Inventing the Universe - Alister McGrath

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen I'm Michael hample I'm the presenter of St Paul's and on behalf of the chapter and the whole Cathedral Community a very warm welcome to today's Sunday Forum here in the ren Suite uh we're delighted that you're here whenever uh Professor McGrath comes it's standing room only so bear that in my next time bring your camping stools with you but it is lovely to see a full Ren Suite meet with so many people uh eager uh to hear our speaker and to engage in debate afterwards with him uh Professor McGrath is a northern Irish Theologian priest intellectual historian scientist and Christian apologist he holds the andreos idreos professorship in science and religion in the faculty of Theology and religion at the University of Oxford he has three doctorates from the University of Oxford a dill in molecular bio physics a doctor of divinity in Theology and a doctor of letters in intellectual history and doesn't it just show in the book that many of us have just read we're often told that faith and science are at war with one another and we have somehow to choose one or the other Professor McGrath says it's time to consider another way of looking at these two great cultural forces what if science and Faith might actually enrich each other the book that many of us have been been looking at and that Professor McGrath will talk about and from and to today is inventing the universe why we can't stop talking about science faith and God published by Hoda in 2015 we're delighted and very grateful that aliser McGrath is with us today the pollen is very very high at the moment and Professor McGrath has a sore throat so we're extra grateful to him for braving that uh and for nevertheless giving us his time uh and his thoughts and his wisdom please give a very warm welcome to alist mcra well ladies and gentlemen it's a huge pleasure to be with you today here at St Pauls I apologize if I croak from time to time I think we a victim of some sort of poll attack but uh hopefully we'll be able to cope with this my topic today is something about the relation of Science and faith I have 40 minutes so I can only sketch some themes and what I thought I would do is pick up on some themes from the book that the presenter mentioned which was called inventing the universe it's all about how we might think about the relationship with science and Faith let me say immediately there is no right way of understanding the relation of Science and faith and the history of this is so complex that unless you are an extremely dogmatic person or a person who actually doesn't doesn't like history very much um you know you cannot see a simple pattern you can impose a pattern I mean for example the so-called conflict thes that science and religion are universally and necessarily at war is a classic example of what we call a golden thread argument which means that you look at the immense complexity of history and you say well we'll pick out that incident and that incident that incident we'll tie them together and say that's the whole thing and in effect it simplifies it reduces it distorts let me give you example a very good recent example of this is Christopher hitch's book U God Is Not Great and this is a what I would describe as a maerial presentation of this very defective form of argument here's a little soundbite from that book he mentions that Timothy Dwight an American Theologian of the late 18th century opposed smallpox vaccination on religious grounds that is true what is not true is that that discloses a bigger pattern the in effect you have to stand back and say what other evidence is there and anyone who knows anything about small poox vaccination might suggest we need to bring other people into the dialogue for example the American Theologian Jonathan Edwards who was a vigorous advocate of small pox vaccination in the generation before Dwight and to prove to his students of Princeton that small pox vaccination was safe he had it himself and died from it 5 years later 5 days later so you know you might might think it's would mention that because it does suggest the picture is not quite as simple as he is suggesting or again those of you who know more recent history will think of a well-known 20th century writer which is George Bernard Shaw and George bernet Shaw a very aggressive in my view atheist um also opposed small pox vaccination saying this was the result of people like Joseph liser and Lou Pastor who were intellectual charlatans now think many of us would simply say well that is um that is something we don't really want to talk about very much but if you're like me and belong to a certain older generation you may remember watching Dr Finley's casebook on BBC many years ago and one of the episodes in that first series was Dr Finley trying to sort out a family who had read George Bernard Shaw and weren't weren't um inoculating their children against small pox as a result my point is simple you can simplify this and say Dwight that's the big picture that's it but it's not like that there isn't a big picture it's a complex picture of conflict of points Synergy of points unease of points happiness of points it's immensely complex and I would just urge you to be very cautious of those who simplify because very often they do so with very obvious agendas in this lecture what I want to do is open up some themes and what I'm going to say is really I'm telling you what I think about this relationship with science and religion not because I want to impose these views on you but because I want to give you food for thought I want to try and say Here's how I think about does this help you think through this in any way my own background is that of someone who as a teenager back in Northern Ireland was absolutely convinced that science and religion were um absolutely opposed to each other in effect to be a scientist was necessarily to be somebody who was opposed to religious belief and actually in Northern Ireland of the 1960s which is what we're talking about that was actually quite an easy belief to hold uh because at that time it seemed to me that that religion was creating social violence and therefore you know with all the certainties of 16y old seemed to me very very evident you know no religion no religious violence end of problem and but more I think more importantly I had this very strong sense that science was able to answer all of humanity is Big questions and therefore there's simply no legitimate intellectual space left for God and that was actually I have to say quite a common view around that time you still find it but I have to say to you that that that there's been a sort of sea change in recent years and people now are seeing these kind of things in different ways I think for me the the kind of major turning point of my own thinking was going to Oxford University to study chemistry in great detail and although I arrived at Oxford as an atheist who expected my um anti-religious Faith to be confirmed by my scientific studies actually it began to raise very very unsettling questions for example the nature of proof the relationship of theory and observation well such things as critical experiments the um very difficult question of the underdetermination of theory by evidence and so on and those of you who studied the philosophy of science will know all about these and don't need me to elaborate on them why I began to realize is that actually science was much more complex than I had realized that in effect I had a rather childish view of science which began to crumble when confronted with serious scientific thinking at a leading British research University and so in effect I I began to rethink things moving away from atheism to Christianity uh and trying to then say well I used to think think that religion was absolutely incompatible with Christianity how now can I begin to frame their relationship and in many ways the the book I've been talking about inventing the universe tells you something about how I began to navigate my way towards what I hope will be seen as a reasonably habitable way of thinking so what sort of ideas do we want to talk about well let me Begin by saying that we need some kind of framework work to begin to think about these things and this is actually much more difficult than you might think because people tend to have this view there was this thing called science very well defined there's this thing called religion very well defined and so it's quite easy to figure out what their relationship is but again the historians enter the picture and they show to us you might think of Peter Harrison's recent book the territories of Science and religion which is a must read if you're thinking about these question s in effectively makes the point that there is no defining definition of what science is or what religion is that's a very important point for example if there's anybody in the audience who's a sociologist of religion or a psychologist of religion you have to face up to the fact that religion is not actually empirically defined it in effect is a social construction it is what Society deems to be religion but religion itself is not an empirical notion at all so you have this real problem by definition right from the word go but nevertheless I think we can begin to do some navigating and I think there are two models that are quite helpful one of them is to say maybe we can think of Science and religion as offering us different perspectives on life so let me try and flesh that out in the book The philosopher I kind of way use as a dialogue partner most is Mary Midgley and many many of you have read Mary mgy she's a formidable lady she's now in the 90s she writes very very well very very clearly and in a series of recent books she develops the idea that in effect reality is so complex that we need what she calls multiple Maps if we're going to make sense of it and this means in effect that was something enormously complex we have to approach it from different angles and in order in order to give a full picture of a complex reality we have to say from this angle looks like this but from this it looks like this and in effect the the reality as a whole is the summation of these individual angles of view maybe she says we can think of science as one such angle of view and religion as another and she she gives us lots of examples um her best example is thinking of a very large aquarium which is very very hard to get your head around and you can look through little Port holes and you see bits of it and what you got to realize if you limit the aquarium to the bit you look at there you're missing so much you need to somehow bring these things together to weave these observational threads into a coherent overall picture I find that quite helpful because one way of beginning to think about science and religion is that many ways science is trying to help us understand how things work how they function and that I want to emphasize is an enormously important question but religion actually is dealing with something slightly different which is what do things mean I'm going to come back to that later but the point I'm going to say is that the these things are not actually inconsistent they're inconsistent if somehow thinking about meaning is inconsistent with observational facts that's certainly true but they don't need to be and the point I'm going to emphasize is that we need a big picture of reality unless you're going to limit yourself to a hopelessly superficial and thin account of a complex reality you need to find some way of being able to weave together different ideas and say these are all part of something bigger and it's so easy to say I look at things this way and that's it but the challenge is to say well maybe that is one way of looking at things the question is what other things need to be said so mer immedately I think gives us one way of beginning to do this and it is I think helpful in some ways but not I think in others so here is another way of thinking which again I find helpful and I'm offering to you in case it may be helpful to you as well I to say maybe we need to think about science of religion working at different levels different levels now what do I mean by that basically it's saying that if you try to offer an explanation for something you can give explanations at different levels but those explanations are not necessarily contradictory for example um I am raising a glass of water why am I raising a glass of water well you can give one answer which is basically um you know the sort of electromechanical stimula coming down my arm muscle contraction there we go that explains how I raise the glass of water and you see that's right I mean I mean that is right but it's only part of the answer and you know what the rest of the answer is the rest of answer is I've got a sore throat so therefore I say I need a glass of water or again to give a very famous example from the discussion of this question you might like to imagine a kettle that's boiling on a gas ring why I say a gas ring because the guy who first used this was writing back in the 1960s and that was what he used but anyway there's a kettle boiling in the gas ring question why is the kettle boiling well answer one because gas has being converted into energy through a process of energy conversion which you can describe raising the water to the boiling point that's right but the point you also want to make is well the kettle's boring because I wanted to make a cup of tea now now I know it sounds trivial but those are both right does the fact that answer one is right mean that answer two is wrong no does the fact that answer two is Right mean answer one is wrong no the key point is that you can offer a scientific explanation for something which illuminates part of it but in effect leaves open room for further explanatory engagement and that's the point I want to make Ian not like Richard Dawkins would say you can offer scientific expan for everything I'm sure he's right but it's not a total explanation in fact there's a lot more that needs to be said so what more does need to be said for me one of the questions we need to ask is whether Natural Sciences have limits I'm going to talk about this in relation to what I think is a very important question which is the the fact that we as human beings crave for meaning those of your psychologists will be aware of the work of Crystal Park or Ken pargament and in effect they've done a whole series of studies to in effect show how this drive to find meaning really is important to people and scientifically you can you can actually get quite a long where in in dealing with this question you can say let us investigate what it is that people find meaningful and the difference that it makes to their lives and a social psychologist like Roy bister would say there are four key areas where people actively seek and reflect because these are seen as being important to their psychological well-being the four that Roy B mentions are the following let's see if these make sense to you number one identity who am I number two a agency what difference can I make to this world number three value do I Really Matter number four purpose why am I here and the psychologists tell us and I have no reason to dispute this that these questions remain really important for most people psychologists don't actually tell us why we find these things important they're very helpful clarify the fact that we do and in effect allowing us to map that on to our Reflections about life but the key point I going to make is this if as human beings meaning matters profoundly what happens if science can tell us what that meaning is and it's it's a real question one of my favorite scientists is s Peter Med he's an Oxford scientist he died some years ago he won the the Nobel Prize for medicine for his work on immunobiology but towards the end of his life he wrote a little book called the limits of Science and rationalist I mean meow was a rationalist he didn't really like religion very much but he was very very clear he said look there are certain questions that science is not merely unable to answer now but will be unable to answer at any point and these are things like meaning and value and the point he's trying to make is that actually if science answers those questions it stops being science and becomes something else that's a very interesting question some of you will have read for example um Sam Harris's book the moral landscape which in effect tries to give a scientific answer to this question of morality but in effect saying you can provide a scientific answer to questions of what it is we should value and it's a very interesting book The difficulty is it's smuggles in all kinds of metaphysical and moral presuppositions in answering the question and in the end I think it constructs a purely circular argument but it's interesting because it recognizes the importance of this question where do our ideas of value where ideas of meaning come from and in the book inventing the universe why I try to say is look um maybe we can hold science and Faith together in some way for example by saying that they illuminate different areas of Life which are important now this does not settle boundary issues for example what happens if there's overlap or if there's some kind of dispute but it does give us this framework for beginning to think about these things for me one of the great things about science is its emphasis on evidence in other words that you need to be able to give reasons for what it is that you believe and therefore if you're a scientist you are going to want to say I want explanations of of why this happens I don't want a a sort of reassertion it does happen I want some sort of explanation and the importance of evidence in this I think is enormously important this has led some people to say in effect that you must be able to prove everything that you believe and this I think is one of the habits of the movement that sprang up in 2006 2007 which I think has faded away since then sometimes called the new atheism which in effect seem to say that you only accept what it is that you can prove I hope I've misunderstood them because that's clearly just not right basically the issue that we all face whether you are religious or non-religious or anti-religious is that all of us end up believing things that go beyond the available evidence and if I had to make a criticism of the new atheism I think one of the points I would make is that it uses criteria to judge others beliefs which it doesn't apply to itself in other words you know you prove your beliefs but mine are so self-evidently correct I don't need to do this I do want to raise a question about that but there's a much more important question here and let me make this through an intermediary this is Sir Isaiah Berlin who's one of Oxford's well rather one of Oxford's most important philosophers and intellectual historians and Berlin focused on people's ethical political and social ideas very important things to think about as we approach a general election and Berlin made this point it's a very telling point and I leave this um suspended in the air so to speak for you to think about what Berlin says is that when we look at the really big questions that give each of us purpose and Direction animation about what the nature of good is what kind of society we're looking for who we think we are what we're meant to be doing and so on we find ourselves in this difficult situation of believing things and believing them to be important but being unable to prove that they are true postmodern philosophers would simply say well that that's the way it is get used to it you know that is part of the epistemic Dilemma we face as human beings which is there are things that really matter to us and that we have good reason for thinking are right but cannot actually prove that they are true and that's just the way we are you can prove lots of stuff in logic and Mathematics when it comes to other things like the meaning of life why we're here and so on things get rather more complex Isaiah Berlin's point is this since none of us can prove the things that really matter in life we could at least be gracious to each other and try to learn to live with each other now that's a politician speaking and I respect that judgment enormously but I want you to note the intellectual point that lies behind it that in effect all of us end up holding things precious important which we can't absolutely prove to be right that does not make us irrational if you look at for example the massive literature on to give you for example um social epistemology and things like that you know this is just the way the field has gten the recognition that because we are human beings we are trapped in a sit situation which means that we end up really being committed to things that can't be proven to be true but are not irrational have not abandoned reason in doing so what I'm going to make therefore is actually we find ourselves in similar positions whether we're scientists or whether we're religious Believers a good example from science would be the debate about whether there's simply one universe or whether there's this thing called a Multiverse a kind of bubble of universes and many of you will know this debate and the key point is simply that the observational evidence is there the question is how do you interpret it and the Multiverse the universe are two different ways of reading that same evidence there's no question of the evidence forcing you to one conclusion it's open and you've got to try and figure out where you stand and having sat in in some of these discussions you know I can say with complete integrity I hear some of my scientific colleagues Oxford saying we believe this is the best way of looking at things and others taking the opposite position we believe this is the best way of looking at things but listen very carefully they all know the way things are so it's none of this nonsense you're irrational thinking that it's this gracious informed realization that reality is complicated and therefore slick simple answers very often are just not right and so this recognition that we have to learn to live with this tension between different ways of thinking because the evidence itself is not absolutely ambiguous looking back on my own intellectual career I think I would now say that in effect um I was someone who believed that there was no God in Brackets thinking I could prove it close brackets who became a Christian now believing there is a God in Brackets but realizing I can't prove that and then in a much longer bracket but then looking back in my time as naist iiz I couldn't prove that either so in fact it's a question of atheism and Christianity other faiths in effect being Faith being belief systems and just recognizing that and moving on from this very unhelpful attempt to say there's faith and there's fact I mean that's a very 18th century position and we have rather moved on from that things are much more complicated simply because in effect facts very often rest on theoretical Reflections on observational entities so I want to give plenty of time for discussion so let me begin to wrap things up how do we think about the relationship of Science and Faith well the answer is there are many ways we could do this and I've tried to map out a few but there are many other things that need to be said but for me one of the things that really I find very attractive and Powerful F about Christianity is what CS Lewis identified in his own life as a thing that Drew him to Faith away from atheism back in the late 1920s and it is a sense that Christianity offers you this persuasive attractive and intelligible way of looking at the world and Lewis summarized this in a a quotation which you'll find at the end of a lecture he gave at Oxford during the second world war and this is a quotation that he he ends that lecture with I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else and the point I is making there is the capacity of a system to make sense of things is indicative of its truthfulness or its reliability I I would endorse that I endorse it humbly I'm not being arrogant about this but it does seem to me to something that's really very important now here's the big Point Lewis was very very clear that that big picture could include science could help us make sense of Science and its limits without in any way colonizing science as a kind of Christian activity so for me that is quite an important point to make as I'm here at St Paul's I ought to say that John dun who was Dean St Pauls in the old St Pauls before the Great Fire of London actually says something very very similar in his sermons and those so well worth looking at and for that reason so let me bring this lecture to an end and that use plenty of time for discussion and by trying to say if if we are talking about maybe science and religion enriching each other and obviously I know many people say well we're not sure that can be done but just run with me for a few moments how might that actually happen in other words I've talked about something in a very abstract way this idea of En richment could I try and provide you with some sort of illustration or application to give you a sense of how that might work out so I'm going to give you one or two just to show how this might work out and these are simply ones I found helpful or representative and I'm sure there are many others that could be given as well one of them is Einstein's theory of relativity and many of you will know about this is all about world lines it's about Point X1 Z1 T1 you and then moving on to X2 Z2 T2 and so on and basically Einstein's point is that in fact the physical description of the universe is set out in terms what we sometimes called these World lines here's the point in uh just about a year before he died himself one of um Einstein's closest friends at Zurich Michelle besso died and Einstein wrote a very interesting letter of condolence to best so's family in effect saying look for us believing physicist that's his phrase um we all know that past present and future just you know they're all the same there's no difference between them that that actually the sense that the present is really important there kind of Illusion that we hold on to and I often wonder what bessel's family made in response to that letter of condolence uh because it kind of way it didn't really seem to engage the fact that besso had actually died uh and that yes it's right look look there's the the past is the present is a future we're not there in the past we're here in the present we're not there in the future and actually it's quite important to us that we live in this present moment and think of that being significant and Rudolph carap a very famous vienes philosopher who happened to be in Princeton around the time that Einstein was there said that as as Einstein reflected on this he began to realize that for human beings questions of identity the present moment the fact that we exist in this bit of history but not that bit of history is actually really important and the point that norat was making simply was that um this didn't seem to fit into Einstein's way of thinking and he reports Einstein is in effect saying that he seemed to realize there was something Beyond physics that was necessary if we were to give people something meaningful by which they can live that's quite interesting because the key point is that Einstein is not saying I give up on relativity there much more maybe we need something more than that to deal with human beings are and what is they looking for but here's another one this is much simpler this is looking at the night sky I'm sure many of you have done this um I opened the book inventing the universe by just talking about um an experience I had back in the 1970s when I and a friend decided we would um go around Iran and we did that and and to do it you had to go by bus in the middle of the night because it was so hot during the day and we went across these vast deserts on the way from one city to another and in one of these cases the bus broke down in the middle of a desert in the middle of the night and all the passengers got off and waited for the bus to be fixed but it was a vast desert it was solemn it was still there was a pitch black sky above us and the stars were blazing down with an intensity I've never seen before I we get air pollution here there was none in the Iranian desert I I was overwhelmed by the sense of Amazement at this um Universe around us I kind of way struggled to take it in but it was very much there and I suppose the question that that raises for many of us is this how do we begin to observe this remarkable universe without simply reducing it to the level of theoretical functions in other words how can we understand how the universe works without losing that sense of amazement and awe and wonder at the beauty of the universe and that's why I think we need to have systems at our disposal intellectual Frameworks which help us say we can look at this wonderful universe and try and make sense of it by the same time allowing us to take Delight in it in a sense almost saying it is so big we cannot take it in and that makes us Wonder at the same time we're very grateful we seem to be able to make so much sense of it but you see lying behind it there is this deeper question not simply the response of Wonder and amazement but this deeper question of what does it mean and that really is the point I'm going to end on this need for meaning which I flagged up earlier in this lecture the psychologists tell us it's human to seek for meaning so we look at the night sky what does it mean it might just mean that we are hopelessly insignificant that in effect the vastness of the universe overwhelms us we don't matter to anyone we here for a while gone and that is it and some of you may know a very interesting book by an American cell biologist a book is entitled The Sacred depths of the universe it's a very interesting book and in this book um one of the major themes is simply the sense of the intellectual pressure that that begins to emerge as you recognize the universe is going to end that in effect uh we seem to be hopes in significant and that in effect caused the writer of that book simply to close these questions down the universe is so big we are so small we are insignificant in comparison you might find that very same idea expressed in that very interesting Persian work the rubat of Omar kayam that inverted Bowl we call the sky we're under crawling could we live and die lift not your hands to it for help for it rolls impotently on as thou and I that's that sort of idea Christianity I speak of Christianity because it's the faith I know best and and which I adhere gives you a different way of looking at that it says yes the universe is V but you nonetheless matter and you might think of Psalm 8 which looks at the immensity of the universe and then makes the point that actually each of us still matter to that God who made them and in fact articulates almost like a theological frame one who Maks the doctrine of creation becomes in effect a means of sustaining hope identity and meaning in the face of this vastness of the universe so in this lecture I've kicked around a lot of ideas i' kicked them about very very briefly it's simply to give you an idea of some of the questions that the relation science of Faith might raise and some of the answers that might be given and clearly in the book itself I talk about a lot of other issues in more detail and I have just published another book called the great mystery the great mystery published Again by hoder which focuses on this question of why is it as human beings we ask questions about meaning and were do those thing think thoughts take us so that basically is a very brief synopsis of a fascinating field I'm not going to stand back and let you take the floor for the next uh 20 25 minutes I'm very happy to let you direct the conversation in whatever way you like and I will do the best I can to answer your questions so who would like to begin our conversations if you just like to raise your hand I will try and pick you up and we'll see where the conversations go uh I'm looking for a question and a question here yes please that definition of sence seems to well I think that if you look at the literature there's a very significant debate about what is science what is pseudoscience what lies outside it and for me this I actually share your view to some extent this isn't a very important question but some think it's very important I think what what you can do is say that there is a generalized scientific method which finds application in different ways in different fields I think that's quite an important Point um to begin with but actually it is very very difficult to know where to draw boundaries and what in effect comes as science and what does not and the question is made much more difficult by the English language which uses the word science to mean what other languages mean by simply intellectual disciplines in general so that there's a real issue there I mentioned Peter Harrison's work and Peter Harrison's work the ter of Science of religion is a historical survey of what the word science has meant in literature really over the last thousand years and making the point it shifts meaning it shifts in response to changing practice it shifts in change in response to changing social debates and shifts in response to cultural contexts and he draw a rather dispiriting conclusion actually it's very very difficult to give any meaningful answer to the question what is science that doesn't stop people from saying well surely it's this I think that's an entirely reasonable response and you could I think quite easily give an answer in terms of utility which I think is is possibly your approach but I think some people do take the following line of argument science is what tells us what is Right therefore we privilege science in Social discourse and so on so actually in that sense for those people it is actually quite significant for me science illuminates part of the picture but only part and we need to bring in other disciplines as well if feel like it's going back to CP snow and that very famous lecture of 50 plus years ago and it just seems to me that we need to find some way of holding these together because there a real danger that scientists and and humanties people just don't talk to each other I think there's a real conversation to be had there thank you let's keep going you talked about um uh in your examples about multi-universe multi-universe and and single universe and about the graciousness of both sides and could that be um duplicated with Christianity and with other religions as well as science and Christianity and other religions but but all the major faiths looking at each other in that way well I do hope so I mean I mean my own view is that you can say I think I'm right and I think I good reason thinking I'm right but a this doesn't allow me to be arrogant and to in fact dismiss others and be in my view the Supreme characteristic of somebody who is secure in their beliefs is their willingness to listen to others because in effect that is how if you are a Searcher for truth rather than a Searcher for dogma of some sort you know in the end your conversations with other people will help you either say I think I'm still right because I can respond to that or in fact I may need to do some more thinking and those conversations are what helps you find truth I have to say I dislike intensely dogmatism whether it is atheist or scientific or religious precisely because it tries to shut those conversations down it tries to imply it's almost AC mically irresectable and irresponsible to have those kind of conversations I think we really need to have those conversations and I've tried to suggest that we to be respectful and humble about them but I don't want to emphasize it doesn't mean you give up on what you believe to be truth it means that you feel well if I really have found the truth then I ought to be able to respond gracely to this and if I can't maybe I haven't found the truth for me the more aggressive somebody is it's it's very often a smoke screen for intellectual insecurity so that's a very important point to bear in mind I think good question thank you let's keep going over in the corner please good afternoon I wonder um how you might respond to a humanist world view of why we pray for me well I I I think I would need to ask you what do you mean by the word humanist because I mean I'm a Christian humanist I have friends who Islamic humanist friends from Jewish humanist I mean do you mean a secular humanist yeah I mean I would I would say that um this is a very important question conversation let's have it and and let let's begin by saying you know we need all perspectives to be in the conversation because you know this is how civilized human beings proceed un like that my own view is that um secular humanism um in effect does need to take this question of why it is that human beings seek meaning much more serious than they've done and I think that um I I don't want I mean there are atheist in this room I'm delighted you're here I do not judge you by Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion I want to make an absolutely clear I mean that is just not representative of the intellectual respectable atheism and one of the reasons is that he in effect just closes this question down it's a very important question I think we need to really take it very very seriously for me the really interesting question that emerges from this and that's one where I think I would very much like to hear the secular humanist answer given clearly because I think it's very important is what bigger picture can we give that leads us to seek meaning in the first place if someone like CS Lewis or John dun you know I mean basically the answer is all to do with being made in God's image which in effect gives us a homing Instinct for God that kind of thing so in effect there's a kind of it fits in very neatly into this way of thinking I I I I have read certain secular humorist writers and I have to say I'm not I I'm looking for something more than that and if if that conversation gives me more than that I would personally be delighted with again these conversations really matter thank you uh over here please sir and then we'll go forward back to you sir yes please my question follows on that course um I tend to think you did raise the question what might be the meaning of life I certain did yes you didn't answer it by saying well we're all intended to Exist by God I take it you believe that to be the case so I tend to believe that um we're the result of evolution we have conscious experiences that can be pleasant or unpleasant and we should Endeavor to diminish the unpleasant ones and maximize the pleas ones yeah but my question really is um how do you conceive the universe assuming it was planned to Exist by God 14 or so billion years ago so that we are here now do you conceive that at the moment of the initial creation God knew exactly what was going to happen because he knew and could work out every last detail to an infinite number of decimal places which you would need to do to get us here now which uh is possible thing um if determinism is true in physics but that also knocks away a lot of religious Notions about Judgment of God and everything to do with judging people because all their actions would have been determined by the initial or do you final point do you think that quantum theory is true there's indeterminism which means that every moment an atom could go this way or that way and not even God could work out which way it would go because it's arbitrary in which case he couldn't be certain however carefully he stting is that we would be here now well let's begin with that third point I mean as you know there are multiple ways of understanding quantum theory they're all empirically equivalent and certainly what you've given us is a slightly popularized account of the Copenhagen way of reading it but then you see you might also think of deid boom's approach or you might think of others as well where actually indeterminism is not intrinsic to the way the universe is it's an aspect of that particular way of reading quantum theory and you have to explain why you chose that way of reading quantum theory rather than a different one because they do have very different metaphysical implications I think for me one of the most important things for a Christian way of thinking is that God in effect creates human beings with the capacity for for change for freedom for making decisions and that I think does raise questions about um determinist reading of things I I am puzzled for example by Sam Harris's book on Free Will which um seems to me to in effect basically rule the idea out it just seems to me to be a very worrying account of what human beings are because you rightly pointed out the importance of meaning and I I didn't really get give my account of what I think by meaning but it's along the lines you think um but the point I was trying to make is that the actual the fact that we seek for meaning is really important and you can guess what my approach to meaning is but I think that there's something really very important to add to this and and and is this that um we we talk very Loosely about God creating the Universe I think what we need to say is actually that we tend to in fact almost think of there being a timeline and at T1 along that timeline God brings the universe into being and and kind of way the real difficulty is that time is itself part of that created order so in effect we are talking about the establishment of time and matter at the same time which raises some very interesting questions so for me there is no need to propose a radical determinism I think that that is one way of reading a Quantum approach to to to our universe but I think there are many other things which I need brought on that picture as well thank you uh was it back yes please sir thank you you are in the unique position being a brilliant scientist and an Ariz Theologian now Thomas had some doubt about resurrection and he has to see the mark before Believe In Christ said well do you believe because you've seen the mark and Christ answer was blessed are those or SE the but yet believe what is more important for us as Christians is it to have some doubt about the existence of God and so or to continue to have faith in believing in the existence of God thank you I think that's a very good question and it's going to require a longer answer than I can give but let me let me sketch the beginnings of an answer number one um it's not just Christians who have doubts any thinking person all have doubts about their worldview precisely because there's always a point of conflict between the worldview and universe the difficulty is that um you you you find that there is always intellectual tension between any put like this big picture any metan narrative precisely because it is so so embracing and the complexities of our universe so you know I mean I mean I have atheist friends who will say we are atheist but you know we are aware it's not there are some there are some little problems you know they're quite clear about that so I want to say that actually you ra question specifically about Christianity but it's a broad question of how we coexist with D I read bertr Russell many years ago and Russell was ultimately I think not so an atheist he's more just uh someone who realized that it's very very difficult to answer questions and pragmatically chosen to be an atheist but if you read his book the principles of Western philosophy on page seven of the introduction there's a wonderful line which I kind of still carry around with me which is say the chief task of philosophy is to enable us to cope with uncertainty without being paralyzed by indecision I it's a it's a wonderful line saying look this is the way things are get used to it but that doesn't need to paralyze us now the example you've given from John's gospel is very very powerful and and there are two things I think I would say in response to that one is to say that D is just part of a life of Faith certainly true of the Christian faith and actually I have to say any faith where the believer actually thinks about things will'll find that the same thing is true there and maybe in the case of John's gospel maybe there's also this thought that this this episode is actually intended to console those who have these same DTS later and just say look um these have been anticipated you're in good company that might set context for the kind of questions you're thinking lot more these we said but thank you very much yes please and then over here I think that might be all fit in but please yes how would you define meaning or what does meaning mean to you how do I Define meaning that is really interesting and the reason it's really interesting is because um there's a very interesting series of seminars at Oxford going on right now about exactly this question um how what does meaning mean and it's a really difficult question um I there are a whole series of um philosophers who in effect talk about philosophy disengaging with this question because it's so difficult to answer and um I think one of the things you notice that people find it much easier to say let us figure out what people find meaningful which is a sort of descriptive or empirical account of things whereas the question of meaning actually is almost something something deep in that there is something there which perhaps is to be discovered or perhaps you know you you come across and that tells you what things really are all about or if the word meaning has a normative sense and so so I think that there's a real issue there for me the big problem is this science is extremely good at dealing with things that we apparently observed but you can't read off meaning from the world in fact it's about an interpretation of what's going on in the world and so for that me for me that's saying this is not something we can resolve empirically we can't in fact do an experiment to say you know this means that this means this you know in fact we're we're left with this uncertainty and yet on the other hand there is this very strong body of scientific evidence which says in effect to be human is to Quest for meaning you've read a book by Janette wion it's called it's a lovely title appear about three years ago why be happy when you can be normal is that wonderful time and um and in it she says and the human beings don't just eat hunt reproduce they search for meaning we are meaning seeking animals I think he's absolutely that's what literature is saying but that does not tell us what the answer is and that that for me is is is why things are so complicated you know all liter saying it is human to Quest for meaning and yet very often we then say that's great what is the answer to that question well you see that that's where the Instinct bit really starts so what I'm saying to you is is that I think that that because it's so important we do need to ensure we can deal with that because as again you will know there's quite a large body of literature saying if you feel you have found meaning you can cope with doubt and distress um n's book um J titles goods and D room Twilight of the idols one of his philosophical aism is you can cope with any how if you have a why he was getting that saying but he doesn't that does not mean he can tell us what meaning is it's this he can say it's really important and and we can all agree on that so I'm afraid I'm I'm I I can tell you what I think I can tell you why I thought it but I I've I've not come here to kind of way dump my views on you I'm saying that really there's such a big question is more discussion and in this book I mentioned the great mystery I'm I'm opening up precisely that question with the literature and just saying let's look at some of the answers given and see where they take us so thank you for raising that very good question and over here we have what's going to be our last question today I'm afraid yes please he touched on prision about past present and future and suggestion that we find more significant for ourselves in living in the what do you think about whether we find more meaning perhaps in trying to GRA with the understanding of God outside time and that seeking well that that again that's a really interesting question I mean I mean if God um create Universe in the sense in which God is outside time because that's what creation makes happen and yet certainly when I was thinking about these things back when I was 18 you know one of my big issues was well that you know if there is a God then it makes no difference life at all because God's outside of the space time um you know whole thing what difference does that make and then I discovered this Christian idea of incarnation and that's that's a game Cher because that is very much about God outside time coming into time inhabiting the specifics of space and time and therefore becoming available and accessible to people in time and if that's right it really is a game Cher so that that to me was really very important but I think your question you know raises lots of other issues as well and I think that really as as as I wrap this lecture up I think that one of the things to say is that I think that Christian churches are very often quite good at saying this is what Christians think I I don't think they're very good at saying here's here's why we think these things but for me the the really important thing is actually not so much that but if this is true what difference does it make I'm saying and so for me that that really is question of trying to unpack the the implications of this way of thinking for the way we think the way we live and that seems to me to something that is still a work in progress if I could begin we've had a wonderful question they' be much behind the answers I gave I'm afraid but I hope that they show to you that these very rich questions that this is a really interesting topic uh and I've just given you what I think about there's a lot of more think about and I very much hope that in some way I've tried to open this up for wider discussion thank you so much indeed

Channel: St Paul's Cathedral

Views: 10,751

Keywords: St Paul's Cathedral, Alister McGrath, Inventing the Universe, Science, Religion, Church of England, Christianity

Id: 9it5w2DowKU

Length: 55min 50sec (3350 seconds)

Published: Tue May 09 2017