Speaker 1: Welcome to the Gods I View Podcast. I am your host, Trevor.
I wanted to get another episode out there because I've
been feeling off the past week or so, you know,
maybe something in the air. I'm not sure exactly what's
going on, but I realized I just don't ever want
to really talk about theology on the show anymore, because
I was just thinking about it, like I almost feel
like no good can come of it. You know, there's
like some narrow, narrow group of people who might like
what I'm saying, but then this other group of people
might not like what I'm saying, and ultimately that's not
really what the show is about, you know, nor am
I really in a position to do it. So I
realized I was a lot wowing myself to just sort
of air like a stream of consciousness, which I do often.
But if I am going to do that, I prefer
it to be something I'm like, somewhat informed about and
has low risk of upsetting people. There's also really no
benefit to it, you know, like it helps no one.
So we're gonna redirect, We're gonna reorient ourselves. Oh my
dog's barking with somebody, That's what you do when you're
feeling I think I think this is a lesson. I
think it's good advice. I don't know when you're just
feeling a little h you gotta pivot change it up.
So anyway, we're gonna we're speaking of changing it up.
We're gonna do something brand new we've never done before.
We're gonna listen to Alex O'Connor. I do get emails
from people are like, man, you really like this Alex
O'Connor guy, and I do. Hold on, let me go
see what's going on with my dog. I don't have
a way to pause this. Zuma, Okay, Bud, what's going on?
Who's out there? You're barking it anyway, I'm probably being robbed.
This isn't live, so you won't. Oh my dog, my
dog does this thing. I've read it. It's like a
known thing. He like compulsively sneezes, and I read that
it's I looked it up because like, I've never met
a dog that sneezes so much, And funny enough, he
does it a lot more. If like my son and
I are wrestling, he starts sneezing like crazy. And I
looked it up and it how do they know this stuff?
I don't know. I want to meet these animal psychology researchers, like, okay,
show me the study. How did he do that? Did
you just ask him like place your paw on ABC
or D Why do you sneeze? But I read that
it's like a signal that they're friendly, you know, like
that they're not upset or aggressive or mad. It's like
a playful thing. So dude, I might have to get
up and check out what's going on. Stand by this
is this is very awkward to do on a podcast.
It's literally just going to be silent for ten seconds.
I don't edit. Hold on all right, literally nothing and
no one, completely completely unnecessary. Thanks for being such a
good guard. Doc. It's funny is someone when people really
do show up to our house, he just like rolls
over all right, all right forget off me, get off me.
No respect, no respect for the podcasting and profession anyway.
So yeah, people can I want to say, people complain,
but they're like, man, you really like this guy, and
I don't think that's true. I just I love I
like humility and now listen, he's got the British accent
and went to Oxford doesn't have a PhD. I thought
he did, and so he might come off as pretentious
to some people, but I think he's actually pretty you know.
I guess I value uncertainty is that weird. Most people
value the opposite. Like a key to success actually is
to just be exceedingly confident, and I don't mean like arrogant,
but just like be certain. Don't do you wishy washy,
make decisions quickly, try to stand by them. This is
like a well known key to success and a ticket
to leadership. But it's not me, man. I do not
have that at all, and to pretend like I had
it would to me would feel like lying because I'm
just like deeply uncertain about a lot of things. And
I think it does make people uncomfortable to feel that way,
and so people seek certainty for whatever reason. Though at
certainty doesn't bring me comfort because I'm suspicious of it.
That's why I think if I really believed it, if
I believed in their certainty, if I was able to
convince myself that their certainty is merited, I think it
would bring me comfort. Actually, I just can't do it.
I don't know why. I'm not built that way, So
I like the like, you know, listen, I think it'd
be cool if he maybe with a little bit more
open minded to think. I mean, because I got it.
I gotta really, I'm really trying to figure out what
I think I understand. Like the claim about God is
a tough claim. You know, we've got the problem of
divine hiddenness. That's the biggest problem. I mean, all the
problems that represented as problems in the nineties and to
early two thousands, like they're not even really problems, you know,
all the stuff, Like when science was figuring things out,
it was like, yeah, yeah, none of this is a
problem now, like these are all things we might expect
a you know, indescribable, ineffable force who's capable of producing universe?
A universe might do you know in the idea that
like there's only four constraints, like there's only four constants
that are fine tuned, you know, the force of gravity,
of electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force. I think
that's a I don't know. I'm not a physicist. Anyway,
the idea that you could create four constants and the
universe just sort of unfolds and life originates used to
be presented as like a anti theistic argument, but on
the other side of it, like, clearly that's a theistic argument. Like,
first of all, you know, there was a first cause.
This is the column cosmological argument. Whatever begins to exist
has a cause. The universe has a cause. No, I'm sorry,
whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe begs
and to exist. The universe has a cause, and so
the question is, well, what is that cause? And the
scientists will always say, well, you know, it's the energy,
you know, and the seconds leading up to the Big Bang,
blah blah blah, or you know, Roger Penrose will say
it was the collapse of the old universe given rise
to They're always looking to move it one step further
back into the past, but that doesn't actually do anything.
This is a kicking the can down the road kind
of a thing, like these are not explanatory forces. This
is not an explanation of the first actual cause, because
of course you can imagine nothing existing, right, can't you.
I think this is a limitation on the atheist part,
like they're always criticizing religious people like well, yeah, you
just don't understand it, Like you just can't picture it.
You can't fathom the time scales that these things took
place over blah blah blah, which I agree with. I mean,
I think those are good arguments. I just don't think
they support the position they think they do. But anyway,
I think atheists kind of suffer from a lack of
imagination about about that. Like there doesn't need to be
anything here. That's the natural that's the natural state of things, right, nothingness.
You know, they say, like the natural state of a
book is to never be written. The natural state of
a movie is for it to never be produced. This
is entropy, man, this is the second law. But it's
funny because even the second law is like sort of
evidence of a system that's been built, because there doesn't
need to be laws, there doesn't need to be rules,
there doesn't need to be constants. There could merely just
be nothing. That's the most obvious, most likely outcome. But
there's something, and something seems to be tuned for the
production of wife, and the complexity is staggering, you know. Forever,
the argument was like, look at the complexity of the brain.
Look at the complexity of the brain. Clearly, look that's
science nature and it's like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, dude,
you're making the You're arguing against your position, like the
existence of staggering ordered complexity is not evidence against the
designer or a cause, it's evidence for and so anyway,
I think this is kind of a good conversation that
sort of highlights this tension that I'm trying to explain.
I don't think the interviewer does a really good job
responding to the questions. However, I think they are reasonable
responses according to his framework for looking at the world.
So I don't think they're bad responses. I just think
they're I think he's kind of missing the point. So
let's check it out. The title of this video is
why quantum physics is still a.
Speaker 2: People often talk about interpretations yea, quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpretation,
the many worlds interpretation, whatever. You don't hear people talk
about different interpretations of gravitational theory in the same way.
Why not, like, what's going on with that?
Speaker 3: Because we do have a single interpretation. I mean, when
we think about Einstein developing relativity theory his special theory
in nineteen oh five, the mathematics for that was pretty
much sorted out people, you know, like Lorentz and Poncare
had already developed the equations. What they didn't have was
the correct interpretation, what is this telling us about reality?
Einstein comes along, He doesn't come up with new mathematics.
He comes up with the correct interpretation, the narrative, the
explanation of what this theory.
Speaker 1: This is actually a key point. And this is something
that in a different context I don't think a scientist
would be willing to admit. But in this context it
feels safe. And what he's saying is like, yeah, the
math checks out, but you know, the math is just
a description, Like you need a narrative, you need a
conceptual framework to understand what it means. And it's like, yeah, yeah,
you do. You do need a conceptual framework. And those
conceptual frameworks are often wrong, and the narratives often change
even if the math doesn't change, although sometimes the math
can change. You know, you can have different models that
describe the same system in Tonian physics einstein Einsteinian physics,
that these both work. These both make predictions about orbital
trajectories and things, but they are different. And so the
point is like math is a math is like drawing something.
It is a description of reality. It does not explanatory.
It is not explanatory for that. You need logic and
language and narrative. We love narrative. We are narrative. I mean,
we tell ourselves a narrative about our lives. It's like
history is so fascinating and thinking about the future and
the arc, the arc of time, and and god, I mean,
we're worst story. You know, this is this is this
is what we are. And so scientists tend to pretend
like that's not the case. They kind of try to
accuse philosophy of being guilty of that way of thinking,
like of just you know, trying to solve things through
discussion and logic and thought experiments and you know, the
science they just shut up and calculate. They do the experiment,
they shut up and calculate. Accept that's not what they do.
They get the math that sort of works, and then
they craft narratives around it and they go on YouTube
channels and appreciate about it, you know. So and the
narratives change and the math changes sometimes too.
Speaker 3: It's telling us about the world. You know, that nothing
can go faster than light, that time and space must
be unified into four D space time, so and Einstein's
then credited with relativity theory. It's the interpretation, the explanation
that's important. No other theory is like quantum mechanics, where
the mass works describes the subatomic world, tells us about
how atoms fit together, then electrons fit orbit around the
atomic nucleus, and so on. But we have these half
a dozen or more different ways of explaining what's going on,
and we can't agree on which one's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's the difference between like a mathematical model
that predicts outcomes and I hesitate to use the word explains,
but you know, let's say, describes the various activities of
subatomic particles. That is a separate question from the ontology.
What is the stuff Like people will commonly think about,
you know, particles being in two places at once and
being here and there at the same time, And that's
probably some kind of confusion between our mathematical models, which
sort of act as though, you know, a particle is
in two places at once. Whether it actually is or
not is a totally different question, and I think you
and I probably both agree that it's it's not actually
in two places at once, but it's like our mathematics
describes it as such because it's useful. So does the
quantum physicist of the modern era have much at aol
to say scientifically beyond their like philosophical hunches and interpretation
of the day to do they have anything like scientific
to say about what is actually going on?
Speaker 1: Now? I don't know what he's gonna say, because I've
stopped watching around this moment, I think, but I would
say no. I have a feeling he's gonna say yes,
but I don't. I hate to make that prediction and
look stupid in a moment, but my answer would be like, well, no,
that kind of violates the fundamental aspect of what science is.
Anything beyond that is the old philosophy, you know, because no,
I mean, we use a method, we test, we test hypotheses,
we use empiricism, We craft theories. Sure, but those theories
only ever explain the way the variables interact and make
predictions and things. And there's probably like we can still
explore mechanisms, you know. I'm not saying we never ask like,
well how does this work? Of course we do, but
it's sort of limited to there is a limit. There's
a limit beyond which we just cannot explain, you know.
Certainly in cosmology, it's like what happened before the Big Bang?
Is the universe eternal? Is it infinite? You know? These
are these are kind of examples of that. In physics,
it's you know, all these quantum mysteries that we talk
about at length on the show all the time. So
there is a limit at some point. Really, what we
are doing is you know what they say, we shut
up and calculate. I don't think science should try to
go beyond that. Like I kind of picture imagine this world.
It's almost like I would be a good sci fi book,
Like imagine a world where science and religion we're not
these like opposing forces, these opposing worldviews. Excuse me, because
science shouldn't be a worldview. Science is the best approach
we have to interacting with the world in terms of
answering questions, making predictions, building things. But it isn't a philosophy.
It shouldn't be. It's not a theology, but we treat
it that way. It's really unfortunate. But imagine we didn't
imagine just some like scientist priests, you know, and like
the cathedrals just doing experiments and just trying to figure
things out, not afraid of any hypothesis. Now, the problem
is all institutions become dogmatic, so they would probably have
their own issues. You know, if they found something that
they thought violated some of their assumptions about the way
the world works, they probably tried to hide it, just
like a scientist might in reverse, you know, like ooh,
the Big Bang. You know, that makes it sound like
the universe has a beginning. You can't have that, you know,
that's ridiculous, And that is how the Big Bang theory
was originally treated. So this is just a human failing,
not something that only science is guilty of. But I
do like to imagine the world or we surpass that
limitation and we're just truly exploring. Man, We're just really
trying to find what's beneath the bottom, what is at
the end of all things? As John Wheeler.
Speaker 3: Said, more so now than a generation or two or
three ago. Sure, I mean certainly when I started as
a PhD student in the eighties, it was very much
the case that look, quantum mechanics is a mathematical theory.
It works. If you want to do philosophy, go and
do philosophy, but a physicist uses it. So this is
the Copenhagen view. Sometimes it's simplified into the shut up
and calculate interpretation. It works. Don't worry your pretty little
head about how and why we can't.
Speaker 1: It's funny because shut up and calculate is often like
something people will say, like people will sort of mark
that or be critical of that. But I actually do
think that is the appropriate thing for a scientist to do.
Now that said, if you're not like married to the
idea that you can like explain the mystery away with empiricism,
I think you should really be free to philosophize. But
the problem is, I just I don't trust the impulse
I work with scientists. I am a scientist. I know,
I know how we all are. We're not we're not
like we're not good faith actors in the philosophical and
theological world. You know, we have a position we tend
to the vast majority of us do. And it is
this just really sad, nihilistic, reductionist worldview that sometimes people
put like a little bit of a Buddhist spin on,
you know, to kind of make it not sound bleak
and depressing, like it's all about you know, oneness and stuff.
But it's just I don't know. To me, it's just
kind of vapid and silly. But if people were like
really like open, but yeah, this is a frickin' mystery, man, Like,
if they were really open to just wild explanations, you know,
things like like that we're in something, that we're inside
of something that that when we zoom on all the
way in on the time scale or on the space scale,
it sure seems like there's nothing there. And you can
imagine our video game characters who just became conscious trying
to figure out what they're in, zooming in and being like,
it just doesn't seem like there's anything there. You know.
When I zoom all the way in, it's like, you know,
like I can sort of freeze things and time and
space these little discrete packets, but you know, when I'm
not looking at them, they just seem to be like
everywhere all at once. It's really confusing. Like the more
I know about a particle's momentum, the less I can
know about its other properties. It's just all very uncertain
and mysterious. I hope somebody would say like maybe, like
maybe we're inside of something. Maybe we're not. You know,
I can see you, you're really I can touch you.
But maybe, like maybe there's some sort of information that
underlies all of this. Maybe we have a creator, Maybe
someone built this universe. And yeah, maybe they don't interact
with us and and you know, interact with us in
our everyday lives, and yeah, bad things still happen to us.
And you know, ultimately woldn't decay and you know whatever
whatever the rules of their video game are. But uh,
but yeah, and then imagine everyone in this or he'll
being like what an idiot, you're fired, Get out of
your dumbass, you know, like that that is kind of
the way our world works. You know, it's like that's ridiculous.
We'll leave it to the scientists. We'll figure this out.
We'll figure this out. Go home, Go home to your
Uiji bordy maniac.
Speaker 3: Don't saying. Kopenhagen View says, we can't say anything more
about the quantum world beyond what we can measure and
observe what's going on behind the curtain before we look.
We have nothing to say about it. Not that it
doesn't so much exist, but we have nothing to say
about it. Yes, I was always uncomfortable about that, and
I felt somehow, you know, not that I was out
on a limb, but it wasn't the prevailing attitude to worry.
I think, what's something must be going on? You mentioned
you know the ontology. You know that there is something,
some objective reality out there that wasn't even regarded as
as you know, cut and dried. You know, the quantum
mechanics just tells us what we can. You know, the
results are making predictions about the results of measurements. Most
physicists today, I would say, maybe not my generation, but
younger than me, are a bit more concerned. There is
something going on. I want to understand what it is.
That should be the job of the physicist.
Speaker 2: As John Bell famously said, the job of the physicist
is to understand the world. Contra Neil's Bore, who in
one of your books you sort of blame for this
functional view of science to some degree, which is a shame,
because I mean, Neils Bore is a great hero of
my But yeah, I mean, if Neil's Bourn and John Bell,
I'm siding with.
Speaker 1: That, I'm going to do the most awkward thing in history.
I just realized my wife and daughter are about to
walk in and there's gonna be all sorts of talking.
It's not very conducive to a podcast environment, so I'm
going to wrap up this. I had fun this episode.
It's kind of a weird place to end, but I
don't know, I liked it. I enjoy this more than
theology stuff, and I think you guys probably do too,
So we'll wrap it up there. Email me at godside
Viewbook at gmail dot com. Stay safe out there, and
God blessed.