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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Gods I View Podcast. I am your host, Trevor.

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I wanted to get another episode out there because I've

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been feeling off the past week or so, you know,

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maybe something in the air. I'm not sure exactly what's

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going on, but I realized I just don't ever want

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to really talk about theology on the show anymore, because

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I was just thinking about it, like I almost feel

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like no good can come of it. You know, there's

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like some narrow, narrow group of people who might like

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what I'm saying, but then this other group of people

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might not like what I'm saying, and ultimately that's not

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really what the show is about, you know, nor am

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I really in a position to do it. So I

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realized I was a lot wowing myself to just sort

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of air like a stream of consciousness, which I do often.

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But if I am going to do that, I prefer

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it to be something I'm like, somewhat informed about and

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has low risk of upsetting people. There's also really no

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benefit to it, you know, like it helps no one.

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So we're gonna redirect, We're gonna reorient ourselves. Oh my

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dog's barking with somebody, That's what you do when you're

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feeling I think I think this is a lesson. I

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think it's good advice. I don't know when you're just

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feeling a little h you gotta pivot change it up.

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So anyway, we're gonna we're speaking of changing it up.

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We're gonna do something brand new we've never done before.

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We're gonna listen to Alex O'Connor. I do get emails

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from people are like, man, you really like this Alex

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O'Connor guy, and I do. Hold on, let me go

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see what's going on with my dog. I don't have

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a way to pause this. Zuma, Okay, Bud, what's going on?

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Who's out there? You're barking it anyway, I'm probably being robbed.

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This isn't live, so you won't. Oh my dog, my

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dog does this thing. I've read it. It's like a

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known thing. He like compulsively sneezes, and I read that

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it's I looked it up because like, I've never met

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a dog that sneezes so much, And funny enough, he

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does it a lot more. If like my son and

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I are wrestling, he starts sneezing like crazy. And I

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looked it up and it how do they know this stuff?

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I don't know. I want to meet these animal psychology researchers, like, okay,

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show me the study. How did he do that? Did

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you just ask him like place your paw on ABC

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or D Why do you sneeze? But I read that

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it's like a signal that they're friendly, you know, like

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that they're not upset or aggressive or mad. It's like

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a playful thing. So dude, I might have to get

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up and check out what's going on. Stand by this

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is this is very awkward to do on a podcast.

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It's literally just going to be silent for ten seconds.

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I don't edit. Hold on all right, literally nothing and

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no one, completely completely unnecessary. Thanks for being such a

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good guard. Doc. It's funny is someone when people really

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do show up to our house, he just like rolls

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over all right, all right forget off me, get off me.

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No respect, no respect for the podcasting and profession anyway.

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So yeah, people can I want to say, people complain,

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but they're like, man, you really like this guy, and

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I don't think that's true. I just I love I

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like humility and now listen, he's got the British accent

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and went to Oxford doesn't have a PhD. I thought

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he did, and so he might come off as pretentious

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to some people, but I think he's actually pretty you know.

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I guess I value uncertainty is that weird. Most people

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value the opposite. Like a key to success actually is

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to just be exceedingly confident, and I don't mean like arrogant,

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but just like be certain. Don't do you wishy washy,

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make decisions quickly, try to stand by them. This is

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like a well known key to success and a ticket

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to leadership. But it's not me, man. I do not

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have that at all, and to pretend like I had

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it would to me would feel like lying because I'm

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just like deeply uncertain about a lot of things. And

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I think it does make people uncomfortable to feel that way,

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and so people seek certainty for whatever reason. Though at

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certainty doesn't bring me comfort because I'm suspicious of it.

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That's why I think if I really believed it, if

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I believed in their certainty, if I was able to

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convince myself that their certainty is merited, I think it

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would bring me comfort. Actually, I just can't do it.

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I don't know why. I'm not built that way, So

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I like the like, you know, listen, I think it'd

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be cool if he maybe with a little bit more

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open minded to think. I mean, because I got it.

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I gotta really, I'm really trying to figure out what

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I think I understand. Like the claim about God is

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a tough claim. You know, we've got the problem of

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divine hiddenness. That's the biggest problem. I mean, all the

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problems that represented as problems in the nineties and to

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early two thousands, like they're not even really problems, you know,

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all the stuff, Like when science was figuring things out,

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it was like, yeah, yeah, none of this is a

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problem now, like these are all things we might expect

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a you know, indescribable, ineffable force who's capable of producing universe?

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A universe might do you know in the idea that

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like there's only four constraints, like there's only four constants

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that are fine tuned, you know, the force of gravity,

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of electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force. I think

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that's a I don't know. I'm not a physicist. Anyway,

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the idea that you could create four constants and the

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universe just sort of unfolds and life originates used to

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be presented as like a anti theistic argument, but on

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the other side of it, like, clearly that's a theistic argument. Like,

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first of all, you know, there was a first cause.

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This is the column cosmological argument. Whatever begins to exist

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has a cause. The universe has a cause. No, I'm sorry,

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whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe begs

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and to exist. The universe has a cause, and so

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the question is, well, what is that cause? And the

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scientists will always say, well, you know, it's the energy,

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you know, and the seconds leading up to the Big Bang,

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blah blah blah, or you know, Roger Penrose will say

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it was the collapse of the old universe given rise

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to They're always looking to move it one step further

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back into the past, but that doesn't actually do anything.

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This is a kicking the can down the road kind

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of a thing, like these are not explanatory forces. This

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is not an explanation of the first actual cause, because

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of course you can imagine nothing existing, right, can't you.

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I think this is a limitation on the atheist part,

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like they're always criticizing religious people like well, yeah, you

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just don't understand it, Like you just can't picture it.

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You can't fathom the time scales that these things took

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place over blah blah blah, which I agree with. I mean,

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I think those are good arguments. I just don't think

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they support the position they think they do. But anyway,

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I think atheists kind of suffer from a lack of

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imagination about about that. Like there doesn't need to be

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anything here. That's the natural that's the natural state of things, right, nothingness.

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You know, they say, like the natural state of a

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book is to never be written. The natural state of

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a movie is for it to never be produced. This

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is entropy, man, this is the second law. But it's

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funny because even the second law is like sort of

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evidence of a system that's been built, because there doesn't

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need to be laws, there doesn't need to be rules,

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there doesn't need to be constants. There could merely just

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be nothing. That's the most obvious, most likely outcome. But

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there's something, and something seems to be tuned for the

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production of wife, and the complexity is staggering, you know. Forever,

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the argument was like, look at the complexity of the brain.

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Look at the complexity of the brain. Clearly, look that's

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science nature and it's like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, dude,

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you're making the You're arguing against your position, like the

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existence of staggering ordered complexity is not evidence against the

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designer or a cause, it's evidence for and so anyway,

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I think this is kind of a good conversation that

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sort of highlights this tension that I'm trying to explain.

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I don't think the interviewer does a really good job

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responding to the questions. However, I think they are reasonable

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responses according to his framework for looking at the world.

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So I don't think they're bad responses. I just think

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they're I think he's kind of missing the point. So

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let's check it out. The title of this video is

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why quantum physics is still a.

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Speaker 2: People often talk about interpretations yea, quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpretation,

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the many worlds interpretation, whatever. You don't hear people talk

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about different interpretations of gravitational theory in the same way.

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Why not, like, what's going on with that?

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Speaker 3: Because we do have a single interpretation. I mean, when

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we think about Einstein developing relativity theory his special theory

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in nineteen oh five, the mathematics for that was pretty

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much sorted out people, you know, like Lorentz and Poncare

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had already developed the equations. What they didn't have was

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the correct interpretation, what is this telling us about reality?

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Einstein comes along, He doesn't come up with new mathematics.

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He comes up with the correct interpretation, the narrative, the

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explanation of what this theory.

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Speaker 1: This is actually a key point. And this is something

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that in a different context I don't think a scientist

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would be willing to admit. But in this context it

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feels safe. And what he's saying is like, yeah, the

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math checks out, but you know, the math is just

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a description, Like you need a narrative, you need a

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conceptual framework to understand what it means. And it's like, yeah, yeah,

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you do. You do need a conceptual framework. And those

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conceptual frameworks are often wrong, and the narratives often change

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even if the math doesn't change, although sometimes the math

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can change. You know, you can have different models that

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describe the same system in Tonian physics einstein Einsteinian physics,

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that these both work. These both make predictions about orbital

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trajectories and things, but they are different. And so the

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point is like math is a math is like drawing something.

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It is a description of reality. It does not explanatory.

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It is not explanatory for that. You need logic and

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language and narrative. We love narrative. We are narrative. I mean,

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we tell ourselves a narrative about our lives. It's like

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history is so fascinating and thinking about the future and

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the arc, the arc of time, and and god, I mean,

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we're worst story. You know, this is this is this

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is what we are. And so scientists tend to pretend

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like that's not the case. They kind of try to

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accuse philosophy of being guilty of that way of thinking,

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like of just you know, trying to solve things through

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discussion and logic and thought experiments and you know, the

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science they just shut up and calculate. They do the experiment,

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they shut up and calculate. Accept that's not what they do.

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They get the math that sort of works, and then

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they craft narratives around it and they go on YouTube

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channels and appreciate about it, you know. So and the

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narratives change and the math changes sometimes too.

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Speaker 3: It's telling us about the world. You know, that nothing

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can go faster than light, that time and space must

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be unified into four D space time, so and Einstein's

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then credited with relativity theory. It's the interpretation, the explanation

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that's important. No other theory is like quantum mechanics, where

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the mass works describes the subatomic world, tells us about

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how atoms fit together, then electrons fit orbit around the

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atomic nucleus, and so on. But we have these half

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a dozen or more different ways of explaining what's going on,

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and we can't agree on which one's right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's the difference between like a mathematical model

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that predicts outcomes and I hesitate to use the word explains,

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but you know, let's say, describes the various activities of

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subatomic particles. That is a separate question from the ontology.

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What is the stuff Like people will commonly think about,

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you know, particles being in two places at once and

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being here and there at the same time, And that's

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probably some kind of confusion between our mathematical models, which

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sort of act as though, you know, a particle is

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in two places at once. Whether it actually is or

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not is a totally different question, and I think you

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and I probably both agree that it's it's not actually

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in two places at once, but it's like our mathematics

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describes it as such because it's useful. So does the

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quantum physicist of the modern era have much at aol

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to say scientifically beyond their like philosophical hunches and interpretation

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of the day to do they have anything like scientific

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to say about what is actually going on?

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Speaker 1: Now? I don't know what he's gonna say, because I've

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stopped watching around this moment, I think, but I would

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say no. I have a feeling he's gonna say yes,

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but I don't. I hate to make that prediction and

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look stupid in a moment, but my answer would be like, well, no,

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that kind of violates the fundamental aspect of what science is.

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Anything beyond that is the old philosophy, you know, because no,

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I mean, we use a method, we test, we test hypotheses,

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we use empiricism, We craft theories. Sure, but those theories

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only ever explain the way the variables interact and make

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predictions and things. And there's probably like we can still

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explore mechanisms, you know. I'm not saying we never ask like,

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well how does this work? Of course we do, but

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it's sort of limited to there is a limit. There's

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a limit beyond which we just cannot explain, you know.

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Certainly in cosmology, it's like what happened before the Big Bang?

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Is the universe eternal? Is it infinite? You know? These

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are these are kind of examples of that. In physics,

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it's you know, all these quantum mysteries that we talk

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about at length on the show all the time. So

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there is a limit at some point. Really, what we

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are doing is you know what they say, we shut

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up and calculate. I don't think science should try to

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go beyond that. Like I kind of picture imagine this world.

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It's almost like I would be a good sci fi book,

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Like imagine a world where science and religion we're not

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these like opposing forces, these opposing worldviews. Excuse me, because

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science shouldn't be a worldview. Science is the best approach

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we have to interacting with the world in terms of

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answering questions, making predictions, building things. But it isn't a philosophy.

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It shouldn't be. It's not a theology, but we treat

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it that way. It's really unfortunate. But imagine we didn't

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imagine just some like scientist priests, you know, and like

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the cathedrals just doing experiments and just trying to figure

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things out, not afraid of any hypothesis. Now, the problem

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is all institutions become dogmatic, so they would probably have

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their own issues. You know, if they found something that

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they thought violated some of their assumptions about the way

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the world works, they probably tried to hide it, just

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like a scientist might in reverse, you know, like ooh,

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the Big Bang. You know, that makes it sound like

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the universe has a beginning. You can't have that, you know,

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that's ridiculous, And that is how the Big Bang theory

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was originally treated. So this is just a human failing,

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not something that only science is guilty of. But I

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do like to imagine the world or we surpass that

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limitation and we're just truly exploring. Man, We're just really

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trying to find what's beneath the bottom, what is at

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the end of all things? As John Wheeler.

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Speaker 3: Said, more so now than a generation or two or

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three ago. Sure, I mean certainly when I started as

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a PhD student in the eighties, it was very much

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the case that look, quantum mechanics is a mathematical theory.

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It works. If you want to do philosophy, go and

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do philosophy, but a physicist uses it. So this is

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the Copenhagen view. Sometimes it's simplified into the shut up

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and calculate interpretation. It works. Don't worry your pretty little

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head about how and why we can't.

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Speaker 1: It's funny because shut up and calculate is often like

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something people will say, like people will sort of mark

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that or be critical of that. But I actually do

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think that is the appropriate thing for a scientist to do.

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Now that said, if you're not like married to the

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idea that you can like explain the mystery away with empiricism,

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I think you should really be free to philosophize. But

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the problem is, I just I don't trust the impulse

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I work with scientists. I am a scientist. I know,

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I know how we all are. We're not we're not

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like we're not good faith actors in the philosophical and

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theological world. You know, we have a position we tend

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to the vast majority of us do. And it is

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this just really sad, nihilistic, reductionist worldview that sometimes people

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put like a little bit of a Buddhist spin on,

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you know, to kind of make it not sound bleak

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and depressing, like it's all about you know, oneness and stuff.

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But it's just I don't know. To me, it's just

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kind of vapid and silly. But if people were like

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really like open, but yeah, this is a frickin' mystery, man, Like,

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if they were really open to just wild explanations, you know,

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things like like that we're in something, that we're inside

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of something that that when we zoom on all the

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way in on the time scale or on the space scale,

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it sure seems like there's nothing there. And you can

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imagine our video game characters who just became conscious trying

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to figure out what they're in, zooming in and being like,

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it just doesn't seem like there's anything there. You know.

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When I zoom all the way in, it's like, you know,

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like I can sort of freeze things and time and

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space these little discrete packets, but you know, when I'm

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not looking at them, they just seem to be like

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everywhere all at once. It's really confusing. Like the more

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I know about a particle's momentum, the less I can

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know about its other properties. It's just all very uncertain

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and mysterious. I hope somebody would say like maybe, like

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maybe we're inside of something. Maybe we're not. You know,

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I can see you, you're really I can touch you.

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But maybe, like maybe there's some sort of information that

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underlies all of this. Maybe we have a creator, Maybe

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someone built this universe. And yeah, maybe they don't interact

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with us and and you know, interact with us in

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our everyday lives, and yeah, bad things still happen to us.

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And you know, ultimately woldn't decay and you know whatever

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whatever the rules of their video game are. But uh,

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but yeah, and then imagine everyone in this or he'll

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being like what an idiot, you're fired, Get out of

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your dumbass, you know, like that that is kind of

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the way our world works. You know, it's like that's ridiculous.

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We'll leave it to the scientists. We'll figure this out.

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We'll figure this out. Go home, Go home to your

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Uiji bordy maniac.

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Speaker 3: Don't saying. Kopenhagen View says, we can't say anything more

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about the quantum world beyond what we can measure and

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observe what's going on behind the curtain before we look.

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We have nothing to say about it. Not that it

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doesn't so much exist, but we have nothing to say

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about it. Yes, I was always uncomfortable about that, and

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I felt somehow, you know, not that I was out

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on a limb, but it wasn't the prevailing attitude to worry.

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I think, what's something must be going on? You mentioned

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you know the ontology. You know that there is something,

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some objective reality out there that wasn't even regarded as

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as you know, cut and dried. You know, the quantum

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mechanics just tells us what we can. You know, the

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results are making predictions about the results of measurements. Most

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physicists today, I would say, maybe not my generation, but

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younger than me, are a bit more concerned. There is

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something going on. I want to understand what it is.

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That should be the job of the physicist.

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Speaker 2: As John Bell famously said, the job of the physicist

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is to understand the world. Contra Neil's Bore, who in

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one of your books you sort of blame for this

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functional view of science to some degree, which is a shame,

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because I mean, Neils Bore is a great hero of

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my But yeah, I mean, if Neil's Bourn and John Bell,

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I'm siding with.

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Speaker 1: That, I'm going to do the most awkward thing in history.

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I just realized my wife and daughter are about to

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walk in and there's gonna be all sorts of talking.

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It's not very conducive to a podcast environment, so I'm

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going to wrap up this. I had fun this episode.

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It's kind of a weird place to end, but I

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don't know, I liked it. I enjoy this more than

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theology stuff, and I think you guys probably do too,

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So we'll wrap it up there. Email me at godside

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Viewbook at gmail dot com. Stay safe out there, and

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God blessed.