This moved me from agnosticism to deism. — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Why is there something instead of
2. 0:01nothing
3. 0:02unless there is a supernatural force
4. 0:06outside of nature that made this all
5. 0:08possible? Even Stephen Hawking had to
6. 0:10admit, we got a problem without being
7. 0:13able to explain that. And then it gets
8. 0:15even more interesting cuz heck, I was a
9. 0:17chemist who studied quantum mechanics
10. 0:19and had all these equations that
11. 0:21describe the behavior of matter and
12. 0:23energy. And I knew when I was doing
13. 0:25something that when I got to an equation
14. 0:27that was particularly simple and
15. 0:28beautiful,
16. 0:29that was going to be the right answer.
17. 0:31Why should that be?
18. 0:32Why should our universe follow these
19. 0:35laws that are not just like okay,
20. 0:37they're spectacularly
21. 0:40ele- There's a mind behind all of this.
22. 0:42Why should E = mc squared and not
23. 0:45something really messy and complicated
24. 0:47or maybe it'll change tomorrow? No, it's
25. 0:48the way it is. And even more amazing,
26. 0:51and I didn't know this until I read
27. 0:54somebody's article about it. All those
28. 0:57all those equations that describe how
29. 0:59matter and energy behave, they have
30. 1:01constants in them.
31. 1:03Take gravity, a force between two
32. 1:05objects
33. 1:06is determined by the mass of one times
34. 1:08the mass of the other divided by the
35. 1:10square of the distance between them
36. 1:12times a constant called G. You can't
37. 1:14derive the value of G from theory, you
38. 1:17have to measure it.
39. 1:18And so in our universe, G has this
40. 1:21particular value.
41. 1:23What if it didn't? What if it was off by
42. 1:24a little bit?
43. 1:26Maybe some interesting kinds of
44. 1:27properties would occur. If it was off by
45. 1:29one part in a billion smaller, we would
46. 1:32have never had the coalescence of stars
47. 1:34and galaxies and planets and us.
48. 1:36It [clears throat] just would have been
49. 1:37particles flying apart on into the
50. 1:40definite future. If it was just one
51. 1:42part in a billion stronger, things would
52. 1:44have come together, but a little too
53. 1:46soon, and instead of the universe
54. 1:47continuing to expand, gravity would pull
55. 1:49it back together, and by now there would
56. 1:51have been a big crunch, and there's no
57. 1:52way we could be here for that either.
58. 1:54So, wait a minute, somebody's played
59. 1:57with the dials here. That's not just
60. 1:59gravity. That's about half dozen of
61. 2:01these constants that you can't derive by
62. 2:03theory. And they all have exactly the
63. 2:05value they have to have for anything
64. 2:07interesting to happen in this universe
65. 2:09other than some random particles. So,
66. 2:11either you have to say one of two
67. 2:12possibilities that this was intentional.
68. 2:15There's an intelligence behind all of
69. 2:17this, which sounds like God, that wanted
70. 2:19the universe to be interesting enough to
71. 2:21give rise to complexity and beauty and
72. 2:24us. Or there's an infinite number of
73. 2:26other parallel universes that have
74. 2:28different values of those constants.
75. 2:31And we just got in the lucky one, or we
76. 2:33wouldn't be here if we hadn't been in
77. 2:34the lucky one. Which of those, I thought
78. 2:36to myself, requires more faith?