The Sean McDowell Show - Was Stephen Meyer Right about the Big Bang? (Live Stream Response)

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

"If the universe needs a cause, what caused God?" In this episode, Dr. Sean McDowell and Dr. Tim Pickavance dive into the metaphysical heart of the universe's origin. They move past the scientific data of the Big Bang to explore the logicbehind it. Discover why "nothing" is incapable of creation, why the laws of mathematics are "causally effete," and why an infinite past would make the present moment impossible to reach. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, this philosophical breakdown offers a rigorous look at the "Voice of Reason" behind existence itself. *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... Instagram:   / seanmcdowell   Website: https://seanmcdowell.org   Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Life Audio For a creator from the beginning of the universe. In studio, today is my colleague, my friend, dare I say, boss, are you kind of my boss now, Tim? I'm your boss's boss. Let's be honest. Okay. Whatever. Tim and I went to school together back in the day, 25 years ago, in the MA philosophy program.

Your colleague of mine done some excellent work. And so many of the questions that people have asked, are philosophical in nature. So I thought it would be perfect to have you join us. We already have a dozen plus questions that are coming through Twitter. We have some that are coming through YouTube. I also see some live questions here.

So if you have some questions, write the word question in caps. State it as succinctly as you can. And we will rock through as many questions as possible. All right. Before we jump in, Tim, maybe you could just briefly introduce yourself. I can introduce you, but just tell people listening what you do here at Talbot and your specialty. Yeah, thanks, Sean.

First of all, I just want to say, thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here. This is going to be a lot of fun. These are questions, I think, are that are really interesting for Christians to think about. So I'm really pleased to be here. So I have two roles here at Biola. The first is that I'm professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology. In this role, I do research in writing, mostly about metaphysics and epistemology, and the Western intellectual historical tradition, as it relates, especially to the idea of human persons and how we think about ourselves in the world.

I've been doing that for 18 years. Wow. We've known each other now for a quarter of a century or more. Back when we were students here. So the second role, which is newer, is this role that we've called the U.S. academic dean of Talbot. So in that, I'm responsible to ensure that Talbot has thriving students and faculty and programs, obviously with the help of a huge team of folks, including all of our faculty and our great staff and so on. So I have an administrative role and also a faculty role,

and I'm enjoying both of those. I'm also a Presbyterian ruling elder in the PCA, the Presbyterian Church in America. So I serve at my little home church, Redeemer Presbyterian in Newport, and I'm also a scholar in residence there, which essentially just gives me some visibility for the congregation and the denomination for people who have questions about their faith, questions about theology, whatever it is, they kind of know that they can come to me to talk about those kinds of things. I love it. I love it you do that. Well, we got a lot of questions here, basically about the cause of the universe. Why is it personal? Have we making a God of the Gaps argument? Is it possible that the universe could have come from the laws of physics or math?

So we're going to get into a lot of those. But I just want to remind folks that this is in response. We've been doing these on Tuesdays, calling them Talbot Tuesdays, bringing in faculty, highlighting them. And today, since a lot of the questions are in response to Dr. Stephen Myers' interview from last week, figured we'd bring you on. So let's jump right in. And then we'll jump back and forth between your live questions and some of the questions that we have here. So somebody asked, why can't a U.S. universe come from nothing? Why is that not a possible or maybe even reasonable explanation?

Yeah, I think that's a good question. The short answer in my view is contingency. Okay. And what I mean by that is that when things are contingent, we look for explanations of them. We want to know why it is there, why it has the nature that it does, why it came around at that time, you know, all of those kinds of things. That's just kind of part of who we are. When things happen that didn't have to be a certain way, we ask a why question. Why is it that way rather than some other way? Why did this thing come into being rather than not? And so this base, it's a kind of basic principle of our inquiry about really anything in the world. We want to know why things occurred. And we really only want those when things we recognize that they could have gone differently. So for example,

just like to give you a sense, we don't ask for the whys of mathematics. We don't look for the structure of mathematics. Our theorizing about mathematics is about its structure, the way things relate to one another, but we're not asking really why questions. Whereas in, say, psychology, we look for explanations. We want to understand the why behind that. So we have this kind of structural form of inquiry about necessary things and an explanatory form of inquiry about contingent things. The universe is a contingent thing. And so we want to know why. So the idea that there is no explanation, does that. doesn't really make any sense to us. It doesn't satisfy the longing that we have to have an

explanation. And that longing is rooted in the fact that contingent things need to be explained. They don't just happen randomly. And so that's the short answer, I think, why the universe can't come from nothing. It's because that's not the kind of thing. Nothing does. When we have a contingent thing, we want to know where it came from. What do you think about this? I think that's a great explanation. I often think of the worship song that says, nothing is greater than God. And when I think of that, it's not that nothing is something that's greater than God. It's saying no thing is greater than God.

There's not anything that exists that is greater than God. So when we say can the universe come from nothing? It's not like nothing is something that the universe came out of. It's no thing, not anything at all, which means there's not even potential. potentiality for something to exist. So I think the way you're approaching it makes sense. When things are contingent, we naturally ask for an explanation, things that are necessary. We don't.

But we also know that you can't get something from no thing. It seems like as basic and obvious of a metaphysical intuition that's true as anything would be. So I think I would maybe add that piece to it, but I think what you're getting at makes a lot of sense that even if people don't use the terms necessary and contingent, it's kind of human nature. And at some point we know we can stop asking the why question. But when it comes to the universe, which is contingent and could have been different, didn't have to exist unlike laws of logic or math than are necessary. if we say that something can come from nothing and it doesn't need an explanation, then we're making one exception to this rule. We don't for anything else. And that would be the question, why make the exception there?

That's what comes to my mind. Yeah. I mean, I think I would endorse all of that. In fact, the idea that contingent things need to be explained is rooted in that idea. because if you think, suppose it's not, suppose there was already something and then something contingent happened, we wouldn't just say, well, nothing explains that. Right. We would either say, well, oh, we need to find the explanation of it, or we would find some, we would say there's this cause of it that's already rooted in the things that already exist.

And so that idea that nothing can't explain something is in a way relate, so that's a kind of metaphysical principle. It's a principle at how things relate to one another. But then in our inquiry, like the rules that govern how we should sort of learn and grow and come to understanding, that shows up as this idea that, well, really, contingent things need to be explained. And we explain them by appealing to things that we're already around to do that explanatory work. That are necessary and don't need an explanation. Ultimately. At some point. That's right. That's right. Good. Good stuff. Okay. So I see some questions here. Some I'm not sure how serious they are. Some are relating to fine tuning, which is not the topic of today.

Just so some people know on Friday, I'm posting video on The Origin of Life with Doug Axe, one of the world experts. Next Tuesday, we'll take live questions on that. The following Tuesday, we have an interview with Jay Richards on fine tuning, who's also one of the world's experts on that. We'll take live questions then. Here we're talking about questions related to cosmology and the origin of the universe, more so specifically philosophical questions because that's what. our lane. We want to stay in our lane. Okay, here's some more that have come in, Tim. This one says, this relates to the last one. It says, can laws of physics or mathematics explain the origin of the universe? So this is kind of saying not the universe comes from nothing, because laws of

physics or math would be something, although not physical. Could that explain the origin of the universe? I think there's a lot to say here, but the short answer is no, that the laws of physics, the laws of mathematics can't explain the origin of the universe. And here's the basic reason why. The laws of nature don't explain anything. The laws of nature are descriptions of the ways that the features and natures of things relate to one another. So it's not that the law of gravity causes things to move toward the earth. It's that the earth is massive and mass attracts mass. the law of gravity is a description of that process basically, that relationship between mass, massive bodies and other massive bodies. So the laws don't actually do explanatory work.

They describe the generalities about explanations. Okay. So if we were to say the laws of physics explain the origin of the universe that wouldn't actually make any sense. the laws of physics are just a description. The person who I think says this kind of thing very clearly is John Lennox. So John Lennox has a little book called Can Science Explain Everything? It's a great little book. And he talks about this.

And this actually, so in my work in metaphysics, a big part of that is thinking about things like the laws of nature and what those things are. And it turns out that in the world of philosophy, there's a prominent view of laws on which they really do just describe. the relationships between attributes. And I think that's the right way to think about things. And it's the same with mathematics. It's actually even worse with mathematics because mathematical laws don't govern the physical world. They don't describe the physical world.

They describe these necessary things that don't have any causal powers. Those, so you're describing the relationships between things that themselves don't have any causal powers. That's even less able to explain anything than describing the relationships between things that do have causal powers. So at least the laws of physics are describing the relationships between things that have causal power to do something. But the laws themselves can't explain it.

So they don't even explain once we have a world what goes on, much less can they explain the existence of the world overall. Okay. So one of the strengths, when beginning you said there's much that could be said for this kind of claim that laws of physics or math can explain the origin of the universe is that we know space, space, time matter, had a beginning. So whatever caused it could be self-existent, eternal, uncaused. Mathematical laws, not laws of physics, would check some of those boxes as an adequate cause for the origin of the universe. Now, I'll come back to why it doesn't ultimately, but laws of physics, you can have laws of mathematics apart from a physical world,

but the law of gravity or laws of physics don't continue to again. exist apart from a physical world and depend upon their existence, so they clearly can't explain the origin of the very world that they depend upon. Now, math, and there's huge debates about how math exists, is it platonic in God's mind, we don't have to remotely go into that debate. We would lose everybody who's tracking with us permanently. Hey, I'd have a great time. That would be fun.

We'll do that one at midnight, at some night, hanging out. Now I lost my train of thought, Piggy Man. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay, so the reason that mathematical laws can't explain is because you might say like they're passive. They're not active. There's no mind to choose to cause anything. They're causally a feat.

And that's where a mind has the ability to choose to move this cup, to choose to speak certain things. And creation, there's a beginning point to creation, which. smacks of a mind and a choice to do this, which makes more sense from a person than from something impersonal like laws of math. Agree, disagree, expand. I think that's right. I mean, what I would want to emphasize, though, is that even if, so two things, even if you already have a physical world, the laws of nature don't explain anything. Okay. I just think that's the right way to think about the laws. The laws are descriptions. They're not explanations. Got it. The second thing to say is that the unique thing about a person is that persons can act for reasons. And so you can, so, so those aren't

lawlike governed. They're not governed by laws. And so this is why it's so appealing, actually, to say that there was a mind that explains the origin of the universe with respect to things like it's the fact that it exists rather than doesn't, or the fact that it has the nature that it does rather than some other nature, all that kind of contingent stuff is because a mind can act for reasons independent of a governing law. It's not just by the nature of the mind that it chooses this thing rather than that thing. A mind has the capacity to choose, given its nature. This is unlike how the laws of physics and so on govern.

They describe the ways that things naturally relate to other things. And it's not by choice that the Earth attracts the moon. It doesn't choose that. It has to be given its nature. nature. It's external as opposed to internal. And so that basic contingency in the world, just the first one being that it exists rather than doesn't, needs something non-lawlike to explain it. Correct. And that's a mind. Got it. Love it. Okay, good job. Excellent. All right. So let's let's go to, I like this one here. And I'm, you're going to have to break this one down for

us, Tim, as, as simple as possible. We had, again, we had Meyer-on and In his books, Stephen Myers talked about things pointing towards the beginning of the universe, like the cosmic microwave background radiation, talks about the Doppler effect, kind of the red shift that's expanded, second law thermodynamics. These are the kind of scientific arguments the universe had a beginning. But there's also philosophical arguments. And people like William Lane Craig have argued that even independent of any of the science, this is sufficient to demonstrate that the most reasonable explanation is the universe

had a beginning. Now, let's start with one. What do you think is the best philosophical argument that people could grasp most intuitively? I'm saying you up. I actually think there's so. I'm Kirby Kelly. And in my new book, The Fabric of Hope, I want to walk you through seasons of suffering, uncertainty, and waiting. And remind you of this truth. God is never absent. and he is never far away. When life unravels, hope can feel impossible or out of reach. Maybe today you're feeling like things are falling apart, and you're wondering if you can trust God's good plans for your life.

But what if, even here, God is still working to create something beautiful. Through honest stories and encouragement, the fabric of hope invites you to see your story through a new lens, one where your hard seasons have purpose and your waiting isn't. empty. If you're longing for hope that will never unravel no matter what comes your way, the fabric of hope is for you. Find it wherever books are sold. So Bill Craig says that there are two. He does. Yeah. One of them I actually disagree with him about. Oh. But that's maybe for another day. Is that the existence of an actual? Yes, that's correct. Okay. So I'm super intrigued, but we

won't go there for now. We said we weren't talking about vaguenism and stuff. So, you know, we have to avoid those kinds of things. But I actually do think that actual influence. aren't themselves problematic. That's controversial. I realize that. Just so you know, Dr. Craig watches all of my live streams, and he now knows that, no, he doesn't, I'm kidding. Well, he knows already.

But the other reason that he gives is, I think, apt and exactly right. Okay. So I think the best reason, the best philosophical reason to think that the universe needed a beginning is that you can't traverse an actual infinite amount of time. Okay. So that is to say, if you think that the universe has an infinite temporal duration in the past, that is, say, there's an infinite number of seconds going backward in the past. So it had no beginning.

No beginning. Infinitely before us. And those chunks of time aren't just moments. They're measurable chunks of time, like a second or a minute or whatever it is, right? And in fact, if it was infinite in the past, it would be an infinite number of seconds, an infinite number of minutes, infinite number of years, no matter which chunk you chose. That's right. But that's the idea that it didn't begin.

It has an infinite sequence of these chunks of time going backward in the past. We could never get to now. You couldn't get to the location we actually inhabit. And that means that it wasn't like that because here we are. we are here you know i want to be on that one yeah yeah we're we're at this time that exists now and so you know you can't have gotten to that point if the past okay why so connect close docks why couldn't we have gotten to the past because you could never complete this the cycle okay it'd be like it'd be like you started at zero it's actually worse than this it'd be like

you started at zero and finished counting by one successively, one, two, three, four. And then eventually you just hit infinity. Because if it's infinitely in the past, then you would have to go through an infinite number of seconds to get to now. But you can't ever finish an infinite sequence by successively moving through it in that way. So that's the big, that's the problem. Okay. So here's the way I would try to explain it to my high school students. And you can tell me if this is sound, is I sometimes my students who graduate, we do senior year, I'd say, okay, imagine. to leave a decade and I hope you come back and see me and catch up with your life. And you walk in and I'm sitting in the corner, you go, Mr. McDowell, how's it going?

I said, hang on. I've been here for a decade, a long time. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, I did it. I just counted from infinity down to zero. Now, you'd have two thoughts. Number one, you completely lost your mind. And number two, that's impossible. You can't camp down from infinity.

If I said, well, I started at 50 quadrillion, zillion, zillion, zillion, you'd say, what about about 50 quadrillion, zillion, zillion, zillion, and one. So you can never arrive at the present moment if you had to traverse an infinite number of moments to get here, which is why I'll never be able to count up to infinity. Even in heaven, it will be potential infinite, but at any point in the future, you look back, it's always a finite past.

It's growing, but it's finite. Therefore, if we can't traverse an infinite to get to the present, and we're at the present, the past must be finite. Now, how finite it is, 10,000 years, 12,000 years, 50 quadrillion, that's a secondary question that doesn't matter for this point. The past, therefore, must be finite because we're in the present. Yeah. That's the argument.

Is that a sound way of explaining it? Yeah, I think so. I mean, you can kind of imagine running the tape back. If you could never finish running the tape backwards, how could you have finished running it up to here? That's the basic thought. What's a tape? I don't understand. You know exactly what a tape is.

You lost everybody with your tape illustration. Oh, no, I didn't. We gen Xers know how to use YouTube also. You know, I'm tempted on air to let you share the embarrassing story of what happened to me in metaphysics one, just for fun, that you remember. well. Wait, are you talking about the time that J.P. finally thought you made a contribution to class? Yeah, Tim was in my very first metaphysics class. It's true. Probably the year 2000. And I raised my hand. I was so intimidated by JP Moreland and all these smart colleagues. I raised my hand. And he made a point about a self-refitting statement. And I was like, isn't that self-refuting? And he said, as far as

you remember. Well, oh, wait, no, this is a different thing. This is not what I was thinking about at all. I was thinking about the time when you pointed out that we had an hour more in class than he bought. And he said to you, if you keep making contributions like that, you might just be going somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember this. What do you say to you? He just ripped me.

He's like, it's about time you contribute. We were wondering when you're, I mean, he just. It was the same idea. So he did it to me multiple times. All right. Okay. So let's go to here. We have a ton more here.

All right. We'll dial in. We'll dial in. Okay. So this one came up. Huge question, comment. Who made God? What caused God?

If the universe needs a cause, what caused God? How do you answer that one? So unlike some people, I actually think this is a good question. Oh, okay. All right. But I do think it has an answer. Sometimes I feel like online you get the impression that either this question is stupid or it doesn't have an answer. I think it's a good question, but it has an answer. All right. Now I'm really curious. Well, the answer is actually fairly simple. It's that God is a necessary being. He's eternally existing. He doesn't need an explanation because he self-exists.

He's not the kind of thing that requires us to have an explanation for his existence. So that's actually the kind of standard explanation, but I still think it's a good question. But theorizing about God in this way is sort of like theorizing about mathematics. We're looking for structure, not explanation. So because he's a necessary being, he's not the kind of thing that requires one to explain him. And in fact, I mean, theologically, so that's kind of a philosophical thing, but

theoretically, we believe that God is the one who is and he is above and behind all of the created order, not requiring explanations like created things do. And so I think this fits both

theologically as it's revealed in the scriptures, but also philosophically because of the kind of being that God is he doesn't require. So if I said, well, this is really self-serving. So the universe needs an explanation. All of a sudden, God is just a necessary being that doesn't. How would you respond to that? So we can ask who made the universe, but as soon as who made God, now we have something that doesn't require an explanation. That's right. But I just think that's by the natures of the things themselves. So just as I don't look for an explanation of the existence of mathematics, I look for an explanation of the relationship between mathematics and God. I don't look for an explanation. of the existence of God, I look for reasons to believe that God exists, but those aren't explanations. In fact, interestingly, the reasons we have for believing in God that God exists are things that God explains. So this is true of a lot of our theorizing, actually. We're

often looking epistemologically, like our order of reasoning is running opposite from the order of explanation metaphysically or in the world. So we believe that God exists. because of certain facts about the universe, say, or because of the resurrection. These are things that God explains. We don't believe in God because, you know, we have an explanation for his existence. We believe in God because he explains everything else. Sounds like you see as close quote. Well, yeah, the sun thing. The sun. Yeah. Okay, so really quickly we're here with Dr. Tim Pickavance, who is a, amongst other things,

professor of philosophy published in some high journals books on this. And we're reviewing the conversation with Stephen Meyer and his argument from the beginning of the universe to a creator, focusing more on some of the philosophical objections because that's more of both of our lanes. We did the MA field program together a quarter century ago. By the way, some of you have asked me about my, it wasn't really a debate, but my conversation with Bart Erman, we lost online in the middle of it. We lost some of the content, but we were able to recover for the Sean McDowell podcast audio and put it up there. So you have to have to be a lot. So you have to go off YouTube.

Some of you have asked where to find kind of my review of that with Dave Horner. You can find it on the Sean McDowell podcast. We spent an hour breaking it down. Okay. All right. Let's go to one that's, I think we got a live question. If you have live questions right in question in caps, some of these questions have nothing to do with the conversation at hand as interesting as they are.

Let me see here. Okay. So I'll just clarify this. says, so the argument here is that everything seems to need a beginning, so you postulate something that doesn't need a beginning. I would say partly. I would say in the cosmological argument, Klam says whatever begins to exist has a cause. The key is whatever begins to exist.

There are some things you point out like math that we know by the nature of the nature of of them that they don't need a cause and we shouldn't look for a deeper cause. God is the same kind of thing. This isn't special pleading. This is what it means to be God. And so when things are not necessary in their contingent, we look for a cause for them. We look for who made them. We look for where they came from. Now, it comes a question of who made God. I don't think I've ever said it's a dumb question. Although I taught high school freshmen for years and I love them, but there is such a thing as a dumb question, like anyone who says there's not, has not taught high school.

But I think this is a good question, but I think it's a category fallacy. I think it's akin to saying, what is the color blue smell like, or the musical notes see way like or way. So smells and weights are different categories. We don't expect a certain color to have a smell or a weight because it's not that kind of thing.

It makes sense to say, who made your blazer or who made these lights or who made my shoes because these are the kinds of things that can be made. God by definition can't be made. If God were made, he wouldn't be God. And we all know that. And so it's a category fallacy. So if you actually flesh out when somebody says who made God, they're saying who made the unmakeable creator of the universe or what cause God, you're asking for a cause of something that by definition is uncaused. So what caused the uncaused creator of the universe doesn't make it a bad question, but it shows that it's a confused question that's a category fallacy.

That's how I would phrase it. Okay, let's go back to – I saw one at the top here. This one's fair. It says, hi, professor. Professors. My question is that do you see a problem this doesn't necessarily lead people to Jesus? Why wouldn't someone see a fine-tuned universe, I guess you could say, or the origin of the universe, and maybe decide to follow Allah or even Lucifer?

I could weigh in, but I'd be curious. How would you weigh in? Is it a deficiency of this argument that somebody could look at it and say, I'm following an evil God, I'm following Allah, I'm not going to Jesus, I'm going to some other God? No. So it's not a deficiency, but I think the question underneath that, underneath this question, is the recognition, a right recognition, that things like contingency arguments for God's existence, fine-tuning arguments, they don't get you all the way to Christianity. That's right. So the question is, does that make this fruitless or pointless or irrelevant? And I think the answer to that question is no. And the reason is that Christianity requires believing a lot of different things. and the reasons you should believe different of those things are different, as things tend to be. So, for example, I do think that Christianity fundamentally turns on the question of the resurrection. But one of the ways this can actually practically help people move toward a belief in the resurrection of Jesus

is by opening their hearts to the possibility even of the supernatural in the world, being active and relevant to the way the world unfolds and the way it is. And so I think to the degree that we understand that the universe is bearing marks of its creator, and this is something, of course, the scriptures testify to you all over the place. I mean, people think about the psalmist and the heavens declaring the glory of God. Essentially, these are just, all natural theology is fundamentally, is an attempt to figure out what the heavens are declaring about the glory of God. I mean, that's what natural theology is about.

And further, this is, the creation, where's the mark of Christ? I mean, we see this in Colossians 1 and in other places, John 1. The Logos of God, the ordering principle of creation is the God we worship, and he is the God who became flesh and dwelt among us and was crucified for our sins and raised from the dead. And of course, the fundamental question of Christianity turns on the resurrection, but notice that the resurrection doesn't happen if there's no God.

That's right. And so if you can open people's eyes to the existence, of God and his nature as a being who is intelligent and powerful and creative and extravagant in all the ways that the creation shows, then I think people's hearts can be softened to the idea of the resurrection and we can clear away some of the concerns that people have that keep them from confronting the reality of the risen Jesus. So that's really what this is about. So it's not all the way there, but it's some of the way there. And we can't think. And we can't think that it's all the way.

I'm Kirby Kelly, and in my new book, The Fabric of Hope, I want to walk you through seasons of suffering, uncertainty, and waiting, and remind you of this truth. God is never absent, and he is never far away. When life unravels, hope can feel impossible or out of reach. Maybe today you're feeling like things are falling apart, and you're wondering if you can trust God's good plans for your life. But what if, even here, God is still working to create something beautiful.

Through honest stories and encouragement, the fabric of hope invites you to see your story through a new lens. One, where your hard seasons have purpose and your waiting isn't empty. If you're longing for hope that will never unravel no matter what comes your way, the fabric of hope is for you. Find it wherever books are sold. Or we're making a mistake about what Christianity fundamentally is. how would you talk about this that's that's a great answer and uh i tell you if i didn't think it was just for the record you and i go back long enough that was a good answer and what i think of is gary hobbermas probably studied the resurrection more than anybody alive maybe in history

i don't know certainly up there he's talked about how the objections people had to the resurrection used to be they went to the wrong tomb jesus didn't die on the cross hallucinations they were naturalistic hypotheses. Now the primary objection is more methodological, and it's a commitment to naturalism that just says there must be some other explanation apart from a resurrection. And I think he's right about that as a whole. And so if God does exist, it doesn't prove a resurrection, but it removes some of the naturalistic bias and makes it possible, if not probable, that such a God would speak. So in terms of somebody's

journey all the way to the faith, in many cases, I think arguments like this are powerful in that regard. I also think, and then I'd love to have weighing on this, we got to question similar to this earlier. Like if the universe, if Myers right, that the universe had a beginning and points towards a cause outside of the universe itself. How does this narrow down worldview options? Well, it sure seems to rule out naturalism, because we know the universe is not eternal, can't get something from nothing.

And Meyer argues that every other naturalist, every other cosmological model that aims to keep the universe eternal either has physical problems that it doesn't actually translate to reality or actually muzzles in information in some fashion. So I think we can rule out naturalism. I think we can rule out pantheism. Because pantheism, and there's different ways of cashing this out, so to speak,

but there's no distinction between creation and creator. All is one. The universe had a beginning, it points towards a cause outside of the universe to bring it into existence that, by the way, is personal. So it narrows down worldview options. You've got the pantheistic strain, the naturalistic strain doesn't explain it. So it probably narrows it down to monotheism. I'm not sure the cosmological argument alone rules out deism. I think we need other arguments to get there.

But it seems to me it says Judaism and Islam and Christianity. I think it does rule out and seriously challenge Mormonism because the idea of God was once a man who had a God who was once a man and it goes back and there's not a cosmic beginning point. I think it raises serious challenges there. But it doesn't rule out, which is why many of the defenders of the Kalam argument are Muslims. I think Al-Ghazali contributed significantly to this. So in many ways that raised a question. if a god speaks us into existence, the next question is, has this God spoken and made himself known?

We don't have to have that conversation now, but that's where it goes to. So I don't see it as a fault that this doesn't get us all the way to the cross. I think it just is an argument that stays within its lane and has value, but it's a cumulative case. I agree with that. I mean, I think one of the benefits of natural theology and of apologetics, you know, as a, as a, a kind of ministry to the church, is that it can help us remember that our faith isn't just a blind leap. I mean, faith is fundamentally trust, right? And we do trust the God who made us. But it's not that we, in the same way that, you know, when we trust our computers to keep

stuff on them, this is not irrational. It's not. not something that we do independently of our minds and independently of confirmation that it's reliable at doing this. But nevertheless, there's something that we're actually driving at that isn't mere intellectual assent. We're driving at a kind of interpersonal trust in this being. But in just the way that like my confidence, my trust in my wife is built up when I become more rooted intellectually in understanding who she is and why she does the things that she does in the same way, our trusting God can be rooted in coming to an understanding of who he is and why he does what he does. And this is what these kinds of arguments help us understand. They help us

understand aspects of this God that we claim to trust. So I think we should expect, given that it's God, that there would be a lot of different aspects of that whole process, among which are thinking about the creation, which is kind of his, the first miracle. Good word. Love that. Excellent role of apologetics. Here's one. It looks like it comes from a skeptic who's joined the conversation before. It says, why do theists talk about the universe when the Bible only talks about the sky and flat earth? Is it dishonesty or something else? I would say a couple things. Now, I'm not a Hebrew scholar, so somebody could correct me if I got this wrong but from what i understand heavens and the earth is not the word universe but it's meant to be

all inclusive it's meant to be although people at that time and in biblical times didn't obviously understand there's other galaxies and the depth of the universe because they didn't have the technology to see it that was the understanding of the heavens what's above and the earth what's below so that was a term that would have included the universe even though they clearly didn't understand because they didn't have the technology to see what we meant by the universe. So it has nothing to do with dishonesty. I think Christians should just be clear about what the universe is. And I don't, that's my response. I don't think it's a matter of dishonesty. I think it's just we've discovered more since that time. And so we use the term universe. Would you have anything to that or what?

No, I think that's right. I mean, I think, you know, in the New Testament, I forget where it is, unfortunately, but, you know, Christ is described as having made everything that has been made. So it's clear that, of course, back in the ancient Near East, if people were thinking about, like, what is it that God has made, they would think that the answer, everything means something particular. but I think the fundamental biblical answer to the question, what has God made, is everything that isn't himself. And I think that's not only consistent with the Bible, but it's actually the overarching impetus of the scriptures,

is to say that. And that's what your point is about this language of heavens and earth. That's meant to say all things that aren't God. Everything that's created was created by God. That's a great answer. John 1-1. in the beginning was the word. The word was with God, and the word was God.

He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and nothing that was created, nothing was created, apart from being created by him, is what it clearly says. There's nothing that exists that was not created by him is all-inclusive by its very nature. I think we get echoes of that in Paul also all over the place. That's why I couldn't remember exactly where that. You might be right that I was even. thinking of John 1.

I'm trying to... Colossians 1 as well. Yeah. It's very inclusive. Okay. So somebody said, are we taking questions? Yes.

If you write question in caps, stated distinctly, and I see a ton of questions completely irrelevant to what we're talking about, although they're interesting. And I'm tempted to take some of them. Let's go back to some of the questions

that were sent in earlier through Twitter or through YouTube, et cetera. Let's ask, okay, I'll just throw... Oh, by the way, somebody asked, could we please comment on Penrose's conformal cyclic cosmology model? The answer is no, because I'm not a scientist, I'm not an expert, but... Same.

Stephen Meyer is coming back, and we are doing a two-part, in-depth series, and a response specifically to that question. So we're going to release that in a few weeks, and we want to get it right, we want to be careful. somebody as incredibly brilliant and just influential as Roger Penrose did a response to a comment that Steve made on my channel, which I thought was amazing that he engaged the content here. We're going to come back and we're going to address that. So hang tight. We're going to let the scientist who is an expert in this way into it. Okay.

Let's go to this one. All right. Let me ask you this. This one came through. is I would very much like more about the theory of multiple universes. Somebody wrote that on the YouTube video, the original one. So give me your thoughts on approaching multiple universes. Well, I think this shades into the stuff about Penrose,

because if I understand the Penrose view, it's a form of multiverse theory. I could be wrong about that. I'm not an expert, but I just want to be clear that the multiverse stuff does have. scientific aspects as well. Absolutely. So I want to be careful to just represent that I am not a scientist. I have a little bit of understanding of this, and I think that the really interesting things from my point of view are the more methodological questions about how we could come to

believe these things and what they would mean if we could. So my current understanding of this is that often multiverse theory is meant to be a strategy for explaining things like fine-tuning, origin of life and so on, without appeal to a personal cause. So it's an attempt to explain in a more empirical way things that Christians would explain in a supernatural way. And so in that way, it's a kind of philosophical conclusion. In fact, there's a big question about whether we can have empirical confirmation for multiverse-like theories, which is... That actually is true about the Penrose theory. So one of the big questions is whether Penrose's version of this kind of view, from my understanding, again, limited, is whether he might

have a theory where you could potentially get empirical confirmation, unlike many of the other multiverse-style theories. So if that's right, that's really interesting. But in general, these multiverse kinds of hypotheses, you can almost think of it this way. It's sort of in principle that you can't get empirical confirmation. And the reason is that empirical confirmation, comes by way of causation. It comes by way of something causing something else. We observe what is caused and reason to the cause of it. If these universes are causally isolated, we can't get empirical confirmation because they don't causally interact. And in that way, it's actually more of a philosophical theory than a scientific theory, at least in some of its manifestations.

And this goes back to something you mentioned earlier with just a kind of commitment to naturalism as a methodological principle. We only want to say that there are natural causes of the things that we observe. But that's not an assumption that every scientist agrees about. It's actually highly controversial among philosophers of science that we should be methodological naturalists. And I don't think Christians should think

that we should be methodological naturalist because, after all, we think ultimately God is the explainer of things in the world. So I think we have other reasons to not be a methodological naturalist. But anyway, if it's right, if it's right that you can't, that you don't have empirical confirmation for the multiverses. That is, if you can't get that or if we don't have it,

then it's a question of which of these theories, the God theory and the multiverse theory better explains what we observe. And with respect to things like, you know, one isolated thing like the contingency of the universe, I don't think multiverse theory helps at all. With respect to fine-tuning, maybe it helps a little bit, but I think there are still questions there. But there are other things that need explaining, too, like the evidence of the resurrection and all sorts of other reasons that we have for believing that aspects of Christianity are true. And God as a hypothesis, that's the kind of language that we get a lot in these conversations, explains those things naturally and well, whereas the multiverse theory might explain just a touch of them.

So suppose you're a multiverse person because, you know, fine-tuning or something, well, you still haven't explained the contingency of the multiverse. You still haven't explained the date of the resurrection. You still haven't explained all sorts of things, the existence of souls, you know, all of this kind of stuff. You have all sorts of problems still left to be explained. Your multiverse theory didn't get you very far, but the God hypothesis actually gets you all of those things. So as a theory, it's worse off in those. ways. Does that mean it's crazy or stupid or something? Of course not. But it just means that I think Christians have an explanation for these things that's more comprehensive and more powerful than you get from a multiverse theory. And so because we don't have the empirical confirmation, as far as I understand, it's not really something that Christians should worry about all that much. It's not something that is to be believed. Or anyway, it doesn't serve as like an alternative that should overcom. all the other reasons that we have. Do you think the multiverse threatens Christianity, if it were true, because I don't. No. I think it's interesting. Even C.S. Lewis in his first book in the Narnia

series has this suggestion of like these different worlds, not an infinite number of, but a different worlds that God could have created, kind of baked in before, as I'm aware of, the multiverse became at least a popular theory. Now, there's obviously a ton of different kinds of multiverses. there's not just one. But I think the argument that Meyer makes, and he's going to come back and talk about this, is even if there is a multiverse, it doesn't get rid of the need for information still within a multiverse.

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far away. When life unravels, hope can feel impossible or out of reach. Maybe today you're feeling like things are falling apart and you're wondering if you can trust God's good plans for your life. But what if, even here, God is still working to create something beautiful. Through honest stories and encouragement, the fabric of hope invites you to see your story through a new lens, one where your hard seasons have purpose and your waiting isn't empty. If you're long as you're long, for hope that will never unravel no matter what comes your way, the fabric of hope is for you. Find it wherever books are sold. Granted, and it needs to be accounted for, but really, like you said, this is a challenge

more to fine-tuning than it is the origin of the universe. Because it still raised the question, why is there a multiverse? Where did it come from? Why does something exist rather than nothing? And whether it's one universe or multiverse, it's still the same. fundamental question when it comes to cosmology, not so much fine-tuning. I think that's exactly right. So that's why I kind of mean to say this is maybe a more simple way to put it. The best you can get from a multiverse as far as I can tell is an explanation

of fine-tuning. But there's a lot more that needs to be explained. And I have a general principle as a Christian that I don't say what God can and can't do. So I'm not going to tell God he's not allowed to create multiple universes? I mean, it just feels like, so from the point of view of does it threaten Christianity? I think the answer is pretty clearly no. Doesn't at all. Yeah, I don't think so either. I think we can follow the research where it leads.

Exactly. Not threatened by it at all. Okay. All right. I do see a lot of questions here. If you write question in cap and it's understandable and relates to it, we will address it. a few of these, I don't know that I understand the nature of these questions. I mean, some of these are, we got some troll questions gone in here, which is fine.

I don't know that I understand this one. Maybe you do. It says, when God created the universe, did he intend Torah to be followed eternally? Intent Torah? Torah, T-O-R-A-H to be followed eternally. This feels more like a theological question. I'm not really sure where to go with that one. So I'm trying.

I'm reading some of these comments. I don't even, do you have any thought? I don't even know how to answer that one. I would say God gave the Torah to Israel before the Torah, not all the particulars, but a lot of the commandments like not to murder was given in Genesis 9, for example. It was clarified in the Torah. And obviously when Jesus came, he fulfills the law and fulfills the Torah. and so as Christians, we clearly believe when it comes to Acts 15, we have freedom to follow some of the law,

but we're given a very precise number there to continue to follow. So my quick answer is no. I don't know. You have any added that? I do, yeah, and I think it actually relates to creation. I mean, if you think that what Torah is doing is revealing the moral fabric of reality as, and particularly in the Old Testament, as that moral fabric of reality is meant to play out in the culture of Israelites because of, you know, all the relationships they have to other cultures around them and the distinctiveness that God wants for them and so on,

then I think in a sense we can say that these laws for life are revealing to us the natural order of moral reality. And in that way, so for example, you know, the reason why, you know, the reason why, the food laws go away is because the food laws were separators. This is why it's kind of funny, right? Peter has this dream, which he takes to be two things at once. You can eat anything, and you should proselytize the Gentiles. I think that tells you something about what the food laws were doing. They were a kind of separation, right? And then as the church now is expanded to include all people's, right, you have this ability to be able to be. You have this ability to be to, you don't have to worry about that kind of separation anymore, right? So that was about the

worship of God and how to set yourself off as a holy people. Now the ways we set ourselves off as a holy people are slightly different, but they're more, sure. Anyway, so the idea is that they're revelatory of the moral law that God instituted by creating the world that he did. Love it. In that sense, they're kind of eternal. Good stuff. Okay. Interesting. Did not expect you together. All right. We got a couple more questions here. Again, if you put caps in and state your question clearly and distinctly, we will try to get to it if it's related to the topic of conversation. Friday, drop in an interview with Dr. Doug Axe, Cambridge train, Berkeley trained on the question of the origin of life. And his book, Undeniable, he argues, has not been refuted.

And his arguments still stand. We're going to post that Friday. Give us an update there. And then take your questions next Tuesday. Doug Axe will be in studio. your calendars. Let's take this question right here. I'm scrolling down here.

Okay. All right. This is, okay, it's more of a philosophical one. It's a person wrote on the original YouTube video, isn't it strange how very intelligent people can perceive reality differently and come to entirely different conclusions, which must mean that intelligence has little to do with discovering what's truly important to know and it has more to do the integrity of the mind and the heart.

Now, that's not really a question. That was an observation. What are your thoughts on that? Why, very intelligent people would perceive things differently. Does it tell us that intelligence is not really the key to perceiving reality correctly? I have a lot to say about this, actually. I'll try to keep it short. I think this is a really interesting question because I think the commenter is right.

that intelligence, and if you're thinking of intelligence as the capacity to deal with evidence and think clearly and reason well and those kinds of things, so things like evidence, rationality, logic, all the other more cognitive feeling things, if what's being suggested is that all this intellectual business isn't doing all the work in determining what we believe, I think that's exactly I think that's right. However, I do think it's a little too pessimistic for me anyway to think that these things have little or nothing to do with our judgments and our theorizing. There are other factors in play, but nevertheless, I think the intelligence side of things actually does make a difference. One thing to add here is that that's a descriptive claim.

So we're just describing the facts, right? Of course, parents believe that their kids are good at sports just because they want to think well of their children, not necessarily because of the evidence of their eyes or whatever. So there is a descriptive thing. And as a descriptive claim, I think that's right. There's also a more a question of ideals or a normative question, as philosophers would say, a question about how things should be. And here, I think we can't forget the importance of intelligence. we have to be careful. We have to judge rationally. We have to think carefully. And you can get better at these things. Yeah. There are ways, and some people are naturally better and some of them aren't.

And I think crucially, and this is key, this is something I'm on about all the time. I basically wrote a whole book about it. But biblically, the heart includes the mind. So, and this is true both in the Old Testament and in the new. So in the Shama, in Deuteronomy 6, you should love the Lord, call your heart, soul, and strength. Heart, the Hebrew word there is lave. That word includes the mind in it. It's not opposed to the mind. It's not separate from the mind.

It's encompassing of the mind. It's encompassing of all the core faculties of what it means to be human, including the mind. And this is why when Jesus is responding to the question, what's the great. commandment. And he recites the shama, he adds the Greek word dianoya to the Greek word cardio, which is, of course, heart. So dianoya is the word that translates into our Bibles as mind. But in the New Testament as well, when Paul, for example, says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind, he's talking about your whole heart. He's not, he's talking about the way you feel, what you want. It's the mind, they did not think of us as these kind of separate faculties. This is

actually a question of great interest to me historically, like why we came to think this way. I have a lot to say about it. But here's one little fact that shows that this is actually true. In Joshua 22, as the Eastern tribes have finished their work helping Israel cleanse the land, Joshua is giving them a charge as he's sending them back across the Jordan to inhabit the places that they had wanted to stay. Right? And in that speech, he clearly is referencing the shaman, and he tells them to love God, to continue to love God with their heart.

In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, the word lave their heart, which is how it will appear in your modern English Bibles, is translated in the Septuagint as Dianoya. That's interesting. Mind. So this just points out that these people

who spoke both of these language fluently, embedded in cultures that spoke these languages, thought it in an apt translation of the Hebrew word lave, d'enoya, mind. So the point is, the Bible does not defied these things. So when we talk about intelligence, we're talking about the heart. We're talking about what it means to love God with our whole hearts. And so I think we need to not forget that, even as we recognize there are problems and even as I recognize there might be other things that are rightly involved. So anyway, that was a little bit long-winded. No, that was great. Tell us the name of the book that you- I talk about this in a book that I wrote called Knowledge for the Love of God,

Why Your Heart Needs Your Mind. It's a great book. Knowledge for the Love of God. We did a show on that maybe three years ago or so. Knowledge for the love of God. I think the key takeaway here is that our emotions and our will affects our mind. Our mind affects our emotions. We are whole beings.

Exactly. And there's a lot of reasons people can believe in God. A lot of reasons people can choose not to believe in God. And it's not the correlation between smarter people believe in God or smarter people don't believe in God. There's far more other factors that are at play than that. And clearly, if we could think of as brilliant people like Stephen Hawking, who doesn't believe in God, as smart as they will come. And then the equivalent, whoever you would want to cite on the theistic side believes in God, it's not going to settle it by pointing to people like that. Even scientists.

This doesn't settle it to point at scientists either because the scientific tradition in the West is chock full of people who are deeply devoted to God in one way or another. And I think the idea that these scientific inquiries are incompatible or any way opposed in some way to the pursuit of God with the mind actually doesn't, you couldn't make sense of the development of science. I mean, this is one of the points that we heard Steve Meyer make is that the history of science is a history of Christianity. And it's not just Christians that have been involved, especially of late. But early on, you needed to think the universe was comprehensible and able to be understood. And why is that? Because God's the creator. And he creates the world according to himself.

He creates us in order to understand what he has done. He's a god of order and structure and reason. And he wants us to deploy those powers in the context of like the diversity. of human beings to understand all the different dimensions of the world that he has made. I think that's a really beautiful thing. I think so, too. You know, it's amazing thing about some of the people like Aquinas, Newton believed the universe had a beginning, but they were pre-20th century, were not aware of the science.

What they would have thought if they could have seen the evidence come out for thermodynamics, evidence for the cosmic background, microwave, radiation, seeing the other evidence that is pretty convincing and compelling the universe had a beginning, what their response would have been, would have been pretty cool to see. All right, friends, we're here with Dr. Timothy Pickavans, friend and a colleague of mine at Talbot School Theology, teaching philosophy.

We'd love to have you think about joining us in the Apologize program or in the philosophy program. We go through a lot of this stuff in a ton of depth. A couple of things coming up you want to know about is April 22nd at Biola. that's a Wednesday at 7 o'clock. There would be a screening of the movie, The Story of Everything.

This is what Meyer was talking about. Doug Axe is coming to talk about that and Jay Richards soon as well. But that'll be live at Biola. You won't want to miss that. Let me know if you want us to keep doing these live streams, these Talbot Tuesdays, bringing in different faculty to take your questions

and engage live. Let us know if that's helpful. And a reminder that we're doing a full show on Penrose's model coming up in the next few weeks. Meyer will be back in studio to break that down in some depth two-part series you will not want to miss. And if you miss my review from last week on my discussion with Bart Erman, we just had a breakdown in some of the technology, but we have most of the audio. You have to find out what's called the Sean McDowell Show. It's an audio podcast. We get you there.

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