Stephen Meyer Discusses the Big Bang, Einstein, Hawking, & More - Science Uprising Expert Interviews

it was generally assumed by most physicists prior to the 1920s and 30s that the universe was eternal and therefore self-existence that it had always been here and really didn't require an explanation there was one physicist said uh robert dickey princeton university said an infinitely old universe would relieve us of the necessity of explaining the origin of the universe at any finite time in the past and up till about the 1920s and 30s most physicists and cosmologists simply assumed that the universe had been infinite in time and therefore required no explanation it was the ultimate explainer the universe is eternal it's self-existent it's always been here and therefore we don't need to give an account of where it came from well there was a surprising discovery made in 1912 by an american astronomer astronomer named vesto slifer and he discovered that the uh what we're called nebula at the time were issuing light that was redder than it would otherwise look it had a longer wavelength than would be expected and that suggested that these nebular structures in the night sky were moving away from us in every direction now at the time astronomers didn't know whether the nebula were within our galaxy or whether they were beyond our galaxy but by the 1920s that issue had been settled and it became clear that these nebula were actually other galaxies beyond the milky way that the milky way was just one of well what we now know are hundreds of billions of galaxies and so by the 1920s edwin hubble who was also studying this evidence called the red shift the shift of the the light coming from those different galaxies it was stretched out in the red direction of the electromagnetic spectrum so if you shine light through a prism the light will go will separate it from red to violet you get all the colors in between the red light corresponds to the longer wavelength light so if something is receding or moving away that the light from it will be stretched out and will look redder than it would otherwise look it's shifted in the spectral uh lines and hubble discovered this red shift all over again but now realized that the light was coming not from nebular structures within the galaxy but from galaxies beyond our own and that suggested that the universe was in every direction of the night sky every direction where they could verify this red redshifted light that it was expanding the amazing thing about the expansion of the universe is that it suggests that uh in the forward direction of time the universe will be getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger but if you wind that clock backwards in your mind and back extrapolate as the scientists say then you realize that that the the galaxies which are now moving away from us would at every successive point in the in the remote past have been closer and closer and closer together sometimes this is illustrated by blowing up a balloon the universe is like a balloon blowing up now in the forward direction of time but if you back it up in your mind's eye to think where were all those galaxies in the past at every successive point in the past they were closer and closer and closer and closer together until finally they would have converged in the past at some point marking the beginning of the the expansion of the universe and arguably the beginning of the universe itself and so that became known as the idea of the big bang the place at which the universe began to exist and began to expand outward in the way that we can now observe einstein's theory of general relativity played a very important role in the discovery of the beginning of the universe einstein's theory of relative gender relativity was a theory of gravity and his idea was that matter actually curves or warps space or what he called space time such uh an illustration would be like putting a big bowling ball in a trampoline and the trampoline would would then become depressed at the the at the middle and then bring and become warped overall now if that theory was correct then that implied that the universe was dynamic that matter would be actively shaped moving or changing the shape of space in space time so if the universe is dynamic and matter is pulling space in then if gravity is the only force in the universe then we would have to have a gravitational collapse and then all matter would be congealed all matter space time would be collapsed into a kind of a black hole but einstein realized we don't live in that kind of universe we don't live in a black whole universe where everything has been compressed into one big clump instead there's open space between galaxies and therefore there must be some countervening force pushing outward in contrast to gravity and he called that force the cosmological constant and his his theory therefore implied that the universe was was dynamic and that something had caused the universe to expand but what einstein did was he chose a value for the cosmological constant that exactly matched the inward pull of gravity so the outward expansion of the cosmological constant was contrived to exactly match the inward pull of gravity so that rather than portray the universe as dynamic and likely expanding as his theory would do on its face he instead chose a value for this outward push the cosmological constant describing the outward push at exactly the right amount so that it would match the inward pole and that allowed him to portray the universe as static with neither a beginning nor an end and for einstein this was a kind of philosophical relief because he really didn't want at that point in his career to think about the beginning of the universe because he didn't want to think about what would be necessary to explain the origin of the universe if we're talking about all of matter all of energy all of space and time and so the cosmological constant his fiddling with that value allowed him to portray the universe as static and and not expanding at the beginning of the 20th century and through most of the 19th century it was just presupposed among most physicists and astronomers cosmologists that the universe was eternal in extent that it was had been here for an infinitely long time and that probably it was of infinite uh spatial extension as well so the the assumption was that the universe was eternal self-existent self-organizing but it did not have a beginning point which would have required an explanation for the origin of the universe the origin the universe had always been here yeah it wasn't just einstein who didn't like the idea of the universe having a beginning other physicists and astronomers astrophysicists had a kind of emotional uh reaction against it even sir arthur eddington the great british astrophysicist who brought einstein into the picture as far as the evidence of the red shift and the expanding universe uh eddington invited einstein to cambridge in 1929 and they had a famous conversation where einstein told him about the work of hubble and and hummus and in in california uh establishing that the universe was expanding but eddington himself didn't like the idea he said philosophically the notion of a beginning to the present order is repugnant to me he should he said i should like to find a genuine loophole the the idea of the big bang he said is preposterous it leaves me cold so he he was aware of the evidence presented it to einstein but then himself expressed this kind of emotional uh disdain for the idea and later a physicist robert dickey at princeton university explained what was going on in the minds of many physicists he said that an infinitely old universe would relieve us of the necessity of explaining uh the origin of the universe at any finite time in the past by contrast if the universe has a definite beginning then you have to think about what caused the universe itself the universe of matter space time and energy to come into existence clearly that's not going to be something that can be readily explained by matter space time and energy because those are the very things that come into existence so providing a materialistic explanation for the origin of the universe becomes very difficult because it's matter itself that begins to exist einstein was later forced to abandon the static universe idea for two reasons first his c his fiddling of the value of the cosmological constant seemed to a lot of physicists to be extremely contrived the the cosmological concept could have had a range of values from very weak to very strong but he chose exactly the value that would give it this static uh outcome the problem with that is that implied an incredible degree of initial fine-tuning which itself was kind of mysterious and secondly uh as as physicists began to work with his equations of general relativity they showed that even if the value of the cosmological constant had been fixed just right even slight variations in the distribution of matter in the universe would throw off that balance causing the universe even to rapidly expand or contract that that it was not going to be possible to maintain that static state it would we were going his theory implied a dynamic universe but then secondly uh as the evidence of the red shift became more and more widely known among physicists and astronomers and cosmologists and the evidence for an actual the actual astronomical evidence for an expanding universe became clear it became obvious that einstein's fiddling was contrary to what the evidence actually showed that in effect the heavens talked back and in 1927 on the way to uh uh a physics conference georges lumatra the famous belgian physicist also a catholic priest had had a now famous uh taxi cab ride with with einstein where he told him about the redshift evidence and also explained that he had solved einstein's field equations and that they most naturally pointed to a dynamic expanding universe with a definite beginning and so by the end of the 1930s there was a convergence between theoretical physics which was pointing to a beginning based on einstein's theory and the evidence from observational astronomy that was then uh confirmed by hubble and his colleague hummus at caltech and there's some famous newsreel footage from 1931 where einstein accepts an invitation from hubble to come out to the uh mount wilson observatory in pasadena california and einstein looks up through the camera and then comes out and discusses with the media uh that that he he now realizes that they're that that uh the universe couldn't be static that there's evidence for of a beginning and he gives an uh an evidence he gives a an interview with the new york times a couple weeks later and says that uh that hubble and hummus and had now convinced him that absolutely that the universe could not be static must be expanding there must have been a beginning later he calls his fiddling with a cosmological constant the greatest blunder of my scientific career so einstein finally comes around and so by the 1930s you get this convergence between observational astronomy on the one hand and theoretical physics on the other both of which are now pointing decisively to the really unexpected conclusion that the universe must have had a beginning edwin hubble was a lawyer who went into observational astronomy at a really propitious time it was just as the astronomers were building these large dome telescopes and hubble had the opportunity to use the the great 100-inch dome telescope at mount wilson and he began to observe the night sky through this big telescope which uh was able to resolve little tiny points of light with a much greater precision than smaller telescopes had done before and secondly at this time astronomers started to use photographic plates that that could collect light over long periods of time and and so the these two advances the bigger telescopes and the use of photographic plates allowed them to get very high resolution images of little points of light in the night sky that previously had seemed quite indistinct but now we're revealing themselves to be spiral nebula nebular structures and through an interesting chain of reasoning hub will realize that these nebular structures were actually galaxies beyond the milky way in the 1920s there was still a debate about whether the milky way was the only galaxy or whether there were galaxies beyond it but as uh techniques for measuring distances to remote objects in the night sky advanced it became clear that many of these little points of light in the night sky were not nebular structures of amorphous gas within our galaxy but we're rather distinct galaxies way beyond our galaxy and so the combination of these distance measurements these abilities to measure great distances in the night sky along with hubble's uh observations through the big telescopes enabled him to establish that there were galaxies beyond our own and then further that the light coming from those galaxies was being stretched out and was what astronomers call red shifted such that the the best explanation for what was happening with these galaxies is that they were moving away they were receding from us and that suggested in turn that the universe was expanding from a kind of cosmic beginning point one way to think about the expanding universe is to think of a balloon being blown up if you draw some spiral structures on the surface of the balloon and then you puff puff puff blow the balloon up that illustrates the way the universe is currently expanding it's go every successive moment it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger and the galaxies are getting further and further away from each other the galaxy's on the edge of the universe the galaxy's in the middle they're all getting further and further away but now imagine what would happen if you back the time sequence up if you back extrapolate then that can be illustrated by thinking of the balloon getting smaller and smaller and smaller and corresponding to its its size at every progressive point in the past and at every progressive point in the past the galaxies would be getting closer and closer and closer and closer together till finally you reach a limiting point where all the galaxies can congeal into one's inf into one infinitely hot dense point marking the beginning of the expansion and arguably the beginning of the universe itself balloon collapses onto itself george lamoshra was a belgian physicist who was a catholic priest who in the 1920s first synthesized the evidence from observational astronomy concerning the expansion of the universe based on the redshift evidence and the implications of einstein's theory of general relativity which implied a dynamic universe be from expanding outward from a beginning point and he showed that the physics and the astronomy were convergent that they were giving the same testimony and that really was the beginning what's known as the big bang theory because he brought the two strains of evidence the observational evidence and the theoretical physics into one coherent synthesis after the big bang theory was established in the 1930s there were a series of attempts to explain the expanding universe without implying that the universe had a beginning and one of the most famous of those was postulated by sir fred hoyle the british astrophysicist along with colleagues hermann bondi and thomas gold and what they proposed was that yes the universe is expanding but that as the universe expands new matter is being created as the expansion goes and so they posited kind of arbitrarily that the universe must exist in a state of constant density so that however much space there is there's a corresponding amount of matter so that there's always the same density so what they suggested was that the universe was expanding outward but as it did as it stretched then the density would start to to decrease and that would force matter to be created and they called the they they said that there was a sea field a creation field that was responsible for this matter popping into existence and in so doing what they suggested was that the universe had always been infinitely large it had always existed it'd been it had been here for an infinitely long time and it was just getting more infinite it was getting infinitely bigger but it had all it was infinite to start with and getting infinitely more big all the time and so they still had an expanding universe but one that was expanding uh outward in it for an infinite amount of time having been infinitely large from the beginning except that there was no beginning it had always the universe had always been here so they kind of restored the idea of an infinite self-existent universe but in some way also explained the or took account of the expanding universe then there was another theory that attempt to explain the uh the expanding universe but retain the idea of an infinitely old universe and this was the idea of the oscillating universe and the idea here was that the universe would be expanding outward but then as the expansion slowed the gravity the matter in the universe by gravitational force would cause the universe to recollapse but once it re-collapsed then by some unknown mechanism it would expand again so you'd get a series of of big crunches followed by big bounces okay and this was known as the oscillating universe and that then could account for why the universe looks to be expanding now id uh i i e we're in an expansion an expanding phase but later there would be a contracting phase and that would continue kind of like an accordion in and out in and out in and out that that theory ran into two big problems the first was it was discovered that there was not enough matter in the universe even counting the dark matter to that physicists can't have to infer but can't observe uh to cause the universe to recollapse and secondly it was determined by thermodynamic analysis uh mit physicist named alan guth showed that that the energy available to do work would diminish with each successive cycle that there'd be a build up of entropy and therefore less energy available to cause that outward push so that even if there was an outward push it would be smaller and eventually each successive outward expansion would be smaller and smaller and smaller would be kind of like a ball bouncing to the ground and finally it would damp out to a nullifying equilibrium where there's no more bounces okay and now if the universe had been infinitely old then that means we should have reached that nullifying equilibrium point long ago but since we aren't in such a point we couldn't we can infer that the universe wasn't infinitely old and there was there still must be a beginning so even if there were a series of bounces um there must have been a beginning was the conclusion so the the oscillating universe also uh i think ran into trouble both for theoretical and observational reasons and so the idea of the big bang really began to be accepted pretty widely by the 1970s and 80s in the 1960s there was another really interesting development in theoretical physics that that added to support to the big bang theory and that came with the solution of einstein's field equations by stephen hawking and then later by roger penrose and george ellis three great physicists a british physicist uh else of south africa but he was studying at cambridge and in during hawking's phd years he was studying black holes and he began to think about black holes with in relation to the origin of the universe if general relativity is true he thought then as the universe if the universe is getting smaller and smaller and smaller in the reverse direction of time then the the the matter of the universe would have been more and more tightly compressed and as the as so as you go further back in time the density of the matter in the universe gets it gets higher and higher but that would cause the curvature of the universe to get tighter and tighter and he showed that as you go further back in time as the matter gets more densely densely compacted the curvature gets more tightly compressed and you keep extending that backwards you reach a limiting point where the curvature of the universe must go to an infinite the the matter gets infinitely tightly compressed the curvature gets infinitely tight and at that point the laws of physics break down in what's called a singularity and that singularity marks the beginning point of the universe now in the there's a little film called the theory of everything and in the film they depict uh einstein's sorry in the film they depict hawking's uh phd examination and the examiners are picking apart his other chapters but when they get to this this fourth chapter where he develops the case for the singularity theorem uh one of his his supervisors says a black hole at the beginning of the universe that's that's brilliant stephen and then they they push the book across the the table and say congratulations dr hawking and now but but then after that hawking vows that he's going to go work out the math in more detail which he subsequently does with roger penrose one of the phd examiners a great physicist from oxford and so penrose and hawking and another collaborator uh later george ellis solve einstein's field equations and they do so not making some simplifying assumptions that lamatra had made but eliminating those simplifying assumptions and solving them with full rigor thus thus showing that the implications of of einstein's theory are very definitely that the universe had a beginning not only in time but also in space that there's a point where the curvature of space gets infinitely tight corresponding to zero spatial volume now you have to actually that's that's a profound image because if you think how much space can you put in uh how much stuff can you put in zero space the answer is obviously none and so the singularity theorems have a kind of profoundly anti-materialistic implication because they suggest as as as hawking and ellis later put it that this looks something like a creation event and so that development in theoretical physics along with the refutation of the uh the oscillating universe and the steady state universe by the 1970s and 80s establishes the big bang theory as as the dominant theory among cosmologists and astrophysicists well in in 1965 robert wilson and arno penzias two engineers at the bell labs in new jersey discovered some radiation that was thought to be the echo of the initial big bang if the big bang theory were true then after the beginning of the universe there would be a point where all the matter and energy of the universe were congealed into a kind of infinitely hot dense point and that that intense concentration of matter and energy would produce radiation that would then begin to move radiate throughout the universe and eventually cool and physicists make calculations as to the temperature equivalent of that radiation and and physicists including one at princeton university nearby the bell labs were looking for that radiation penzos and penzias and wilson found it in 1965 and it confirmed a prediction of the big bang theory one that was expected if the big bang were true but not expected if the steady state were through were true the steady state theory envisioned matter popping into existence in little pockets as the universe expands and never imagined that all the matter and energy would have been condensed into an infinitely hot dense point therefore it didn't expect to have the radiation from that infinitely hot dense point pervading the universe today so when that radiation was discovered it it supported the big bang and disconfirmed a prediction of the steady state and from that point forward i think the steady state was pretty much uh uh uh rejected by most physicists even even hoyle and uh um sorry even herman bondi one of the initial proponents of the steady state rejected the the steady state theory i was a grad student in cambridge uh my first year and was at a high table dinner sitting next to bondi and he told me the whole story you know he said the only thing wrong with our theory was it was totally wrong oddly hoyle and gold never repudiated it but bondi did the most common attempt to get around the idea of a of a definite beginning to the universe is not coming any longer from any uh evidence from observational astronomy it's coming from extremely abstract models in theoretical physics one of which is called the most most significant of which is called quantum cosmology if you think about the hawking penrose ella singularity theorems they allow physicists to back extrapolate they imagine what the universe would have been like as you back extrapolate and then it would come to this infinitely tight curvature but there is a tiny loophole that that you can ex you can invoke to avoid that conclusion of a singularity it happens that when the universe is incredibly small when it's smaller than one uh uh one ten to the minus forty third of a centimeter uh that it would be subject to what are called quantum effects or quantum fluctuations and in that tiny little smidgen of space just after the universe would have begun we're not sure how gravity would have worked and so if we're back extrapolating to a beginning based on einstein's theory of gravity at that tiny point there's a possibility that gravity might have worked entirely differently and so some physicists have developed models of what are called quantum gravity or quantum cosmology and what they do is they describe how the universe would have functioned or they they describe the universe using the mathematics of quantum quantum physics and that allows them to portray the universe as possibly coming into existence essentially from a a set of mathematical possibilities rather than from from nothing physical they can think of the laws of physics causing the universe to come into existence now that's a very s uh interesting kind of move philosophically because rather than saying the universe had a material cause or saying that the universe came into existence from nothing physical which were the two previous options now we have a kind of depiction of the origin of the universe where it's coming into existence as the result of a mathematical equation describing how the universe would function when it was extremely tiny and if you in quantum physics there's something called the collapse of the wave function where as as a wave of light passes through a double slit in a famous experiment it seems to be passing through as a wave but then when it hits a detection plate it collapses and has a specific uh particle-like manifestation and in the same way these equations applied to the origin of the universe depict the universe as having many possible gravitational fields and uh spatial geometries the universe describes many possible universes and then if our universe is one of the universes that's described by that set of possibilities in what's called the universal wave function then the physicists think they've explained the origin of our universe our universe is described by the math of quantum quantum physics but there's a catch it's very odd to say that the universe came out of math and one of the proponents of this quantum cosmological idea alexander valenciana said has asked himself in his own book a rhetorical question he says if if the universe existed if our universe first existed as a set of mathematically describable possibilities as a mathematical expression but math exists only in minds are we then saying that the universe came out of a mind and then he never actually returns to answer his own his own rhetorical question hawking came tumbled to the same same insight he said what puts fire in the equations that gives them a universe to describe and now i in my own research i've made a further discovery about this universe explaining the universe out of as a result of the universal wave function and that is to get a universal wave function you have to solve a prior equation called the wheeler dewitt equation it's the analog to the famous schrodinger equation in regular quantum mechanics but it turns out that the wheeler-dewitt equation has an infinite number of solutions it's technically known as a functional differential equation and such equations cannot be solved unless the physicists themselves select what are called boundary constraints or boundary conditions and those boundary conditions restrict the degrees of mathematical freedom associated with the equation now in ordinary physics boundary constraints are decided or determined by the physical system that's being described but since there's no physical system being described by the the wheeler-dewitt equation yet because it's being used to explain the origin of all physics the origin of the universe the physicists have to choose the boundary constraints and they choose those with an outcome in mind they choose those in such a way to give a solution to that equation that which would be a universal wave function that would include a universe like ours so they they have a teleological and directed objective and they they so they limit the degrees of mathematical freedom in the original equation they get a they get a function out that includes our universe as a possibility and they say they've explained the origin of the universe but what have they actually modeled they've modeled the need for a mind to constrain degrees of mathematical freedom with the selection of boundary constraints and in so doing a min a mind that's inputting information into the equation in order to get an outcome that would include a universe like ours so i think what they've actually modeled is a form of intelligent design they've suggested that there would need to be a mind constraining the possibilities so as to get a universe like ours and that's that that uh quantum cosmological theory whether it's true or not has oddly though it's being used to refute a god hypothesis and to say well the universe either didn't need a beginning or it can be explained from physics from literally from nothing by the laws of physics actually implies the need for a pre-existing mind and a mind that would constrain possibilities input information in order to get a universe like ours well the big bang theory coupled with developments in theoretical physics suggests that the universe has been expanding from a finite beginning point where not only matter and energy but time and space itself began in einstein's physics time and space are connected and as space becomes more tightly curved as hawking showed as you go further back and it eventually reaches a limiting point of infinitely tight curvature and as time reaches a beginning point before that no physical reasoning is possible because there's no physics before that that's where physics begins the laws of physics break down at that point so to explain the origin of the universe uh literally the origin of matter space time and energy at a finite point in the past it becomes implausible to invoke matter space time and energy they're if you're trying to explain the origin of matter you can't posit a materialistic explanation because there's no matter there before the beginning to do the causing so if the universe does have a beginning and by the principle of causality all events that begin must have a cause we then must look for a cause that is immaterial that transcends matter space time and energy and that's where i think theism or something like it perhaps deism has a great deal to offer because those metaphysical systems of thought posit an immaterial entity of great power that could bring the physical universe into existence there's a method of reasoning in the philosophy of science a method of reasoning in science called inference to the best explanation where scientists posit that entity which if real or existent would best explain the evidence well if you use that method the entity which if real or existence that would best explain the evidence would be an entity that transcends matter space time and energy and can act to initiate new events that sounds an awful lot like a mind a transcendent mind and so the the transcendent mind posited by theism or perhaps deism i think better explains the origin of the universe than any materialistic explanation again for the simple reason that materialism can't uh possibly succeed because there's no matter prior to the big bang that could explain the origin of the material the material universe there's another development in theoretical physics called the board guth the lincoln theorem and it's not based on general relativity but it's based on special relativity and for that reason it is not affected by postulations about what gravity might or might not have been like within the first tiny smidgen of time after the the beginning of the universe and it's it's those speculations that prevented the hawking penrose ls singularity theorems from absolutely proving a beginning point instead the bourgeois lincoln theorem proves a beginning to the universe but on the basis of considerations from special relativity that have nothing to do with whether or not there were quantum fluctuations within the first tiny smidgen of time after the beginning of the universe and whether gravity might have worked differently or not instead it's independent of all those kind of considerations and caveats that that uh prevent us from saying that the the hawking penrose ellis results are absolute proofs instead you have a very strong proof of a beginning from theoretical physics that is not dependent on these conditions and so that's another line of evidence suggesting that the universe had a beginning in fact it applies to all cosmological models whether inflationary or otherwise and uh and so physicists can say well maybe the universe just was always here but the evidence from observational astronomy is pointing to a beginning i would argue that the singularity theorems of hawking and penrose and ellis at least point strongly to a beginning but then in addition to that i think you have a very considerable and uh compelling proof of a beginning based on special relativity that's been advanced by board glute and valencian and so those three lines of evidence and or and or developments in theoretical physics i think converge on a very uh compelling conclusion as best we can tell the universe had a beginning some have wanted to say that our universe is just one bubble among countless others among an eternally inflating universe that's uh a consequence of something known as eternal chaotic inflation it's a new cosmological model but the board guth valencian theorem showed that on the basis of special relativity all models of the origin of the universe which imply an expansion and the eternal chaotic universe has an an expanding so-called inflaton field that all such models must terminate eventually with the beginning so the eternal chaotic inflation model does not circumvent the implications of the board gotham lincoln theorem it too must have started from if true it too must have started from the beginning some cosmologists will claim that older models like the steady state and the oscillating universe are making comebacks but this appears mainly to be a form of metaphysical desperation the evidence from multiple lines of evidence and several separate theoretical developments point strongly to the beginning of the universe and the attempt to resuscitate these older models seems more to be a consequence of a distaste for their implications for the implications of the big bang than it does from any significant um new developments in physics that would justify those those those models are reviving them for example there's a new model of the oscillating universe that suggests that the universe expanded and contracted and expanded and contracted and that that there's a a new generation of entropy or or low entropy with each cycle but the models the physicists who propose this don't actually explain where that new energy available to work to do work would come from they just posit that it happened so i think there's a bit of desperation in these attempts to circumvent the idea of a beginning lawrence krauss claims that he can explain the universe from nothing on the basis of quantum physics and that these models do not require any external control oddly what i've shown in my new book return of the god hypothesis is that krause's nothing involves the equations of quantum physics and insofar as equations are mathematical entities and insofar as mathematical entities are abstract concepts what we know about the existence of abstract concepts is that they always exist in minds so his nothing seems to imply the need for a pre-existing mind but secondly the the the mathematical expression called the universal wave function that that he invokes to explain the origin of the universe after all he's popularizing the model of alexander valencian who uses a universal wave function to explain the original universe the the unit that universal wave function is actually the consequence of the physicists solving a prior equation called the wheeler dewitt equation and they can only solve that equation because it has an infinite number of solutions if they exert control on the equation in the form of what are called boundary constraints what they do is they limit the degrees of mathematical freedom associated with that equation to get a universal wave function out that includes a universe like ours but that is actually modeling a teleological and directed process in other words intelligent design how does how does the equation get constrained so that it can be solved to produce a wave function that will describe a universe like ours it gets saw it gets solved by the physicist choosing specific constraints or controls or conditions to impose on the equation to get the outcome that the physicist wants and so cross is exactly wrong the uh the universe doesn't come from nothing in his model it comes from math but the math is only explanatory if prior math is constrained by the physicist to get the answer the physicist wants and that i think is modeling the need for an input of information to constrain degrees of mathematical freedom by a mind and therefore i think even if krause's model and the lincoln's model of the origin of the universe is correct they're quantum cosmological models that what those models actually imply is the need for pre-existing mind and pre-existing inputs of information into a set of mathematical possibilities to constrain those possibilities to get the universe that they desire yeah sean carroll has questioned the idea that the universe has a beginning on the grounds that general relativity does not apply or may not apply in the first tiny smidgens of time when the universe would have been infinitesimally small i've argued that what we know from gener from general relativity the singularity theorems at least point to a beginning but i've also pointed out that if these quantum mechanical based models of the origin of the universe are true and we don't apply or general relativity to our understanding of the very beginning of the universe that those models also imply a beginning the singularity is not removed in quantum cosmological models it's presupposed but secondly that those quantum cosmological models have for other an additional reasons theistic and immaterialistic implications they suggest that the universe arose from a purely mathematical state and they arose as the result of a mathematical equation somehow being constrained to produce a particular state that includes a universe like ours and in the modeling the constraints on that mathematical equation called the wheeler-dewitt equation are always supplied by the physicists who choose the outcome they want in order to get a mathematical expression that includes a universe like ours which they then say explains the origin of the universe it's a very odd thing to explain how matter can come out of math but that's what these new models are essentially saying and if that's what they're saying they have theistic implications every bit as as compelling as the evidence for a beginning

Channel: Discovery Science

Views: 197,093

Keywords: science and faith, intelligent design, Discovery Institute, Charles Darwin, Stephen Meyer, return of the God hypothesis, big bang theory, what caused the universe, did the universe have a beginning, sean carroll, stephen hawking, albert einstein, georges lemaitre, edwin hubble, cosmic inflation, lawrence krauss, evidence for God, evidence for a beginning, cosmology

Id: m_AeA4fMHhI

Length: 45min 44sec (2744 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021