CW 210: Creation vs. Evolution with Dr. Geoffrey Simmons of the Discovery Institute Center for Science & Culture
24 Apr 2011 · 47 min
Dr. Geoffrey Simmons, an emergency-medicine physician, argues that biological complexity like the bombardier beetle, giraffe birth, and the eye's layered cornea cannot be explained by gradual evolution. He critiques the fossil record's lack of intermediate forms and says academic pressure suppresses intelligent design discussion in science.
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Welcome to the Creating wealth show. This is your host, Jason Hartman, and this is episode number 210. Thank you so much for joining me today on this Good Friday and I want to wish everybody a very happy Easter as well. So today, as we do with every 10th show, as all of you regular listeners know, we are going to talk about an interesting topic and we are going to talk about intelligent design. We're going to talk about evolution versus creation. And you might be asking yourself, well, Jason, what the heck does that have to do with creating wealth? And I guess not much directly, but that's what we do on every tenth show we cover. Just sort of a general life topic, something different. And this one will definitely be a controversial topic. See if listening to my talk with a guest, if you can kind of figure out where I stand on the issue, I think that's sort of apparent, but I'll let you decide. And before we do that, a couple of announcements and questions, listener questions I want to get to and so forth. First of all, of course, a reminder, join us for our Phoenix Distressed property tour. That's May 20th through the 22nd. We will be staying at the beautiful and ultra swanky Ritz Carlton Hotel in the Biltmore area of Phoenix or Scottsdale Gust. And it'll just be a great trip, great tour. It'll be a small, intimate group. Speaking of which, the room block is almost sold out, so please hurry. Go to jasonhartman.com and register for that. It's really going to be a very special event and everything's included. For $597, you get two nights at the Ritz Carlton, which are $300 a night if you were to go on your own. So you've already saved money right there you get the education, the tour, the meetings with our local market specialist, the luxury motor coach. We include six once you get to the hotel, you'll probably never have to take your wallet out for anything. We even got them to throw in in room Internet access for free. They usually ding you for about an extra $2025 a night for that at these high class hotels. So be sure to join us for that. Register@JasonHartman.com Again there is some urgency. The event is almost sold out in terms of the room block, so it's important that you register right away for that and be sure to join us Facebook Questions thank you so much for posting your questions on our Facebook page. Arthur asked which do prefer Jason Multifamily or sfr? In other words, single family residences and why? Well, that's a good question Arthur, and it really depends. And here, here are some of the factors that you want to consider when comparing single family homes to multifamily or apartment properties. And on the same vein, I'd also throw in mobile home parks and self storage to some extent. In the multifamily category they're somewhat similar, especially mobile home parks and also two other great asset classes. So in single family home historically, nothing really appreciates better than a single family home that is at least has been historically the best appreciating asset class. Why would that be? Well, because the other types of properties are sold on the basis of the income they produce and sold on multiples of their income. So an apartment building, for example, you can grow the income on an apartment building, but you usually can't grow it as fast as the historical appreciation of a single family home in the right market. So for that reason I would say that single family homes could be better. But there are many other reasons that apartments, mobile home parks, or even self storage facilities could be a lot better. And those are generally speaking, the cash flow is better on a multi family property. The appreciation may not be as good in most cases, but the cash flow can be better. Now here's another factor. We talked about appreciation, but in the multifamily world you usually have a better chance to add value and that's really different than appreciation. It's not the same thing. You can add value by doing certain strategic things by re tenanting the properties, by increasing the rental income pretty dramatically, by improving the management of the apartment building or the apartment complex, you can really do a lot of interesting things that are more creative. Usually in the multifamily apartment, mobile home park or self storage world that you can't really do quite as much. You can do a little bit, but not as much. In the single Family world. One downside though, in the multifamily world is that in multifamily you can have situations where the tenants sort of get together and because they're all living in the same place, they can get together and they can form little mutinies and rent strikes and things like that. Now these aren't very effective really, but they can be a difficult bump in the road and present challenges to owners at times. Also, in a multi family property, you may have a lot more amenities and have some more complexity there in terms of insurance needs and safety issues and security issues and things like that, depending on the area and so forth. Sometimes you can get a tenant who say, dealing drugs in your property and that can affect the value of the other units nearby. Also, this depends, this question really depends on the investor. Where are you in your investing career? If you're at the beginning, start with single family homes and work your way up. That's what I did. I used to just be a single family home investor and I made, I don't know the exact number, but probably close to $2 million just investing in good old single family homes. Now I've grown my portfolio and I've got some apartment building buildings and larger properties and it's just great. Start with single family and move up from there. One thing you didn't ask me in this question though is what do I think about condos? I rarely think that condos are a very good deal. I've talked about them on prior shows and I like to, when possible, stay away from condos. There are a lot of outside problems that can be created by homeowners associations and different issues and we'll go in depth. That's sort of a long subject on another show and we have in the past addressed that issue. But maybe in a, in a certain circumstance, condos can be a good deal if the deal is good enough. But the stars really have to align to make me want to do a condo deal. I have before. I've made a lot of money with condos, but I've also suffered some deals with condos too. So the report there is very cautious. Not my favorite thing in terms of condos. Brian asked, will we get to see a jasonhartman.com iPhone or iPad application? We would like to search properties and get info in that way if possible. Well, Brian, that's a good question. I have long wanted to see a smartphone application. I'm a big fan of the iPhone. I love Apple products myself and I'd love to have an iPad app or an iPhone app and I have tried to get them developed myself. Frankly, I haven't chased this down too seriously, but I have chased it down a little bit and I haven't gotten very far with it yet. It's on the list, but I can't say that we're moving toward that real fast. We have one of our clients, our vendors who's working on creating an application that we can use and we will probably get there with that a little bit faster than developing our own iPad or iPhone app. We'll have something in that vein for you in the not too distant future. We have some excellent properties now folks, just all over the place. I mean Phoenix is our upcoming tour, so don't miss that. But we've got some just excellent properties in all of our markets. Right now. I am foaming at the mouth wanting to do deals and I am buying stuff and doing quite well with my investments right now. My own portfolio is growing. I'm out there looking for deals for myself. Sometimes I feel like the shoemaker whose kids don't have any shoes or whose kids have warm out old shoes where I'm working on helping the clients more than I'm helping myself. But when I can, I'm getting my own deals. And I really recommend if there is any time to be investing, it is now. The stars are aligned. Inflation is here. Interest rates are still low. They're probably not going to be low for very long and this is an excellent time to be acquiring property at far below the cost of replacement or actual construction. The cash flows are great. Every property we offer in our network now offers positive cash flow. In fact, very good positive cash flow. Rates of return are above 20% on virtually anything in terms of what our performance say and our projections say. And just do not miss this opportunity. Do not be the person who says I could have, I should have, I would have, but didn't. Don't be the reluctant investor. Do not miss out on this very, very historic time to be growing your portfolio in the most historically proven asset class income property. So now let's get on with our special Show Today, the 10th show, probably a controversial topic. I'd love to hear your feedback but save the nasty email about this being a right wing Christian topic. It's not. It's a scientific topic. My guest is a doctor. He's a medical doctor and he's got extremely good credentials and I originally interviewed him not for this topic. He is a specialist in emergency medicine and I actually interviewed him first on my holistic survival show about Emergency medicine and emergency preparedness. So I just happened to learn when I was talking to him that he also wrote a book about missing links. And when he wrote that, he talked about the missing links in evolution and talked about what Darwin didn't know at the time when he came up with his theories. So I think you'll find this to be a fascinating show. I was very fascinated with it as we talk about intelligent design and we talk about evolution versus creation, and, you know, that's kind of an appropriate topic with timing of Easter being just a couple of days away. So we'll get to that in less than 60 seconds. And I hope you enjoy the show today. And on number 211, we'll talk about distressed property investing, and we will highlight the Phoenix market and the upcoming tour. So stay tuned for that on show number 211. Let's get to our guest. We'll be back with him in just a moment.
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It's my pleasure to welcome Jeff Simmons to the show. He is an expert on the subject of intelligent design. And I know that is a very, very controversial subject, and we're going to kind of drill down on it and talk about science, talk about medicine, and just, just get some real background on this. Jeff, it's great to have you on the show.
Nice to be here.
Well, thank you for joining us. This is a fascinating topic, of course, one that has been debated for eternity. And first of all, for the listeners, maybe can you just start with defining what intelligent design is, or ID as it's referred to? Yeah.
The point on that is that when we look around us, we see the human being, we see animals, we see nature, we see complex phenomena and entities. Could they have come about by trial and error, such as the Darwin theory, small changes for the better. And just through the years, a monkey becomes a human being or are things designed by an intelligent entity? And so creationists and Christians would like that to be God. But the basic thing is, is there signs of intelligent design? And some of the examples used through the years include if you stood on the shores of New Jersey, looking out of the city of New York, you would naturally conclude that that was an intelligently designed city. Or maybe somebody might argue it isn't. But I mean, yeah, but I mean it's clear that this was done by some intelligent beings and not by trial and error. Well then if one looks at the human body, which I'm an md, and that's what I deal with on a day to day basis, it's much more complicated than the city of New York. And yet people who are pro the newer versions of Darwin theory because they get upset if you just say the old version. They get upset saying that you're a religious person and you're just not smart. But if one drills down on the human being and the physics, the chemistry, the physiology, it gets so convoluted and so complex. One just can't, from my perspective, believe that it came about by trial and error. And one of the examples I use when I give a talk, and I've got two books, one called what Darwin Didn't Know and one called Billions of Missing Links. The first one is in its seventh printing, if I may tout my own writing. And I've talked at churches, I've talked at universities, I've talked to synagogues, and I've been on the radio a lot. And I use the example childbirth. And if one looks at childbirth alone and how complicated the development of a child is over nine months in utero. And then on a certain day when the baby is ready, its lungs are ready, its heart's ready, it's ready to take over running its own life. It sends a message, a chemical message through the bloodstream to its mom. And the mom turns around, who recognizes it without realizing she recognizes the signals. And she starts the whole delivery mechanism with her chemicals. And it's a very complex maneuver moving that child into the right position and moving them out the birth canal. And it's very, it's a lot of hormones, a lot of proteins, a lot of nerves and neurological things and things working together. And then as the child comes out, you know, if you breathe too soon, it's over. If you breathe too late, it's over. And so, and then the placenta follows and the child knows how to nurse. Well, all these things are very, very complicated. On paper it may seem very simple, but there's all kinds of chemical reactions and interactions and feedback loops and so this child comes out, well, in most instances, well formed, able to take over, and it actually can grow up in a very symmetric way and reproduce again. One really wonders how that could have come about in little steps. I mean, even the first day of conception, how that could happen. But taking all that combined, how that comes about. And so then if one jumps to nature and things like take a giraffe for instance. A giraffe is born with gelatinous sheaths on its sharp hoofs. So when it's delivered, it doesn't cut up its mother. And there are no in between here. You have to have gelatinous sheaths. They didn't come about one hoof at a time. And also it's born with soft horns. And it's also born in a way that it can get on its feet quickly and actually can run within an hour to save its butt if it has to. And nature's replete with examples of things that happen that are just too hard to believe. They came about by trial and error. For instance, you see on TV an ad for a very big insurance company, they use a humpback whale and they say in the commercial, you know how the mom pushes the baby up for its first breath of air. Now there could not have been an in between situation where the moms didn't used to do that. And so how does something that complex come about? And of course the baby knows what to do when it gets up there. But the whale is another example. This monstrous animal with multiple tons of weight that can dive thousands of feet. There are no fossil records of anything that's an in between animal. Even Darwin couldn't account for it. In his first book he wrote that maybe it was bears going to sea with their mouths open type of thing, catching flies. But he really retracted that and took it out of his second edition and his Origin of Species. And so you got this monstrous entity with no in between species. The same thing with the long neck of the giraffe. And it goes on and on and on in nature. How these things come about. The octopus, which is very complicated, and the eye of the octopus is very complicated, and we have nothing that's in between that shows that these came about by small steps. If one looks at the fossil record, there's roughly, there's no good estimate, but the best estimate is maybe a quarter of a million fossils that science has in museums and universities. And yet we have something like 10 million species on this planet. And so again, there's this issue of complexity and numbers. And so if one looks at this stuff closely, it's not like changing the chassis on a Chevrolet or making it an eight cylinder from a six cylinder. I mean these are very complicated changes from species to species. How did it happen? How did a fish come on land and not dry out? I mean it had to have developed a mechanism to not dry out while it was still in the water. How did an animal go from being cold blooded to suddenly warm blooded with no steps in between? How did an animal that reproduces by eggs only suddenly have live births? And even the monkey, which we do physically resemble, and there's a lot of similar chromosomes and genes, their baby is born face up while ours is usually born face down. So how did they, if we are derived from monkeys, evolved from monkeys, how did this baby do this 180 degree flip without any inbetweeners? People who are pro Darwin or at least pro Darwin's newest theories would argue we just haven't found the data. But they've been arguing this for a long, long time. And the gaps in the numbers of missing links have gone up and up. And that's why I wrote my second book, Billions of Missing Links. And this I was telling you you before we went on the air. This is not a religious argument. I'm not a religious person per se. Spiritual, yes. And believe in God? Yes. But I'm not a.
You don't identify as a Christian and you don't attend church services regularly or anything like that.
I'm not even a Christian but I don't go to services on a regular basis whatsoever. And although I believe God did it and I can't tell you how God did it, I'm open to somebody finding some other intelligent being from another planet. I suppose that sounds far fetched, I mean, but to me it just smacks of intelligent design.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So actually I want to ask you two questions, one that you just related to and then earlier, back to the monkeys. Because when we look back to 1925 and we look back to the Scopes monkey trial, the debate always seems to be focused on evolution versus creation. And I definitely see what you're saying about these steps of the, the fish. How would it develop? Darwin's whole survival of the fittest concept, this is back to high school, that I'm remembering all this stuff because it's not an area of interest or study for me in any real way. But how would that fish develop a mechanism to survive without being challenged with the need to survive on dry land? That's a really good point. But in some cases, it looks like you pointed out cases where evolution couldn't seemingly happen. But in some cases it seems like there is adaptation and evolution. So my question is this before you respond, because I think it'll give you a little better framework to respond. Couldn't both be true?
Sure, they could be, in the small ways. In other words, you can be taller, you can be faster, you can be stronger because you're a mountain lion and the weaker ones were weeded out for whatever reason. So then you reproduce stronger, bigger mountain lions, for lack of any other example, taller giraffes or camels that can hold on to water longer. I mean, there are adaptations. There can be changes in color, there can be changes in reproduction. I think animals adapt and I think nature can weed out some of the folks who aren't as well equipped or aren't as fit. And sometimes it's a function of luck. I mean, if you believe the asteroid hit the earth 65 million years ago, the Yucatan Peninsula, and knocked off about 85% of living beings on the world, well, that maybe had some major impact. That had nothing to do with survival of the fittest. It had to do with where you resided and a few other things. But I do think that there are adaptations, there can be some changes. Look at how dogs can be bred and changed.
Sure, yeah. And that's amazing. Quickly that's happened though.
Yeah, they're still dogs, they're not cats, and they still have the same chromosomes. And Cesar Millan calls dogs basically just different. The same dog in a different designer suit.
Okay, that's an interesting way to put it. So you mentioned the aliens. And so I just want to go kind of indulge this argument for a second because it is pretty far fetched. But I think that was actually depicted in 2001, the movie, wasn't it, where aliens mated with monkeys. I mean, that's a theory out there. And the theory goes something like this. That's why the cerebral cor is such a complex thing where the other organs in our bodies are somewhat simple. The kidneys are filters, the liver's a filter, the heart's a pump. But the brain is in a class by itself at least. The new brain is. Well, I'd say the old brain is too. What are your thoughts about that one?
Well, I don't have any thoughts about aliens mating with monkeys. I've never come across that. But I mean, if one could, you know, Watson and Crick, one of those guys, believe that we may be a consequence of extraterrestrials, who visited our planet and if nothing else, just dump their garbage and their bacteria. But you know, I don't propose any of that in my talks. I just kind of throw it out that if there is intelligent design, from my perspective, if one can come up with another intelligent being, then, you know, I could buy it. But I don't really buy into the extraterrestrials. Who knows? And what was the second part? I lost track.
Well, it was just about the movie 2001 and the differences in the organs, if you look at that, they're not.
As simple as you think, you know, and I don't mean that in any pejorative way toward you. If you read my book, you'll find out and you may have, I don't know. But if you. I'm talking about generically, if you read my book, you will see that the kidney is extraordinarily complicated in what it does, and the liver as well, and even the spleen, which they all once thought was an accessory and a leftover from primitive times. But these mechanisms that go on within these organizations are so complex and so multi level and feedback things. If this happens, then it's got to cycle back and affect that which affects this and affects that, and enzyme reactions that take a millionth of a second and the enzymes have to be in the right place and how do they get there? And the heart itself, unbelievable backup mechanisms. If the heart rhythm problem is blocked because of damage from a heart attack at one level, there are two or three other levels where it can take over and keep beating. And so how did this happen and the way it works and how it adjusts the heart, how it adjusts when you are in pain, when you exercise, when you're climbing a mountain and your oxygen levels have dropped, when you're sick. I mean, you have so many mechanisms in your body to speed up your heart, to slow it down, to increase your blood pressure, to slow it down, to increase your oxygen intake, to slow it down, to increase your thyroid hormone, to slow it down. And all these monitors going on. And you have these monitors all over your body that are monitoring your temperature and are regulating your temperature and regulating your circulation.
It's pretty amazing to say that's mind boggling.
And that's why I say I used to be very pro Darwin theory and, and started changing my mind when I got into medicine and through the years reading books that were arguing scientifically against Darwin. The problem with the Darwin situation, as I see it, is that there are only two options that appear to Be available to people. You either believe God did it or you believe that it came about by evolution. And so if you believe God did it, then you have to, or so people think buy into the gay issue, the abortion issue, the church and state problem and a whole long, long list of polarizing, aggravating, irritating, upsetting things that people don't want to buy into. So we don't take, we don't knock Darwin off the block because if we do we have to buy all these other things. And I don't believe you have to do that. But that's kind of how we are in this society. It's sort of like 45%, 45% with about 10% of people just not sure. And then among those folks who are, or the extreme, you know, it gets pretty nasty sometimes. And I've been the, well, lack of another word, victim. Certainly the endpoint of some very unpleasant things on the Internet. If you were to Google my name, you'd get many thousand hits and among them would be people who said I'm incontinent, my poor wife, I'm impotent. You know, I got bo, I'm stupid, I mean, and not arguing the issues. I mean these are exceller nuts who just kind of thrive on saying nasty things and trying to outdo other nasty people.
And these are people that would believe in Darwin only, right? Yes.
And think I'm some hit closet creationist or you know, and I make a.
Point, I just got to make a political point about that. And I hate to do this, but I just got to. Because that kind of mean spiritedness comes from the left most of the time. And it's amazing that a lot of these groups, they're the ones preaching tolerance. Yeah, yeah, well they're the least tolerant of all. I mean it's just crazy to me. You go on a university and try and promote this ideology or anything to do with anything that's considered to be on the right side of the spectrum and they will shut you down so fast. It is just. And we're going to talk about that. I think that's really coming up here in our talk. But, but any thoughts on that, just since you brought it up?
Yeah, well, I think it's because it's driven by a lot of issues and I also think it's tolerated by universities. I've talked to universities before and although I've not had a particularly hard time when it's open for questions, we get mockery of some sort from some groups within the class or the group. But it's because there's a mindset that if you are religious, and granted, if you don't believe in Darwin, you have to be religious. You can't be a scientist, that you're stupid. You're trying to force other issues and people get very bent out of shape. And it's really a shame. And I agree with you 100%. It's the left who professes to be tolerant, and yet they're the most intolerant. But there's plenty of kooks on the far right, too, and, you know, they're the ones who applaud me the loudest. And I don't have a religious agenda. In fact, I've written nine books. And I've wrote these two books because my wife kept saying, you know, you read all these things, why don't you just write it? Because I'd written six fiction books before that. And so I wrote it. And the next thing I know, I was very accepted by the rite and the Christian churches and some of the synagogues and some of the synagogues not, and then shunned by other groups. I happen to be on NPR once, and the DJ said to me, or the host said to me afterwards, you know, this was kind of a pleasure. He said, I really thought you're coming in here and you're going to be a Bible thumper, you know, so that's the impression that you probably are. If you don't believe in Darwin and it's, the emperor's got no clothes, you know, it's over.
Why do you say that?
Well, I don't think Darwin's got. I don't think there's any facts that really support what he proposed. I mean, I think he was a very smart man in his time. He used the data that he had at the time, and it was logical. But he didn't even know what a cell was or how complex a cell was. And we've gone way beyond that. And how to explain even a cell which actually is probably more complicated than the city of New York on its own, and how it reproduces itself. Exactly. And it does it in just a few hours. How that came about and how can you specialize into a thyroid cell or a parathyroid cell or a brain cell? You know, we may have. When we're in utero, there's a moment in time where we make a quarter of a million nerve cells every minute and they migrate to their right location. And then they have as many as 10,000 connections, and they make these connections correctly in 99.9% of the time. How on Earth, if you wanted to count each one of those connections and each one of those nerves, there isn't enough time that the Earth has been around to account for how that happened. So it had to happen many at a time and it wouldn't allow for trial and error, which would be Darwin's approach. And so like I said, being a physician looking at how the human body works, I just can't buy into his theory. And some people argue, well, you're just talking about a man 150 years old, 50 years ago. But I'm talking about the new approaches of Darwin which really aren't that much different. And this is really an agenda item, this is a political item, this is a right and left wing item, much, much more so than what the facts point to.
I don't want to defend Darwin, but just in his defense, can we completely throw him out in your opinion or does? Because it seemed as though you were saying that at the beginning of that last.
No, I think he, I think on the micro level, you know, within species, survival of the fittest, weeding out, the slower, the, the less procreation, that's legitimate, that works. He also wrote a great piece of work on animals and emotions in which he was 150 years ahead of his time because most people felt animals didn't have emotions. He wrote a great piece of work and did a lot of research on the usefulness of earthworms. And actually that was scientific and much of it is valid to this day. And so like I said, he was a smart man. He was using what he had then. But like a lot of theories from 102 and 3, 400 years ago, things have changed.
Let me take a brief pause, we'll be back in just a minute.
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Scientist. Seems like it's become so politicized and so as if it's. To me science means it's totally objective. What's true is true. What's not true is simply not true. It's not about a vote or a popularity contest. I've definitely noticed this in the sort of global warming debate. Why has intelligent design, why has it been veiled as creationism number one? And number two, why do people in the scientific community disparage it so much? Everything you said sounds very scientific.
To me, yeah, I think because a lot of the folks who are supporting intelligent design are creationists for one, for two, there's a track record of arguing religion against science. And so they kind of meld together. A number of them are, for lack of another term, and not to be pejorative, closet creationist or closet Christians. In other words, they're arguing scientific arguments, but they really have a Christian agenda. So the scientists recognize that some of it's a carryover from old days. And so that's part of it. Secondly, to be successful in an academic institution, you really can't support intelligent design. That's like shooting yourself in the foot and you're an idiot. You don't belong here. People lose their jobs and so you're discouraged to say anything if you do. There's lots of examples of people who have lost their positions. So academics used to be, if you said anything that 200 years ago that was against God, did it. You lost your position, you were burned at the stake, essentially, and now it's 180 degrees the other way. So scientists, based on a backtrack record of just arguing with creationists have continued that idea. I think like I said earlier, politics are such, there's a huge agenda that comes along with it. One also has to recognize that an awful lot of scientific articles, and some people say as many as 90% of them in journal articles, are incorrect or flawed. And because journals will only take good sounding journal articles, people who do studies often don't do statistics correctly. As a Harvard professor who a Greek name I can't pronounce it says that something like 90, and he's a well thought of world speaker, that 90% of the medical journal articles are flawed. And so a lot of things get into the mainstream as being true and being factual and then they're disproven. And if you want to jump to my field, which is the area that I know best, I mean, one looks at vitamin E, it was a great thing to take to prevent heart attacks. Now it's possibly dangerous if one looks at calcium. We're giving people calcium right and left for bone health. Now there's an article out that says, yeah, but for every 15 fractures we save, we cause 22 heart attacks. And then suddenly out comes another article saying, well, that article's flawed too. And so we get in this quagmire of scientific articles, are they valid, were they selected correctly, were they reviewed correctly, were the statistics correctly correct? And so we have an awful lot of information out there that's incorrect. And it's lucky that somehow we managed to improve and move along despite some of it. But a lot of things that you think are common sense now may not be common sense tomorrow. And what you think is locked in fact today, go back 100 years ago and see what they thought was locked. In fact, you'd find it's quite different. We have this contemporal chauvinism that we think we're the smartest that we can possibly be, and we know the most kind of thing now. Fast forward 100 years and we're going to look kind of barbaric and unsmart. Also.
That's really interesting. Contemporal chauvinism. I love that phrase, by the way. You're right, because we're taking the world as we know it today and thinking this is it. And then you move forward and. And it's just a complete change when new facts and circumstances are.
In Darwin's day, there was a professor who laid out about 200 different parts of the body that were vestigial, in other words, unnecessary, like the appendix. And they were carryover from primitive times. And that shows how we evolved. And it's not a perfect thing because God didn't do it perfectly kind of stuff. And we're down to about six things now that we can't explain very well, maybe five. And it's just a function of this contemporary chauvinism stuff that, you know, hold out. We're going to have more answers tomorrow and the day after.
So you're saying that none of us should be prepared to give up 200 parts of our body that we don't need?
No, don't do that, including your appendix, if you don't have to.
Oh, really? Okay. Because of the. Just out of curiosity, are you saying that because of the risk of. Of surgery or because it is necessary in some way?
Actually, it looks like there's two things that it probably does, and this is probably still early on. One is it harbors safe bacteria, sort of as a reserve for your bowel. And the other thing is it looks like it has a lot to do with developing your immunity when you're in your mom's womb. And so it's sort of like saying your navel is vestigial, you don't need it, you can get rid of it. Well, the fact is you really needed that port of entry a long time ago. And so maybe the appendix you really needed, you know, in your development. And it isn't vestigial per se, it's just A residual of like your navel.
Two of the points that you brought up previously, I really appreciated those and did not realize how much I should appreciate them. One is the complexity issue when it comes to intelligent design and the examples you gave there. And the other ones that may even be more profound is the missing links concept. Do you want to elaborate on those a little bit more? The giraffe, the whale, Very interesting, interesting points there.
Yeah, I can give you another example because I love to read things about nature. A bombardier beetle that's in Africa and in particular in Nigeria, which has a turret like a machine gun turret on its rear end that has two chambers, one chamber that has a certain chemical and another chamber that has another chemical. If you combine the two and you shoot them out, this turret, which it can shoot almost360 to protect itself, they explode as they combine and they cause injury to mice and other insects and to a person. They can do some eye damage if they're close enough and burn the skin. One would question how on earth did they come up with two chemicals that would combine? I mean, did it come up with Chanel number five in one and you know, and peroxide in the other and that didn't work. I mean, there's no way we could have had an in between combination of these chambers that will explode and not only that, but the turret that will shoot it. And I'd have to look at my book for the numbers. But it's, you know, it's several hundred shots per second or something, you know, and exploding all around it saves itself. How, how did that silly thing come about? And again, it's trial and error. Doesn't work. I mean, I like to come back to the human being and different components of the human being. How did the kidney have a function that controls vitamin D and all the steps that go into that? Because you can't have sun hitting your skin causing vitamin D to be created and then it has to go through the kidney to be changed so it can be used by the body. How many trial and errors did you have to do that? It's interesting with a human being as to even just growing up from an infant to an adult, how is it that so symmetric and it's so controlled and it's always fluid. And at a certain age the sex hormones start developing and they know what to do. The sex hormones know where to go and the cells know how to use them. And same thing with all the other hormones. There's 20 some hormones and counting and you know, there's all These cells have little sort of docking stations, you know, that are different shapes.
The.
No, you know, look, there's another example from the eye. You know, the eye is often used. There are 1,000 layers of transparent cells on the cornea that you look through. Now, you couldn't have had 900 with 100 that weren't. I mean, you had to have them being all of them be transparent. And it's the only part of the body where they're transparent. You have three kinds of tears. Again, this kind of pushes the anti Darwin situation. Why would you need three kinds? And one has to do with happiness. They're chemically different. One to do with happiness, one to do with sadness, one to do with lubrication. And there may be a fourth that has to do with infection.
I had no idea they were different.
Yeah, they're different. And not only that, but they drain from the upper outer to the inner lower. You know, where you get all that crust in the morning. That's the. That's the drain spot. And we didn't have any animals in the past that we know of that had this draining system going up to down, you know, going upward rather than downward or from inside to out. And the eye itself just challenges. One gets really into how the eye works, how the nose works, and how it has different. Recognizes different smells by their shapes. 10,000 different shapes and some, I don't.
Know, something like smells by their shapes. Is that the shape of the molecule?
Yeah, the shape of the molecule.
Really?
Yeah.
Incredible.
Well, and look at your teeth. You know, look at your teeth. I mean, there are no animals that preceded any of us that had the molars up front and the incisors which cut and chew, slice in the back. I mean, so it wasn't trial and error. The teeth came the way they're supposed to come. And so these are questions that people who are pro Darwin really need to explain and can't. And so what happens is then we resort to name calling or. Yeah, you are, you know, you're pro Sarah Palin and you're anti Obama or, you know, I mean, it gets into ridiculous stuff.
Yeah, it definitely does. Just touch on the whale again for me, if you would, because I found that to be really interesting. It's such an amazing creature. I mean, this giant, giant creature. There's no evolutionary step, is there?
No, there isn't. And there's no explanation how it can dive so deeply. It has at least four and sometimes more segments that depressurize at different rates. It has a communication system in Its head that it can communicate for thousands of miles. There are no predecessors for that. You know, its heart is the size of a Volkswagen and no predecessors. The tail, interesting enough if you notice, goes up and down, which is contrary to fish, which goes back sideways. And there are no species to explain how this tail came about and that mechanism and the blubber, we don't have a good explanation for this foot thick blubber that it has which controls its temperature when it dives to these extreme cold levels. And can't tell you much more about whales. That's not quite my expertise.
It's not your expertise, but that's so interesting because it would seem by intelligent design it was just put there and that's.
Well, I had a professor say to me once, what do you think God dropped the whale into the ocean? I said to him, you know, I don't believe in simplistic terms, but it kind of looks like that. I mean if you believe in a maker God I guess, and being omnipotent, he or she or it was able to do that in some way. We're never going to have God come down to us, as far as I know, and tell us he did it or how he did it. So it's a faith issue and so is Darwin's theory. From my perspective it's. I believe this. It's remained a theory throughout, it's not changed into a fact. And the reason for that is stuff that I've elaborated on, it's gotten more complicated and the arguments have gotten stronger. And there's a lot of professors who've written books, you know, challenging the science of Darwin's theory. And Michael Behe and Stephen Myers are big names, but there's of a lot. Jonathan Wells, there's a whole long list of very intelligent people who put their reputation on the line a few times to write about this. I'm the only MD that I know of who has published along this line. But that may not be accurate. I'm certainly among few.
Yeah, that's for sure. Well, you know, speaking of that, maybe we'll kind of close with this. What about doctors? I mean doctors are scientists, but I wouldn't consider them to be scientists. And in the strict sense of the word where they're working in a lab and researching things in petri dishes all day. By the way, what's your area of practice as an internal medicine? Internal medicine. Okay, so what do they think about this? I mean, are they all strictly evolutionist? You talk about how someone who require evolutionary biology as a class Much like biochemistry, anatomy, physiology. What else do they say in the medical community?
Yeah, interesting enough, there's a chunk who are religious and they would be coming from the position I'm in. There's a large number who think evolution is correct. And because there's some logic to it, small to large, unsmart to smarter, you know, monkeys look like people. Plus they were taught evolution is correct by their professors all the way through school, as I was. And as I said, when I went through medical school and got out, I was a firm believer in the theory of evolution and it was supported by all my professors and all my peers. And so it seemed to make sense. I married a lady who was very religious and we have our debates on it. And I started looking into the science of it. Not the religious part, but the science of it. And I found there's some very good reasons to challenge this scenario.
This has got to be. Jeff, I really have to compliment you. This is one of the most fascinating shows I think I've ever done and I'm talking about 300 episodes with all of my different shows. Well, I'd be glad to do some.
More some other time.
Yeah. Tell the listeners where they can learn more. Give out your websites and so forth. Tell them where they can get the book.
What Darwin didn't know easiest is Amazon.com but you can order at any major bookstore. Billions of missing links for sure. Amazon.com I have a website but I don't work with it very well so I would just go the usual ways. Some of my novels are around. I have a brand new book coming out called Common sense and disaster Preparedness because I wear a couple different hats and that should be out shortly.
Yeah, we interviewed you for that subject on the holistic survival show. So that was very interesting as well. Well, Jeffrey Simmons, thank you so much for joining us today and for really shedding some light on this topic. Just very fascinating discussion. Thank you so much.
My pleasure, My pleasure.
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