Dr. Brian Keating
Appearances
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah, that's what I... So often, and this is why I was drawn to Peterson Academy. I've been a professor for 21 years. You know, it's part of my identity as a human being, one of many. And I think...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
For me, the opportunity to do something completely new, novel, and really interact with the type of intellect, the curiosity that hasn't been beaten out because they don't have to learn partial differential equations.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And they don't have to learn how to solder together a data acquisition system and all sorts of other things that are very important for professional physicists that aspire to do them. maybe some of them will. And I've, in fact, been encountered by people that do want to take that course further than when I presented in Peterson Academy.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But the point being, you know, if you can maintain that wonder, if you can maintain that curiosity, and you are undeterred by failure. You know, I always tell my students, when you solve a problem, guess what you win? You win a ticket to an even harder problem. And that's a good thing. Because that's It's like success in life. It's success, exactly. It's deferring gratification.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But the thing about science, Jordan, as you know, you can't win science. You know, science is an infinite game, as Dweck would call it, right? There's no such thing as completing. You've come to the end of science. No one will ever do that. No one will ever complete science. You may have the most knowledge. You may have a stack of Nobel Prizes, et cetera.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But you can't complete science because Mother Nature is undefeatable because she's an infinite array of ever-retreating forces that I think Wigner called it. And the point being, it's confusing because there's an ambiguity. The human mind hates ambiguity because we know to get a tenured position is a finite game. There's only so many professors that can get it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
To get the highest score on a test, to get into graduate school, to get a post, all these things. So science is comprised— It's an infinite game comprised of all these finite games. Nobel Prize, it only goes to three people. So how do you navigate in those realms?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And I think that people cleave towards the, well, if I just do the hard things, the differential equations and the circuits and the- If I master the finite games. Yeah, those finite games, then I will win the infinite game. And along the way, they beat out of themselves, unfortunately, sort of the suicide of that curiosity that got them interested in science to begin with.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Another Feynman quote. Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. Not their knowledge, not their wisdom. Or the ignorance of you.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And you look at the word, look, you know more than anybody what the meaning of words are. And you know in Hebrew the word for thing is the same as the word for word, suggesting an entanglement that's inextricable. But in the sense, science, let's look at the word science. What does science mean? It doesn't mean wisdom. No, that's sapience. That's sapienza. We are homo sapien.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
We are man who is wise. What are we wise about, Jordan? That we're going to die. That's the only thing that we know. Though we know for sure is that we're going to die. And it's interesting that it also comes up in the first chapters of Genesis, right? As you've spoken about at many occasions. But the word science means knowledge. And what does the word knowledge in Hebrew connote?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Well, it connotes Adam knew his wife. Mm-hmm. So it's very different. The notion in sort of the Greek, the Roman, the tradition of Asa, et cetera, that is coming down through us. And it's very crucial to life. I mean, technology, science, and knowledge acquisition in general. That's sort of one tradition.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And the Hebrew tradition is a tradition where knowledge, as I say, means something radically different. And the aspiration for wisdom, Torah, wisdom, knowledge, truth, emunah, as you say, all these things have elements of illumination
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Yes. A purpose. Purpose. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So these things, you know, and you should never confuse it. I mean, there's no one as dumb as, you know, someone who's brilliant. You know, there's no one who will believe some of the dumbest things, dumbest propositions that you couldn't convince that bricklayer you spoke about to believe than an intellectual, than an academic, you know.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
They spoke of—Lennon spoke of useful idiots. Sometimes I think of useless geniuses. Some of my colleagues are useless geniuses. They're so bright. And then they'll lead their credibility to the domain of wisdom, of which they have none.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
It's within all of us. And the smarter you get—look, I've interviewed 21 Nobel Prize winners on my podcast, and And never once – I mean, they've all been brilliant. They've all been incredibly accomplished in their field, obviously, to get to that level. And I've criticized the Nobel Prize, but not the people that win it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
You can't – I mean, the one rule I learned when I was asked to nominate winners on the two occasions I've been asked to nominate the winners of the Nobel Prize is that you can't nominate yourself, right? That's the one rule that they adhere to that Alfred Nobel stipulated in 1880.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But most other things they've disavowed, unfortunately, which is a grave sin, by the way, because, you know, in Judaism, the greatest mitzvah, which means commandment, people think it means good deed. It doesn't mean good deed. It means commandment. You're commanded to do certain things. And one of the things you're commanded to do that has greatest, utmost importance is to bury the dead.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
and to not leave a dead body unescorted. Why is that? Well, it's the one thing they can't reciprocate, right? They can't, you bury the dead, they're not going to bury you, right, by definition. And so it's the ultimate altruistic, you know, beneficence in the sense. And when Alfred Nobel wrote his will, he specified exactly what he wanted.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
He wanted to go to one man who did the greatest accomplishments for the greatest benefit of mankind in the preceding year. So it was one person, preceding year, and it had to benefit all of humanity. So it was what we call, in Hebrew, an ethical will. So it wasn't just a will, here's my money. He had no kids. He had no wife. He had no heirs to give the money to.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
So he gave it all, in the sense, towards the betterment of mankind. Literally, that's what it says. But many of the other things they've disavowed. He can have three people win it. They can win it for stuff done 30 years ago, 50 years ago. But one of the few things that they've actually kept is this focus, if you will, that it should benefit. It should provide a benefit to humanity.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And then you wonder, well— That's also a non-scientific element of science, right?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And would you say then, just based on that, that somebody who identifies as a scientist alone is fundamentally unhealthy? Is not maybe psychopathic?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
All PhDs are like that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
The problem is scientists don't, we don't get any ethical training. And I say that, you know. It's all implicit. It's implicit that you're just going to learn it. Similarly, we don't get training in public communication. I view my YouTube channel and my podcast, et cetera, as I don't get paid for it. The university has not revoked my tenure, but they don't help with it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
They don't provide any resources for it. There's no antagonism. I do it because— Well, at least they don't get paid.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But, no, and I have a great relationship with the chancellor and my deans and so forth. I'm very blessed to be where I am. And it's one of the best campuses for many other reasons. But all this to say, I don't get, you know, it's not part of my duties as a professor to do the explanations that I do and provide interviews with Nobel Prize winners. I do it because I believe in two things.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I believe I have a moral obligation, and maybe you'll agree too, maybe not. I have a moral obligation. I'm taking your money. I'm taking taxpayer money. Imagine if you're the person who installed the countertops in your home. And they said to you, you said, you know, excuse me, you know, sir, you know, how's it going? I'm sorry, Jordan, what I do.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
is so specialized, it's so erudite, you cannot possibly understand it. Even with your PhD and your success story, you'd say, go to hell. You don't talk to your boss like that. I am your boss. The public is our boss.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And a lot of it is p-hacked and, you know, implicitly, you know, hacked to get the results that were desired, whether it's for some drug company's benefit. But even beyond that, the workaday scientist, I'm talking to the person in the lab next door to me, not some, you know, shill for Pfizer or something like that. I'm talking about just a workaday scientist.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And, you know, she or he will say to me, I'm not good at that. I'm sorry. You, Brian, you have to give to it. By the way, I don't think I'm that good. But I do think that I have an innate desire for the 1% gains that can be made by iteration. That every iteration, I try to get 1% better. My conversation, the questions I ask, the types of conversations that I have and the depth that I go into.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And I think that's my unique skill, if anything.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I mean, your videos are online from Harvard, from Toronto, et cetera. But when I say that to them, they say, well, I'm just not good at that. And I say, oh, yes, I forgot. I forgot. I forgot, you know, to my friend. I'll say, yeah, you were born knowing quantum electrodynamics. No, no, no. I work really hard at it. Oh, oh. So you work hard at that which you think is valuable.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
So that means you're telling, you're admitting, you're copying to the fact that you don't think communicating to your boss is important. And I find it shameful. And I don't think that everybody should be out of the lab, you know, tanking 20% of their time and learning how to communicate like Neil deGrasse Tyson. But they should spend some of that time.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And they're trained to do diversity inclusion. Yeah, yeah. You're trained. Or they're punished for not doing it, at least. Well, you won't even get in the door now. You won't even have your applications reviewed. I'm interested to see what happens in the coming administration as we speak.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I've traveled literally trillions of micrometers and billions of seconds to be here, and we are going to explore this universe together. Cosmology is the oldest science known to humanity. Since cavemen and women, people have wondered, where did everything come from? We're not going to do any alien autopsies or anything in this class, but we are going to cover a lot of fascinating questions.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is the universe made of? How can we possibly understand the grand landscape of the cosmos? When you look back in space, you look back in time. It's amazing we've been able to do this, to study the properties of the cosmos, time scales of billions of years, size scales billions of times bigger than our own.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And now the question is, can we go back to time equals zero? Can we go back to before time equals zero? And what does that even mean? I hope in this course to keep striving and asking these great questions, because without great questions, there can be no great answers. And without great answers, there can be no understanding.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
You know, Jordan, I always joke, our profession, I call it the second oldest profession, right? I mean, there have been universities since the University of Bologna in Italy was established in 1082. And look how much has changed. There's a guy or a girl taking a piece of rock and scraping on another piece of rock. How innovative. After a thousand bloody years, we've done almost nothing different.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Okay, so there's PowerPoint, and that's not that much different, let's be honest, right? But what if there were the opportunity to bring in literal the visualizations that they've done on my first course, and I can't wait to see on the second course. And my third course is – see, what's nice, I'm an experimental physicist. I'm not Brian Greene. I'm not –
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
manipulating wormholes like my friend Kip Thorne and so forth, who did the science behind the movie Interstellar. I was the advisor to Christopher Nolan. I'm not a theoretical physicist. So what do I do? I do experiments. The more experiments, the better. But you only do another experiment because some aspect of the previous experiment failed. And that's fine.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
That's part of the iterative process of science that makes it not only so important and so annealed, so hardened by truth and the process of attempting to achieve truth, imperfectly as it may be, but getting things wrong. Look what happens when you get something wrong. Let's be honest. It's a surprise, right?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
You didn't think you were going to go down and you're going to discover dust instead of the Big Bang, which is what happened to me in describing my first book. We thought we saw the gravitational wave aftermath of the inflationary universe that we talked about in my first podcast episode with you. But instead, that led to the Simons Observatory.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
It's led to a $200 million project that is now going to not only look for the gold, but also look for the dragons, look for the dust, look for the things that are in the impediments. So the surprise was not a failure at all. I mean, look, when you solve a puzzle, you get a little bit of thrill. And remember when you were a kid, you had a Rubik's Cube, you had this thing or that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
You'd solve the puzzle, and you would do something that no adult does. You'd do it again. Like, my kids do this all the time. They solve a Rubik's Cube, then another one messes it up, then the other one solves it. And, like, I already solved it. Like, I don't need to rewrite my PhD thesis. Like, I already wrote it. But there's a little bit of that thrill that you get when you are surprised.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I say this to my students all the time. I say, flaws... in your experiment, in your theory, lead to new laws. It's not like we study. Do you know, Jordan, that we're made of matter, right? But in the early universe, we think that there was almost an exact symmetry. It's one of these guiding principles of physics, that there are symmetries. Conservation of energy is a type of symmetry.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Angular momentum's conservation is another type of symmetry. Displacement, the symmetry, those are all the things that we say exist. The laws of physics shouldn't change. They should not look different in a mirror or upside down or on Pluto or in Arizona. It should not make a difference who you are, where you are.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
It's kind of the great democratic process of science known as the Lorentz principle of Lorentz invariance that Galileo really crystallized and then later eventually— Fundamental things apply everywhere in all directions. Fundamental truth to the extent that we can perceive it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And so, you know, when you do something and you find out, well, this is not correct, like the fact that the postulate was, and all the greatest scientists thought, there should be equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Well, guess what, Jordan? We wouldn't be here if that were true.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
All the matter particles would annihilate with the antimatter particles and the universe would be a universe of complete, barren, sterile radiation. Pretty boring unless you happen to be a photon. But that's not the case. And it's obvious just from we exist. We know that that's not true. We can observe it. I refute it thus. Kick the rock. It's made of matter. Where's all the antimatter?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Is it segregated in some galaxy that we haven't been to yet? No, we don't think that's the case. So where did it go? Well, we have to look. How symmetric is the universe? How beautifully, finely balanced, tuned, if you believe in an intelligent designer? How... finally tuned, did he tune it to be? Well, it turns out he did a spectacular job.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Because for every particle of matter, there was another particle of antimatter. Except for there was one, for every billion particles of antimatter, there was a billion and one particle of matter. So the two matching a mirror image matter and antimatter particles, they destroyed each other. And what was left? One particle of matter. And the rest was a bath of photons. Right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
It is not a rounding error. It's exquisitely balanced. Now, we don't know why. Some theists will say it's intelligently designed. And you can ask certain questions. How well designed does the universe have to be? In other words, how finely tuned? You have a good ear for classical music. My wife enjoyed talking to you about it. You know, she plays the violin. I play Spotify.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
So I have no musical ability whatsoever. But you could perceive the note A, 440 hertz, right? Your ear can actually perceive if it's 441 hertz. In other words, one out of 400, so less than 1%, a quarter of a percent mistuning, you can perceive it. How well tuned does the universe have to be in order for us to be having this conversation?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And then the supposition is, well, if it's extremely finely tuned across a whole vast panoply of different areas, from the strength of these constants, the number of protons, to the number of antiprotons, then you might start to think this is suggestive. But it's not a scientific hypothesis, right? We can always say God, and we can always say there was no God, but you can't prove it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And I think this is an important fact that people get. I was on with a young man that you've met many times, Stephen Bartlett, on his podcast, wonderful podcast. And we spent four hours together. And one of those hours was just about me, him asking me to prove God scientifically. I said, I'm sorry, Stephen, again and again. I cannot do that. He's searching. He's reaching for something.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah. Well, he probably talked more about God with me than he did with you. And I was quite surprised that he did because I'm a cosmologist. I'm not a theologian.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah, I always say I'd kill for 1% of God's book sales. And I told him, look, what you're searching for, I can't necessarily give you. I can give you the approach to me that I find persuasive, but it's not going to be persuasive to you because it's specific to me and my life history and how I understand how I got to be who I am.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And it doesn't use the strength of quantum electrodynamics, and it doesn't use all sorts of things.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And when you search for that, I think I told him, I said, Stephen, you know, and I think I got this from you in the conversation you had with Dennis Prager that I was privileged to be a part of in Santa Barbara about five, six years ago. And you said, you know, who am I to say, this is you, who am I to say I believe in God? Like, what is a man to say such a thing? I mean, it's so ridiculous.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And I've turned that around. I say, I don't believe in gravity. And he's like, what are you talking about? And Stephen said, you're a physicist. You have to believe in gravity. I said, no, if I take this meteorite and I drop it, I don't believe it's—I have evidence for it. What is the notion of evidence? It means it's something we can't necessarily define, but we can say it's certainly not faith.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I don't have faith that it's going to do that. We have empirical evidence. DNA leads to the genetic inheritance that we have. Those things you don't have to take on faith. You have evidence for them. So science and religion—science should not be used— It's not one of its tool, its best purposes. You know, you have a hammer. You don't use it to screw in a screw.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
You have to use the tool in the domain for which it's designed or perhaps best.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And so resonant, that phrase that you used that, you know, is tattooed on my brain, you know, who am I to do that? I found it as a call to kind of a clarion call because it made me think, look, Jordan, there's what, a billion, you know, Hindus and Buddhists and so forth. It can't only be that Judeo-Christian, you know, theology is correct. It's the only approach, right?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
It can't be the only approach. And maybe it's not the only truth. In other words, maybe there's—just assume this proposition, and then you can take it apart. Assume all religions that have at their base a moral goodness, an aspect of improving— human flourishing and the human condition, not some nihilistic, you know, witchcraft or whatever that seems to serve no teleology whatsoever.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But where there is clearly, and we know that Christianity and Judaism have this embedded within them, and Buddhism I'm most familiar with, but it has elements of that. And take away the theology and just talk about the values. there's an equivalence class in mathematical terms of all religions that practice good values. They have this in common.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah, you came in January 23 to the house, and we had kosher rib-eyes. Yeah, that's right. Exactly two years, yeah. Yeah, your tour for the last time in San Diego. Yeah, that was the last time we were together. And then we did...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Whatever this is, this notion of human flourishing and goodness and treatment and so forth. Again, proposition, I'm not saying it's true. Assume it's true. Just assume that's true. Assume that God, in other words, is, you know, there's no such thing as a, we don't believe that there's a thing called a photon, like specifically a particle.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
We believe the fundamental element is called the photon field. That the field, which exists everywhere at all times in all places, that that is what's fundamental. And then this photon, you know, the human eye is miraculous. We can see a single photon in the right circumstances. Right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
It's incredible. And that's part of the loss you spoke about earlier where we think about the loss of the night sky. I'm curious. We'll talk some other time about how the human psychology will be robbed of this and maybe that will do something like having phthalates or microplastics. Those things are tangible.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But the intangible loss of the night sky from all places on earth perhaps, God forbid, but let's just say. Anyway, getting back to my proposition, imagine God is a field so that – and then each – what we see as a photon or what we see as Hinduism or Judaism or Christianity is an instantiation, is actually the particle version of it, if you will, of a field that exists locally.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
throughout all space and all time. In other words, what if God is, and we can't, and this is not refutable because you can't, you know, we're saying by definition it's incorporeal, it's a field, and just like you can't feel the photon field, you can detect its manifestations. And so what if the, you know, the fruits of the tree are sort of proof of what it was made to do, right?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
An apple tree doesn't produce a grapefruit, and a honeybee doesn't produce a spiderweb. So the instantiation, how do these things, you know, connect to one another?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And the Jews thought there early. Yeah, and I always say, you know, we have the Eskimos in northern Canada reputed to have 12 words for snow. And you find that with the Jews. You find there's six different types of words for knowledge and wisdom and intuition and wisdom. You know, you can identify them. They don't have as many words for snow. And so what were their tools?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
What was their environment like? It was saturated with religion. And with literacy. Yeah, and with literacy and, you know, the language and being able to communicate that as well, but also expressing something which must be intrinsic. And I find when I hosted Richard Dawkins in Vancouver, he asked me to come up. I had him on my podcast for two episodes for his most recent book. And...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah, I've recorded two. One's out currently, which is called Cosmology. Very simple. And then I've recorded a second one, Introduction to Astronomy, which you might think would come before cosmology, but actually cosmology encompasses most of astronomy anyway. In some sense, cosmology is one of the oldest sciences, if not the oldest science.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And I'm always, you know, kind of—and I've had Sam Harris on the last year as well. And the thing that's frustrating to me about when I talk to scientists like them is how simple their understanding is, quite frankly, of religion, specifically Judeo-Christian. I'm not an expert in anything. I mean, I was an altar boy in the Catholic Church as a kid, a complicated story.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But I'm born Jewish, two Jewish parents, and I'm Jewish to this day. But the point— their understanding of things. Like, I said to Richard, you know, in Vancouver, a thousand people there, it was wonderful, people coming up, tears in their eyes, thank you for making me an atheist. And I found it so depressing.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And because of the richness, and by the way, I often call myself a practicing agnostic, meaning, and which I think is in harmony with your famous statement that I mentioned before, In other words, if you know for sure that God exists, then you're an absolute fool or an imbecile if you don't believe in him or whatever that means, almost to the point of evidence.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And I don't dispute that many, many Christians feel it in a way that Jews don't, you know, this personal relationship with God, Savior, and that he died for my sins. It's harder for Jews to relate to that. But I stipulate that they feel that way. But to say that you are an atheist, like that is your identity—
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
is a very strange thing to me to believe, especially from these brilliant men like Sam and like Richard, because they have such simplistic ideas and knowledge.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
You're just not going to get anywhere with it. The taste is not disputable, right?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I said to Richard, you know, I said, look, Richard, I also don't believe in the God that you also don't believe in. It's so simplistic. And Sam, to some extent, is worse just from the perspective that he's so persuasive. I mean, he's the only person besides you that I've ever known, I've spent four hours with, that never uses the word, you know, has any verbal communication.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
crutches whatsoever, and I don't mean to jinx our conversation, but he just speaks in complete—he speaks in prose, as they say, you know, paragraphs. And, you know, when we talk about things, very simple things, why don't you do—you know, what is your feeling about, you know, Judaism that made you reject, you know, I guess his dad is Jewish, I forget— And, well, it just takes slavery.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And he just asserts that, you know, slavery is, there's no such thing as, he said to me, Brian, Brian, you and I create a religion. Are we going to have slavery in it? I said, Sam, this is so, this is like my, you know, seven-year-old learns this, you know, in school, in her Talmud class. Like, you can't be serious.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
It's the science that you can do with the two telescopes that you're born with in your skull. And for that reason, it's accessible to everybody. You know, I was thinking on my way over here, you talk so much about freedom and how important that is. There are very few things that are literally free, right? Right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Like, you think that slavery meant like black African slave trade, you know, in the deep South in America. And it's just not that. And once we go through it, and I taught him, you know, what it meant to have a slave. By the way, Moses is called a slave of God. Did that mean that Moses was whipped by God? No, it means he's a servant.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And there was this concept called indentured servitude, which is actually a kindness. If you couldn't pay your debt to me, Jordan, and you were going to steal something, no, no, no. I would give you, basically employ you, and I provide food and shelter. And by the way, sometimes you wouldn't want to leave.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
After six years, you wouldn't want to leave because I treated you so well as my slave that I would have to take your ear and hammer it into the door with a nail. And this was a part of a tradition that Jewish slaves had to undergo in order to remain with their masters because we're meant to be free. And so this was meant to show as an outward symbol to the world that I chose not to be free.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And we know many people choose to be slaves of a different kind rather than be free men and women. But I said—he—
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
The most common slavery that scientists practice is workaholism. They work 24-7. They work all days of the week. They're so fascinated because it's so intoxicating. You know, you have that feeling when you discover something and you realize, wow, gee, I am the first— Human, frail human that's ever understood this in the history of the planet. It might be small. It might be incremental.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Maybe it's not. Yeah, but you also don't know. But you don't know. And you don't know what these little seeds— Hard on the trail, man. Yeah, you may blossom into something so wonderful. And that's what's so great about science. But it's addictive. And I tell my students, you have to work. But people forget, Jordan, right?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Before it says, you know, on the seventh day you shall rest, it says six days you must work. In other words, it's not optional. It's a command. It's a mitzvah command form. Hebrew has it. English doesn't.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
You must work, Jordan, because you can't appreciate the true sense of soul society, you know, satiating of your soul, unless you have that feeling of accomplishment of working the earth or working the laboratory. But if you only do that, if you only do that, you're a slave. I don't care. You might have a Nobel Prize, but you're a slave. Mm-hmm.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I could only think of two, and you'll probably correct me, but freedom of thought is not necessarily a guarantee around the world, right? Every human being doesn't have access to freedom of speech. Certainly not. Right, definitely not. Especially not your home country, especially nowadays. But air? so far as I know, is free. And the only other thing I could think about, Jordan, was the night sky.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And so, when I talked to Richard and I talked to—I came away, you know, somewhat depressed. Because also, you know, as you know, in Judaism, the word Judaism comes from the word gratitude, hodo, hodea, which means to give gratitude towards God. You know, Judah's name for the thanksgiving that his mother gave to God. So, it's endemic in our—and that's why we do say blessings.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Because you can't look at a meteor shower, you can't look at a rainbow, and if you bless it, you can't be angry and grateful at the same time, right? That seems to be impossible.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I look at the iPhone 16. So I'm a tech junkie. I love technology. It doesn't come with a manual. And actually, this is very interesting. I'm going to show it to you in a second. I brought you a very ancient manual. But it's very interesting. We have manuals, but you can get it online. So it doesn't come with a printed manual. You go to Apple, and they'll tell you every single feature.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
There's 8,000 YouTube channels that have manuals. Millions of times more subscribers than me. And it will be listed, you know, how to get this shortcut, how to do this app. So there's an instruction manual for a bloody chunk of silicon glass and a little bit of rubber. And there's no instruction manual for people. I remember the night we brought our first son home. And we were bleary-eyed.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
He wasn't nursing. He's going to die. Right? You remember that feeling? He's going to die. Like, he's not going to die. He's going to be fine. He's six pounds.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
This thing might die. It's sheer terror. And it's the most responsible. And they send you home and there's no instruction manual. And I actually said, let's look at the manual to my wife. And she's, what the hell are you talking about? There's no manual. But humans need instruction. some instruction. And it doesn't have to come from somewhere, but it can't come from yourself.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
When I talked to Stephen Bartlett, he said, I'm a good person. I don't kill anybody. I say, Stephen, how many people that committed great sin and great evil thought they were doing evil? None of them, not a single bloody one of them thought they were doing evil. They justified it as great good, whether it was eliminating Jews or whatever. I don't even have to take it that far of
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
So he's trying to justify, I think, his behavior. Because what happens, Jordan, when you believe in God or you have some notion of a moon or faith or just want to approach a creator or something bigger than you? Well, then you have obligations. And people hate that. I don't think Richard—I mentioned Richard Feynman.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
We all can look at the night sky. We can all enjoy it. And we're in both those ways. You know this, I'm sure. We breathe in every breath has millions of molecules that Jesus himself breathed in. That's the nature of our atmosphere and the mixing of molecules, etc. It's guaranteed that that is the case. But the only other thing that we may share with Jesus is that we see the same night sky.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
If I told you 20 years ago, Jordan, you eat meat only and salt. You know, I have prepared meat. I think it was pretty darn good, kosher ribeye when you came to my house a couple of years ago. But if I told you 30, 20 years ago, Jordan, you're just going to eat ribeyes and salt. You would say, that's horrible. Like, I don't want to do that. That's going to be, you know, take away my freedom.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
You're telling me it's composed. But now you took it upon yourself. I see it in you, the health, the vitality, the just, you know, incredible transformation that you've undergone. Who is happier? Jordan 20 years ago could eat all the Doritos, or I don't know what you ate back then, or has this prescribed thing to do in the prime of his life.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And I feel that way about, so I said that to, you know, Stephen and also to Sam, and When you're given, you know, look, as a Jew, I don't eat pork, right? I love to eat pork, you know. And why did we not get—who knows? There's no real reason why we think—it's not because they're dirty. But when you have an instruction manual, you—
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
The assumption is the writer, the author of the instruction manual knew something that you don't. And maybe there's some benefit from following their instructions. The question is, you know, if you do believe in God and if you do practice some faith tradition or whatever, will you be happier or not?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
These people that came up to Richard Dawkins with tears in their eyes at the book signing after our event—
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I don't want to say, you know, okay, so now I don't have to listen to him because he was abused. You know, it's like if you meet somebody who was physically abused as a child and then they turn out to—you don't want to make that an excuse because look at the other people that were. Yes, of course, of course. So I don't want to let him off the hook so easily in that sense.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But I guess the challenge that I have is when I deal with somebody like that, because I can talk science with either one of them, Lawrence Krauss, again. Yeah, yeah. These people I can talk to, and they're so self-confident. But— They would never, and I told this to Lawrence Cross, because I had him on my podcast, and he's had me on his podcast.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
We've talked about this, and we kind of joke I'm the religious Jew, he's the atheist. But he knows nothing about the faith. Why does he know nothing? Because most Jews, boys, have a bar mitzvah at age 13, which is a rite of passage, which sucks. I mean, I've got one of my kids going through it right now.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And your voice is cracking, and you're in front of everybody, and you're embarrassed, you have pimples, and your girlfriend, you know, and it's horrible, right? But you go through, it's a rite of passage, right? And then what does it mark for most Jews, men? Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris, if he had one. It marks sort of a graduation, right? from religion.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
It marks the parole from prison of this obnoxious, not really satisfying or meaningful tradition that was forced upon you by the circumstances of your birth. I agree with Richard. No one can be a Christian, you know, like you're a Christian because you were born to a Christian family. That doesn't mean that you're actively doing anything in Christianity. And that's different.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
We see the same cosmos as he did. There haven't been any new planets coming in.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
So Judaism is more of a behavioral or religion where you have to do these mitzvahs and do certain things. It's behavior, it's practicing religion. But, you know, at the same token, if you deny somebody that, like, there's almost no chance. I'm sort of miraculously – because both my parents were kind of atheists. They didn't take Judaism very seriously. My dad was an active militant atheist.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
He used to say to me, I don't believe in God. I believe in Satan because he made you believe in God. But the point being, you know, if you deny something that could be beneficial – Even if you don't believe it yourself, I think it's—I don't want to say child abuse, but you're denying your children something.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And I said, you know, the avatar for me— Well, what do they have if they don't have a tradition? They have nothing. They have themselves. They have the medium.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
That's true. They're free. That's free toothaches, I suppose. So I find it also quite a respite. You know, I'm a pretty tough person, but I do believe the human spirit needs safe spaces in a sense, not the kind of places we had on campus on November 6th with, you know, Play-Doh and finger painting kits for the students who were traumatized. That's Play-Doh, not Play-Doh. That's right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And it's going to be a bitter, unhappy hungry person.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But instead, we need safe spaces that the human mind can expand within. You know, if you just go to the gym and work out and you never recover, you can't fully grow to your potential. To me, cosmology, uniquely in science, you know, but less so generally science, certainly not virology, right? But science in its purest sense, the pure sciences, not political science, but pure science, not applied.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And to me, that's why, look, I struggle with God. That's the name of your book, right? Israel. Israel means wrestle with God. It's not Islam. Islam means submit to God. When you submit to God— That's a different vision, man. It's a very different vision, and we can debate about it. But the fact is, when you submit, it's like I've often noted with my children, the first word they said was no.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Because if you say yes, you're just agreeing with somebody else's, whatever. Whatever they propose to you, you want to eat this? Yes, I want to eat this. You have no self-identification. I mean, you know, this is a trivial one-on-one for you. But that is true. So you express your individuality.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Absolutely. Yeah, no, and so all these things are self-evident. And the thing in Judaism where I feel is sort of denied to people that just refute. Look, I say, as I said, I don't believe in the God that Richard Dawkins doesn't believe in. It's trivial. Yuri Gagarin, when he circled the earth the first time, the communist, you know, Pravda, the truth, right?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
They asked him, what did you see up there? He said, I can't tell you what I saw, but I know what I didn't see. And they go, what? I didn't see a man with a white beard sitting on a chair. You know, congratulations, Yuri. That's really, you know, he's a hero of the Soviet Union.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
That's so baby. Nobody thinks of that. Where's up? There's no up in space. There's no heaven.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I said, you know, or, you know, Stephen Bartlett asked me, he said, you know, the Bible says the earth is flat. First of all, it doesn't say that, but second of all, you know, I said— But it's locally flat. It is definitely flat. And I won't say this. I said, you know, look, Stephen, I could say this to Sam or Richard Dawkins. You know, I say the Earth is flat. Prove me wrong.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
One in a thousand people, ordinary people, will get that right. About 50, 60 percent of scientists will get that right. If I say prove that the Earth orbits around the sun— 90% of scientists will get that wrong. I bet most scientists watching this, I'm not going to put anybody on the spot. Including me. Yeah, I'm not going to say, stand on one leg and prove it, Jordan. But we can prove it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
It's discovered in the 1700s how you could do it. It's called stellar aberration. And I'll give the answer to the test. But Galileo, one of the greatest minds in human history, he believed, and he was right, that the Earth goes around the sun. And he went to great lengths. And I think this is so beautiful. We put so much emphasis on scientists. that they are sort of gods, right? They manipulate.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
What did Arthur C. Clarke say? He said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I actually opened my podcast with that, with his actual voice, because I'm at the Arthur C. Clarke Center. So when you look at that, who wields magic? Well, it's gods or it's magicians and fairies and all sorts of wonderful creatures that certainly aren't people.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But when a scientist can unlock the power of the atom, or can unleash humanity's need on electricity with infinite energy, or can develop a superconductor, or all the lasers, anything that we take for granted in technology all came from basic physics. The internet came from basic physics.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
like I get to do, I have the privilege of doing, which is studying the universe offers a space for the human mind, the intellect, to relax, to enjoy, to appreciate. And there's no secret. You've heard cosmetology. I make this joke in my Peterson Academy course. I say, you know, this course is not about hair and makeup, you know, despite my wonderful appearance.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And when you look at that, then you expect that they're ineffable, just like their primitive, childish, infantile notions of what we think God is, right? They think that we think that he's the guy in the chair in outer space with the beard, but they project that onto humans. So they'll say Richard Feynman was a god.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I mean, literally, there's more people, Jordan, that play in the NBA right now than have won Nobel Prizes in physics, okay? And so when you look at these great men, including my hero, Galileo, They were greatly flawed individuals, horribly flawed. Feynman cavorted with his graduate students' wives. He had mistresses. He went to strip clubs.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Einstein married his cousin who was a horrible, horrible father. He neglected a child with severe mental illness. Never saw him after he moved to America to get fame and fortune. Cavorting with... What's the guy's name? Charlie Chaplin. He cavorted with Charlie Chaplin. And he loved the fame and attention. He had a huge ego. Not great. I don't want to emulate him. Do I want to be like Einstein?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Do I want to be like Feynman? Hell no. But you look at a man and you analyze him or you analyze a woman. What... Are they willing to teach me? What can I learn from them? And what you learn from Galileo is that great men can have great flaws, and they can be right and they can be wrong.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And if you can learn from both of them, both those tendencies that are mixed up within them, they have both within them, you must subdue.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah, I brought this to show you. I can't give you this because it's signed not by the great Jordan Peterson, but it's signed by Galileo. So, I'm going to show you what his signature looked like, and I want to point out just something interesting. That's his signature. Wow. So this was a book he wrote. It's called The Military Compass. Now, you and I, I told Stephen Bartlett this.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I said, do you know what a slide rule is? He said, I have no idea what a slide rule is. Where did you get this? So I have a collector. So when I got my advance for my first book, Losing the Nobel Prize, I basically bought this book. And it's a— It's in great shape. Wonderful. Look at the pages on it. This is from 1646. It has a custom box and so forth.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And there's an English translation that they made in the 70s. You can't get this anymore anymore. But there's an English translation of it. But there's a tag I put there. Why don't you open that up and read me what it says on a Post-it note page. I think it's on this side of the page. So these are all things that you could do with this thing called the military compass.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
So I think it says there, right? What does it say? Can you read it? This one? Yes.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And he goes through, and what does he mention, the currency that he's going to convert?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But it's actually related, cosmology and cosmetology, by the prefix cosmos, which in Greek means beautiful or appearance. So it's literally telling us that the night sky is beautiful and it's something to behold and it's a sensual pleasure. People don't think of that with cosmology.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah, so here's what the device looked like. It was like a slide roll. So maybe later we'll get the cameras to zoom in on it. It was a slide roll. It was a computer. It was a device to simplify calculations. And he invented it. And he wouldn't actually produce, as he did with his telescopes, he wouldn't actually give the hardware away. He'd give the software away.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
He'd give the operating manual away. This is how he made money, because he had illegitimate children. He had mistresses. He was also not the greatest of husbands and men and certain things. He was a deep believer in God. But when I look at this and I say, this book, this is the second edition. The first edition was written in 1601, and there's only about seven of them left.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
There's actually more Gutenberg Bibles than first editions of Galilee's Compass. So this one was cheap, very cheap compared to those. You can almost get, they're priceless. They're kept under lock and key at the Galileo Museum. in Florence. But the point is, if he had taken those Florentines that he's talking about, or the ducats, you know, if I give you a ducat right now, it's almost worthless.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I mean, yeah, it's kind of cool historically. It might look good. It was a paper note. It's basically like a paper dollar. It got inflated to nothing. They would do things, you know, with the money back then. They would shave the corners of the coins. That's why coins have ridges on them now. All sorts of interesting historical tidbits. But if he had just kept one of these things,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
you know, kept the original edition, his heirs would have hundreds of millions of dollars. And so you look at these people and you often find that the people who have the greatest scientific knowledge and technical and maybe practical knowledge, sometimes their wisdom is to be lacking.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But the average person will never look at that and say, wow, this person, you know, has been divorced six times or, you know, treats his illegitimate stepdaughter horribly or whatever. We never look at that. We never say part and parcel. And I think I'm not advocating we should look at Feynman and say, you slept with your graduate students' wives. No, no, no.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
You should just say that there is a value in the people that, say, have those wonderful aspects, those wonderful characteristics, that don't have the foibles. Just they may not have Nobel Prizes. In other words, we prioritize the intellect over the ethical. And I think it's very dangerous. And it's very seductive for scientists to want to emulate Galileo.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah, I've read the first couple chapters online, and it starts, you know, just to think about the connection as I start my cosmology class at Peterson Academy. You know, I start off by saying, you know, what is the most important day on the calendar? Let me say it to you. Like, what is the most important day on your calendar every year? It's probably Christmas, I would say. Yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
So what is Christmas? It's a birth. It's a beginning. It's a new—but what is the only event for which there might not have been a preceding day, let alone, you know, a repetition of that day, the origin of the universe? If we go back from now, late 2024, we go back 13.8 billion years. Let's say we're talking on a Thursday today. We'll come back. There'll be some Thursday. Just counting 24 hours.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Doesn't mean the Earth was here. Doesn't mean the sun was here. Just counting back in units of 24 hours. Back, back, back, back, back. Come to some Thursday, and, you know, perhaps that was the day the actual Big Bang occurred on, if we could keep track of it. I mean, it's totally practical to do this type of calculation. And we don't actually know what happened on the Wednesday before that day.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
It's a concept. You can think about it, but you can't actually necessarily know what happened. And so that is why I feel like cosmology is the ultimate, the most primitive, primordial subject and why it evokes something in people. There's reasons why the caves of Lascaux, you know, 40,000 years ago, they weren't depicting like, well, here's how you make a good atlatl or spear, you know, whatever.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
They were depicting like the stars and the movements.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
It's visceral, right. By the way, it didn't have to be that way. Most stars are not like our sun. Our sun is not unique. I shouldn't say unique, sorry. Our sun is unusual in that it's a singular star. The preponderance of stars that you look up and see on a dark night sky... are multiples, pairs, binaries, triples, maybe even clusters of stars. And that would be very different.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
That would mean you wouldn't have the ability to see because there'd always be a star out, effectively. They won't orbit right next to each other like in Tatooine in Star Wars. Remember, there's a red sun. But you don't have constellations. You don't have seasons and tracking. You don't have agriculture, the human being's first technology.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And there are some of my colleagues, and I'd love to talk to you about the psychology of aliens. There's a huge... murmuration in the zeitgeist right now, both that super advanced technology is visiting the Earth, incomprehensible distances and so forth, and simultaneously that there are untold worlds yet to be discovered where life is not only abundant, but it's also maybe superior to us.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And maybe they are so advanced and so in possession of Moore's Law for 80 more doubling periods than we've enjoyed it for that, in fact, they've created us in sort of giant silicon apparatus. This is called the simulation hypothesis. And, by the way, the greatest adherence to both the alien reality hypothesis and the simulation hypothesis are atheists, right?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But it's natural, right? Yeah. So, you're going to subordinate your belief in a God that is Judeo-Christian, say, because then you'd have to do things, right? Then you'd have to, you know, have obligations on you to the community, to your wife, to your parents. Sacrifices. Sacrifices to the Sabbath.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
You might have obligations, but I don't need those if I believe in an alien who's on Proxima Centauri.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And the tuning. You have a fine tuner, right? These same people will reject the arguments of design from fine tuning, which I'm not saying I'm comfortable with those signs. We discussed that already. I mean, we can put up many counterexamples of things that are extremely exquisitely tuned that didn't have a designer whatsoever.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And the Earth's distance to the sun is not exquisitely tuned in a sense that necessitated a designer to do it. In other words, we wouldn't – the anthropic principle would suggest we wouldn't be here if the things were radically different from the way it is. Yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And actually, a lot of the parameters in cosmology and particle physics and symmetries that we talked about earlier are not as finely tuned as a radio dial, if you remember those, as you and I do, but most of the younger folks won't. But you've got to tune it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But actually, you don't have to tune it that exquisitely any better, in fact, than the universe was tuned along the lines of certain parameters. But this alien, you know, kind of hypothesis has gotten a lot of attention. You know, it has political ramifications. It has military ramifications. You know, what is it meant to do?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
But I'm curious from your perspective, you know, putting on my podcast or hot now, is there, you know, this compulsion to sort of, you know, feel that there will be – you're familiar with the Drake equation. Maybe you've heard of it. I can describe it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
You don't believe in nothing, you believe in anything, right?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Is that so is that because of the? Intolerance that we as humans have towards ambiguity right in other words the battle over abortion or the battle over immigration It's partly that it's partly because if you fail to specify you drown in ambiguity and anxiety
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah, yeah. I've heard from so many, and I'm so impressed by them, Jordan. You and Michaela, Jordan.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I just hope I can get tenure. Yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Yeah, and the dirty secret, the shameful secret of what I do with my colleagues is that most of us, myself maybe an exception, are completely inured to it. We're so used to seeing, we're so used to thinking of incomprehensible, literally astronomical numbers that we... Sometimes don't even bother to look up at the sky. There's an eclipse happening of the moon? Oh, so what?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
I'll see it some other time. Big deal. We know what that is. I know what that is. I know what causes it. It's not mystery. It doesn't portend evil, doom, disaster, catastrophe. Those words have the word star, astro, within them, right? Evocative of the power that was once thought to be held within the night sky's domain.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Now the scientists know we've extirpated the sort of, you know, mysterious gods and demons and so forth. But at the same time, we've also, as I say, inert ourselves to the wonder that a normal person feels when they encounter the mysterious. And I think it's quite amazing when you see, you know, in my religion, you know, I'm Jewish and I'm practicing, I take it very seriously.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
You know, we are commanded, one of the many things we're commanded to do, in addition to the Sabbath and honoring our parents and so forth, is when you come upon a miracle, you bless it. So we actually have blessings for seeing a meteorite, for seeing a meteor shower, for seeing a rainbow, for these phenomena, for seeing the ocean when you haven't seen it. It's good.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And everything is new.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Are you familiar with the poem by Walt Whitman? Yes. It's called When I Heard the Learned Astronomer. Oh, no. Yes, this is a different one. Oh, okay. And it's really, they believe it was sort of written around the mid to late 1800s, and he had heard a lecture about the recently discovered planet Neptune. So Neptune was discovered in a most remarkable way.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
It was the first object we would call dark matter. We saw its unseen gravitational pull, a conflicting and affecting the orbit of an inner planet Uranus, which is closer to the sun. We didn't know why the anomalous behavior of the inner planet was being affected. It was predicted to exist. Truly dark matter discovered. And Whitman, you know, was kind of reacting to that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And the poem starts off, it says, when I heard the learned astronomer arranging with facts and tables and figures, et cetera, how quickly I became depressed. and despondent by the night sky brought to numbers. And then he says, I walked outside under the silent canopy of stars to be alone and marveled at their great beauty.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
Now, Richard Feynman, another, you know, Whitman and Feynman, I always put them opposed, and I do this in the course of Peterson Academy. I contrast them. He says, Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of all time. And a very cool and interesting person. Fascinating individual, complex, and incredibly brilliant. Provocative. Yes.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
And often evoking Whitman's other famous phrase, I contain multitudes, right? But in Feynman's case, he said, what is it about scientists that you presume I see less than the poets? Poets will speak of Jupiter as if he is a god. But why do I see less when I speak of him as a ball of methane surrounded by a retinue of planets? In other words, can you see more or can you see less?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
512. Time, Space, and the Miraculous | Dr. Brian Keating
My wife makes fun of me when I see a shark. It'd be great to see both. Yeah. So that's the goal. And in fact, I say that in the course. I say, you don't, at the end, I say, who do you side with? And half the students say Whitman and half the students say Feynman. And I say, you're both right in a sense. You should embody both characters.