If there is no God Well Galileo said something very important he said the purpose of science is to determine how the heavens go the purpose of religion is that a term and how to go to heaven so in other words the purpose of science is to figure out natural laws and the purpose of religion is ethics how to go to heaven how to be a good person how to be an upstanding member of society the problem occurs you said when people in Natural Law begin to pontificate about ethics or when people in religion begin to pontificate about natural law that's when we get into trouble the church for example flirted with the idea of a flat earth or the fact that the earth was the center of the universe if that were Juhi would never have entered the space age we would never have been able to map the surface of the earth exploration the economy trade routes the cyber revolution and today the Internet. But of all been impossible if we believe that the earth was flat or the earth was the center of the universe so that was going to Laos take that there was no fundamental conflict between religion and science science was about natural law and religion was about ethics Well now comes Isaac Newton and Isaac Newton takes it a 1000000 steps farther by actually writing down using mathematics the laws of natural law and so all of a sudden we were thrust into the age of calculus thrust into the age of the 3 Laws of Isaac Newton but of course he was criticized because Newton had a new picture the new picture he is that the universe is a clock I get a clock ticking away God said it into motion and it's been obeying the 3 Laws of Motion ever since well then came the killer question if the universe is a Clark then why do we need God is God simply a luxury that we don't need all we have is Newton's Laws of Motion. Newton was troubled by this because of course Newton was very religious back in those days you had to be religious or you could never get a position at a place like Cambridge University So Newton fudged of it and he said that well you see 1st of all God created the clock and every once in a while he has to tweak the Clark he has to intervene in his own laws of motion you see what happened was a clergyman wrote him a letter a very important letter that he quoted even today and that letter says something very interesting that later said that the universal law of gravity is attraction the earth is attracted to the Sun The Sun is attracted to the Galaxy everything is attracted by gravity but then this minister said if everything is attracted to everything else then why doesn't the universe collapse well. That stumped Newton he was shaken he was speechless Yes it's true gravity is attractive not repulsive it's attractive so sooner or later all the stars in the Heavens would come together and collapse into a gigantic fireball and we wouldn't be here to talk about it. Isaac Newton was floored by this criticism he thought a lot about this and finally he wrote a letter a very famous letter to address this question. He said that the universe must be infinite and uniform because if it's infinite and uniform then all forces cancel out there's no preferred direction because the universe is uniform therefore the universe is static the universe is static because all the forces left right down cancel each other exactly but Isaac Newton said there's a flaw even in his own argument and that is if you have for example a stack of cards and the slightest disturbance on the stack of cars will send the whole thing tumbling down so in other words the universe has to be precisely fine tune to be exactly uniform but that's impossible just look outside and you see that the stars are more or less randomly distributed on average evenly but they are randomly distributed so I So Newton thought all I'm in trouble 1st the universe has to be infinite or also with collapse because gravity is attractive not repulsive but 2nd of all it has to be fine tuned exactly so that all forces left right up down cancel exactly because the slightest probation the slightest effect will eventually over billions of years cause all the stars to tumble once again. Newton was stumped the greatest scientific genius of all time didn't know what to say at that point he simply threw his hands up in the air and said well sometimes God has to intervene he has to tweak the laws of motion so that the universe doesn't collapse into a gigantic fireball so New didn't believe that yes god exists yes God created the clock Yes the clock beats more or less without divine intervention but of once in a while God has to intervene in the affairs of the universe or the universe will collapse one man comes Einstein who comes up yet with a new point of view concerning this paradox Einstein said yes gravity is attractive therefore you might think that the universe should collapse but he said perhaps there is an antigravitational force called the cosmological constant and there's a balance between gravity and anti gravity well that's one way to do it but the other way to do it is more accepted today and that's called the Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang theory answers the question why isn't the universe collapsed because gravity is attractive even Einstein's equations admit 2 types of solutions expanding universe is and collapsing universes so if the universe expands as the in the Big Bang Theory pioneer in the 1920 s. If universe expands that solves the paradox Why doesn't the universe collapse because the universe is constantly expanding so that was Einstein's take on that question but then there is yet the bigger question and that is then what about God Well and Stein answered it this way Einstein said that well there really are 2 kinds of god and you have to distinguish between these 2 types of God 1st of all there is the personal God The God that you pray to the God that answers your prayers at Christmas and you get that shiny red bicycle the God that smites the Philistines and destroys your enemies the God The perform his miracles and walks on water Well Einstein couldn't get himself to believe in a personal God Einstein believed in a 2nd type of God and that it is the God of Spinoza In other words the God of beauty harmony order simplicity elegance the universe is so gorgeous it didn't have to be that way the universe could have been random it could have been ugly. And you know here we have natural laws that you can write on a sheet of paper that's right you can write out Einstein's theory of gravity in one line and the quantum theory well but takes about 10 lines but together that one sheet of paper summarizes everything that is known about the universe today so Weinstein said that he's like a child entering a library this huge gigantic library full of different kinds of volumes the mysteries of natural law explained and all he could do all humanity could do is take the 1st volume open it up read chapter one page one and yet before him was all these volumes Well the God later is up for sale and some people are saying well no that's not what Einstein believed that all Einstein said the concept of God is flawed so what how do you reconcile the 2 I personally think that the people who interpret the god letter interpreted it incorrectly when Einstein right so the concept of God as a child is concept he meant the personal God The God that answers your prayers why should the God of the universe care what you get for Christmas yes more important things to do so Einstein believed in the God of Spinoza So in other words he was an agnostic he said so over and over so it was not as if he thought the concept of God was childish is that the concept of the personal God was childish but then the existence of God Himself Einstein left it open and Einstein more or less bordered on the idea that the laws of physics the laws of physics could be like a God Well then the next question is what about Stephen Hawking Stephen Hawking post you mostly has come out with a new book a new book that summarizes many of his previous writings. And in this book he says but humbug forget all these theological nonsense look at the science the science says there is no God and He gives a scientific proof of the nonexistence of God which I found very interesting Hawking says the following the universe started with the big bang and the Big Bang in turn started from this tiny tiny little infinitely small thing that suddenly exploded giving us the universe today how long did it take for the universe to be created all fractions of a trillionth of a trillionth of a 2nd the most instantly the universe expanded into its present day farm that is the big bang theory coming from Einstein's own general theory of relativity so says Stephen Hawking quote There was no time there was no time to create the universe and the laws and everything we see around us the universe wrong instantly from this tiny singularity and therefore there was no time for any one person a God the God himself there was no time to create the universe and so he's basically saying he has a proof of the nonexistence of God but personally I think there's a flaw in that argument. A flaw that even Einstein himself realize you see this proof of the nonexistence of God that there was no time to create the universe is based on Einstein's theory of relativity which is flawed Einstein himself realize that the general theory of relativity is useless at the instant of the big bang and the center of a black hole at both places gravity becomes infinite and we want to banish infinities from the laws of science infinity means nothing to by physicists and therefore Einstein himself realized that there was a defect in his own equations because they failed at the instant of the big bang and the center of a black hole so why is time believing in a higher theory a unified field theory a unified field theory where the quantum theory would emerge as a consequence of this higher theory now today we do have a candidate it's not proven but we have a candidate for the theory of everything and that's called string theory string theory is what I do for a living that's my day job so I have a stake in this debate so what does string theory say about this well string theories claim to fame is that it has no infinities at all. It is a totally finite theory therefore you can answer the question what happened before the Big Bang was there no time to create the universe as Stephen Hawking has said well string theory gives you a different take on the whole question 1st of all Einstein's theory of gravity says that the universe is a bubble of some sort we live on the skin of the bubble and the bubbles expanding that's called the Big Bang Theory as seen on c.b.s. Television Well if the Big Bang theory is based on a bubble that's expanding string theory is based on other bubbles a Multi-verse of bubbles a bubble bath a bubble bath of universes universes constantly being created and destroyed why because the Big Bang was a quantum event and if it happened once there's a certain probability it will happen again and again and again that's the nature of the quantum theory meaning that big bangs are happening all the time even as we speak big bangs are taking place and so sometimes these bubbles can bump into each other creating a bigger bubble or these bubbles can peel off a baby bubble and that could be the big bang so in other words there was something before creation there was something beyond our universe and so that's the defect in Hawking's disprove the existence of God It's based on Einstein's own defective theory that Einstein himself realized was defective That's why I and science spent the last 30 years of his life from 125-2155 puzzling over this grand unified field theory so then the question is well what's my point of view yes I have a point of view and for what it's worth let me tell you what my point of view is. 1st of all when I was a child I realized that my parents were Buddhist in Buddhism there is no beginning there is no end there's only nerve in a higher states of consciousness so there was no creation as we know it in Buddhist thinking however because my parents were locked up during World War 2 in a relocation camp they wanted the kids to understand American culture so they sent me to Sunday school where I joined the Presbyterian Church and I learned all about Genesis and all about the parables and the stories in the Bible and well when you read about Genesis you realize that hey maybe there was a big bang so the big bang theory according to the Catholic Church its latest thinking is the big bang is compatible compatible with Genesis that there was an event a beginning of time which seems to agree with the Big Bang theory in fact one of the creators of the Big Bang Theory was in fact a Catholic minister and so here we have a theory of the big bang that seems to be scientifically correct but you see if string theory is correct it means that big bangs are happening all the time and these bubbles are floating in a higher our Rina this higher our Rina is hyperspace a higher dimension which you can think of as nervous no so the words here is a new picture the multi-verse the multiverse gives us a new picture of Buddhism and Christianity that yes our universe had a beginning our universe had a beginning but there are other universes out there each one of these universes has its own laws of physics. And it expands all these universes are expanding into nerve Ana and what is nerve Hannah their vanity is a dimension beyond our bubble if our bubble is 3 dimensional it means that your venomous be higher than 3 dimensional and string theory even gives you a prediction the universe must be a leaven dimensional and so think of this arena this large arena of 11 dimensional nirvana where bubbles form and these bubbles pop into existence now then the question is can you prove or disprove the existence of God Well I don't think you can either prove or disprove the existence of God So I think Hawkings disprove the existence of God is a bit premature in fact it is impossible to disprove a negative for example let's say that unicorns don't exist Well that's a reasonable assumption but can you prove it can you prove philosophically and theologically that unicorns cannot exist maybe maybe someplace on a deserted island some place far far from civilization there is a unicorn we find strange things happening all the time so you see the point is you cannot disprove a negative Personally I think that 100 years from now a 1000 years from now we'll still be debating the question about whether you can mathematically prove or disprove the existence of God Now we're turns out that if you Google my name some people claim that I have claimed that you can prove the existence of God Well that's fake news sorry about that somebody wants to piggyback on my name I make no such statement. In fact I say the opposite that you cannot prove or disprove the existence of God because science is based on things that are testable reproducible falsifiable that's called science but the existence of God I think cannot be proven it cannot be reproduced it cannot be falsifiable and therefore it is beyond the province of ordinary science so I would call that not the system maybe maybe not that God exists you know when I was in college at one point I thought that well if I don't become a physicist maybe I can become a philosopher so I read the works of St Thomas Aquinas the great theologian and he had 5 proofs of the existence of God 3 of which have been studied very carefully and are not redundant with the others the cosmological the teleological and the ontological proof of the existence of God Well we can now look at these 3 proofs from a scientific point of view the teleological proves the existence of God is God By Design For example if you're walking on the sands of Mars everything is worn down the sands of Mars have pretty much sand blasted everything inside and all of a sudden you see a camera a beautiful camera on the surface of Mars with beautiful lenses and reflexes and you say to yourself well oh the Martians the Martians must have built this camera and then you are further on the sands of Mars and then you see a rabbit. A rabbit with an eyeball infinitely more delicate than the mechanisms and the lenses of the camera a rabbit whose reflexes require biology far beyond anything that can be seen inside a camera and so if you assume that a camera has a maker then the rabbit must also have a maker even greater than the Martians in other words God So this is proof of God by design However today we have the laws of evolution where things evolve all by themselves without any divine intervention so out of chaos can come order because of survival of the fittest now the cosmological proof simply says 1st mover and that has some merit because the 1st mover would be the big bang now the ontological proof is more delicate It says that God is perfect and if God didn't exist he wouldn't be perfect so he must exist so existence and perfection are identical a perfect being must exist because if he didn't exist it wouldn't be perfect well it was a Mind you a con to finally picked apart that argument and that is perfection and existence really are 2 separate concepts so just because you're perfect does not mean that you exist. Now the argument about 1st mover simply says that for something to move something has to kick it and for that object to move something has to kick it and so you have this infinite sequence of kickers each one causing the next object to be moved but then the question is Where is the 1st kick or the 1st mover that set everything into motion in other words they cannot be an infinite sequence of motions each one kicking in the next it has to be a source and origin for all this and that is creation and therefore it is compatible with the Big Bang theory because in some sense the energy of the Big Bang is the energy that set everything into motion the stars the galaxies everything we see around us was set into motion because of the 1st mover and that was the big bang itself and so even the Catholic Church has stated that the Big Bang theory is compatible with Genesis Chapter one Verse one of the Bible. Well that concludes the 1st part of exploration and continuing our discussion of religion and spirituality we're going to bring on John bridged are a physicist who has extensive knowledge about Einstein's life as well as their spiritual and religious life as well and so once again in the 2nd have exploration we're going to continue our discussion of God and religion and if you want to copy a today's program called the Pacifica program service at 187-350-2300 is again for a comp you today's program called the Pacifica program service at 187350230 stay tune. 'd 2 2 welcome once again this is Dr Michio Kaku professor of theoretical physics at the City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and this is the 2nd half backs will aeration in the 1st half of exploration we discuss the question of god given the fact that God is in the news on one hand Stephen Hawking with his latest book comes out and says bah humbug there is no God because there wasn't enough time for God to create the universe at the instant of the big bang and then we have the Einstein Papers the god paper is up for auction millions of dollars are going to be spent as people chase in the original handwriting Einstein's fought on the question of God But did the media overstate the case well we're going to talk today with John Brister a biographer of Einstein He's a physicist at Princeton University and he's had numerous contacts with Einstein himself as well as Werner von Braun the father of the missile program so once again our special guests in the 2nd part of exploration is John Brister who will explore the spiritual and religious dimensions Einstein's thoughts the 1st