Science vs God: Bryan Enderle at TEDxUCDavis

what is really real is the ground really here we say that objects like the ground are composed of molecules and those molecules are composed of atoms here's a simple illustration of the atom you can see that in the center is the nucleus and that has protons and neutrons and around the nucleus are electrons but you might also notice there's some void space or empty space in this atom can you estimate the percentage of void space in an atom it's 99.9% void space actually there's 13 nines after that decimal point so the ground seems solid seems like it's here but it's nearly 100% nothing same goes for this stage the seats this whole auditorium you know and I know that in pop culture they like to tell you that your significant and you're somebody but in modern science pretty much nothing tell that to your psychiatrist everybody has their own view of reality whether a scientist philosopher theologian you see philosophers and theologians they debate abstract ideas comp like myself and we wonder what practical impact are they having on our day to day lives and then we see scientists like myself and we're seemingly dispassionate people and we sit in our labs and we do experiments and we wonder what contribution are we having to the deeper meaning of life you see I'm someone who holds graduate degrees in both science and theology and I seek the nexus of both science and God so that I'm neither dispassionate norm practical famous scientist Sir Isaac Newton seemed to be able to put together these ideas and he said the most beautiful system of the Sun planets and comets could only proceed from the council and Dominion of an intelligent powerful being but sadly we have drifted from this point of view you see simply what I believe is that science in God as I have understood them go together they're integrated and even more so with the advent of modern science in the last hundred years or so it's actually helped us make some connections of those seemingly mystical qualities about God I'd like to give you three examples to illustrate this first one is probability probability in modern sciences is interesting thing you see pretty much everything has a probability whether it's the normal or the really unusual let me give you an example of one of those unusual things you see if we take the atom again the atom there's actually a probability that a particle in the atom can leave the atom and at the same time violate the law of conservation of energy now the law of conservation of energy says that energy is neither created nor destroyed yet a particle in the atom without having the energy to do so and no available energy can overcome an energy bearer barrier and just leave that's the weirdness of probability now why is this interesting theologically well theologically we wondered well how can God act in these seemingly miraculous ways I mean isn't it just magic and myth for example and there's plenty of them God is described as omniscient all-knowing outside of time described as omnipresent that is everywhere present we wonder how is this possible but yet what if there was a finite probability that God could act miraculously and that's not impossible and what if there's a possibility that God doesn't overstep the bounds of science but actually works within the bounds of nature and science you see what I'm saying is this if modern science tells us there's a probability for unusual activity happening and we're okay with that then we should not be as surprised that God could act and do miraculous things and there's still a probability for that now I'd like to hone in on two of these things that I just mentioned that of omniscience and omnipresence and use this in our second two examples so next the theory leti in our thought discussion of how that connects to omniscience that is God is outside of time and knowing all well the theory of relativity came about in the 1900s by Einstein and it's this theory that has been proven and described over and over throughout the decades it has many facets and the one we'll focus on is that between velocity and time simply said the faster an object goes the more lag in time you'll have there's an interesting set of experiments that were done to illustrate this in 1971 they are the Hoffa like eating experiments they took a couple cesium beam atomic clocks these are really accurate clocks and they synchronize them and they placed one on the ground and one in a commercial airliner that flew around and then later landed on the ground well what did they find the clocks were no longer synchronized they were actually off by an order of nanoseconds and that could be calculated from the theory of relativity which one was behind in time the one that traveled faster in the on the airliner and later returned to earth well this idea can be expanded such that the faster you go the slower time goes until you reach your apex at the universal speed limit that's the speed of light and you know at the speed of light light travels so fast the time actually no longer progresses you see their time is not a factor for light or we might say light is outside of time well that's weird I know but that's a theory of relativity why is this interesting theologically well theologically we know that God describes himself and is described as light and yet we wonder how could God be a mission that is outside of time and knowing all you see if it consider God we know he's sees past present and future all at the same time and knows all and that seems eerily similar and parallel to the idea that a photon could be outside of time now you're mr. eight I'm not saying that God is a photon what I am saying is that in modern science if it tells us that light can be outside of time we should not be as surprised that God could be outside of time weird I know but let's keep going let's evaluate the third topic in modern science that I want to look at and that's entanglement and how that relates to the idea of omnipresence well entanglement is this really interesting strange idea that came about in 1935 by Einstein skrill dinger Rosen and others and say you had so you have two particles and they could really be photons electrons some molecules various things and if they're entangled or connected a change in one will affect a change in another well you think no big deal but the interesting thing is you can separate them more and more and more and they can still be entangled see distance doesn't seem to be a relevant factor this reached the limit furthest limit I've seen in 2012 published in a journal of nature where these two entities were separated by a hundred and forty three kilometers that's 88 miles and they were still connected in interacting with each other that was in a case of photon teleportation from one fifth place to another and that happened instantaneously this was fixed in the TV and film series Star Trek if you've heard of it in Star Trek they beam people up and they're moving somebody from one place to another pretty much instantaneously and the distance doesn't really matter that's the idea of entanglement well why is this interesting theologically theologically we wondered how could God be omnipresent I mean isn't that kind of weird well if God is here and he's interacting with people and those people could be separated a distance from him all around the world somehow he's doing that instantaneously all the time this all so seems weirdly similar to the idea of entanglement give me write again I'm not saying that God's an entangled particle what I'm saying is that if in modern science particles can interact with each other even while separated at a distance we shouldn't be a surprise that God can interact with humans again separated with a distance and doing that instantaneously well you might ask so what so what well again I believe that science and God as I've understood them are totally interconnected and integrated and I know you're going to say wait a minute proofs by analogy are not proofs and I know that what I'm saying is these seemingly mystical qualities about God that we thought were magic actually have an interesting precedent in modern science you've seen this Erlenmeyer flask of boiling water on stage here for the last 10 minutes or so and so I ask you why is the water boiling okay no doubt you're going to say that the heat from the hot plate is being transferred into the liquid water as the temperature increases the kinetic energy increases exciting the liquids in the liquid molecules in that liquid state to go out to the vapor state the vapor pressure increases increases until it reaches atmospheric pressure at which point nucleation points within the glass allow bubbles to form overcoming the enthalpy of vaporization and thus it boils duh but actually what I tell you is no that's not really why the water is boiling the water is boiling because I want some tea mmm love tea tea is really good which answer is the correct one you see we actually need both the science explanation and the deeper meaning explanation to get the fuller picture of reality each answer is incomplete without the other and really insufficient without the other and it causes us to have a smaller understanding of what the reality is Einstein put it this way science rule out religion is lame and religion without science is blind now I understand that Einstein didn't have accept any conventional religion for sure but he was moved by some quote cosmic religious feeling many of you probably here today are academia pnes or students and you probably are focused on your academics field of study and things like that possibly without much regard to the deeper meanings of life and what I'm saying is maybe we're missing out on something maybe we need to work towards a reality that's a little bit bigger than that so I asked you what is really real

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 601,958

Keywords: TEDx, tedx talks, Enderle, tedx, tedx talk, Bryan Enderle, ted talks, Technology, English, Science, ted x, Education, ted, United States Of America (Country), TEDxUCDavis, Religion, ted talk, God

Id: sn7YQOzNuSc

Length: 13min 7sec (787 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 22 2013