A Princeton PhD Explains How Earth is Fine Tuned for Life & Discoverability ft. Dr. Jay Richards

Allan CP (: 00:00

What if the earth isn't just fine-tuned for life, but it's actually in the perfect position with the clearest view in the universe to do science? Dr. J. Richards talks about this in his book called The Privileged Planet that he co-authored with Guillermo Gonzalez. My name is Alan and this is a Science Dilemma podcast, and we're going to be speaking to Dr. J. Richards today about this very topic. So by the end of this episode, you'll hopefully see why science may be leading us back to God.

Dr. Richards, thank you so much for hopping on and having the conversation with us today. So before we get into any of the deeper questions that we definitely want to tackle, something that we love to do is just highlight our guests. And so you have quite the bio. You've written over a dozen books, including some bestsellers, New York Times, from economics to why we're special in the universe. You've also produced documentaries, appeared on TV. I mean, the list goes on, including your degrees from

Dr. Jay Richards (: 00:31

Yeah, it's great to be with you. Thanks.

Allan CP (: 00:57

Was it a PhD from Princeton as well? And so for our listeners that don't know about the privileged planet, could you explain real quickly like what is the book and why should they definitely read this?

Dr. Jay Richards (: 01:08

Yeah, absolutely. So book, as you said, it came out initially in 2004, and then there was a documentary that was made of it that came out the same year. And then we always knew we would do a 20th year anniversary edition in 2024. And the reason is because we knew that there would be a total solar eclipse in the United States in 2024. And that's the opening chapter of our book is about this remarkable series of coincidences that allows us to have what you could call perfect eclipses.

where in our case, the moon, right, that kind of a cultic body in the sky and the sun, they take up the same space and size and shape in our sky. They match weirdly perfectly, even though, you know, they're totally different bodies. The moon is 400 times smaller in the sun. It's also 400 times closer though. So you get this amazing coincidence. Turns out it's a kind of a complicated story, but that's tied both to conditions that make earth more habitable. That is better for life.

And it also sets up a series of conditions that allow scientists to discover things that would otherwise be very, very hard to discover. And that's really what our book is about. There's of two parts of it. The first is, okay, what things are needed in order for life to be able to exist on a planet? What kind of star does it need? What size does it need to be? Atmosphere, does it need planets around in the system? All these things.

And it's easy to imagine that, okay, life could exist in lots of different kinds of environments. It turns out that a lot of stuff has to go right just to have a single planet that can host chemical life on its surface. And that's interesting because the more we learn, the more we realize that in fact, they're probably of all the sort of planets that there could be in the universe, or even if we just talk about the galaxy, it's quite possible that ours is the only one that could possibly host life. And we can...

learn that just from sort of studying the evidence of astronomy. That's neat, but that's not a design argument, right? Just saying, okay, life, know, habitable planets are rare, you know, that doesn't sort of scream design by itself. Arguments different though, argument is that the same narrow conditions that allow earth to be habitable, that allow planet to be habitable, also set up the best conditions overall for doing science. So those rare places in the universe where observers can exist, where scientists can exist,

find themselves in best places for doing science. And we argue that that suggests strongly that the universe is not just intended for life, not just designed for life, but it's designed for discovery as well. And so of course, I'm just kind of explaining the conclusion, but in the book, we give lots and lots of examples of how this pattern holds across all sorts of different disciplines.

Allan CP (: 03:51

So what pattern have you seen that like within conversations or when people come and tell you like, man, that chapter really impacted me. Which example would you say that you often get from people?

Dr. Jay Richards (: 04:03

is probably the eclipse, even though the setting up the explanation for why the eclipse matters, ⁓ it takes about five minutes, honestly, to explain, okay, why is it that a perfect eclipse, what does that have to do with our existence? Well, sort of simply. ⁓ So one of the key things you need if you're gonna have water on a planet, and life almost certainly needs water, is the planet has to be the right distance from its host star, right? So it's too far away, it's too cold, freezes up. If you move slightly too close to your star,

boils off. So this narrow region, this Goldilocks region around a star, the right kind of star anywhere where a planet would need to be. And so when you're in that Goldilocks region, that's going to set the size of the planet, your star in your sky, right? It's like the sun looks a certain size because there were distance from it. All right. That's one piece. Well, the second piece is that you also need a large, well-placed moon like we have to stabilize the tilt of your planet on its axis so that it doesn't wobble. And so we all learn, you know, that

There's tilted ⁓ on its axis at about 23 and a half degrees relative to the plane that know, it orbits around the sun. So it gives us seasons. If we didn't have the moon though, it would wobble erratically and that would make it much, much less ⁓ hospitable to life. All right, so now we've got these two pieces, but guess what happens when you get a large well-placed moon and it's in the right spot and you get the sun in the right spot for liquid water, what happens? You get a weird match between these two bodies.

uthor, Guillermo Gonzalez, in: 1999

relativity, which was done in: 1919

Einstein had predicted a large massive body like the sun ⁓ would essentially deflect starlight, So that sort of space time would warp around the sun. And so if you've got a starlight passing near the edge of the sun on the earth, right? And you were to map where it would be without the sun and then map where it is with the sun. It would look like the star had moved because of this gravitational distorting effect of the sun.

But of course you can't do that experiment normally, right? You can't see starlight next to the sun except during a perfect eclipse when the bright photosphere of the sun gets covered, but you can see stars on the edge. And so it's just this crazy by itself. You could just say, okay, that's a wild coincidence. It's eerie at the very least, but then to go and find that, actually now when we look at geology, when you look at planetary astronomy, when you look at physics, when you look at the atmosphere or location in the galaxy.

Over and over again, we find that the places or the features you'd want for life at a planetary level also set up the conditions for science. At some point that just gets, okay, this looks more like a conspiracy rather than a coincidence.

Allan CP (: 07:33

When we're talking about design, we're also wondering for the student, the family that has young kids and they're teaching them and learning these concepts, teaching them why this matters, what implications does a designer or no designer have on our lives? Could you speak a little bit into that?

Dr. Jay Richards (: 07:49

Yeah, I mean, it's ultimately the question, right? Do we exist for a purpose or not? And the broader question is, does the whole world, does the universe exist for a purpose or not? And we know that those questions are tied up together, right? And so we know that the earth and ourselves and our bodies are made of chemicals and all of this stuff's connected. And so it's really kind of the ultimate question. Now people in the modern lives, we've got enough distractions and a lot of creature comforts that

In some ways it can keep you from even addressing this question, though people usually, most people, at least as they get close to death, they start pondering these things. ⁓ And what's amazing is there's this myth that, well, natural science has, anytime natural science advances, traditional belief in God or religion recedes. So there's this inevitable zero-sum game between science ⁓ and theistic belief.

And it's not true. mean, first of all, the science itself emerged in a broadly Christian and theistic context. The founders of almost all the major disciplines of modern science believed in God. Many of them were even ⁓ faithful and practicing Christians. ⁓ And moreover, many of the things we discovered in the 20th century, if anything, are theism friendly. mean, discovering the universe has a beginning in the finite past, for instance, rather than having always existed. I mean, that screams

⁓ something right then, okay, the universe isn't the ultimate reality. There's gotta be something beyond it because you know, the ultimate reality doesn't just pop into existence, uncaused out of nothing. The fine tuning of the constants of physics, this argument, the realization of the layers of information and complexity in the biological world. Well, you didn't even kind of really have the category of information really clearly a hundred years ago. Over and over and over again, you realize that

Okay, yeah, there's a way of interpreting science that might lead to unbelief. But if you look at the evidence of science and where it's pointing and separate it from the kind of scientism and kind of parasitic materialism that gets tied in with science, I think the truth is just the opposite. If you look at the evidence of the natural world itself, ⁓ I would say it's very, very God-friendly.

Allan CP (: 10:05

⁓

Yeah. And I think that that's something that people aren't commonly told in academia. do you have a sense of why that is just with your experience, all the conversations that you've had of like, is discussing the earth being designed such a big topic in society that people are, it's almost taboo to talk about in certain spaces and typically aggressive if we believe that there is a designer.

Dr. Jay Richards (: 10:29

Yeah,

and I will, in some ways, this is the perennial question of Western civilization. I mean, if you read ⁓ Socrates, who's really, we know Socrates because he's a character in Plato's dialogues, the ancient Greek philosopher. He is already arguing with materialists, some of whom we don't even know about. If we hadn't did that Plato's dialogues, we wouldn't even know about these guys. Then you read Aristotle, who's the student of Plato. They're both arguing with materialists and atheists basically who say, reality is just these like,

particles in the void colliding with each other and they form bodies, right? And ⁓ both Aristotle and Plato in their own way are arguing against that. So this is all the way back at the very beginning, certainly Greek philosophy. So that's a thread of Western civilization. And of course, the biblical thread, the Judeo-Christian thread is a major thread. And then you get the Roman thread, right? For people like Cicero who were very ⁓ enamored and persuaded by design arguments. And so this is just

This is the perennial discussion of the West for sure, for let's say 2,500 years. And then for the most part, the majority position during this time has been the teleological view. In other words, the view that things exist for a purpose, that there's transcendent mind or creator. That's the mainstream view that's almost always prevailed until the last couple of centuries in which there's this kind of emergent and assertive materialism.

ook, The Origin of Species in: 1859

theories in science that was actually proposed to rule out a theistic claim, right? It's weird. It's like that shows you that the Darwinian theory, it's different from the others. You don't see, like I've never seen a Newton fish on anyone's car. I've never seen an Einstein or a Maxwell fish, but you see Darwin fish, right? And so it's always been both a kind of scientific claim and theory, but also this metaphysical claim. And so once science started to seem to be carrying the water,

For materialism, for this particular metaphysical view, all of a sudden people are attached to particular scientific theories more than they would be otherwise. So if you're committed materialist, Darwinism, it's not just like, okay, well, if that's not true, something else is true. It's carrying major water for you. It's why Richard Dawkins famously said, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. You don't hear that about a lot of other theories in natural science.

I just think that's why it's an unfortunate, weird thing that happened in the 19th century, primarily, ⁓ certain complicated philosophical threads. so people associated science and honestly academic study itself with atheism and materialism. ⁓ but it was, it was a false association. And I think we're still living with the consequences of trying to extract the sociological fact, which is that materialism and science are sewn in so closely together.

with the reality, which is the evidence of science, looked at objectively, I think points in the opposite direction.

Allan CP (: 13:50

I think I just recently read something that said the issue has not been science and faith, but really it's been scientism and faith. that pretty consistent?

Dr. Jay Richards (: 14:00

Exactly.

mean, scientism is a theory of knowledge that says something like, okay, the methods of natural science are the only way to gain knowledge of reality around you. And then materialism is this sort of claim about reality that in fact, the fundamental thing that explains everything else is sort of matter and matter, space, time and energy, right? So one's a kind of claim about knowledge. One's a claim about what exists, but they tend to go together.

Now, of course, on the other side, we don't have to criticize the methods of science insofar as there are methods of science and they give us knowledge. The problem is when you start saying that's the only way to know things, because first of all, that's actually incoherent, right? Because if it's true that the only things we can believe must be proved by the methods of science, what about that proposition, right? So how did you prove with the methods of science that that should be an intellectual rule, right? So the whole thing falls apart. And then obviously there are things that we know in other ways.

And so you need a theory of knowledge broad enough to account for what we do in fact to know And then you need a theory of reality that's rich enough to be able to accommodate the things that we want to know and that's always been the problem with Materialism is that yeah, it might seem simple, but it's too simple. It reduces things That you look you know that you yourself are not ultimately just blind matter in motion You have direct access to your agency. And so any theory that

implies that you don't exist is a theory you have very strong reasons to disbelieve. Right. And so that's, think what is ultimately at stake. And I just think we have been in this weird cultural moment for a century and a half where materialism and scientism kind of gained the upper hand. ⁓ but I think that at this point it's, it's just power that, that, keeps them there and not, the evidence itself.

Allan CP (: 15:47

You have your thumb on the pulse, just from what, like we've had a conversation before and today just from listening to you and seeing everything that you've studied and been involved with. You have your thumb on the pulse, not only in science, theology, but also in culture. ⁓ And where do you see us going? as far as everybody discussing the earth being special or designed, I know that people want to explore the universe and that's great, but where do you think we're trending as a culture?

Dr. Jay Richards (: 16:16

I think we're trending in two different directions. One's bad and one's good. ⁓ know, for instance, a different subject, but I have spent four years really in the policy arena here in Washington, DC dealing with gender ideology, which is just this idea that the sex isn't real, the sexual binary of male and female, that's something that gets assigned to us or imposed by doctors when we're born. But we're really this internal sense of gender, this kind of disembodied gender soul that happens to get attached to a body.

And if there's an incongruence between your gender self and your body, way to fix that incongruence, it's not to adjust your body to your mind, your body is to change your body medically with drugs and surgery to match this internal sense, right? Well, this is a complete, obviously contrary to everything we know about science. So contrary to what we know about the human person, but it's so radical that I think it is waking a lot of people up because this is

Gender ideology is the result of several really bad intellectual trends. I all the worst ideas from the 19th to 20th centuries just find their way together when you're doing gender ideology. And so many people wake up when they realize, okay, this is deranged. My son goes to school and the teacher starts treating him as if he's a girl. Getting between someone and their parent and their children is generally a bad idea. And so that I think in some ways that's a positive trend because

We were going in this direction for a long time, but people didn't see where the culture was going. And now suddenly we're sexualizing kids. Doctors are saying, yeah, let's put your daughter on, on testosterone. ⁓ that has a way of waking people up. Paul, ⁓ in Romans talks about the law written on the heart, you know, so the, the Romans, the Gentiles, have this law written on the heart. So in other words, they kind of did their following. They still have a sense of the moral realities, right? Even without the law of Moses.

And that's God's common grace. That's the natural law that he's built into things. And so sometimes the culture has to get really bad before that sort of kicks in for people. But I think we're at that moment where it's kicking in for people. The testimony, the senses of the natural law are finally doing their work. And I think it's an opportunity for believers to say, okay, now let's help them connect the dots.

Allan CP (: 18:31

Mm, that's good. And as far as we talked earlier about, you know, the privileged planet, it's been 20 years, you know, I mean, 2024 is 20 years. What have you seen change in the culture? I know you just talked about changes that you're seeing currently, but over the last two decades, I'm sure that you've seen so much change and very fast. For sure. What have you seen as far as in the topic that we're discussing, in the last two decades?

Dr. Jay Richards (: 18:57

Well, on the kind of mundane level, just, you know, we were making claims about the rarity of Earth and Earth-like planets, and the book came out, there only, think it was about 100 extrasolar planets had been discovered. So it's sort of risky to claim this, right? Because we knew that we'd learn more. Well, I think it's up around 5,000 extrasolar planets now, and not one thing in our argument had to change. We have updated it, added new references, kind of filled some things out.

Privilege Planet comes out in: 2004

for their beliefs. So that's: 2008

Well, here we are in: 2025

They're now believers, or at least are actually really interested. You've got people from Jordan Peterson to the economic historian, Neil Ferguson, ⁓ and his wife, Ion Hercele, ⁓ either coming to faith explicitly, despite the social kind of opprobrium that attends to that, or getting really, really close. And so I don't think there's anyone that says that new atheism is the cutting edge now. And that is just...

I don't know that any of us really would have predicted that, we're just in a completely different place than when were 20 years ago on that.

Allan CP (: 21:18

It's almost like people saw what the alternative to intelligent design provided them. And it's just, the alternative isn't as good as what we're.

Dr. Jay Richards (: 21:26

Discussing.

No, it's kind of like politics. It's like, okay, yeah, maybe I have my ideal politician, but you're always comparing the people when you're in a vote. It's like, okay, there's this guy, but okay, man, I don't like him, but who's the alternative, right? And that's, that's what this is. Look, you're going to believe something. You're going to assume something is true. ⁓ and so at the very least you should do your hardest to kind of evaluate the evidence and the claims, the strongest versions of the claims on all sides.

And a lot of people don't have the time or the energy to do that, but I do think that there's a subset of the population that's doing that. And this is a really good time. mean, honestly think just in terms of the the evidence is going and the way that kind of cultural vibe is going, theism is, it's looking really, really good. In fact, I think there's no better time for the prospects for theism as a kind of cultural commitment than right now.

Allan CP (: 22:18

Yeah, that's been something interesting that I've seen ⁓ just on the side of even so many atheists. I watched one episode between two atheists discussing and for two hours all they discussed was Christianity and the rise of Christianity in America. And it was just like, I didn't expect that at all. But the whole point of their conversation was they were fascinated with just the prevalence of like Christianity.

Dr. Jay Richards (: 22:41

Yeah, well, and what's happened is a lot of people, know, with the Enlightenment, there are certain kind of universal moral claims that people thought were just sort of grounded in natural reason, you know, like this universal duty that Immanuel Kant talks about, or this conviction that there's intrinsic rights and dignity that attaches to every human being, all of which is true and all of which I think in principle can be known by reason. It's very hard to maintain that though with a broader...

Christian and theistic framework. That's where those ideas emerge ⁓ and that's what feeds them. So even though there's a natural law, it's dim and vague and it never can sustain itself. And so I think what's happened is that as the Christian elements of the culture have waned, people that thought of themselves as classical liberals and believed in human equality and these things are starting to realize this stuff doesn't really stand very strongly on its own.

And it's like, if you want to maintain your classical liberal values, you need to spend a little bit more time looking at the roots of where they came from in the first place.

Allan CP (: 23:44

Amen. Well, Dr. Richards, thank you so much for this. mean, this is incredible. ⁓ I feel like just from this conversation alone, probably students could take away two or three things for sure. ⁓ Where could they just other than buying the privileged planet or listening to it on Audible, where else could people find you so that they could be following what you're writing, producing?

Dr. Jay Richards (: 24:08

Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely, I'm the most active in social media on X and I'm at Dr. J. Richards. And then if people want to see lectures or videos, there's a lot of free stuff on YouTube. Just Google the video function at Google or one of the search engines and you'll find a lot of stuff.

Allan CP (: 24:23

Is that debate on YouTube as well between you and Christopher Hitchens?

Dr. Jay Richards (: 24:26

it's divided it's i think it's there in in one chunk and i think they'd even have versions of words cut up in like 12 minutes segments

Allan CP (: 24:34

Cool, okay, we'll have to put that in a link then. Well, thank you very much. Man, how cool is that? Dr. J. Richards is awesome, and we want you guys to let us know what you think, whether you agree, disagree, or just have some thoughts. Go ahead and dialogue respectfully in the comment section, share with a friend, and just let us know what you guys think. Subscribe and keep engaging with us. We'll see you in the next episode.

Dr. Jay Richards (: 24:38

You bet, great to