Cosmology and Creation | Episode 1805 | Closer To Truth

To most physicists, mindless laws generated the universe. A few believe that a supreme being is the creator. But don’t the discoveries of cosmology eliminate the need for supernatural causes? Featuring interviews with Stephen Barr, David Bentley Hart, Nancey Murphy, Tom McLeish, and Andrew Pinsent.

Season 18, Episode 5 - #CloserToTruth

Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes viewers on an intriguing global journey into cutting-edge labs, magnificent libraries, hidden gardens, and revered sanctuaries in order to discover state-of-the-art ideas and make them real and relevant.

Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

#Cosmology #Creation

[edwardussery]

Dr. Kuhn, I am mesmerized every time I watch an episode of this series. I always take something of great value away when I observe and listen to your most profound inqiries. I am certain that it is one of the greatest things (if not the greatest thing) to happen to YouTube, as well as to the internet as an ever-expanding whole. It will persist in consciousness long after we have transitioned from time-bound experience. Scintillating and transcendental. I'm reading "The Mystery of Existence: Why is There Anything At All?" and I can't read more than a few pages at a time because the material is so dense and thought-provoking. I have to stop and contemplate every few lines. It's fantastic to share consciousness with a mind like yours. I hope I have the opportunity to meet you at some point in the near future. Bravo!!!!

[sheenaalexis]

That first interview was fantastic. It really put my inner thoughts out in front of me. The fact it exists at all! The example he gave was perfect.

[robertthiesen]

This series is just outstanding. Such a breath of fresh air for someone who has found value in philosophical theistic understandings of ultimate questions, and has grown tired of the way this perspective is bypassed in popular opinions in the culture. The presenter is miles ahead of these popular opinions in his openness to these views.


That said, his inference after contemplating the argument from contingency suffers from some of the same mistakes. The conclusion of the line of thought is not a negative statement about science not disproving God, but that God is the necessary ground of the universe. Moreover, the fact that this line of thought is not scientific doesn't mean nothing follows from it! This inference would seem to assume a scientistic epistemology, which is a non-starter from my perspective.

[willbrink]

If you don't follow the Closer To The Truth YT channel, you're doing it wrong. Very useful discussion here no matter where one falls on the topic.

[ameremortal]

I’m learning so much. I really need these theistic points of view to expand my understanding.

[TheGreatAlan]

I love how is possible to watch and listen to ideas from the smartest among us, . While reading comments from the dumbest of us.

[coolmuso]

David Bentley Hart nails it. Creation is not just a temporal event that happened in the past, but is more fundamentally ontological. When God creates, he brings the entirety of the substance of being into existence. It makes no difference to whether the universe had a temporal beginning, to whether it's eternal, or cyclical, etc.

[bajajones]

doc, I watch every day. just like being back in college. GRAZIE. If I ever see you Kuhn, BIG HUG!

[garybala]

Thank you for another great installment in the CTT series.

I thought that this one really did “move the ball forward” in getting at the truth, particularly with the insights of Barr and Hart.

Their position seemed to be a modern version of the old teleological “watchmaker argument.”

The sheer existence (or apparent existence) of all existence (the local universe and greater multiverse landscape beyond) irrefutably argues for: an existence “source”, “predicate” or “creator.”

The next question is why existence?

It could be for 1. A Reason 2. No reason (randomness) or 3. We can’t ask the question for some unknown (or later knowable) reason.

I pick 1. There is a reason. And I pick philosopher John Leslie’s reason.

The need for Good justifies the creation of existence. And the building up of more Good justifies its on-going existence.

[maxnullifidian]

They should put verbal gymnastics in the Olympic games - these believers would win all the medals!

[terrywbreedlove]

The Quantum world absolutely preaches the existence of God. Or at the very least the possibility he exist.

[moonzestate]

David Bentley Hart is closer to truth.

[stoictraveler]

The priest at the end is all over it.
Fruitful simplicity indeed.

[zenbum]

Perhaps Mr. Kuhn mischaracterizes what "most cosmologists" believe:

"Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?" -- Stephen Hawking

Maybe instead of "God" we should use the term "Fire". Or would that make us all Zoroastrians? :)

[jimmcgreehan]

What's interesting is if the concept of infinity exists only through the metaphysical language of mathematics, but purely physical infinity cannot somehow actually exist, then it seems to follow that metaphysics itself and its causal powers take primacy in creating existential events (creation). This is quite an irony for the physical sciences. Or at least presents another paradox to resolve and/or reconcile.

[iamthenrone]

"You cannot disprove the geocentric model, you can only exclude it on philosophical grounds" - George F.R. Ellis

[tedgrant]

Every symphony had a composer. Every painting had a painter. Every house had a builder.
But who makes the pebbles on the beach ? He must be very busy !

[sudipadhikari]

if the universe is all accidental how are our creation intentional

[classicCyber]

God is infinitely more powerful than us. If we human one day create an AI that has all the knowledge of the universe and is 1000 times more intelligent and powerful than us. While this AI can develop a superior mind. We'll still be his creators.
God is the theologian's AI

[AD-endq]

science seeks explanatory power... that is a fair and honorable goal but to say explanatory power therefore no God is equally as false as to say no explanatory power therefore God...