The Sean McDowell Show - “Pick your Poison”: Naturalism’s Cosmological Dilemma

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

In this episode, Dr. Stephen Meyer is back to set the record straight and unpack the bigger argument his critics keep missing. This is the first part of a response to Sir Roger Penrose who recently pushed back on a previous conversation with me on the show. Stephen calls it a "pick your poison" argument and once you see it, you can't unsee it. It's a dilemma at the heart of modern cosmology that philosophical naturalism has not been able to escape. *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

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Listen now to One Degree of Andy, wherever you get your podcasts. Life Audio Those who are watching this going, okay, who exactly is Penrose? And why is his claim that you misrepresented him so significant? Penrose expressed some dismay at my misrepresenting him. And Justin Briarly caught wind of it. He had a debate scheduled for me and Alex O'Connor. But then Alex preferred to do somebody else and Justin brought in Phil Halper.

And Phil and I had, it went on about three hours. Bill went then what he believed was my position and shared it with various cosmologists and physicists and elicited critiques of me based on what he had fed to them. But unfortunately, what he fed to them was a misrepresentation of my position. And so even though these very prominent people critiquing me, cumulatively sound very authoritative in dismissing poor old Myers' benighted view, it was a kind of garbage in, garbage out situation where having fed them a straw man, the critiques that each of them collectively rendered missed the mark.

A new battle emerges over the Big Bang. Interestingly, part of it came through from a conversation we had on this channel, as well as a new book out that's called Battle of the Big Bang. Dr. Stephen Meyer, a friend of myself, Talbot School Theology, one of the leading defenders of the existence of God, in light of the emerging scientific evidence, is here to explain kind of the drama behind the debate. and what's at stake. Thanks for coming here in person.

It's great to be with you, Sean. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there's a bit of a backstory that involves the two of us. Should I start there? That's a great place to start, please. Well, you and I had a conversation soon after the paperback version of my book, Return of the God hypothesis came out, in which there was a new epilogue. And in the epilogue, I mentioned some of the newer, what are called infinite universe, cosmological models, models that physicists and mathematicians have been devising to try to save the idea.

that the universe is infinitely old, despite the many lines of evidence that have been accumulating since the 19, teens and 20s, suggesting that the universe had a beginning. And one of those models is a model that was devised by Sir Roger Penrose, the great British physicist, and Sir Roger's model called the conformal cyclic cosmology, is something that I critiqued in passing in the epilogue of the books,

pointing out that though it does provide a, mathematical account of how the universe could be infinitely old, it does so at a high cost for philosophical naturalism, in particular the cost being the affirmation of unexplained fine-tuning, additional sources of unexplained fine-tuning. So you may be able to get around the beginning, but to do so, you have to affirm additional sources of unexplained fine-tuning that suggests, again, a fine-tuner and reinforce the fine-tuning argument for God's existence, even if you've gotten rid of the cosmological argument for God's existence that's predicated on in beginning. In response to our conversation, a British science writer,

journalist, Phil Halper, apparently heard the conversation, one of the authors of this Big Bang, heard the conversation, presented elements of it to Sir Roger. They collectively expressed some dismay thinking that I feeling perhaps that I had misrepresented some aspects of Sir Rogers model, and then they came back with a podcast and critique. That resulted in turn in Justin Briarly, hearing about the Halper response to you and me, Justin was looking for someone to debate me at Oxford. He had arranged for a debate between me and first Alex O'Connor. Alex ended up shifting and having a debate with a different partner, and then Justin pulled in

Phil, and he and I had a three-hour conversation moderated by Justin about all things cosmological, which was, in a way, really terrific. And that, in turn, has resulted in how Phil presenting what he takes my position to be and presenting it to a series of leading physicists and cosmologists. He writes on this topic, so he knows many of the leading people in the field, and eliciting their critique of me. But that may be where we want to join the discussion, because now whereas Sir Roger felt that he had been misrepresented,

I think that Phil misrepresented me in what he shared with these physicists and cosmologists, leading to a kind of garbage in, garbage out situation where he presented them with a straw man version of my position, and then their critique of my position being falsely predicated came back as sounding very authoritative and suggesting that maybe I didn't know what I was talking about at all, but it was based on a misrepresentation of my view. And you've kindly given me a chance to rejoin the conversation, first by clarifying, what my view actually is. And then I guess we've decided we'll have a second conversation about the work of Sir Roger Penrose in his conformal cyclic cosmological model where we'll maybe

clarify a few things, eliminate some confusion, and then see if we can clean that discussion up as well. This is a really remarkable moment that we're at, because debates about the boo-gang, like you said, have been going on for a century plus. And now we're at a point where all these new models are emerging. People like Sir Roger Penrose, one of the most influential scientist for the past half century, has weighed in with his model. There's claims of underrepresentation, misrepresentation. Well, the most important thing is that we get clarity on what the models are, whether they point towards the universe having a beginning, whether they point towards intelligent

design. I think this is kind of a remarkable moment that we're at. So I appreciate you come down and clarifying your model. And then we'll also have part two where we'll focus it distinctly on Roger Penrose's model. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. You know I believe in God, but I'm also a big believer in Bob Dylan. And Dylan's famous quote, which I always shared with my students, is you can't criticize what you don't understand. Love it. So if I misunderstood some part of Sir Roger's model, let's return to that and clean that up. I think that the gravamen, the focus of my critique, stands irrespective of one thing where I think I did get it a bit wrong,

one element of what he's proposing, in a way, in my defense, I think we'll see when we get there that my way of representing what he was arguing was perhaps a more sympathetic reconstruction of his rationale then some physicists would grant to him. So it was an error in that direction at least. Fair enough.

I also embarrassingly misstated the title of his model. I said that it was the cyclic conformal cosmology when it's actually the conformal cyclic cosmology. And my new friend Phil had a little fun with that, but we'll let that go, as he did ultimately. But in any case, I do appreciate this. because I think in the interest of clarity and advancing the truth, we want to make sure that we are critiquing each other's ideas accurately. It was one of the neat things about the conversation with Justin Breyerle in his new program.

He wants to make sure that each of the interlocutors are feeling that the other interlocutor is representing their position accurately. So I think this is a great opportunity to do that. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify what my position is so that people understand. what it is I'm actually arguing as opposed to the impression that Phil gave to these cosmologists and physicists. And it may be that, Charitably, that Phil's impression of my position was inaccurate but was innocently derived because these are difficult things to master. And in my book,

Return of the God hypothesis, I have a kind of prima facie case for theism based on the beginning, but then I have in the latter part of the book a second derivative case that says, but if you don't accept the evidence for a beginning and you want to model the origin of the universe alternatively as having a past eternal kind of profile, then you will invariably end up affirming something that provides grounds, provides other grounds for theism. And so this is a style of argumentation that

philosophers sometimes call a robust argument, and a robust argument is one that terminates with the same conclusion, irrespective of two or more different factual predicates. And that's the kind of argument that I'm actually making, and that is a little bit difficult, perhaps,

to perceive at first blush. Well, we'll get into some of that. I really appreciate your your commitment and desire to follow truth to represent arguments fairly. You're humiliating to come on and say, you know what, I might have gotten this not as clearly as I could have, but let's come back and get it exactly right and then offer our critique. I think we're at a remarkable part of this conversation. It's actually fascinating, Sean, to go step by step, and this is what we'll do in our second conversation,

we can go step by step through the Penrose model. a lot of people, these discussions of cosmology are of interest to everyone. Where did the universe come from? This is a question of ultimate concern. Why is there something rather than nothing? You know, one of the great philosophical questions closely related to that. But because the cosmologists are often physicists in their training and because cosmological models are rendered mathematically often, many people cannot read the papers that are written by these leading thinkers.

And so they end up being opaque to the public. And one of the things that I like to do, having had a background in physics and having great physics colleagues, Bruce Gordon, a philosopher of physics, who studied his PhD with Arthur Fine at Northwestern, Brian Miller, PhD in Complex Systems physics from Duke. when I was doing Return of the God hypothesis, I did a lot of mathematical retooling myself. My daughter was at Tulane at the time. Every time I'd go down,

I'd spend three hours with Frank Tipler in his office. That's great. And he derives some of these fundamental equations of quantum cosmology for me and showed how they followed from the Schrodinger equation in ordinary quantum mechanics. So I had enough background to be able to kind of retool in this. area and then to read these papers profitably and then function a bit as a translator with some even more sophisticated, accomplished physicist as my guide to make sure I was getting the technical

details right. And so with that in mind, I think when we come back to have that conversation about Sir Roger's work, it's remarkable that I think that when you break it down in qualitative terms and explain what he's arguing metaphysically as well as physically and mathematically, most people will actually be able to understand the model. And that will also, I think, expose where there are some logical limitations, let's say, in what he's doing, and why the case I'm making about unexplained fine-tuning in all the infinite universe cosmological models is actually quite compelling. Okay, so let's take a step back.

you know very well who Roger Penrose is. I've tracked his work for a long time. One of the most respected scientists of our day. But for those who are watching this going, okay, who exactly is Penrose? And why is his claim that you misrepresented him so significant? Tell us a little bit of that backstory. Well, Sir Roger was actually one of Hawking's Ph.D. examiners. And Hawking in the mid-60s presented a PhD thesis at Cambridge University.

It was after his ALS diagnosis. It's really a very heroic story because he was so discouraged at one point. He thought he would quit the Ph.D. But he continued. And in one of the key chapters of his dissertation or his thesis, he'd been thinking about black hole physics. And he realized in the forward direction of time, matter is getting more and more diffuse. In the reverse, well, he's thinking a black hole is a concentration of, of matter that is so dense that even light can't get out. But then he begins to think about black hole physics in relation to what the cosmologists are talking about, that in the forward direction of time, matter is getting more and more diffuse. But that means in the reverse direction of time, matters getting more and more densely concentrated. So according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, the space around the matter in the reverse direction of time would have been more and more tightly curved as you go progressively further and further back. And that's why you,

intuitively, you reach a limiting case because as you go further and further back, the matter gets more and more densely concentrated, the space gets more tightly curved, the space gets more tightly curved, the matter gets more densely concentrated, and eventually you reach what Hawking eventually called the singularity. Now, he presents that as part of his PhD thesis, and in the little film about his life,

the biopic called The Theory of Everything, not to be confused with our new film coming out called The Story of Everything. Hawking, they show, you know, the examiners pushing the thesis across and saying, What does it really mean to love your neighbor? Not as a project, but as a person. This month on the Salvation Army's podcast,

of life. We'll explore how true evangelism starts with genuine relationships shaped by grace, humility, and compassion. We'll hear from Salvation Army leaders and volunteers as they share how they're engaging with their communities and truly making an impact in the lives of their neighbors. And later this month, we'll be joined by author and missionary Preston Fiddler. And I think it comes back to we get to do this rather than we have to. I think if we approach it from this perspective of feeling like we're not. We have to convert our neighbors. I think we're seeing it backwards.

And we've got to see it from this place of, man, I have been converted. I am redeemed. God has saved me. And I get to tell this goodness to my neighbors. Listen to Words of Life on your favorite podcast store or visit Words of Lifepodcast.org. Picking at all the little mistakes he made in the other chapters and then this idea of a space time singularity, a big bang at the beginning, a black hole at the beginning of the universe. That's brilliant. congratulations, Dr. Hawking, and they shove the book back across.

And Penrose is one of the ones that's pushing it back. And then someone says, well, now go work out the maths. Okay. Well, so Penrose and Hawking then go work out the maths, okay? And in 67, 68, I think they publish a couple of papers with mathematical proof of the singularity. Then Penrose, then rather Hawking writes a book with George Ellis in 71 with a further elaboration of proofs of singularities. And in the 71 book, they acknowledged that, yes, well, in, I think it was at that point, 10 to the minus 33rd of a centimeter is the volume at which the

general relativity analysis has to take into account the quantum. And they really, at that point, we, you know, all bets are off. But we're talking about something so small you can hardly imagine it. And they say it's essentially, if it's not, a singularity, it's a near singularity, and essentially it's a creation event. What we've established is there was a creation event. Hawking then spends much of the rest of his career, at least on cosmology, attempting to circumvent that conclusion. And he formulates quantum cosmology as the way to do that, okay? And that's why I address, I go into so much depth on that in the return of the God hypothesis, because I wanted to show that you can circumvent the conclusion,

of an absolutely certain beginning, but you do so at a cost, and the cost in quantum cosmology is an unexplained informational input or an unexplained fine-tuning that itself has the heistic implications. That's the bottom line of what we've just been talking about. What Penrose now has done

is come up with another cosmological model that attempts to restore an infinite universe, attempts to depict the universe as infinitely, or past eternal. and that's only one of, it's only one of many reasons that Penrose is significant. I mean, he's a great physicist on multiple, in multiple different areas,

and also kind of a leader in the discussion of the mind-body problem as well, where he's had some very interesting things that I think are actually quite favorable to the sort of notion of dualism. So he's a very interesting figure, brilliant physicist, and obviously, in a way, I was kind of pleased that he engaged us, He was saying in the interview that I had critiqued his new model. I was pointing out that many leading physicists have rejected it. They think it's just very counterintuitive, contrary to a lot of known physics.

And he said, well, but other physicists are critiquing it is a point in its favor. I'm glad to know that they're taking it seriously enough to critique it. I feel the same way about Sir Roger critiquing our conversations. I'd love to hear you say that. When I heard he respond, I was like, wow. He's hands down, one of the most influential scientists over the past half century, takes our interview and your work seriously enough to respond. This is a great moment for this conversation and for this debate. So maybe let's take a step back.

Phil's created this video with the responses by 16 cosmologists and or physicists based on a misrepresentation of what your argument actually is. That's my claim that he misrepresents, and I can justify that. The backstory is that after Sir Roger, well, Phil heard our conversation about where I discussed Penrose's model at the end of a longer conversation. He then shared my remarks with Penrose and then did an interview with him. Penrose expressed some dismay at my misrepresenting him, and then then, This went out in some of the sort of atheist, scientific atheist circles, and Justin Briarly caught wind of it. And he had a debate scheduled for me and Alex O'Connor, but then Alex preferred to do somebody else, and Justin brought in Phil Halper. And Phil and I had, I think, about a three-hour-long debate.

It was all conversationally moderated by Justin. who's very skilled at that. He's the best. But it went on about three hours, and, you know, in blocks of time, and I guess it's going to be released later this spring. In any case, Phil went then and took what he, took my, what he believed was my position,

and shared it with various cosmologists and physicists in his acquaintance, because he writes on this, so he knows a lot of these people, and elicited critiques. of me based on what he had fed to them. But unfortunately, what he fed to them was a misrepresentation of my position. And so even though these very prominent people critiquing me, cumulatively sound very authoritative in dismissing poor old Myers' benighted view, it was a kind of garbage-in-garbage-out situation where having fed them a straw man, the critiques that each of them collectively rendered,

I think, in the end, missed the mark. And so that's kind of where it stood or where it stands, yeah. Okay. Do you want to go into any of the details of that debate, kind of what happened, where it goes? Obviously, I want people to go watch that as well. Well, less the debate, but more than this question of the misrepresentation, because I think it's crucial. And it goes back to what we were first talking about. Okay.

Because what Halper told them was that I claimed that the singularity theorems of Hawking and Penrose proved a beginning, and that I was advancing a singularity-based apologetic for the existence of God. And based on what I've already said, I think your viewers and listeners will understand that my argument is quite a bit more subtle than that, and that it is a conditional argument. if we accept that as best we can tell the universe had a beginning, not that we've proven it, but as best we can tell, the best explanation of the evidence is that there was a beginning, then that conclusion has theistic implications.

The postulating God best explains the finite origin of the universe, the origin of the universe a finite time ago where we consider the universe to be matter-spaced time and energy. Okay. But if we accept one of these infinite universe cosmologies, or if we model the universe as having an infinite universe, then in our modeling we invariably are affirming something in particular quite often unexplained fine-tuning that provides alternative evidence for theism. So it's either that we have a theistic conclusion based on the factual predicate of a beginning. Or we have a theistic conclusion based on some of the features that are invariably present in these infinite universe cosmological models, in particular, vast amounts of new unexplained fine tuning. And so my apologetic is not singularity based. Rather, it's evidentially based, not a proof of an absolute beginning, but a cumulative case for a beginning as a best. explanation of the evidence, plus or, and in addition to an alternative condition where if you

don't, if you're not persuaded by that, or if you want to model the universe as being infinitely old, you're going to be affirming something else that invariably provides grounds for theism. So it's an either-or argument, not based only on one possible factual predicate. This is one of the most important things I want people to take from this interview. You said at the beginning kind of pick your poison or either or. We don't escape design or information, whichever avenue we take. It's not like a fork in a road. You can have a universe and get eternal universe, get rid of God.

There's still design there. Or this fork in the road, we have the beginning of the universe, which has theistic implications. Now, a minute ago, you said that Penrose's model, which we're going to come back to and respond to in some depth, has been rejected by many, if not. most physicists at this point? Is that fair before I go further? Well, let's get into that when we do the separate conversation about Penrose, but there are different elements of what— Penrose has a kind of five or six-step scenario by which

he justifies a new eon of creation, a new ion of expansion of the universe. So he has a—rather, if you think of that old oscillating universe model where the universe expands and contracts and expands and contracts. The problem in that old model was that when you get to the end of an expansion phase, you have highly diffuse distribution of matter. It's not organized or concentrated in any way that would allow it to do work. And so you have a buildup of entropy. It's a high entropy end of cycle state. And the problem that the old oscillating universe model had was how do you get from a high entropy state with a lot of energy that is a lot of matter and no energy available to do work to a new cycle where you have a concentration of energy

that's available to do work and create a new expansion phase. Penrose has a three or four step scenario where he attempts to solve that problem. But he does so by violating some very established known principles in physics, in particular, the unitary principle of quantum mechanics, and a few other things that have caused a lot of leading physicists to say, wait, I don't think this works. And then there's a little bit of a mathematical slide of hand where he uses something called conformal geometry

to try to make what looks very big, namely a universe, look very, very small, and where he's got a lot of, where he has no energy available to work, and where suddenly he gets a new concentration of energy available to do work. And the moves he makes to accomplish that have been questioned by lots and lots of physicists. Okay. But we can come back to that, and we ought to break that down in a more step-by-step-step-way, because the last thing we want to do in our next conversation is misrepresent Sir Roger,

because he's a great physicist and deserves to be properly critiqued. My motto that I've always taught my students is from Bob Dylan. You can't criticize what you don't understand. So let's come back and make sure that everyone understands that we understand what Penrose's model is. And then I'll offer my critique in that context. And we'll take that conversation more slowly, which we probably should have done the first time around. Love it. No, that's totally fine.

That's fair. So without going into depth, my question is that at least maybe you haven't done a poll of the most, but many leading physicists are challenging and agreeing with you that there's certain questions. It's not just the ID people that are questioning penrose. So then here's my question on your model. Since you're saying the origin of the universe, if it had a beginning, has theistic implications. And that seems to be widely agreed, at least by philosophers as far as I can tell. But on the other fork in the road where you're saying these models require some, they don't get rid of the need for information input and hence an argument for design.

is that equally built upon questionable assumptions, or would you say in your other rung of this fork, no, I'm building on widely accepted theories and ideas inside the scientific world? Well, I would say that this conditional argument, you know, if you elect condition A, you have theistic implications. If you elect condition B, you've got theistic implications. That's what, that was perhaps the most original element of the return of the God hypothesis. And for that reason, it may be exactly why it was difficult, it has been difficult for my critics to understand what I'm saying. You know, Phil Halper has sort of just repaired to this idea that this is another version of the Kalam argument, and Myers arguing using the singularity theorem to justify the second premise that the universe had a beginning.

And physicists say, no, you can't use the singularity theorem to do that because inside the Planck volume, we have quantum mechanical effects that mean that the weak and strong energy conditions don't apply, and therefore we don't know. And so, and what I've shown is in the book that even if we go for a quantum

cosmological model, that has theistic implications as well. For different but more subtle reasons, not because it is the case that in those quantum cosmological models, the modelers don't get rid of the singularity. They presuppose it in their equations. But setting that aside, even if you can imagine a past eternal quantum mechanical state,

to get to a universal wave function that includes a universe like ours, you have to constrain the underlying mathematics in a way that's non-arbitrary that requires a huge input of information. And in the modeling, that information is always provided by the intelligent physicist. So I want to ask what's actually being modeled. What's being modeled is the need for information coming from a mind to get a universe like ours as one of the options. Gotcha. And that's Chapter 18 and 19 in the book.

It's the headiest stuff in the book, and it's not for everybody, but there it is. But that's just now with the new book by Halper and F. Shorty, and by the way, I would highly recommend it. It's a great exposition of all the different models that are out there, and they're very clearly explained. But what my colleagues and I, Bruce Gordon, philosopher of physics, Brian Miller, a physicist. What we found in going through these models is that invariably, they have one or more of these epistemic costs that I was describing,

one of which is always unexplained fine-tuning. And others, which are often present, are violations of known physical laws or principles, some mathematical slights of hand, and very typically a multiplication of pure theoretical postulates, the violations of parsimony of Occam's Razor. So high epistemic cost for these infinite universe cosmologies, which is one of the reasons I argue that as best we can tell the universe had a beginning. If the alternative models are Baroque, convoluted in the

Occam's Razor sense, if they involve violations of known well-established physical, and they have to invoke additional sources of fine-tuning. What does it really mean to love your neighbor? Not as a project, but as a person. This month on the Salvation Army's podcast, Words of Life, we'll explore how true evangelism starts with genuine relationships shaped by grace, humility, and compassion. We'll hear from Salvation Army leaders and volunteers

as they share how they're engaging with their communities and truly making an impact in the lives of their neighbors. And later this month, we'll be joined by author and missionary Preston Fiddler. And I think it comes back to we get to do this rather than we have to. Think if we approach it from this perspective of feeling like we have to convert our neighbors, I think we're seeing it backwards. And we've got to see it from this place of, man, I have been converted, I am redeemed. God has saved me.

And I get to tell this good news. my neighbors. Listen to Words of Life on your favorite podcast store or visit WordsofLifepodcast.org. Better we, then the evidence we have, not the proof, but the evidence we have of a beginning suggests that probably the beginning is, suggests that the universe as best we can tell did have a beginning. That's a better explanation. If you have to resort to explanations that are as convoluted as the ones that are being

advanced and described in the F short, and Halper book, then the case for the beginning, I think, looks all the stronger. Okay, so when I saw this book, Battle of the Big Bang, I had a couple thoughts. I was like, awesome. People are still talking about what this means. My second thought was, I thought we started establishing the universe had a beginning about a century ago, and it was sometime in the middle to the end of the 20th century, that multiple models came up, whether it's the steady,

state or the oscillating universe, trying to explain a way apparent beginning of the universe and maintain an eternal universe. I kind of thought this debate was dead, and yet it's reemerging. What's new with this book and where are we at right now kind of frame what's at stake and why this conversation is important. Put it in historical perspective, because if you go back to the 19-teens and 20, Einstein's theory of general relativity on its face, Einstein himself realized, implied a dynamic expanding universe that suggested the beginning. He gerrymandered his equations, as you may recall. What he did, he postulated an anti-gravity force called the cosmological constant, which we now think is a real thing.

but what he also did is he gave the cosmological constant a very particular value so that it would exactly balance the gravitational contraction so that he could portray the two forces as equiposed in perfect balance and notice the movie made because this is what's going on right up to the present he fine-tuned the value of the cosmological constant with enough fine-tuning he could circumvent the impression that his equations otherwise gave of a beginning, of a dynamic expanding universe outward from the beginning.

And so fine-tuning has been in the toolbox of people who want to depict the universe as infinitely old from the very beginning of this debate. But then Einstein eventually came around, he was challenged by Eddington to go out to Mount Wilson, see the evidence that Hubble was acquiring of the redshift and the expanding universe, and later said that his attempt to jill.

Derrymander, his own equations, was the greatest blunder of his life. It's amazing. I misquoted him in the book. I quoted him as saying it was the greatest blunder of his scientific career, but it was of his life. Oh, I didn't realize that. His actual quote was of his life. Interesting. So, and then we had the steady state model.

1960s, you get the cosmic background radiation, and that, for all intents and purposes, sounds the death knelt to the steady state model. Then we have the oscillating universe model, which we were talking about before. that model I think was pretty much a spent force by the mid-80s. There was the problem of where do you get the new, where do you get new available energy to do work? And is there enough mass to cause a recalapse? The conclusion was no.

Then there were other challenges that came about in the 90s. There was little perturbations in the cosmic background radiation that had been predicted by the Big Bang, hadn't been observed before, the George Smoot stuff. So that provided further evidence. And I would say the hot big bag model is still the gold standard in cosmology. But what we're seeing now are very, I would say, very clever attempts to model an infinite universe, past eternal universe, using mathematics.

And there's a book by a German author called Lost in Math. And there is a sense where the human mind is infinitely creative, and we can model almost anything mathematically. But one of the reasons that I say that as best we can tell, the postulation of a beginning provides the best explanation for the evidence that we have, is that if you think about a dynamicable expanding universe, where galactic material is receding from us, and where space is getting less and less curved

as matter is getting more and more diffuse, you have actually, what you're seeing is a dynamic expanding universe. If you back extrapolate, most naturally you come to some point past which you cannot go on limiting case. There's nothing in the observational evidence that we have that suggests a static or steady state universe. You can posit a pre-plank time static universe, if you like, but there's nothing in what we see that suggests that as a natural

conclusion, whereas what we see in this dynamic expanding universe, which we back extrapolate, does suggest a limiting case and therefore beginning. So there's a kind of prima facie, obvious case for a beginning. There's also certain paradoxical or there's certain explanatory conundrums that result for naturalism if you posit an infinite. universe. For example, if you say, well, inside Plunk time, maybe we had, or inside the Plank volume, we had an infinitely existing static universe. And maybe it was in a quantum state, maybe some other kind of state. In whatever state it was, there's two possibilities. If it was infinitely old, if you could kind of think of it as a kind of infinite tale

that preceded the expansion of the universe or a kind of. cosmic egg that was infinitely old. Either in that state the necessary and sufficient conditions of a subsequent expansion were always present, okay, or they were not. If they were always present, if those conditions were always present, then we should expect to see evidence of an infinitely long expansion, of an expansion that's been going on for an infinitely long period of time. But That's not what we see. Empirically, we see evidence of an expansion that's only finitely old. So that we should eliminate.

That means that if we posit an infinitely old cosmic egg or tail on the expansion, that perhaps the necessary conditions of a subsequent expansion were there, but not the sufficient conditions, not the conditions that would result, that would cause a subsequent expansion. in that case, something would have needed to be added to those merely necessary conditions to make those conditions sufficient. But that entity, whatever it was inside the Planck volume, existing infinitely long into the past, was the whole of the universe. That's what we're positing the universe was inside that Planck volume,

that tiny smidgen of space where the quantum effects apply where maybe general relativity doesn't, et cetera, et cetera. But that means if the universe, as it existed from that infinite time, did not have the necessary and sufficient conditions to cause a subsequent expansion, something from outside the system must have been added to create, to move from mere necessary conditions to causal sufficiency. But that means that a transcendent causal and entity must have acted to explain the expansion that ensued. And that causal entity, moreover, was not conditioned, determined by any physical state within the universe because it was something

separate from the universe. So you have something that looks, and its action occurred at a finite point in the past. So you have a discrete event that's not physically determined that comes from a transcendent causal entity. Now, theism would explain how that happened. It would explain why you had a subsequent expansion, whereas I can't think of anything within a naturalistic framework that would do that. And in any case, the whole question of how you got from the cosmic egg or the cosmic tale to the expansion is unanswered on naturalism. So,

again, that's not a proof that the universe had a beginning, but the attempt to circumvent the beginning by invoking the indeterminate features inside the plonk volume,

the indeterminacy of the pre-plank time state don't really give you a support for naturalism. they still point in a theistic direction. Okay, so if I'm going to frame this historically, if we go back a century, the, again, oscillating model, and then the steady state theory kind of model, there was kind of one attempted explanation that at least seemed to be pushed forward and promoted.

Now we have in Battle of the Big Bang, 25 or so models. Penrose's model, do you view this as saying, wow, these challenges are ramping up and it's getting greater? Or do you kind of view this as people are really starting to realize that it points towards the beginning of the universe and it's kind of just an attempt to avoid this, and we're coming full circle saying, nope, what started a century ago is really clear?

Like, how do you view the state of this in this book emerging, if that's fair? I would leave it to readers to determine whether or not they detect underneath this proliferation of new models a desperation. Okay. I tend to not want to traffic in motivational arguments, okay? Fair enough. But there is a very important argument from the history of science that's from Coon's

structure of scientific revolutions. And that is that the proliferation of models is not the sign of a healthy research program, but it's the sign of a degenerate research program. Lacketos, I think, said the same thing. and so I don't, when I had the debate with Halper, when I would critique one model, he'd say, oh, but there are these other models. And I'm not saying any one of them is right.

I'm just saying the very fact that there are all these models suggest that we can't be asserting that the universe did in fact have a beginning. Well, my counter would be, first of all, the proliferation of models is the sign of an unhealthy, degenerate research program, not a healthy one. If the community can't congeal around one of the models as being clearly the best or one or two as having great promise, then in fact, F. Shorty, in describing his variable speed of light model in which he suspends Einstein's limitation on the speed of light from special relativity as part of his model,

and a few other very fundamental things in physics, he says, well, it may seem counterintuitive, but it's no worse than all the others. So that kind of a defense is not really compelling. So, and I lost my train of thought here. Where was I going with that? Anyway, the degenerous proliferation of models has generally seemed to be a sign of a degenerate research program, not a healthy one. Oh, and then the second thing is that if the models collectively

are subject to the same types of problems, then proliferating many of them doesn't solve the problem. help. Okay. And this is our claim, and we're going to be coming out, my colleagues and I at Discovery, with a series of blogs and podcasts on this showing that as you go through the different models, that we're actually, and I did this in preparation for my debate with Halper, is I just developed little scorecards. You can score these models. Do they, to what extent do they proliferate pure theoretical entities, ad hoc theoretical entities.

To what extent do they violate known principles of physics? To what extent do they involve themselves in some mathematical slides of hand? And to what extent do they invoke unexplained fine-tuning? Invariably, they invoked unexplained fine-tuning. And many of the other problems were present in various combinations in each of the different models. So I don't think the mere volume of output of the naturalistic cosmologists in formulating past eternal infinite universe cosmologies is evidence of a healthy research program or evidence that the problem has been solved, that they have come up with a better model for the origin of the universe than a model which affirms that there was a beginning. Okay, so tell what we were at. In a minute, I'm going to give people three things. In fact, I'll do it right now and then I'll come back to you. I think three things people can do fall in-up with this. Number one, we're going to have an in-depth response to the Penrose model and the claim that you misrepresented it, and we're going to walk through that, so look for that to come out.

And, Sean, I would interject there that because our conversation was so rushed when we had it, it came at the end. it was a slightly confused discussion on our part. Okay. Mine more so. And I did get one thing wrong, but the most fundamental thing, which I claimed about the unexplained fine tuning, I absolutely got right. Good. But I want to make sure that we represent Sir Rogers' work accurately, so that I'm grateful

to you for agreeing to do a separate conversation just on this. Oh, I'm thrilled. And also, I'm in touch with it. with Phil. And we can send him the link to it and they can come back at us. And we'll just, we're here not to win the argument, but to get to the truth and to clarify things. So, I mean, this is, we've reached a point, a really fascinating point in the, in the cosmological discussion. Because there is now a battle for the Big Bang and there are all these new attempts to preserve an infinite universe cosmology in the face of the evidence. I think it's just a fascinating

turn in the conversation and one which we're very happy to engage. So thank you for being willing to do that. I'm not claiming to be always right or infallible in this, but I think that a subsequent discussion which we clarify the conversation. What does it really mean to love your neighbor? Not as a project, but as a person. This month on the Salvation Army's podcast, Words of Life, we'll explore how true evangelism starts with genuine relationships shaped by grace, humility, and compassion. We'll hear from Salvation Army leaders and volunteers

as they share how they're engaging with their communities and truly making an impact in the lives of their neighbors. And later this month, we'll be joined by author and missionary Preston Fiddler. And I think it comes back to, we get to do this rather than we have. to think if we approach it from this perspective of feeling like we have to convert our neighbors, I think we're seeing it backwards. And we've got to see it from this place of, man, I have been converted.

I am redeemed. God has saved me, and I get to tell this goodness to my neighbors. Listen to Words of Life on your favorite podcast store or visit Words of Lifepodcast.org. Make very clear what Penrose is arguing and then offer our critiques much more assistance. systematically, we'll be clarifying for all sides in the discussion. Love it. By the way, this is a win-win. I told my wife, was like, I'm interviewing, my friend, Stephen Meyer, and I was trying to explain the models and this debate that's going on. So, number one, look for that video to come out. We'll do part two.

Number two, you've got a series of podcasts and articles coming out of Discovery Institute where you'll respond to a bunch of these models. Third, check out your debate by Justin Briarly-Will with Phil Halper, which will be about three hours in length, is great. Broken up into three separate hours, but it was, I think, Phil and I both thought it was sort of brutal. So what should we know going into that, watching that?

Because a lot of this, we can talk here and we can make our argument, but we're not being cross-examined, right? Proverbs 1817 says the first of the speaking of court sounds right until the cross-examination begins. What should we keep in mind when we watch that debate? Well, I think, first of all, that there is a new phase in the discussion of cosmology and what it means for these big metaphysical questions. And I think that it's an exciting development that this is happening on both sides.

Secondly, I think from my point of view, the thing that may have been a bit difficult to get across in a conversational framing is that in a conversational setting is my framing of the argument. Phil kept in the discussion trying to position me as the arch defender of the singularity. And I think the singularity theorems are highly suggestive. I don't think they provide a absolute proof, but we don't require proof in science to affirm something as a best explanation or the go-to model or the best theory. And so I think my argument has been

as best we can tell the universe at a beginning for multiple reasons. But if you don't want to accept that and you want to model the universe alternatively as having an infinitely long history that is past eternal, that the cost of such modeling has its own theory. implications. That's the framing that and that and the key element there is that look to the,

where are you finding unexplained fine-tuning in the models? At the end of the debate, Justin asked us each to say what we had learned from the other guy. Oh, that's great. And he kept checking throughout the debate to make sure we were feeling that the other guy was representing. Fairly. Justin's the best. No, he did a fabulous job. And Phil was a great interlocutor, okay. But I don't think that he got this overall, I don't think he understood what I was trying to say, but one thing he did acknowledge was that he said at the end, he would have to think about Meyer's argument about the unexplained fine-tuning. That's something he needed to think more about. And so I think that point I did at least get across. In any case, none of these

really deep issues in cosmology and metaphysics. as especially as to which worldview best explains what we're finding in the sciences are settled by podcasts and debates. They really have to be settled in each person's own mind as you lay out the competing cases before you and begin to think about it. So these conversations that we're starting,

I think, are invitations to other people who are interested in these ultimate questions to begin your own investigation of this. And we'll be in service of that writing and blogging and podcasting more about this at the Discovery Institute. And I appreciate you opening this up here. Oh, absolutely. I think if someone had told me when I really started this channel, yeah, Sir Roger Penrose, who did work with Hawking and one of the most recognizable and remarkable scientists of our day, would do a response to one of my YouTube videos. I'm not sure I

would have believed, but I'm also encouraged by... You may not want to lay too much stress on that. They may not want to do it again, you know. Well, I think it's, I think it's led to great continued conversation, which is what we all should want moving forward. It certainly led to the debate with Halper, which led to Halper's video response to me that he put out after the debate, which has now led to our conversation responding to Phil, and maybe it'll result in another debate. Who knows? That would be amazing. Did I miss anything part of this story that you wanted to share? Well, one thing.

Okay. In addition to, there are, I'm going to get back into the weeds. Let's leave it there. Okay, all right, fair enough. So check out part two. Yeah. We'll get into the weeds with your response to Penrose, and I will have some fun doing it. Dr. Stephen Meyer, love your book, Return of the God hypothesis.

And it's pretty remarkable. As I look at when this was published, this says, So it's 2021. 2021 is hardback, revised paperback, 2023. That's when I had the epilogue in which I responded to Penrose and Steinhart, a couple of the other newer cosmological models. What Halper and F Shorty have shown is there's a whole lot more models to respond to. And the series of blogs were doing at Discovery with my colleagues, Bruce Gordon and Brian Miller,

may result in another book, who knows. So it's an ongoing discussion, but I would say we feel quite confident that the theistic take on this is far superior to the naturalistic or materialistic one. The epistemic cost of philosophical naturalism is very, very high. You can hold it if you want, but you're going to end up with some very complicated, convoluted kind of cosmological models that are equivalent to the sort of epicycles that people held when they were trying to. trying to hold on to the geocentric model in the face of the evidence that was coming out in favor of the, the, the, the, the heliocentric solar system model.

This is one of the things about philosophy of science you learn is that it's always, you can, if you're willing to hold enough auxiliary hypotheses, you can, you can hold on to almost any idea. But the epistemic cost of that gets higher and higher and higher. And at a certain point, people finally say, okay, enough is enough. Let's go with the simpler, more elegant hypothesis. And I think Theism is precisely that. It's the elegant hypothesis that explains why the universe is best we can tell has a beginning, why the universe is finely tuned, why we see information embedded in living systems, why we act as though the moral law is not optional, why we can trust the reliability of the mind, and on and on and on.

Theism has broad explanatory power across both scientific and philosophical categories of thought. That's a great note to end on. Appreciate you come down here in person. Appreciate your work, your friendship, personally, as well as for Biala and Talbot. And I'm looking forward to our deep dive response to Sir Roger Penrose. Thanks very much. Sean. Good to be with you.

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