Best of the Program | Guest: President Donald Trump | 10/15/24
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On today's podcast, when Donald Trump says he's got 45 minutes to spare, you make the time to talk to him.

I got to talk to him yesterday. You're going to hear part of what he had to say, but make sure to hear the full comments, all three segments. Check out the full podcast. This is the best of. Also, Spencer Claven joins me on the program to talk about how science is actually pushing us back closer to God and not away from him. Also available on the full podcast, you'll hear the first installment of what we hope you send your friends who may be undecided voters. There's a lot on today's show, and it begins in 60.

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You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Welcome to the Glenn Beck program. So yesterday I'm on the phone with the president and he says, um, uh, president Trump, not the other one. Um, but who is the other one, by the way, do we know yet? No, we don't. Well, we talk about that in this interview. Oh yeah. We, we talked about everything, uh, in this interview. Uh,

And this is just spur of the moment. We were talking about an interview for next week and he's like, I've got time. You want to do one now? And I was like, in lieu of the other one? And he's like, no, that one too. And I'm like, okay. I mean, the guy is just, he never stops. He never stops. Anyway, we talk about the hurricane, Elon Musk,

the people that are surrounding Kamala Harris, election cheating, Bill Clinton and the illegal immigrants with Lake and Riley, Tim Walsh shotgun experience, the broken teleprompter of Kamala, the possibility of nuclear war, China's handling of COVID. And that's just the first two segments.

Uh, so hang on for a wild ride. This is a fascinating interview. It'll run in three segments, this one, and then next hour to set two more segments. Here is interview part one with Donald Trump. Mr. President. Yes. Hi, Glenn. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. I hear you just got off the phone with Elon Musk. How did that go? I did. No, he's great. He's this guy. He's in a,

He's in a world all by himself. He's a fantastic guy. When I saw that rocket ship come down yesterday, I said, you've got to be kidding. The way it landed right where it left, right? It's fantastic. We were talking. I think he is...

One of the great—I mean, Steve Jobs maybe is in his category. I don't think that—I think he's the greatest mind and not theoretical, actually doing stuff in my lifetime. He gets it done. There's nobody like him. Yeah. And he's a big supporter, which really makes me feel good. He knows what's going on. He thinks it's the most important election ever. So are you—

Have you been serious about allowing him to go in and look for cuts and everything? Oh, sure. No, you know, he's also a great businessman. I'm trying to figure out if he's a better businessman or essentially scientist. And he is great. He feels that there's tremendous fraud, waste, and abuse. You know, there's expression fraud, waste, and abuse. Yeah.

He feels it's there and, uh, you know, it could save, it could save a lot of money and, and, and make lives better. Okay. You get more for the buck, but he feels so straight. He doesn't want to be in the cabinet or anything. He just can't do that. He's, he's, he's got so many things going. He wouldn't want to do that. But,

He would like to do something having to do with the budget because it's tremendous waste. Oh, yeah. And he's good at finding that. I mean, the way he runs his companies, I mean, it's tremendous. Yeah.

He's maybe the best at finding that. Oh, people love it when they hear that. Without making any dent to, you know, and make people's lives better, actually. You know, make them better. I know. It really is such a statement that he's probably the most effective person on the planet of looking over the horizon and then bringing tomorrow into today and

And the left, because he likes you, he is, I mean, they just, they will shut him down. Yep. Well, they'll try, but he's hard to shut down because he's so advanced. He's on a different playing field. He's so advanced. You shut him down, you shut the country down, essentially, when you look at, look at Starlink. So he had Starlink, and in North Carolina, they called, is there any way you could call

And some great people in North Carolina are suffering. And, you know, they have no communications whatsoever. And I got, I called him and he was, I didn't know much about Starlink other than it's supposed to be good. And I called him and he added to them immediately. Now they delayed him, you know, they delayed him. We were, they did.

They put a hold on what he did. We were on the ground. My charity, Mercury One, was on the ground. We were one of the first people on the ground. We were running at...

At the height, I think we were running 50 helicopters, and we had it all. I mean, we had everything. We were there with Elon's guy when they started jerking his chain. They even came and tried to shut us down, and our guy looked and said—

you know, you don't have a single helicopter here. We're saving people in the mountains. If you were here maybe a week ago, sure, but we're not shutting down. I mean, it was really tragic what they did. It's one of the worst rescues ever. And I think in a league with Katrina, which was pretty bad, some people say it's worse.

And they actually got people, private people like you. You go in with helicopters, you want to save people. And they didn't let them do it. I know. You're a little different. You can do things, but they didn't let them do it. No, it's a terrible thing, Glenn. I think that's one of the biggest things that...

You know, when you say we're going to take our country back, one of the biggest things that I miss is the ability to just do things that you feel are right, that are legal, but to just take control of your own life. The government has grown so far out of control. It's in every aspect of our life. And it is the problem.

And it's a nasty government. It's a mean government. They weaponize government. They've done things that... And, you know, it's interesting because the people aren't very smart. You know, the people on top. But it's a group of people not on top. It's the people that surround them. They are smart. And they're vicious. And they're fascists and everything else you can be. It's a nasty group of people. So somebody is quite smart. I mean, sometimes historians...

we'll look back and say this was a genius. It was the biggest heist in human history. It was horrible, but it was genius. Who's actually the president, Mr. President? Well, I think it's a committee of people, and they might not even know who the committee is. They may not even know themselves. Does that make sense? It's a group of people that are in different levels of D.C.,

And they surround a man that was not the most capable person. By the way, never was. Right. But certainly not anymore. Yeah. She's worse than he is. She's worse than he is.

And the difference is she was a believer. You know, she was a believer for a long time. She was a Marxist for a long time. She's further left than Bernie. You've heard that many times. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But she's further left than Pocahontas, okay? Pocahontas is probably further left than Bernie, I think. I don't know.

How you rate them, I'd have to go by your scale. I believe in your scale maybe more than mine. But if you think about it, you know, we have some people, and she is considered the most left in the

in the entire Senate, and not the smartest, and not by any means the smartest. In fact, maybe the opposite. But she is, I mean, when you say she's worse, I mean, we were talking yesterday to Mike Lee about, you know, her centerpiece legislation when she was in the Senate, which I think was called Do No Harm, and it just dismantles religious freedom, just entirely dismantles it. Right, right.

They are. You know, when we were in a group together for the audience to know, we spent a lot of time yesterday with the Latter-day Saints and some incredible people and people of religion, too, just people of religion. And she's against religion, and it's in her bones, too.

She's against religion. And I don't know how people can vote for her. Like we were talking about not so much Utah because we have such a big lead there, but we were talking about Arizona. And, you know, you take a look at Arizona and I would certainly say Nevada. And you have a lot of Latter-day Saints, Mormons in those areas. And it

if we got i think we're at 88 i mean if we got one percent more or two percent more and this whole country would turn around because if we won those two we would be in awfully good shape to win the whole thing as you know so we spent time together

together and it was it was great and when i mentioned your name i will say i mentioned glenn's name everyone in the place went crazy so they like you they like you a lot um that was the big audience i uh it was amazing they're electric i mean i you know you at one point leaned over to me and said what's your gut say uh and you know the you know the figures i better than i do my gut says

you're accelerating at exactly the right time. And as I said to you, but for cheating. That's the biggest risk. You told me that we've made a lot of good headroom or headway on that.

Well, I think just by nature that we don't have COVID. They use COVID to cheat. And they did so many things, so many different things. But just the fact that they didn't get legislative approval. I mean, you don't have to go any further than that. They'd actually go for legislative approval, not get it. You know, like let's say it's a Republican legislature, right? Not get it and then do it anyway. It was just terrible. They used COVID to cheat. Now, that, number one, that in itself makes it better now.

But they're a very devious group, and you know it better than maybe anybody. And you talk about it more openly. A lot of people, they're afraid to talk about it. You're not afraid to talk about it. Well, once you've been threatened by George Soros, once you've been threatened by George Soros, it kind of just, everything else is kind of meh.

But I see his man Gascon is down by 30 points in a poll. Amen. Which is so crazy. It's so crazy. Kamala Harris is cut from that exact same cloth.

Yeah. Oh, that's a way of talking about it. You know, I had a tremendous rally the night before, the night before yesterday, and it was unbelievable. And you heard about 101,000 people. Coachella. And I say, if we had a...

honest election, if we had God coming down to be our vote counter, wouldn't that be great if we could ask God to do it? That would be the ultimate vote counter, right? Because you'd have honesty. But if we had God come down, I think I'd do great. I think we'd do great in California. I think we'd win it. I think we'd win it. You know, they send out like 38 million ballots or 36 million ballots. They go all over the place. And then they come pouring back.

And it's, you know, when you go and vote into a really good, solid state where you have a real and they look at you and they want your ID, even if you're Trump, they say, please, could I see your license? Could I see it? There's no gives. You really can't get away with anything. I know there's nothing to get away with. They don't have computerized machines.

They have paper ballots and they have voter ID and everything else. Have you have you talked to Elon Musk about this? Because I think with I mean, you know, this we can transfer billions of dollars and not a penny is lost. We do it all day long and it's fine. How come we can't get the technology to lock this into place, especially with block chain?

So Elon is the number one person for mechanical devices, including computers. There's nobody more. And yet he says the only way to do it really safely is with paper ballots. You know, it's like something, right? He said, I consider myself to be the world's greatest expert on all such things as this type of equipment. I would say I'd put him in number one place. When you look at that rocket, the way it landed, I'd certainly put him in number one place. And

And he's, you know, he's, uh, he's concerned because those, you can make things swing and you can make things do a lot of bad things.

he said but you can't do it with paper ballots when you you know they have believe it or not they have paper now that's actually very highly sophisticated yeah yeah i mean you know very highly amazing that you know when you hear paper but it's very sophisticated stuff yeah but the voter id is very important and they don't now in california as you know better than i do because you talk about it a lot but the california thing is amazing with gavin newsom where you're not even allowed to ask somebody whether or not

That's crazy. They have motorized it. If you do, I think it's like a criminal act or something. It shows our country's gone totally crazy. Right now, you're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. And don't forget, check out the full show for even more. We're back with more after a word from our sponsor.

Part two is coming up in just a minute. First, Wayne wrote in about his experience with Relief Factory. He says, I've been suffering from a lot of pain in my back and my right foot for over two decades now. I've tried everything to make it go away, and nothing has worked. Then about a year ago, I heard Glenn yapping about, my words, not his, he said, talking about Relief Factory, and I thought I'd give it a shot. Not only did my pain go away, it has stayed away ever since then. Thank you, Relief Factory.

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Relieffactor.com. Call them now. 1-800-4-RELIEF. 1-800-4-RELIEF. It's relieffactor.com. Now back to the podcast. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Program. You and I were talking the other day about...

The hidden Trump vote. And I want to ask you your thoughts on something. I think there's actually a hidden Trump vote that is going to come from Democrats.

Because they didn't convince people of these policies. They scared them into it. They taught them, shut your mouth and just go along with it. And I think reasonable Democrats are going, this doesn't work.

I don't want my kids being talked to by a teacher in secret. That's the sign of a predator. I am paying more for my groceries. I can't do it anymore. And I think there's a slice of the Democrats that might tell everybody they're for Kamala, but we'll go in and vote for you. What do you think of that? So I think the biggest...

You know, you see the polls and the polls have the economy number one in inflation. I view them as the same thing in a sense. I think the inflation and economy, you can wrap them up into one. I actually think and I may be wrong, but, you know, not wrong by much. I think the biggest problem.

the biggest thing that uh... people are going to be looking at it voting on this what's happening at our border where where murderers are allowed to come in and where drug dealers are allowed to come in and just destroy a country literally destroyed and inflation is a destroyer of a country too but it's a different kind of a it's a different kind of a destroyer it's not as mean not as mean as having guys coming in with machine guns i have to go ahead go ahead uh... well i was gonna say i don't know if you've heard this yet i want to play some audio this is bill clinton

today talking about lake and riley listen to this oh you had a case in georgia not very long ago didn't you they made an ad about about a young woman who'd been killed by an immigrant yeah well if they'd all been properly vetted that probably wouldn't have happened but if they all properly vetted and that doesn't happen and america is not having enough babies to keep our populations up so we need immigrants that have been vetted to do work there wouldn't be a problem

I mean, he sounds like he's campaigning for you. Yeah, that's come a long way. You see, that's probably where they're going, because they were for open borders, no talk. Anybody comes in, just walk right into our country, which is insane. And now all of a sudden you're hearing people talking about, well, you know, we need people to come in, come in.

but the damage has been done yet and said that we have to twenty one million people came in hundreds of thousands of those people are from prisons and from gangs

and drug lords and human traffickers and murderers and they're here. So we have a problem. He's a little late in saying it because we have a big problem. We have people in our country that are going to be murdering a lot of people. Lakin Riley is a...

Beautiful young lady. I know the parents. I know everything about her. What happened to her is just horrible. But you have many, many, many cases like that. Some you don't hear about, but they're there. Aurora is really bad. When you look at what these Venezuelan street gangs have done, they've formed and they've taken over.

buildings, beautiful buildings in a very good place. And they're basically in the real estate business. They've taken them over with machine guns instead of with finance. J.D. Vance was talking to Martha Raddatz, by the way, brilliant pick. And he says, Martha, are you listening to yourself?

You think this little problem is little? There are Venezuelan gangs that are running apartment buildings in America. It's amazing what these people will try to excuse. Not believable when you say it. J.D.'s been great, by the way. Oh, I love him. He's been great. And as good as he's been, Waltz, on the other side, I mean, is this man even a little intelligent? Yeah.

I mean, it's just incredible. I know your son is a hunter. You have to ask him. Play that video of him trying to load the shotgun. I swear to you, I mean, I'm fairly decent with guns. I would not hunt with that guy. He looks like he's dangerous with a gun. He's never done that.

It's crazy. I think it was a horrible pick. Now we'll see how it works out on November 5th, because one way or the other, if they won, I guess he wasn't a horrible pick. But when I heard that they picked him, I couldn't believe it. And he's only gotten worse. And she's gotten worse. She's worse than Biden. I really believe that. She's worse than Biden. Biden is superior. And they're fighting like cats and dogs, the two of them. So you think that's true? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. No. Well, he's angry because he got 14 million votes and he was thrown out. This was an overthrow of a president. I know. This was an overthrow of an American president. There's never been anything like that before. He won the primaries. I know. And they came to see him and they said, we want you out. I'm amazed he agreed to it, actually. And you know, the truth is he looks better than he ever did. He looks better than he did for. Yeah.

for five years. I don't know. Somehow he didn't play well as president, but he does play well the way he's playing against, like with Ron, Ron DeSantis in Florida has done a good job, very good on the hurricane, you know, stuff job, but he's done a very good job. But the way she went at him, uh,

and just got creamed, and Biden was on Ron's side. I know, that's crazy. And that's, you know, with that Bill Clinton clip, I'm just wondering, are they just, like, cutting her loose? I think that's true.

No, I think they're trying to steer a different path now. I think they're saying it's not working. And we've had a very good run for three weeks. And I think they're saying it's not working. She's changed 15 major policies. You probably, you're the all-time pro. I would say if you've seen any candidate for high office change two, it would be a lot. Oh, yeah. Remember John Kerry, I think, changed one or two things, and he became the waffle man. Yeah.

That's right. No, he did. But it didn't work. No, but she's changed 15. I mean, from fracking to crime to this, to that, to borders, which she all of a sudden now wants to have a strong border. And she acts like nothing happened. You know, where was she for four years? Right. But but I've never seen anything like it. If you go back two years, just go back or just go back into their primaries and listen to what she said and what she voted for.

And now every one of those things have been thrown out. So I don't know. You know, I mean, let's see what happens. I can't imagine you could get away with it. But there's another thing. It's called competence. And, you know, she they tried to threat to democracy with me. They tried it all. They tried everything. But let's look at now their competence. The woman is not a competent person and I think far less competent.

than Biden and I would never thought I never thought I'd be saying it but there's something going on I mean I watched her with a teleprompter her teleprompter broke and she kept going 32 30. that was amazing no I said what's going on with that I know

You've been in television. I've been in television. We know teleprompters. She had no idea what the next sentence was. She was saying 32 as if, hey, prompter person, I'm at the bottom of the page. It was crazy. And you know what? She could even say, my teleprompter went off. Yes.

And sometimes I do that, and then you go on to make your speech. You know, you can't sit there. You can't walk off the stage, right? But a teleprompter is one of the most unreliable pieces of equipment I can tell you. I know. Sometimes, like the crowd we had, that was a big crowd. The night before, I had 101,000 people. And you can lose yourself. I figure teleprompters go out 5% of the time and 2% or 3% of the time where they're just gone.

I mean, I've had a blow off the stage. You know, if it's windy, they're not very good because they move like a sail. You can't. They're very hard to hold back. They move. If a teleprompter is moving, you can't. I don't use a teleprompter that much anyway. But if a teleprompter is moving, it's a problem. But you've got to be if you're going to be in politics, you have to be able to if and when because it's when. But if and when the teleprompter goes, you know, there's you've got to be able to speak politically.

And she was frozen. And she's lucky that thing came back because, you know, it snapped back. It's called a snapback. Yeah. It snapped back for her. And she then started continuing to read. I wish it wouldn't have. I would have loved to see how she would have ended that. Well, I think it would have been a bad thing. She couldn't have done the 32 one more time. I don't know. She had exhausted the number 32, I can tell you. So what happened?

What frightens at least me is she's not in control. Biden's not in control. And they're talking about changing our nuclear strategy with Russia. And I don't know who's making those decisions. And I have to tell you, Mr. President, I mean, you know, have you read Nuclear War by Annie Jacobson?

Yes, I have. Okay. That's terrifying. I don't know how you would make the decision as president of the United States that quickly. That is the biggest single threat. When these people talk about global warming and they worry about the oceans going to rise in 300 years by an eighth of an inch,

It's like it just infuriates now at the same time. I don't even like talking about nuclear right now bad It is okay, so you know during my administration. You probably never heard the word nuclear I don't I purposely and Now you're hearing it every single day you're hearing it all the time And you know issues it a lot as Putin now. He's issuing that word. I know I know and that will be

There will never have been anything like that. The level of power, I'm the one that rebuilt it. I rebuilt all of our military. I rebuilt it at the highest level. I hated, in many ways, I hated to have to do the nuclear, but I did because we have no choice. We have other countries. We have five other countries now that are, as they say, nuclear capable, and that's too many. That's actually five too many. The truth is, I think I would have had a deal with Russia and with China

to denuclearize their stock. I really think we would have had that. All three of us agreed on it conceptually, and I think we would have done that, but COVID came along and we had to fight that battle and we fought it well. Never got credit for it really, but we fought it well.

I got credit for the economy. I got credit for the military. We knocked out ISIS and got the biggest tax cuts and regulation cuts, all that. But I never got cut. You know, and nobody knew what this was. COVID came in. It was a gift from China. I got it. I got to tell you, the way they the way they say that you didn't do enough when they were the ones bitching, when you said, I got to close to China, we can't have this happen again.

And they called you a bigot and everything. And now they're saying, you didn't close it fast enough. I mean, are we, do they really believe the American people are goldfish? For the same people, Nancy Pelosi, crazy Nancy, she was going crazy when I said, if I didn't close it from China then, and you know what, there are 11 people in the room, and I was the only one that said I want it closed. And you had to close it. We would have lost everything.

probably a couple of million people more and and we really i mean we would have lost millions of people more had i not done that that was a great move but you know nobody knew what this thing was and everybody got hurt you know proportionately a lot of there was a lot of equals okay they all got hurt china ended up getting hurt very late in the process you know it looked like china

almost skirted the issue it has really hurt china it's it's hurting it right now because what that you know they went through it very very now they were different they locked them in and they welded the doors closed and they forgot or something happened yeah you know people died of starvation can you believe that they welded them into their apartments yeah and then they uh either

either forgot or something happened, but they didn't, uh, unwell them until it was late. Uh, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable, but that was a terrible thing. Uh, I have been bitching and complaining about the secret service for, well, since Obama, uh, we have, we have not been protecting our president's, uh,

rightly i mean my my people have gotten around the secret service uh however i will tell you this this weekend i have never seen anything like the security that you have around you now it is top shelf uh and they said that you asked the president for uh

rocket launchers or something to protect your plane in case somebody shoots a rocket at the plane? Is that true? Well, I better not get into it, but they have very strong security around the plane. Yeah, I know. That's odd. They have very strong security. And they really...

I mean, they have to. The one thing that we don't have is we haven't had a president saying if some country in Iran where there is actually a threat, that if they do anything to not it's not me, it's a president, a former president. And now in leading in both parties to be president, if they do anything that we're going to obliterate the country, because when you say that, that's the end of that. They won't do anything. But we haven't heard that. And other presidents have issued proxies.

You know, like proclamations, as you probably have heard. There were two or three of them issued that way where even rivals, rivals were being threatened. And certain presidents were able to get up and say, if you do this, we're going to hit you so hard that you won't have a country left. And when you do that, they tend to say, well, let's take a pass. Right. That's the way it works. But Biden is not right.

is not, I guess, not willing to do that. And that's pretty, pretty sad. I would do it for him. I would say if, if he were, if it were reversed and I was where he was and it was, you know, him, I would issue such a proclamation. You have to, you have to have a country. Yeah, you don't, you don't. You're streaming the best of Glenn Beck to hear more of this interview and others download the full show podcasts, wherever you get podcasts.

So Scientific American has just endorsed a candidate. I want you to listen just to the opening two paragraphs.

In the November election, the U.S. faces two futures. In one, the new president offers the country better prospects, relying on science, solid evidence, and a willingness to learn from experience. She pushes policies that boost good jobs nationwide by embracing technology and clean energy. She supports education, public health, and reproductive rights.

She treats the climate crisis as the emergency it is and seeks to mitigate its catastrophic storms, fires and droughts. In the other future, the new president endangers public health and safety and rejects evidence, preferring instead to nonsensical conspiracy fantasies.

He ignores the climate crisis in favor of more pollution. He requires that federal officials show him personal loyalty rather than upholding U.S. laws. Dare I say the Constitution. He fills positions in federal science and other agencies with unqualified ideologues.

He goads people into hate and division, and he inspires extremists at state and local levels to pass laws that disrupt education and make it hard to earn a living. What a choice. Wow. Well, there is another side to this. Spencer Clavin has just written a new book called

called Light of the Mind, Light of the World, How Science is Actually Leading Us Back to God and Not Away from Him. Follow the science. Spencer Clavin is with us now. Hi, Spencer. How are you?

Hey, Glenn. I'm doing well, thanks. And I want to guarantee at the outset that unlike Kamala Harris, I actually did not copy-paste any passages into this book. Wow, good for you. That's hard to do. Thank you. That's hard to do as an author. Really, it's a struggle. Yeah. Yeah. So...

We have perverted science so much it's become nothing but politics. And if I'm not mistaken, you know, I heard something from somebody the other day, and I did not know this, that the Big Bang theory was actually rejected by scientists at the beginning because it proved a first cause. It proved there was something before the Big Bang, and science didn't like it because of a God thing.

And now it's the it's it's sold as the opposite. Yeah, that's absolutely right. This was a major conflict. Einstein was very worried about this when George Lemaitre, the sort of father of what's now known as Big Bang Theory, came to him with this idea of he called it a day with no yesterday. It was extraordinary.

extremely unsettling because many scientists had kind of bought into this narrative that in order to do science, in order to know the truth about reality and accept truth without superstition, they had to be materialists. They had to get rid of any notion of the divine or the transcendent. And I think if you follow that logic down to its conclusion, you actually end up

with a purely materialist view of science that does fall prey to things like endorsing Kamala Harris for president or all the things we saw during... Doesn't it also lead us to just nihilism? Nothing has meaning. We're just nothing but atoms bouncing around.

Yeah, no, there's no question that it does. In this book, in Light of the Mind, Light of the World, I trace the history of how this idea emerged and became so powerful. It was not the idea of the original architects of the scientific research.

revolution. Some of us in school were taught this story about a battle between the repressive church and the brave seekers of truth like Galileo, who had to fight against religion in order to do science. But that's not the true story at all. The story I tell here is

a story about faithful men seeking God's truth. Galileo wasn't an atheist, neither was Isaac Newton, neither was Johannes Kepler, basically all of the major figures who inaugurated the great age of science and modernity

believed that they could know the universe because they believed that mankind was made in the image of God. For that reason, his mind was not just a random product of atoms bouncing around together. It was not just an accident that happened to emerge in one little tiny corner of a dark universe. And we're not, as Stephen Hawking once claimed we were, we're not chemical scum on a tiny planet in the middle of nowhere. We're actually in

printed with the key to understanding creation. And that was the roadmap that the architects of science plotted out. Now, gradually, because the methods that they devised were so powerful, their

were some people in the wake of the scientific revolution who wanted to claim that knowing the physical world was knowing everything and that by understanding the mechanics of how material works, you could actually get rid of any need for God or a prime mover or a first cause. And I'm happy to report that in this case, we can actually blame the French, which is one of my favorite things to do, just generally. It was...

Yeah, it was Pierre-Simon Laplace, the great French astrophysicist who lived through the French Revolution. It was supposed to have said to Napoleon, I have no need of God as an hypothesis. And we shortly, in short order, not only in France, but also in Russia, we saw where that conviction leads. We saw, as you say, the nihilism of believing in only material, which the

scientific revolutionaries would never have endorsed, that nihilism leads to the raw imposition of power. Because if it's all just atoms bouncing around and there's no meaning or purpose, no higher morality, then you're just going to try to conform time and space itself to your political program, which is what they did in the French Revolution. It's what they did under the Soviet Union.

And that's part of the story that I tell in this book, too. But the really important thing that we haven't yet fully grappled with or understood is that even if it once looked plausible to, say, the thinkers of the Enlightenment, that you might be able to get rid of God. And even though we've been stuck with that narrative for so long, we grew up with it in school. Science itself no longer supports that narrative.

So if you really want to follow the science, you actually need to do a hard reset on this presupposition we have that science and faith are inherently against one another. The discoveries of cosmology, as you indicated, Glenn, also the quantum revolution at the turn of the 20th century is fascinating.

totally upended our mechanistic idea of the universe and taught us some things that look a lot like the book of Genesis. They've suggested, for instance, that human consciousness has a unique or at least a highly important role to play in constituting reality, and perhaps even that there's no such thing as a meaningful concept of matter without mind, without some kind of observing principle or, dare I say, some sort of mind-to-speech

the universe into existence, to see it and call it good. So all of this is waiting there for us to take stock of. And if we don't, of course, you know, we'll end up in service to Craven political project. Yeah. I have to tell you, you know, the Nobel Prize in physics just went to two AI scientists. And AI, if we don't decide that

human life is different and that there is mind with a capital N, M, we're going to be very, very lost because there are going to come a time quickly where people will like, well, no, that's life. I mean, it's got to be life because it talks to me. It relates to me. It answers my questions. It asks me philosophical questions. It's my best friend.

And people will start to defend AI as life. And then we're going down a hole that you just do not want to travel in.

Oh, I mean, I don't know if you saw that movie Her with, I think it was Scarlett Johansson, but that wasn't supposed to be a prescription. That was supposed to be a warning. I know. And, you know, Alan Turing, one of the sort of real forefathers of modern computing, if not the originator of the computer, he wrote a famous paper in 1950 that's now become known as the Turing Test. And of course, this is a

brilliant mathematician so it's not that he was a dumb guy but he was in hock to this very idea that if a computer can fake being human then it is human and why did he think that which from my view this is exactly backwards so why is it that he thought that well he believed

that human beings are nothing more than machines for turning inputs into outputs. We are effectively calculating machines ourselves. And the only thing that we can know about ourselves is that we take in stimulus from the outside world and we turn out things that look like thoughts and emotions. So if a computer can do that, well, it's doing what we do. But what's the logical next step? Well, if we're machines, if we're computers,

We're very primitive, first gen computers. We definitely need an update because we were randomly formed, it's supposed, by some haphazard process. It's only equipped to deal with our immediate surroundings. And why should we expect?

to endure beyond the advent of these computers, which can do so much more calculation than we can. Calculation is the point of life, then we don't stand a chance. But of course, we all know that calculation isn't the point of life. None of us lives that way. We live knowing that the human experience

of things is itself irreducibly important and that if you take that away, who cares what a machine can do? So these are all things that we are being forced now to grapple with and you can hear it in the way that these guys talk about their technology. Eliezer Yudkowsky, one of the major sort of

thinkers in the AI sphere published an essay where he said, you know, the AI doesn't love you. It doesn't hate you. You're just made of atoms that it can use for something else. And if that's what we think of ourselves, then of course, that's what we're going to submit to. That's how we're going to treat our machines.

Spencer Clavin, all of his books are just tremendous, deep, deep thinker, and this one's really important, Light of the Mind, Light of the World by Spencer Clavin. You can get it wherever you get your books.

And I highly, highly recommend it. You can follow Spencer on Twitter, at Spencer Clavin, or you can see his website, rejoiceevermore.substack.com. Spencer, thank you, as always. Good job. It's a pleasure. Thanks, Glenn. Thank you. Bye-bye. This episode is brought to you by Shopify.

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