Is There A Place For God In Science? Brian Cox Responds | Q&A

so I don't have a I don't believe in God however and I don't like the the antagonism that occurs always produced by this question I mean what you can save you if you have cosmologists what you should say is so we know that the universe was very hot and dense 13.8 billion years ago we don't know how it got hot and dense we don't even know actually if the universe had a beginning in time don't know so that to me is where the science science starts for me with I don't know getting order the point of that question I had a bit of an argument with famous atheists Russell Brand is also comic as we know that but you said Russell's not an atheist wrote Russell's and he's not strongly believes in there you said to him that science doesn't rule out the existence of a creator no but in the sense that I just said that I think we're overstepping the mark III do not believe there's any evidence for a creator however that there certainly isn't no you know that the the point is that the correct thing to say is we don't even know whether the universe had a beginning I don't even know whether it was eternal nobody does so so that that was the point I was making I think we're over we're stepping into a an area where we don't really need to be yeah and I think a point and as scientists we need to be humble about the fact that we don't know everything and we shouldn't pretend to know anything on a lot of questions because climate change is so incredibly complex the marine system is all these different inputs and circulations and different drivers and so you know we get to the limit of our knowledge and I think really what you're trying to say is we need to be careful not to go beyond what we know the great great Richard Feynman the great written Nobel Prize means he is a beautiful quote where he says that then it says what is the meaning of it all and he said and he says in the end we have to admit that we do not know but in admitting that we may have found the open channel that's the key to science we don't know David what do you think so I could I completely agree with all of those comments but this obviously lots of if you like mysticism that helps people understand their unexplained observations science is one way that we use for trying to under gather evidence to help understand a range of if you like previously unexplained phenomena others in the past and some presently also use their own observations and then faith to help them explain that I think those are different perspectives Nannie is better or worse than the others but we need to be careful that if we want to understand natural phenomena I think what we have to think about is how can we use the evidence that emma talked about before to make policy decisions I would much rather base those on well-founded well collected evidence than faith fair enough Kirsten what do you think it's an interesting question do you think there is some sort of creative being that exists beyond science I'm going to be my favorite answer to give to any science question if I don't know I don't know we don't know there's it's like brian says that there's i'm gonna say there's null evidence not know got some null just there's a very quick serious point i'd like to make which is that i remember once I was given a talk to schools in in London and London is a very very diverse population at many people of many faiths and on and I was asked that question is it possible to be a scientist in believing God and I was taken back actually and I thought so I said yes and I was gonna have some common caveat like you said that caveat is there but I got a round of applause and I thought this this is important because the last thing someone like we should do is close off that possibility of being a scientist because someone has well I mean professor Professor Henry Brown who built the interferometer up in the parks I think using he believed in God I grew up with their art so that the worst thing today would be for the you know a roomful of the students to say well you can't be you you can't be a scientist because you believe this thing or that thing I do that's that would be a terrible thing got time for sorry quick no I mean you know if we say God it's it's everybody would imagine something different I suppose and and we have to be realized that it's probably not sort of a little translation of the Bible that the earth was created in seven days and all the rest of that certainly from the scientific perspective that would be hard to adopt but going back further in time and with some of the unknown questions that are still confronting us you know so I think I think we have to be a little bit open-minded about what God is to people and what it could be

Channel: abcqanda

Views: 432,082

Rating: 4.7588992 out of 5

Keywords: Q&A, QandA, auspol, australian politics, Tony Jones, politics, abc, abc news, God in science, Brian Cox, believing in God and science.

Id: FoKo4M-bbVI

Length: 5min 11sec (311 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 17 2019