Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Stephen Meyer: Return of the God Hypothesis (#131)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Oh no. Here we go again. Brian Keating, an allegedly serious scientist, is having on another person to talk about God. God save us. Oh, you're not going to say that. But it is true. I am having on Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, author of Darwin's Doubt, the signature in the cell, and other expositions of so-called intelligent design. and of course intelligent design tends to get conflated with creationism and young earth creationism. But actually nothing could really be farther from the truth. Stephen is a very highly scientifically literate. I challenge you if you think that his bona fides are not up to snuff. He has actually debated the most eminent atheist scientist in the world, including Lawrence Krause and others. And I think you'll find him incredibly introspective, thoughtful person,

Starting point is 00:00:56 with very, very good arguments on his side for the case that he makes in his new book, Return of the God Hypothesis, which is about fine-tuning, about entropy in the early universe, about Alexei Valenkin, about Lawrence Krause, about Richard Dawkins, about issues raised in his previous books regarding the nature of information. And the claim is simply defended here, not a personal God, not Jesus, not Moses, God of Moses and or Abraham, but instead the necessity in his claim for a mind to create information. And I push back in many cases, as you'll see. Maybe you think I succeeded in defending your viewpoint, whether that be pro or against so-called intelligent design. I hope you'll give it a chance.

Starting point is 00:01:47 If you want to unsubscribe, I will refund your money, which is zero. But I hope you don't. I'm going to have on many, many of the world's most eminent scientists coming up, including those that use God just as much as Stephen does, namely Michi Okaku. I also have on David Spurgel, one of the most eminent scientists in the world, and oh, a guy named by the name of John Mather is coming up very soon. He, of course, won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for his cosmological discoveries. So I urge you to treat this with an open mind. If you're not interested, I hope you won't unsubscribe, but I'll understand if you do,

Starting point is 00:02:22 But nevertheless, you have to at least give Stephen credit. And I hope I get a little credit, too, for pushing the boundaries of what we know about the origin of information itself. And stay tuned. There'll be many, many more lectures, including Caleb Scharf, who is a professor of Columbia, to my knowledge, secular. And he's going to talk about the rise of information on his new book coming out in May. We have many other guests coming up. So unsubscribe at your own loss, at your own peril. I hope you won't because I had a phenomenal time talking. with Dr. Stephen Meyer, and I hope you will enjoy this episode.

Starting point is 00:03:00 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Welcome everybody to this episode of the Into the Impossible podcast, and today I am joined by a very interesting individual, someone I have spoken about before on the podcast and in my day job as a practicing cosmologist, and that is Dr. Stephen Meyer, who is joining us. He is at the Discovery Institute, and I will give a proper introduction to him as we go on. But the occasion of today's podcast interview, which is years in the making, because I've known of his work for many, many years, followed him and admired what he does and the role that he plays in the philosophy of science, and even in, as you'll find out, intelligent design.

Starting point is 00:03:56 What is this? Keating, a respected cosmologist, is now getting in. into intelligent design, well, you'll find out. And as I said in the Encomia that I gave to this new book by our wonderful guest today, it's called The Return of the God Hypothesis, Stephen C. Meyer. He's the author of the breakaway bestselling book, Darwin's Doubt, The Signature in the Cell, many other books and works of really outreach and scientific communication. And it's such a treat to to be with you today, Stephen, and I'm so enamored of your prodigious workload. How do you do it? How do you possibly do this tremendous output that you do and still have some semblance of sanity left over? Well, I could ask you the same thing, actually, with your practicing day job at the

Starting point is 00:04:52 forefront of cosmology and also working out very fine books yourself. So it's once I got liberated from full-time teaching. I was able to write quite a bit more. So that's been the secret, I think. I was a professor for 12 years and then came to discovery and have been more focused on the research. Right. So I want to just read your quick bio that I received. And this should be familiar to many of my listeners because they may have encountered you already in your debates with none of the upcoming guest, Dr. Lawrence Krause of the Origins Project and the Origins podcast. Hopefully Lawrence is coming on not too long for none. Lawrence plays a not insignificant role in the God hypothesis.

Starting point is 00:05:34 I wonder, did you send him an advanced copy of this book? I will send it out. Okay, good. Yeah, we'll get him assigned. I think he and I have dueling essays in a journal inference coming up soon. Oh, wow, okay. So I received a copy of... He's a worthy intellectual interlocutor, for sure.

Starting point is 00:05:55 Yes, that's right. and the odd couple, if ever there were one. So I received this book in the mail at UCSD, and I opened it up, and I said, oh, Stephen's got a new book. I didn't know that. It was December 7th, I know, because it's a day that will live in infamy for many reasons.

Starting point is 00:06:13 And I got this book and said, Stephen Meyer received his PhD from Cambridge University in the Philosophy of Science, a former geophysicist and college professor. He directs a Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. He authored the New York Times bestselling Darwin Stout, signature in the cell, which was selected as a London Times literary supplement book of the year. It's been featured on PBS, Ben Shapiro, et cetera, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:06:36 And it said, Professor Keating, you know, we were so pleased to present to you this galley copy, so this is not the original copy. And it said, we'd be so pleased if you'd get us some comment on the book by December 15th. And, you know, Stephen doesn't write books by the pound, but if he did, he'd be either. even more replete and munificently remunerated than he has. This book is like 600 pages long. So I said, I can't do that. You got to give me at least eight days, nine days, Stephen, come on. But actually, I tore through it.

Starting point is 00:07:10 Of course, I looked up my name and made sure that I was featured prominently as a couple of chapters befitting my own personal resplendence. But this book is so thoroughly researched. It really is kind of like a mini PhD in the philosophy. of science. It is dense. I took billions of notes on the hard copy. I'm going to get the audiobook version. But I want to first start off with the question that my audience is going to ask. Why are you on this show? Why are you an intelligent design advocate on a show with a practicing cosmologist who professes that he is a devout, practicing agnostic on not an infrequent

Starting point is 00:07:48 basis? So what makes you, and some of the work that you do, what brings attention, maybe even controversy to the work that you do. Well, one of the things that you have said that I like is that you're an agnostic who wrestles with God. You're interested in the big questions. And I am too. And I think that's a common interest that we have. What does science have to say about these larger metaphysical or worldview issues, if anything? I think it actually has quite a lot to say.

Starting point is 00:08:20 And I think there are design implications in cosmology and physics. every bit as much as in biology. I think we do live in a universe that has evidence of design and purpose. And I think that means that science may have some clues as to some of those, the answers to some of those big questions. So I hope that makes some sense to your audience, but certainly I think in our conversations has been one of the things that has drawn us together.

Starting point is 00:08:48 Absolutely. Yeah, we've had really deep conversations. And as you know, I'm practicing jurors. I'm not Orthodox, devout Orthodox, but I do adhere to some of the tenants, most of the tenants of my faith. You know, it's been a long time. I haven't, you know, slept with my, with my grandmother's, you know, ex-husband or saying, you know, there are all these mitz vote in the Torah, and people say, I can't keep it. I can't keep all those commandments. And I say, you know, did you sleep with your, with your stepmother's wife or, you know, whatever? And it's actually not that hard to adhere to some of these things. You know, you don't have to do that much, you know. find a red heifer and kill it. That's not something we have to do in a daily basis. But the conversation that we had, I'll just start off by saying the thing that worried me about this book, and even conversing with folks like you or William, is it William Lane Craig or

Starting point is 00:09:40 William Craig Lane? I always forget. William Lane Craig. You always get this sort of sense as a scientist, Jewish or not, you know, that there will be the following progression. It'll start off with the column cosmological argument that, you know, anything that has a beginner must have, or anything that began must have had a beginning and must perhaps have a beginner. So cosmology, the big bang, the universe had a beginning, therefore there must have been a banger, as one of my rabbi's sense. The big banger is the, is the force, the motive force that put the bang in the big bang. And then it will be, well, because God wouldn't create the universe without some sense of purpose and design therein, it is.

Starting point is 00:10:22 in effect, a personal gut. Okay, so that might follow logically from a supposition that column is right or that this argument is sound. And then it will always be, and therefore, Jesus. And it's very difficult as a, you know, practicing Jew, not to deny the historicity, the magnificent teachings of Jesus, the authenticity of Jesus' life and his teaching. We, as you know, as Jews, document exquisitely the teachings of all of our rabbis going back thousands of years. and Jesus was, of course, one of the most preeminent exemplars of that tradition. So I always find it interesting and a little bit perilous to engage with Christian people that are scientifically inclined to want to support the hypothesis that Jesus, more than the God

Starting point is 00:11:10 hypothesis, the Jesus hypothesis. So can you say something about that? Can you read this book, which is, as I said, thoroughly documented details the biological, cosmological and physical implications of the evidence for design. Can you accept the contents of this book written by a Christian, a devout Christian, if you're not Christian and perhaps have no position on the legitimacy of Christ as Messiah? Well, yeah. I mean, you and I have something else in common, which is that you're kind of a Christian-friendly Jewish person, and I'm a Jewish-friendly Christian-friendly Christian person. And I have a lot of close colleagues in our work in Discovery who are Jewish.

Starting point is 00:11:56 And I don't think you can settle questions of specific religious questions, especially within the context of theism, through appeals to nature. I think theologians make a distinction between general and special revelation. And the kind of arguments that I'm making are based on the general revelation of nature. And I don't think they settle those differences between Jews and Christians or non-religious theists and Muslims or those other sorts of considerations would have to come into play. And those conversations would have to occur separately. So this is a book simply about, well, simply it's a big topic. First, the evidence of design. But then it also addresses a second order not addressed before, which is what concerns.

Starting point is 00:12:49 science tell us about the possible identity of the designing intelligence responsible for life, for example. So that's that that that might get you to theism. I argue that it does, but it doesn't get you further than that within the framework of theism or some sort of transcendent intelligence, then there's other sorts of questions that would require further deliberation that can't be, I think, settled by appeals to nature. And of course, you know, this is not a new, topic of people have been kind of looking at the confrontation, is religion engaged in a perpetual battle against science? And some of those come down to what the late great Stephen J. Gould called Noma, non-overlapping magisterial support. And I actually, I've never been a huge

Starting point is 00:13:40 fan of that. I always kind of find that rather bland. And that's not to say I haven't used that argument myself. I frequently have said, you know, if you pick up a book and it says, you know, great stars of the NBA, and you look through it, and it's 99 pages of the seven Jews who have ever made it to the NBA, and there's one page about everybody else, then you would say, well, this is not really an accurate title for the book, and yet that same ratio takes place in the Bible, in the Old Testament, at least the Testament I'm most familiar with, in that there's about 35 verses that plausibly have to do with evolution or the Big Bang or creation of the universe out of 35,000 versus. So there's that same ratio of one to a thousand. And yet

Starting point is 00:14:25 people want to kind of pigeonhole it as saying a couple of scientific things here, a couple of, you know, a couple of biological claims here over there. And I really feel like that's the most, that's the deepest clue that they're, it's not just that they're not overlapping. It's that they're totally irrelevant. It's like picking up a book on quantum field theory and expecting to find a way to raise your kids. So what is that about NOMA? Is it just because of Stephen J. Gould's, you know, amazing personality and communication of science? Is there something actually there that is more than, you know, than just kind of feel good. You do what you want to do. I'll do what I want to do. Because I always say, if God exists, you're going to act very differently than if God

Starting point is 00:15:08 doesn't exist. If you know God doesn't exist. So just tolerating it, you know, giving it lip service, as NOMA appeals to, at least in my understanding of it, I don't find it very satisfying. Is it legitimate in some sense? Well, I think there's legitimacy in it. There's an old saw from Galileo. You know, the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. And that is to say much of what we call the natural sciences concerns questions that are religiously neutral. You know, what's the formula for assault?

Starting point is 00:15:36 What's the given reaction sequence or the specific form of the law of gravity or whatever? But there are questions that science raises that do have larger philosophical, worldview, religious implications. What is a law of nature from whence did the universe come? What caused the universe to come into existence? And so I don't adhere to no, but I agree that there's some truth to it. There are vast realms of science that are religiously neutral. But there are also questions that arise in science that are, that have philosophical worldview or religious implications.

Starting point is 00:16:19 And it's at that intersection that I think that are some of the most interesting questions, the kind that you address on your podcast, for example. And that's what this book is about. What can science tell us about those big questions? One of the things I appreciate about some of the interlocutors opposite me, and that would be the very overt new atheists, is that they do a great job of framing some of those big questions.

Starting point is 00:16:43 So for example, Richard Dawkins says, The universe he asserts that the universe has exactly the properties we should expect. If at bottom, there was no purpose, no design, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. Blind, pitiless, indifference is just a metaphorical way of describing what scholars call scientific materialism, the worldview of scientific materialism that says that there is at bottom nothing but matter and energy. The matter and energy are the things from which everything else comes, and the material, the physical universe has been eternal. is eternal and self-existent. It doesn't require an external cause to account for its origin or existence.

Starting point is 00:17:22 Now, that's a very provocative claim and a very interesting one, because what Dawkins is essentially saying is that metaphysical hypotheses, every bit as much as scientific ones, might be testable by reference to observations that we can make about the world around us. And he asserts, in fact, that the metaphysical hypothesis of scientific material, realism is testable, that it comports beautifully with what we would expect to see if that hypothesis were true when we go out and look at the natural world. And that's actually an excellent, I use that quote as a framing device in the book because I want to argue just the opposite,

Starting point is 00:18:02 that there are at least three big discoveries that we've made about biological and cosmological origins that are not what you'd expect if a materialistic worldview were true, but rather comport more nicely with the expectations of theism. And those three discoveries in the book are that the universe likely had a beginning, that it's been fine-tuned from the beginning and subsequently and subsequent to that for life, and that there have been large bursts of digital information into our biosphere that have made new forms of life possible.

Starting point is 00:18:31 And I look at those three big discoveries and suggest that they comport more nicely with theism and therefore provide what philosophers call epistemic support, not proof, but evidential or epistemic support for a theistic worldview. What level of epistemic support is, is it possible to say you've achieved a status tantamount to, you know, evidentiary support? In that, you know, people say, oh, that's just circumstantial evidence. But, you know, as I understand it in the American juror system, there's a certain amount of circumstantial evidence that upon a certain amount of it will constitute enough to at least be dispositive in certain legal circumstances.

Starting point is 00:19:15 So at what level would there, you know, rise to be the level of evidentiary support coming from epistemological support? And maybe just define, you know, both of those. Yeah, that's an excellent question, especially coming from a cosmologist. I mean, you know that in your field, you're reconstructing often events that took place billions of years ago. And you don't have the luxury of being able to do a controlled experiment or an experiment or controlled laboratory. conditions. You have to go back. You reconstruct the past based on the clues that are left behind, whether it's the cosmic background radiation or other things. And I actually did my PhD thesis on origin of life biology and the historical method of scientific investigation that's used in fields

Starting point is 00:20:02 like origin of life research or evolutionary biology or archaeology or forensics or cosmology. There's a whole class of disciplines that depend upon long after the fact circumstantial evidence in order to reconstruct processes and events that took place a long time ago. Stephen Jay Gould said that speaking of evolutionary biology said the historical sciences reconstruct the facts based on the clues that are left behind. So people think, well, that makes it a lesser type of science. Well, maybe, but oftentimes circumstantial evidence can be very compelling. And it is in the following, under the following conditions,

Starting point is 00:20:45 epistemologically. Often the problem with reasoning from effects back to causes is that there may be more than one cause that can explain the same effect. The type of inference you use when you reason retrospectively from effect back to causes is known as in logic an abductive inference. Now, abductive inferences can be grossly underdetermined. There can be many more causes that might explain the same effect. And in that case, you're stuck. Then circumstantial evidence isn't very compelling. But the historical geologists and evolutionary biologists in the 19th century refined that method, and they did so by showing that if you compared competing hypotheses against often a wider ensemble of evidence, you could narrow down the candidate explanations,

Starting point is 00:21:34 and in the best of cases, you could infer to a best explanation. This method known as the method of multiple competing hypotheses is used instinctively by people in, for example, cosmology or evolutionary biology. And it does allow us, in some cases, to make very definitive inferences about the causal events in the past that explain the ensemble of clues and evidences that we have in the present. So circumstantial evidence can be very powerful, and it can be dispositive if you're in a position to make an inference to the best explanation where you have, after an an examination of an ensemble of clues, only one plausible explanation for the evidence at hand. Right. And I see this a lot in a kind of fallacy of insufficient evidence playing out,

Starting point is 00:22:25 but more on a practical level. In other words, you might find a lot of scientists, as you mentioned in the book, and some of the most preeminent scientists are mentioned in this book, are some of them are friends of mine uh you know despite the the the the folks that i associate with my off time and uh and and and yet they'll say things like you know i mean just i'll bring up sir roger penrose he hasn't commented specifically on this book but uh to me but he was you know one of the first if not the best to really popularize this idea of the exquisite fine-tuning or low entropy state of the early universe, that seems in great conflict with the theory of inflation, which seems to suggest that the entropy created during this early evolutionary process

Starting point is 00:23:14 in the universe of its expansion by 35 orders of magnitude in a microscopic fraction of a second, that that's almost a death blow to that theory. And you do mention those concerns in the book, as, you know, kind of reasons to doubt the kind of universe from nothing, which we'll get into in just a bit. However, you know, what you don't talk so much about is that Sir Roger came up with a alternative cosmology, which does away with the evidence, or does a way with this disposes of the entropy challenge to the inflationary cosmology. And it actually involves a universe with no beginning, a multiverse in time, which he calls a cyclic universe, which he calls conformal cyclic cosmology, featuring an innumerable number of aeons,

Starting point is 00:24:06 or eons, as we would say in the States. But I don't see much made of that. In fact, I see predominantly the evidence that you put forth in the book for a singular origin of the universe, which at first blush might be considered, you know, kind of consistent, if not proved or, you know, posited by the Bible, specifically the Old Testament. So, What do you make of the fact that, you know, what one cosmologist can do, another can undo? In other words, we used to think the universe was infinite, was static, unchanging. Hubble, the standard lore comes along, shows even Einstein was wrong. So any point, and now, then later on, folks like Beta and Gamov and came up with the theory of the evolution of the very earliest synthesis of elements.

Starting point is 00:24:55 Then we had Hoyle, who's in the book, and Burbage, my late-grade colleague here at UCSD, coming up with a quasi-steady state universe. And we see this going on and on. Then we had inflation. Now we have cyclic cosmology or the bouncing cosmology of Paul Steinart. It's also in the book. So tell me, why should we trust this science, this argument that you're making right now, when history shows time and time again, as Mark Twain said, their cosmology, at least, is rhyming,

Starting point is 00:25:24 that it's dangerous to say there was a single beginning, despite all the proofs in there, there's counterproofs from everybody else. So why should we trust the cosmology, which you thoroughly explore and explain in this book? It's really a magnificent treatment of our current understanding. But again, Stephen, it's our current understanding. And what one cosmologist can do in the past, another can do better now. That's a great question. First, I do address the the cyclical cosmology of Penrose, first in a long footnote, and then I have extended research notes that go with the book. They're going to be posted online. And so it's obviously very important to keep current with the most current things. And I can come back to that in a bit.

Starting point is 00:26:09 But the big picture broadstroke answer to your question is that what I've done is I've made an argument for theistic implications of modern cosmology that does not depend upon a specific conclusion about there being a beginning or not. What I have constructed is what a philosopher's sometimes call a robust argument, meaning that multiple predicate lead to the same conclusion. And so I show that as best, I make the argument from a preponderance of evidence, both from observational cosmology and from theoretical physics, drawing on the singularity theorems of the 1960s and 70s, which are conditional, and they're conditioned upon general

Starting point is 00:26:53 relativity and there are reasons that we might not extrapolate all the way back to the beginning if we accept that there could be a quantum theory of gravity in the early, you know, pre-plunk time part of the universe. But I also make the argument that the back extrapolation that is being made in observational cosmology that gets us to a big bang and the movement towards an infinite curvature, which is the implication of the singularity theorems, are indicators. of the beginning. Paradei presents Ojos with Alergy and Picasson

Starting point is 00:27:27 contrail and the Garnaday extra-fue to alleviate to liviourg to aler clarity and flownays at 24 hours.

Starting point is 00:27:37 Paradey! And then there's also a third line of argument which is the Borguth Belincon theorem that doesn't depend upon the kind of energy conditions that are necessary

Starting point is 00:27:48 to make the singularity theorem work. It depends only on special relativity and basic geometric considerations that also implies that there was a beginning so we have multiple lines of evidence pointing to a beginning but then I say but if you don't accept that there was a beginning or if you accept that there might not have been a beginning then and that in this era of quantum gravity we should be exploring sort of

Starting point is 00:28:11 quantum accounts of the origin of the universe but then I show that those accounts of the universe though they've been promulgated by sort of overt scientific materialists, they actually have latent theistic implications, certainly idealist implications. You want to say that the universe has come out of a universal wave function, and then you have to ask, well, what is a universal wave function? You can say the laws of nature, or laws of physics explain why there is a universe rather than nothing. Well, what are the laws of nature?

Starting point is 00:28:46 What kind of form can they have before there is an actual physical universe? And this is a question that was raised by Alexander Valenkin himself, one of the proponents of quantum cosmology. In fact, I've got the quote here. It's really provocative. In the absence of space, time, and energy, what tablets could these laws of nature be written upon? The laws are expressed in the form of mathematical equations. If the medium of mathematics is the mind, does this mean that mind should predate the universe? But in that account, the universe comes out of a mathematical abstraction or a universal wave function

Starting point is 00:29:20 which is the solution to a prior mathematical equation, that Wheeler-Dewitt equation, which is an analog to the Schrodinger equation in ordinary quantum physics. Belinkin makes this provocative observation, however, if we're saying that matter, space, time, and energy come out of essentially mathematics, and mathematics is the realm, is conceptual and exists in the realm of the mind, is our new account of the origin of the universe actually presupposing the existence of a prior intelligence or a mind? He doesn't answer that rhetorical question, but interestingly, who was also a proponent of quantum cosmology was sensitive to the same concern when he said what puts fire in the equations that gives them a universe to describe in our experience math by itself has no causal powers it's causally inert so deposit math is to posit something that in our experience only exists in a mind and minds of the things that do have causal powers so have we by circumventing one sort of cosmological account that leads to a theistic conclusion on one basis namely that there was a definite beginning or singular

Starting point is 00:30:20 before which there was not matter, space, time, or energy to explain the origin of the universe. Now we have a different cosmological account, but it for different reasons implies the prior existence of mind. And as I show in the book, even there's even some deeper logic to that, and that to get a universal wave function, you have to solve the Wheeler-Dewitt equation. But the Wheeler-Dewitt equation is a functional differential equation that has an infinite number of solutions and can only be solved if there are boundary constraints placed on that equation and the boundary constraints are chosen selectively by the quantum cosmological modelers to give a universal wave function that includes a universe like ours which is their condition

Starting point is 00:31:01 of saying that we've explained the universe so that input of information by the modelers i think is actually quite significant because it suggests that to get a universe like ours out the other end you've got to put information in and the information is coming in the modeling from the mind of of the theoretical physicists. So what I've shown is that in a sense, many roads to Rome. You've got different cosmological models, but they all have, if you probe them deeply enough, they have implications that are not strictly materialistic and point in the direction of mind. So yeah, let's go deeper in that. I just want to remind everybody and talk with Dr. Stephen Meyer, the Discovery Institute, and author of Darwin's Doubt, Signature in the Cell, as well as the

Starting point is 00:31:47 upcoming book or now today's released, just released, fresh off the presses, as they say, return of the God hypothesis. We're going to talk about that word return in a moment because I think it's provocative. I want to ask you to visit Stephen

Starting point is 00:32:03 on the web, on Twitter. We'll have his links on the YouTube version. Otherwise, please do subscribe to this podcast wherever you're getting it and leave a review. That's what helps us get great guests like Dr. Stephen Meyer and others like Lawrence Krause, who I presume we'll come on and present a form of a rebuttal. He plays not an insignificant role in this book.

Starting point is 00:32:24 And he's a controversial character, a self-declared militant atheist. And one of the ones who I think, although I agree with your most recent, you know, mentioning of the Wheeler-Dowit equation, which is something, you know, that's not super well known to most, certainly most practicing experimental cosmologists. And yet as an example of something which I've encountered quite frequently, where there is sort of a teleological imposition that's placed that you, once you have an idea, for example, the Hawking Hardle No Boundary proposal, which features prominently in this book, or in the ever-ready in many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is another kind of quantum mechanical set of equations or framework, perhaps, is the best way to describe it,

Starting point is 00:33:15 that could potentially, according to some, explain the features of the universe we do observe. So when we look at it, the challenge that I have for you is that, again, there's nothing that says Wheeler-Dewit is the ultimate expression any more than there was anybody who said that, oh, Hawking Hardle made this beautiful No Boundary Proposal. What need then for a creator? As you mentioned in the book many times. And I have tremendous challenges to hawking, but I'm afraid that, you know, you're, you will leave yourself exposed to, you know, people who are not as friendly as I am. And they'll say things like, well,

Starting point is 00:33:56 no one tells you that Wheeler DeWitt is correct. In other words, there might not be a universal wave function. First of all, you know, how could you interact with it? How could you parameterize it in what type of a Hilbert space does it exist? While I agree with you that the challenge to Krause and all, you know, who popularized Valenkin's idea, He wasn't the originator of those ideas, the universe from nothing, was that it presupposed the existence of a Hilbert space, of a mathematical entity, of the laws of nature. And I find it very weak T as you Brits, or you're American, but you spend enough time in England to be an honorary Brit.

Starting point is 00:34:31 And as they say, so it's weak to say, well, okay, so now here's this, it feels like a critic will say you're cherry-picking. You're saying, oh, because the Wheeler-Dewitt equation describes the properties which a universe must have, and all quantum mechanical systems are undeniably subject to initial value conditions and boundary conditions, and that they'll say, well, okay, so what? So we learned to wit are wrong, just the same way that Hawking and Hartle are wrong. So why are you cherry picking which physicists you choose to get your evidence for the mind behind the universe? Again, if it's eternal, just like the stupid question that people, oh, who created God? Well, God doesn't need a creator, right? So

Starting point is 00:35:14 you wouldn't stipulate that there has to be a mind that creates the mind that created the matter. So anyway, how do you overcome that objection? That there's no saying that we'll, now, it could be epistemologically sufficient or could be parsimonious to believe that, but there's no evidence for it. We have no treatment, no ability to ascertain whether or not the Wheeler-Dewitt equation is as fundamental as the Schrodinger equation in that it has predictive power in the domain which attempts to be magisterial over which. Right.

Starting point is 00:35:46 Well, again, what I'm attempting to do is not to say that Wheeler DeWitt is necessarily right. In fact, near the end of my treatment with this, I raised some questions about whether this application of quantum, the analogy that's drawn between ordinary quantum mechanics and the origin of the universe is apt at all, because there are some disanalogies. In an ordinary quantum mechanical system, you have a detector, you have something emitting electrons or photons. You've got an experimental apparatus. You've got double slits. In the quantum cosmological case, you have nothing at all.

Starting point is 00:36:26 You have just the mathematics of quantum physics. You apply to try to explain the origin of the system rather than describing a system that already exists. But the point that I make is that if you take this as an alternative to the body of evidence that we have pointing to a beginning and say, well, there's a different way of giving a cosmological account, then oddly that account also leads to a theistic implication. So in a sense what I presented in the book is what I've called elsewhere a cosmological trilemma. the preponderance of evidence that we have from observational astronomy and from developments in theoretical physics, and both special and general relativity does point to a beginning. And it suggests that is the most likely conclusion. And I think there is a good argument for theism based on the origin of the physical universe at a finite time in the past.

Starting point is 00:37:31 But if you don't like that conclusion, if you opt for a different account, and the main account that's been given as an alternative to the beginning is one that tries to circumvent the beginning with a quantum physical account of the origin of the universe. That then also has a theistic implication. Now, a third approach to that is to say, well, as you mentioned, maybe all the possibilities that are described by the universal wave function exist in some possible world, the many world's interpretation. And in a separate chapter, I show that if you go many worlds, you end up essentially with absurdities like Boltzmann brains and an inability to make any predictions or explanations of a phenomena in our universe, or in our universe, you end up having absurd science destroying consequences. So you can't absolutely prove the existence of God, but the consequences of denying the existence of God, as a theoretical postulate at least, is a system of physics which ends up. eating its own, which ends up destroying, for epistemological reasons, our ability to rely on our own reasoning capabilities about the world around us. So at the end, the choices between God

Starting point is 00:38:45 and science, or no God and no science. So that's the sort of argument that I construct in the book. Now, there are obviously, the other thing that I'm critical of in the book is the tendency among some theoretical physicists to create kind of mathematical castles in the air based on zero evidence, and then say, well, because I can create these actions, that that provides a better account of things than, say, what we are getting from your field observational cosmology, which are these strong indicators of the beginning. Well, maybe so, but at some point you have to weigh the epistemological weight of the speculative mathematics against the evidential arguments, or evidential, uh, just, uh, considerations that we have coming out of observation astronomy.

Starting point is 00:39:34 So I'm not, and this is where I think it's very important to point out that if the standard here is absolute apodetic proof of the kind you get reasoning deductively from mathematical axioms, you don't get that. You don't get that in science. You don't get that for a science-based argument for the existence of God. But what I'm arguing from is the preponderance of evidence and showing that the best indications we have are of a beginning, and if the main alternative conclusions that we have, or the main alternative models that have been proposed to explain away the beginning,

Starting point is 00:40:13 both have theistic implications, then we have a strong argument. We have good evidence for a theistic conclusion, even if we don't reach the standard of proof, which is, again, unattainable both in science and in what you might call natural theology, science-based arguments for God's existence. When I think about the kind of approach that atheist scientists, self-declared, militant, or otherwise take Stephen Hawking, and speaking of edifices in the sky, I mean, no one was better at kind of slipping a slider

Starting point is 00:40:47 by an unsuspecting lay audience than Stephen because he was so charismatic, he was so brilliant, and he was so accomplished and such a brilliant writer. I only recently, I started reading a brief history of time in 1988 when I was a teenager, you know, and I stopped reading it in 1988. And then I picked it up again in 2020, and I started reading. And I finished it and found it, you know, oh, these objections are trivial. So I was like congratulating my, you know, all it took is becoming, you know, a full professor of physics.

Starting point is 00:41:19 But he's actually a wonderful writer. but the sophistication needed to understand. It's far beyond the fact that he would say things such as any equation in your book cuts the readers by half, but any mention of God doubles the amount of readers for the book. And of course, I only later came to the conclusion of what he was doing was really a sleight of hand. And it was, I believe, somewhat dishonest, perhaps intellectually to do what he did. and I can say this because I wouldn't expect that you would say it, although you hint strongly at it, but you're too much of a gentleman to mention it and speak ill of the dead.

Starting point is 00:41:58 I love Stephen. I am having on the first author of a critical biography of him called Hawking, Hawking, sort of about the business of Stephen Hawking, which I call Hawking Incorporated. He calls Hawking Hawking, Charles Seif, and New York University. Anyway, he'll be on soon. I think his book comes out a week or so after yours. But the problem I have with him is that he would use in a brief history of time, this Hawking-Hartle cosmology as a way to obviate the need for a creator, as he said.

Starting point is 00:42:25 If God has two roles, according to Stephen Hawking, who was not a great theologian, although I point out that he thought so much about God, that he actually was an Israelite because the word Israel in Hebrew means wrestles or struggles with God, and nobody struggled more with God than Stephen Hawking. And in fact, the last word, words of his book, that famous book, probably one of the most popular science books in history, sold three times more copies, as you point out, than Richard Dawkins, Blind Watchmaker, or the God Delusion. It sold over 10, maybe 12 million copies to date now.

Starting point is 00:42:55 Both monster bestsellers, yeah. Yeah, it was, and it made a whole publishing company and a whole industry of popular science writing, which I benefit to this day. So at the risk of, you know, of killing the golden goose, I would say, you know, he, in that book, the final three words are mind of God. In other words, if this is proven to be true that back in 1988, he believed that the Hawking Hartle cosmology. would obviate the need for God because God had two purposes. One was to

Starting point is 00:43:22 instantiate the universe and the other was to instantiate the laws of physics. The latter he disposed of according to him in the grand design. Another book with very strong theistic overtones and atheistic overtones. But speaking of a brief history of time, in that book, he goes through what I only later really recognize as, you know, after going to graduate school basically, as he was doing this mathematical trick of transforming time in a calculational sense from proper time, from physical time, which we enjoy

Starting point is 00:43:54 right now, and we can do experiments on, and we can observe things like time dilation and other relativistic effects. And he converted it to this imaginary space, which is purely used for mathematical purposes to solve equations which otherwise cannot be solved

Starting point is 00:44:10 without these techniques, known officially as WIC rotations to the experts playing at home. And then he said, well, it's just a mathematical trick. And then literally, Stephen, a page later, it's, and now we see that there's no boundary to time, and therefore there was no need for a creator. Speaking harshly, and as I assume, you know, we'll find out when I read the rest of Hawkinghawking, which talks about him as a commercial entity, but he was not immune to using God as leverage

Starting point is 00:44:38 to increase the influence of his books and his thoughts. In that book, that argument is really falling on deaf ears. And worse than that, Stephen, maybe you would comment on this, is that in the revised, updated edition, 2016, he not only says that there's more evidence than ever for the no boundary theorem, but there's also evidence, more evidence for M theory and inflation. And I point out, this is two years after the Bicep II affair that I play a big role in. So you do indeed. What about this need to have vindication, to have proof, et cetera? Why do, you know, sort of these headlines, you know, appear on page one. God is dead. There's no God. Hawking says. And then the response to the community falls on deaf ears, if at all, on page B-17 of the Saturday edition. Well, that was one of the things that, you mentioned Lawrence, Claros a minute ago, and I'm indebted to him for getting me into this whole subject of quantum cosmology. I've been studying it a bit, but in

Starting point is 00:45:46 I was preparing for a debate, I read his popular book, and then that took me to Blinken, and then that got me not only, I was fortunate enough to attend the lecture series that Hawking did in preparation of the release of a brief history of time when I was a grad student in Cambridge. So I've been aware of this for years, but in prepping for a debate with Krause,

Starting point is 00:46:07 I ended up getting into the technical papers on quantum cosmology, and that's reflected in the last three chapters of this book. And one of the things I was shocked to find was that this idea of the idea that the WIC rotation that eliminates in an intermediate step in a longer calculation the implication of a singularity but only in the domain of imaginary time or in the complex domain of imaginary numbers that that implication that he drew from that in the brief history of time played absolutely no role in his technical work with Ardle that was

Starting point is 00:46:46 something that was purely offered for public consumption. And yet he, as he pointed out in the book itself, the idea of imaginary time and the depiction of the spacetime geometry that is possible during that intermediate step in the complex domain has no physical meaning. And yet from that, Hawking drew a metaphysical implication, namely that there was not a beginning to the universe. and therefore there was no creator. But then he acknowledges that when you complete the mathematical manipulation, when things are converted back into the real time in which we live, the singularity reemerges.

Starting point is 00:47:27 And this is one of the things that was actually also very interesting, is that the singularity is presupposed in all of the quantum cosmological modeling. They don't eliminate it. It's only in this popular work. And if I could just circle back to the previous, very astute question about, well, you know, there's always a new cosmology. How can you draw any significant conclusion from the whole, you know, body of work in cosmology when things are constantly changing? One of the things that's not changing, it's a constant, is the need to

Starting point is 00:48:01 account for the specificity of our universe as we find it. And specificity in mathematical terms is in a sense, it's a rarity of condition among a vast ensemble of possibilities. And no matter which cosmology is invoked, there is a need to, there's what's called the cosmic winnowing problem. How do you winnow among all those possible ensembles of conditions and possible states of affairs? How do you account for our universe emerging out of all those mathematical possibilities? And that problem is ubiquitous. It cuts across the grain of different cosmological models. You find it in multiverse cosmologies where the multiverse is,

Starting point is 00:48:44 is invoked, whether it's based on inflationary cosmology or string theory or the combination of the two. So you construct a multiverse cosmology to explain the fine-tuning. But then it turns out that you need a universe-generating mechanism to generate the new universes in the multiverse, and those generating mechanisms themselves require prior fine-tuning. So you have the need for specificity of the condition, and it's left unexplained. same thing occurred, and this is what fascinated me in the cosmological case, you can circumvent the beginning problem, but only at the case of a deeper information problem. You have to, you have to account for the origin of the specificity that is included in, in the case of quantum

Starting point is 00:49:31 cosmological models, the universal wave function. So some of these problems that are necessary to account for the origin of the universe at all, why we have something rather than nothing, and why we have a specified something rather than all the other things that could be are not eliminated by any cosmological theory and instead continue to beg the same types of questions questions about the origin of specificity of information where in our experience we know of only one cause for the origin of information for the origin of specificity in that sense for the origin of fine tuning and that that that causes a mind so there's a kind of incorrigibility of the same type of problems in all the cosmological models.

Starting point is 00:50:13 And that's what I meant earlier when I was referring to a kind of, what I done in the book was constructed a robust argument, one that was not dependent on one model versus another, but rather upon the need to solve certain basic classes of problems that are only solved in our experience by the postulation of mind or intelligence. I'm talking with Dr. Stephen Meyer, the Discovery Institute, author of Darwin's Doubt,

Starting point is 00:50:38 signature in the cell and the latest book, return of the God hypothesis. Let's get to that title word return, because for many of us, we never started off with the God hypothesis. And it's often made a great deal of, and you talk about this in the book, the God of the Gaps, and how even the great Isaac Newton, who, you know, folks like Krauss disparage, you know, as a wanton torturer of counterfeiters. And even I've been known to poke fun at his alchemical explorations. as well. Of course, he was a phenomenal scientist, but it's often been said that he was able to patch certain holes in the theory of universal gravitation by only invoking theories of

Starting point is 00:51:25 God's intervention or angels supporting matter distribution. Now, I'd heard that in the context of the static universe, the apparent static universe. I hadn't actually, until you brought to my attention, this kind of offhand comments by Neil deGrasse Tyson and others of, you know, this failure and, you know, kind of that of how Newton stymied scientific progress because of this. Can you say something about the invalidity of that, actually the lack of scientific curiosity or good scientific practice and just accepting these folklore tales about Isaac Newton and has supposed appeals to the God of the Gaps? It's amazing, Brian. I've heard this story about Newton invoking either the action of angels or the direct action of the deity to remedy an insufficiency in his laws of gravitation because as he examined the solar system, he saw that there were certain points when you'd get the outer planets in conjunction. That would make the whole thing stable. And at that point, he would postulate the direct and specific idiosyncratic.

Starting point is 00:52:36 action of God to to stabilize things and then the solar system could continue to work according to the laws that he had otherwise discovered. I went, I've been suspicious of this for a long time because when I was in grad school, one of my PhD examiners in a tutorial said, if you miss Newton's theism, you've missed everything. He was devoutly religious. But he was also, the whole point of the Principia was that he was, he was arguing that the mathematical harmony of the universe, the mathematical principles that were evident in the universe displayed the handiwork of God. So to say that the mathematical laws were insufficient and that they required episodic interventions and interposing of divine will to remedy instabilities in the system was contrary to his whole program of research. So I was always

Starting point is 00:53:32 suspicious of this story. And so I decided to look into it myself. I got into the Principia. And lo and behold, he actually argues that the planetary system, he does point out that there are these perturbations that arise from time to time as the planets, the outer planets get into certain alignments. But he says, it doesn't matter. The system as a whole is stable on the order of millions of years.

Starting point is 00:53:59 No, he says, for vast eons of time. And he never posits an episodic intervention of the deity to remedy the irregularity, irregularity in the planetary system, and the irregularity that would not be captured by his law of gravity. So it's just a myth. But to your earlier question about the word return,

Starting point is 00:54:24 the book, the title of the book invites interest in a story. And the story is that, quite contrary to the depiction of the relationship between science and religion that's offered by, for example, contemporary new atheists or by late 19th century historians. Historians of science now recognize that theistic concepts, specifically Judeo-Christian concepts that were part of the milieu of Western Europe from roughly 1,300 to 1750 were crucial to the rise of modern science.

Starting point is 00:55:01 In particular, the concept of lawful order. The idea, there are three metaphors that are commonly used, and you find them in the writings of Kepler and Galileo and Boyle and Newton. Metaphors like the laws of nature or nature perceived as a clock or a great mechanism or the book of nature. All of these are metaphors of theological origins. There are laws of nature because there's a law giver. There is a sustaining, the deity is understood to be sustaining the regularities that we see. He's not an explanation for irregularity, but a deeper explanation for why nature is uniform in the way that makes science possible. Another key concept that came out of this period of the scientific revolution was a concept of intelligibility that the early natural philosophers, mechanical philosophers, people would say they would call scientists, believe they could study nature and that nature would reveal its secrets because there was a built-in rationality or design in nature.

Starting point is 00:56:03 that was the product of the divine mind, the same mind that had endowed in us rationality. So there was a principle of correspondence. There was rationality built into the universe, and we being rational creators made in the image of the rational creator who had made the universe that way, could understand the order and design that he'd put into it. Thus, Kepler spoke about the high calling of the scientist, was to think God's thoughts after him. So these theological concepts were crucial.

Starting point is 00:56:33 to the rise of modern science, the development of systematic methods for studying nature. And that perspective, I think, was largely lost in the late 19th century, early 20th century. The story of the book is the story of discoveries that I think should and are beginning to rightfully bring that perspective back. So there's a kind of arc to the story that theistic ideas helped inspire science, of that theistic perspective was lost in the late 19th century with figures like Huxley and Darwin and in other fields, Marx and Freud. But much of that is now beginning to come back as scientists, I think, are again opening their minds to the idea that there could be purpose and design in the universe after all. Is it a valid argument to say that an absence of understanding of how a deity

Starting point is 00:57:27 could instantiate these processes is a strike against the God hypothesis in the following sense. So let's stipulate that the universe began either in a finely tuned initial condition in the inflationary cosmology or in the cyclical episodic cosmologies of Penrose, of Steinhardt, of Turok, and many others. Let's just stipulate the universe merges with the proper characteristics. And then the universe is kind of a boring place for hundreds of thousands of years. And even at that time when my bread and butter, my bread was buttered, so to speak, when the cosmic microwave background has produced, the formation of hydrogen, still not much happens for another 400 million years when galaxies begin to form. And then, you know, there is a surfeite of galaxies in the observable universe.

Starting point is 00:58:21 We have no evidence for life or anything in any other planet in our starvation. solar system, even let alone in other solar systems in our galaxy, let alone in other galaxies in the current time in our present universe, let alone in the past or the future of our current observable universe. But let's just say the universe is pretty boring. And then if you're just kind of as I like to do, let's talk about me, just focus on the earth. Nothing much happens.

Starting point is 00:58:48 The earth coalesces out of a protoplanetary disk, a bunch of dust, comes together. billions of years go by. And then all of a sudden, some molecules come out of the primordial soup, perhaps with information. I'll even stipulate there's information there that was cellular digital information in the form of the genetic code.

Starting point is 00:59:11 All this playing out by the laws of physics, which you argue are very finely tuned. I should point out there's a colleague, my good colleague Fred Adams at the University of Michigan, who claims that actually the evidence for fine tuning in cosmology, is not quite as stringent as made out. And we'll talk about that some other time,

Starting point is 00:59:29 because I think it's a detail, especially as it pertains to this rambling question I'm asking. So the universe is pretty darn boring for, you know, for about nine billion years until the Earth forms. Then the Earth forms, and again, if we're the pinnacle of creation, if we are the, you know, the planet, which as you believe will host the Messiah,

Starting point is 00:59:46 I believe the Messiah, you know, you believe he'll come back. I believe he's yet to come, but those are the last time. Yeah, exactly. you know, we could ask him when he comes, as Avi Loeb, my friend quoting Elie Wiesel, has said, you know, when he comes, we'll ask him, is this your second time, or your first? And then we'll finally know. We'll sort it out, yeah.

Starting point is 01:00:06 Yeah, so this is the pinnacle of creation. But how does God interact? In your view as a philosopher, et cetera, very, very, by the way, to the audience out there, I might be rambling, but the book is not. The book is as deep in cosmology. I mean, we're talking about WIC rotation. complex planes, couchy integrals, and then is equally kind of fluid and maybe even more so conversant with the biological implications because that was your, really your domain expertise

Starting point is 01:00:34 in graduate school. But anyway, God is kind of patient, right? And he's waiting. And then all of a sudden the code becomes active. And then we've only had civilization for the past few hundred thousand years. I don't think you deny evolution, obviously, but you believe it's directed by a mind. and even the laws of physics are tuned and that requires a mind to tune. But I want to ask you, how does the deity interact? In other words, he was fine-tuning 14 billion years ago nearly, and then, but the pinnacle of what he's waiting for comes about in the last 100,000 years. So round up, these are big numbers.

Starting point is 01:01:10 It's basically the entirety of the universe for the laws to actually matter. In other words, forget about dinosaurs. I don't really care about that. If we're the pinnacle, we're the only entity with mind that is conscious, that is conscious as homo sapiens, means we are conscious of our existence and that we are existing. Therefore, we know we're going to die. Now, we're the only animals. We're the only creatures that can do that. So with a pinnacle, why would God do it in this way? How would he do it? Because I think it's fair to ask how. You know, is he in a laboratory? Is he experimenting? If so, you know, how does it get instantiated the mind? is it just like this roll the dice, it came up so finely tuned because he's omniscient, omnipotent, and everything else, that he knew eventually there'd be a you and me and a Zoom call that we could chat on. In other words, how is the mind able to account for the teleological purpose that we should exist? Let me speak first about the time question because I have, you know,

Starting point is 01:02:13 friends to my right, if you will, who are, uh, uh, hold to a young Earth creationist view, and they're often troubled by the great amounts of time that have elapsed from the beginning of the universe to the first appearance of life on Earth. And I think you could ask that question coming from the opposite perspective. But to me, I think the great expanse of space, the great expanse of time that we have lots of galaxies that don't seem to give any evidence of life, lots of planets that don't to have the right conditions. Our planet does seem to be very privileged,

Starting point is 01:02:52 as one of my colleagues put it in the book, Privileged Planet. But to me, it speaks of a kind of divine extravagance. The whole great big universe with 13.8 billion years of time that preceded us was leading up to a teleological endpoint. So I don't find out the amount of time that's transpired from the beginning until the appearance of life on Earth troubling. But there's a, there were concepts,

Starting point is 01:03:18 theological concepts that existed prior to any of this discussion that I think were helpful, and they were part of the scientific revolution, the idea that there were two powers of God that were relevant to understanding nature. One was called the Potencia Ordinata, the ordinary power of God, which was posited as the explanation for the regularities that we see in nature, that God's hand was, for the most part, hidden in that, but yet God was behind the regularities, what we call the law, the laws of nature, are a mode of divine action. And then theologians also spoke of something they call the Potencia Absolute or the theat power of God, where God was capable on occasion of acting as an agent within the

Starting point is 01:04:04 orderly concourse of nature that he otherwise sustained an appell. And so I think we have evidence of both powers of God in our physical cosmos. and certainly the fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the universe. And there, I also, I know about Fred Adams. And I also know you've looked at the book, Fortunate Universe by Luke Barnes and his Cambridge grader supervisor, whose name is slipping my mind. The Gerant Lewis, yeah, they were guests on the show.

Starting point is 01:04:35 Yeah, Lewis, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they, you know, the terrific pairing there with a the atheist and a materialist discussing the fine-tuning. But they argue that Adams, this position is really an outlier. At the end of the book, say, whether you're a materialist or a theist, here's a great list of fantastic physicists who all see the fine-tuning was a real thing. And it has to be explained one way or another, whether by a multiverse or by theistic design,

Starting point is 01:04:59 whether by many universes or one God. But in any case, the point is, I think in the fine-tuning, and for me, in the origin of life and the origin of the digital code, I think we see evidence of discrete intelligent action. Everything we know from experience shows that information, especially in a digital or alphabetic form, and that's what we find at the foundation of life and DNA and RNA. This is a stop-press moment in the history of biology. But when we discover that the secret to heredity, the secret to how proteins are built,

Starting point is 01:05:34 is actually a complex information storage, transmission, and processing system that's run by literally digital code that is being expressed in accord with an independent system. symbol convention that we now call the genetic code. This is an extraordinary discovery. And yet every day men and women get together and do it for free. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you will. Exactly, exactly. So, you know, where did the information come from? That problem has stymied origin of life research. This is what I did my PhD on. It's what the book's signature in the cell was all about. Even New Atheist is prominent as Richard Dawkins have acknowledged that we have no idea from an evolutionary point of view how life first originated from simple non-living

Starting point is 01:06:20 chemicals. Although as Darwin himself pointed, you know this better than anybody, but he said it's no objection to speak of the origin of life as not being understood within the theory of evolution. One might as well criticize the origin of matter. And I like to point out, we understand the origin of matter now, but is that a God of the Gap's argument type of argument to... I think on Darwin's part, it's more materialism of the gaps. He's saying, well, we don't understand the origin of matter, so why should we have to come up with an explanation for the origin of life? In fact, we still don't understand the origin of either

Starting point is 01:06:54 from a materialistic point of view. But as for the origin of information, we have a wealth of experience as to what causes information to arise. The great information theorist, Henry Quasler, who was one of the first information theorist to apply that the information science is to an analysis of molecular biology says that in our experience, he says information habitually rises from conscious activity. And we know this from, and this is part of what we know and should be helping to inform us as we think about the origin of information

Starting point is 01:07:25 in a biological context. Whenever we see information, whether it's in computer code or in a hieroglyphic inscription or a paragraph in a book or information that's embedded in a radio signal and we trace it back to its source, we always come to a mind, not a material process. So when the discovery of information, the foundation of life in every living cell, including the very simplest ones, I think is evidence of the activity of a mind of intelligence. And in fact, this connection between information and intelligence is presupposed in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. They're looking for information embedded in radio signals. And if they find it, they're going to conclude that it has an intelligence source from another galaxy or

Starting point is 01:08:12 planet or something. So I think, to get back to the broader question you asked, I think we have evidence of discrete divine action at the beginning of the universe and very possibly after that, especially with the origin of the information necessary to get life going in the first place. Yeah, and you see this also, I won't belabor the point, but the simulation hypothesis is also a presupposition, which I think ultimately, you know, it's a design theory. It's a design theory. And it brings up all sorts of interesting, you know, theological questions of the odyssey of the simulators, you know, would they create evil? But again, you know, I've had this argument from the left, I don't say, with Sean Carroll, you know, who said that, you know, God is not a good theory. So I've asked him point blank, you know, what are the of the multiverse is a true explanation for the origin of the laws of nature in our physical universe, and he says 50-50. And I say, what are the odds of God's existence? And he says less than 1%.

Starting point is 01:09:16 So we won't rule it out, obviously. But he'd say things like, well, can you envision a simpler universe? Can you envision a simpler universe that could exist, be via Akam's razor, if you like, which I often point out, you know, is more like a hatchet than a razor as important. employed by most people, but nevertheless, having a simpler universe, he would posit, you know, an empty Hilbert space, to which I'll say, well, who creates the Hilbert space? And, you know, and he really doesn't have a good example. He'll say things, oh, come on, you know, where does that come? But it is true. They're, you know, I think the, and he's, he's, I would say, he, I would say,

Starting point is 01:09:54 is a pacifist atheist, and that he's, he's not interested in converting people to, atheism as Dawkins or Krauss might openly suggest they are. And yet he'll say things like, well, what is the purpose of the Hubble Deepfield galaxy, you know, 65,252 over there on the left, you know, the cosmic wallpaper, as we call it, what's the purpose of that galaxy? What's the purpose of, you know, the 40th excited state of xenon? What is the purpose of CP violation in Cobalt 60? You know, why do these things exist?

Starting point is 01:10:31 Is it, you know, God's just having fun. I mean, extravagance is one thing, but, you know, as we know, there's no information without energy. There's no creation of order, you know, without destruction, reduction of entropy. And that requires energy. So, you know, is it just the profligacy? Is it show God's showing off? You mentioned before it's sort of like almost like a flourish, the magnificence of it all. But it would seem very profligate.

Starting point is 01:10:57 And so what is it? Or I think you might answer, but I should let you answer, but we don't know. In other words, we can't know why God would do it. But what would be the purpose of wasting? I mean, it's like lawns in the Western Hemisphere were created, you know, as a byproduct of royalty, demonstrating that they didn't need to use their agricultural resources to grow food. It was meant to show resplendent abundance in their creation. So what is the purpose of Cobalt 60s parity violation?

Starting point is 01:11:31 What is the purpose of Xenon's 40th resonance? What is the purpose of that galaxy over there? In a universe with a mind, it would seem quite wasteful. Well, our approach is not to try to assign a purpose to everything that we see in nature, but rather to detect action of intelligence where the evidence, the distinctive hallmarks of intelligence are present. As to the rest, maybe it is causing. cosmic wallpaper, but the Hubble deep field's an awfully beautiful piece of wallpaper. I mean, it's really, you know, so.

Starting point is 01:12:03 Yeah, I pointed out to, Sean, you know, I have a colleague who studies that galaxy over there. I love, I have a PowerPoint I do on your field, on cosmology. I have a beautiful picture of the Hubble Deep field. I think it's gorgeous, you know. There is extravagant beauty in the universe. But our, my work, the work of other people who work on intelligent design is not trying to, assign a purpose to every last piece of the universe, but rather to detect activity of intelligence where it is to be found. And I think it is certainly found in the origin of life. It's

Starting point is 01:12:38 certainly found in the fine tuning. It's certainly found, I think, at the beginning of the universe. So rather than say, how did God do it in that sense, we're trying to detect that there was a mind behind it. And then in this book, what I do is ask the question, well, what is the most likely identity of the designing mind that is revealed by these features of the universe that display distinctive hallmarks of mind. And that's where I say, I don't think it's a space alien. I don't think it's even just a deistic creator. When you look at, you know, Dawkins actually in a film several years ago was interviewed by Ben Stein. And he said, Ben Stein asked him about the problem of the origin of the first life. And Dawkins acknowledged that there isn't an adequate

Starting point is 01:13:26 materialistic evolutionary explanation for saying and he said you know it might be that there's a signature of this is docking speaking there might be that there's a signature of intelligence in the cell in which case it would have had to have come from another an alien intelligence that itself was evolved by under that's the panspermia yeah pan spermy idea um that's that's unsatisfying in this in in in in two respects uh and i argue against this in the book is it was taking it Let's take it seriously as a metaphysical hypothesis. First, it pushes the question of the ultimate origin back one generation out into space without answering it. And it leaves it unanswered, whereas the theory of intelligent design is the only cause does generate information, and that is mine.

Starting point is 01:14:16 But secondly, any intelligence within the cosmos cannot account for the evidence of design that precedes it in the fine-tuning of the laws and constants of physics, the initial conditions of the universe. That evidence of design points in a transcendent direction, something beyond the universe, or to a transcendent multiverse. But I have reasons that I lay out in the book for preferring a theistic design hypothesis as an explanation for the fine-tuning over and against the multiverse. In particular, the multiverse requires universe generating mechanisms, which themselves require prior unexplained fine tuning. So the fine tuning never gets ultimately explained by the multiverse hypothesis. And yet there is one type of explanation that accounts for finely tuned systems in our experience, whether they're French recipes

Starting point is 01:15:05 or exquisitely crafted pieces of machinery or digital code. And that is, again, what we mean by fine tuning is a small probability system that achieves an overall function, a discernible function. And when those two things are conjoined, we talk about that as fine tuning, and we also know an experience that those types of systems arise from mind. So I think there are reasons to prefer theistic design over the multiverse. I don't think

Starting point is 01:15:32 it's 50, 50 for one and zero for the other. I think there's reasons to prefer one over the other. Well, to be fair to Sean, he said 1% or less. So he didn't quite say zero. He's too smart to say zero, right? To be fair to Sean, Carol, for another reason, I very much appreciate this work because unlike some of the really ardent defenders of scientific materialism, who take it as axiomatic

Starting point is 01:15:53 and take anyone who disagrees as ignoble and ill-informed, Carol is very clear that scientific naturalism or materialism is itself a metaphysical hypothesis. It's a worldview that needs to be defended. And I appreciate him for that reason, because he puts it on the table and says, all right, let's look at it. What's the evidence for? And against it, he makes a case. And with such a person, and you can have a really, a very constructive conversation. Yeah, he's a genuine intellectual and somebody that I have great respect for. He's also a phenomenal scientist and a mentor, and he endorsed my book, so I can't say anything. So you can only say good things, and you gave me a nice endorsement.

Starting point is 01:16:33 Yeah, although with endorsements, you know, endorsements are kind of funny because, you know, because of the zero-sum nature of reading books, yeah, I can't read your book and read my book or a customer. You know, so it's kind of dangerous, right? You don't want to be too glowing in the praise of another's work. No, your book is really phenomenal. As I say, you may not agree with everything, but you'll have your work cut out for you. And for me, you come away sharpened for the better from this debate. I want to push back a little bit on the mind and the code.

Starting point is 01:17:02 Anyone who's ever been to the DMV and picked up a license plate, you know, I picked up a license plate the other day for my wife's car getting renewals, 6-Z-Q, T-X-Y-4. wow, that's really improbable. I mean, to find that, you know, that license is extremely improbable, you know, one in a billion chance of trillions of chances, actually, with all the letter combinations it could be. And yet, I got that very one. And obviously there's no mind, you know, behind that. It might have been a random number generator. And of course, random processes can be created randomly, truly by the radioactive decay, which doesn't require a mind unless you want to go to really prima facie causes. But let, let's let's just restrict it to naturalistic explanation. And yet there's no real design. Yes, maybe it didn't have a thousand letter sequence, but it wasn't really wasteful. It wasn't using, you know, hieroglyphics. It wasn't, you know, just demonstrating the power of the mind. So I want to ask you, you know, at some level, do you think it's possible to derive not just a non-deistic God,

Starting point is 01:18:08 but a personal Judeo-Christian god from these arguments that you make in this book or from intelligent design, generally speaking, that advocate for a single God. As atheists will say, is in the cute kind of tried and true way, they'll say, I'm not only a monotheist, I actually believe in even fewer gods than you, Stephen. I believe in no gods. So in the sense, can intelligent design follow down a path that will lead to a personal God in the sense of God who cares about perhaps interacting with the laws of nature, maybe not for Brian Keating, but for Jesus Christ, in your opinion, and so forth. A God who intervenes personally to achieve a set of goals or commandments as in the Ten Commandments that we adhere to. Can you get

Starting point is 01:19:02 from ID to AD in a direct path, or is it as difficult as proving God's existence to be real? Well, there's actually two questions in your questions. Let me take the first one about the detection of design, the detection of false positives with design, a design inference. The work that my colleague, William Dembski, has done in his book, The Design inference, shows that, yeah, it's absolutely possible to get a few letters or a few things to arise that look as though they're designed.

Starting point is 01:19:39 and the question is, do you have the probabilistic resources to explain such things by chance? And often you do. But there also becomes points where you're beyond the reach of chance. And this has been widely recognized by original life researchers themselves. There's a great quote from the Scottish biochemist Karen Smith where he says, you know, a few, you can easily, by chance, generate a few short words, cat, ran. You know, I used to do this to my students, reach in the scrabble bag and pick out letters. And occasionally, they would, you know, in a demonstration in class, they'd get the word cat or ran or something like that.

Starting point is 01:20:19 But I was attempting to show that chance is not an adequate explanation for the origin of the amount of information you would need to build one protein, let alone a full living cell. And so I would always win the demonstration, win the argument in the demonstration by continuing to allow them to pull letters out. Because as Karen Smith pointed out, if you need a vast amount of information, as the amount of organization or information required increases, chance becomes increasingly implausible. And Dembski has shown that there's an absolute cutoff where you exceed, what he calls the probabilistic resources of the universe. And so in both signature in the cell,

Starting point is 01:20:56 and I reprised this argument a bit in Return of the God hypothesis, I show that there's actually some sophisticated second-order probabilistic reasoning, that allows you to eliminate the chance hypothesis. If you have a very highly specified thing that you're seeking through a random search and you're only able to sample a small minuscule proportion of the total, in this case, sequences that are relevant in the time available since the beginning of the universe

Starting point is 01:21:27 till now, counting every interaction of elementary particles as an event, you can show that there aren't enough events since the beginning of the universe to sample more than, in calculation I made, more than one, 10 trillion trillionth of the total relevant sequences in searching for one modest protein. In that case, you can eliminate the chance hypothesis. It's more likely than not. The chance will be false. It's overwhelmingly more likely than not that a random search will fail, in which case

Starting point is 01:21:56 it's overwhelmingly more likely that the chance hypothesis is false and true. So there are ways of guarding against the kind of false positive inferences to design that you were just describing with the license plate illustration. As to the second question of how you get from an inference to design simpliciter or to a generic intelligence, which is as far as I take the argument in my first two books in Darwin's Dow and Signature in the Cell, how you get from a generic designer to a designer that has the attributes of, a god that would be recognizable to theus, well, that is the argument of the new book. And what I do there is broaden the, using the method of inference to the best explanation or multiple competing hypotheses that I described earlier in our discussion,

Starting point is 01:22:47 I broadened the ensemble of relevant evidence from just the biological evidence, the evidence of design we have long after the beginning of the universe, to look at the evidence that we have either from the beginning of the universe or soon after as the laws of physics chemistry are taking shape and showing that that you have evidence of design prior to the origin of any possible imminent intelligence. No space alien could be responsible for the fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the universe of the laws and constants of physics upon which its very existence depends. And so that candidate designer isn't very good, in which case you're looking at something that is pointing beyond the universe

Starting point is 01:23:28 and then I think you start to look at evidence for transcendent intelligence, but also we have evidence of design long after the beginning. So I think when you take the ensemble of evidences jointly, you have evidence for both an active intelligence, but one which is transcendent. And those two attributes jointly, I think, give you attributes that we uniquely associate with the deity. Oh, that's fascinating.

Starting point is 01:23:59 Stephen, you know, I love talking to you. I could talk to you all day. I would be upbraided and possibly physically abused by many people more intelligent than me, aka my wife, if I don't go and pick up one of my children. You've got to pick up some kids. Yeah, that's right. But I do want to put a pin in some of these conversations because I do think it would be great to have more debates and discussions with you about these ultimate issues in life and existence.

Starting point is 01:24:26 I think there's so much fun. I think when you take out the hostility of the militant atheist, and you do so with love and with true interest and understanding the other's point of view, I find your work fascinating. Again, as I said in my blurb, you might not agree with everything. But the point being, these are the issues that make life worth thinking about and living and understanding. Because not just in the Pascal's wager sense of things, I think that if you do, don't examine these things. It's sort of you're you're not making use of the full computational power.

Starting point is 01:25:03 It's like buying an iPhone and oh, it has a camera. I don't need that. Oh, it can browse the internet. I'm just having it. I just have it for the notes app. But Stephen, I love talking with you. I love meeting you in person about three weeks ago. But now I want to ask you if you are willing to go into the impossible and answer the final three questions that I ask all my treasured guests who come on me into the Impossible podcast. And to hear Stephen's answer, I learned this trick from our mutual friend Ben Shapiro. To hear Stephen's answer, you're going to need to subscribe to my mailing list, which you get at briankeating.com.

Starting point is 01:25:40 Stephen is a subscriber, as are many of my guests. So by the way, if you want to be in great company with the wonderful, brilliant nine Nobel prize winners who have been on the show, billionaires, brainiacs, ordinary people like you and me, please subscribe, Brian Keating.com, and you'll get a link to the answers that Stephen will provide to the Thrilling Three. So if you're not going to listen to that or subscribe, signing off, enjoy the rest of the universe. But for now, those subscribers, now stay tuned for Stephen's answers to the Thrilling Three. You can get a link to it down here or to my mailing list right there. Stephen, I want to thank you so much for going into The Impossible.

Starting point is 01:26:18 I wish you the success and blessing and happiness that you are, so richly deserving them. And I hope we'll meet again for more of these stimulating, impossible conversations. And I hope it won't take 14 billion years of evolution and design for us to come together again. Fantastic. These conversations are often impossible because of that underlying hostility that we talked about between different groups. But I think we've made it possible this morning. Thanks to your great question. So thanks for having me on. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Hello, I'm Stuart Volker, producer of Into the Impossible.

Starting point is 01:27:00 If you enjoyed this episode with Professor Brian Keating, please let us know by subscribing, commenting, sharing, and most importantly, rating and leading reviews. It really helps keep our universe expanding. We appreciate hearing from you and read every review and comment. We're always open to your suggestions for future episodes. Watch our YouTube channel at Dr. Brian Keating, D.R. Brian Keating.

Starting point is 01:27:24 And join our premieres every Tuesday at 8 a.m. Pacific time for live chats. Follow Brian on Twitter, Medium, and support us on Patreon at Dr. Brian Keating. That's DR. Brian Keating. For free access to exclusive content, please visit Professor Keating's website and sign up for his informative newsletter at briankeating.com. Into the Impossible is produced with the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination in the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego.

Starting point is 01:27:55 Eric Viri, director, Brian Keating, co-director, Pastor Coleman, associate director, produced by Stuart Volko and Brian Keating. For more information on the Arthur C. Clark Center, go to imagination.ucsd.edu.

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Stephen Meyer: Return of the God Hypothesis (#131)

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