Why Are We Here? Exploring The Mystery Of Existence

foreign [Music] but if you want to get early access to our episodes consider becoming a paying member if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe and share it with your friends thank you for all your support the origin of our universe is the greatest mystery of all why is there something rather than nothing further still how did we come to exist in a world with such precise laws of nature and complex creatures as we shall see how we answer these questions determines everything from the meaning of Our Lives to the secrets hello and welcome to the mystery of existence I'm Jack signs and I'm delighted to welcome you all here to the beautiful Royal Institution theater without further Ado please welcome to the stage one of judaism's most Innovative and insightful big picture thinkers Professor Sylvia Jonas the world's most famous atheists and recently ranked the world's most influential I think Professor Richard Dawkins globalizing the philosophy of religion it's Hindu expert and Oxford University lecturer Jessica Frazier thank you and last but certainly not least one of the biggest names in all of Christian philosophy Professor Richard swinburne Okay so we've agreed to limit our discussion this evening to three main questions they are why there is something rather than nothing how our laws of nature ended up being fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life and where and natural environments and complex organisms came from what's the origin of life more generally we've got people representing Different World Views here from Christianity experts on Hinduism atheism and Judaism as well Richard Dawkins this we've got two Richards with us to see me so excuse me for using full names very formally but Richard Dawkins would you like to begin with the motivations for why you would reject God as an explanation no it's not how I would like to begin okay I am here to talk about science and biology and the third of your your three points in other words um the mystery of existence is indeed a deeply profound mystery and a biologist is perhaps best qualified anybody to expound this mystery because um at least until 1859 it was a total mystery the Facts of Life being both highly complex are almost unbelievably complex and also carrying a gigantic illusion of design living things appear to have design written all over them and this applies to the deepest levels of complexity as well as superficial levels complexity first um the human brain has about 86 billion neurons and about 600 trillion connections between them and if you were to count up the number of nerve impulses that are rocketing through your like rifled bullets through your brain at the moment it would be something like four quadrillion of these clicks these impulses per second complexity of the brain complexity of the rest of the body every animal and plant every bacterium is prodigiously complicated the illusion of design you can see this every time you see a camouflaged insect a stick insect a stick caterpillar a leaf insect a stick caterpillar that has carved on its exterior Leaf scars perfect mimicry of a real stick butterflies that have perfect mimicry of a leaf um everything about a living organism screams at you it's it's designed and until Darwin came along that's what most people thought almost everybody thought Darwin had the effrontery almost to realize that it was possible that all this complexity and this illusion of design could come about through blind mechanical forces evolution by natural selection that degree of complexity and apparent design cannot just happen it has to have a process leading up to it it has to have a process leading from Primeval Simplicity to the complexity that we see around us at present Simplicity is difficult enough to explain that's the first of all things why is there something rather than nothing but Simplicity is by definition a whole lot easier to explain than complexity and Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection in this most general form is the only explanation we know that it that can lead from Simplicity to complexity which is why I stick my neck out and say that if there is life elsewhere in the universe and I think there probably is but if there is then it will be darwinian life every other detail may be different from life on this planet but one thing I would bet on is that it will be darwinian life it will have come about by some version of random variation followed by non-random survival that is the only formula I believe we know is capable of lifting Simplicity to the level of complexity uh it gets a lot of help on this planet and probably elsewhere from what I've called evolutionary arms races it's one thing for animals and plants to be adapted to the climate that's relatively simple but what happens in nature is that you have enemies which are evolving at the same time and I think Darwin realized that the prodigies of complexity that we see are mostly the result of arms races he didn't call them arms races but he meant it arms races between predators and prey parasites and hosts males and females when the when you are surrounded by other things that are evolving at the same time as you are then you get an escalation and it's that escalation between predators and prey parasites and hosts Etc that gives rise to these extraordinary levels of complexity that we see now that's biology and since Darwin we in principle understand how is how the trick is dumb the trick is done by non-random survival of random variation natural selection pushing back before biology the origin of all things the origin of the universe the origin of of matter the origin of the laws of physics we need a physics on this a physicist on this panel I think we haven't got one um because that's um where the problem is at present biology is essentially solved and that was the big one William Paley in his book on natural theology in 1803 said that physics is comparatively easy it's biology that really demonstrates the the role of the of the Creator um and he said that apart from Saturn's ring there's not a lot of complexity going on in the physical world um he was right but nevertheless since biology is solved we're now pushed back to physics and cosmology um as the place where the mystery is now deepest and as I said I'm not qualified to talk about that my physicist friends are working on it and I'm interested in perhaps there are physicists here tonight who can tell us what the present state of the art is on explaining things like the origin of the laws of physics the origin of the um fundamental constants a half a dozen or so fundamental constants whose value is measured but which is not not yet explained and as you know there's a strong argument to say that these these um fundamental constants are fine-tuned in the sense that if there were any of them were slightly different from what they are then we would not have but we not have galaxies we would not have matter we not have chemistry we would not have biology um and we would not have us um so there are various solutions to this riddle of where the fine-tuning comes from um and I think the one that is most favorite at the moment is the Multiverse idea that we are in one of a very large number of universes which have different laws of physics and different physical constants and the anthropic principle by the anthropic principle we have to be in one of that a minority of universes which has the properties necessary to give rise to sentient beings such as us capable of of understanding it um are there other physicists say that it's just we don't yet understand enough there will come a time when we when we have a theory of everything and then we will know why these physical constants have the values that they do and where the laws of physics come from um so I've divide I would divide the problem into into the biology problem which was once thought to be huge was huge still is kind of huge but the courage that we should get from the fact that Darwin solved that problem should lead us on to have courage to have courage to feel that the same problem in physics will be solved and um I think I probably had my time no that's uh that's wonderful uh Richard swinburne would you like to jump in here because you're right view in terms of whether or not physics will eventually gather as could contrast well with Richard Dawkins us okay I believe that the world in the sense of all that there is apart from God exists because God sustains it in existence if it had a beginning God created that first state of the world and if it had no beginning God kept it in existence throughout past Everlasting time things in the world behave almost entirely in accordance with scientific laws and it is God who keeps those laws operative God does however in my view give to human beings some very limited free will to make differences to the world and God May occasionally intervene in the world to bring about some event directly I believe these things because I believe that theism the hypothesis that there is a God provides the most probable explanation of the most General features of the world that there is a physical world and the same implies if there is a Multiverse that it is governed almost entirely by simple comprehensible laws of nature and that those laws are such as to bring about in the course of time including via the mechanism of evolution bring about in the course of time human bodies those bodies are the bodies of conscious human beings theism is rendered probable by these data inverse feature virtue of the very same criteria as a hypothesis of Science History or detective work is made probable by its evidence these criteria are one if the hypothesis is true it's quite probable that we refine the data two if the hypothesis is false it's not at all probable that we'll find the data and three the hypothesis is simple is a very simple hypothesis it postulates the existence of only one entity not many one substance as philosophers call it God and it postulates about him that he is essentially Everlasting and omnipotent that is able to do anything logically possible so theism postulates that there are zero limits to God's length of time life and zero limits to his power zero is a simple Knight number and so the whole nature of God is a very simple nature all the other properties traditionally ascribe to God follow from these properties for example such a God is omniscient that is he knows anything or to qualify that claim in the same way as the claim of omnipotence that he knows everything logically possible to know compatible with his omnipotence thus you will know of all actions whether or not they are good or bad to know that an action is good is to have some inclination to do it we humans as well as having inclinations to do what is good are also subject to counter inclinations to do actions which are bad the simplest and so most probable kind of God would not have bad inclinations and so he will always do good actions he will be perfectly good hence God's omniscience and perfect goodness follow from his omnipotence and so do all the other properties traditionally ascribed to God such as being creator of any world there is being perfectly God a good God would wish to spread goodness to create more good things we humans are good things we have powers to reason and to make small differences to ourselves other people in the world but most of the these great making properties which we have with one exception are properties possessed in far greater degree by God himself but the one very good property which we possess and God does not possess is the power to choose freely between Good and Evil God would think it good that there should be beings who can make a real differences to themselves others in the world for good or evil without being always programmed to do the good just for example as good parents who want their children to be good would not wish to give them a drug which would make them automatically do good actions they would want the children to make up their own minds about what to do within limits for this reason it is probable that God would make humans although it is also probable though less probable that he would make many other good things but in order to make humans he must give them bodies and so a physical world he must make it governed by observable regularities simple enough for them to understand because otherwise they will not know which actions of theirs will have which effects they will not know what will happen if they set light to crops whether that will destroy the crops or help them to grow and so generally but there will only be simple observable regularities if there are simple underlying laws of nature yes humans will only exist if those laws are such as to be compatible with the existence of humans whether or not God makes them by an evolutionary process or creates them fully grown and finally of course humans will not be able to reason and to make Con choices unless they are conscious hence if God seeks to bring about humans he must bring about the necessary conditions for their existence and those are the general features of the world which I have described that there is a physical world governed in almost entirely by simple laws of nature such as to be compatible with existence of humans and that humans are conscious but of course there isn't a slightest reason for supposing these things would occur unless there is a God why should there be a physical Universe at all if there is why should it be governed by simple laws of nature or any laws of nature at all without a hypothesis such as theism one would expect the different chunks of matter to behave in entirely different ways from each other but in fact every fundamental particle in the universe behaves in exactly the same way as every other one in Conformity with laws of nature unless someone arrange things in this way it would be immensely improbable that this would happen and an aspect of that is of course the fine-tuning likewise it would be immensely improbable that the laws even if they were simple and comprehensible would be such as to bring about the evolution of humans and there would have to be an enormous set of laws quite different from those of physical science to explain the evolution of Consciousness maybe there are such laws but again this is not to be expected unless God made it so since the postulated God is simple since these datas as such as might probably occur if there is a God and such as belly probably would not occur if there is no God I conclude that any rational and scientifically minded person must on the basis of these data conclude that there is a God on the basis of these data conclude that there is a God of course there are other less General data to be taken into account such as the fact of human suffering and because I have only 10 minutes I can only say two or three sentences about this but the basic reason why given theism we might expect suffering is that it is either the result of bad human choices which God allows humans to make or although caused by natural processes it makes possible human choices of how to deal with it in good ways and by the way we deal with our suffering we have the opportunity to make ourselves Saints what a good God would want of most of all of his children is that by their own free choices they would become Saints for these reasons I hold traditional views of the existence and nature of God and if I can't explain why there's a God that casts no doubt on the correctness of my explanation of the general features of the world just as if physicist can't explain why the fundamental laws of physics operate that cast no laws doubt on those laws being the fundamental laws of part of physics thank you Richard you've finally tuned your answer to precisely 10 minutes there as well so thank you Mr accurate Sylvia in an earlier draft of the book we've put together I described your view as making friends and enemies of of everybody and you didn't like the overly combative nature of of my phrasing so we changed it but this might be a a good way in because you see virtues and vices in both the views that both Richards have presented here how do you approach the three mysteries we set out at the beginning and well with becoming less and less Mysteries as we're having the discussion here but and also to compare your view with some of the others and begin contrasting them as well yeah thank you um so my perspective on these questions is completely from a philosophical point of view um and I started thinking about these questions because I found it really puzzling to put it mildly perhaps even a little bit annoying that the topic of theism and God and religious belief and what it actually means to people has almost entirely vanished from um well most graduate syllabuses that I've seen so um even though now we're sitting here with people who are mainly or thinking to a large extent about these topics um theism is not really such a big issue anymore in philosophy departments it's just ignored as a topic and I found that strange um because it seems to me quite obvious that it's a topic that many people have very strong views about um Etc okay so when um I started thinking about the question of this evening why is there something rather than nothing for now I'll focus on that big question perhaps the biggest of metaphysics I thought well um there are well two extreme I'll call it extreme positions you can have you could say well there is if there is an explanation there's going to be a scientific explanation and that's that there is another site that says well there is a God that's a metaphysical explanation of how things are um and it seems that a lot of the debate is going on between these two uh sides between these two extreme sides of the debate my goal is to bring these questions the big metaphysical questions about why there is something rather than nothing back onto the philosophical Center Stage as it were so I want to find ways of thinking about these questions that are not going to be either condemned as um religious in a way that many of us no longer find adequate or satisfying or overly scientistic so in order to um try and get you to see my point of view I'd first of all like to draw your attention to the fact that to a question like why is there something rather than nothing we can give different kinds of answers um we could be looking for causal explanation for why there is something rather than nothing and causal explanations typically we turn to the Natural Sciences too um okay so and as we just heard the Sciences have certain answers up to a point and we may expect many more answers from the Natural Sciences about things that right now seem mysterious but causal explanations are not the only kinds of explanation that are out there in fact even within the Natural Sciences many of the explanations that are in place are non-causal and I'll just give a very simple example when we ask ourselves why the number seven is not divisible by three probably the explanation of this fact is going to involve some story about the primeness of seven about this characteristic which makes a prime number only divisible by one and by itself so seven would not be divisible by three we have thereby given an explanation of a certain fact and that explanation was not a causal explanation that's just you know perfectly fine happens all the time so in the math case um one might say well this is something like a conceptual explanation we said what it involves or what it entails to be prime but there are other kinds of non-causal explanations for example um we could explain uh certain item or a certain fact in terms of its purpose rather than in terms of its physical workings for example an explanation of a computer could involve a very complex description of how I don't know electrical signals uh interact with the hardware or something like that but we could also explain a computer as a device that is designed to process and store information so in that in that way we would have described and explained the computer in terms of its purpose or in terms of its function so um You probably see where I'm getting at I think that um a question like why is there something rather than nothing might best be answered with an answer that concerns its purpose and not so much its cause and the reason for that is that I think if we try to give a causal answer almost necessarily we're going to well theism and scientists are going to run into some kind of conflict um which I think should be avoided if religion is uh supposed to be taken seriously at all it has to be in agreement with science and that's just that so that's also one of the things I assume and only when we give a causal answer to this question these two get into conflict so I just mentioned that science I think should should always have priority but at the same time I find that um religious peoples beliefs and convictions and also religious people's experiences should be taken seriously obviously up to a point there is a limit to what's reasonable and what isn't um but sometimes my impression is that people who have any sort of theistic inclinations um come out as unreasonable on the utterly scientistic picture and that's something I would like to avoid so what I'm looking for is a way of reconciling the positions from a philosophical point of view a way of perhaps giving an explanation of the non-causal kind for the question why is there something rather than nothing from a point of view that doesn't reduce religious sentiments to wishful thinking and I'll stuff at that okay thank you Jessica so Hinduism has a worldview or religion just as diverse as any other school of philosophy African philosophy European philosophy when we talk about Hinduism we're not we haven't got like a set of core doctrines like you might have a Catholic Christianity or something like that so I assume it's got lots of different ways it can help solve these three mysteries I'm going to push you with a question although you're going to set out your soul as well because I want to hear as well your view within there as to whether there's any branches of Hinduism you think we can rule out or whether there's some versions which are particularly helpful in solving these Mysteries okay so ruling out I'm not my job to rule out um but I will focus on one school that I think has kind of philosophy at its core and in a way by speaking to a range of global sort of philosophy stroke religions particularly Asian ones a particular one in Hinduism called bidanta I want to speak to a world view that doesn't really see this and this view as in conflict right so I'm I'm kind of just saying globally there are a huge range of philosophies that take existence as their inspirational source for reflection um and you know from that perspective just take a moment to realize that the Contemporary fight between Christian monotheism and scientific materialism can look like actually very much a minority concern in The Wider Global and historic history right we shouldn't assume that that dominates all of thought that across the range of philosophies globally people are much more invested in a shared set of insights that Inspire both philosophy and Science and religion and that's kind of interesting when you look at the Asian religions and you see for instance taoism which is trying to analyze reality in terms of forces that balance and flow in relation to each other or Buddhism which observes the changing flow of phenomena of whatever kind we see and questions our way of analyzing the universe or Jainism which says reality can be analyzed from many different perspectives there isn't one single system there isn't one computational ontology that captures it all so we've got a range of different options Hinduism interests me partly because it takes precisely the mystery of existence the fundamental reality we see unfolding around us as the core of its insights at least in the tradition I'm looking at so if you go back 3000 years to him in The Vedas called the nasada that Carl Sagan cited in his Classic series Cosmos it starts off in the beginning was not being all that we see around US forces space-time nor even non-being a kind of big empty space it says there was neither air nor space beyond it right this is 3000 years ago they're thinking speculatively about what must have been the source of everything and they say well the ways that we think about the universe whatever must have been the source must have been fundamentally more basic than either of those images neither stuff space-time nor a big but empty space and this text goes on and says you know at some point something must have burst forth in energy generated the forms and beings and forces we see this ancient hymn ends with but who really knows right so having had the mystery of existence we now have the skepticism of a quite a well-formed philosophical insight who really knows what the origin is it says where it was what it came from how it happened even the gods come after the generation of existence and the last line of this ancient text is maybe the highest God in heaven knows and then it says oh maybe it doesn't free so there's this like fabulous little moment of like we have a deep question here for everyone to engage in and we should not accept over simple answers that take the easy route now what we get is three different key insights that come out of this ancient text right which they think are true no matter which perspective you take on what kind of thing it is here's what we seem to find one if we look at the causal and constitutive generation of the world or that we see everything is formed in some way and out of something roll that back and what you have is a world of contingencies everything comes out of a certain circumstance at some point at the bottom you have to have something which is what we call self-existent right whether this is physics or whether this is religion or whether it's philosophy something has to be there which was not formed by something else even if you have a circle causally even if you have an infinite regress causally then the whole thing has its nature innately right so what we get is a self-existent reality two we get a self-natured reality everything could have been different as far as we can tell from how it is right most of the things we see we can see being contingent as we put it carpet could have been blue I could have been redhead I just wanted to be a redhead right everything could have been different these Natures are contingent but you can't have contingencies all the way back that's by seems to be by definition to the nature of contingency so that you have to have something which is of its own character a nature that generates the rest so there has to be something which is innately self-natured 3 that has to be something which has an immense generative creative causal power that is constantly working upward through all we see and which by the way doesn't just generate the same thing over and over and over again like a repeating computer program it generates level upon level of what we call emergence right so from the most fundamental level whatever that is up up through the levels whether it's to energy whether it's to matter whether it's uh atoms chemicals uh to organic life to Consciousness to thought to meaning to stories to emotions to values right all of this seems all of this clearly must be generated out of whatever is the foundation of existence okay so these three insights self-existence self-nature causal power all so Hinduism must be the case and that should be something everyone can agree on could you just say how that's different to Richard's swinburn's View and we can open the discussion up and interject at this point in the discussion because Richard's view seems quite close to them that you've got this self-existent cause this thing that couldn't have failed not to exist that brings into being everything like this in this Hindu metaphors of the root of being and it growing into the tree of life and stuff seems very close to a view like Aquinas or someone like this one of riches from Burns uh favorite Scholars would you say that's quite closely linked to that yeah Aquinas is a fabulous guy um I think the one thing I will say that's Hindus and wants to dial back the added assumptions you build on that philosophically so there's clearly a source whether it's a person whether being a person is the highest form of existence you could imagine or the only cause for the world that's out there still to be determined right and not and some Hindus atheists and some are not lots of other religions have different views on that so I think the weather you add on to this a number of further uh doctrines including personhood afterlife etc etc that's another matter but you do have a philosophical Insight at the call okay for the why there's something rather than nothing type thing Richard swinburne you've we're talking about causality I think we all tend to agree with the darwinian explanation for the complexity of life there are no issues there on the panel the one which you've all spoken about most of all is that perhaps the biggest question and the Mystery of existence in the singular why there's something rather than nothing there's two key themes that have came out the answers one of Simplicity and one of causality Sylvia's book battle at the moment ago Richard swinburn you've got an argument quite a famous argument for why the cause of the world talking about causality would have to be a person rather than some prior physical fact why it have to be something a person some non-physical Consciousness that kicked off The Big Bang rather than something else uh yes but just let me make two other remarks first um I have no choir at all with anything Richard Dawkins said I highly agree but the question is why is these laws operate if and the answer is of course because as you said little ones of physics are crucial here but then why are the laws of physics operative and okay there's a Multiverse but that will only produce these laws if it itself has laws and so in the end you are left with the laws of Science and the laws of science uh postulate that every thing in the world it might be the atoms of our world or the or the chunks of the so-called nothingness in in the big space which out of which universities evolve behaves in exactly the same way and that's what the law likeness means and um it means that everything just to take that we're talking about atoms but at the same applies of whatever the constitution of the Multiverse is it behaves in exactly the same way and the question is why um it's no good just saying there's a law of nature the law of nature just is that they behave in this way full stop so why do they behave in this way and they are a large number of separate things and unless something causes them to behave in the same way we're left once again with a multitude of things and that's why I think the same scientific explanation of these things because scientific explanation just consists in postulating with all those things behave and exactly the same way and we want something a little simpler than that and in fact there is a model of causality which is the question you were coming on to just before we do the model of causality we give Richard an opportunity to extraordinary idea it Richard swinburne is saying that we need a special explanation for why every electron every proton every Neutron every particle behaves in exactly the same way how could they not behave in the same way they're all the same kind of thing that's what they do while the Constitutions of the universe exactly the same kind of thing in if you define the kind of thing in terms of its powers and I agree that's a reasonable way to do it why are all the cut things in the universe have the same powers in the sense of attracting for example every other one in accordance with the um Newton's law of gravity or whatever else the law is that question remains there are two separate questions there one is why do these particles have the properties that they do and the and that is a profound question the other is why do they all have the same properties which is the one you're stressing yeah that's not profound at all um that simply follows from the uh well I mean you in that case I mean as you say they have the same Powers because that's what they are the question then is why are all the things in the universe the same in this respect they are uh have the power to attract every other body in the universe in accordance with Eminem Dash over r squared that is if you're saying that that you need a God to explain why all these electrons and protons of the paving the same way are gone capable of doing that would have to be supremely complicated and yet you're saying this one is simple why do you think he's got to be exceeding because he's got to hold all these electrons in his little hands at all he has no extension in space but that comes back to the question of causality in fact because there is a model of causality which is entirely not the scientific law one which we use all the time the nature of a scientific model of causality is it postulates laws of nature acting on initial States producing from them other states but if you are her model of personal action is not at all like that if you ask anyone of the audience why are you here they're not saying well there was a scientific law in virtue of which Etc which led to my being here they say well um there were some interesting talks going on I believe um I believe that they're coming at this time and that the way to get there is this and I have the purpose of hearing of having these and I have the purpose of getting here so we explain all human behavior in terms of the powers of humans in terms of their beliefs about what the effects of their actions will be and in virtue of their desires to produce these beliefs and that is a model by which we explain ordinary human behavior which of course consists in a large number of atoms buzzing around in our bodies but what explains them is uh something fairly simple me Jessica do you want to come in on this point on this debate about Simplicity and it's just an interesting case that argument is made in above seven seven hundred uh in by Indian tax there's a striking coherence across the range of phenomena that shape the universe and the Buddhists who are very anti the idea that there's a shared coherent thing going on uh attacked it quite strongly the response philosophically is what we call a counterfactual argument which says basically if you didn't have some coherence that keeps things that in that in a sense a coherent nature unfolding and everything you'd have a chaos you'd have static uh the Indian texts say humans would become elephants would become seeds or become trees at every given moment of the time right so there is a coherence but in a sense it seems that what both positions share is essentially the observation that there's a coherent nature uh that constitutes the cosmos right without the cosmos you wouldn't have that coherent nature whether what that comes from is another issue so maybe the issue is more weather coherence in itself whether that Unity of character that unfolds in laws and and in the different materials we have is striking or not is it significant or is it really doesn't really matter right and some of that's about whether it could have been otherwise okay good um Soviet you I said you made friends and enemies of everybody and you were you explained your view very well just a moment ago but I thought your view in particular was against this view of swinburne's which that theism can serve as a type of scientific hypothesis because the more progress science makes the further we push God back against the wall and that's not the kind of theism that we want I think Bonhoeffer has a nice quote about this somewhere doesn't it right yes says if we conceive of a God and he isn't that way and with signs progressing then um theism is always going to have its back against the wall and that's not what we want like the uh the god of the gaps is uh is an expression that is often used that we could we can fill in God wherever a science hasn't gotten to yet or like for whatever question the science doesn't have an answer yet is this an exception to that rule though because our tools of physical science aren't going to be able to stretch Beyond pre-big Banks so is it's Richard swinburne okay to say here that a non-physical non-scientific explanation can never be pushed back against the wall because science will never reach that type of course ordinary ones can be pushed back a bit but if you postulate an omnipotent God then it can't be pushed back anymore because if there was an another God that caused the omnipotent God the omnipotent God wouldn't be omnipotent so once you've got there you do route to stop and as regards them this Simplicity um or I think perhaps the ordinary detective examples or historical examples will illustrate this point um suppose you'll find all the coins in a deposit have the same head on them uh you're not going to look for a set free explanation for each of the of the heads you're going to look for one explanation which explains them and if you can do it by one explanation one entity which brings them about you're not going to look for two entities fewness of entities um substances philosophers call them as well as Simplicity prop properties in other words number zero as opposed to a number 2.3546 these are the criteria we're both in history and in detective work and in physics that you're looking for well British women a moment ago said any scientifically minded person would believe that God is the ultimate cause why is it about this explanation that you're not happy to entertain Richard is it don't you know is it simply to do isn't it obvious is it is it Simplicity the main point though or is it just something non-physical is saying that God is simple because he's a single entity yeah how can he be a single entity if he simultaneously controlling the universe every particle in the universe he's forgiving our sins he's giving us free will he's deciding whether or not you'll die or not on a certain day such a thing is not a single simple entity it's a highly complicated Mammoth great big fat entity well take another example of a very simple entity uh uh a particle of matter here this particle of matter is influencing all sorts of other particles of matter all over the universe how can it do that with just being one particle of matter well it does according to the law of gravity um well yes so what I mean that well you were saying that in order to have a large number of effects it had to be a big thing in order to do the things that God is supposed to be doing he cannot be simple he he's an entity of subjective Consciousness he thinks about things he has will free will he has the power to influence anything in the world that he wants to do he even does the things that the Christians believe and all the other religions believe how can you possibly say that such an entity is a single simple entity well I'm giving you the example that says an entity which is a pretty small and unconscious entity can have a very large number of effects and if God can have a lot of a large number of effects and yet the um virtually uh even smaller than an electron in other words having no spatial extension um why shouldn't you say so it is the nature of science to postulate entities which are unobservable and have strange properties in order to explain observable entities we postulated atoms Etc with their properties in order to explain regular combinations of substances by weight and volume we postulate fundamental particles explained to explain this these fundamental particles turn out to be rather strange in having both wave-like and particle-like properties but if they are able to produce this effect then that's reason for believing them to be true and of course you need a omnipotent bee in order to produce all that but you should go for the simplest one you can have and the simplest one will have simple properties and it will not be extended because if it is extended it would have parts and they would have ways of Behaving is Hinduism uniquely placed to solve this sort of tension here so the criticism is the beginning must be just as complex as the thing that it creates just kicks the can down the road you've got the same problem further on says Dawkins the swinburne swinburn says well you need an uncalled was caused something separate does Hinduism give us that without all of the the baggage of some of these these other views yeah I mean it's an interesting book because in some ways we've got here we've got a a multi-part nature so if let's say we've got all the the atoms the particles have essentially the same sorts of natures but there are many of them and there are laws of natures and they have their own character they're multiple ones so we've got a coherent universe but multiple factors going on in that Universe coherence is agreed upon here right that there is complexity is also agreed upon here so what exactly is the point of dissension the point of dissension is whether those things are unified in something that is significant in and of itself right and I think here we want to say it sounds like you want to say no they're very different things coming together to make a cosmos they have no intrinsic uh unifying character to them to speak on the Hinduism point one of the three major arguments that you see in the ancient Indian Scholastic world one of them is that to have multiple factors that are able to causally impact each other to make up things together right um and in any sense to form a shared Cosmos there has to be a link there has to be some ontological underlying medium that allows them to have those connections and make a cosmos whether they are laws or whether they're particles or materials or whatever so on that account it's hard to see how utterly pluralistic Universe Works in that way there must be some form of unity that links those factors and enables the coherent complex Universe to unfold right that seems to be the case whether you want it then to be a person with Will and intention that seems a bigger part of what's really at stake here okay good does anyone want to come in on any of those points just there on the same topic just wanted to actually ask the question the question because because this is something that's really been puzzling me for a long time how a being or an entity that is so different from ordinary mid-sized objects with causal powers can have the causal powers to bring about everything there is here so I think that's some something many people find very puzzling and when you've made the comparison with fundamental particles um and your argument was well we postulated these entities at some point um eventually we continue the scientific story continued we managed to unravel some of the Mysteries those particles became less mysterious the question popped into my mind well do you think potentially this is something that could happen with the the Divine entity as well like because you made this comparison so can science ever get to a point where perhaps you know God is an unraveled mystery well of course I don't know where science will get to but what sounds will get to is the scientific law I don't know what the law will be but it doesn't matter what the law will be it may get to a beginning or it may not but uh it will get to laws and um laws are claims about how every particle or whatever it's made of is going to behave in certain respects and exactly the same way and I agree with Richard point you you can think that as a defining characteristic of the constituents that's fair enough and for the question is why the constituents have just the same fighting and that's why that if you can get you need to get beyond that if you were to have an explanation because you you've you've reached the Terminus where everything is behaving in exactly the same way and so it's worth looking at the other mode by which we explain things and explain personal Behavior explain personal behavior and virtue of the powers of people we've all got powers fully limited ones and they differ a bit with each other what we can do uh we've all got beliefs and that influences what we do uh we've all got desires that let influences what we do and the beliefs influence and the steps that we take to influence our size so um uh if you can explain in terms of one entity um you're not gonna it's not going to be a scientific one but it could be a personal one because you can explain it in terms of someone who is something like us and the uh I remember the Genesis starts with the um the God make made humans in His image after his likeness there are similarities and similarities are such in this respect he is a personal being but of course his powers are immensely greater and his knowledge is immensely greater and his desires are for the good um and um this we've got all this model is already we've just got to blow it up a bit it's ready there to explain things well so just just one further question because I I'm I was wondering about your exchange the exchange between the two of you and you were saying well this being would have to be infinitely complex in order to achieve all these things that the being allegedly achieves um but what you seem to be saying just now was that well we we won't get to a point where we're going to be able to fully explicate the nature of this being right I mean we're going to be able to say things like well it's an omnipotent being and we're going to have to be satisfied with that so we we cannot inquire any deeper into the nature of this being sure I wasn't saying we know everything about God I'm just saying we know in this respect what he's like sure of course yes obviously if he is like us we're not simple well as regards are us being um I mean you are thinking of us as a chunk of brain or a chunk of brain plus body um I these are the causes of our thoughts but they're not the same as our thoughts they are the causes of our desires not the same as our desires causes of us that we are unified uh attitude I mean when we hear a sound and see a light and so on um it's not that part of us sees us uh Hears A Sound and the other parts sees alike it's a unified self which is uh seeing these things and which is aware of its own beliefs at the same time of course it's a causally dependent but then rating on this Earth on a body but what he's dependent on a body is a center of Consciousness to of which these are properties and therefore the properties won't won't be in the sense in which the property of this Carthage is square do you think God can read our thoughts can you read the thoughts of everyone in this room almost eight billion people in the world yes and he's simple he's reading all these thoughts and he's simple he's a simple entity in the sense that he has properties but they are very big properties uh uh big but uh but you're using Simplicity as an argument in his favor on sort of Occam's razor grounds yeah it's a simple explanation because he's one entity but he's not a simple ant he's reading eight billion people thought simultaneously but that's not the issue it plays the issues the issue is I might kind of don't agree that this is the right argument but I do think your point is important it's a causal simple thing it's a single cause which generates all of it that's your point of your coin example right we wouldn't say oh my god there are peaches all over the room you wouldn't say oh my God everyone some random people all came in and put features on the phone you just seem as one person so there can be causal Simplicity without the entity being simple having said that whether that argument ultimately works is another thing but it doesn't require causal Simplicity for the entity itself to be simple but the argument in favor of him being simple is that we want simple explanations that's Richardson Cinema's point we want a simple explanation and I'm saying God cannot possibly be a simple explanation he's a very complex explanation so I'm kind of interested in the way that everyone is suggesting different kinds of explanations for what the whole of existence and of course our title is a mystery of existence what kind of explanations we would want and I kind of want to ask each of us from philosophical a scientific a Christian theistic perspective what kind of thing would a complete explanation look like right from each of these perspectives so from a philosophical perspective if we had the whole explanation what kind of thing could that be well as I said in the beginning I think a complete explanation would of course involve the ongoing efforts of uh well in this case I suppose physics and cosmology to figure out what can be said about the very first moments of the existence of our universe but at the same time I think from from a slightly different point of view perhaps from a religious point of view we should ask the question what's the purpose of everything and really listen to what different traditions and religions have to say about that perhaps try to see if there is anything besides ethics or acting morally um that is at the core of these views from a philosophical point of view so I'm looking at things from a very detached point of view so I'm one thing that I find very interesting is that many people seem to take issue with um the postulation of an entity let's call it entity like God on the one hand precisely because that entity has well is so non-standard it's so different from the kinds of entities that are around us everywhere doesn't have that entity doesn't have any causal properties for example no spatio temporal extension etc etc so many people feel reluctant to even posit certain entity but on the other hand in other areas of philosophy we do deal with these kinds of entities All the Time mathematical realism is the idea that mathematical entities do exist not in a spatio temporal way like chairs and beer mugs but they do exist and what mathematical language does is it describes the mathematical Cosmos so and I'd say people take a lot and of course this is um the object of a very Lively ongoing philosophical debate but in general I'd say that people take much less issue with such a position that postulates the existence of mathematical objects then uh with a position that postulates one entity um that we call God so I'm interested in figuring out if there is any good reason for us to be so biased about these different debates um and my suspicion is that we're not necessarily justified in having this bias at least from a philosophical point of view Richard Dawkins what would the complete explanation look like simple things are relatively easy to understand complex things by definition a lot therefore what we need is an explanation of complex things in terms of simple things and that's really my entire position um we have in Darwinism a brilliant example of how you can get from Primeval Simplicity to Ultimate not ultimate but very very great complexity from the very from the relatively easy to understand to the to the relatively difficult to understand and we have a cumulative gradual step-by-step Bridge from the simple to the complex from the easy to understand to the difficult to understand we understand every step every step of the way therefore that is a model for what a complete explanation would look like we need such an explanation for everything we have it for life we don't yet have it for everything but we have it as a model for the explanation for everything and it should give us Courage the fact that Darwin solved the biology problem should give us courage to advance to the explanation for the relatively simple world of physics Richardson but this was the point of disagreement we went over quite a lot of the last half so I don't want to labor it too much but I imagine you agree with pretty much everything Richard Dawkins has said there but you disagree on whether the god hypothesis is a complex one or a simple one uh yes and I disagree about whether the laws of physics uh plus plus the Universe on which they operate it's a simple thing because it consists of a very large number of things um for the reasons I talked about that's not a simple starting point um just to answer the point from over there um this I'm not giving an explanation necessarily at the beginning of the universe it might not it might or might not have a beginning I'm looking for an explanation of what what keeps it in being all the time whether that's an eternal or Everlasting or not um and I certainly am looking for a causal explanation but I think that um explanation of human behavior is also a causal explanation we explain what somebody does in the history of their purposes desires Etc and their powers um we have we have fairly limited powers and most of us have rather similar powers to each other but some people don't have nearly as much Powers as other people do so things can differ in that respect so uh Simplicity is a matter of postulating few entities only one um simple powers and Harmony powers are simple Powers because their powers were zero and zero is a simple that's zero limits and that's a simple one we're looking for uh Everlasting uh instead because that's an entity to whose uh existence there are zero limits and we're looking for an entity from uh of which we can postulate very few properties from which all the others follow and all and which we would expect to bring about this sort of universe so uh it's not possible to have a scientific explanation which is very simple simply because it consists of explaining in terms of laws and laws involve a lot of things doing the same thing and that's just not a simple starting point but I've said that before of course Jessica you want to answer your own question that you posed what would the complete explanation look like distance was our title and it makes it sound as if existence was one kind of thing um but actually we're dealing with lots of different kinds of existence as you pointed out right from the existence of energy of space-time of physical things of events of numbers of laws of nature are a different kind of existence from for instance contingent concrete entities running around you know your cat um so it's not that there's one thing there are multiple forms and some are what we might call more extraordinary relative to what we usually see around us than others even the laws of nature if you roll it back right so on the on the evolutionary model it's not simply that Evolution explains all biology what also explains all the biological upwelling is the conditions of material beings the range of possible emergencies of different kinds of organisms the range of possible variations and mutations Within These there are actually a whole bunch of pre-settings that make evolution possible so it's not really such a simple explanation as it seems to be if you roll those back and look for a physics explanation at the bottom of all of them you get something that is going at the very least I think part of what your point is going to be extraordinary right it's got something which is of a very different character from your cat and the things that we see contingently generated even the laws of nature have a mysterious and extraordinary yet that there are characters that seem to naturally emerge so that I just kind of want to pull it back too it's not really whether you're going to get a simpler a complex answer it's whether there's something really striking and different from all that we know at the bottom of the chain that I think is most interesting okay earlier in the discussion Richard Dawkins I asked you where the Simplicity was the reason which you don't favor the god hypothesis if the if it Richards women could convince you somehow that God is a simple entity would you be open to the idea then of postulating the existence of of this God well if he could convince me of that but quite obviously the exact opposite of sinful and so so the question doesn't arise well I'm just trying to see where you know ultimately where the tension is and where the rejection is there because typically people reject Richard's guard on the basis of something like the problem of evil something like that the problem of evil is Trivial compared to that to this I mean to the problem of evil could be solved by just saying God is an evil God I mean that that's not a not a difficult problem um natural selection is a deeply evil process um nature really is red and Claw in tooth and Claw well um interesting versus swinburne there's quite a few students in the audience today and I think tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of students studying religious studies in the UK have to study your response to the problem of evil as part of their exams so I think it'd be really interesting to to go into a bit here you mentioned in your opening statement that a god of the type you believe in would give us the opportunity to choose good or evil to be free and that's not a luxury that God himself enjoys and then you might think that things like a delicate topics like people who are suffering with with cancer or the genocides and wars and natural disasters I think it'd be quite a difficult thing to say to somebody who's going through those there's indescribably problematic events that you know this is a great way for you to develop your character this provides the opportunity for you to be good or or to leave this horrible regime or this is a great challenge for you to overcome curing cancer and that seems like a a difficult pill for a lot of agnostics who would like to move towards theism to swallow would you like you'd like a lecture on the program um well I'd like to know what you'd say to someone well I wouldn't say that to a person suffering um this is this is um you have to just console them um it would be uh they they would they that's not what they want an argument uh but um when they've got over their suffering or when you are asking the question when you're not suffering I'm standing back and wondering why there is evil then uh there is I believe an answer all right well it does start from uh human free will God gives us uh makes us what I would call Mini creators he gives us a share in his creative work um and he gives us a choice which he doesn't have of the sort of world we want to be the sort of people we want to be the sort of people who want our friends to be the sort of people we want the world to be and it will only be a real choice and matter if if the bad choice has bad effects um if if it was just a toy world where it was made little bad effects and little good effects then people would think it wouldn't matter whether you were good or not um it's got to matter a lot and of course it does matter a lot um we are in that position to jump in but just so because we've unpacked the the character building and the reasons why the world's better because it contains yeah those evils I wonder how much evil would there have to be for you to say now there's too much how many people would have to yeah well I wouldn't wish to put a number how can you count these things so but I would make the point uh that although it may not see in terms of the audience a hundred years is a a very short time uh compared to an everlasting time and um if people suffer too much they just die there is clearly a limit um whether it's too big or not if they're difficult to decide I don't think it is too big but once you get the idea that it's somewhere along this line it's a good thing and too much would be then it becomes just a matter of degree but of course them there are evils which are not produced by humans natural evils um disease accident etc etc um and these two give choices she was choices to ask how to deal with it are we going to keep all the food to ourselves or are we going to share it um are we going to feel sorry for ourselves or are we going to try and cheer other people up there are always choices for the sufferer as well as for the malevolent person or a person who might be malevolent can I just interject here with one thing so you say that there's like Eternal happiness of heaven and everlasting unique Unity with God it's nothing compared to finite suffering here in the world but for a lot of Christians there is a place of this Everlasting infinite pain and suffering isn't it so it isn't it not balanced out well I don't think that that your what you're saying is that I I think that a lot of people for suffering hell I don't think anyone suffers in Hell except through their own choice that is to say one of the most answer the worst condition of humans can be to be full of hatred and if they continually reject the good I don't mean they reject the tenants of Christian belief I I mean they they reject all the good that they see and out for selfishness and are quite happy to exterminate people and torture people and they've lost their sense of the goodness and God is they wouldn't be happy in heaven they wouldn't want to be in heaven but Heaven is for people who love the good and want the good and most of us are not fitted for heaven even at the end of our lives and indeed both uh Catholic and Orthodox Christianity allow for that possibility that we will end our lives without our fake being if not help on the Catholic view as it were yeah the only alternative is purgatory and in the end we'll get to heaven if we're putting Purgatory the Orthodox allow the possibility that we might go either way but for before the uh General resurrection that is to say our faith might not be determined to death something we might have to show ourselves one way or the other eventually um just to open the discussion up here Sylvia you want to interject on on this point sorry I I just I would like to ask a question um actually it's a question a question for Richard Dawkins um but inspired by what you just said so and and it sort of uh I think illustrates my point of view there is so much Beauty in what you just said and I can so much so much Beauty in what you just said and it gives a certain uh perspective on our otherwise completely random existence um and it gives people dignity so it I was just reminded of um the novel by Henrik sinkhievitz it was turned into a a popular Hollywood movie but I'm talking about the actual novel that he received the Nobel Prize for and it describes the persecution of Christians um under the rule of Nero in uh ancient Rome so early Christianity and it was so atrocious what they did to Christian people back in the days and their belief their faith gave them such dignity when they had to face the most horrible horrible things that were being done to them and I found that extremely moving I found I've it's it's impossible to ignore the kinds of power that a religion and a religious belief can unfold and it's something I think as a philosopher at least I want to respect and that's something that belongs onto the syllabus of every good philosophy undergraduate course my question for you Richard Dawkins is on your world view what do you make of the belief of so many people in the world who are theists or have theistic inclinations um I'd say it's uh we spoke about the numbers uh or I mentioned them in the book I think it's at least 95 or some number like that seven percent of the world are non-religious that's right seven percent um of the world's population ident self-identify as atheists so the vast majority of people have at least some kind of theistic inclinations whatever exactly the uh whatever exact form they might be taking are all of these people only deluded is that is that the only thing we can say about that yes okay then I mean what what argument are you making um we don't we don't decide such things by majority vote what I'm trying to say is that besides offering an explanatory competing hypothesis to questions about the first instances of our Cosmos or perhaps about whatever sustains the cosmos religion and theistic belief does so much more and I think there is uh there should be a place uh in any philosophy thinking about this that respects all the different functions and benefits that theistic belief has what what more are you thinking of what what you say just so much more what you're thinking of there sorry what are you thinking of when you say religious belief does so much more it gives makes sense of as I said it gives sense to something something unexplainable when we look at the ethical dimensions of religious belief it can give people guidance how to behave how to act with one another it can give uh answers how to as Richard swinburne just explained to us it can give us a way of facing um well extremely difficult life situations etc etc it gives comfort and consolation somehow it sounds a little well I it's I feel like it's a little bit more than that when you say it like that I assume what you have in mind is that it Comforts us the way wishful thinking sometimes come from yes that's exactly what you mean yes so what do you make of the fact that there are people who are extremely educated who have read your books um who know their way around in the Natural Sciences and yet hold on to theistic beliefs well um many of them if you actually ask them what they believe it turns out that they are what they might call spiritual what's the difference well um I'm spiritual when I when I look up at the stars when I look up at the Milky Way I have a feeling an overwhelming emotional reaction to that and you could call that spiritual So when you say that Highly Educated people in science are religious you want to ask them do they actually believe for example that Jesus is the son of God do they actually believe they're going to survive their own death I would ask them that sort of question do you think that the people you're talking about believe they're going to survive death yes I think I cannot speak some [Music] scientists into our observing Jews and who believe that the Jewish law is literally true yes but do they believe they're going to survive death well that's it's it's a question that's a big question it's a question that is it doesn't have the same prominent place in Judaism um the I I asked it precisely because that is a scientific question the brain is what does the thinking when the brain decays do they do you think you're going to survive death do they think that you do you think you're going to survive death I don't know I wish I had such a firm answer to it well but I certainly don't think that um I should dismiss somebody who believes it for good reasons good reasons meaning you know a certain upbringing a certain conviction that their religious tradition tradition has a point should just be disqualified as people who are doing are engaged in wishful thinking just to interject her to bring Jessica in for a moment just a point of agreement though I think Richard Dawkins is fine and you can correct me if I'm wrong with those who are culturally Christian who enjoy Collective um comings together and community building and the artworks and all there are some good things that come out of religious community which I think you'll both agree give people a sense of purpose and and togetherness strength Etc and beautiful wonderful Arts as well the point the disagreement though is that it's just wishful thing in terms of the scientific hypothesis that yes I mean the music and the art where we're certainly agreed about yeah and and there's no question about that the the beautiful literature the the the the the Book of Ecclesiastes the song songs these are wonderful poetry but I gather that even better in the Hebrew than in the English because they're pretty good in English but so what I mean that that has nothing to do with the truth right of propositions which is a scientific proposition that when the brain decays your personality your survives that is a scientific proposition which uh seems to me at least very very improbable indeed so we just have a few minutes until we open the floor to audience questions I just want to make sure Jessica is able to jump in on some of these points before we do so I just briefly briefly uh this Richard made the point about wishful thinking that argument the modern world originates with Sigmund Freud in the future of an illusion who says wishful thinking doesn't make a thing true it doesn't mean it's not true either but it doesn't intrinsically make anything true right so so it's it's a it's a well-established kind of Point um just to note maybe of that 90s what is it 93 of the world's people who are considered religious I don't think they're all considered this I think a lot of those people would be for instance in China I think a lot of them will be in India some of those will get some will not right so there's a huge number will be Buddhists uh there are a huge number who would say to the problem of evil we were never promised the idea that were promised a world where everything's going to be perfect all the time is actually quite important presupposition it's not that everybody automatically lives with that as the thing and the idea then that we're kind of resentful if everything isn't perfect oh dear it's a bad world uh there's a long uh precedent both in Western and an Asian religion that what makes life meaningful isn't whether it's nice all the time right it's whether it has an intrinsic value and the idea that if you make time and space and agents and agencies who have to go through things and deal and experience you're always going to have a mix of the good and bad you don't get to pre-load that with a happy a sort of a Rosy Glow so it it may be that being itself is what makes it good or bad either you affirm that there exists these things or you do not if you do you have to take what comes but the problem of evil is a very particular problem within a particular set before we leave the theater please join me in thanking all of our panelists and all of the people working behind the scenes and the global philosophy of religion project for making tonight possible thank you very much [Applause] thank you again Richards you enjoyed it thank you thank you very much if you enjoyed this episode you can show some support by subscribing to the podcast sharing it with your friends and leaving a review foreign [Music]

Channel: The Poetry of Reality with Richard Dawkins

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Length: 83min 55sec (5035 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 19 2023