipated this, too.
He thought these bases
were carrying information
for the construction
of proteins.
A cell is filled with proteins
that are performing the tasks
inside the cells.
STEPHEN MEYER: They're
like the tools in a toolbox.
You have a hammer,
a wrench, a saw.
Each of those different tools
perform different functions
because of the different
three-dimensional shapes
that they have.
The same thing
is true of proteins.
Proteins catalyze
reactions at super-fast rates,
those are called
enzyme proteins,
they build the structural
parts of molecular machines,
and they also help to process
information on the DNA molecule.
So, proteins do all
these important jobs,
but they do those jobs
because they have very specific
three-dimensional
conformations or shapes.
Now that raises the question,
how do they acquire those shapes?
Well, they get those
precise shapes if and only
if the amino acid subunits,
the constituent parts out
of which they're made, are
arranged in very specific ways.
BRIAN MILLER: And there's
20 amino acids in the same way
that you've got 26
letters in the alphabet.
So, the order of the amino acids
in a protein is like the
letters in a sentence.
They have to be in
the right order to work.
STEPHEN MEYER: But
what causes the amino acids
to get arranged properly
so that they will fold properly
into the right shapes?
And the answer to
that was the discovery
that the DNA molecule
contains information...
instructions for
directing the construction
of those protein molecules
that do all those important jobs.
DOUGLAS AXE: In
those stretches of DNA,
you have very particular
sequences of A's, C's, G's,
and T's that tell cells how to
make amino acid sequences
that fold and become
functional proteins.
And molecular biologists now
have a very good understanding
of how the information in
DNA directs the process
of protein synthesis.
First, the cell uses a large protein
machine called a polymerase
to make a copy of the
information on the DNA.
The polymerase separates
the DNA into two strands.
One strand serves as
a template for creating
a complementary RNA copy.
The resulting copy, called a
messenger RNA transcript,
detaches and then
approaches and passes
through the nuclear
pore complex.
Then the transcript with the
genetic assembly instructions
arrives at a two-part chemical
factory called the ribosome,
the site of protein synthesis.
As the messenger RNA transcript
passes through the ribosome,
a mechanical assembly line
builds a specifically sequenced chain
of amino acids using the
instructions on the transcript.
These amino acids are
transported to the ribosome
by molecules
called transfer RNAs,
which link specific
sequences of bases
to corresponding amino acids
in accord with the genetic code.
The sequential arrangement
of the amino acids determines
whether the chain will
fold into a functional protein,
and if so, which type.
Once the chain is folded
into a functional protein,
it is ready to perform
its job inside the cell.
That's in fact what's
going on inside cells.
STEPHEN MEYER:
The discovery meant
that you had to explain
not just the origin
of the cell viewed as a
kind of amorphous blob,
but rather as an enclosure
of a sophisticated information
storage device and a sophisticated
information transmission
and processing system.
SPEAKER: They
inherited all the traits
of the cell they came from.
And this same sort of process
goes on in all living creatures.
JAMES TOUR: It's not just a
bunch of protoplasm anymore.
The cell is utterly amazing.
How can you look
at this and not think,
how in the world did this start?
Because molecules don't come
together to do that on their own.
SPEAKER: OK.
But what I'd like to know is,
where'd the first cell come from?
SPEAKER: In a way, you're
asking where life itself began.
We don't know that.
STEPHEN MEYER: I first
encountered the mystery about the origin
of the first life at a
conference that I attended
when I was a young scientist.
There was a discussion
between scientists
who were committed to the
standard chemical evolutionary model
for how life arose
from simpler chemicals
in the so-called prebiotic soup,
and other scientists who
had become skeptical
of the standard model.
One of those scientists on the
panel was a man named Dean
Kenyon, a biophysicist with a
Stanford PhD, he'd worked at NASA,
and he'd written the best-
selling advanced graduate-level
textbook on how life first arose
from these prebiotic chemicals,
"Biochemical Predestination".
But leading up
to the conference,
he began to doubt
his own theory.
DEAN KENYON: My own
research work on origin
of first life was one
of the main factors
that led me to begin to
question this general viewpoint
about origins.
As time went on there, I
began to be more aware
of some of the
problems involved.
Actually, some students brought
me a book in which my own work,
"Biochemical
Predestination", was critiqued.
I thought I could easily refute
this refutation of my work.
And so, I said, "Well,
I'll take the summer
to look at this material.
It looks very interesting.
Here, the question of
origin of genetic information
looked increasingly
problematical.
By the time the summer
was over, I had decided
that I could not
refute this criticism.
Things added up to the time
for a critical reexamination.
STEPHEN MEYER: And his
old idea was that the subunits
of the large information-
carrying biological molecules,
like the proteins and the
DNA, would have self-organized
because of forces of attraction
between the constituent parts
of those large molecules.
In chemistry, sodium and
chloride combine to form salt.
NA has a plus charge.
Cl has a minus charge.
They attract, and they form a
nicely ordered crystal lattice.
However, as he got
deeply into the chemistry,
Kenyon realized that DNA
wasn't that kind of molecule.
DEAN KENYON: In the DNA
molecule, we have A, T, C, and G.
And the specific order in which
they occur does not depend
on the chemical
binding affinities
between or among
those various bases.
STEPHEN MEYER: I used
to use a visual illustration
with my students to
get the idea across.
I would use a little
magnetic chalkboard
and stick letters to
it, magnetic letters.
In the case of the magnetic
letters in the chalkboard,
there were magnetic
forces that explained
why the letters stuck
to the backboard.
But those forces didn't explain
the arrangement of the letters
that spelled out some message.
Instead, that was explained
only by an exogenous source
of information, namely, I
had arranged the letters.
So, the magnetic forces
explain why the letters stuck
to the backboard, but
not their arrangement.
And in the same way, there
are forces of attraction in DNA
that explain why the bases stick
to the sugar phosphate backbone,
but not forces that explain the
arrangement of the characters.
DEAN KENYON: And so,
my doubt just reached, I guess,
for me, the intellectual
breaking point.
If one could get at the
origin of the messages,
the encoded messages
within the living machinery,
then you would really be on to
something far more intellectually
satisfying than this
chemical evolution theory.
STEPHEN MEYER:
And at this conference,
he publicly repudiated
his own theory.
DEAN KENYON: I don't think
you have to jump off the end
of the rational world
to move in the direction
of a frankly theistic
understanding of the origin of life.
JAMES TOUR: Since
Kenyon announced his doubts,
there have been
many other attempts
to simulate how the molecular
compounds necessary for life,
like proteins and DNA, or even
simpler chemical building blocks
of those compounds,
might have evolved
under realistic prebiotic
conditions on the early Earth.
But those laboratory simulations
invariably require a cheat.
Human interference.
When you do organic synthesis,
when you make a compound,
you need to generally
start with pure compounds
because the
impurities cause a lot
of deleterious
reactions to occur.
Once you've made your
compound, you've got to stop it
at exactly the right time
before it decomposes,
more human interference.
Now, what you have to
do is you have to separate it
from all the other
compounds that formed.
Separations are
really hard, really hard.
Huge human involvement.
Now you have to identify it.
You have to know what
it is and characterize it
in order to bring it
on to the next step.
How do you go on?
And the poor early
Earth was mindless.
It didn't know what it
was supposed to make.
Molecules have never been
known to move toward life.
Never, ever, ever.
Molecules don't evolve
toward life. They don't.
STEPHEN MEYER: Attempts to
simulate how life could have arisen
from a prebiotic environment
involve an element
that never gets acknowledged.
And that element
is intelligence.
JAMES TOUR: We need to
address more fundamental questions.
What's the origin of the code?
JOHN LENNOX: And I know
that philosophers of science
and scientists find it
difficult to really grasp what
information is because
it has a couple of levels.
STEPHEN MEYER: In
classical information theory,
there isn't a way to
distinguish a series of symbols
that are merely improbable
from a series of symbols
that are improbable
and also functional.
[Music]
The difference between the
monkey typing out random gibberish,
which would be a highly complex
arrangement of characters,
but not one that
conveys any meaning
or performs a
communication function,
and, say, a line
of poetry, like,
"Time and tide wait for no man.
If you compare those two
symbol strings side by side,
you'll see that they both
are highly improbable.
But something is
present in the one string
of characters that's
not present in the other.
And that's what
we call specificity.
Or sometimes it's called
specified complexity.
The arrangement of
the characters is specific
to perform a function.
DOUGLAS AXE: Now,
what's interesting in life,
you have things that
are not just complex and
that there's lots of parts, it's
that they're arranged
in a particular way
that allows them to do
something remarkable.
And that is the thing
that makes the complexity
not just ordinary complexity...
but specified complexity.
And DNA is a great example
of specified complexity.
JOHN LENNOX: And when we're
talking about information contained
in the genetic code
in DNA, we are talking
about a level of
semantic information.
Because in DNA, the sequence
is coding for something.
In that sense, it has meaning.
STEPHEN MEYER: A
scientist named Henry Quastler,
who was one of the pioneers in
applying the information sciences
to analyzing the information
that's stored in DNA, he says,
"The creation of new
information is habitually associated
with conscious activity.
JOHN LENNOX: We
associate information
with a rational
intelligence behind it.
That's true at all levels.
And as we grow up, we learn.
We read books.
We see words.
We learn language.
And everything
points towards the fact
that this does not
arise spontaneously.
STEPHEN MEYER: Bill Gates
says that DNA is like a software
program, only much more
complex than any we've ever created.
What do we know about
the origin of software?
It always comes from a
mind, from a programmer.
In fact, whenever
we see information
and we trace it
back to its source,
whether we're looking at
a section of software code
or a hieroglyphic inscription
or a paragraph in a book
or information embedded
in a radio signal,
if we trace the information
back to its ultimate source,
we always come to a
mind, not a material process.
So, the discovery of
information in a digital
or alphabetic form at
the foundation of life
in molecules like DNA and
RNA is a powerful indicator
of a designing intelligence
playing a role in the origin
of that information, and
therefore in the origin of life itself.
JOHN LENNOX: That's
where all our experience
of the universe points.
We see the word exit, immediately
we infer to a mind behind it.
A Chinese archaeologist sees
a couple of strokes on the wall
of a cave and says,
"Human intelligence.
And I say, "Don't be
so stupid, two strokes.
Ah, yes, but they are the
Chinese symbol for a human being.
And so, there must have
been an intelligence behind that.
WILLIAM DEMBSKI:
We look inside the cell.
We have a whole
theory which describes
these controlled
transfers of information.
And the only examples
we know of this sort
of controlled transfers
of information is systems
that intelligent agents
have developed.
BRENDAN DIXON: When we look
at how information gets processed
in the cell, you get the string
of information being ejected out
of the nucleus, but
that string of information
on its own does not give
you, in any way, shape,
or form, the product we
need to get work done.
It has to be picked up
by another mechanism
that knows how
to read that string
and convert what it sees there
into what is needed over here
to get the work done that
that thing over there needs.
That gave me pause
and made me go,
"Wait a minute, I've
seen this before.
We do this all the time
in computer science.
Some of the ideas that
we were seeing in biology
that resonated with me were
such notions as error correction.
RICHARD GUNASEKERA:
By any chance,
if there's something
that is done incorrectly,
there's even another
protein that's able
to proofread and fix this.
[Music]
STEPHEN MEYER: The
existing code can be recoded,
it can be rewritten, it
can be edited on the fly.
The information
processing system
in the cell uses design
strategies reminiscent
of high-tech digital computing
with one key difference.
The design logic in the
cell exceeds anything
human engineers have produced.
BRENDAN DIXON:
We know now that DNA,
you can read it
once in one direction.
You can read it in
that direction again,
but if you start here, you get a
different gene expressed than
if you start here, even
though those overlap.
WALTER MYERS: You can read
the same segment of DNA forward
to get one protein and
backwards to get another.
BRENDAN DIXON: We've never
been able to yet make anything like
that happen with computers.
WALTER MYERS: The
code in the computer program,
it only does one thing.
You can't read
it back and forth.
You read it one way,
and that's what it does.
That's all it does.
ROBERT SHELDON: In DNA, we
have codes within codes within codes.
They're interdigitated.
They are multi-level,
overlapping.
We're dealing with
a system that exhibits
a manifold complex design.
BRENDAN DIXON: The
level of complexity that we see,
I stand back and go,
"Wow, that's really elegant.
DAVID BERLINSKI: As
soon as the immense miracle
of the cell is exposed,
it's an ongoing process.
We're far from a complete
description of even the simplest cell.
We see these are
not random structures.
They haven't been
cobbled together.
They haven't been
pieced together
by some sort of
stochastic mechanism.
They're exquisitely and
ingeniously put together
in a certain way, and if
they're not put together
in that certain way,
they don't work.
STEPHEN MEYER:
Let's take a look at what's
around us on planet Earth.
Do we see what looks like
the bare bones, minimalistic,
cobbling together
something by accident
for the sheer purpose
of ruthless survival?
Or do we see something
much more extravagant,
beautiful in its expression?
This is actually a big problem
in evolutionary biology.
It's called the problem
of gratuitous beauty.
Many organisms have beauty
beyond anything that's relevant
for their survival.
ROBERT SHELDON: This
deserves an explanation.
Many people have tried to
give a utilitarian explanation.
Oh, yeah, well, it's
some adaptive reason,
or there's some
sexual selection.
But I think the answer
requires something more.
The one who realized
the answer requires
something more was Aristotle.
He said, "No, it's the result of
some kind of rational structure
to the universe, dare
say even an intelligence.
So, the exuberance
is one that appears
to be designed to
elicit our attention.
[Music]
It's one that seems to
be reaching out to us.
Now, here I am waxing.
It would seem to be mystical.
DAVID BERLINSKI: I must
say that these are observations,
they're appeals to intuition,
but not to be dismissed
for that reason.
Not to be dismissed.
There's something
interesting going on.
STEPHEN MEYER:
There's something in science
called the beauty principle
that says true theories often
convey a mathematical beauty
or structural harmony.
Upon looking at their
model of the DNA molecule,
Francis Crick was
quoted as saying,
"It's so beautiful,
it's got to be right.
ROBERT SHELDON: You find
that all the time in the literature
today, people saying, "Beauty
is truth, and truth beauty.
If we find a set of equations
that is just beautiful,
then it must be true.
SPEAKER: Sometimes the
path toward the truth leads
through beauty.
And that is an important window.
We need to be
willing to open that.
JAY RICHARDS: There's really
two fundamental hypotheses
about reality.
One is that the story
of everything is purpose,
that behind everything
there is an author.
The alternative is
that none of that is true.
We're the result of blind
and impersonal processes
that did not have us in mind.
So, ultimately, these questions
about the origin of matter,
the origin of life, the
origin of the universe,
come down to that fundamental
question and those two options.
TIMOTHY MCGREW: Richard
Dawkins has very famously said
that the universe
has, at bottom,
just those properties one would
expect if there were no design,
no purpose, only blind,
pitiless indifference.
That's an interesting claim.
What I find interesting about
it is that it's the right kind
of claim to be trying to make.
We want to take our
metaphysical hypotheses
and see what consequences
they have, what they point
to, how well they
account for various things.
One of the most important
questions any of us can ask,
when should I change my mind?
Or to put it a
little bit differently,
if I am wrong, how
am I going to find out?
Consider you're walking
through the woods.
In a stretch of woods that you
had thought totally uninhabited,
you stumble upon an
old, sort of rundown cabin.
Looking at it, you
think it's just a relic left
over from a long time ago.
Then you go up to the door,
and you push it, and it opens.
And as you step inside,
you see a cup of tea,
still hot, steeping
on a little table
in the middle of the cabin.
When Richard Dawkins says the
universe has exactly the features
that we would expect if there
were at bottom no reason,
no purpose, what he's saying
is that there should be no signs
of intelligence in the universe.
Where Dawkins goes wrong
is that there actually is a cup
of tea on the table.
JAY RICHARDS: And so much more.
Recent scientific discoveries
point in the direction
that none of the leading
scientific materialists expected.
STEPHEN MEYER: No one
expected that the physical universe
of matter, space,
time, and energy
would have a definite beginning.
No one expected that the
universe would be finely tuned
against all odds to
make life possible.
Dawkins himself has confessed
to being knocked sideways
with wonder at the
miniaturized intricacy
of the data processing
machinery inside the cell.
We're not living in a vast,
meaningless universe.
From the forces holding the
cosmos together to the instructions
in the DNA in our own
bodies, we see evidence
that everything was
intended for a purpose,
that the story of
everything is not blind,
pitiless indifference, but the
unfolding of a grand design
that all of us are part of.
And surprisingly, perhaps, it is
science that has revealed this.
[Music]
ALLAN SANDAGE: Here
is evidence for what can only
be described as a
supernatural event.
DEAN KENYON: I don't think
you have to jump off the end
of the rational world
to move in the direction
of a frankly theistic
understanding of the origin of life.
ROBERT JASTROW: Is there
something else that we can imagine
that would lay these
questions to rest?
I can't see it.
FRED HOYLE: The question
then was what does one do about it?
SPEAKER: We might
rethink the story of everything.
The universe does not
look like it's been left to itself.
It bears everywhere the
fingerprints of its creator.
[Music]