Here is the video of the panel discussion from Discovery Channel’s Curiosity Conversation last Sunday. Not sure how official it is, so it might not last. Jerry Coyne was motivated to dig them up, since he doesn’t have cable TV. I’m putting the panel first — this is all about me, baby — and the Hawking program under the fold.
The participants were me, David Gregory, Paul Davies, and John Haught. But there were also short video interventions from Jennifer Wiseman, William Stoeger, and Michio Kaku. Actually seeing the program made me even more frustrated about the lack of time and inability to discuss any issue in depth. Also, while the makeup of the original panel seemed fair (committed atheist, wishy-washy physicist, Catholic theologian), the pre-recorded videos all took the line that science shouldn’t be talking about God. That gave the final program more of a “gang up on the atheist” feel than I would have really liked. I don’t think the videos added much, other than to eat into our valuable time. An hour-long program would have been better, and it probably would have been a much sharper conversation if there had just been two panelists rather than three. But again, credit to Discovery for having the event at all.
Specific thoughts on the participants:
- David Gregory: I thought he did fine. Not sure why some people were complaining about the questions; his job was just to get the conversation going and keep it moving, which he did with admirable professionalism.
- John Haught: He actually had a very difficult job, since his take on the nature of God isn’t easy to boil down to a sound bite. Still, I personally don’t think there’s any there, there. If you can’t imagine a universe in which God doesn’t exist, you need to work on your imaginative skills.
- Paul Davies: A very clear speaker and strong communicator, but again not a sound-bite kind of guy. He did win the Templeton prize, but isn’t very explicitly religious. (At least, not that one can discern, which is part of the problem.) But he does strongly believe that it’s not okay to simply say “the universe is like that” — he thinks there is necessarily a deeper explanation for the laws of physics.
- Jennifer Wiseman and William Stoeger: Neither really even tried to argue in favor of God’s existence. They just took the angle that religion talks about value while science talks about facts. I think it’s important to get the facts right before you start talking about values, and said as much, but we didn’t have time to dig into that issue.
- Michio Kaku: I tease Michio. The guy is a brilliant science communicator, but I don’t think he added anything of value here.
- Me: This isn’t an easy format, and I would probably grade myself a generous B. I don’t feel like taking back anything I said, but I definitely could have been more forceful about it. Still looking to improve at things like this — any suggestions?
Okay here are the videos, judge for yourselves. First the panel, in two parts:
Here’s the episode of Curiosity, hosted by Hawking, in four parts.
Thanks for posting this, Sean. Very interesting indeed.
This debate could have occurred 3000 years ago, if only humankind had understood enough science back then. I mean, the debate went on as if Jesus had never existed.
To try to answer your question, Sean, about how would it be the universe without God, well Jesus would have never been existed. I don’t think it’s a small difference, at least on our planet.
Even if it was a biased debate (David Gregory was obviously leading the public towards the atheistic view), I appreciated two important points which came out of it. First, I appreciated your point about reality. We all have to start from reality, but sometimes scientists don’t realize that they are also biased by the mainstream atheistic view. For example, the gospel is a tale of FACTS, not of opinions, not of abstract speculative philosophy, not so much of moral teachings, but of facts. Now, a honest discussion about the God of Christians should start with an evaluation of the credibility of historical documents talking about facts: the gospels. If you state a priori some of those facts are impossible, you don’t have an open scientific attitude. Second, I appreciated the sort of conclusion implied in the debate, that God should be relegated into the moral sphere and kick out of reality. That’s exactly the dogma of the dominant ideology of our times.
Sean @32:
In your latest post you rightly came after first-philosophy when it comes to understanding the world, to natural philosophy. I urge you to adopt the same skeptical approach when it comes to moral philosophy. Moral philosophy cannot produce values, any more than natural philosophy can deduce the structure of reality. Values exist in us, they’re scientific facts, not conclusions of first-philosophy.
“Philosophers need to talk to scientists to make progress, but ultimately values are about philosophy, not science.”
But what is the role of philosophy in morality? I submit that it lies at the foundations, in clarifying concepts and creating conceptual frameworks. Philosophy can lay out the concept of “value”, but finding out which values are present in humans is a scientific question.
This does not mean that scientific research “is going to produce a quantitative answer to the question of exactly how much harm would need to be averted to justify sacrificing someone’s life”. But the important point is – neither is philosophy! Values aren’t something philosophy can derive. Human values are an empirical fact of human psychology. And hence the answers – plural, for there is no “objective” answer, only a host of “subjective” ones – are ultimately about science, not philosophy.
> Michio Kaku:
> The guy is a brilliant science communicator,
> but I don’t think he added anything of value here.
I don’t know Sean,
I thought Dr. Kaku’s analogy of using bubble bath to represent The Miltiverse was worth noting.
Now I know that in your book “From Eternity to Here” Paris Hilton was mentioned
While I can’t seem to visualize a connection between Stephen Hawking and bubble bath.
There may be something worthy regarding further research provided grant money could be acquired for the work necessary in proving the other side of the equation.
Another thing, it looks like Dr. Kaku who is from the East coast is trying to move in on your turf!
He hosts a Saturday radio show at 10:00 am on KPFK called Exploration.
Just lett’en you know….. Bro!
Until someone can substantiate the source of intelligence of the Mind of Man, Chance, Evolution, Spontaneous Generation and the perfect ecological, geological and atmospheric harmony to support life on earth, common sense dictates that only a Creator could have designed all life forms and all Physical Laws.
Remember, for the simplest life form the odds of its 239 protein molecules each consisting of a minimum of 439 amino acids formed in left-handed chains (in order to replicate itself) is one chance in ten followed by 29, 345 zeros. Indeed, a little impossible wouldn’t you say? Indeed, even Charles Darwin remained a Christian after writing Origin of the Species.
“Remember, for the simplest life form the odds of its 239 protein molecules each consisting of a minimum of 439 amino acids formed in left-handed chains (in order to replicate itself) is one chance in ten followed by 29, 345 zeros. “
That might be true if you are computing the odds that it came together by chance, but not if it evolved. How probable is a good novel? Not much if it is monkeys on typewriters, but higher if if writer is writing it.
In other words, the God of the Gaps is the default assumption because that great, reliable arbiter of all things outside the realm of human experience, “common sense”, dictates that it must be so.
Of course, the assumption that in the entire space of possible sequences, only a unique one would correspond to life is totally justified. Clearly then, life must have been created by conscious intent. This is not question-begging at all.
Seriously, this argument boils down to little more than “It’s improbable that things would end up exactly as they have,” which is trivially obvious for anything that’s fairly complex and does not imply what you seem to think it does.
Secular men, especially those of academia, are their own worst enemy. Indeed, they insist that only human beings can conceive, create and manufacture material things. However, they refuse to accept that a Creator had to have conceived and created themselves, all other life-forms, and their ability to procreate. Especially since the latter are incomprehensibly more complex and in fact “miracles”.
How sad that no one on the show discussed the Laws of Probability that states that even for the simplest life form the odds of 239 protein molecules, with each having 410 amino acids, could create itself by chance is one chance in ten followed by 29,345 zeros. And this doesn’t even include its DNA instruction set for procreation and male/female X/Y chromosome determinations. Indeed, all Probability Mathematicians know that any chance of one in ten followed by only 50 zeros is absolutely impossible no matter how much time and space is allotted.
So life began by chance you say??
Sean,
The subject matter of religion is either unidentifiable and thus vacuous or identifiable and unsupportable. The debate should argue towards identifiability because well-defined concepts live in a space of consequences that can be dealt with. The religious apologist is thus inevitably forced to clothe a concept in some sort of unidentifiable dress. That’s where the tug-of-war takes place. The religious apologist wants the freedom to access a space that science hasn’t yet filled in order to insert his/her non-scientific, poorly defined, or poorly constrained, entity, to construct its invisible home there until science forces it to relocate by restricting the space of conceptual unidentifiability.
Regarding your video, I was surprised by the clarity and weight of your arguments and the poise of your demeanor.
Thanks again for reviewing my paper.
David