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19th-Century Atheism Just Got Schooled by Modern Science — Transcript

by Stephen Meyer · 2,902 words · 434 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00The science of the 19th century that
0:02gave rise to this perspective has been
0:04eclipsed by major developments in
0:07science over the last 100 years in three
0:09main areas. Cosmology, physics, and
0:11biology. Let me talk first about the the
0:14cosmology or the astronomy. The shift in
0:17this field starts in the 1920s. There's
0:20a now famous astronomer named Edwin
0:22Hubble. Most of us have heard of him
0:23because of the famed Hubble telescope.
0:26It's kind of a bummer for him because
0:27he's a really great scientist. He got a
0:29telescope named after him and it's
0:30always broken and they have to go up
0:32there and fix it. But anyway, Hubble
0:35starts uh working in the 20s. He comes
0:37out of law, the field of law into
0:39astronomy at a really propitious time.
0:42They're building these great dome
0:43telescopes. This is the 100inch uh
0:46diameter telescope at Mount Wilson that
0:49uh Hubble used. And using these great
0:52big telescopes, the astronomers are are
0:54able to at this time to start resolving
0:58these onto photographic plates the light
1:00coming from little tiny distant uh
1:04previously indistinct points of light in
1:06the night sky. And it turns out that
1:08these little indistinct points once uh
1:10the light is collected over with a long
1:12exposure on a photographic plate through
1:14these big telescopic lenses re the light
1:17starts revealing structure. And this is
1:20a picture of what's called a spindle
1:21nebula. And there were others spiral
1:24nebulas. And uh oh that sorry that was a
1:28well that's a spiral. And here's another
1:29spiral nebula. Now, this reignited a
1:32debate that had been going on in
1:33astronomy between astronomers who
1:36thought that our Milky Way galaxy was
1:38the only galaxy
1:40uh and other astronomers uh who thought
1:43that there were other galaxies beyond
1:46the Milky Way, island universes, if you
1:48will, beyond the Milky Way. And this was
1:50called the Great Debate in the 1920s.
1:52But in 1924, Hubble was able to settle
1:55this debate by using some new techniques
1:58for estimating distances. He was able to
2:01determine
2:03that the Andromeda nebula was actually
2:06the Andromeda galaxy, that it was a
2:09separate galaxy. And the way he was able
2:10to show that is he was using these new
2:12techniques for measuring distances. He
2:14determined that the Andromeda galaxy,
2:16one of the closest ones to us, was
2:18900,000
2:20uh light years away. That was his
2:21estimate at the time. And we, the
2:24astronomers thought at the time the
2:26Milky Way was only 300,000 light-years
2:28across. So clearly it had to be way
2:30beyond the Milky Way. Therefore, it was
2:31a separate se separate galaxy. And the
2:33Andromeda Nebula, which just meant gas
2:35cloud, was renamed the Andromeda galaxy.
2:39That was pretty awesome. And as they
2:41began to look at other points of light
2:43using these same techniques, they found
2:45that there were galaxies in every
2:47direction of the night sky. In fact, if
2:49you look at this little square that's
2:51highlighted on the PowerPoint, that's
2:53like a little tiny part of the visual
2:55field, maybe like a dime at arms length.
2:57And now, if we were to
3:00magnify that, it reveals galaxies galore
3:05in even the tiniest little quadrant of
3:07the night sky. And and the current
3:09estimate is that there are about 200
3:11billion galaxies in the visible
3:14universe. So in just the space of a
3:17decade, our sense of the the immensity
3:19of the universe was just magnified
3:22incredibly. Now that was really that was
3:24an an amazing discovery. But even more
3:27important was what was discovered as a
3:30result of the light coming from these
3:32galaxies.
3:34Turns out that the light was redder than
3:36than the scientists expected. You know
3:38how if you if you uh shine light through
3:40a prism and it separates into colors,
3:43the red through to the the blue and the
3:45violet and the red red light has a long
3:48wavelength. And if an object is is
3:51emitting light and moving away, it will
3:54cause the wavelength of the light to
3:56stretch out and it will look redder than
3:58it would otherwise look. So the the the
4:02light coming from the the the the gases
4:05in these far away galaxies looked redder
4:07than similar light would look coming
4:10from if we looked at it spectra in a
4:13laboratory. And they call this the red
4:14shift. In other words, the wavelength
4:16was stretched out. It's kind of like the
4:17the Doppler shift with sound when if a
4:19train whistle goes by it goes hm the
4:21sound well that's the wavelength of the
4:23sound stretching out. Same thing happens
4:24with light. And so the the scientists
4:26were able to dis to discern that the
4:29galaxies are actually moving away from
4:31us. That's what the red shift meant. Now
4:34that had incredible implications for
4:38u the question of the origin of the
4:40universe itself. Hubble used data from a
4:43a unsung hero in astronomy named Vesto
4:47Slifford to about this red shift. And um
4:52so here's here's the here's the
4:54implication of all this. If the galaxies
4:56are moving away from us in every
4:57direction in the forward direction of
4:59time, the only way that could be true is
5:02if there is a kind of spherically
5:04symmetric expansion of the universe that
5:06everything is expanding in the forward
5:08direction. So if we think of I got a
5:09visual aid in the forward direction of
5:12time you have the universe getting
5:13bigger [snorts]
5:16bigger and bigger
5:18and the galaxies every galaxy getting
5:20further and further away from every
5:21other galaxy. But if you wind the time
5:24clock backwards, if you back extrapolate
5:28and you think, well, [snorts] what was
5:29the universe like a hundred years ago or
5:31a thousand years ago or a million or a
5:33billion or however far back you go,
5:35eventually you get to the point where
5:37all that galactic material is going to
5:39congeal or would have come back to the
5:43same point, a point marking the
5:45beginning of the expansion of the
5:47universe and arguably the beginning of
5:50the universe itself. And so we have from
5:53observational astronomy the first hint
5:56that the universe has not been here
5:59eternally. It's not eternal and
6:01self-existent, but rather it had a
6:03beginning. This is one of Hubble's plot
6:06showing that that there was a law um the
6:09further out the galaxies are, the faster
6:10they're moving away. And that again can
6:12only be true if it's if the universe is
6:14expanding in this spherically symmetric
6:16way. Now about this time, actually a
6:20little before this time, there was a
6:22famous physicist with really bad hair
6:27who had come to the a very similar
6:29conclusion and this was Albert Einstein.
6:32He he was uh in the 19s still working in
6:35Germany. Eventually he came to Princeton
6:37to escape the Nazis. But in the teens he
6:39came up with another theory, a new
6:41theory of gravity known as general
6:43relativity. And we talked a little bit
6:45about this last night, but it's
6:46basically the the conceptual idea behind
6:49it is that matter causes space to bend
6:54such that other matter passing through
6:56that space will have its motion changed
6:59by that preferred by those preferred
7:01lines of trajectory.
7:04So as a [clears throat] result of this,
7:06he's thinking, well, if matter causes
7:07space to bend, then that means that if
7:12all you have in the universe is that
7:14gravitational
7:16uh field, then everything should be
7:19collapsed onto itself into something
7:21like a black hole. But we don't live in
7:23a universe like that. We live in a
7:25universe where there's massive bodies
7:26separated by empty space. So there must
7:28be some countervening force of expansion
7:32to to counter to to offset the
7:35gravitational force which means that the
7:37universe must be in some way dynamic.
7:39There's something pushing outward. But
7:42if something's pushing outward, then
7:43that it would imply that there could
7:45have been a beginning and that troubled
7:48Einstein because at this point in his
7:50career, it was different later, but at
7:51this point in his career, he was very
7:52much a scientific materialist. And so he
7:57he he posited something. It was kind of
7:59a fairly arbitrary conjecture on his
8:02part, but he proposed that this outward
8:04pushing force, which he called the
8:05cosmological constant, had exactly the
8:08right magnitude so that the outward push
8:12was com exactly balanced by the
8:14gravitational pole and you had a
8:16universe that was static, neither
8:18expanding nor contracting. It was kind
8:20of a contrived value that he assigned to
8:23this, but it worked to eliminate the
8:25idea of a beginning. And for a time for
8:29him that was a sigh of relief. But then
8:32in the 20s a physic other physicists
8:34started working with these equations and
8:36they realized you know that's pretty
8:38contrived Einstein that would be an
8:39incredible degree of fine-tuning to have
8:41that cosmological constant with exactly
8:43the value that you you Einstein chose
8:45for it. The math allows a lot of other
8:48values that would imply most other
8:50values would imply a dynamic universe.
8:52That's thing one. And then this amazing
8:54physicist, a a Belgian Catholic priest
8:57named Father Lamatra,
9:00um is with Einstein at a conference in
9:02the 20s and they're in a taxi cab ride
9:05going to the the conference and Lamatra
9:08tells Einstein, "First of all, your your
9:10physics is contrived. The equations
9:12really suggest a dynamic universe. You
9:14know it and we know it. But also, have
9:17you heard about this red shift data that
9:20Hubble's working with out in California?
9:23Because it's showing that the dynamic
9:25expanding universe is really what the
9:27heavens have talked back effect in in
9:29effect. And Einstein was listened to
9:32Lamatra and eventually made his way out
9:37at Hubble's invitation to Pasadena,
9:39California, and had a peak for himself
9:43through the the the Hooker 100inch
9:46telescope and came out and announced to
9:48the media after seeing this in his heavy
9:50German accent. He came out and said, "I
9:53now see the necessity of a beginning."
9:58and later and explained that the value
10:02this arbitrary value he chose for the
10:05cosmological constant was the greatest
10:07mistake of his scientific career because
10:09he allowed his philosophical
10:11presuppositions his predilictions to
10:14determine his scientific theory rather
10:17than letting the evidence decide the
10:18question. And um anyways a great moment
10:21in the history of science. It
10:23established what is now uh known as the
10:26big bang theory when you had this
10:27convergence of theoretical physics
10:29general relativity with observational
10:31astronomy and that in turn established
10:33that the universe had a beginning. Now
10:35Einstein was not the only the only
10:36scientist at the time who didn't like
10:38this. Uh Sir Arthur Edington a famous
10:40British astrophysicist said this. He
10:42said philosophically the notion of a
10:44beginning of the present order is
10:46repugnant to me. I should like to find a
10:48genuine loophole. I simply do not
10:50believe the present order of things
10:51started off with a bang. The expanding
10:53universe is preposterous. It leaves me
10:56cold. He said uh this in psychology is
11:00known as the theory of denial.
11:03You know, you notice what the evidence
11:05he's citing. He's not citing. He says
11:07philosophically he doesn't like it. And
11:10uh later physicists, you know, because
11:12you have to ask, well, what's the big
11:13deal? Why are physicists so upset about
11:15the idea of a beginning? Uh Princeton
11:17physicist Robert Dicki put it this way.
11:18He said he said an infinitely old
11:21universe would relieve us of the
11:23necessity of explaining the origin of
11:26matter at any finite time in the past.
11:28If matter itself comes into existence,
11:30then you can't invoke matter as the
11:33cause of the origin of the material
11:35universe. You need something that is
11:38immaterial that transcends matter. And
11:40this uh conclusion was highlighted later
11:44in the 1960s by some work uh by Stephven
11:47Hawking. There's a bigger story here
11:49that I'm compressing and maybe with
11:51Germo uh we can talk a bit more about
11:53it. There were after the big bang was
11:55proposed there were some other models
11:56proposed. The U steady state model, the
11:59oscillating universe model. These were
12:01each attempts to preserve an infinite
12:03universe that didn't have a beginning.
12:05But one by one as more observations of
12:07different kinds came online in astronomy
12:09these were set aside as inadequate
12:11theories. And then in the in the mid60s
12:14there was an extraordinary development
12:16in theoretical physics. uh Stephen
12:19Hawking probably know of him wonderful
12:22um uh inspiring figure you know he
12:25physicists confined to a wheelchair with
12:27the ALS disease when he's working as a
12:29PhD student he's working on black hole
12:31physics and he's aware of the way that
12:33you know matter causes this the the
12:35space to curve and he begins to think
12:37and that's what a you know he's thinking
12:39okay that's what's going on with a black
12:40hole there's so much matter it's curved
12:42so tightly you can't get anything out
12:43but he starts to apply this idea to the
12:45universe and he's realizing that as the
12:47universe is going forward forward in
12:48time, the matter is getting more and
12:49more dispersed. But as you wind that
12:52clock backwards again in your mind's
12:54eye, you eventually get to the point
12:55where the matter is so tightly curved or
12:58the matter is so densely compact that
13:00space is getting tighter and tighter
13:02more tightly curved in its curvature and
13:04eventually the mathematics something
13:06called the field equations of general
13:08relativity which he and Roger Penrose
13:10solved imply that there is an infinite
13:13curvature at some point in the finite
13:15past. Now an infinite curvature
13:17corresponds to zero spatial volume. And
13:21then you have to ask what we discussed
13:22last night. How much stuff can you put
13:24in no space? And the answer is well no
13:28things go in no space. I mean it's and
13:31so this singularity theorem has this
13:34profoundly anti-materialistic
13:35implication. And it happens that Hawking
13:39worked for much of the rest of his life
13:42to try to uh as WC Fields put it, he was
13:45looking for a loophole. You know, he was
13:47looking for a way around this
13:48conclusion. Uh Hawking was a really
13:51interesting figure. He was a kind of um
13:53theologically sensitive, even you could
13:55say god-obsessed atheist. And u so he
13:58was aware of what he he'd shown in 1968
14:00with Penrose, but then he was developing
14:02other other ideas. one called quantum
14:05cosmology which we can discuss in the
14:07Q&A in which I discuss at length in my
14:09new book trying to find a way around
14:11this this conclusion but the
14:13straightforward application of general
14:15relativity to the origin of the universe
14:18implies a creation event and um we'll
14:22have a little quiz on these equations
14:24afterwards but um anyway this is the
14:27idea curvature goes to an infinite zero
14:30spatial volume the astronomer Robert
14:32Jastro said this is an exceedingly
14:35strange development unexpected by all
14:37but the theologians. He's writing in the
14:3980s and not notice our starting point.
14:41Remember I start my starting point with
14:43Dawkins. He said that the universe is
14:45exactly as we should expect if there's
14:47nothing but blind pitiles indifference.
14:49But the these uh astronomers say no this
14:52is totally unexpected from a
14:53materialistic standpoint but it was
14:55expected by the theologians. And Jasper
14:58went on to say, "For the scientist who's
14:59lived in by his faith in the power of
15:01reason, the story ends like a bad dream.
15:04He's scaled the mountains of ignorance.
15:05He's about to conquer the highest peak.
15:07And as he pulls himself up over the
15:09final rock, he's greeted by a band of
15:11theologians who have been sitting there
15:13for centuries
15:16entirely expecting that the universe
15:19would have a beginning." Because after
15:20all in in the the biblical witness you
15:24had the first very first words are in
15:26the beginning. Arno Pensas one of the
15:28leading physicists who played a big role
15:31in this story in refuting what's called
15:33the steady state theory with his work on
15:35the what's called the cosmic background
15:37radiation put it this way. He said the
15:39best data we have concerning the big
15:41bang are exactly what I would have
15:43predicted had I nothing to go on but the
15:44five books of Moses, the Psalms and the
15:46Bible as a whole. And indeed it is
15:49rather striking. The first words of the
15:51Bible are in the beginning. In the
15:53epistles in the New Testament there are
15:55two different mentions of the plan of
15:57God existing before the beginning of
15:59time which is really striking in light
16:01of relativity theory because uh the
16:03singularity theorem implies that time
16:05itself is a created entity which has a
16:07beginning. And um there's even mentions
16:1011 or 12 separate mentions in the
16:12Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, of God
16:16stretching out the heavens, either
16:17having stretched or stretching out the
16:19heavens. So uh the this new cosmology is
16:22in a way very much expected on this from
16:25the standpoint of theism. It also helps
16:28revive an ancient argument for the
16:30existence of God that went like this.
16:32Everything that begins to exist must
16:33have a cause. The universe began to
16:36exist and the universe therefore must
16:38have a cause separate from itself. All
16:41causes are separate from their effects.
16:42We call that transcendent or separate
16:44cause God.

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