Michio Kaku - The Question Of God

[Music] welcome this is dr. Michio Kaku professor of theoretical physics at the City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and this is exploration that beacon exploration we discuss the fascinating world of science and its impact on society and today we're gonna deviate from our usual format because I'm going to try to answer some of the emails that I get first of all I have to apologize I get so many emails that it's impossible for me to answer all them so I want to take this opportunity to answer some of these emails on air one persistent email that I always get is the question of God and believe it or not God is in the news that's right first of all the late Stephen Hawking has a new book coming out posthumously where he says bah humbug there is no God and he even gives a quote scientific proof unquote of the non-existence of God so well we'll talk about that and then the Einstein God letter is up for auction if you have a spare million dollars then you too can possess a piece of science history a handwritten letter in Einsteins own handwriting addressing the question of God and I think the media has misinterpreted that letter but anyway the god letter is up for auction and if you have the spare million dollars then you too can have a piece of science history so on exploration I'll try to answer that question what does science say about the existence of God and for that matter what do I think about the existence of God but first of all this question has practical historical implications in the world scene if you were to go back let's say a thousand years a thousand years the past at a time when the Europeans were engulfed with the Inquisition and burning witches and finding demons and witches everywhere you begin to realize that the Chinese the Moslem empires were going quite well for example if take a look at the names of the stars many the names of the stars are Arabic Algol Altair not to mention algebra where do you think the out of algebra came from then what happened was about a thousand years ago there was a debate a debate which affects during history even today Islamic scholars began to debate the question is there a god or is there something called natural law that supersedes God or was the relationship between God and natural law an at one hand we had the great scientists of the Islamic world these two people who worked out mathematics algebra these are the people who worked out trigonometry they are the ones who gave names to the stars in the heaven they were astronomers mathematicians engineers architects and they believed in studying natural law perhaps could be one way to glorify Allah however there were also the fundamentalist who said bah humbug we don't have to study natural law because God can change natural law any time he feels like so why bother to study something which is so complicated natural law when Allah could simply snap his fingers and change natural law well this debate went on for centuries but it mainly signified the decline of basic science in the Islamic world the great centers Adamic learning gradually fell into the dust it became a forgotten footnote in history that one day long ago optics physics astronomy mathematics was pioneered by the Islamic world and that led to the decline which ultimately culminated in the decline of the ottoman empire so when World War one took place the Islamic world was known as the sick man of Asia and Europe people begin to cut up the Ottoman Empire and what we have today is the rump of the ottoman empire being turkey and so we see the fact that abandoning science had implications not just the illogical implications about the existence of God and natural law no it also had direct implications in terms of prosperity in terms of development science even warfare all of that depended upon being nourished by the seeds coming from science and science fell into decline as a consequence well now let's take a look at the Western world 500 years ago the West was not much to look at it was a net importer of technology technology came from elsewhere like from China and from the Islamic world Europe was a net importer of technology and then we had the persecution of Galileo Galileo was asked do you really believe in God because your writings seem to indicate that perhaps there is no God well Galileo says something very important he said the purpose of science is to determine how the heavens go the purpose of religion is to determine how to go to heaven so in other words the purpose of science is to figure out natural laws and the purpose of religion is ethics how to go to heaven how to be a good person how to be an upstanding member of society the problem occurs you said when people in natural law began to pontificate about ethics or when people in religion began to pontificate about natural law that's when we get into trouble the church for example flirted with the idea of a flatterer or the fact that the earth was the center of the universe if that were true we would never the Space Age we would never have been able to map the surface of the earth exploration the economy trade routes the cyber revolution of today the Internet but have all been impossible if we believe that the earth was flat or the earth was the center of the universe so that was Galileo's take that there was no fundamental conflict between religion and science science was about natural law and religion was about ethics well now comes Isaac Newton and Isaac Newton takes it a million steps farther by actually writing down using mathematics the laws of natural law and so all of a sudden we were thrust into the age of calculus thrust into the age of the Three Laws of Isaac Newton but of course he was criticized because Newton had a new picture the new picture is that the universe is a clock a gigantic clock ticking away God set it into motion and it's been obeying the three laws of motion ever since well then came the killer question if the universe is a clock then why do we need God is God simply a luxury that we don't need all we have is Newton's laws of motion Newton was troubled by this because of course Newton was very religious back in those days you had to be religious or you could never get a position at a place like Cambridge University so Newton fudgie divot and he said that well you see first of all God created the clock and every once in a while he has to tweet the clock he has to intervene in his own laws of motion you see what happened was the clergyman wrote him a letter a very important letter that's he quoted even today and that letters is something very interesting that letter said that the universal law of gravity is attraction the earth is attracted to the Sun the Sun is attracted to the galaxy everything is attracted by gravity but then this minister said if everything is attracted everything else then why doesn't the universe collapse wow that stumped Newton he was shaken he was speechless yes is true gravity is attractive not repulsive its attractive so sooner or later all the stars in the heavens would come together and collapse into a gigantic fireball and we wouldn't be here to talk about it what huh Isaac Newton was floored by this criticism he thought a lot about this and finally he wrote a letter a very famous letter to address this question he said that the universe must be infinite and uniform because of his infinite and uniform then all forces cancel out there's no preferred direction because the universe is uniform therefore the universe is static the universe is static because all the forces left-right up-down cancel each other exactly but Isaac Newton said there's a flaw even in his own argument and that is if you have for example a stack of cards and the slightest disturbance on the stack of cards will send the whole thing tumbling down so in other words the universe has to be precisely fine-tuned to be exactly uniform but that's impossible you just look outside and you see that the stars were more or less randomly distributed on average evenly but they are randomly distributed so Newton thought oh I'm in trouble first the universe has to be infinite or also we collapse his gravity's attractive not repulsive the second of all it has to be fine-tuned exactly so that all forces left-right up-down cancel exactly because the slightest perturbation the slightest defect will eventually over billions of years cause all the stars to tumble once again Newton was stumped the greatest scientific genius of all time didn't know what to say at when he simply threw his hands up in the air and said well sometimes God has to intervene he has to tweak the laws of motion so that the universe doesn't collapse into a gigantic fireball so didn't believe that yes God exists yes God created the clock yes the clock beats more or less without divine intervention but once in a while God has to intervene in the affairs of the universe or the universe will collapse well now comes Einstein who comes up yet with a new point of view concerning this paradox Einstein said yes gravity is attractive therefore you might think that the universe should collapse but he said perhaps there is an anti gravitational force called the cosmological constant and there's a balance between gravity and anti-gravity well that's one way to do it but the other way to do it is more accepted today and that's called the Big Bang Theory the Big Bang Theory answers the question why doesn't the universe collapse because gravity is attractive even Einstein's equations admit two types of solutions expanding universes and collapsing universes so if the universe expands as the Big Bang Theory pioneered the 1920s if the universe expands that solves the paradox why doesn't the universe collapse because the universe is constantly expanding so that was einstein's take on that question but then there is yet the bigger question and that is then what about God well Einstein answered it this way Einstein said that well there really are two kinds of God and you have to distinguish between these two types of God first of all there's the personal God the God that you pray to the God that answers your prayers at Christmas and you get that shiny red bicycle the guy that smites the Philistines and destroys your enemies they got a performs miracles and walks on water well Einstein couldn't get himself to believe in a personal God Einstein believed in a second type of God and that is the God of Spinoza in other words the god of beauty harmony order simplicity elegance the universe is so gorgeous it didn't have to be that way the universe could have been random it could have been ugly here we have natural laws that you can write on a sheet of paper that's right you can write that Einstein's theory of gravity in one line and the quantum theory well that takes about ten lines but together that one sheet of paper summarizes everything that is known about the universe today so Einstein said that he's like a child entering a library this huge gigantic library full of different kinds of volumes the mysteries of natural law explained and all he could do all humanity could do is take the first volume open it up read chapter one page one and yet before him was all these volumes well the god letters are for sale and some people are saying well no that's not what I Stine believed at all Einstein said the concept of God is flawed so what how do we reconcile the two I personally think that the people who interpret the God letter interpreted it incorrectly when Einstein writes that a concept of God is a childish concept he meant the personal God the God that answers your prayers why should the guide of the universe care what you get for Christmas yes more important things to do so Einstein believed in the God of Spinoza so in other words he was an agnostic he said so over and over so it was not as if he thought the concept of God was childish is that the concept of the personal God was childish but then the existence of God himself Einstein left it open and I signed more or less boarded on the idea that the laws of physics the laws of physics could be like a god well then the next question is what about Stephen Hawking Stephen Hawking posthumously has come out with a new book a new book that summarizes many of his previous writings and in this book he says bah humbug forget all these theological nonsense look at the science the science says there is no God and he gives a scientific proof of the non-existence of God which I found very interesting Hawking says the following the universe started with the Big Bang and the Big Bang in turn started from this tiny tiny little infinitely small thing that suddenly exploded giving us the universe today how long did it take for the universe to be created all fractions of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second almost instantly the universe expanded into its present form that is the Big Bang Theory coming from Einsteins own general theory of relativity so since even Hawking quote there was no time there was no time to create the universe and the laws and everything we see around us the universe sprung instantly from this tiny singularity and therefore there was no time for anyone I'm person a God the God himself there was no time to create the universe and so he's basically saying he has a proof of the non-existence of God but personally I think there's a flaw in that argument the flaw that even Einstein himself realized you see this proof of the non-existence of God that there was no time to create the universe his base and Einstein's theory of relativity which is flawed Einstein himself realized that the general theory of relativity is useless at the instant of the Big Bang and the center of a black hole and both places gravity becomes infinite and we want to banish infinities from the laws of science infinity means nothing for my physicist and therefore Einstein himself realized that there was a defect in his own equations because they fail at the instant of the Big Bang and the center of a black hole some Einstein believes that a higher Theory a unified field theory a unified field theory where the quantum theory would emerge as a consequence of this higher theory now today we do have a candidate it's not proven but we have a candidate for the theory of everything and that's called string theory string theory is what I do for a living that's my day job so I have a stake in this debate so what does string theory say about this well string Theory's claim to fame is that it has no infinities at all it is a totally finite theory therefore you can answer the question what happened before the Big Bang was there no time to create the universe as Stephen Hawking has said well string theory gives you a different take on the whole question first of all Einstein's theory of gravity says that the universe is a bubble of some sort we live on the skin of the bubble and the bubble is expanding that's called the Big Bang Theory as seen on CBS television well if the big bang theory is based on a bubble that's expanding string theory is based on other bubbles a multiverse of bubbles of bubble bath a bubble bath of universes universe is constantly being created and destroyed why because the Big Bang was a quantum event and if it happened once this is certain probability it'll happen again and again and again that's the nature of the quantum theory meaning that big bangs are happening all the time even as we speak big bangs are taking place and so sometimes these bubbles can bump into each other creating a bigger bubble all these bubbles can peel off a baby bubble and that could be the Big Bang so in other words there was something before creation there was something beyond our universe and so that's the defect in Hawking's disproof of existence of god is based on einstein's own defective theory that einstein himself realized was defective that's why Einstein spent the last 30 years his life from 1925 to 1955 puzzling over this grand unified field theory so then the question is well what's my point of view yes I have a point of view and for what it's worth let me tell you what my point of view is first of all when I was a child I realized that my parents were Buddhists in Buddhism there is no beginning there is no end there's only nirvana higher states of consciousness so there was no creation as we know it in Buddhist thinking however because my parents were locked up during the World War two in a relocation camp they wanted the kids to understand American culture so they sent me to Sunday School where I joined the Presbyterian Church and I learned all about Genesis and all about the parables and the stories in the Bible and well when you read about Genesis you realize that hey maybe there was a big bang so the Big Bang Theory according to the Catholic Church is laid as thinking is the big bang is compatible compatible with Genesis that there was an event a beginning of time which seems to agree with the Big Bang Theory in fact one of the creators of the Big Bang Theory was in fact a Catholic minister and so here we have a theory of the Big Bang there seems to be scientifically correct but you see if string theory is correct it means that big bangs are happening all the time and these bubbles are floating in a higher arena this higher arena is hyperspace a higher dimension which you can think of as Nirvana some of the words here is a new picture the multiverse the multiverse gives us a new picture of Buddhism and Christianity that yes our universe had a beginning our universe had a beginning but there are other universes out there each one these universes has his own laws of physics and it expands all these universes are expanding into nirvana and what is nirvana their ballet is a dimension beyond our bubble if our bubble is 3-dimensional it means that your vana must be higher than three dimensional and strength theory even gives you a prediction the interest must be 11 dimensional and so think of this arena this large arena of 11 dimensional Nirvana where bubbles form and these bubbles pop into existence now then the question is can you prove or disprove the existence of God well I don't think you can either prove or disprove the existence of God so I think Hawking's this proof of the existence of God is a bit premature in fact it is impossible to disprove a negative for example let's say that unicorns don't exist well that's a reasonable assumption but can you prove it can you prove philosophically and theological II that unicorns cannot exist maybe maybe someplace on a deserted island someplace far far from civilization there is a unicorn we find strange things happening all the time so you see the point is you cannot disprove a negative personally I think that a hundred years from now a thousand years from now we'll still be debating the question about whether you can mathematically prove or disprove the existence of God now it turns out that if you google my name some people claim that I have claimed that you can prove the existence of God well that's fake news sorry about that somebody wants to piggyback on my name I make no such statement in fact I say the opposite that you cannot prove or disprove the existence of God because science is based on things that are testable reproducible falsifiable that's called science but the existence of God I think can the proven it cannot be reproduced it cannot be falsifiable and therefore it is beyond the province of ordinary science so I would call that agnosticism maybe maybe not that God exists you know when I was in college at one point I thought that well if I don't become a physicist maybe I can become a philosopher so I read the words of st. Thomas Aquinas the great theologian and he had five proofs of the existence of God three of which have been studied very carefully and are not refunded with the others the cosmological the teleological and the ontological proof of the existence of God well we can now look at these three proofs from a scientific point of view the TV logical proof the existence of God is God by design for example if you're walking on the sands of Mars everything is worn down the sands of Mars have pretty much sandblasted everything inside and all of a sudden you see a camera a beautiful camera on the surface of Mars with beautiful lenses and reflexes and you say to yourself well the Martians the Martians must have built this camera and then you walk further on the sands of Mars and then you see a rabbit a rabbit with an eyeball infinitely more delicate then the mechanisms and the lenses of the camera a rabbit whose reflexes required a biology far beyond anything that can be seen inside a camera and so if you assume that a camera has a maker then the rabbit must also have a maker even greater than the Martians in other words God so this is proof of God by design however today we have the laws of evolution where things evolve all by themselves without any divine intervention so out of chaos can come order because of survival of the fittest now the cosmological proof simply says first mover and that has some merit because the first mover would be the big bang now the ontological proof is more intelligent it says that God is perfect and if God didn't exist he wouldn't be perfect so he must exist so existence and perfection are identical a perfect being must exist because if he didn't exist he wouldn't be perfect well it was a manual can't who finally picked apart that argument and that is perfection and existence really are two separate concepts so just because you're perfect does not mean that you exist now the argument about first mover simply says that for something to move something has to kick it and for that object to move something has to kick it and so you have this infinite sequence of kickers each one causing the next object to be moved but then the question is where is the first kicker the first mover that set everything into motion in other words it cannot be an infinite sequence of motions each one kicking the next there has to be a source an origin for all this and that is creation and therefore it is compatible with the Big Bang Theory because in some sense the energy of the Big Bang is the energy that set everything into motion the Stars the galaxies everything we see around us was set into motion because of the first mover and that was the Big Bang itself and so even the Catholic Church has stated that the Big Bang Theory is compatible with Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 of the Bible [Music] well that concludes the first part of exploration and continuing our discussion of religion and spirituality we're gonna bring on John brinster a physicist who has extensive knowledge about Einstein's life as well as as spiritual and religious life as well and so once again in the second half of exploration we're gonna continue our discussion of God and religion stay tuned [Music] welcome once again this is dr. Michio Kaku professor of theoretical physics at the City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and this is the second half of exploration in the first half of exploration we discussed a question of God given the fact that God is in the news on one hand Stephen Hawking with his latest book comes out and says bah humbug there's no God because it was a enough time for God to create the universe at the instant of the Big Bang and then we have the Einstein papers the god papers up for auction millions of dollars are gonna be spent as people chase in the original handwriting Einstein's thoughts on the question of God but did the media overstate the case well we're gonna talk today with John brinster a biographer of Einstein he's a physicist at Princeton University and he's had numerous contacts with Einstein himself as well as Wernher von Braun the father of the missile program so once again our special guests in the second part of exploration is John brinster who will explore the spiritual and religious dimensions of Einsteins thoughts the first question for you is how did you first get to know Albert Einstein well because I was a student at Princeton I graduated in physics in 1943 and he was in the community and I moved within a block or two from where he lived at 112 Mercer Road and my family saw him quite frequently walking to the Institute for Advanced Study my prime contact contacts were in symposia and meetings not so much on a personal level I listened intently to everything he said when he spoke but my interest in Einstein was in his mind and his ideas of spirituality as opposed to physic okay well sometimes Einstein when asked whether or not he had a philosophy of the universe and God we mentioned that he believed in the God of Spinoza well what is that could you explain a little bit about some of his religious and philosophical beliefs that seem to coincide with those of Spinoza well I'm not sure that I'm completely qualified to discuss but note so although Einstein did mention him on many occasions what Einstein answered to the many questions that he was asked about spirituality was basically specific it was very convinced of his position a church man would ask him questions write letters to him and he would answer those letters on the back of the envelope in which the questions came and they they were always directed to one thing and that he did not believe and any personal God he did not believe that prayer was effective that there could be any response from prayer to a personal God but he believed in a transcendental natural force which he felt he could never fully understand he he admired nature admired the beauty of nature and he always used the word imperfectly with respect to the understanding of nature so in effect I interpreted his religion to be what I had written at times about a natural religion one in which the forces of nature were the forces of the universe and man being very new in the universe only a billion years or so old wouldn't would never understand nature entirely okay well let's talk about a little bit about Isaac Newton and other physicists many physicists look at material forces objective material mechanical forces that govern our world as set forth first by Isaac Newton but Newton himself believed in God not necessarily such a personal God that answers prayers but a God that set things into motion now Einstein being a great physicist whose laws actually replace those of Isaac Newton well we're in those laws do we see the hand of God in my opinion being very interested in the human mind and how it worked of course we knew very little about neuroscience at the time of Einstein but in time we learned more and more about it and in the development of the human brain in the process of the emergence from the animal brain it's clear that the brain developed an area at the priest model area of judgment reason and logic which didn't exist prior to that time and yet the animal emotions which humans inherited were very powerful and I do is and maybe I interpreted this a little bit from the Einstein view is that the period of development of human logic is not yet ended that is we may only be halfway in to the period that is logic judgment and reason are still developing in man and perhaps in a few more millennia we will see religion quite differently okay well let's talk about science and religion Einstein once said that science without religion is lame but religion without science is blind so he loved to talk about God he called God the old one the lawgiver but in some sense it was a God of harmony the God of unity rather than the personal God that answers prayers and parts the waters and intervenes and affairs of men and women so could you explain to us a little bit about what is this god of harmony the lawgiver as Einstein used to write well obviously he did mention God many times he certainly mentioned God and formally in his conversations with his fellow scientists some of the theological people probably misinterpret as to to relate to a personal God but I understand it as you do that his reference to God was the god of nature the God that followed all the laws of nature that man is attempting to learn and survive by so that his his god was essentially the God that I tried to define in this new book now Einstein once wrote a beautiful passage concerning how he viewed knowledge science and the entire universe in the following way he said that if you are a child entering a library full of millions and millions of volumes you are in awe of this vast storehouse of knowledge and yet you can only pick up the first volume and you can only be perhaps a few pages of the first volume and yet in front of you is this huge library of knowledge and in some sense he said the library is the universe the library is a storehouse of wondrous facts wondrous information wondrous equations and we are the child humanity all of science is nothing but a child entering this library able to only read the first volume and perhaps only a few pages of the first volume so what are your thoughts concerning how Einstein view this great library of knowledge well I go back to what I said before that is from the very beginning the human mind has developed a bank of knowledge one bit of knowledge is added to another and much of this has been written down according to the interpretation of the writer all writing has matched perfectly but Humanity in in the many millennia of existence has through the function of the mind drawn conclusions about the position of man and about the nature of the universe and that all has been recorded and eventually the sifted out and drawn to specific conclusion a your mind for example I understand has concentrated a lot on the complexity of the universe of the multiplicity of the ten dimensions of string theory and that sort of thing um I'm Way behind you I'm still with four and Heisenberg and the ignorant Polly John Wheeler you're a modern scientist and you are apt to see things quite differently with basically the same mind that Einstein applied to his theoretical work okay well would it be fair to say that in some sense there are two kinds of God that we have to be more careful about the word God that Einstein did not believe in the God of intervention the God that answers prayer the God that parts the waters the God that smites the Philistines not that kind of God but the God of harmony they God of unification and that God then set the universe into motion would that be a fair statement yes that would be a fair statement but you have to bear in mind that all those words that you bring forth are human words developed from the human mind the minds interpretation of what it it acquires through its five senses the I often think that the interpretation of nature is quite impossible because the there is no language in the human mind that that's very recent age that can apply to the to nature which has existed essentially forever we haven't developed the language to describe the god of nature so to speak okay now let's talk about where the universe came from in Genesis Genesis said God set the whole thing into motion now physicists have the Big Bang Theory and the Big Bang Theory simply set itself into motion for reasons we don't understand but then people ask the embarrassing question well where did the Big Bang come from well maybe perhaps there were many bangs but then the other question is even if you have many sequence of big bangs in a multiverse of universes then where did the physics come from where did in Stein's equations come from in other words you go all the way back even further than the Big Bang to the laws of physics themselves and at that point Einstein would simply say well those are given to us by God now this is not intelligent design this is not the intelligent design of certain people who dispute evolution and say that there's a hand of God of creating evolution in one way creating humans as as as a watchmaker designs watches however we are left with this embarrassing question if there is a unified field theory the theory that Einstein tried to find that would allow him to quote read the mind of God then where did the unified field theory come from well I write the question that and it's a certainly a difficult question I believe it goes back to the idea that I mentioned before and that is the human mind has many limitations it goes back to the very structure and function of the mind itself so the brain is a biological mechanism it stimulated by five senses at the information that it acquired it goes through the hippocampus to what we call memory and that memory is used as the basis for all behavior and action and I'm not too sure that the human brain is in a position yet to have sufficient understanding to to explain any of that which you say the human mind again is so limited still being no more than a billion years old perhaps in another million years or so it may have developed further there may be more neuron more complexity more understanding my my book the man who created God was based on not only Einsteins idea of religion but how how a formal religion would be created if Einstein were an aggressive religious leader okay now also when Einstein was asked what is your goal in life he said that his goal in life was to quote read the mind of God that is have an equation perhaps no more than one inch long that would allow him to unify all the laws of physics that was his goal in life so in some sense if you were to ask then what is the god of Einstein the god of Einstein in some sense would be the unified field theory that is this one inch equation from which everything Springs the Big Bang the formation of galaxies the creation of the planet Earth all of these would be summarized into one and from what I read of Einsteins work God is either the unified field theory itself or the creator of the unified field theory you think that's a fair statement I don't think it's entirely a ferret statement I I think the idea is a good one I don't think that Einstein really felt that there was an entity a god entity that would allow humans to define the universe and its function with the small mathematical formulas I I felt that beyond that he was he he assumes it was more complicated than that do you remember that in his later years he he said more about people of the existing world he had he had great empathy for people of the world and he moved somewhat away from theoretical physics to his concern about people of the world and in a sense the the book that I wrote says that we will never really understand that some of the things that you question and it might be a good idea for the existing cultures of the world to begin to decide on a unity of belief around nature rather than a personal God and get to the point where the leads are more more unified and the the matter of of imaginative structure of that the mind engages in is the deterrent to the develop to the natural development neural development of logic and if I think he agreed that if we could eliminate the the imaginative side of religion the human mind would progress to much greater judgmental capability people would agree there would be much more universal peaceful coexistence those that was constantly on his later mind okay speaking about that when Einstein was a child when he was very young one year he became extremely religious he would cite religious texts he would actually write hymnals to God poems to God and he would sing religious songs on his way to school and back but then what happened was he read a science book and the more you read about science the more he realized that there was this vast discrepancy between what he learned reading these religious books and the books of science which were reproducible provable falsifiable not just matters of faith but matters of simply observation and experiment so he saw this this fundamental conflict there so do you think therefore that that is the fundamental conflict that every scientist feels that when we try to bridge the world of science and religion that at some point a scientist realizes that natural laws can explain the universe much better than miracles you're absolutely right and I should tell you that I had a similar experience in my life I was born and brought up as the Catholic I served Mass at a Theological Seminary every morning at 5:30 in the morning until I reached a similar age about the same age as Einstein did when he began to think differently the the rites and ceremonies did not match modern understanding as knowledge developed and I understand his experience in that regard because of my own experience okay now if you were to then look at the current debate a lot of people are debating about God today God the Bible intelligent design how do you think Einstein would view it if he were alive today would he be horrified that that fundamentalist Christians are trying to inject ideology on biology classes and of course these fundamentalists also want to ban the big bang theory and the big bang theory is nothing but a natural consequence of Einstein's theory and has been essentially verified looking at astronomical data so what do you think Einstein's react what reaction would be looking at the current debate Einstein discussions that are taking place today especially in some of the more emotional new developments in belief Einstein was absolutely firm within his belief he never had second decisions to make with respect to believe he would be appalled at how at how religion has penetrated cultures to today culture and religion are so mixed up with politics that one gets the impression that the world will be in constant turmoil Einstein tried to see through all that okay and any parting thoughts you may want to make concerning Einsteins spiritual side and his thinking about religion and God I think his his feeling about religion and God is relatively cut and dried he didn't believe in and a personal God he didn't believe in prayer he didn't believe that in the concept of the soul believe in heaven hell he didn't believe in immortality and I think that summarizes the his belief in the in a nutshell well I think you've correctly summarized what Einstein did not believe in he didn't believe in the trappings of religion or in a personal God but he did believe in the God of Spinoza that is a God of harmony beauty simplicity the universe didn't have to be this way it could have been ugly in fact in his writings Einstein talked about the old one the lawgiver in other words where did the laws of physics come from even though the laws of physics allow us to explain much of what we see around us it still leaves open the question of well where did the laws of physics come from and on that question Einstein was silent he didn't know he just believed that it was just so gorgeous it was a miracle a miracle that the universe could exists in such a splendorous way and so I signed never put down people who were religious he said that the feeling of the mysterious is one of the most precious what ever one of the greatest emotions that we can possibly experience not the emotion of learning of physical law but the appreciation of the mysterious that is the boundary between what is known and what is not known and this is what fascinated Einstein why did the universe have to be so ordered why did the universe have to be so gorgeous to admit planets and stars and even people and at that point he was silent other than to say that well maybe this is the god of Spinoza not the God that you pray to not the God that smites the Philistines but another kind of God the lawgiver a kind of God that makes this gorgeous universe possible I think that's the way Einstein would like to have been remembered [Music] well I'm afraid that's it for exploration once again this is dr. Michio Kaku professor of theoretical physics at City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a special guest today was John brinster talking about God spirituality Einstein what does physics say anything about this great universe of ours according to Newton Galileo Einstein and now Stephen Hawking [Music]

Channel: Cuckoo for Kaku

Views: 72,099

Rating: 4.6813822 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: lSmIooNI0g8

Length: 57min 26sec (3446 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 23 2018