0:00 - Introduction
0:17 - Science vs. Christianity
7:54 - Revisiting COVID and Vaccines
13:07 - Empirical Evidence vs. Hypothesis
20:59 - Hidden Data and Methodology
21:50 - Replication Crisis in Science
28:09 - Theory vs. Simulation
32:20 - Projections and Models
43:33 - Science and Christianity
56:06 - Skepticism and Faith
In this podcast episode, we tackle the intriguing debate surrounding science versus religion, with a specific focus on science intertwined with Christianity. By examining real-world examples like global warming and the COVID vaccine, we aim to navigate through these complex topics while steering clear of controversy. Our goal is to present grounded facts on these issues without delving into lengthy discussions or intricate mathematical analyses.
We take a closer look at how past predictions regarding climate change have not fully come to fruition and the challenges faced by the claims of effectiveness and safety surrounding the COVID vaccine, especially with the introduction of boosters and uncertainties about long-term effects. We strive to strike a balance by acknowledging the nuances and complexities revolving around these topics, urging our listeners to consider the presented empirical evidence and facts from a neutral standpoint.
Transitioning to a broader discussion on science and Christianity, we ponder the implications of empirical evidence versus theoretical assumptions. By drawing parallels to scenarios where tribes believe in particular remedies despite scientific opposition, we underscore the significance of empirical evidence over mere hypotheses. We underscore the importance of revisiting and reassessing scientific models in light of contradictory evidence, highlighting the essence of empirical truth in scientific dialogues.
Further delving into the intricacies of scientific methodology, we elaborate on the process of testing hypotheses, validating empirical evidence, and adapting theories based on factual observations. We emphasize the necessity of acknowledging errors and refining models with new data, distinguishing between genuine scientific inquiry and rigid adherence to outdated concepts. By framing the discussion around tangible evidence and logical consistency, we aim to foster a critical understanding of the interaction between science and empirical reality.
As we navigate through these intricate topics, our aim is to prompt listeners to think critically about the convergence of science and belief systems, encouraging reflections on how empirical evidence shapes our perceptions of the world. By unraveling these intellectually stimulating dilemmas, we invite our audience to contemplate the evolving landscape of scientific inquiry and the enduring quest for verifiable truths in a space where facts and hypotheses intersect.
[0:00] So, good morning, everybody. This is just a solo show, some thoughts I've been having recently. I've been really fascinated with the question or concept of science versus religion. In this case, I'll talk about sort of science versus Christianity.
[0:18] So, I'm going to use two concepts here to talk about this. So the two concepts are global warming and the COVID vaccine.
[0:33] Now, this is not controversial stuff because I'm not going to talk about long-term stuff. I'm not going to talk about the math. I'm simply going to talk about the facts on the ground so far. So, of course, as you know, climate change was sort of introduced in the 1970s as global cooling. Then it switched to global warming. And when neither of those materialized, it became climate change. Climate and change are kind of synonyms because climate is sort of defined as that which isn't changing. So the predictions from my youth regarding climate change have failed to materialize. Materialize, you know, like all the ice caps gone by 2020 and so on and cities underwater and so on. So the predictions, whatever you think of the underlying science and facts and reason and data, the predictions have failed to materialize. With regards to the COVID vaccine, the effectiveness did not materialize insofar as, you know, we need these constant boosters, as the effectiveness wanes and so on. The safety, of course, remains a significant and important question.
[1:47] But, I mean, we now know, of course, that the vaccine was not tested for transmission. And by its very nature, a vaccine that was developed in a very short period and deployed in a very short period cannot, I mean, this is just logic 101, right? Something which which has developed quickly and tested really over a couple of months, that the long-term effects simply cannot be known. But it's novel technology. The long-term effects simply could not be known. So the claim that the vaccines were safe, if it had turned out to be completely true, let's say the vaccines didn't harm anyone ever.
[2:29] The claims of safety were not, I mean, just by definition, they could not be verified with empirical data because there was no long-term safety data. You can't claim that novel technology in particular is safe in the long term because you simply don't have the long-term data. And there do seem to be some vaccine injuries and there is some alarming data. So, safe and effective as absolutes did not turn out to be an accurate description of the vaccines. And I think it's hard to argue otherwise. wise. Now, of course, there were people who said that they were far more dangerous than they turned out to be, whether it turns out, like Peter McCullough says, Dr. McCullough, that it's kind of like a batch issue and so on.
[3:23] And there were some people, of course, who said that the vaccines would kill everyone within a couple of years who took it. And that's, of course, not the case either. So the alarmists were wrong. And the people who said, you know, they're perfectly safe safe, we're wrong, and whatever the truth is somewhere in between, it's obviously hard to tease out from the data, but there are some problems for sure. I think the New York Times just did a whole article on vaccine injuries, and even Chris Cuomo, the broadcaster, has admitted to being vaccine injured after he interviewed, it was a nurse who also said he was vaccine injured. So, like, the safe and effective thing has not turned out to be as absolute. I think we can all agree on that. It has not turned out to be as absolute. And now that very few people are taking the boosters and COVID is not as big a deal as it was, and that's, you know, the general way that these things go is that viruses that start off more dangerous end up.
[4:30] Becoming less dangerous. And I mean, the ideal thing for a virus, of course, is to have a certain period where you don't show any symptoms, but you're transmitting, and then have you still sort of staggering around transmitting. A virus that puts you straight in bed right away tends to not replicate as much, so it tends to mutate to the point where it's less dangerous and has fewer or lower symptoms. That was sort of predicted. Whether that's played out, it seems to. I mean, I certainly believe that Alpha was a nasty virus and the latest versions don't seem to be quite as virulent. So that's sort of worked out. So people aren't really taking too many boosters. And according to the data that I've read, I'm no expert, but my understanding is that that if people took their last shots a year or two ago.
[5:25] Even if it was like two shots plus a booster, that the effectiveness has diminished significantly. So people are much less protected now based upon how the quality of the vaccine degrades. And yet COVID-19 is not running rampant through the population. Everybody seems to have kind of moved on. And it has become, it seems to be in general, it's viewed as somewhere between the cold and flu. So even though people are relatively unprotected, if they haven't taken their boosters, and it seems like not many people have, like all the way up to the current.
[6:04] So people are relatively unprotected. And COVID has mutated to something obviously less virulent, it seems to me, than alpha, which I admit was a pretty nasty bug. And so it's just joined the pantheon of the what 200 colds and whatever however many flus there are kicking around and that's uh how it's sort of played out which is not what we were told right, we were told that the vaccine would stop transmission and stop you getting covid and And these things were not tested for and certainly not as accurate as was claimed. I think everyone can accept that. I'm fairly agnostic on the whole thing because I'm far from an expert, but I think people would say that the story that everybody was going to die who was unvaccinated, what was that famous White House thing? You face a winter of severe illness and death. You were overwhelming the emergency wards. That didn't really seem to be, I mean, that didn't really turn out to be the case.
[7:20] So the idea that the only way for society to survive with COVID was to take these two perfectly safe shots has not turned out to be really very true. I mean, I don't think that's too controversial a statement. I'm really trying to find a middle ground here. So forgive me if I'm going too far one way or the other, but I just want to get a sort of basic agreement, because the purpose of this is not to talk about COVID, but rather to talk about the relationship between science and religion.
[7:54] So if you're relatively comfortable with the statement that the safe and effective and the only way that we can live with COVID is.
[8:05] The vaccine, and that the people who were unvaccinated were going to get severely sick and die, well, that really hasn't turned out to be the case. And again, I don't want to sort of adjudicate the moral, mental, and media horrors of the COVID era, but what I do want to do is talk about science as a whole, because I find the relationship between science and Christianity absolutely fascinating. So, for instance, if a scientist says that some particularly naturally occurring substance, right, let's say a specific form of honey, right, so some specific form of honey, and he says this should not help with any particular illness, right, it has no medicinal properties, it shouldn't help with any particular illness. And then there's some local tribe, and I apologize for diminishing Christianity, I don't mean to, I'm just saying let's start with something I think we can all agree on, because I'm trying to bridge the aisle between the science secularists and sort of the Christians. So let's say there's a sort of specialized form of honey that the scientist says has no medicinal purposes, and the local tribes tribespeople believe that it does.
[9:33] So the scientists have gone through the process, say, no, this shouldn't really have any medicinal properties, so it won't help you with any particular illness. It's just, you know, sweet tasting honey. But the local tribespeople, we can say pygmies or whatever superstitious group you want to think of, which is not to say Christians are superstitious, that's a whole different thing. But the local tribespeople, people, they say this is really good for treating a sore throat.
[10:01] So you have the theory from science, and then you have an evolved belief from the locals. Now, the evolved belief from the locals is based on empiricism, and the rejection by the scientists of any medicinal properties in the honey is based upon their science, right? What does this mean? Well, it means that you have empiricism versus hypothesis.
[10:28] So the scientists are working with theory, and the locals, the tribe, they're working with evidence. They've noticed that when you sip this honey, or you taste this honey, or you eat this honey, you get relief from your sore throat, and it goes away quicker, like it gets cured quicker. So this is the question of the bee, right? The question of the bee is that, according to this, I don't know if this is an urban myth or whatever, but there is sort of the argument that according to science, the bee can't fly, but the bee flies, right? So theory versus empirical evidence. There's no point saying the bee can't fly, according to your theory, because the bee is flying, right? So this is the theory versus the practice. Now, in science, what is more important, the theory or the practice? Is it the conception, or the hypothesis, or the conjecture, or the actual empirical evidence? Well, it is, of course, the actual empirical evidence.
[11:34] That matters. It doesn't matter what your theory is. What matters is what the empirical evidence is. So if you say the honey can't provide any relief, but then people believe, now maybe people believe this relief is there, but it's not really there, and this, that, and the other, right? So maybe that's the case. But you would test that. And if you find that the swelling of the throat goes down faster, the retina rawness, right? The swelling of the throat goes down faster when you take this honey, then either it's a very powerful placebo effect, which is always possible, or this honey does have medicinal properties, right? That's the big question that you're trying to work with. Now, in order to eliminate the possibility of the placebo effect, what you would do, of course, is you would take the bacteria that would normally be present in someone's throat, you put it in a Petri dish, and you put the honey in there. Now, if the honey kills the bacteria, then you have proof that it's not just a placebo effect, because placebo effects don't apply to bacteria or to Petri dishes, right? So you would test that. Now, if you go through that whole process and you find out that yes, the honey does kill the bacteria, then the natives are vindicated in that the honey does provide medicinal benefit. It kills the bacteria.
[13:01] And the theory of the scientists is proven to be false, right? So they say it doesn't have medicinal properties.
[13:08] Obviously, killing bacteria is a medicinal property. So when you find out that the honey does kill bacteria, then clearly you have proven that it has medicinal properties. So, that's interesting. And then what you would do, as a responsible scientist, you would have to say, gee, we were wrong. We were wrong, it does have medicinal properties, that's number one. And number two, you would have to review the theory, you would have to review the theory... Said it can't have medicinal properties. Because if you say something can't have medicinal properties, and it turns out to have medicinal properties, you're not just wrong about that particular thing, you're wrong about the entire approach that you have, because you have a principle that says, based on X, Y, and Z, this honey can't have medicinal properties, it does have medicinal properties, so it's not just the honey that you're wrong about, it's the whole principle by which you said, the honey can't have medicinal properties, whatever methodology you're using to establish that is also incorrect. There's some variable you're not taking into account.
[14:09] So the science as practiced is, you know, you notice some pattern in nature, you come up with a conjecture or a hypothesis to explain it, and then you make sure that that hypothesis doesn't contradict itself or any other known and accepted standards. You know, if you have a hypothesis that is logically consistent but requires there to be no gravity on Earth, or no gravity in space, or no gravity as a principle, then it's wrong, because gravity is a thing, so you can't do that.
[14:40] So, what you do is you say, okay, I've noticed a pattern, I've got a hypothesis about it, I've got a theory about it, I'm going to make sure that theory is logically consistent, I'm going to make sure it accords with known observations, and known accepted truths, And then what I do is I set up an experiment to test my hypothesis. And then if the hypothesis accords with logic and reason and evidence and all other known scientific theories that are accepted as facts, and some are, and then it also predicts the behavior accurately of the hypothesis. Material, empirical, verifiable facts in reality, well, then you have first scientific truth. And, you know, could it change more sensitive recording equipment or measuring equipment and so on? Well, yeah, I mean, Newtonian physics did give way to Einsteinian physics, but Newtonian physics is all you need to sail a ship. Einsteinian physics is more helpful if you're trying to get a probe past Jupiter. See, I didn't say Uranus there because I'm mature, but I'm not saying it it was easy. I'm just saying I didn't do it. So the circling back when you've made a mistake is essential to science, right? If you press on without circling back when you've been wrong, you're not a scientist, you are a propagandist.
[16:00] If you have made predictions and those predictions have turned out to be wrong and you don't circle back to review and correct the model but simply plow on with more and more predictions, then that's not science as far as I would understand the discipline.
[16:18] Because reviewing where you've been wrong is essential for correcting a model. If a model has failed to predict things well, has gotten things pretty wildly wrong, and then you just continue with that model.
[16:33] Then that's not science. I mean, you're doing something else. And that something else is pretty wretched Pretty wretched, because you're calling it science. So if you look at something like global warming, global cooling, climate change, and so on, and you say, okay, so we've had 40, no, 50 years, right? The 70s to the 2020s, we've got 50 years of predictions. Have those predictions come true? And, I mean, obviously there have been a lot of predictions as a whole, that the predictions of climate change as a whole have failed to materialize. And has there been a circling back of people saying, oh gosh, you know, we did get things really wrong. And it was pretty catastrophic that we got things wrong because, you know, this has gone into children's education, which is really frightening them about the end of the world. This has gone into, you know, tax and control policies, which have you know transferred billions of dollars from people based upon our theories they're not just idle speculations in a basement or something locked away in an ivory tower, they have massively affected and influenced you know probably trillions of dollars by now.
[17:52] And they've frightened generations of children into thinking that the end of the world is nigh i mean they're not innocuous theories right these are very important substantial theories that that have, you know, really wrecked children's childhoods and have, you know, taken trillions of dollars from people and put massive amounts of controls on people and destroyed their dreams because they can't start their businesses or the businesses have to close down or the taxes get too high on carbon. You know, this is pretty substantial stuff.
[18:23] So, if the empirical evidence are that people with the, quote, wrong ideas are actually getting the right outcomes, that's really important. That's a data point for science to examine, and a very significant data point for science to examine, because the natives who think that the honey helps them with a sore throat are right, and the scientists who say that it doesn't are wrong. Now, if the scientist says that the reason the indigenous people believe in the honey is because their ancestors have told them that it's the nectar of the gods, that their god has placed the honey in their vicinity to help them with the demonic possession called the sore throat, right? I was stretching, but, right? If the scientists say that the people who are right are right for the wrong reasons, that also is not doing science. Because if something is effective at curing a sore throat, that's the most important thing. That's the most important thing. Because it actually cures the sore throat.
[19:38] If the scientists say, harumph, harumph, they lift their noses in the air and say, but, you know, it's based on superstition, I mean, okay, but would you rather get the right prescription from a doctor for the wrong reasons or the wrong prescription for the, quote, right reasons? Well, obviously, you would rather get the right prescription for the wrong reasons, because what matters is empiricism. According to science, what matters is empiricism. So, the scientists who don't believe the honey has medicinal properties don't take it when they have a sore throat. But the superstitious indigenous population who do believe that take the honey and their sore throat is cured quickly.
[20:23] So, science leads to harm and, quote, superstition leads to benefit. That's important, right? So there are two ways that scientists are able to maintain predictions even in the face of error. There are two ways that scientists are able to maintain predictions in the face of error. Now, one is to say, we're not showing you the data. We're not showing you the methodology. So that's how you hide any potential errors or problems in what you're doing.
[20:59] Is you say, you can't have the data, right? And we saw this, of course, when pharmaceutical companies wanted to hide the data from the COVID trials. So we see this. And of course, we see this with climate change in that I don't know that there are many of the models where the data and the methodology is open source, right? So the taxpayers pay for these.
[21:24] Models that predict temperature 50 to 100 years out, the taxpayers pay for these models, but the scientists often will not release the models and the data to the public.
[21:41] Now, science, of course, is supposed to be something that can be replicated, right? I mean, if you can't replicate a scientific experiment, and this is part of the whole replication crisis in science.
[21:51] But if you can't replicate the scientific experiments, you can't replicate the results, then you have a big problem. And scientists who don't open up their data and methodology to the general public, opening it up to other scientists isn't particularly helpful to the general public. Because scientists, of course, have an incentive to tell the government what it wants to hear, because the government pays the scientists, right? And everybody who's ever had a boss knows that, you know, what your boss wants is pretty important. So it has to be opened up to the general public. It has to be opened up to those who aren't going to benefit from the scientific conclusion, but are going to be harmed potentially by the scientific conclusion, right? So scientists, of course, they promote X, Y, and Z, and they get, what do they They get more funding, they get promotions, they get all of this great stuff, and so they have an incentive to provide a particular result.
[22:55] But, of course, the other person, the person who's paying for it and is going to be harmed by it, in that taxes are going to go up and controls are going to go up and regulations are going to go up and all of that, so the people who are going to be harmed by it have to have a say as well.
[23:14] Understand that in a, you know, you're buying a condo or something, then it's not just the price to sell at once that matters. It's the price that the buyer is willing to pay and they both have a say and they can both walk away. That's the only way it's just, otherwise it's just fraud or theft or something like that, right? So for credibility, the scientists should open up the data and the methodology to let the general public have a look, right? And you'd be really surprised. You say, oh, but it's so complicated and so on. But there are a lot of people who are very interested in this kind of stuff and very competent and very able and look deeply into it and analyze it and, you know, run their regression tests and check the assumptions and look at the source data and, you know, can replicate it, right? So the first way that scientists tend to hide objective feedback is through not releasing the data and or the methodology by which they come to their conclusions.
[24:12] They'll publish a paper with conclusions, but they won't publish all the source data and the code of the modeling. Now, the modeling is the second part, right? So the first thing you do if you want to be, to me, a somewhat skeevy scientist is you won't release the data and the methodology by which you're coming to your conclusions, thus making your conclusions impossible to replicate, is number one. But number two, what you do is you rely on modeling. You rely on modeling. So I want you to think of, I mean, most of us have played video games, right? And the video games have a kind of physics. I mean, I remember programming a game similar to Lunalander on the Atari 800 when I was a teen, and you have your physics, right? So I wanted it to to be realistic so i tried to design the physics that would be accurate to landing a spaceship on the moon and how much fuel was required to reverse i did you know a fair amount of like, physics and and engineering to get this the movement of the spaceship realistic moon is one-sixth the gravity and and so on right and depending on the the momentum downwards how much fuel do you need to slow down or reverse your descent you know all this kind of stuff and then And at what angle? That's quite fun, right? To me, those are the kind of fun, logical puzzles to try and get it right.
[25:39] So what you do is you create a model. Now, if I had a prediction of how fast a spaceship will fall, right? Let's just say an object so we can sort of imagine measuring it. So if I have a prediction and I say, here's how fast an object will fall on the moon, then what I would do is I would drop the object, measure its fall, and see if my prediction was accurate.
[26:08] What if I'm in control of both the predictions and the physics, right? What if I'm in control of both the predictions and the physics? In other words, what if it's not the actual moon but a simulation? So if there's a disparity between my theory and the simulation, then I can either adjust my theory to match the simulation, which is very tough, or I can alter the simulation to match my theory. You see this? You see this? And this happens all the time in video game design, right? I sort of gave you a minor example from my teens. Lemlander is called for lunar emissions module. Lemlander, I called it, right? So I was trying to adjust the physics of my spaceship landing simulation to match what would actually happen. And what I did was I would say, I would look up, okay, okay, you know, how fast, what's the acceleration on the moon? And I would program that into my little video game. And it ended up being pretty realistic.
[27:16] But what I did was I adjusted the parameters of my game, and I actually ended up with, you could land on a bunch of different planets, and because I had set up the parameters, as something that could be adjusted, you ended up being able to adjust the gravity, right? So you could land on Mars, you could land on Jupiter. I mean, I pretended Venus, well, I pretended Jupiter had a, you know, pretty accessible solid surface. But you could land on very, because I was able to adjust the parameters so you could change the gravity kind of at whim, right? But if you have a prediction and you're in control of the measurement and the physics, in other words, if what you have is a simulation, it's way easier to adjust the simulation to prove the theory than it is to change gravity. The theory to match the simulation, right? So the theory then becomes paramount.
[28:10] And because you're not dealing with tangible reality, but rather dealing with a simulation, a model, right? Because you're dealing with a simulation, it's way easier to adjust.
[28:23] Parameters of the simulation than it is to change your whole theory, especially if your career rides upon the theory being true, right? So if your career, your income, your status, your friendships, getting to the right dinner parties and schmoozing with the right people and maybe getting on TV and getting your own show or whatever, like if all of this requires upon the theory being correct, then it is in an amoral sense infinitely preferable to adjust the simulation to match the theory, right now of course there's times when a simulation or a projection is perfectly valid right i mean when you are in business and i've of course written a bunch of these right you have a business plan and the business plan says you know based upon this or this or this evidence we're going to grow by this or this amount, and that's your projection. And then you are supposed to measure your growth relative to that projection and see how accurate you are, and if you ended up exceeding it, you'd figure out what you got wrong and adjust it for next year, and if you were deficient, then you'd figure out what assumptions you made that were wrong, and you'd adjust that for next year or try to remediate them or something.
[29:37] And long ago in another Galaxy business meeting, And I saw a guy who said, when the guy ahead of him said, our business is going to do $4 million, he one-upped him by saying, well, our business is going to do $5 million. And it turned out that the guy hit his target of $4 million and the guy who said $5 million didn't hit his target, but he just one-upped. And this is not, of course, the case everywhere, but it certainly happens. So if you are in control of the experiment and the theory based upon a simulation or a model, then you can always say, well, the theory says this and the model has to reflect that. So you simply change the parameters of the model.
[30:24] To, quote, prove the theory. Because when you're dealing with projections, you're not dealing with empirical evidence. I mean, this is obviously by its very nature. You're not dealing with empirical evidence because empirical evidence has to be in the past, whereas projections by their very nature are in the future. It's nothing wrong with that. Businesses do it all the time. We do it as a whole all the time. A woman who's going on a date she's very excited about will spend a couple of hours getting ready to look great because she's projecting that that's going going to be a great and fun date and she wants to put her best foot forward we do this all the time, and it's nothing wrong with it i mean obviously weather forecasters do it all the time to tell you whether it's going to be sunny or cloudy or whatever tomorrow right or this week so.
[31:08] The way that scientists hide what they're doing is either to not release the data or to not rely on empirical evidence, but rather to rely on models with made-up parameters. And I'm not kidding about this. Like in America, a third of the temperature stations just aren't around, right? The cities have grown, they've been taken down or whatever. And they just, you know, try and average the numbers and they can basically, so they have some methodology, but to some degree it's just made up because it's certainly not empirical evidence from the actual stations themselves. And of course, as we know, and I talked about this like 15 years ago in the show, a lot of the temperature stations used to be in the forest, and now there are cities all around them. And because the cities are all around them, they've got the heat signatures or the heat from the cities are going into the temperature centers, just giving you artificially high temperatures and so on. And if you are well paid to prove a theory, and you're in control of the variables that support that theory. In other words, it's not objective. Objective is actual physical measurements.
[32:21] Subjective is a model. A model is subjective. Of course, right? Because you have to choose weights and options and, you know, the temperature 100 years from now is obviously a pretty wild thing to predict. And so your models are, to some degree, they have to be wind-based. I mean, there's way too many variables, so you have to choose some, right? Right. So that's how you hide things from the general public. Now, scientists can hide things that control people's lives. In other words, they say, you have to go through me, the scientist, to get the answer. And I'm not giving you the source data and I'm not giving you all the methodology and all of the weights and you can't play around with the model and like all of this kind of stuff, right? I'm not open sourcing the model so that you can do your own thing and see what you get. Number one. Now, this is to me somewhat of a dishonorable exercise and not because models are intrinsically wrong. I mean, models are kind of like future models are important, right? You have a future model. Maybe you want to lose some weight. You have a future model called being more slender and you have to pursue a goal to achieve that. So models, future projections, totally fine. The problem is when your models are incorrect and there's not...
[33:42] Any repercussions or consequences, people don't lose their funding. Like, you know, if you predict X, Y, and Z disaster in the future, and X, Y, and Z disaster fails to materialize, in fact, it's the opposite, perhaps, then of course, you should, in a free market, you would lose your funding, right? You would get fired, right? If you have a salesman who says, I'm going to make $10 million next year, and he in fact loses $5 million, he's just fired, right? I mean, if you get your models wrong, and in fact, if you get your models egregiously wrong, wrong and it can be fraudulent in fact right if you claim that you are going to make a certain amount of money next year and therefore a bunch of people invest and they or your stock price goes up based upon these projections and it turns out that you don't get anywhere close and then it turns out that you had assumptions that were impossible to achieve that's pretty fraudulent and you can get into some serious trouble for that. So, are people circling back and saying our models are completely incorrect? So, for 50 years, there's been modeling of the effects of global climate change, and those models have been, to some degree and to a large degree, though of course not completely, when you scattershot occasionally, you're going to be right.
[34:55] Spray and pray, right? So, for the most part, these models have not been accurate, and you can see because they go from global global cooling which didn't materialize to global warming which didn't materialize to climate change which is cherry picking any extreme weather event and calling it a disaster and so we have 50 years of predictions which certainly have failed to materialize if you look at the earliest predictions it was you know largely disaster by the year 2000 and now it's you know 2024 and disaster has yet to materialize in fact this sort of counter evidence, sort of the greening of the planet, the thickening ice sheets and so on. So if somebody has been wrong for 50 years and then they say, but I can predict the temperature a hundred years out, even though they have failed to predict the temperature for the last 50 years with any particular accuracy, I mean, that wouldn't be particularly believable, right? I've been wrong for 50 years. I don't have any corrective mechanism in place. I haven't fired anyone or changed any sort of fundamental assumptions. And so I'm, but, but trust me on the next hundred years. Right. I mean, that's, that's not, that's not believable, right? That's not, that's not credible.
[36:06] The reason this is important, of course, is because it is inferior to Christianity. I'll tell you why. So Christianity is not a mystery religion.
[36:19] Because Christianity, you ready? It's going to give you goosebumps. Christianity gives you access to the source data called the Bible. And in particular, Martin Luther's translation into the common tongue of the Bible and so on. So Christianity gives you access to the source data. A mystery religion is there's a guy in weird clothing, and he doesn't tell you any methodology by which you can determine right and wrong. You ask him, he chants and then tells you what to do, and you don't have any access to what's going on, right? You can't talk to the God directly, you can't access the text directly, and he goes into the back room, he goes into some paroxysm, he chants in tongues, he speaks in tongues, and then he orders you what to do and you can't question it. That's a mystery religion. Or at least that would be my sort of understanding. Maybe there's some other technical way that the term is used. But a mystery religion is you go and say to the priest, what should I do? And the priest says, I will ask the oracle. And a funny story, it turns out the oracle says you have to give me 10% of your income. Well, where is that written? No, I talked to the oracle and the oracle told me and there's no way you can question the oracle and the oracle hasn't written anything down.
[37:38] So that's a mystery religion you don't have access to the source data only the priest or the witch doctor or the shaman has access to the god and you just have to obey and you cannot question and you cannot oppose and you cannot query and you cannot evaluate for yourself self. So way back in the day, the early church, the mass was in Latin and the common folk couldn't even really read, let alone read Latin or understand Latin. So you just kind of had to do what people said. And there was a fair amount of corruption in that, which Martin Luther, I think, perhaps a bit too far, but rightly pointed out that if you're going to ask people to live according to religious rules, they should have access to the Bible, right? So that they can evaluate for themselves what's right and what's wrong. And a Christian can be a Christian through reading the Bible, praying to God, and obeying the moral rules. He has access to the source documents.
[38:40] So if you understand that, then you understand that science has turned into a kind of mystery religion where you don't have access to the source data and methodologies. You just have to do what the people in the funny outfits tell you to do, and you can't question or query it. And if you do, you are a blasphemer, right? You don't care about the future. You want the world to burn. You're an anti-vaxxer. You're a bad person. You're killing grandma, right? And the less you have access to the source data, the more attacks, punishments, and ostracism you have to go through for asking any questions. You see what I mean? If you have access to the source data, then you can say, well, the reason I believe is because I accept this methodology, this has been proven, this has been validated, and so on. Okay, so that makes sense to me. But if you don't have access to the source data, then you need punishments. You need punishments to obey so if you can't evaluate things for yourself why would you obey you'd say i don't i don't believe this right i mean you've not given me any reason to believe it and you know science is all about skepticism and science is supposed to be about things in the material real world and so models are not science and they're not models are to science as a business plan is to money in the bank. It's a projection.
[40:06] I mean, a dream is a heart. A dream is a wish your heart makes, right? So models are to science as business projections are to money in the bank.
[40:18] Try to spend your business projections and say, no, no, no, I typed a million dollars into my spreadsheet saying that's what I'm going to make next quarter. So, oh, Mr. Banker guy, give me a million dollars because this is what I've typed into my spreadsheet. He'd say, but that's just a projection. I mean, it's next week, right? Now, if you have a magic spreadsheet and you say, well, I've been completely wrong on my projections for the last 50 years, but next year, or five years from now, we're going to make a bazillion dollars, a Googleplex dollars, a dillion quill, as my daughter used to say when she was little about the largest number she could conceive of, I'm going to make massive amounts of money, then the bank won't give you that, right? Because the way that bad religions and bad ideas tend to propagate is they tend to push the punishments and rewards further and further out, right? So, for instance, if you say you're some primitive person in a primitive place and you say you're a witch doctor and you say, if you give me five chickens, then there will be rain tomorrow. Give me five chickens, I'll do a rain dance and there'll be rain tomorrow. Well, of course, the dance has nothing to do with the rain. So if it, if it works, he's like, so right, so right. But at some point people are going to say, well, this doesn't really work very much.
[41:45] So the witch doctor has an incentive to say, well, give me five chickens and you'll have great weather in a month, right? And by the way, he keeps track of his own predictions, and so don't you know it, it turns out that the next good rain, oh, that's pretty much a month, or I said it was going to be three weeks, not a month, and I'm the one who recorded it, so trust me. Source trust me bro so the witch doctor has an incentive to move things further and further out, in his predictions and as he moves things further and further out he has to make things more and more catastrophic because if he says you know give me five chickens today or you're going to stub your toe in 10 years people won't give him the five chickens so it has to be more and more every disaster, the further and further out the predictions go, right?
[42:39] Like, you know how your eye inverts things, right? That which is further away should look larger, but in fact looks smaller because your eye inverts things. Oh, it's the same thing, right? So if your predictions get further and further out, they become less and less testable. And eventually, of course, the ultimate of that is obey me or you're going to go to hell after you die, right? So that's as far out as really is possible in a human lifespan, and then you have to make the negatives of that which can't be empirically verified as terrible and horrible and dire and malevolent and horrible, right? It's just, it has to be completely wretched.
[43:15] So, as the predictions are discredited, and as the results get pushed further and further ahead in time, things have to get more and more and and more dire. And that's, you know, global warming and so on. That's sort of fairly understandable.
[43:34] So, if you look at Christians, then Christians have, to a large degree, and certainly more so than atheists, have gotten two things right. They had skepticism as to the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, and they have skepticism as to.
[43:55] Catastrophic effects of, you know, catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, right? C-A-G-W, right? They have skepticism about it. Now, they have skepticism about the vaccine because they say, you know, God has made human beings, you know, pretty well. And if there was some great way to fight disease, God would have designed that. And, you know, vaccines that simply introduce a dead virus to stimulate your immune system, that's a little bit of a hack of what God is is planned and that's fine. God gave us the reason to do that. But, you know, mystery mRNA juice, that's mucking with the blueprint and that's kind of blasphemous and that's not a good idea. I'm obviously completely bastardizing, but it's something like that.
[44:38] And they said regarding global warming, something like, God has designed the world such that, you know, human success can't be a disaster. You know, for us to reason, for us to think, for us to be happy and satisfied and wealthy. Prosperity, I always use the word prosperous rather than wealthy because prosperous sounds much better than wealthy for some mystery reason of the brain. So they say, God is not going to punish us for having cars. God has designed the system to take a certain amount of stressors and to bounce back. And it's just not something that I particularly believe, and of course, part of that skepticism of science comes from the Christian skepticism regarding macroevolution. Christians perfectly accept microevolution, but they say you can't show one species transitioning to another or any species in between, so they have a certain skepticism regarding science, and that skepticism regarding science, often based on evolution and in more extreme circles, or I shouldn't say more extreme, It more fundamentally circles based upon geology and archaeology and, you know, the dinosaur bones, right? Like, if the world is 6,000 years old, why are there dinosaur bones that carbon date slightly further back? Well, it's a test of faith, right?
[45:56] So Christians have developed an immune system to science. They have developed a skepticism of science because they've been burned by science. So, you know, once bitten, twice shy. What's a band called Great White with a song called Once Bitten, Twice Shy? It's a great combo of band name and song title. Never heard it, but I'm sure it's fun. So the Christians have developed an immunity to science and are skeptical about science. And also the skepticism of science is that science says there's no morality and christians say we can't function without morality we can't achieve happiness and love without morality and god is the source of morality and if you dismiss god then you dismiss morality and really that has been the purpose of science right the purpose of science is and i'm talking about government science like just so you understand i love science as a methodology i think it's fantastic one of the great, inventions of the human mind. But, you know, government science is a is a different matter, right?
[47:01] So, I mean, Government science is science as, in a sense, gulags are to hotels. But anyway, I mean, they're both places you can live, I suppose, but one is by choice and one is not.
[47:13] So Christians have developed a skepticism and they have developed an immune system regarding science. So they doubt science. And so doubting science is science, right? Doubting science is science. Science is basically the distillation of trust but verify, right? So, okay, you've got this thing out, but I'm going to have to replicate it. I'm going to verify, right? So skepticism is the foundation of science. Trust science is a complete contradiction in terms, and that's cult thinking, that's not science. Science is that which doesn't have to be trusted, because there's evidence, right? You don't have to trust evidence. I don't have to trust gravity. So Christians were more skeptical of science with regards to just these two examples, right? The vaccines and global climate change. So the Christians were were more scientific than the scientists, because they were skeptical. And the scientists should learn from that. So the scientists and the atheists should look and say, well, the catastrophes predicted by 50 years of global warming have failed to materialize, or global change, climate change. And it turns out that the Christians had some valid valid perspectives on the vaccines. They had some skepticism that turned out to be not entirely inaccurate regarding the vaccines.
[48:35] So that's the challenge, right? And the challenge is back to our example of the honey. The natives believe it cures their sore throat. According to our science, they're wrong. and what you do is you say but their epistemology their methodology for determining this is the ancestors say it's God's sky nectar when it's not and therefore they must be wrong about everything which is to, that it actually does cure them. Now, when someone else gets something right and you get something wrong, that's important information to process. Now, of course, I think that if the atheists and the scientists, and I'm generalizing here, but it's a general trend, that if the atheists and scientists were honest and curious and rigorous and disciplined, they would say to the Christians, you got some stuff seriously right here.
[49:38] And what did you get right? Now, we don't accept that it's a biblical thing because we're atheists or whatever, right? But you did get something right. And humbly, I need to know what that is. And then the fundamental answer to that would be that the Christians were skeptical of the claims of the scientists.
[49:55] So skepticism, which is supposed to be the foundation of science, turned out to be the province of Christians and credulity and acceptance of authority, blind acceptance of authority, turned out to be the province of the atheists, right? In other words, the Christians were more scientific than the atheists who were cult-like because they accepted claims without any evidence. Because that's the funny thing, right? What do the atheists get mad at the Christians? Well, you say you have to have faith. You believe claims without proof. You believe self-contradictory claims without proof. Okay, but how did the atheists do any different? The atheists accepted self-contradictory claims without proof, right? I mean, just to talk about the vaccines, the claim that the vaccines were safe and effective was impossible to make because they were developed in such a short time span and the source data was withheld until that judge was going to withhold it for like 75 years in some cases. So, the atheists accepted wild claims without proof. In other words, the atheists had more faith in the vaccines. scenes. Faith, right? Belief in contradictory information without proof.
[51:15] I mean, either one of those is a reason for skepticism. So, the atheists had faith in science, and the Christians were skeptical of science, so the Christians were more scientific than the atheists. And since science is all supposed to be about humility, the scientists and the atheists are not being humble and saying to the Christians, boy, you got some things right. We really need to understand that because your thinking was superior to ours. Now, of course, atheism and science is really, really plagued by the absolute curse of vanity. And so the atheists look at the Christians and say, well, you believe things without proof. Trust science.
[52:03] In things, I trust in this or that political leader or world health leader or bureaucrat or something like that. I trust all the scientists compromised by perverse financial incentives, right? You see, the atheists don't accept the obvious empirical fact that they are enmeshed in a mystery religion where the scientists go into the back rooms and do incomprehensible things and then order everyone to obey, which is a mystery religion, if not a downright cult.
[52:35] So the atheists and the scientists and so on, they have to accept, on faith, highly compromised and financially bizarrely incentivized scientists that won't release their source data and won't give public access to their models. So the atheists have to believe in a mystery religion with no access to any source data, but the Christian can pray to God and read the Bible. He has access to the source data. And even if you don't consider prayer source data, without a doubt, they could read the Bible. And so, if someone comes along and says, well, God says thou shalt steal, the Christian can go to the source data, the Bible, and say, no, no, no, it says quite clearly here, thou shalt not steal, so you're wrong. So, the Christians have access to more objective information than the scientists do, because either the source methodology, source data, and processes are not revealed, or it's a model, and models are innately subjective. Models are innately subjective. That doesn't mean that they're always wrong, but they can't be objective because they are projections. They can't be. Objective is empirically verifiable facts in the past. Or you could say in the present, but, you know, whatever time lag goes on at a micro level.
[54:02] But there's more superstition in modern science than there is in Christianity, because modern science has turned into a mystery religion with no access to the source data, and you have a priesthood that commands obedience with dire stories of horror, right? Right. I mean, with COVID, it's, you know, if you don't take the vaccine, you're going to get seriously sick and die and infect others. And then it turns out that the vaccine wasn't even tested to see if it stops transmissibility. And people who took the vaccine got COVID anyway. Right. So there was these dire things. Right. Now, that's just a threat.
[54:43] Whereas if all of the source data had been released and the source data had perfectly proven, at least that if you take the vaccine, you won't get COVID and you won't transmit it, well, then there would still be the question of long-term effects, which would be impossible to determine. But if all the source data had been released, then they wouldn't have needed the threats, right? So the threats are always because the source data is not released, and that's the mystery religion side of things. Now, you can say, but in certain aspects of Christianity, there is still hell. Absolutely, there is. but you still have the source data and you can avoid hell by reading the Bible and praying to God. So you don't need the priest, at least certain sections of Christianity, particularly the Protestant sects. So there has been this funny inversal that I don't think anyone's talking about and I find absolutely fascinating. Because look, I try not to take sides, right? I mean, I'm very pro-science. I do have skepticism of faith, but I'm not on anyone's side other than the truth. And the truth is that science, government science, particularly with the scaremongering of the media, that government science has turned into a doomsday mystery religion, cultish aspects to it. Obey the leader, he can't tell you why. He won't tell you why.
[56:07] Christianity has become more scientific because it brings skepticism to a lack of proof. So there's way more faith manifested in modern science than there is in Christianity because Christianity has access to the source data. And science, you can't get that. Or, you know, by the time you get it, it's too late, right? You've already taken the injection or whatever it is, right? So I find this fascinating. I'd love to hear what you guys think about this, but this inversal, I am an empiricist, right? I am an empiricist, always have been, always will be. And the empirical fact is that in some significant scientific controversies, Christians have made way better decisions than atheists and secularists and scientists.
[56:52] That's just an empirical fact, right? They have often not raised their children. In general, Christians have not raised their children in mortal terror of the imminent end end of the world with regards to global warming there may be other more extreme sort of end times, beliefs and there are right the sort of uh left behind stuff but they haven't raised them with that this sort of destruction of the world through through science because of course with christianity even if you believe in the imminent end times you can escape to a better place or get to a better place through faith with catastrophic anthropogenic global warming there's no escape i mean i guess there's an escape which is you you pay more taxes and the government will change the weather in 50 years even though you can't get rid of crime in your neighborhood don't worry it would totally change the weather in 100 years but there is no real escape because the demands keep escalating right.
[57:48] It's an empirical fact that I've been toying around in my brain for quite some time, that Christians made better scientific decisions than atheists, which I think is really fascinating. And I'm going to do the whole bit about morality and so on, but I wanted to talk about this because I think it's really interesting that the atheists and the scientists who claim to value empiricism had a test, right? And the test was of fear and compliance and independent critical thinking and resistance to falsehoods or questionable propositions. And in the test of skepticism and independent thinking and resistance to propaganda.
[58:30] Most Christians passed and most atheists failed. But that's the exact opposite of what you would expect, according to the mindset of reason and evidence and skepticism and science and so on, right? And so, if you have a dual experiment running about skepticism, scientific thinking, independence, resistance to propaganda, you have these two communities both exposed to the same situation, one of whom generally made better decisions than the other. But that's important that's important and the vanity of the atheists in general well there's two reasons why people don't talk about this the vanity the atheists and the humility and humbleness of the christians but nonetheless it's a fascinating fact and i would love to know what you guys think of this so thank you for listening free domain.com slash donate to help out the show i'd really really appreciate that have yourselves a wonderful wonderful day lots of love from up here i'll talk to you soon bye.
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