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