Sir Roger Penrose & William Lane Craig • The Universe: How did it get here & why are we part of it?

for more debates updates and a bonus video of Sir Roger Penrose describing his work with Stephen Hawking to find the Big Bang sign up at the big conversation dot show hello I'm Justin Briley and welcome to season two of the big conversation from unbelievable exploring faith science history and philosophy and asking what it means to be human the big conversation is brought to you by premier Christian radio in partnership with the Templeton religion trust and today our big conversation is on the universe how did it get here and why are we part of it my conversation partners today are Roger Penrose and William Lane Craig so Roger Penrose is a celebrated mathematical physicist among many accomplishments he worked alongside Stephen Hawking to produce the Penrose Hawking singularity theorems which helps to confirm Big Bang cosmology he's described himself as an atheist but has rejected the idea that the universe is purposeless saying I think that there is something much deeper about its existence which we have very little inkling of at the moment professor William Lane Craig is a renowned Christian philosopher and the founder of reasonable faith an organization seeking to defend Christianity through reason and evidence he's well known for arguments for the existence of God such as the Kalam cosmological argument and the fine-tuning of the universe for life he believes that God is the best explanation for the origins of the universe and why we find ourselves in it so today we'll be looking at the deep mysteries of the universe and whether its complexity order origins and the fact it produced us points beyond itself and if so to what so bill and Roger welcome along to the program it's great to have you both with me I I feel like a kid in a sweetshop because having you both here is is something of a dream come true for me well I want to say right at the beginning how acutely aware I am of the tremendous privilege of being on the same program with one of the world's greatest cosmologists and I feel honored to be talking with dr. Penrose it's a huge pleasure and honor from you too so well I'm glad that we're all in mutual agreement on these issues how much we have to be something yeah let's see what we disagree on did the course of the program but let's have some introductions to you both Roger what drew you first of all to to science and maths in particular as a young man I think it was largely my father who has a great I mean he was a scientist a human geneticists mainly medically trained but also he'd lost philosophically and mathematically trained so he had a good understanding of math and I think he has a mainly it was a sort of playful understanding like puzzles he certainly it was it was a great chess problem --mess and also wealth chess was big in the family my younger brother became British chess champion at same times which was of course tells me something about the way your your brains are wired perhaps as well it wasn't quite the same with all of us but Oliver my older brother was it was also an excellent chess player became became a Cambridge University champion for example but I wasn't at all I was not interested in chess but I was very much interested in puzzles and games well mathematical kinds of puzzles and and also physical geometrical puzzles sometimes like that so that was an important feature of my upbringing I think but we used to go for long walks and looking at plants and talking about the universe and their ways did faith ever feature in your childhood or not particularly I would say no it didn't in the sense of a particular religion no you see my father came from a Quaker family so he had that kind of background but he was he had very much sort of sympathies with with Quaker as you know he's a very much pacifists and that sort of thing he didn't like conflict and but he wasn't a believer in the sense of religious belief he wasn't a Christian certainly not nor was my mother I said that that was not part of her family upbringing and and did you ever have any brushes yourself with religion growing up or as a student ha no I wouldn't say so I mean maybe at the age of seven or six or something don't sure we count that sort of thing I know I know I wouldn't even send that then either did I think there was a big question mark and what not I was going to say I mean as your scientific career progressed did that open up any of those big questions about where where did this all come well there was a curious thing I remember at one time when we we were in Canada during the war years and there was we used to go every Sunday to Sunday School you see and I think my younger brother Jonathan asked the question you know you see we were a bit suspicious that this is just a way of getting us out of the house of it but very good halves in peace you see and Jonathan asked my mother actually do whether she really believed it and she got this embarrassed look on her face but this was apparently indication that I don't think there was any confession to us that they hadn't actually been confident that this was the truth it was a way of having some peace doing during Sunday's and Jonathan sang in the choir well I remember this was no this is so that kind of aspect of things has in a sense it has any of that filtered through to you in terms of at least appreciating the often people talk about the majesty of choral singing oh yeah Oxford University where you have been based for a long time there are beautiful chapels and that's not I think all that it makes it makes a huge impression on me yes and I and music I mean well I'm a tremendous fan of bark you see and I think that there's I mean there's something absolutely incredible in the music and I can understand I mean he was driven by by his religious faith Christianity and obviously it was a hugely important thing and and if the expression of that in music can be extremely moving yeah we'll come back I want to talk to you about your work with Stephen Hawking obviously and and that will feed into what we're talking about on the show today but let's introduce you bill on the show it's wonderful to have you here I suppose in in many ways the sort of things that Roger was has been working on throughout his life have been very influential in in some of the important arguments you'd be making for the existence of God because I think it was I think in the 1970s that you started to really engage with Big Bang cosmology and see that there was an interesting and flut fruitful relationship here with some other philosophical arguments yes I interestingly my background sounds rather similar to Rogers in terms of my upbringing I think you were actually more involved in trajectory than I was my parents were at best nominal Christians but we never attended church but when I became a teenager I began to ask what I call the big questions in life Who am I why am I here what's the meaning of my existence and as I looked at the universe I could see no meaning to my existence I knew that humanity would eventually perish in the heat death of the universe and I could see no reason for its existence for the existence of human beings and in particular for my existence and I simply faced an inevitable death in which I would cease to exist and so for me it were it was these big deep existential philosophical questions that eventually through the witness of a girl who sat in front of me in my high school German class led me to faith in Christ and as a Christian to finally get to your question Justin it's important for me to have a synoptic worldview that is to say a worldview that includes a Christian perspective on all of the different facets of human learning whether it be the sciences literature art psychology history philosophy and the deep metaphysical question so you're correct when I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the Kalam cosmological argument under John hick at the University of Birmingham one of the things I began to explore was whether there might not be some sort of scientific confirmation for the claim of the Kalam cosmological argument that the universe began to exist and I was startled to see the degree to which contemporary astrophysics did support this premise in no small part because of professor Penn roses mmm-hmm work on the singularity theorems so that is an important part of my worldview as a Christian and hence why you've been engaging with Rogers work really a lot of your life and and I know that you yourself have had a number of discussions and dialogues with significant scientists and philosophers it's obviously a hugely contested argument but one that I think will we'll get to some of the interesting aspects of it in the course of today's discussion thank you very much both for joining me on the show today Roger I said I wanted to ask you about Stephen Hawking of course who was a brilliant mind a convinced atheist though and especially latterly he came to believe that science had ruled God out or at least as an explanation of the universe did how far did you agree with your former colleague on on that well you see there's a huge irony in all this of course which is my view about the origin of the universe and I remember hearing there was a bit only there was new book of Stephens posthumous posthumously published yes which had and there's a chapter in which he talks about the origin and the Big Bang and I thought it was the most unconvincing part of the whole thing so well you see the huge irony here is that I've changed my mind on all this so the singularity theorems were as as you describe these were confirmation of this singular origin I'm the word singular has to be explained here it means a place where essentially where your equations go to infinity and you have to give up other words it's where your equations cease to work and and the they stop telling you what to do if you like and the idea is you go we take observations about the expansion of the universe and the equations of Einstein and try to extrapolate backwards and use general theorems which show that you really can't evade the singular origin so that's where things the equations blow up and you have to you can't rely on the equations to give you any tell you what what happened at the beginning state and Steven has a particular way of looking at that which was an interesting way I don't think it works myself he developed an idea with James hartal and an American who in California a very interesting man and I think the idea is a very interesting one but I have some problems with it you have some major reservations yes but the the main thing is that my current view is that the big bang although it existed there was a big bang was not the beginning mmm and so that there was something prior to the big bang but if you like the reasons original reasons for my thinking about this are a bit like the kind of thing you're talking about know about what the universe is for a while what you're doing in kind of that kind of question should I go into that well I want to go into you yes the way you are now yes utterly fascinating and mind-bending at some level but but maybe we should start at a more sort of fundamental level because I I quoted in my introduction from a quote of yours I'll read it out in fullness now you say there's a certain sense in which I would say the universe has a purpose it's not there just somehow by chance some people take the view that the universe is simply there and it runs along it's a bit as though it just sort of computes and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe I think there's something much deeper about it about its existence which we have very little inkling of at the moment and you've obviously written as well at length and spoken of the fact that you you see that there's there's a sort of three ways in which you can look at reality the mental the physical the abstract and and in some sense you actually believe there is more to this reality than simply the physical aspect that many people many of your atheist colleagues would say well that's that's all that ultimately exists here Roger do you want to just begin by sort of spelling spelling that out what your worldview is in that sense well you mentioned what when you say my world you mentioned the three worlds which I often used to describe like these are things also the three mysteries if you like well one of these you say they there's the physical world you know things like tables and so on and what we think of is it's the physical world all this not quite clear when we go deeply into it what's going on what that really means but never mind about that the physical world and then there's a mental world that's our experiences consciousness feelings about things so on and then there's what you call the abstract world I would be more specific about that it's a mathematical abstraction so we're thinking about how it is well let me secondly explain the mysteries just overhead mystery number one is the fact that this world of physics seems to depend so extraordinary precisely and the more we explore it the more precise we see this is it's precisely guided by physical but sorry mathematical equations and so we have these mathematical let's not just say equations that's a bit too specific mathematical principles yes which which govern in such a precise way the way this physical world operates and there is if you like a huge mystery I'm calling it a mystery these things we're never quite sure whether is this what Eugene Wigner found yes so because as the unreasonable effective of mathematics it just seems to be a an extraordinarily remarkable fact that mathematics is that the universe seems to be written in that language and we can discover it that's exactly yes yes and the more we we know about how things operate I mean now there's extraordinary precision there are in measurements well answer science general relativity is is very very precisely determined and laws of quantum mechanics and how they internal interrelate with well even even with gravity in some respects I mean how clocks and one of the Einstein's prediction is there's a clock a pie will run more slowly than one down here and these this precision in that I'm sorry I got it the wrong way around I know you mean yeah that the Mazama is extraordinary yeah the precision you know even even from from down here to maybe a center centimeter above and they can measure the difference yes so these extraordinary precise now okay it just shows that the mathematical theories when we really understand them and when we get them right there's still not quite right well that's clear but nevertheless the precision is extraordinary so that's mystery number one mystery number two is how is it that conscious experience can arise when the circumstances seem to be right now it doesn't seem to be probably I'm just guessing but I don't think it's present in that glass or in the water in the glass but nevertheless it seems to come about with certainly with human beings and I think with our animals I don't think it's unique design brain structures somehow seem to give rise to yes to this and there is a genuine mystery and I think and it's not just a matter of you know complicated company computations or something much more subtle going on so that's mystery number two and mystery number three is our ability to use our conscious understanding to comprehend mathematics and these very extraordinary self-consistent with deep ideas which are very far from my experiences so that's the how we how we comprehend mathematics ephemera and in that sense you you believe that mathematics for instance is discovered rather than invented but really in that sense it exists independently yes right yes and and and and one of those great mysteries as you say is the fact that we can access it yes itself a remarkable feat of of reality that's right because it's so indirectly connected with our existence and what you know how we get along in the world and not how natural selection has helped us to to survive and so on it's really hard to see how these things come about from well there's there's three big mysteries there just to kick us off with Bill what's your response to some of these huge well I want to say first and foremost that one of the most exciting things about Rogers thinking is this deep metaphysical vision of reality that he has it's in such contrast to the sort of positivistic and verification istic pronouncements of many scientists who think that philosophy is dead and that these metaphysical questions are meaningless roger is engaged in questions that are not simply physical or scientific these are meta physical questions and I think that the fundamental issue that is raised by this tripartite metaphysics is the ancient philosophical problem of the one and the many that is to say what is the underlying unity of these three seemingly disparate realms of reality the mental the abstract and the physical these realms of reality are so different so causally unconnected it seems that one wonders what is the underlying unity for all of these so how are these three browns related for example the mathematical abstract realm cannot be the source of the physical or conscious mental realm because abstract objects by definition are causally a feat that's part of what it means to be an abstract object the number seven for example has no effect upon anything so the abstract realm cannot provide the source of unity could it be the physical realm that provides the source well Rogers already mentioned the second mystery how does the physical give rise to consciousness particularly intentionality the intentionality is the aboutness of our mental states I can think about my summer vacation no physical object has intentionality so the mental is difficult to derive from the physical and the abstract it seems to me is impossible because the mathematical realm is characterized by necessity these are logically necessary truths and by its plenitude there are infinite realms of mathematical objects and the physical realm by contrast is contingent and therefore cannot ground these logical and mathematical truths and it's plausibly finite as well so the physical can't need the support now what about the mental could the mental be the source of these other two realms well in mental causation we do have the experience of the mental causing physical changes in our brain I can will to get up or to speak similarly many philosophers have thought that the abstract realm is not really a separate realm that exists by itself but it they are ideas in the mind of of consciousness hmm that they are the result of intellection by a mind now the problem is that no human mind could be the source of the abstract realm because of its plenitude and necessity whereas we are contingent and finite so what I want to invite Roger to comment on is why couldn't the mental realm include an infinite consciousness that is to say an omniscient mind which has created the physical realm and which is the source of the abstract mathematical realm this would solve the problem of the one and the many and give you an underlying unity for this tripartite metaphysic that you affirm and what you've just described sounds suspiciously like God you say to that well you see you're putting it as an interesting you're putting it in in the mental world if you like whereas I tend to put it in in me in the in the Platonic mathematical world you see that that I don't quite see why I mean how do you drive the precision you see just a mental thing doesn't seem to me but I I don't quite see why it helps if you like I mean you can postulate a super mental being or something I mean what does it have a mental existence without a physical one is that the idea yes mental this mind this patient this mind has created a contingent physical realm yeah and is the source of the conceptual realm as well I can't quite see well you could say that it contains all that because it's so infinite that it contains the entire mathematical world yeah sense but does it where does it come from what's its well it would have to be metaphysically necessary in order to be the source of yes broadly logically necessary mathematics and truths and I would say other sorts of truths ethical truths that are plausibly necessary this is very curious you see you have the mental world sort of being unnecessary right and I have the mathematical world somehow being an assessee huh because it's somehow somehow I appreciate the necessity but the problem is but the abstract realm has no causal powers these are causally a feat objects that never come into contact with things physically they can't move them or shove them or pull them they exert no forces they are not minds and so they can't make decisions to cause things they're not causal agents so it seems to me that positing the abstract realm is fundamental is causally inadequate and what one would gain from what I'm proposing would be a solution to these three mysteries it would give explanatory depth to your worldview I don't quite see how it explains anything I mean does it I mean you're talking from a perspective of a religious person and therefore one's thinking of this somehow I mean specific religions are much more specific than it--and that's why I grimaced a bit when you say from a religious perspective it's a philosophical perspective but okay I'm happier with that because then I think this is what I have more trouble with one's trying to make it specific in certain directions as regards one religion or another but if it's just such an abstract notion it's not that I'm necessarily unhappy with it except I don't know what to do with it because it's it's so vague mm that's interesting just just for my benefit yeah this this abstract realm of mathematical objects and and so on yes you say it's there it's a mystery why it's there well either wasn't calling that the nursery yes see the mysteries are the connections I like I draw this picture with the three worlds you see the worlds are there the mysteries are the connections between my worlds so mystery number one that was how somehow out of a small part of this mathematical totality we see physical laws and it's only a very small part I mean you look at a any old Journal pretty well mathematical journal you see it's full of things I'm talking about pure mathematics it's full of things which don't certainly don't purport to have any connection whatsoever with the physical world I mean some some of those seem to have and it seems to be a very tiny part of that world which it has to do with the operation of physical world so that's one of the mysteries and then the next mystery is why it is that's a very small part of what we call the physical world organized in the in just a very specific way comes about very rarely I mean all these planets around or how many of them actually do we think has has life of any sort in it conscious life that's a huge question but anyway whatever it's a very tiny part of that which gives rise to mentality as far as we can see and then it's a very tiny part of our mentality I mean even mathematicians don't spend the whole time thinking about mathematics they have other activities which you know they go to the movies sometimes they have a love life and some movies and tries to solve that mystery by saying well what if there is an underlying explanation to it it's it's all contained within a divine mind well in mind in one of these worlds you see which a little bit I find that a little bit [Music] not just asymmetrical I just find it not very explanatory but why not why do you find at least this doesn't well if you just say well there is there is a somehow super mentality and and it can do anything I don't know what I don't know yeah I think I need to have more of an explanation about about exactly well for example tides mr. islands are one the applicability of mathematics I think this is a huge issue because on platonism you have this abstract a temporal non spatial realm of causally a feat objects and the physical world happens to operate according to certain mathematical principles that you and as Mary Lang who is a philosopher of mathematics at the University of Liverpool has said on Platonism the applicability of mathematics to the physical world is a happy coincidence which just seems incredible by contrast we know that minds can design things and the view that there is an omniscient mind who has designed the physical world on the mathematical blueprint that it had in mind is a very ancient perspective that goes back to middle Platonism and people like Philo of Alexandria who said that the intelligible world the intelligible cosmos exists first in the mind of the logos the the divine intellect and then is instantiated in the physical world by the log-house who creates the world on this blueprint and that seems to me to be a good solution to the one and the many problem I think is that you call it a solution I trouble is it's it's I think it my problem is just too vague I don't see how you can do much with this particular view you see when it comes to the explanation of how a physical world operates in terms of mathematical it's extraordinarily precise and and one can say an awful lot about that but a statement like the one you make here it worries me because it's yeah you can call it a solution but it doesn't tell us very much the mystery is it because it's very hard to then investigate this this explanation itself the mysteries behind the mysteries you you need to be able to say how could you contradict such a few you see it's it's so so vague in a way I mean why wasn't there a mind which was in some malicious well maybe it is malicious I don't know we we don't it's just saying it's a mind without telling us right I haven't said anything about the moral properties of this I mentioned earlier that among the logically necessary truths that this mind would know and ground would be not only mathematical truths but certain ethical truths I think certain ethical principles are not contingent but are necessarily true and so this would provide a grounding for the objectivity of moral values and duties in a paradigmatic good this being would be not only the source of the mathematical realm but of the ethical realm in being the supreme good and so now we're beginning to add a little more content to this notion as the creator the physical realm this mind would have to be uncaused timeless spaceless immaterial enormous ly powerful in order to cause the ethical realm it would have to be good perfectly good and to cause the mathematical realm it would have to be omniscient and so we're winding up I think with a very rich theological ultimate yeah yes I mean of course you're touching on these other platonic aspect learning morality and and and well you didn't refer to the beauty aspect of - good point aesthetic values so well has those three platonic aspects and one can extend the idea of the truth if you like which is perhaps the mathematical part of me and of the platonic notions and two other three as well which I'm quite happy to to consider but I guess that my problem is that it's it's just I said this before there's just too vague to know what to do with it make these words you say well it does this and it does that it does that explains this and that but in a way which I don't quite I mean if speaking is a you know to scientists let's say Bill has this hypothesis that God he's the ultimate explanation in grounds he's various phenomena that you believe in and you see is it big that you find the hypothesis itself doesn't do it because you can't investigate that I think it less hypothesis I think that's the main problem having it in isn't hard to know what to do with it and inevitably goes beyond science in that's exactly I mean we're doing metaphysics here are not not physics we these this is a metaphysical vision of reality consisting of a tripartite division of realms that have very mysterious interconnections and so what I'm suggesting is a metaphysical hypothesis that will provide unity in the diversity and solves the one in the many and I think it's a it's pretty specific I rattled off a number of the properties that this mind must possess and that I think that's not let me raise an issue with you yes because if we're putting this thing in in in the mental world then to me that means it would be possible to be that thing so that means one could be this entity this God or whatever one calls it and I find that really hard to perceive I mean somehow with a being of this sort with it with this kind of total control over the whole thing I mean it's so much odds with my own but certainly experiences of what conscious experience is quite a conscious thing do you believe we have free will I think there is something there which is not explained by I mean this is a it goes into some technical issues here but about the operation of sure of the world and where our understanding of physics has might have a gap in it and so on and maybe one could call that a free will I would maintain an open mind when it comes to pricing well then if this being has elected to create agents with freedom of the will then does not true that it's in control it doesn't really have them well it had the freedom not to still have all this well I mean that somehow I think that that's a further question be explored it would seem me that is the creator of the physical realm it would be very easy for this mind to have created a world with no free moral agents in it a world in which the highest form of life is say rabbits and there wouldn't be any free will but if I don't know maybe if this being has elected to create significant moral agents that are endowed with freedom of the will then it means that not everything that happens is controlled by this being in a marionette sort of fashion and that would gel I think nicely with our experience I think that this gels with our experiences of beauty of ethical norms and obligations that press upon us and with respect to our own freedom to transcend the physical realm and and not be simply determined so this really fits beautifully with our experience I think what would it take I suppose I've been just as nobody what would it take to move you from acknowledging the mystery and the depth of what what is the reality we live in to to acknowledging a source of the sort that Billie is pointing to I just don't see why it's a solution to these problems I think that's my real issue I mean it's a you can postulate that there is some kind of a thing which one could call a god I suppose and that thing is supposed to inhabit this world which is the mental world to me that's a hypothesis which I can't quite see what to do with I mean I'm not saying it's wrong I just can't see why one should attribute this thing which is somehow the answer to all questions should inhabit the world of the it sounds like you'd rather have the questions and then put that sort of a an explanation to the questions yes I I think I mean there could be a truth in such a view but I don't see why I'm driven to believe that and I don't see why it should be a conscious thing you see this is I mean could be I'm not okay I just don't see the ex explain why this explains very much to see to say that this entity god-like entity whatever it is is something with a consciousness of its own now I'm not saying it's wrong and it might be that there is such a thing maybe one you know like in some religious views once on after death somehow once consciousness becomes part of that thing I'm not saying I think that's a wrong view I don't necessarily think it's a wrong view let's have one response and then we'll move on to some of the specifics of cosmology here I'm not trying to drive any one conclusion I'm offering okay a metaphysical solution to what you admit are profound mysteries in your own worldview where we have these three disparate realms of reality that don't seem to connect very well and given that you've already got the mental realm you've already got the realm of mind it's a it's a small step to postulate an omniscient mind but why don't you think we've already go the physical world you say you could why don't we put it there well I already put it there right I already spoke to that because you can't put it in the abstract realm because that realm is causally a feat you can't put it in the physical realm because the physical realm is contingent and finite and therefore cannot explain the logically necessary and infinite abstract realm and it's very difficult to explain the mental realm to on the basis of purely physical causes I think we just said you're just saying it's not here and it's not there it doesn't mean it's in the third place well anyway well no no I mean if there are these three realms of reality and the unity the underlying unity can't be found in two it follows logically that it's going to be found in the third unless there is no unity to be found at all maybe the unity is something much deeper than any of these pictures where all those years contain it has to do more with the that the totality of all three putting it in the mental world so they meant for putting in the mental world is giving it a I mean degrading it in a way I think that's what I feel it feels unbalanced to you yes imbalanced and if it has free will and some here then that's somehow degrading it because they said it could somehow have done something else it's like us it's too much like us yes like only the ancient views of well the Greek user for God's in some sense we're finite we're talking about a metaphysically necessary source of the platonic realm and a physical world this is a this is not and perhaps significantly the judeo-christian traditions of course do speak of humanity being made in the image of God you're having trouble with that idea well it's been a fascinating conversation already gentlemen I really enjoyed it why don't we move to one of these specific world the physical world because obviously we're titling this discussion the universe how did it get here and why are we part of it let's talk about the the fact that we know now things we never could have dreamed knowing a hundred years ago about the nature of the universe we live in it must have been an extraordinary exciting time when you were developing the those theorems with Stephen Hawking and seeing them confirming what has already obviously been been meeting you from the observational evidence of the Big Bang the background microwave radiation and so on can you just describe a little bit what what it felt like it in those you know very significant you see it also there's an evolution of my thinking and of course it has changed this has been there for a long time and I began to worry well you know people study about the models of the universe and they were always only studying the one where where Lemaitre very symmetrical universe models where you didn't even need II think that if you like because they were all looking at the cases were completely symmetrical listen in idealization and it worried me why are they so different that is to say the singularity in the Big Bang when detail when you look at what happens in the collapse case completely different mmm I mean the similarity was what sort of started this off but when you look at it in detail it's completely different now this has to do with this fundamental principle of physics known as the second law of thermodynamics now the second law of thermodynamics tells us roughly speaking that things get more and more randomized as time goes on there's a thing called entropy which is a measure of this randomization and so this is the general print it's a very fundamental principle of physics and it's all over the place yeah and you see this in this singularity it's the Big Bang with this very very special idealize singularity and in the black holes it's almost completely the opposite hmm the low entropy beginning and the high entropy singular incredible order in the beginning yes rather than is very diffuse and the nature of that order seemed to be in paradox with the well the observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background this is the early observations of radiation coming in all directions this is microwave radiation like in your microwave oven yes and and this radiation seemed to be very uniform over the sky not only that it had a spectrum that is the frequencies are different the intensities of different frequencies or such that it showed that there was this maximum entropy state high highest randomised Asian you could have so it was completely randomized but yet it had to be ordered and so I puzzled about this for a long long time and you have this order the explanation is and I think it's more or less accept it now is that the explanation is that the order is in gravity and not in anything else so you have this very very gravitationally ordered structure let's say the gravitation of degrees of freedom did not take part in this thermalization everything else all the photons or the matter everything else was randomized but not gravity and this struck me as a huge paradox how do you have this imbalance between one and the other and that had been sort of in the background for a long time my thinking now there was a particular moment but I should describe this go ahead where I was I mean it's a bit like the questions you raise you see where I was thinking about the future of the universe and what we come to understand in recent years is that there are these black holes not only are they there that there are absolutely huge ones our galaxy in the middle of our galaxy is a black hole which is about four million times the mass of the Sun and it's just there and you can see you can see the stars going around I mean you can measure them in in in real time in movie the stars going around and then there's something in the middle here is is this the one that was even imaged recent that was not the same I think it was sort of put out that it was going to be that one but the image they showed was a different galaxy okay with a much much bigger black hole okay so I think I can't remember how much bigger it is in this one a lot bigger so you see these huge black holes in the Centers of galaxies know what's gonna happen well they'll start swallowing up more and more of a material some of it will escape but maybe about half I don't know what the figure so exactly what gets swallowed up now in a cluster of guy you get many we're in a cluster it's only got about three or four I can't remember how many there's the biggest one is the andromeda galaxy and we are on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy it'll take a few thousand million years before we encounter it but then the black holes will feel each other out they will collide swallow each other up it it will be mainly than one swallows us up and when I say us I mean our black hole right and the material in the cluster more most of it will get swallowed up eventually you get much bigger clusters then most of the material gets swallowed up and there so it's a pretty boring state because she just got these black holes sitting there and most of the matters all swallowed up pretty boring and I thought well it's not this thing interesting this happened because Stephen Hawking explained this is his greatest contribution it's a very important thing the black holes are not entirely black they have a very very bit pretty black but they have a very very low temperature but over the years and years and years not thousands not millions zillion zillion zillion you have to think in terms of googles if rice so that's ten to one hundred ten year think of one followed by 100 zeros yeah that number of zeros and probably more with a really big ones and after that period the radiation from these black holes will take all the energy away and energy away and then disappear with a little pop when I said pop okay nucleic Splosion depends on how you measure it doesn't matter too much anyway they disappear and we just had this very boring area when the we had the boring time when the black holes were the most exciting things arrived and then it got really deadly boring and this is what you've described as the heat death of the universe in that it is it's in it's in but whatever it is it's a very boring nothing nothing of any interest exists at West Point so I I got depressed aside the universe and we live and that's this interminable tedium that's that's that's what we're in for what's the point of all that the exam and that's your question but then I thought yes so it's it's worse and I don't know if it's worse than tedium but I mean we be there to experience it it's now so it's boring it extinguishes yes but that's well mister you're making a key point we won't be there but who will be there photons mainly now you see it's very hard to bore a photon not just because photons I don't think have experiences but they that they don't actually if I could use the experience again were in a right perhaps inappropriate sense they don't experience the passage of time so time does not it's the way relativity works the time from the creation of that photon to infinity is nothing as far as that photon is concerned that's right yeah it has no no as a clock it doesn't it doesn't have any Sun because it doesn't have any mass essentially and right for something to act as a clock it has to have mass but it's the point where you've got no mass in the universe exactly just photons then when then you've got no time is that there's no time and if there is no time there is no measure of space either because the how space is measured knows in terms of time how long does does it take light to get from here to here that distance is a time and that the measures of distance are in terms of times so that's the way physics is understood and that's the way distances are measured much you know the meter rod in Paris is no good as a thing anymore meter you define it in terms of light and how long it takes like to go from here to there and how far that is so if you don't have any measure of time you don't have any measure of scale and that means that big and small are equivalent so in this remote future times distances become irrelevant and times you have to understand a bit more of the details which I can't go into here course but it's what's called a conformal picture what's quite useful to think of many of our listeners might have seen some of these Asia pictures the things called circle limits you can have this angels and intellect is a nice thing what if you and you have these angels and devils and they get more and more crowded along to the boundary of this thing and they get some extraordinary precisely known right up to the boundary and that's the infinity of the world that these beings inhabit but nevertheless you can see it as a finite boundary and it's a conformal map they squashed this way as much as that way and in in space-time it means the time and space are squashed by the same amount so that the future about the Infinity is somewhere that's the point I'm making there is actually a place or time I should say which is the infinity and if you were massless you'd get there it's just like the angels and devils and that the boundary of this Asha picture is a thing which is there even though it represents the infinity of that world it's there still yes and you could imagine a continuation to something on the other side and the picture I have which is put forward I don't know about 15 years ago not many people paid any attention to it is that there was something on the other side and what there is to be something on the other side and that is the big bang of a subsequent Aeon right and similarly our Big Bang was the continuation of the remote future of a previous Eon now I'm using the word Eon I looked up in the dictionary to make sure that the word Eon didn't have mean a definite number of years so I'm using it it just means that an unimaginably vast period because I'm saying that and this is what you've called the conformal psychical cyclical cosmology and and and in that sense it's it sounds it shouldn't be confused with but it sounds a little bit like the sort of bang crunch idea of that was in fashion at one time yes but this is actually a sequential series of bang there is no collapse you see it's different I mean that's right there one of the Freedman models right after Einstein's put produces equations had a university expanded out and collapse and then it could bounce and have another but this is essentially a continually expanding you never collapse but at the point where time sort of becomes irrelevant it's almost indistinguishable from another from the Big Bang where time is also that's right we can you might say aren't they very different but it's the Big Bang is hot and dense very concentrated and extremely hot whereas the remote future is extremely cold and rarefied but you see when you lose the scale it applies to the mass and Whitman applies to what temperature if you like so you squashes when you squash down the temperature goes up when you stretch out it goes down and they're completely equivalent what I want to return to this is a fascinating idea before we do that bill the let's talk for briefly first of all about your work with the Kalam cosmological argument which is which has been very much focused on Big Bang cosmology as it's been traditionally understood up till now and and if you like Rogers thesis is is something of a an extension of that but your your view has been that actually what we do know of cosmology what appears to be verified from science supports this idea that the universe had a beginning that there was a cause to the universe and and philosophically we can speak of that cause being God yes this is a very ancient argument for a creator that goes back to the attempt of early philosophers to rebut Aristotle's doctrine of the Eternity of the universe and during the Middle Ages it was developed in great detail by medieval Islamic philosophers and then mediated through Jewish philosophers back into the latin-speaking West and finally came to be enshrined in the thesis of the first antinomy of amano account concerning time and it basically goes like this it's very simple argument whatever begins to exist has a cause secondly the universe began to exist and then the conclusion follows therefore the universe has a cause and in support of that second premise that the universe began to exist the medieval proponents of the argument appealed primarily to philosophical problems with the infinitude of the past and they raised a number if I thank very cogent objections to the notion of the finitude of the past but now with the advent of modern cosmology we seem to have pretty dramatic empirical evidence in support of the second premise as well so that the premise I think is more probable than not both in light of philosophical argument and scientific evidence and that's where a lot of your discussions have ranged around you know whether whether if there is a beginning to the universe if there is a sort of boundary if you like to time and so on whether whether we can speak of a cause of that universe coming into existence and whether that course could be God yes though the question of the beginning of time is a subsequent question to the beginning of the universe I think the time is a metaphysical quantity that is different than our measures of time the fact that a photon doesn't measure the passage of time I think is irrelevant to the fact that the photon exists in time I I agree that with Newton on this respect the time itself is a metaphysical reality and what physics discusses physical time is our best attempts to provide some measure of this time and these measures may be accurate or inaccurate affected by gravitational fields affected by uniform motion and so forth but time itself is not something that is a physical quantity it is a metaphysical reality travel with that I mean sure we have I mean this view we have in relativity is certainly we don't have a time in the sense that we talk about time in normal language because it's it doesn't run the same for everybody if you like I don't know that I've understood you what you're saying exactly but it's as though somehow there is a time in the sense progresses universally yes yes right you see that so for example these photons in the far distant future these photons in the far distant future are temporarily later than the photons that exist now indeed some of them may have had emission events in the past well if they have a past and they're in the future they're clearly in time know anything a boat on itself you date agree with that no you see it's suggesting there is a kind of you know time progressing or independent no you can have a temporal order without having a time associated with that and if you have distant events then they go according to a different they may have a which is earlier or later for a particular thing I mean which I mean which is earlier or later in an event on the Andromeda galaxy you see for example depends on if I start moving forwards it's no different from when I move backwards so I'm I'm weeks probably so how does why do you say that there is somehow a universal response I won't be a Lorentzian with respect to that I think as a number of other contemporary physics a Lorentzian you mean they chain Lawrence yes I'm not quite sure what is its technical when you say that any that there are relations of absolute simultaneity okay in the world even if our measuring devices are affected motion in the typical relativistic way yeah yeah and you know I'm disagreeing with that you're disagreeing with that I mean we're probably not gonna get to the bottom of this but could I raise an issue this day is more mental okay I noticed that when you spoke of these symmetrical predictions of a singularity and your work in showing that even in a universe that is not isotropic and homogeneous that these this singularity would occur you spoke of whether or not they were realistic solutions or not and I think this is that one of the fundamental questions to ask about your conformal cyclical cosmology to what degree do you think this is a realistic depiction of the universe as opposed to a mathematical model I notice in 2006 you said so far we regard the conformal space-time prior to the Big Bang as a mathematical fiction however my outrageous proposal is to take this mathematical fiction seriously as something physically real now I'm suspicious of that outrageous move when you see I use the word outrageous as a defense against people who would be that's not it's very different from the conventional view yes I don't think it's not in fact I if you ask me now what I think about I think it's correct I think that this is good sufficient evidence now this is very different from those days sufficient evidence now to indicate that it makes predictions which are not made by the conventional view and we are shall be seeing beginning to see are actually present in the observations now this is pretty new there are things which are a few years old which had to do with signals week you see I had this view and you're going back to whenever it was 2006 or something yes when there was no observational indication of this particular view apart from okay it seemed to make sense of certain things which are puzzles which other schemes don't seem to make sense of I mean I think I mentioned earlier in the fact that the gravitational degrees of freedom are highly suppressed in the early universe whereas the others are not in this scheme that is explained where is in other models of the universe inflationary cosmology and so on I don't see an explanation so but that's not the point I'm making here these are subsequent yeah I mean I used to give lectures on this taking the view that you more or less describe that this is an interesting idea nobody will ever know whether it's right or not I'll be able to go on giving lectures on this the end of my time at least without contradiction but then I started to think well maybe there are observations observational tests and I began to worry about what is the most violent possible thing apart from the Big Bang itself and I was thinking about okay I mentioned our collision with the Andromeda galaxy which will take place eventually and our black holes which will feel each other out and eventually they will swallow each other up and there will be one fantastically huge emission of energy in a form that we might not even feel if we were pleasant at that time in the form of gravitational waves been an absolutely enormous release of energy and that enormous release of energy will spread out through the universe but would be detectable in principle by beings in the cut in the succeeding eon now I'm claiming that these things happened in the eon prior to ours and that the signals produced by these collisions between supermassive black holes where are these signals are actually observed and with a an Armenian colleague vaheguru John I article on this a paper quite independent of ours by some polish colleagues headed by Christoph Meisner and the more recent paper that they did on this was originally on this satellite which was called the W Maps satellite which is as microwave background and then they more refined observations of the Planck satellite were analyzed by this polish group later on and they found that with a confidence of 99.4% these signals were real and not artificial so you think there's been physical confirmation in that sense of yeah the the cyclical model and the newer observations the things which I call Hawking points well let's not get into too much more detail there but but bill what what let's say you know that this possibly this model could could be a potential sort of way of understanding the universe I suppose my question one question I have is would that mean it is infinite into the past and would that mean that you kind of avoid the need for a a divine sort of starting point - right well I can't resist saying first that that the observational data is under determinative the majority of cosmologists don't explain the data through this particular model I in fact I mean most cosmologists as I understand it from my reading don't think that the entropy ever will disappear the way that this model requires and they don't think that a particle physicists don't think that electrons will decay so that there will never be just photons so I don't think they decay out of them but you do think they all they disappear right no they the mass there's a there is an look I mean sure the view is not currently accepted by modern cosmologists and I agree with that but they haven't looked I haven't had never had any explanation of let's take the Polish work because they're more explicit about the probabilities there the Polish work I haven't seen anybody contradict what they've done I haven't seen any answer to this probability confidence level of 99 point for now this is this okay this paper was only came out earlier this this this year but there was an earlier paper the heads and there's an earlier paper we had and I and I haven't heard anybody say there's anything wrong with it mmm but the point was that the data is under determinative you said that it was 99% sure that the signals were real right but the question is what how do you best explain this imprint yes I would like my bigger question as it were about this is is I suppose it's the question let's say that we are living in this si si si ma chatte I think I think you're right we should be talking about exactly yes the the I mean the the fundamental perhaps most obvious question is well if if that is the case where did it come from why why is there in a universe at all whatever particular sort of you know reality it takes I mean bill I suppose for you the the Big Bang cosmology and so on has served to reinforce that idea of the idea that there is a mind behind the universe that there is a cause yes and would would the the cyclical model sort of if it were in any way shown to be a good representation of reality undermine that undermined the idea that we have to have a cause behind well it doesn't show that the past is infinite it only talks about two eons I'm skeptical again that its proper to speak of this other universes existing temporally prior to ours because if time disappears then they're not temporally related you can't say that one is earlier then something you see yes when you say time disappears it doesn't cut order doesn't just as a temporal order does not disappear so I think there's a misunderstanding here if the time the notion of the length of time maybe not preserved in a sense but necessarily but time order whether something was before or after still is preserved in the sense of causal relationships and that's not affected by the conformal Maps so you can you can squash time or stretch it but which is earlier than which which is early in which is later is still preserved you're talking about the metric yes hi yes as opposed to temporal order of earlier then and later then okay that's that's clear okay I mean how does that play in as far as you're concerned to to your overall picture of the idea of the universe being caused yes well I still under beacon that can it be extended to past infinity yes the question yeah I mean you say there could have been the first 73 time if you go back and that was the first one you see could you see it's interesting because I actually talked about this in the meeting in the Vatican them not serious a few years ago I can't mean it was exactly and they came up with what I thought was from their point of view the correct answer namely that okay suppose this infinite succession of eons is the correct explanation of the physical world sure God created the whole lot and and that it's the temporal order of these things it's not the important point yes and I thought yes that's from your perspective that's the right answer mm-hmm it is is that satisfactory to you well there would be a different form of the cosmological arguments such as was defended by Leibniz Leiden it's held that even if you have an eternal universe in the past that doesn't explain why there is any universe rather why's that so nothing but other than nothing right and so for live Nets the eternality or infinitude of the past was irrelevant to the question of whether there is a metaphysically necessary being that explains why the universe exists but this would be relevant though to the Kalam cosmological argument because if it turned out to be correct and could be extended to past infinity then it would not be true at least scientifically that you can give good evidence that the universe began to exist you would still have all of the philosophical arguments in place against an infinite regress of these sorts of eons obviously we don't have time to play out in detail the argument as to as to whether we can establish you know that particular model but there is an aspect of it that I'd love to dig into in the in the final time we have together gentlemen which is why this particular universe and the way in which it appears to be governed by these fundamental constants and forces that seem incredibly fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life to appear at some point this is often called the fine-tuning of the universe for life build you want to very briefly explain from your perspective why you see this is an interesting argument for the existence of God well in the contemporary literature on fine-tuning there are basically three explanatory options either physical necessity that these constants and quantities must have the values they do that it's not contingent or secondly chance and the form that this normally takes would be a kind of multiverse hypothesis and then an appeal to an observer selection self selection effect that we can only observe universes that are finely tuned for our existence so we shouldn't be surprised that somewhere in the infinite multiverse that we should appear in such a universe and then the third one would be design that there is an intelligence that is not designed the universe and Rogers a special contribution I think to this has been to place a very significant objection and question mark behind the explanation of the multiverse hypothesis between the self selection effect because if we were just a random member of a multiverse we ought to be observing a much different universe than we do I want to come to that I mean first of all on this question of fine-tuning which again we might be worth just spelling out a little bit for the audience you yourself have have contributed interestingly to this there there's a certain aspect of reality the initial low entropy distribution of mass and energy now without getting too technical at this point this is this is essentially the the idea you were caught of alluding to earlier that at that very earliest moment that singularity a big in Big Bang cosmology there's an incredible amount of order versus the disorder the entropy that appears later on that needs to be there in order for a a life-sustaining universe to be possible in fact you put this extraordinary number on it of the precision needed to be 1 in 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123 which I'm told is if you were to try to write that down there and you put a zero on every single particle in the observable universe it you still wouldn't have enough zeroes and and so this is mind boggling stuff but it appears it appears that as though some some someone as you know who was it who said someone's been monkeying with the physics what a royal red hole said it looks as though as as bill has said some sort of design is that to ensure that we we got here now yeah now what do you what do you say to that no I did well I'm agnostic I would say on that one you see it's not clear to me I mean people talk about about the mass ratio between the proton and the neutron and the fact that the neutron is just a little bit more massive than the proton and K is that way around the other way around and so on but but it's it's very difficult to since we only know one kind of life you see or one kind of the production of consciousness it may be very rare throughout the universe we I mean the numbers may not all be that or like all that good you see you can imagine fiddling with them so that so they were consciousnesses all over the place you see I don't know you see we don't know enough about that and there are some nice examples from science fiction which show different alter I like the one Fred Hoyles idea of the black cloud you see where this was a completely different way of imagining a conscious me ago which was this huge cosmic cloud which communicator those missed by electromagnetic signals and things ice the other story which I like to refer to is one by Robert forward which was a Dragon's egg I think was the name of story where there was a neutron star which came close to the Sun and the people on the earth went to explore it and it turned out that they were living beings on this neutron star which instead of using chemistry they use nuclear processes and this means that their lives and evolution took place millions of times faster than us and how you can make a story with this complete imbalance is an amazing achievement I hope but but but they even had a religion which took place in the chillers which were the inhabitants of this neutron star and when the thing came close to them they built their complete religion on the on the star which appeared you see in the do you think it's I mean these are obviously stories but do you think it's possible in a sense that some sort of conscious reality could exist even in the absence of the physical sort of carbon-based life that we we obviously need it could have been done very differently in a different totally different in many different parts of the universe where the physics is very different from what it is only earth and maybe a different kind of life could have evolved there and I have no idea just that we don't know there are puzzles right which look like coincidental things and they were one of the first ones with Hoyles think about the energy level of carbon which hadn't been there then then you couldn't have got beyond evil bill what's your response to these sorts of ways of dealing with the fine-tuning well this is fascinating to me because as I understand you Roger you're not advocating either physical necessity nor chance via the multiverse hypothesis and self-selection effect nor design but rather you would simply deny the fact of fine-tuning altogether that the universe is not fine-tuned for not too strong I said I don't know you don't know yeah and to me that is highly implausible I we just find example after example of fine-tuning in contemporary physics and it seems to me to be a desperate expedient to deny that it exists in the absence of fine-tuning there wouldn't even be matter there wouldn't be chemistry so the idea that that in other forms of life would evolve I think is logically possible but it's not I think the most plausible solution to the problem well I mean we just know so little about what constitutes life and how it I mean we have the universe we have and you could imagine fiddling with the numbers and making them to what extent that freedom is even there mathematically isn't clear III think we just know I mean I can see the arguments and I can see there's a case for the argument to say that okay from certain points of view it looks as though there are accidental things about the constants of nature which have allowed things to happen which if they hadn't happened we wouldn't be here and that's true but maybe some other thing would be here which could I was wondering whether you're the the conformal cyclical model in any way sort of does the job of a multiverse in as much as well if the universe has sort of had these rebirths time and time and time again perhaps we're living in the one that was habitable for human life that ability yes there could be an evolution of constants I mean this was an idea that John Wheeler put forward not with this model but with other models with announcing universe models that maybe each time there was a new set of constants produced and they were different each time and we happen to be living in the particular Eon if I could use that word here in which the constants happen to see the kind life at least that we experience so that's potentially a solution what do you think though that solution seems to me to fall prey to the very argument that you give against using the anthropic principle with respect to the multiverse because what you've done in trying to push the conformal cyclical model the past infinity is any fact establish a multiverse except it's sequential II ordered rather than simultaneous in any case then the question is why do we observe a fine-tuned universe like this instead of the one which is unfathomably more probable that is say no larger than our solar system a patch of order that is that big that would be unfathomably more probable than a fine-tuned universe and indeed maybe we're all just Boltzmann brains with illusions on the external world around us why you know it falls prey to this very objection it's an answer you see I'm not giving this house because I don't like it okay so this isn't your favorite this it's not my favorite but it is a possible answer right the eons are different than the numbers differ you can't different by very much from observational point of view but they I mean some of them don't differ very much but they could differ and they couldn't yes I like it but it's a possibility right but then it doesn't explain our observations because they're the most probable observable universes are not the one we like this one we use the other argument you said we happen to be in the one where they are nice you know okay there are the eons where this isn't one every five million or so maybe he has nice conditions in it sure I mean that's an excellent I don't like it it's an answer to this question I mean in a sense you've said from the outset though that you're you're agnostic essentially YES on this whole question of the fine-tuning you you you acknowledge that we do appear to live in in a fight universe that is finely tuned for life to do at some point develop but you you're at this point you don't think we have any adequate I don't think we ever explained about that is that convincing okay because we we don't even know what constraints they're on what these numbers could be from theoretical reasons there might be it's it's it's a big question mark but a possible answer to the question I don't quite see why you're objecting to this would be that every so often in these succession of eons the numbers come out right for life to work and we happen to be in one of these because we have to be in those because we can't be in the dead ones well but we can be in observable universes that are not finely tuned for our existence and those are in fact unfathomably more probable you you yourself in in your your work have said that the odds of our solar system falling together by the random collision of particles is around 10 to the 10 to the 60th oh yeah other jovi this no no that part of it it's completely explained by the model no no I'm not that's not that's not the point I thought you were talking about small effects about you know depends on life may depend on certain chemical no what I'm saying is that appealing to an observer self selection effect isn't sufficient to explain why we observe a finely tuned universe but it's your calling over one part in 10 to the 10th 124 whatever it is I mean that is it's perfectly explained by the model that's that's not a question how do you mean it's perfectly explained by the mode oh no the CCC model right gives you that right yes no no no about that number I'm not I'm not taking as I was using that as an illustration of the fact that an observer self selection effect isn't sufficient to explain why we observe a finely tuned universe and there are a multitude of other finely tuned constants but I want to know is he which funded you and you're talking about if we're talking about the 10 to the 10 to the 120 for four rather than three because of the dark nevermind okay doesn't matter too much it is still a huge number yes that number yes is a huge puzzle that's one of the reasons for CCC yes that's not I'm not including that right we don't need to include that that was just an illustration yes okay nobody believes me but I say that nonetheless there are other aspects of that that appear to be finely tuned that even which the CCC model wouldn't directly explain only in this sense of of we happen to live in the EON in which potentially this that takes a different form you see you might argue that that you have a propagation there is a kind of instability some of these numbers mean that the evolution goes away and you don't have a nice continuing eons which were similar to each other so there's different questions that couldn't be raised on this board it's probably time to start drawing our conversation to absolutely fascinating and I've so enjoyed it thank you very much that we start with you Roger I sort of hinted at this at the beginning but is there anything that would sort of cause you to cross the line from from mystery to perhaps there really is a divine mind behind all this incredible order complexity and you know the unfathomable uniqueness of who we are in this this universe gosh thing could appear but then you say would I trust that they'll look quite it's not it's more I think it's more could one twist the views about what I think he said I don't have a clear view abundant overreaching an overarching picture of what's really going on in this and I do say okay maybe there's I talk about the three mysteries of the connecting the worlds but there's a bigger mystery which isn't wonderful thing all about you see and it's just that I'm not disagreeing with in a way that question but but I'm not quite sure to say there's oh there's a sort of mind which is supposed to answer these questions it's really an answer to it I don't find that satisfying I mean your colleague Hawking was certain at the time he passed away that there would be nothing on the other side to greet him well I mean if it were the case that you found that there was a divine mind would like that if there was somebody on the Sun other side to greet me when I get reached my end I don't believe that experiences can continue you see because it because once one's memories you see one's experiences involve one's memories and all that stuff and I can't imagine coming as some other being later in and having the same experience just as I've had and so that doesn't quite make sense to me but whether experience in some abstract sense can continue is another question and you're open to that possibility or yeah you have shows that off no I'm closed off any of these things I just haven't the foggiest idea bill what's your thoughts as we draw draw this conversation to a close well I suppose my overall impression would be that theism provides a kind of metaphysical fundamental unity to the world that is absent in the absence of the existence of a creator and designer of the universe and a source of moral goodness the theistic hypothesis has a tremendous unifying force to making sense of reality and therefore I think deserves serious consideration by any thinking person today um well Rocha and Bill thank you so much for joining me on the program today thank you yes for more debates updates and a bonus video that you won't find here on YouTube of Sir Roger Penrose describing his work with Stephen Hawking to find the Big Bang sign up at the big conversation dot show

Channel: Unbelievable?

Views: 451,020

Rating: 4.8419752 out of 5

Keywords: unbelievable, justin brierley, premier christian radio, christianity, atheism, philosophy, faith, theology, sir roger penrose, william lane craig, universe, cosmology, science, apologetics, kalam, big bang, physics, astrophysics, fine tuning, God, Jesus, Bible, debate, conformal cyclic cosmology, stephen hawking

Id: 9wLtCqm72-Y

Length: 88min 19sec (5299 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 04 2019

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[u/Darkhorseflying]

“May-sures” I nearly had a stroke