[♪♪♪]
ROBERT LAWRENCE KUHN:
 I seek meaning and purpose
 in existence.
 But meaning and purpose
 are abstract, often arbitrary.
 How to explore rationally?
 One way is to explore origins.
 Origins reflect how things
 come about,
 so, they're clues, not proofs.
So, if my interest is existence,
 then the closest I get
 is the universe.
How did the universe originate?
 How did it begin?
 What was before the beginning,
 if before the beginning
 even makes sense.
 I speak to cosmologists,
 physicists.
To most, physical, mindless laws
 generated the universe
 with no intrinsic meaning
 or purpose in the mix.
 A few believe that a
 Supreme Being is the creator.
I'd like there to be such a God,
 but don't the discoveries
 of cosmology
 with ever more precise
 observations
 and explanatory theories
 eliminate the need
 for supernatural causes?
 How then can physicists
 who believe in God
 harmonize the discoveries
 of cosmology
 with the doctrine of creation?
 Cosmology and creation?
 I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn,
 and this is Closer to Truth.
[♪♪♪]
 I've often examined how
 the universe began,
 but I've not done so entirely
 from the perspective
 of sophisticated believers,
physicists and science-literate
 philosophers
 who see the universe
 as God's creation.
 It's not that I cocoon
 myself with believers.
 It's not that I don't know or
 reject the scientific strength
 of non-believers.
 Rather, I want
 the best arguments
 of scientific believers.
 Get their best shots,
 then evaluate them.
 That's why I'm attending
 a conference at Notre Dame.
 The Quest for Consonance:
 Theology
 and the Natural Sciences.
 One of the primary topics here
 is cosmology and creation,
 and I begin with a physicist
 who focuses on cosmic origins
from a theological perspective,
 the President of the Society
 of Catholic Scientists,
 Stephen Barr.
Steve, you're a physicist,
you believe in God,
and you see the universe
as leading to God.
Many physicists and cosmologists
would see the opposite.
They'd see the more we've
learned about cosmology,
the less we need God.
I think some people have
a misconception that cosmology
can replace God
and cosmological theories.
So, they would say, well, the
universe maybe had no beginning,
or, if it did have a beginning,
physics can explain
that beginning.
The argument for God is not that
the universe had a beginning.
It's that the universe
has existence.
And I would use the
analogy of a symphony.
The beginning of the symphony
is just the first notes.
The origin of the symphony,
the source of its beauty,
is the composer, the creative
mind of the composer.
And so, you wouldn't explain why
Schubert's 5th Symphony exists
by pointing to its first notes.
That would be silly.
And it's also silly to explain
why there's a universe
by pointing to the details
of the Big Bang
or some cosmological theory
of how the universe started.
It's the mere fact that
the universe exists at all,
that it's real,
that points to the fact there
must be a source of reality.
There must be a source of being.
There must be a God.
The traditional Christian view,
and Jewish view, of creation
is not that God sort of did
something at the beginning.
It doesn't really have to do
that much with the beginning
in the temporal sense.
It has to do with the fact that
the universe is not a fictitious
or hypothetical or possible
world, but a real world.
God is a source of reality.
For religious people,
that absolute,
that ultimate reality is God.
For the atheists,
the ultimate reality
is the physical universe.
The difference, however,
is the physical universe is
the kind of thing that doesn't
have to be the way it is.
It doesn't have to exist.
It doesn't have to have all the
particular features that we see.
There's a lot that's contingent
about this universe
that could have been otherwise.
God, in the traditional view,
is a necessary being
who can't be otherwise
than he is.
And so, you have to choose.
Do I want the universe to be
the ultimate reality, or God?
They're both logically possible.
I happen to think that
God is more reasonable.
And to take the universe
on that argument,
it wouldn't be the universe
as we know it today,
which is very contingent.
It would be some sort
of meta laws,
and we think
they would be deeper
than quantum physics laws
as today.
There has to be some sort
of integration
with general relativity.
Whatever it is,
whatever the ultimate meta,
the most fundamental,
the deepest bedrock
of physical laws,
to make the fair analogy,
that's what you would
have to go to?
Right. But there are an infinite
number of possible laws.
There could be the laws
of some possible universe.
And this universe happens to
have some particular laws,
and that raises the question
of why these laws?
Why not some other laws?
Again, well, I could
take it as a brute fact.
Don't ask why.
These are the laws.
Take them or leave them.
The theist says, well,
there are laws because
there's a law giver, and the law
giver framed these laws,
and perhaps he had
something in mind
when he framed
these particular laws
rather than some other laws.
Let's look at the beginning
of the universe
and all the new theories
about how the universe began.
Inflation theory, eternal
chaotic inflation theory.
Some theists would look
to that as giving additional
corroboration that there was
the creation ex nihilo,
from nothing, that the
current understanding of the
Big Bang theory, inflationist
theory, supports that.
Do you agree with that?
Well, I don't, actually.
So, whether the universe began
with a quantum fluctuation,
which I think is a beautiful
and plausible idea,
whether there's
chaotic inflation,
whether there's eternal
inflation, all these things.
Very interesting.
It tells us a lot
about the universe.
It tells us how the beginning
of the universe unfolded.
But it doesn't really touch
the question
of whether the universe -
what made this a real universe
and not just some
hypothetical one
that exists
as a mathematical possibility.
KUHN: Stephen distinguishes
 between the beginning
of the universe and the ultimate
 source of its existence.
 He claims that it doesn't much
 matter if the universe
 had a beginning.
 The defining fact is that
 the universe has existence.
In other words, a universe that
 went through endless cycles
 of Big Bangs would fit his God
 created the universe model
 just as well as
 a single Big Bang.
If this is theological retreat,
 I need to call it such.
 If it's theological reality,
 it's a powerful point,
 and I need to pursue it.
 If correct, I need to decouple
 cosmological accounts
of the Big Bang from theological
 foundations of causation.
 I speak with an orthodox
 theologian and philosopher
 whose classic understanding
 is that God
 is timeless and unchanging.
 David Bentley Hart.
David, I have to tell you
that the great majority
of leading cosmologists
do not believe in God.
They believe that remarkable
observations and theories
in cosmology
can pretty much explain
the entirety of the universe.
You disagree with that, and
I'd like to understand why.
Well, they may be able
to explain the entirety
of the universe in terms of
the succession and articulation
of physical states
that compose it.
They can't explain
its existence.
And this seems to be a constant
point of misunderstanding.
They're not even asking
the same question.
And we go around
in these circles continually.
Cosmology is an
etiological question.
It's a question
about physical states.
So long as there
are physical states,
one can succeed another,
one can arise from another.
The question of creation
is ontological.
It is the modal plausibility
of the existence
of any physical state at all.
And that's not a modern retreat
from older theories,
that you can verify
from the earliest sources
in all these traditions.
From the Cappadocian Fathers
in Christian thought,
from Aquinas specifically says
the issue of creation
is unrelated
to whether the universe
is an eternal succession
of physical states or not.
Even if the universe existed
without beginning,
still this question would need
to be answered,
because it's of
a radically different kind.
So, the very notion that
cosmology could even contribute
to this issue is problematic.
It makes a wonderful
contribution to thinking about
the nature of the universe
within the embrace of,
if you happen to be a theist,
a theistic picture.
But it's not a logical rival to,
and it's certainly not
a logical answer to,
the question of existence.
I'm fascinated by modern
cosmology, don't get me wrong.
I love reading it.
But I don't confuse it
with the sort of questions
that touch upon the issue of
God or the issue of creation.
You know, what if
Roger Penrose is right
and we're bouncing through
one universe after another
as each one exhausts
its energetic potential
as it becomes a liminal state
in which a new universe arises?
Fine. That happens to be
a common view
of many Indian forms
of theism.
That in no way for them,
in Vendantic tradition, again,
would have anything to do
with the question
of the Divine ground,
the Divine origin,
the possibility of the existence
of physical orders,
of their arising
and their passing away.
I find the story
of the Big Bang fascinating,
but I don't see it as being
particularly relevant
to the question of creation.
Because some theists
would look at the Big Bang
as a stronger affirmation
that the kind of God
that they believe in is real,
that that kind of Creator
who creates from nothing
had to have a beginning
to the contingent reality
we call the universe.
If they could establish - I
don't know how you would do this
by some physical
or theoretical means -
that before the Big Bang, there
literally was no physical state,
then perhaps I'd have to say
they've got a point.
I don't see how--
That sounds like a logical
impossibility.
Yes, but see, in recognizing
that it's a logical
impossibility, you already
recognize the issue
of contingency, because,
all right,
if there were no prior
physical state,
but even if there were
a prior physical state,
when you reduce that to
the grounds of the possibility
of any contingent reality,
you'll arrive at
the same conclusion.
Either way,
it's an infinite regress
if it isn't grounded in that
which is not contingent.
[♪♪♪]
KUHN: To David, the only
 conceivable way to get God
 from the Big Bang creation
 of our universe
 would be to prove that prior,
 there were no physical states
 or laws at all, which
 is a logical impossibility.
 The bedrock question is
the manifestation of existence,
 not the mechanism of creation.
 God is certainly the ultimate
 ground of all being,
 but not necessarily
 the specific designer
 of our universe's Big Bang.
 It's an argument for God
 that cannot be refuted,
 which means it's not science,
 and nothing follows.
 It's like, you can't prove
 God does not exist.
 Okay. But nothing follows.
But many theists do pay special
attention go Big Bang cosmology.
 An ever-existing universe of
infinite duration is disturbing.
 I meet Christian philosopher
 Nancey Murphy.
 For three decades, Nancey
 has been following cosmology
 and creation, from the
 fine-tuning of our universe
 to the possibility
 of multiple universes.
How has she kept her faith?
Nancey, how do you see
the history of cosmology
as it affects your status
as a believer
who is a philosopher
of religion?
Well, I would like to take
the history back a lot longer.
Up through the Middle Ages
in particular,
the discussions with the
theologian Thomas Aquinas,
comparable discussions
in Judaism and Islam,
reacting to Aristotle's
cosmology.
And one of Aristotle's positions
was that
the universe is eternal.
There was a relative consensus
among the theologians
through the Middle Ages.
The assumption was that
the doctrine of Creation
is actually talking about
the world that we live in,
and some of the points
that were made
is the world was created
out of nothing;
scripturally it had a beginning,
a temporal beginning;
that the world is good;
and so forth.
When modern theology came along
and put the focus all on
human religiosity
and human awareness of God,
those questions
about the actual universe
dropped out of
mainline theology.
And what I have found
fascinating
is the way cosmologists
have brought
those old issues back
onto the table.
There was a principle
that the late ancient
or early medieval theologian
Augustine applied liberally
throughout his theology, which
was the principle of plenitude.
That was the idea
that if God is a creator,
surely God would create
as much as God could create.
And I have come to recognize
that if the scientists do decide
that there are
multiple universes,
then that's just
a major extension
of Augustine's principle
of plenitude.
But if you take the multiple
universe hypothesis,
part of that, in order to create
a universe that is fine-tuned,
you have to have innumerable
and perhaps infinite numbers
of universes.
But the incredibly vast number
of them must be sterile
if you're just mixing up
by random
all of these constants
of physics.
That seems to undermine
your theory
of a God doing all this
for plentitude.
Well, there's no - we humans
are in no position
to say that God
doesn't value non-humans,
and that God
wouldn't value having
as many universes
as possible.
Even empty ones
that are sterile?
Yeah. Yeah. Plenitude.
We have got mosquitoes
and we've got humans.
Plenitude.
But what is interesting about
the multiverse hypothesis
is it raises, once again, an
argument that Thomas Aquinas had
with the contemporary
Saint Bonaventure
about whether it's conceivable
that our universe
could be of infinite duration.
And Thomas argued
that it's conceivable,
but scripture teaches that our
universe did have a beginning.
But it raises the question
whether it makes sense
to talk about an infinite
number of universes
or an infinite series
of universes.
And so, the same sorts
of questions
about the intelligibility
of taking a concept
like infinity that applies
in mathematics
and using it to talk about
physical reality has just
been brought right back
into theologians' faces again.
Do you have a dog in this
fight in terms of theology?
If you have multiple universes
where you would have one series
that had to have some kind of
beginning to go infinite
and another where you could
have been infinite in the past?
I've got a Chihuahua
in this fight.
[laughter]
I tend to agree with
Bonaventure's idea
that if there's an infinite
series from past infinitely,
that things should have
progressed
through an infinite series
of whatevers,
whether it's events
in our universe
or universes
in this foam of universes.
And I tend to side with
Bonaventure that in the concept
of infinity simply cannot
be applied to physical reality.
[♪♪♪]
KUHN: Nancey cannot conceive
 how the universe
 could have an infinite past.
 Mathematical infinities,
 she says,
 are not literal countable
 physical infinities.
 And with an infinite past,
 everything possible,
 no matter how remote,
 would have already happened,
 and happened an infinite
 number of times.
 It gets nuts.
 Have I gotten lost
 in ontological speculations?
 I'm trying to test the idea
 of God as Creator,
 see science and the universe
 as they are.
 Sense whether God
 can be justified.
 Is there a different kind
 of theistic perspective?
I speak with a British physicist
 who wants to refocus
the traditional science-theology
 debate, Tom McLeish.
One of my research themes, if
you'd like, is of light motif.
Is order out of chaos.
So, my physics dwells
in the microscopic world
or the nanoscopic world of
polymers and macromolecules
and membranes where everything
is in continuous fluctuation,
random motion,
that we call heat.
That's what heat
is current physics.
So, how does this chaotic
molecular world
give rise to the ordered
structures of things?
So, the concept
of chaos to order
is a fundamental one
to understand science.
How does it enrich
your theology?
You're not finding God
through your polymers.
No, I'm doing actually
precisely the opposite
and so in fact the theology
of science
that I've tried to develop
as a scientist
is almost diametrically opposed
to this idea of natural theology
that you just articulated.
That tradition says
it is indeed possible
to see God through nature.
And I take a very,
very different stance.
I think we stand next to God
looking with God into nature.
So, I'm trying to develop
science in the service of God.
That's the question.
The question how does one
reconcile science and religion,
to me is a completely
non-question.
I'm fed up with that question.
It assumes too much.
I want to ask
a different question.
I always want to ask,
what is science for
within the kingdom of God?
You are assuming God exists.
There's no doubt,
there's no analysis.
God exists.
Now, I'm a scientist,
I'm looking here.
And now I'm seeing how they
can articulate. Is that fair?
That's fair enough,
although, of course,
one continues to ask
the question,
which I do in terms of
my science or my faith,
is that I have one mind,
not two here.
Does this all make sense?
So, a theistic or a Christian
theistic view of the universe,
one's always thinking,
look, is this commensurate
with the universe I see?
My view is that, is that
there are no strong
irrefutable arguments
for or against theism.
It's a step of faith either way.
One has to assume something
and then you get on,
look at the universe around you.
You're a believer to begin with,
but does that generate
some kind of
a warm feeling inside?
( laughter ) I don't know about
warm feelings inside.
We all like warm feelings
inside, don't we?
I have reflected
on what difference
does my Christian faith
make to the science I do,
and I think maybe subconsciously
my research track
around random order out
of chaos is a biblical theme.
In the book of Job, it's all
about the wild side of nature.
And I've realized that
like exploring the subtlety
of how nature is endowed
with freedom
and explores that freedom in
both Brownian motion materials,
in evolution,
to discover possibilities.
And that does echo with my view
of what a Creator might be like
and his love of freedom.
[♪♪♪]
KUHN: Tom suggests
 a theology of science
 where science enriches
 appreciation
 of a God-created world.
 Thus the concept of Creation
 becomes more
 than how the universe began.
 More even than
 its raw existence.
 Complexity out of simplicity
 is also part of the story.
 I agree, but only if I start
 by assuming that God exists,
 which spins reasoning
 in a circle.
[♪♪♪]
 That's why I remain fixated on
how latest theories of cosmology
 articulate with theistic
 explanations of creation.
 Still, at the Quest for
 Consonance conference,
 I speak with a physicist
 who is also a priest,
 the Research Director
 of the Ian Ramsey Center
 for Science and Religion
 at Oxford, Andrew Pinsent.
Andrew, from the standpoint
of a particle physicist,
and as a believer,
what can you tell me
about the structure of reality?
Gosh. A good way of
starting an explanation,
particularly in regards to the
science and theology issue,
is what happens
when I go into schools
and I give talks
often to the schoolchildren,
and they ask me
how can I be a priest
and believe in the Big Bang?
And I say, we invented it.
What does the Big Bang tell us
about the structure of reality?
Basically that it's a kind
of fruitful simplicity
about the start of everything.
The universe begins simple, but
with an extraordinary potential.
And then gradually,
it's like a flower blooming.
It's not like an explosion,
which is a chaotic thing.
Gradually, the different light
is transmuted
or becomes particles,
and then particles combine,
they create atoms.
Then you get atoms cooking
in stars to create
the various different
elements, and so on.
And there's a kind of wonderful
story about all this,
a wonderful narrative, that
out of this initial simplicity,
but with a rich potential,
comes this extraordinarily
complex and beautiful universe.
What is the contribution
of particle physics
to understanding that?
With regard to particle physics
specifically,
we recreate the conditions
of the Big Bang.
And what happens
are some of the forces
look very different
in everyday life.
They suddenly seem to be much
more closely related
in that primeval state than they
are in everyday terms today.
But we can recover some of the
underlying simplicity,
that rich simplicity of the
beginning of the cosmos.
How does that inform your
theological understanding?
I don't think there are direct
theological implications,
but there's a narrative here
which ties in very well
with the grand theological
narrative we've been using
for nearly 2,000 years.
That the universe has order,
and it's the work
of a loving Creator.
And therefore, we expect
to find order, which we do find,
albeit at a level our minds
find difficult to grasp.
And we find that the many
different phenomena,
which seem unconnected
in everyday life,
have an underlying unity.
So, I think there is a kind of
consonance of the narrative.
I wouldn't like to go
further than that.
[♪♪♪]
KUHN: For a theist, consonance
 between cosmology and creation
 is the best you get.
 The universe is consistent
with a Supreme Creator/Designer.
 To atheists, of course,
 the universe and atheism
 are consonant,
 and the universe is consistent
 with the absence of God.
 Am I running in circles?
 Is progress possible?
 When consonance and consistent
 with are the touchstones,
 perhaps predictions can be
compared as more or less likely.
 I'm not optimistic.
 Is a universe that began more
 consistent with a Creator God?
 Theists are divided.
 Some say that the question
 is ontological, not temporal.
 That the pure existence of the
universe is the puzzle to solve,
 irrespective of whether
 the universe had a beginning.
 Others, that a universe
 with a beginning
 is more consistent with God.
 I am in awe of pure existence.
 But to me, if the universe
 had a beginning,
 consistent with a Creator
 would be stronger,
 because an eternal universe
 that did not have a beginning
 could be the ultimate
brute fact with no need for God
 more easily than could a
 universe that had a beginning.
 Yet, the mystery of existence
 is the most profound
 and probative question.
 That's not inconsistent.
 That's Closer to Truth.
[♪♪♪]
ANNOUNCER:
 For complete interviews
 and for further information,
please visit closertotruth.com.
[♪♪♪]
