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Ignorance Or Sarcasm

A fellow traveler posted this comment on my Substack letter last week:

It’s impossible to know if Kent meant this question seriously or sarcastically. Either way, I thought I’d devote this week’s letter to explaining what any well-informed, serious person already knows: “intellectual Christian” is anything but an oxymoron.

Intellectual Christians

Christian thinkers have profoundly shaped the intellectual world generally and Western civilization in particular. Here are just a few of them:

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was fascinated by the mystery of the human mind. Long before modern psychology, he explored memory, self-awareness, desire, free will, and our restless longing for God. He also had remarkably modern ideas about time, which he argued isn’t just something measured by clocks. It’s a mysterious phenomenon embedded deep within our very being.

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) showed that reason and faith are not enemies. Our IQ and SQ, you might say, are two complementary ways of discovering truth. Drawing on Aristotle, Aquinas tackled some of life’s biggest questions: How is the cosmos organized? What is good? What is our purpose? How should we live? And what can reason alone tell us about the existence and nature of God?

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was one of history’s great geniuses. He invented calculus at about the same time as and independently of Isaac Newton. He also tackled some of the deepest questions about reality, reason, and God. In his famous book Theodicy, Leibniz confronted an age-old puzzle: If God is all-powerful and perfectly good, why does evil exist?

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) brought philosophy down from the clouds and made it intensely personal. He focused on the individual - our choices, fears, doubts, identity, freedom, and direct relationship with God. Kierkegaard insisted that faith is not merely agreeing with a list of religious ideas. It’s a courageous, deeply personal decision to trust God even when reason cannot give us absolute certainty. It’s what later became known as the “leap of faith.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) was a brilliant philosopher who began life as an atheist and became deeply interested in consciousness, empathy, and how we understand the minds of other people. Her search for truth eventually led her to Christianity. Stein later became a Carmelite nun and sought to bring together modern philosophy and the Christian thought of Thomas Aquinas. Born into a Jewish family, she was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Her life demonstrated that intellect, faith, and extraordinary courage can coexist in the same person.

C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) was one of the clearest and most influential Christian thinkers of the twentieth century. A former atheist and Oxford scholar, Lewis had a rare gift for explaining profound ideas in language ordinary people could understand. In books such as Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, and The Abolition of Man, he explored morality, suffering, free will, human dignity, and the dangers of believing that people are nothing more than biological machines.

Alvin Plantinga (1932–) is one of the most important Christian philosophers of our time. He challenges the popular claim that believing in God is irrational unless it can be scientifically proven. Plantinga argues that believing in God can be perfectly reasonable - just as our belief in other minds, the external world, and the reliability of memory can be reasonable even though none of them can be proved with absolute certainty. He also offers a powerful response to the problem of evil and argues that the real conflict is not between science and Christianity, but between science and atheistic materialism.

Christianity & Universities

Today’s so-called bastions of higher learning were invented and proliferated worldwide by Christians. Here are just a few examples:

The University of Paris, founded around 1150, grew out of Christian cathedral schools.

Oxford University, where teaching was underway by 1096, and Cambridge University, founded in 1209, were shaped by Christian scholars and clergy.

Harvard College, founded by Puritans in 1636, was established in part to train ministers.

The modern university, for all its present-day hostility toward Christianity, was born from the Christian conviction that truth is worth seeking because God’s creation is rational and intelligible.

Christianity & the Scientific Method

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The Great Transformation

Having read the Bible cover to cover multiple times, this remains one of my all-time favorite verses:

Perhaps it’s because I’m an intellectual Christian that I find it fascinating Romans 12:2 singles out the mind as the agent of radical change - as the way we can discern God’s will for our lives. Wow! Not our exercise routine, not our nutrition, not our attitudes, not our personality, not our habits - our mind.

To understand why the Bible places such a huge importance on our mind, we first need to ask some basic questions.

What Exactly Is the Mind?

According to the Bible we are imperfect, mortal representations of our Creator - like an artist’s many self portraits on two-dimensional canvases. Creatures unlike any other on Earth with a body, mind, and spirit.

Our body is strictly physical, and our spirit is, well, strictly spiritual. But our mind is something else entirely. It’s something that defies comprehension; as real yet deeply mysterious as dark energy and dark matter.

The mind is also something that decades of scientific research indicate is immortal. There’s compelling evidence that when we die our mind lives on. It’s called the “Persistence of Consciousness.” I talk about it in my movie, The Invisible Everywhere.

Because of all this and more I’ve come to believe our mind is a bridge - a portal - that straddles the physical and spiritual worlds. That it’s the direct conduit, if you will, between our mortal existence and our immortal Creator.

But wait, Dr. G! I hear many of you objecting. Doesn’t the Bible make it clear our connection to God is through the Holy Spirit?

Yes, my fellow traveler, it does, as Jesus himself explains to the disciples in this verse:

I interpret this verse to mean each of us is born with a standard-issue, God-given spiritual capacity. But when we make Jesus our Lord and Savior, something categorically greater occurs: the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us - to open our eyes to what God wishes for us. It’s like igniting a giant searchlight in a very dark and dangerous world.

What’s more, this description of the Holy Spirit as our divine Helper and Teacher is entirely consistent with what I’ve said and am about to explain to you about the human mind.

What Exactly Does the Mind Contain?

After centuries of study and speculation, science is still utterly baffled by the human mind. At the very least we can say the mind houses what we call human reasoning, our human intelligence.

To most people this automatically means logical intelligence, or IQ. But as I explain in my bestselling book Believing Is Seeing and other writings, many animals have IQ. What makes us unique is we have spiritual intelligence, or SQ.

Where exactly is our spiritual intelligence housed? I believe it’s located in our deeply mysterious, immortal mind, alongside our logical intelligence.

It’s what Romans 12:2 is telling us. It’s explaining that our mind - with one abutment in the physical world and the other in the spiritual world - is a supernatural bridge God designed into our architecture and uses to bring us closer to him, uses to lead us to our divine destiny.

Conclusion

Stitching together everything being said here leads us to conclude that, contrary to popular perception, the mind is not merely the instrument of our logical intelligence. It’s also where we apprehend spiritual truth - and where the Holy Spirit teaches, corrects, and transforms our thinking.

That’s why I say our mind is a bridge, a portal, between the physical world and the spiritual world. Between an ugly, selfish, willful existence and a life guided by God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will.

It’s why Romans 12:2 identifies the renewing of our mind as the agent of radical change: the means by which our day-to-day thinking can be transformed from the enemy’s logical-material-profane worldview to our Creator’s translogical-immaterial-sacred one.

Love,

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The Starting Line

Three years ago, when I began writing the script for my new movie, THE INVISIBLE EVERYWHERE - inspired by my bestselling book Believing Is Seeing - there wasn’t any of today’s hysteria about AI devastating Hollywood’s traditional filmmaking business. The first publicly available AI video generators - among them Runway, Kaiber, and Pika - were not widely known and not very good.

Naturally, therefore, I assumed I’d produce THE INVISIBLE EVERYWHERE the old fashioned way, the way I did my previous, award-winning family movie, LITTLE RED WAGON.

LITTLE RED WAGON cost me $8 million and took me four years and hundreds of people to make. It was released theatrically in the U.S. and abroad, then licensed to Walmart for 90 days, where the DVD hit the bestsellers list, then to Netflix for four years. Now, distributed by Lionsgate, the movie is on Amazon Prime, Fandango, Apple TV+ and other major streaming platforms.

But just when the script was complete and I was preparing to raise the necessary funding, out of the blue I had an experience that changed everything. It happened in late February, 2025, at roughly 4 am. I was still in bed when an urgent, inner voice said to me:

“Don’t wait! Make this movie right now, even if you have to use your iPhone camera to do it.”

I was completely taken aback because at that early hour of the morning I wasn’t thinking about the movie or much of anything else. Yet the directive was so persuasive I began purchasing the basic filmmaking equipment I figured I’d need to make the movie by myself - including a new iPhone.

About a week into this bizarre turn of events, however, while browsing the internet, I came across Runway. At that point, like most people, I’d never heard of AI video generators.

Intrigued, I prompted Runway’s free-trial version with a line from my script and waited. Less than a minute later it spit out a 5-second video, which honestly wasn’t very good. It’s what people today call “AI slop.”

Still, the scientist in me was sufficiently fascinated by the process that I began to tweak the prompt over and over again. I now realize that by doing so I was learning to communicate with an alien collaborator.

On about the fifteenth or sixteenth try, I finally hit the jackpot! Runway generated a 5-second video that completely blew me away. Not only did it conform to my vision of the particular scene, it transcended it.

That was the moment when I dared to wonder:

“Could I possibly use AI to produce a full-length movie?!”

After my wife and I prayed about it, I decided to give it a try. Little did I know I was committing to what would be one of the most grueling tasks of my life - on par with earning my 3D PhD in physics, math, and astronomy.

The Marathon

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My Hispanic Heritage

As the grandson of legal immigrants I’m especially excited to celebrate our incomparable nation’s 250^th birthday.

My maternal grandma was born in Cuba. She escaped Cuba’s oppressive, confiscatory government and immigrated legally to the United States. She lived first in Georgia then in California. She was small, tough, and made a mean fideo.

She married my maternal grandfather, who was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. He immigrated legally to the United States and started a shoe repair shop. He was an atheist but became a Christian minister after witnessing the miraculous healing of my uncle Carlos.

My paternal grandma was born in Austria. She immigrated legally to Texas where she married my paternal grandpa, after whom I’m named.

He was a field hand - a bracero - and an atheist. But he became a Christian minister after having a miraculous experience while waiting for a train in Kingsville, Texas. He became an accomplished violinist, poet, and flowering plant collector. And he ran a sizable ranch in Southern Texas.

All my grandparents worked hard and contributed greatly to the country they loved. They lived the American Dream and in the process inspired me in countless ways.

I myself was born in the middle of the Mexican barrio in East Los Angeles and grew up in a Spanish-speaking household. My dad was a journeyman carpenter making wood cabinets. But after studying the law on weekends he passed the California Bar on his first try and became a successful criminal defense attorney.

My mom was a fulltime housewife who managed to clothe and feed three kids, pay the bills, and run a household - all with the meager resources we had for many years.

I dreamed of becoming a scientist, having never met one. That dream took me to UCLA, Cornell, and Harvard. Along the way, the God I didn’t believe in opened unexpected doors that led me to my destiny, which was something far more than just being a scientist.

I’ve traveled the world covering the biggest science stories of our time. I’ve been to the White House twice. I’ve won three Emmys and been inducted into the Explorers Hall of Fame. And I’ve even chaired a committee at the National Academies of Science, the Holy of Holies of the scientific community.

I’ve written bestselling books. Made two movies. Above all, I’ve had my eyes opened to the existence of God by, of all things, my beloved science.

Haters

It breaks my heart to read about polls showing that many “Americans” hate our country so much, they refuse to fly the American flag; would not stand and fight for it if attacked; would rather live in another country; and are not proud to be Americans.

These fellow travelers are entitled to their opinions, of course. But having traveled the world, I dare them to find another country that comes even close to offering ordinary people like me and my family so many opportunities to succeed.

Is our nation perfect? No, of course not, because we humans - humans everywhere - are not perfect. We’re a fallen species. But I’ve observed that most Americans wish and strive every day, in ways large and small, to make the United States a more perfect union - and, because of that, we’ve made enormous progress even just within my lifetime.

Celebrate!

So with all my heart and soul, I declare I love America for everything it has made possible in my life and in the lives of countless others. Here at Rancho Milagro, I will always - always! - proudly fly the American flag. Without hesitation, I’ll stand and fight to the death for our nation if it is attacked. And, finally, after seeing the world, I have zero desire to live anywhere else than right here in the United States of America!

Happy birthday ol’ girl! May you thrive for many more birthdays to come.

Love,

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“荣耀归主 ❤️”

[Glory to the Lord ❤️]

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The Invisible Everywhere: Believing Is Seeing presents the modern scientific evidence that shattered my lifelong atheism and opened my eyes to the existence of God.

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Falling In Love

When I fell in love with science in the second grade, I was really falling in love with two things: the scientific method and logic.

I’ll save my love affair with the scientific method for another letter. Today, I’d like to talk to you about my equally passionate love affair with logic.

My fascination with logic quickly led me to Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher who, more than 2,300 years ago, became the first person to systematically write down the rules of logical reasoning. His writings were later collected into a work known as the Organon ("Tool"), which for nearly two thousand years has served as the bible of logical thought in the Western world.

Growing up, I amused myself by working through countless books of logical puzzles. Here’s a classic one written by the legendary Princeton-trained logician Raymond Smullyan.

A typical puzzle went like this …

I’ll give you the solution at the end of this letter.

I challenged my dad with logical puzzles I myself created. I used logic to win arguments with my friends in and out of class. Basically, I drove everyone around me crazy with my infatuation with logic!

Falling Out of Love

My years-long love affair took its first big hit, however, when I learned that Aristotelian logic is just one of many ways of reasoning logically. Without getting too deep into the weeds, I learned that Aristotle’s logic is what’s called a bivalent system of logical reasoning, because it allows for only two possibilities: true and false.

I learned that other logics existed that recognized three, four, five— an infinite number of degrees of truthfulness. Collectively, they’re known (naturally enough) as Non-Aristotelian logics. In particular, the ones that allow for infinite shades of truthfulness are called Fuzzy Logics.

The next blow came when I learned that among all these logics, Aristotle’s is now considered by most mathematicians to be relatively primitive. Modern mathematics (and by association modern philosophy) relies heavily on sophisticated, high-level, non-Aristotelian reasoning.

The next blow came when I learned that modern physics, too, now leans heavily on non-Aristotelian logic to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe beyond and within us. This is especially true in the translogical, looking-glass discipline of quantum physics, where nothing can be everything; solid can be ghostly; and past, present, and future can all be the very same thing.

The next blow came when I learned that not just in the academic world, but in the

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The Resurrected Jesus

It’s hard enough to wrap one’s mind around the pre-crucifixion Jesus, a being who’s fully God and fully human. What kind of DNA did he have??

But things get even more dizzying when we try comprehending the resurrected Jesus. What did he actually look like?? What was he made of??

The Bible says the resurrected Jesus was both unrecognizable and recognizable.

The Bible tells us the resurrected Jesus ate food, bore physical scars, and was palpable.

But the Bible also says the resurrected Jesus was in certain ways very much like a ghost.

Is it possible for us mere mortals to make any sense of these seemingly contradictory descriptions of the resurrected Jesus? Is it possible modern science can help us do that?

The answers are, yes and yes.

Ordinary Matter Is Miraculous

Let’s start with the basics.

You often hear the expression “ordinary matter,” but in truth there’s nothing ordinary about ordinary matter. Indeed, it’s not hyperbole to say ordinary matter is genuinely miraculous.

For example:

• Ordinary matter inside a woman’s womb is able to organize itself into a human being!

• Ordinary matter is able to transmit and curate genetic memories!

• Ordinary matter is able to form a brain capable of contemplating the universe and itself, asking deep questions such as, “Was the resurrected Jesus’ body made of ordinary, miraculous matter or something else entirely?”

The answer is this: Jesus’ resurrected body might very well have been made of ordinary matter because ordinary matter has certain miraculous properties we see at the quantum level but not in the everyday world we live in.

I. Recognizable and Not Recognizable

According to modern physics, ordinary matter can look very different from one observation to the next. The classic illustration of this extraordinary property of ordinary matter is called Schrödinger’s Cat - a cat trapped inside a closed box.

Open the box once, the cat might appear dead; open it a second time, the cat might appear alive - and so forth, ad infinitum. It’s a mind-blowing trait of ordinary matter called the Observer Effect.

Perhaps this explains why Mary didn’t recognize the resurrected Jesus the first time she laid eyes on him, but did the second time.

II. Palpable Solid

According to modern physics, ordinary matter is mostly (99.999999999%) empty space. If all the empty space were squeezed out of every human being on Earth, the entire human population would be reduced to the size of a sugar cube.

Despite this extraordinary etherealness, however, ordinary matter behaves very much like a palpable solid. For instance, the ground supporting your weight, the desk holding up your computer, or your very own body - they’re all made of ordinary matter that is 99.999999999% absolute nothingness!

Perhaps this explains why the resurrected Jesus, although in an altered, heavenly state of being, was still solid to the touch.

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Movie Plot

In recent years Mr. Spielberg has not enjoyed the kind of phenomenal blockbuster dominance he did throughout the first three decades of his career. I loved ET and Schindler’s List. Filmmaking masterpieces.

His upcoming sci-fi thriller Disclosure Day offers us his vision of what would happen if suddenly humanity learned beyond any doubt that we are not alone.

The movie begins when meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) has a life-changing extraterrestrial encounter. As strange events spread across the globe, cybersecurity expert Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) uncovers evidence that governments have concealed the truth about ETs for decades. Together, the pair race to reveal this bombshell truth while being chased by people desperate to keep it hidden.

It’s not an original plot - in fact, it’s downright hackneyed - but the movie’s sure to make a fortune. Especially since Mr. Spielberg, who’s currently making the rounds hyping the movie, is shrewdly releasing it this weekend - right when the Trump administration is releasing long-concealed UAP sightings reports, which have ignited the public’s imagination.

In this letter I briefly explore the movie’s three main premises from the perspective of a scientist and Christian. And then I finish by telling you whether I plan to watch this big-budget summer flick.

I. Life Exists On Other Worlds?

In my own movie, The Invisible Everywhere, I explain the shocking discovery modern science has made regarding the possibility of extraterrestrial life: Against all odds, our universe - not just Earth - is tailormade for life. That means it’s absolutely possible - some argue, absolutely certain - there’s life on other worlds out there somewhere.

For more than 30 years, astronomers worldwide have searched for and currently claim to have identified more than 5,900 extraterrestrial planets (exoplanets). Only a few dozen, however, are roughly Earth-sized and have orbits within their star’s habitable zone, where liquid water could exist - making them candidates for ETs.

All things considered - including our observations using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope - astronomers estimate our Milky Way alone might contain billions of potentially habitable planets. While we can’t actually determine if any of them harbors life - a virtually impossible task - this estimate suggests ETs might not be rare, but quite common.

II. We’ve Been Visited by ETs?

Even if ETs are everywhere, what’s the likelihood we can detect them and/or that any of them has actually visited our astronomically tiny orb? This is where fantasy (and wishful thinking) tends to come unglued from reality.

I had the rare privilege of being a grad student at Cornell right when the “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” (SETI) movement was launched. Its two principal founders, Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, were among the professors from whom I took classes. Frank was even on my PhD thesis committee.

In one of my exobiology classes, Frank taught us about “Drake’s Equation.” Mathematically, it looks like this:

Where:

N = Number of detectable civilizations currently existing in the Milky Way

R_* = Average rate of star formation in the Milky Way (stars per year)

fₚ = Fraction of those stars that have planets

nₑ = Average number of potentially habitable planets per planetary system

fₗ = Fraction of habitable planets where life actually arises

fᵢ = Fraction of life-bearing planets where intelligent life evolves

f꜀ = Fraction of intelligent civilizations that develop detectable communication (or propulsion) technology

L = Average length of time such civilizations remain detectable (or viable)

In class, Frank estimated that N ≈ 1.

Based on decades of observing and theorizing about the heavens, we can take reasonable stabs at numerical values for these three parameters:

R_* ≈ 1–3 new stars per year

fₚ ≈ 0.8–1.0 (i.e., most stars appear to have planets)

nₑ ≈ 0.1–0.5 (i.e., habitable-zone planets might be common)

Honestly, though, we have no real clue about what numerical values to assign to the other four parameters:

fₗ - How often does life arise?

fᵢ - How often does intelligence evolve?

f꜀ - How often does technology arise?

L - How long do technological civilizations survive?

Consequently, N can have any value from essentially zero to tens of thousands in our galaxy alone - which means many, many, many more than that throughout the universe as a whole.

However … some years ago I wrote a Fox News Op Ed on the Drake Equation, in which I explain that a group of Oxford University researchers make a compelling case for N = 0.0000000000000000000000000000000001 (one hundredth of one trillionth trillionth trillionth) of a detectable civilization within our galaxy.

In plain English, they conclude:

In a universe tailormade for life, therefore, cool-headed scientific analysis leads a person to doubt that we’ve come into actual contact with ETs - either by our detecting their signals or by their visiting us in person.

My brilliant, legendary, pointedly open-minded professors Drake and Sagan agreed:

III. Do ETs Undermine the Bible?

Like everyone else on the planet, Christians wonder what it would mean if ETs actually do exist. Would it in any fundamental way clash with the Bible and the Christian worldview?

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A reporter recently asked me:

In this letter I will expand on the brief answer I gave her.

The Galileo Myth

Galileo Galilei’s legendary confrontation with the 16th-century Catholic Church is one of the most famous stories in Western civilization. Repeatedly invoked in op-eds, college lectures, Twitter arguments, and conversations at dinner tables, the conflict is usually portrayed as a straightforward morality play: a brave man of science silenced by ignorant religious authority.

Because of that mischaracterization, the big takeaway for too many Christians is that, “science is the enemy of faith.” And so they must guard themselves against science’s secular inquiries of the natural world.

For too many atheists, the big takeaway is exactly the opposite, yet equally flawed: “religion is the enemy of reason.” They use their misunderstanding of the Galileo affair to bludgeon Christians as backward, dogmatic, and hostile to facts.

Both conclusions are completely misguided.

In fact, the confrontation between Galileo and the Church was not about science versus religion at all. It was about the two competing scientific cosmologies of the day:

It was also about human ego, academic stubbornness, and the danger of blind consensus.

To understand how the drama unfolded you need to understand just four basic facts.

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Time & Religion

When I was a grad student at Cornell I realized science was not going to be able to answer all my questions about the universe and my place in it. That’s when I - a tormented intellectual in search of deep truths - embarked on what I call my Hermann Hesse scientific-spiritual journey.

Along the way I explored the world’s major religions and then some, starting with Hinduism and ending (grudgingly) with Christianity. I recount the journey in my book Believing Is Seeing and partly so in my new movie The Invisible Everywhere.

On that long, winding, adventurous journey, I made many astonishing discoveries, one of them being the role of time in the various belief systems.

Generally speaking, time plays a minor role in most Eastern religions: their narratives tend to be atemporal. But not so the Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - whose narratives are far more emphatically and verifiably historical.

What’s more, among those three religions, I discovered time plays the most prominent and portentous role in Christianity. In fact, the Christian concept of time was so progressive, it predated even science’s current conception of time.

Here are three examples of what I mean.

I. Linear Time

Eastern religions see time as cyclical - for example, what Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism call Samsara. According to these worldviews, each of us is trapped inside a hamster wheel cycling through repeated iterations of birth, life, death, and rebirth - until, after great effort over many lifetimes, we’re finally able to escape and enter some kind of paradise.

Christianity was the first and only religion in human history to have a purely and completely linear timeline, hence its popular description as “The Greatest Story Ever Told.”

Like any good modern-day story, the Christian worldview has a well-defined beginning, middle, and end.

• The beginning is Christ’s birth.

• The middle is Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

• The end is Christ’s Second Coming.

Christianity’s view of time was so novel and compelling that science eventually adopted and adapted it for itself.

Before then, Aristotle - the grandfather of science - saw time as cyclical, repeating every 12,960 years (Annus Maximus). Today, the modern scientific worldview - like the Christian worldview - is solidly based on linear time, not a wheel of time.

II. Relative Time

According to 18th-century classical physics, time was defined by a single universal clock. Everything, everywhere - galaxies, stars, planets, people - kept time at exactly the same rate: tick … tick … tick … tick …

In 1905, however, Einstein’s special theory of relativity opened our eyes to a truth that is now a pillar of modern science, namely: Our reckoning of time depends on our particular speed and weight. The faster we move and the stronger gravity pulls on us, the slower time appears to flow: tick ………. tick ………. tick ………. tick ……….

For instance, someone living on a mountaintop - farther from Earth’s gravity - ages faster than someone living at sea level. Your head - because it’s farther from Earth’s gravity - ages faster than your feet. And so forth.

This revelation rocked 20th-century science to its core. Yet, once again, Christianity anticipated science because way before Einstein’s 1905 theory was ever published, Scripture spoke about the elasticity of time.

III. Timelessness

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“I just wanted to let you know your work is so inspiring!”

Jessica O.

The Invisible Everywhere: Believing Is Seeing presents the modern scientific evidence that shattered my lifelong atheism and opened my eyes to the existence of God.

👉 Get Your “Ultimate Expedition” Ticket Now & Start Watching!👈

Mrs. G and I are not part of a large organization; its just the two of us working hard to serve the God we love. So please consider becoming a Paid or Founding Subscriber. By doing so you’ll not just benefit from these weekly letters, you’ll actually support them and our efforts to speak truth with love to a world sorely in need of both.

Thank you and God bless you.

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God of the Gaps

Many people paint this war-mongering picture of reality …

When I was a boy I bought into this picture because science was my god. I genuinely believed that given enough time science, like a modern-day Oracle of Delphi, would answer all my questions.

That was saying a lot because I was (and still am) a very curious person. My middle-school math teacher nicknamed me “Michael Jillion” because I constantly interrupted him with my jillion questions.

Science of the Gaps

I now know better. I now realize science can never answer all my questions about the universe and our place in it. Here are just a few of the reasons why:

1. Science uses words in its theories without any real understanding of their meaning. In truth, for example, we have no idea what space, time, matter, and energy really are or where they all came from.

2. Only 5% of the so-called observable universe is actually visible to us. A whopping 95% is invisible and, therefore, inscrutable to us. It’s made of Dark Energy and Dark Matter, which are complete mysteries to us.

3. Beyond the observable universe - beyond the Cosmic Horizon - is a cosmos that’s 100% invisible to us. Its stars are so far away and moving away from us so fast, their light can never reach us.

4. Logic is incapable of deciding the veracity of most truths (Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem: “truth is far bigger than proof”).

5. There’s a hard and fast limit to the level of detail we can discern and, therefore understand, about the basic fabric of our universe (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principles).

6. Most essential aspects of our lives cannot be weighed, measured, or studied in a test tube.

Further to that last point:

• Science can measure the hormones associated with love, but cannot explain love itself.

• Science can measure biochemical changes during grief, but cannot comprehend the full meaning of grief itself.

• Science can analyze the physical properties of music, but cannot quantify its beauty.

• Science can measure electrical activity in the brain, but cannot explain the mystery of human consciousness.

Over the decades I also learned something else …

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“Just watched your movie - it was phenomenal.

I would love to give [it] to my atheist, intelligent daughter!

(This worked really well for The Chosen series.)” 😊

Linda L.

The Invisible Everywhere: Believing Is Seeing presents the modern scientific evidence that shattered my lifelong atheism and opened my eyes to the existence of God.

👉 Get Your “Ultimate Expedition” Ticket Now & Start Watching!👈

Mrs. G and I are not part of a large organization; its just the two of us working hard to serve the God we love. So please consider becoming a Paid or Founding Subscriber. By doing so you’ll not just benefit from these weekly letters, you’ll actually support them and our efforts to speak truth with love to a world sorely in need of both.

Thank you and God bless you.

Subscribe now

Measuring Intelligence

The modern idea of IQ traces back to the early 1900s, when the French government asked psychologist Alfred Binet to devise a practical way of identifying schoolchildren who needed extra tutoring.

In 1905 Binet and his colleague Théodore Simon created the world’s first modern intelligence test. It’s important to note Binet believed human intelligence was something complex; shaped by environment, education, and personal experiences; and certainly not reducible to a number.

In 1912, however, German psychologist William Stern disagreed with Binet by introducing the concept of Intelligenzquotient, German for “intelligence quotient.” It’s where the now-familiar abbreviation IQ comes from.

According to Stern, a child’s “intellectual endowment” could be quantified by calculating a single, numerical ratio: the child’s “mental age” (as measured by his IQ test score) DIVIDED BY the child’s actual age MULTIPLIED BY 100.

In 1916 Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman - who believed a person’s intelligence was fixed at birth - transformed Binet’s test into the famous Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, helping popularize IQ testing throughout schools, the military, and corporate America.

IQ tests typically measure abilities such as logical reasoning, mathematical thinking, memory, vocabulary, pattern recognition, and spatial perception - all of which are important abilities.

But IQ tests have little or nothing to do with a person’s creativity, wisdom, moral judgment, emotional insight, intuition, or what I call Spiritual Intelligence, or SQ.

Multiple Intelligences

While teaching physics at Harvard I befriended many colleagues in the psychology department because I authored a monthly column in Psychology Today magazine. I especially recall with great fondness the department’s legendary chairman, Jerome “Jerry” Kagan - a brilliant, humble, sweet-hearted man.

In 1983 Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner shattered the idea of a single, fixed IQ. His Theory of Multiple Intelligences proposed that we humans have different cognitive strengths and weaknesses ranging from linguistic and logical to musical, interpersonal, and spatial. In other words, being “smart” isn’t just one thing; it’s a collection of many different abilities.

I resonated so strongly with Gardner’s broadminded view of intelligence I promoted it in one of my Psychology Today columns. Privately, however, I wondered why none of his intelligences took into account human spirituality, which is no small thing.

Humans everywhere take their spiritual beliefs very seriously, and that includes atheists. I had discovered that fact by the time I got to Harvard because during my grad studies at Cornell I embarked on a spiritual journey of my own, starting with Hinduism and ending (grudgingly) with Christianity. I explain this in both my book Believing Is Seeing and movie The Invisible Everywhere.

After stewing about Gardner’s oversight I decided to do something to correct it. The result was my book Can A Smart Person Believe In God?, published in 2004 by Thomas Nelson, in which I introduce the concept of Spiritual Intelligence.

It’s since been translated into many different languages all over the world.

SQ: Your Unique Superpower

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WHAT WE KNOW

APPEARANCE

The Shroud of Turin is 14.3 feet long by 3.6 feet wide and made of linen. On it is the image of a man with the following wounds, as ascertained by numerous medical examiners, pathologists, and scientists:

Backside: The man’s back, buttocks, and legs have more than 100 dumbbell-shaped contusions, consistent with the strike pattern of a Roman flagrum, a short whip with many leather thongs, each tipped with two small lead balls or pieces of bone designed to tear through skin and muscle.

Face: The man’s face shows significant swelling on the right side, particularly around the eye and cheekbone. The nose also appears misaligned, indicating torn cartilage or a fracture.

Head: There are dozens of deep puncture wounds covering the entire top and back of the man’s scalp, consistent with a dense cap or helmet of thorns being forced onto the man’s head.

Shoulders & Knees: There are deep, heavy abrasions across both of the man’s shoulder blades overlaying the whip marks, consistent with the friction of carrying a heavy, rough wooden crossbeam (patibulum). Additionally, both knees are severely bruised and contain microscopic traces of dirt and limestone, indicating violent, unprotected falls onto hard ground.

Wrists & Hands: The man’s wrists (specifically, the “Space of Destot”) have puncture wounds. Also, the thumbs are not visible. This is consistent with nails being driven through the wrist, which damages the median nerves, which causes the thumbs to instinctively lock inward across the palm.

Arms: The angle of the blood trailing down the man’s forearms is consistent with the gravitational physics of a crucified body.

Feet: The image indicates the man’s feet were crossed, with the left foot placed over the right and transfixed to an upright post with a single, large nail driven through both arches.

Torso: On the right side of the man’s chest, between the fifth and sixth ribs, there is an elliptical wound consistent with the dimensions of a Roman spear (lancea).

PROVENANCE

If the Shroud is genuine then its journey began circa 33 AD inside a burial cave beyond the walls of ancient Jerusalem.

The first report of its existence, however, dates back to just ca 1353-1357. It was owned by Geoffroi de Charny, a French knight who displayed the cloth in a church he built in Lirey, France.

In 1453 Charny’s granddaughter Marguerite gave the Shroud to Duke Louis I of the powerful House of Savoy, Italy’s future royal family, in exchange for some expensive real estate and a handsome pension.

In 1532, the Shroud barely survived a fire in the Sainte-Chapelle in Chambéry, France, the House of Savoy’s capital city. A drop of molten silver from its protective casket burned completely through the folded cloth, and the water used to extinguish the flames left distinct, symmetrical water stains.

In 1578, the House of Savoy moved the Shroud to their new capital city, Turin, Italy, where it was placed in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. It remains there today in a climate-controlled, bulletproof case.

IMAGE

The image on the Shroud penetrates only the fabric’s top two or three microfibers. It does not soak through.

In 1978, the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) - a team of physicists, chemists, and engineers from institutions such as Los Alamos and NASA - determined the image was not brushed on nor created with any paints, dyes, or stains.

In 1898 Secondo Pia, an Italian lawyer and photographer, discovered that the Shroud’s image is a photographic negative. The negative of the negative revealed a stunningly detailed, positive image of the Shroud man - more evidence the Shroud image is no mere painting.

Using a VP-8 Image Analyzer - a tool NASA has used to map lunar elevations - scientists discovered that the intensity of the image correlates with the distance the cloth would’ve been from a three-dimensional human body - still more evidence the Shroud image is no mere painting.

No one has been able to use medieval techniques or modern laser technology to reproduce all the Shroud’s unique properties: the image’s superficiality, lack of pigment, photonegative quality, and 3D spatial encoding.

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW FOR CERTAIN

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The Invisible Everywhere: Believing Is Seeing continues receiving glowing reviews. To God alone be the glory! Here are just three of them.

Multiverse Madness

If you’ve been to a movie theater, played a modern video game, or even walked down the toy aisle at your local store recently, you’ve undoubtedly come across one of the most hyped concepts of our modern era: The Multiverse Hypothesis.

From blockbuster superhero epics and Oscar-winning films to animated series and video games, today’s pop culture is in love with the idea that there are an infinite number of parallel universes - and quite possibly infinite versions of you living out every possible scenario. It’s a wildly entertaining concept that makes for great comic books, fantastic action figures … and, of course, enormous profits.

But while the Multiverse Hypothesis is being paraded around the public square as cutting-edge, established science, the truth is far less glamorous. In this week’s letter - at the risk of being branded a killjoy - I’ll pull back the curtain on why this idea was actually created, why it has utterly failed, and why its future is quite bleak.

I. Desperate Beginnings

The idea of multiple universes was conceived out of desperation by different physicists at different times for different reasons. At least two of them were the result of modern science coming face-to-face with the supernatural. (Another notable one, involving String Theory, will be the topic of a future letter.)

Running From Supernatural Weirdness

The first rigorous, mathematical argument for parallel universes appeared in the 1957 doctoral thesis of Hugh Everett III, a grad student at Princeton University. He proposed it as a solution to the vexing paradox in quantum mechanics called the “measurement problem.”

This problem is commonly illustrated by Schrödinger’s Cat, a hypothetical feline kept inside a closed box. According to the translogical laws of quantum mechanics the animal is both dead and alive at the same time - a vexing paradox, indeed.

Everett’s proposed solution - which came to be called the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics - is that many different versions of Schrodinger’s Cat exist in many different parallel universes. In one version the cat is alive and well; in another, dead as a doornail. In still other versions, the cat is in various states of well being.

Everett’s brainchild immediately tickled the public imagination. But as often happens in modern science, the MWI only made a weird situation even weirder.

Running from a Supernatural Creator

The most popularized version of the multiverse originated in the 1980s with Russian-American physicist Andrei Linde. He elaborated his idea in two published papers titled, “Chaotic Inflation” (1983) and “Eternal Chaotic Inflation”(1986).

Linde conceived the Multiverse Hypothesis to solve a crisis that to this day still plagues modern cosmology: our universe’s perfect vital signs. Please note, the vital signs aren’t nearly perfect, they’re 100% perfect!

By vital signs I mean all the numerical descriptors of the universe that tell us how it’s wired. They’re akin to your own vital signs, which doctors check to see how well or poorly you’re wired.

The vital signs of our universe - what we scientists call “fundamental constants of nature” (e.g., the strength of gravity, the mass of electrons, the expansion rate of the cosmos, the strong and weak nuclear forces) - have numerical values so utterly perfect it defies human comprehension. If the value of just one of these vital signs was off by a tiny, tiny bit our universe would be desolate: no stars, no planets, no life.

Put plainly, when we “doctors” check the universe’s vital signs, we discover it’s wired in a way that clearly argues against its being an accident. Against all odds our beloved universe appears to be deliberately tailormade for life.

For secularists, this is very bad news because it discredits the canonical atheist-materialist worldview. In order to save face they desperately need a way to explain away the miracle of our existence without invoking God.

Enter Linde’s Multiverse Hypothesis, which goes like this: If there are an infinite number of universes with randomly assigned laws of physics, then by pure, blind luck one of them is guaranteed to have the long string of perfect vital signs - like a long row of cherries on a slot machine. We just happen to live in the cosmos that by chance hit the jackpot.

II. History of Failure

Since the late 1950s scientists have eagerly sought ways to find ways to put meat on the bones of the various multiverse hypotheses, but so far they’ve failed. Here are two examples of their many failures.

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All too often I hear someone demand that I prove God exists. “Prove it!” they exclaim, “Or else, shut up about it!”

Recently, a reporter for a major, widely respected international publication wrote a very positive, well-meaning article about my new movie, The Invisible Everywhere, for which I’m genuinely grateful. It mistakenly claims, however, that I’m actively seeking to prove that God exists.

As I’m about to explain to you, anyone who demands or claims to have proof that God exists doesn’t understand the nature of proof. Alas, it’s a common misunderstanding I know all too well.

Starting in the second grade, when I fell head-over-heels in love with science, I too had a mistaken perception of proof. Naïvely, I saw it as an indisputable, 100-percent, iron-clad way of cementing a truth.

Later in elementary school, when I taught myself geometry, I came to live for those heady moments when I could write “QED,” the three beautiful letters that seal the proof of a theorem - for example, the Pythagorean Theorem. Quod erat demonstratum: Thus, it is proved!

For me, a skinny, nerdy schoolboy, being able to use logic to prove something beyond a shadow of a doubt was positively thrilling. It made me feel powerful, even godlike.

But the feeling didn’t last long. As I grew older and my understanding of logic, truth, and proof matured, I came to realize how very childish I’d been.

Rude Awakening - Part I

Today, math, logic, and science are universally hailed as bastions of unassailable, bulletproof truths. But the reality - the proven reality - is they aren’t.

Let’s start with “mathematical proofs.”

Circa 300 BC, Euclid published his now-famous Elements of Geometry. After the Bible, geometry texts are among the most widely published books of all time.

As a boy, what I didn’t understand - and what most people today still don’t - is that the whole of Euclid’s geometry and all its so-called proofs rely on believing in thirty-three unprovable assertions. They fall into three categories: definitions, postulates, and common notions.

Some of Euclid’s unprovable assertions are easy to believe because they’re so obviously true. Like these:

• Things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another.

• If equals are added to equals, the wholes are equal.

• If equals are subtracted from equals, the remainders are equal.

Others, however, are more problematic because they’re illogical, even downright supernatural. Like these:

• A point has no dimension - no length, no width, no depth.

• A line has only one dimension - length.

• A plane has only two dimensions - length and width.

Euclid’s all-important “point” defies logic and the imagination: How can something be said to exist - even hypothetically in our imagination - that has no physical dimension whatsoever?

The same enigma applies to Euclid’s lines and planes. Together with his points, they are unlike the points, lines, and planes we draw or experience in the real world, all of which have three dimensions. They are, quite plainly, not of this world.

Every single so-called geometric “proof,” therefore, is founded on a house of cards as it were. On assumptions that are unrealistic and cannot be proven.

The fact that geometry is nevertheless incredibly useful in the real world is an entirely different subject. A subject that’s deeply mysterious, which I’ll visit in a future Substack letter.

Rude Awakening - Part II

Next, let’s look at “logical proofs.”

As I grew older I learned about the Austrian logician Kurt Gödel. In the early 1930s he used logic to prove - prove! - that logic can’t prove most truths. Logic can’t even prove something so utterly obvious as 2+2 = 4, never mind something so utterly complex and profound as the existence of God.

In one of history’s greatest and most shocking ironies, in other words, Gödel used logic to prove its own terrible weakness. I summarize Gödel’s so-called Incompleteness Theorem this way: Truth is far, far bigger than proof.

In case you’re interested in learning more about Gödel’s bombshell revelation I explain it in greater detail in my book Believing Is Seeing.

Rude Awakening - Part III

Finally, how about “scientific proofs?”

As a naïve scientific geek I lived by the motto, “Prove it!” If something couldn’t be scientifically proven, forget it - I wasn’t willing to believe it.

But I eventually learned something that shook my worldview to its core: My beloved science doesn’t have the clout to prove its own theories, never mind the theory (belief) that God exists. That includes its vaunted tentpole theories of evolution, cosmology, and subatomic particles.

I explain the details of this remarkable impotence in my aforementioned book, but here’s the headline: Science is not just “evidence-based,” as many are wont to boast, it’s also “interpretation-based.” And therein lies the problem.

The scientific method spells out strict rules for collecting evidence. It’s an excellent technique that has proven itself time and again over many centuries.

When it comes to interpreting the collected evidence, however, it’s a free-for-all. Ten different scientists can interpret the same evidence ten different ways - and none of them can ever prove their interpretation is the only right one.

Scientists claim to be guided by a rule of thumb called “Occam's razor,” which argues that the simplest explanation is always the best one, but who says it is? Occam’s Razor is an arbitrary, unprovable rule of thumb.

The reality is that scientists are free to interpret evidence any way they doggone well please. There are no rules; and as I’ve just explained, not even logic can be counted on to guide them to the truth. For as the legendary American mathematician Morris Kline observed: “Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.”

One more thing about so-called scientific proofs.

Scientists of every era inevitably settle on some kind of consensus interpretation of the available evidence. Think of it as a kind of “group think.”

Time and again, however, history teaches us that science is never settled. Over and over again, the scientific consensus of the day is eventually replaced by a new consensus based on new evidence.

In short, when it comes to scientific theories, there is no such thing as proof. For as Albert Einstein explained: “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”

Conclusion

For the reasons I’ve explained here - and so many others I’ve learned during my decades-long, winding journey as a once-atheist scientist - I now understand this: The concept of proof is as mythical as the unicorn. In life as in mathematics, logic, and science there is no such thing as 100% certainty.

Science documents this humbling truth in the form of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Likewise, the Bible speaks this truth in 1 Corinthians 13:12 (NLT):

The absence of certainty in life requires every one of us, no exceptions, to rely on faith. In other words, every one of us - every atheist included - is a “person of faith.”

Faith isn’t a weakness. It’s a necessary part of life, because so much of the universe we inhabit and that inhabits us can’t be seen, can’t be proven, and can’t even be imagined. We are bathed through and through in mystery.

Even faith itself requires faith. That is, no one’s faith can be 100% certain, 100% perfect, because we are imperfect creatures in an imperfect, fallen world. It’s well known that even the faith of saints goes through periods of grave uncertainty. In theological circles it’s called The Dark Night of the Soul.

Anyone claiming to have faith in science, God or anything else that’s 100% certain, 100% perfect, is being (to put it politely) overly self-righteous.

I regret that my faith in God is necessarily imperfect, because God deserves perfect faith. Nevertheless, even though my faith in Him is necessarily imperfect, it’s unshakeable because it’s firmly grounded on bedrock: the timeless revelations of the Bible and the modern revelations of my beloved science.

If you aren’t one already, please consider becoming a Paid or even Founding Subscriber. If you do so, you’ll go from just benefiting from to actually supporting my efforts to speak truth with love to a world sorely in need of both.

Thank you and God bless you.

Love,

Subscribe now

This past week we’ve experienced an explosion of new subscribers - new fellow travelers. If you are one of them, welcome! I’m honored and excited that you’ve chosen to join me and fellow travelers from all over the world on this crazy, fascinating, deeply mysterious journey called life.

According to Substack, my fellow travelers live in all 50 states and 55 different nations. The top five nations represented are the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and India.

I take your journey, your intelligence, and your time very seriously. That’s why I spend hours writing and perfecting each one of my weekly letters to you, published every Wednesday.

Before sending out a letter, Mrs. G, my wife of 34 years, critiques it to make certain I’m making my points clearly. In so many ways, I owe her a debt of gratitude I can never repay.

She and I have a son whom we adopted when he was four. I tell the extraordinary story of how that happened in my book, Believing Is Seeing, which as I write these words is an Amazon Bestseller. As I explain in the book, my wife, son, and I are quite literally a family made in heaven.

#1 in Cosmology

#1 in Science and Religion

#5 in Christian Apologetics.

#898 in ALL books sold on Amazon

I was born in East Los Angeles, fell in love with science in the second grade, and dreamt of becoming a scientist. But after many twists and turns, I became that and so much more - a wholly unexpected outcome I credit to God.

From me on this platform you can expect letters that explore the great invisible unknown - far beyond the familiar territories of just science and just religion. I’m singularly focused on the ill-understood and poorly represented terrain where science and religion - especially Christianity - converge.

As my new movie, The Invisible Everywhere, documents, modern science shattered my atheism and opened my eyes and mind to the existence of God. That’s why, today, I’m fully committed to sharing with the world what I’ve learned from my decades of studying the universe and the human animal. Speaking truth with love.

How did the cosmos get started?

How did life on Earth happen?

Are we just another animal?

Where is the human mind located?

Are we alone?

Is there life after death?

Does modern science discredit the Bible and belief in God?

These are just a few of the countless questions I address on this platform.

We don’t discuss politics here. Instead, we discuss matters that are of eternal importance to you, whatever your politics might be. As Jesus said, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.” (Matthew 22:21 NLT)

I invite your comments on and suggestions for my weekly letters. I want this forum to be used for a discussion among fellow travelers, not weekly lectures from me. I have as much to learn from you as you do from me.

Once again, on behalf of Mrs. G and me, thank you for being part of our thriving community of smart, inquisitive, international explorers.

To God alone be the glory!

In Case You Missed It

I wrote an Op Ed concerning quantum physics and God’s omniscience. On Monday Fox News published it on its front page, where it went viral. Here it is.

If you aren’t one already, please consider becoming a Founding or Paid Subscriber. It will help support my efforts to speak truth with love … to a world sorely in need of both.

Subscribe now

Thank you and God bless you.

Love,

Today is the world premiere of The Invisible Everywhere!

After more than a year of sweat, blood, and tears - and, above all, prayers! - the theater doors are now open, globally.

Whoever you are … wherever you are … whatever you believe … whatever you don’t believe … grab your popcorn and drink … then go to TheInvisibleEverywhere.com … get your ticket … and prepare for a stunning journey into the great invisible unknown.

This is not your grandfather’s documentary. This is not your conventional Hollywood movie. It’s a full-length motion picture created by one person (me), using a desktop computer, and consumer-level AI video generators.

We’re told on good authority it’s the first time in human history such a thing has been achieved. Whether it’s true or not …

To God alone be the glory!

Mailbag Ministry

A fellow traveler recently send me this message:

My Reply

Thank you for your understandable question.

AI is causing a great deal of anxiety and disruption, the loss of jobs being one obvious example. I take that matter very seriously and have written extensively about it - most recently in a “30-Minute Science Pocket Guide” I published titled “Artificial Intelligence.” If interested, you can obtain a copy of it here: www.michaelguillen.com

Given that very real, shared concern, I can understand why you would ask: “Why are y’all so proud about using AI to create this [movie], rather than actual human beings?”

There are many reasons I’m proud of The Invisible Everywhere and how it was made. Briefly, here are three of them.

1. This movie would not have been made without AI.

The previous movie I made - LITTLE RED WAGON - was produced in the traditional way. It required $8 million, a crew of hundreds, and five years to produce. It was shown in theaters, then sold as DVDs by Walmart (where it became a bestseller), then shown on Netflix. Currently, it’s on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Fandango, Tubi, and other platforms. It’s distributed by Lionsgate.

If made in this traditional way, The Invisible Everywhere would’ve cost me $10 million (because of all the required special effects), which I didn’t have and would’ve been difficult to raise in the current, depressed Hollywood climate.

AI made it possible for me to make the movie by myself, on my desktop computer, for about $25,000.

2. AI is not all bad.

Like all previous, major, disruptive technologies, AI has the potential both for harm and for good. The discovery of nuclear energy led to the creation of the A- and H-bombs, which have the power to annihilate us. But it also led to the entire field of nuclear medicine, which has saved countless lives. Radiation therapy kept my mother alive for years after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Yes, AI is putting many people out of work - for which I grieve - but it’s also employing many other people in entirely new positions. As a species we are constantly forced to adapt to changing environments - the AI revolution is just one example of that.

I’m confident we’ll end up being wiser and stronger because of AI. I published an essay about this on my Substack platform recently. You can read it here: https://www.morethanmeetstheiq.com/p/the-very-good-news-about-ai

3. Opposition is often driven by fear and close-mindedness.

We’ve seen this drama before. In 1609 Galileo built the world’s first telescope, which enabled our species to behold things never before seen: Jupiter’s moons, Venus’s phases, and lunar craters. Yet many fearful and ill-informed people of his day refused to look through, or even go near, the telescope.

Likewise, in 1450, Johannes Gutenberg invented the metal movable-type printing press, making it possible to produce books en masse and thereby increasing the world’s literacy rate. Yet many fearful, ill-informed people hated and railed against the invention because it put scribes out of work.

Conclusion

Love it, hate it, fear it, welcome it, AI is here to stay. My commitment as a scientist, Christian, and conscientious human being is to do everything in my power to make sure AI’s positive potentials are realized.

I believe that AI enabling me to make a beautiful, uplifting movie about the awe and majesty of the universe and human life - without a Hollywood-sized budget or crew - is a reason to celebrate, because it represents the empowerment of the individual over the tyranny of the establishment.

I call it the “Power of One.” Unlike any other technology we’ve invented, AI makes it possible for one person to unleash her or his native creativity.

As someone who was born in East Los Angeles, without a silver spoon in his mouth - without any connections to power - I’m not just proud of what I’ve achieved with this groundbreaking movie, I’m hopeful it will bless generations of people earnestly seeking for truth long after I’m dead and gone.

If you aren’t one already, please consider becoming a Founding or Paid Subscriber. It will help support my efforts to speak truth with love … to a world sorely in need of both.

Subscribe now

Thank you and God bless you.

Love,

My new movie, The Invisible Everywhere, premieres worldwide April 8 on TheInvisibleEverywhere.com. Go there now to see the trailer.

Here on Substack I’ll be keeping you updated on all the exciting developments. So don’t go away - this is the place to be!

To God alone be the glory.

If you aren’t one already, please consider becoming a Founding or Paid Subscriber. It will help support my efforts to speak truth with love to a world sorely in need of both.

Subscribe now

Thank you and God bless you.

Love,

It’s crazy busy here at Rancho Milagro as we prepare for next Wednesday’s world premiere of The Invisible Everywhere! If you haven’t seen the trailer, here it is. Enjoy!

In the meantime, yesterday evening, NASA launched Artemis II, the first time in more than 50 years we’re sending astronauts to rendezvous with the moon.

Tomorrow I’ll be recording a podcast to discuss this historic event with Team Awesome, my amazing posse of young, bright, articulate protégées.

So, be on the look-out for that. Don’t miss it!

This photo was taken two years ago during my visit to NASA HQ in Houston. Those cardboard cutouts are of the astronauts currently on their way to the moon!

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Thank you and God bless you.

Love,

I have a confession to make to you today: I am overwhelmed.

With the recent launch of my 30-Minute Science Pocket Guides and frenzied preparations for the April 8 worldwide premiere of my movie, The Invisible Everywhere: Believing Is Seeing, I’ve been operating at ultra-maximum capacity. What with daily media interviews, putting the finishing touches on the movie’s elegant distribution platform, and navigating the relentless day-to-day demands of life, my schedule is out of control.

I’m betting you know exactly how this feels.

Nowadays, in the quiet moments before the morning rush begins - when the iPhone and computer screens are still shut off and the house is quiet - I find myself yearning for simplicity.

The problem is that we live in an era of hyperactivity and complexity. Every day, we’re bombarded by a tsunami of emails, texts, bills, notifications, and bad news. The psychological toll of all this is very real - afflicting us body, mind, and spirit.

Browse through the clinical research and popular articles in expert publications such as Psychology Today - for which I was once a columnist - and you’ll see a recurring, urgent theme: our brains are simply not built to process this never-ending avalanche of manmade stimuli. It’s like trying to run an entire household on a AAA battery.

Psychologists call this phenomenon “cognitive overload”- where the sheer volume of choices and information we face daily make it nearly impossible to focus on anything in depth, elevates our bodies’ levels of stress hormones, and drains our capacity and ambition to be creative.

The bottom line is that we’re biologically and spiritually wired to need white space, or as the creator of the universe puts it: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Even Jesus needed time to rest. Yet we so constantly and thoroughly fill up whatever empty spaces there are in our calendars there’s no room left for us simply to catch our breath.

This modern predicament led me to pick up a book I’ve been diving into recently: Freedom of Simplicity by Richard Foster.

Foster proposes something profoundly countercultural. He suggests that achieving true simplicity doesn’t result from some clever life hack, scheduling technique, or method for decluttering our garage. Instead, Foster says, achieving simplicity happens from the inside out.

He argues that when we are inwardly well oriented - when our inner compass, so to speak, points to true north - the outward turbulence of life is less likely to buffet us. Instead, we’re more likely to strip our lives of its non-essential distractions and frustrations so that its essentials - above all, our relationship with God - can thrive.

As someone who has spent a lifetime studying the universe, I’m able to see a powerful lesson in simplicity that others might not. Here’s what I mean.

Outwardly, the universe is filled with chaotic processes - black holes devouring entire stars, materials undergoing tortuous phase transitions, mountains being worn down by weather, radioactive atoms being split apart by fission. But at the heart of all this Sturm and Drang are simple truths - like Albert Einstein’s concise equation, E = mc^2.

So, as I yearn for simplicity, the question I’m forced to ask is this: What simple, essential truths are at the heart of my life?

On one level, the answer is simple: the truths immortalized in the Bible. But the challenge I face is applying them daily in the midst of radio and TV interviews, my cell phone constantly ringing or sending me texts, constant deadlines - like the weekly deadlines for my Substack essays - and the personal challenges, domestic chores and household repairs that never cease demanding my attention.

I wish I could say that the simple, essential truths I hold sacred are running the show. But, alas, I can’t. Even at my age, I’m still a work in progress.

How about you, my beloved fellow traveler? How good are you at carving out space to breathe? To be still? To achieve a sense of tranquil simplicity?

As we barrel toward the movie’s April 8th worldwide premiere, the journey we’re on is about to get really interesting. But right now the one thing I yearn for most of all is the simplicity of a quiet moment.

My new movie, The Invisible Everywhere, premieres worldwide April 8 on TheInvisibleEverywhere.com. Go there now to see the trailer.

Here on Substack I’ll be keeping you updated on all the exciting developments. So don’t go away - this is the place to be!

To God alone be the glory.

Click here to order my brand new 30-Minute Science Pocket Guides.

If you aren’t one already, please consider becoming a Founding or Paid Subscriber. It will help support my efforts to speak truth with love to a world sorely in need of both.

Subscribe now

Thank you and God bless you.

Love,

My newest movie, The Invisible Everywhere, premieres worldwide April 8 on TheInvisibleEverywhere.com. Go there now to see the trailer and press release.

Here on Substack I’ll be keeping you updated on all the exciting developments. So don’t go away - this is the place to be!

To God alone be the glory.

Does God Speak?

The Bible makes many claims that appear to conflict irreconcilably with science. For example, this one: God can speak to us, and we to him.

Is there any reasonable way we can square that fantastical assertion with science? Yes - and quite easily, actually.

Conventional Communications

When I was a boy madly in love with science, I learned there are just two forms of communication: acoustic (sound) and electromagnetic (light).

Sound consists of forward-and-backward vibrations - what we scientists call “longitudinal waves”- that travel at speeds that depend on the medium through which they’re moving. Sound moves about four times faster in water than in air, for example.

Light is a bit more complicated. Simply described, however, it consists of up-and-down vibrations - what we call “transverse waves” - that travel at speeds that, once again, depend on the medium though which they’re moving. Light moves fastest through a vacuum.

Through most media, light travels much faster than sound - although there are exotic materials called “Bose-Einstein condensates” where that’s not true. In any case, scientists once believed that nothing in the material universe - not even information - can travel faster than light does through a vacuum.

Quantum Entanglement

Starting in the 1970s, however, that shibboleth was thoroughly upended by the shocking results of certain quantum experiments. The development was so revolutionary it earned three scientists - John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger - the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Read more