How Science Became Religion Friendly with Prof Keith Ward (2022-05-02) ​

0:00:02 okay so hello everyone and welcome to
0:00:06 blogging theology uh today i'm delighted
0:00:09 to talk again to professor keith ward
0:00:12 you're most welcome sir
0:00:14 hello yeah thank you um we we spoke to
0:00:18 uh keith ward uh i think it was april
0:00:19 last year so it's been just over a year
0:00:22 since um he was a guest on blogging
0:00:24 theology and for those who don't know
0:00:25 keith is actually an english anglican
0:00:28 priest philosopher and
0:00:30 theologian
0:00:31 he is a fellow of the british academy
0:00:34 and a priest of the church of england
0:00:37 comparative theology and the
0:00:38 relationship between science and
0:00:41 religion are two of his main topics of
0:00:44 interest
0:00:45 and he was regis professor of divinity
0:00:47 at the university of oxford from 1991 to
0:00:51 2004. now some years ago when i worked
0:00:55 in holborn which is part of central
0:00:57 london i was in the audience when keith
0:01:00 gave a lunchtime lecture at gresham
0:01:03 college which by the way has been giving
0:01:05 lectures to the public since 1592. i kid
0:01:08 you not and the lecture was entitled
0:01:11 religion and the quantum world religion
0:01:13 in the quantum world and i remember
0:01:15 being utterly enthralled and fascinated
0:01:18 by the presentation which amongst other
0:01:21 things
0:01:22 demonstrated why materialism this uh
0:01:25 materialist doctrine is no longer
0:01:28 terrible
0:01:29 and why idealism philosophical idealism
0:01:32 is a much more plausible worldview now
0:01:34 all this in the light of quantum
0:01:37 mechanics in other words in light of the
0:01:39 new physics modern physics
0:01:41 so today keith has very kindly agreed to
0:01:44 discuss this subject again on blogging
0:01:46 theology so would you like to introduce
0:01:49 us to this topic keith
0:01:51 right well thank you paul um yes i can't
0:01:54 remember my
0:01:56 gresham college lecture but i i've
0:01:58 gotten some more things i can say
0:02:01 and i do think you're right you stated
0:02:04 it very carefully and accurately i
0:02:06 thought that materialism is no longer a
0:02:09 scientific option
0:02:11 but
0:02:12 idealism is more plausible it's not
0:02:16 overwhelmingly obvious
0:02:18 even the quantum physicists but lots of
0:02:21 them do accept it so what i do is i take
0:02:24 three of the major themes of quantum
0:02:27 theory
0:02:28 and i won't be technical so there's a
0:02:31 bit of over simplification going on
0:02:33 there are no equations or diagrams
0:02:37 but these three things
0:02:39 are what have changed physics out of all
0:02:43 recognition
0:02:44 since 1905.
0:02:47 the quantum revolution started in 1905
0:02:50 with a paper by einstein
0:02:52 which proved that
0:02:55 light
0:02:56 doesn't only move in waves
0:02:58 light waves but
0:03:01 moves in particles
0:03:02 uh quanta
0:03:04 and that's why it's called the quantum
0:03:06 revelation and so the first thing i want
0:03:08 to talk about briefly
0:03:10 is the wave
0:03:11 particle duality which all particle
0:03:15 physicists accept
0:03:17 but nobody understands as richard
0:03:20 feynman a very leading practitioner said
0:03:23 no one understands quantum mechanics so
0:03:26 i'm not going to pretend that i do if
0:03:28 richard feynman did i certainly couldn't
0:03:31 possibly
0:03:32 but it works that is to say we wouldn't
0:03:34 have mobile phones or any the computers
0:03:37 anything like that without quantum
0:03:39 mechanics it definitely works it's what
0:03:41 it means or what it implies about
0:03:44 reality that is so difficult
0:03:47 and the way particle duality can be put
0:03:49 um picturesquely by looking at higgs
0:03:52 boson
0:03:53 that was in the news fairly recently uh
0:03:56 when i say recently i mean in the last
0:03:58 10 years i suppose and uh
0:04:01 higgs boson
0:04:03 is was said to be a particle a particle
0:04:06 discovered in cern in geneva
0:04:09 uh which uh that battle gives mass
0:04:13 to all objects in the universe
0:04:16 and you may say how can a particle give
0:04:18 master everything in the universe
0:04:20 and the answer to that is totally weird
0:04:23 but correct
0:04:24 and it is
0:04:25 that the higgs boson as a particle
0:04:29 is the signature particle of an infinite
0:04:32 field
0:04:33 which ascends like gravity throughout
0:04:36 the whole universe and it does in fact
0:04:38 give mass to particles which pass
0:04:42 through it
0:04:43 so it's not just a particle it's a field
0:04:45 and feel the theory as what is taken
0:04:48 over really from particle theory so
0:04:50 people used to think well atoms are like
0:04:52 little billiard balls and they bump into
0:04:54 one another and they make up more
0:04:56 complicated things well
0:04:58 nowadays
0:05:00 quantum mechanisms say well it's not
0:05:02 that items don't exist it's that they're
0:05:05 actually um things that we seem to
0:05:08 observe but show a deeper reality which
0:05:12 are fields of force you know everybody
0:05:14 knows the one equation i'm sorry i'm
0:05:16 going to mention one equation but
0:05:18 everybody knows this one e equals m c
0:05:20 squared
0:05:22 energy is mass times the speed of light
0:05:25 squared
0:05:27 energy and mass are equivalent in other
0:05:29 words so
0:05:30 mass that's which makes little particles
0:05:32 which is things which makes them heavy
0:05:35 uh is identical with energy which takes
0:05:38 many different forms so it doesn't have
0:05:40 to be material it doesn't have to be
0:05:43 stuff heavy stuff right
0:05:46 so when you talk about waves and
0:05:47 particles um you're saying something
0:05:50 rather complex so i'll give you the
0:05:51 formula straight away in english and
0:05:53 that is that um
0:05:57 there are probability waves these are
0:06:00 waves they're
0:06:01 not physical waves they're probability
0:06:03 waves
0:06:05 and if you take the square of the
0:06:08 amplitude of a probability wave
0:06:12 it will give you the probability of
0:06:14 finding a particle at some point well
0:06:17 that's a big complicated but what it
0:06:19 means is um there's a huge argument in
0:06:22 quantum mechanics about whether waves
0:06:24 actually exist or whether they are
0:06:26 mathematical constructs which because
0:06:29 you've got to square them together the
0:06:31 probability of founding particle the
0:06:34 important thing is that probability has
0:06:36 taken over from certainty right if you
0:06:39 look at newtonian physics it looks as
0:06:41 though everything's certain if you get
0:06:43 your initial parameters correct you can
0:06:46 predict what's going to happen next
0:06:48 incidentally uh um newton himself didn't
0:06:51 believe that but that's what other
0:06:52 people made of newton so they
0:06:54 yeah no
0:06:56 i didn't realize that that's an
0:06:57 interesting caveat there yeah right
0:06:59 but um he thought
0:07:01 gravity was actually
0:07:03 objects were connected at a distance by
0:07:06 god
0:07:07 but he didn't say that in his physics he
0:07:09 just said we won't talk about that
0:07:11 um so anyway he did i have the things
0:07:14 other people interpret it as a a
0:07:17 deterministic
0:07:20 relationship between things so you could
0:07:21 predict everything from one initial
0:07:23 state
0:07:25 now in field theory and quantum
0:07:27 mechanics that's not true you can only
0:07:29 predict probabilities
0:07:31 and that's very important because of
0:07:32 course the improbable things can happen
0:07:35 in fact some uh quantum mechanisms
0:07:38 including um
0:07:40 brian cox of television fame
0:07:43 he actually wrote a book called
0:07:45 everything that can happen
0:07:47 does happen so he really wants even the
0:07:50 very improbable things to happen
0:07:52 somewhere maybe not in this universe but
0:07:54 it's in some universe that's just to
0:07:56 show you how far quantum mechanics has
0:07:59 moved away from newton's idea of one
0:08:03 absolute space in which you locate
0:08:06 little massive
0:08:07 heavy
0:08:08 gravitational bodies and instead you've
0:08:11 got an einsteinian space which is bendy
0:08:14 which space time bends
0:08:17 and moves around and shifts so it's not
0:08:20 an absolute reality
0:08:22 uh and you have a probabilistic wave
0:08:25 fields which give you the probability of
0:08:28 finding particles but they're not
0:08:29 themselves particles
0:08:32 one other example i'll take simply is
0:08:34 that an electron when i was in school i
0:08:36 was told that electron was a little
0:08:38 thing like a planet
0:08:40 uh of negative electric charge moved
0:08:43 around the nucleus of an atom which had
0:08:45 a positive charge now that is is totally
0:08:48 wrong because electrons aren't
0:08:52 just particles that there are
0:08:54 probabilities of fatty particles under
0:08:57 certain experimental conditions but if
0:08:59 you say what is really there it's not a
0:09:02 particle well the particle comes about
0:09:04 when it's observed
0:09:06 um
0:09:07 quantum mechanisms talk about collapsing
0:09:10 the wave function so you have a wave
0:09:12 function which is a very mathematical uh
0:09:15 entity and you collapse that
0:09:17 and you see a particle
0:09:19 uh let me
0:09:21 just final remark about that
0:09:23 element that i'm talking about i'm going
0:09:25 to mention uh the the john wheeler uh
0:09:29 delayed choice
0:09:31 a double split experiment or drum um
0:09:35 so what this is is you have a you fire
0:09:39 photons
0:09:40 uh through
0:09:42 two slits
0:09:43 and uh if it's a photon that you've got
0:09:46 if it's a particle then it will go
0:09:49 through one slit or the other slit but
0:09:51 not both right and it will produce on a
0:09:55 screen on the other side of the slit it
0:09:58 will produce a wave interference pattern
0:10:00 which is like a
0:10:01 bad widths of uh bandwidth as if waves
0:10:04 went to the shore you get a pattern of
0:10:06 sounds right
0:10:08 so that shows that light is a wave but
0:10:12 if you shoot a photon through a double
0:10:14 slit and you
0:10:16 record you observe
0:10:19 it's doing so by having a device which
0:10:21 will record which slit it goes through
0:10:24 remember it's supposed to only go
0:10:25 through one or
0:10:27 it goes through both we don't know which
0:10:30 well if you observe it it turns into a
0:10:33 particle so
0:10:35 fire a photon through a double slit and
0:10:38 you get a wave pattern
0:10:40 right but observe it going through the
0:10:42 slit and you get a particle hitting the
0:10:44 screen and partly so you get little
0:10:46 spots on the screen it's not a wave
0:10:47 pattern at all
0:10:49 so observing it changes what it does it
0:10:52 changes what it is so
0:10:54 uh he would say wheeler would say but
0:10:56 that means the wave is changed into a
0:10:58 particle when you observe it
0:11:01 uh it's even worse than that because if
0:11:04 you let the photon go through the split
0:11:06 you don't know where it has gone through
0:11:08 both
0:11:09 to be a wave or one to be a particle you
0:11:12 don't know that
0:11:13 after it's gone through the split you
0:11:15 observe it you have a little device for
0:11:17 observing it you still find it turns
0:11:19 into a particle even after it's gone
0:11:22 through the slits
0:11:23 so
0:11:24 that is why it's incomprehensible nobody
0:11:27 knows why that happens at all but the
0:11:28 bottom line is this because the bottom
0:11:30 line is what you seem to have in reality
0:11:33 is wavelengths which are
0:11:35 not physical they're more mathematical
0:11:38 really they're
0:11:39 like constructs more than anything else
0:11:41 they stand for something but we not
0:11:43 certainly not particles
0:11:45 but when you observe them you will get
0:11:47 particles and the bottom line there is
0:11:50 observation creates particles i.e mass
0:11:55 my parents are massive things they've
0:11:57 got mass
0:11:58 so
0:11:59 uh
0:12:00 that that's
0:12:01 that makes the link between mind
0:12:03 consciousness observation and physical
0:12:06 reality and so that's why materialism
0:12:09 doesn't seem
0:12:10 uh to be
0:12:12 appropriate or adequate for quantum
0:12:13 mechanics
0:12:15 it's just not loves of matter
0:12:17 it's a much more complicated process so
0:12:20 people like roger penrose for example
0:12:22 who with stephen hawking did the
0:12:26 black holes mathematics um he's he says
0:12:30 uh actually the platonic he calls it
0:12:33 platonic reality of mathematics is more
0:12:37 real
0:12:38 than the physical things that we observe
0:12:41 so matter is not even totally real it's
0:12:43 just an appearance to us so the human
0:12:46 mind of something which
0:12:48 is mathematically expressible but
0:12:51 whatever it is it's not matter but it's
0:12:53 it's something we can't
0:12:55 picture at all i mean
0:12:58 he's invoking the name of plato this
0:13:00 ancient greek philosopher who was
0:13:01 basically out of a respectable society
0:13:04 with the rise of modern science at the
0:13:06 beginning which was uh much more
0:13:08 focusing on the materiality of this
0:13:10 world rather than the transcendent
0:13:12 reality of ideas and forms and so on so
0:13:15 you're saying that
0:13:16 the plato seems to have come back
0:13:18 through the coming again through the
0:13:19 back door back back in credibility very
0:13:22 much very much so i mean nowadays
0:13:24 quantum mechanists are speaking about
0:13:27 the multiverse and the multiverses many
0:13:30 many many universes may be
0:13:33 infinitely but a huge number of other
0:13:35 universes now if you think about that
0:13:38 these are space times which are not in
0:13:42 our space time
0:13:44 so if you ask the question where are
0:13:45 they the answer is they're not anywhere
0:13:48 not anywhere in our space time
0:13:51 so you said well some
0:13:53 quantum theorists talk about super space
0:13:56 but they're just inventing a word for
0:13:57 that it has been there are completely
0:14:00 different space times and they perhaps
0:14:02 operate on different principles we don't
0:14:04 know as brian cox said maybe every
0:14:07 possible universe exists maybe there are
0:14:09 millions of them um and i think the
0:14:11 astronomer role believes that as well so
0:14:13 it's quite a widely held belief but
0:14:16 it's very controversial i mean what's
0:14:18 controversial is is it sensible to talk
0:14:21 about many many different universes
0:14:24 um or is it sensible or platonic
0:14:26 mathematical entities which somehow are
0:14:29 seen by us as physical things that's the
0:14:31 plato bit
0:14:33 or
0:14:34 do you just give up and say i'm not
0:14:35 going to ask that question i'm just
0:14:37 going to do the maths right and
0:14:40 it's not materialism is dead therefore
0:14:45 extraordinary probabilities and
0:14:47 complexities of quantum quantum fields
0:14:49 not dealing with discrete bill uh you
0:14:51 know like balls or billiard balls where
0:14:54 you could just tap and see nothing like
0:14:56 that to do a probability field no
0:14:58 billiard balls
0:15:00 and all that jazz um but uh
0:15:02 so but
0:15:03 so idealism then is is an obvious thing
0:15:06 to look to but also you can simply shrug
0:15:07 your shoulders like like the french do
0:15:09 here and say
0:15:10 we don't know we're agnostic
0:15:12 that that's right i think that that is a
0:15:14 very widespread view when people like
0:15:17 brian cox uh is visibly contemptuous of
0:15:20 religion he doesn't he doesn't have any
0:15:23 time for religion but that means he's
0:15:25 failing to make the link between
0:15:28 the fact that all these many universes
0:15:31 are no longer made of matter
0:15:34 it's energy in different way forms and
0:15:37 probabilities but where are you to say
0:15:40 that those exist well
0:15:42 now this is the bit that is that is that
0:15:44 wouldn't be accepted but would be
0:15:47 respectfully heard by all quantum
0:15:50 mechanisms it could be the mind of god
0:15:53 you say well mathematical entities you
0:15:55 know
0:15:56 pleasure didn't put them anywhere he
0:15:58 just said well they are they just are
0:16:00 mathematical energies but in fact
0:16:02 mathematics exists in minds that's where
0:16:05 maths exists and
0:16:07 so to say that the mathematical reality
0:16:10 which is behind the appearances of the
0:16:13 material universe is the mind of god
0:16:16 makes sense now i've never met a quantum
0:16:18 mechanist and i know a lot of them
0:16:21 who thinks that's ridiculous so they
0:16:23 don't all believe it or even if they
0:16:26 believe in the mind of god they say well
0:16:28 i don't mean
0:16:29 the jewish god i don't mean the old
0:16:31 testament god i don't mean the christian
0:16:33 god right because they they don't like
0:16:35 those
0:16:36 legends as einstein would have called
0:16:38 them for example but einstein himself
0:16:41 believed in a vast intelligence
0:16:44 a mathematically elegant intelligence
0:16:47 underlying the universe and that's why
0:16:49 he said things like god doesn't adjust
0:16:52 with the universe because
0:16:54 he had this idea of a mind like reality
0:16:58 which underlies the physical reality
0:17:00 that we see so that's
0:17:03 that's the first part i want to make
0:17:04 just as a a general acceptance that um
0:17:08 there are wave fields
0:17:10 and the particles are probably produced
0:17:13 by observation
0:17:14 but how you interpret that further
0:17:16 whether you get to god or not seems to
0:17:19 me very likely that you do but to many
0:17:21 people they'd prefer to remain agnostic
0:17:24 about that they'd say but it's not
0:17:25 matter anyway it's something more than
0:17:27 matter you know even stephen hawking who
0:17:29 was not a theist at all even he did say
0:17:33 that
0:17:34 the big bang when the universe
0:17:36 originated and the whole existence of
0:17:39 the universe
0:17:40 springs from something beyond space and
0:17:43 time which is mathematically elegant and
0:17:45 that's the move that's the revolution
0:17:48 so that's the first part
0:17:52 the second the seconds are
0:17:53 interconnected and they won't take as
0:17:55 long uh the second one is indeterminacy
0:17:58 this is the heisenberg indeterminacy
0:18:00 principle
0:18:02 again
0:18:03 it is just a fact has been
0:18:05 experimentally proved many times
0:18:08 that it is
0:18:09 absolutely impossible to predict
0:18:12 to tell to describe to pin down
0:18:15 uh both the location
0:18:17 and
0:18:18 the
0:18:19 momentum the of the speed really are of
0:18:22 a fundamental particle right given when
0:18:24 looking at particles with
0:18:27 particle accelerators and so on you can
0:18:30 if you know their location you can't
0:18:32 know their momentum
0:18:33 and if you know their momentum you can't
0:18:36 tell their location that's because
0:18:38 they're waves
0:18:39 right a wave
0:18:41 you might know what speed is going to be
0:18:43 you can't say where it is because it's
0:18:45 spread out it's spread out over the
0:18:46 whole universe in fact so it has no
0:18:49 location
0:18:50 if you get a location you're making it
0:18:52 into a particle really and then you
0:18:54 can't say what speed is going
0:18:56 so again that's totally
0:18:58 counter-intuitive
0:19:00 and quattro magnus i think totally
0:19:03 agreed on saying this is not just human
0:19:06 ignorance it's a fact about the world
0:19:09 but that's a really important point
0:19:10 because i know people who say i know
0:19:11 it's simply because of our ignorance
0:19:12 that we can't comprehend this but you're
0:19:14 saying it's intrinsically intrinsically
0:19:17 uh um unknowable and that's a really
0:19:19 important so it doesn't matter about the
0:19:20 advance of science we cannot know
0:19:22 intrinsically the position and the
0:19:24 momentum of
0:19:26 of these things
0:19:28 that's true and uh the reason for that
0:19:31 is they're not really particles
0:19:33 right so they're speaking of them as
0:19:36 their particles it's helpful in some
0:19:38 ways but actually it's not true to
0:19:41 reality so
0:19:42 um so it's very important this is called
0:19:45 objective
0:19:47 uh indeterminacy it's not subjective
0:19:49 it's not i just can't tell it's that
0:19:52 actually
0:19:53 reality is not like that at all
0:19:56 now what we're bringing you don't have
0:19:58 to bring religion in here either but if
0:20:00 you did want to bring god in you'd be
0:20:02 able to say actually we can show that
0:20:05 the universe is not deterministic
0:20:08 just by physical laws it is
0:20:11 indeterminate there are open futures
0:20:13 there are different ways in which ways
0:20:16 could thing could go and we simply don't
0:20:18 know we we can prove that we can't
0:20:22 know all the causal factors
0:20:24 which make things happen as they do
0:20:26 because his location and momentum we
0:20:29 improve you can't know both of those and
0:20:31 of course there's also dark energy and
0:20:33 dark matter there are hundreds of things
0:20:35 we don't know so it would be stupid to
0:20:37 say i know every causal thing in the
0:20:40 universe and so i can prove that a
0:20:42 deterministic view is true you can't say
0:20:44 that
0:20:45 so you must see the universe as open and
0:20:48 that leaves it open for there to be
0:20:50 divine action in the universe without
0:20:53 breaking any laws
0:20:55 because the laws are only probabilistic
0:20:57 i think that's an advance in
0:20:59 understanding so that that's the
0:21:00 principle of indeterminacy
0:21:03 the third one the last one i'll talk
0:21:05 about is entanglement now that's a very
0:21:08 interesting one um it was john bell in
0:21:11 1964 in geneva
0:21:14 who came with the bell theorem and the
0:21:17 notion of entanglement she's very new
0:21:19 1964 it's not all that long here
0:21:22 uh an entanglement he said if two
0:21:25 fundamental particles talk about
0:21:27 particles again remembering they're not
0:21:29 just particles but let's say if two
0:21:31 fundamental particles interact so
0:21:34 exchange electric charge for example
0:21:37 with each other
0:21:38 and then they separate and go off
0:21:40 perhaps light years away from each other
0:21:43 they continue to interact
0:21:45 forever
0:21:46 so if the electric charge on one of them
0:21:49 say
0:21:50 four light years away
0:21:52 changed from positive to negative then
0:21:54 the other particle it interacted with
0:21:56 which is let us suppose still on earth
0:21:59 will change from negative to positive
0:22:02 and
0:22:03 this happens instantaneously does it not
0:22:05 it's not wrong
0:22:06 after 10 hours or a million years it's
0:22:08 instantaneously it's instantaneous and
0:22:11 because for einstein's theory of
0:22:13 relative temperature nothing can go
0:22:15 faster than the speed of light so this
0:22:16 is quite impossible absolutely
0:22:19 and yet it's been pretty empirically
0:22:21 demonstrated now
0:22:24 this is an empirical fact
0:22:26 it's an empirical fact um there are
0:22:29 different attempts to understand it but
0:22:31 remember john wheeler or richard feynman
0:22:33 sorry who said you can't really
0:22:35 understand it you just gotta accept
0:22:37 that's what it's like
0:22:38 but
0:22:39 the thing is if the big bang theory is
0:22:42 true which it probably is
0:22:44 then at the beginning of this universe
0:22:46 every particle when they started to
0:22:49 originate
0:22:50 uh and come into existence was entangled
0:22:53 with every other
0:22:55 and that means that every particle in
0:22:57 the universe as it's expanded is still
0:23:00 affected by every other particle in the
0:23:03 universe
0:23:04 in other words you can only understand
0:23:06 what's happening in one part of the
0:23:08 universe if you
0:23:10 understand the whole universe and the
0:23:12 way that it's entangled with things as
0:23:14 john parkinghorn who taught me most what
0:23:17 i know about quantum physics as he used
0:23:20 to say um
0:23:22 he
0:23:23 uh if a particle
0:23:25 uh a million light years away from here
0:23:28 changes its electric charge
0:23:32 then that will affect
0:23:34 things on the earth
0:23:36 now those effects are usually subatomic
0:23:38 so we're not going to usually
0:23:41 notice them
0:23:42 but of course sometimes they will
0:23:44 at critical points have huge effects
0:23:48 and we can never tell when that will
0:23:50 happen because
0:23:52 we can't get a million light years away
0:23:54 so
0:23:55 uh the causal
0:23:57 nexus of the universe is very it's more
0:23:59 holistic it's more interwoven than
0:24:02 anything that newton might have imagined
0:24:05 actually
0:24:06 we talked about newtonian very briefly
0:24:08 and let me quote what he said in
0:24:10 procedure mathematica his great work he
0:24:13 um he actually said
0:24:15 no nobody with any intelligence
0:24:19 would think that it was possible for
0:24:22 objects to influence one another at a
0:24:25 distance
0:24:27 and that's newton
0:24:30 wrong unfortunately
0:24:32 well yes he was wrong about that but it
0:24:35 remains a problem and it it that's
0:24:38 because of the fields in quantum
0:24:41 mechanics in field theory which are
0:24:43 infinite of course um there's there
0:24:46 isn't a gap between them
0:24:48 like grab the gravitational field it
0:24:51 operates throughout the universe you if
0:24:53 you say where is it it's just everywhere
0:24:56 and that's what newton didn't get he
0:24:58 couldn't see how these objects
0:25:01 because um although newton was a uh
0:25:04 christian believer he um
0:25:07 did he was a mechanist as well actually
0:25:09 he did he didn't think the matter
0:25:13 with lumps of stuff yes but when you get
0:25:15 away from that idea then of course there
0:25:18 can be cause like connections
0:25:20 which are not
0:25:22 physical they don't obey einstein's
0:25:24 theory of relativity
0:25:26 and this is one of the problems of
0:25:28 modern physics
0:25:30 is i've checked this out with many
0:25:32 physicists and they all assure me it's
0:25:35 true
0:25:36 but they don't think it's relevant
0:25:38 but what is true is that einstein's
0:25:40 theory of relativity
0:25:42 contradicts quantum mechanics
0:25:46 there's a contradiction they don't worry
0:25:48 about it because quantum mechanics is
0:25:50 about very very small things subatomic
0:25:53 things
0:25:53 and
0:25:55 relativity is about very large things so
0:25:58 it doesn't
0:25:59 they don't have to worry about about it
0:26:02 but they will admit that theoretically
0:26:04 something's got to give one day some
0:26:07 genius will come along and unite there'd
0:26:10 be a new paradigm and some somehow this
0:26:12 will this will make sense on a on a big
0:26:14 scale and a small scale together yeah
0:26:18 so
0:26:19 let me try to bring that to a conclusion
0:26:21 though i mean i think one thing it shows
0:26:23 is that science is only the beginning of
0:26:25 understanding the universe there are
0:26:28 many things that science does not
0:26:30 understand that doesn't mean religion is
0:26:32 going to explain it just means science
0:26:34 can't
0:26:35 exclude it so you can't say we've got a
0:26:39 completely adequate picture of the
0:26:41 universe like richard dawkins has said
0:26:43 to me on occasion we've got a complete
0:26:45 understanding of the universe we don't
0:26:47 need anything else well that's as far
0:26:48 from the truth as you could possibly can
0:26:51 we now know we understand hardly
0:26:52 anything we know nothing about dark
0:26:55 energy really so
0:26:57 uh we've got uh wave particle duality
0:27:01 we've got the entanglement of all things
0:27:03 in the universe with each other even on
0:27:05 a physical level
0:27:06 we've got probab probability and
0:27:10 indeterminacy in the universe
0:27:12 well that's a very different huge it's
0:27:14 more it's more dynamic it's more open
0:27:18 it's more relational
0:27:20 uh and the causal factors in such a
0:27:23 uterus are much more open
0:27:26 to
0:27:27 non-physical influences
0:27:29 and i presume god would of course be a
0:27:32 non-physical influence so
0:27:34 my understanding is
0:27:37 a lot of
0:27:38 quantum physicists do not like talking
0:27:41 about god because they think they would
0:27:44 have to play guitars and wave their
0:27:45 hands in the air and do all sorts of
0:27:47 things like they don't like that bit of
0:27:48 gods in churches
0:27:52 but if you talk about um
0:27:55 uh the elegant mathematical structure of
0:27:57 the universe and uh its beauty and
0:28:00 awesomeness and
0:28:02 its openness and its probabilistic
0:28:04 nature they'll say yes uh
0:28:07 it is much more mysterious and much more
0:28:10 awesome than we ever thought um
0:28:14 if you want to call that garden they
0:28:16 might say well you can do that
0:28:18 you know um it's certainly we're
0:28:20 certainly open to the idea but
0:28:23 we're not going to become religious
0:28:25 that's that's the general attitude
0:28:27 although some are religious let me let
0:28:29 me end my
0:28:31 exposition with with one of your quotes
0:28:34 oh please uh from max planck i mean
0:28:37 these are all
0:28:38 absolutely top rated nobel prize winning
0:28:42 physicists i think they're all right
0:28:44 wheeler and others are all physicists at
0:28:46 the highest level yeah they are yeah and
0:28:48 max planck says i regard consciousness
0:28:51 as fundamental matter is derivative from
0:28:55 consciousness
0:28:58 eugene vigner
0:29:00 the content of consciousness is an
0:29:02 ultimate reality
0:29:05 john von neumann perhaps the best
0:29:06 mathematician of them all said all real
0:29:10 things are contents of consciousness
0:29:13 so that's just three quotes and there
0:29:15 are lots of others too
0:29:16 to show that that idealistic view the
0:29:19 consciousness and things in their mind
0:29:21 are actually prior to
0:29:24 and causes of physical things and the
0:29:27 physical things are appearances to us to
0:29:29 our brains
0:29:30 of things um
0:29:33 that we can't even
0:29:34 picture though mathematics gives us a
0:29:37 little um
0:29:39 exploration of how things work so so the
0:29:42 world of science since 1905 it's as new
0:29:46 as
0:29:46 has changed out of all recognition
0:29:49 and
0:29:50 the sad thing is that in schools this
0:29:53 because quantum physics is so difficult
0:29:56 it's not usually
0:29:57 made the big thing of
0:29:59 and i think clergy in particular or
0:30:02 theologians don't like to get involved
0:30:05 in science too much again because
0:30:07 it's a it's a different subject
0:30:09 altogether um
0:30:11 but i think people like john paul cohen
0:30:13 and there are many others too um
0:30:16 who who are
0:30:17 um quantum physicists um understand that
0:30:21 the world has changed and we need to see
0:30:23 matter not as the one
0:30:26 important and ultimate reality but as
0:30:29 something
0:30:30 manifesting something more mysterious
0:30:33 beyond it something mathematically
0:30:35 elegant and maybe something very like a
0:30:38 cosmic mind and
0:30:40 i think that that's the most plausible
0:30:43 view that i myself can think of so
0:30:46 well thank you thank you for the
0:30:47 exposition absolutely fascinating and i
0:30:49 think some sort of key theme struck me
0:30:52 there the mysteriousness of this new
0:30:54 science this new physics since 1905 or
0:30:56 something where einstein you know he
0:30:58 worked as a clerk in a patents office
0:31:00 didn't he yes
0:31:02 he was his humble car writing uh stuff
0:31:06 physics which would just overthrow uh uh
0:31:09 the received 19th century paradigm and
0:31:12 for that small
0:31:14 almost like the butterfly effect in
0:31:16 chaos you know at this lingering effect
0:31:18 and changed absolutely everything but
0:31:20 but also that the universe is in some
0:31:22 sense an expression of consciousness
0:31:24 this idea of the the primacy of
0:31:26 consciousness
0:31:28 which for religious persons just another
0:31:29 word for something else of course the g
0:31:31 word which we yeah we can't mention like
0:31:34 society in many places but it's just a
0:31:37 kind of a secularized way of speaking of
0:31:39 the same reality the consciousness is
0:31:41 the fundamental you're given these
0:31:43 incredible quotes uh here and yeah i'm
0:31:45 also struck by uh talking to to people
0:31:48 not religious people how
0:31:50 that materialism still see seems to be a
0:31:53 thing out there
0:31:55 in the media
0:31:56 uh yeah and yet we're kind of behind the
0:31:59 curve on this are we not if we're still
0:32:02 inhabiting this paradigm because as you
0:32:04 say the physics has moved on since a
0:32:07 peyton's clerk in 1905 in switzerland um
0:32:10 and a revolution in our understanding of
0:32:12 physics so i thought interesting how
0:32:15 things lag behind in the in in society
0:32:19 behind our understandings in physics
0:32:23 part of this is because a lot of the
0:32:25 understanding of the scientific world is
0:32:28 not from physicists but from biologists
0:32:32 like richard dawkins for example who is
0:32:34 his neurologist and
0:32:37 they don't
0:32:38 really concern themselves professionally
0:32:40 with ultimate questions about the nature
0:32:42 of the universe and
0:32:44 whether waves or particles are
0:32:47 important they don't deal with that they
0:32:49 deal with things they can touch and feel
0:32:51 and cells and dna which they can see
0:32:54 with microscopes
0:32:56 and
0:32:57 also biology is notoriously difficult
0:33:00 for us for a believer because
0:33:03 there are so many tragedies and deaths
0:33:05 and extinctions and and so for a
0:33:07 biologist they don't like to think there
0:33:10 is purpose they hate that that there is
0:33:12 purpose in the universe and i think
0:33:14 that's what's contributed to the
0:33:16 understanding but
0:33:18 they don't always see and i'll be i'm
0:33:20 afraid i'm sorry to say richard dawkins
0:33:22 doesn't always see that actually biology
0:33:24 depends upon physics and in the end
0:33:28 the things that happen in biology are
0:33:30 going to be physically
0:33:32 um
0:33:32 caused so you have to know the nature of
0:33:35 the physical
0:33:36 before you can fully understand the
0:33:38 biological so i myself think biology
0:33:41 will have a similar revolution
0:33:44 to the quantum revolution in physics uh
0:33:47 quite soon i should think it well i i
0:33:50 hope you're right but but if
0:33:52 consciousness is the the fundamental
0:33:53 reality out of which emerges or is
0:33:56 expressed by the consciousness the
0:33:58 physical universe we have if that's the
0:34:00 the underlying philosophical premise of
0:34:02 of of idealism or the world view
0:34:05 you're articulating then we as
0:34:08 conscious beings as particular instances
0:34:10 of consciousness um our brains then are
0:34:14 uh is kind of a top down to use poking
0:34:17 horns top down bottom up in that
0:34:19 language he uses in his books but people
0:34:21 don't know john paulkenhorn who
0:34:23 very sadly recently passed away was
0:34:24 professor of uh physics theoretical
0:34:27 mathematical physics i should say at the
0:34:28 university of cambridge he was a leading
0:34:31 physicist he worked at cern and then
0:34:33 later in his career he resigned and
0:34:35 became an uh like keith a priest of the
0:34:38 church of england uh but also like keith
0:34:41 a major christian theologian he was a
0:34:43 scientist slash theologian uh
0:34:46 distinguished in both fields which
0:34:48 is a remarkable uh achievement um and
0:34:51 and you've obviously uh referenced him
0:34:53 there but so coming back to the
0:34:55 particular minds that we inhabit if
0:34:57 that's the right way
0:34:58 are you saying that and this this
0:35:00 touches on the biology side of things
0:35:02 right
0:35:03 if our minds um are if consciousness is
0:35:07 prior and our conscious minds are in
0:35:09 some sense an expression of
0:35:12 this
0:35:12 more fundamental consciousness are our
0:35:15 brains then
0:35:17 how do we how do we describe our brain
0:35:19 are the material
0:35:21 yes physical brain within that paragraph
0:35:23 are they conduits or mechanisms or what
0:35:26 kind of language do we use to express
0:35:28 our brains in that parent
0:35:31 instruments i would say the brain is the
0:35:33 instrument of consciousness
0:35:36 and the brain is what
0:35:39 filters out information from that
0:35:41 unknown quantum world and turns it into
0:35:45 things which we can understand like
0:35:47 colors the colors um you know we're
0:35:50 wearing bluish shirts
0:35:52 but blue doesn't exist in the world of
0:35:54 physics i mean it's just a wavelength of
0:35:56 life
0:35:58 but
0:35:59 our brain actually turns that
0:36:02 into a
0:36:04 conscious experience of blue so the
0:36:06 brain is a sort of instrument a medium
0:36:09 a channel
0:36:10 between a physical universe and uh the
0:36:14 nature of mind so
0:36:16 i what i when we're talking about
0:36:18 idealism i don't mean there is no
0:36:20 physical universe i mean there is a
0:36:22 physical universe but it couldn't exist
0:36:25 without mind
0:36:27 so you're just agreeing with george
0:36:28 berkeley or bishop berkeley uh who
0:36:30 famously held to immaterialism it seems
0:36:33 to be saying that he
0:36:34 deny the existence of material substance
0:36:37 altogether and what what we perceive is
0:36:40 simply
0:36:41 everything is ideas perceived by the
0:36:43 mind you're saying no no there is a
0:36:46 mind independent objective reality of a
0:36:48 material nature out there so you haven't
0:36:51 gone as far as barclay did in his
0:36:53 material well i think barclay did
0:36:55 actually
0:36:56 uh say what i'm saying and that he's he
0:36:59 is widely misunderstood by other people
0:37:02 but um
0:37:03 the thing is that um the consciousness
0:37:07 has evolved is how you get conscious at
0:37:10 various levels i mean
0:37:12 animals et cetera humans are the best
0:37:14 things we know on this planet probably
0:37:17 for a particular consciousness
0:37:19 but it has evolved in a certain way
0:37:22 and but the evolving world itself is a
0:37:26 content of the divine mind
0:37:29 and i think this is what barkley was
0:37:30 saying he wasn't saying there's
0:37:33 he raises the question in one of his
0:37:35 books um
0:37:36 what if there was a desert with no human
0:37:39 beings ever seeing it would it exist
0:37:42 and he said yes it would because the
0:37:44 mind of god would make it exist there is
0:37:46 a mind but it's not your mind it's the
0:37:49 mind of god so barkley did think there
0:37:52 were physical things but the physical
0:37:54 things were were actually ideas in the
0:37:57 mind of god
0:37:58 not in your mind so they they're there
0:38:00 whether you're or not
0:38:02 right
0:38:06 when i leave my room and this has
0:38:07 various colors when i when i leave the
0:38:09 room uh as far as i'm concerned that the
0:38:11 colors don't exist they're just they're
0:38:12 just products of wave uh particles about
0:38:16 what waves
0:38:18 are you saying because god perceives it
0:38:20 therefore the colors do actually exist
0:38:22 in the mind of god and persist in some
0:38:24 way well balcony had two senses of the
0:38:28 word idea when he said we're all ideas
0:38:30 are in the mind one sense is what we see
0:38:32 the colored world of three-dimensional
0:38:35 solid objects if we
0:38:37 didn't exist or if we weren't looking if
0:38:40 we weren't in the room that wouldn't
0:38:42 exist but there would be something that
0:38:44 existed which would be the idea in the
0:38:46 mind of god that would be the quantum
0:38:48 world
0:38:49 oh it says the quantum world and he he
0:38:52 didn't say that of course he didn't know
0:38:54 about the quantum world but he did make
0:38:56 a distinction between
0:38:58 ideas in god and ideas that god made
0:39:01 perceptible to humans right right so
0:39:05 there's that distinction so
0:39:07 um
0:39:08 in fact it's not as barclay's not as bad
0:39:10 as he sounds if so there's no matter
0:39:13 there is much it widely misunderstood
0:39:15 because i i misunderstood in the in
0:39:17 immaterial sense of denying anyway but
0:39:20 we've covered that but uh he said i i
0:39:22 agree i see why you said because he did
0:39:24 call himself an immaterialist
0:39:27 but he also said if you want to call
0:39:30 these ideas in the mind of god matter
0:39:32 that's all right by me
0:39:35 okay
0:39:36 reassuring i suppose so just to tease
0:39:38 this one a bit further so uh
0:39:40 we we've agreed that consciousness is
0:39:42 the fundamental reality it's prior to uh
0:39:45 any uh particular material extents that
0:39:49 we see and and these material realities
0:39:51 are expressive or the products or
0:39:54 created uh are being created ongoing
0:39:57 crazier continuum by this consciousness
0:40:00 so does that not mean that the in terms
0:40:02 of uh
0:40:03 evolution of human evolution other
0:40:05 possibilities that we are dealing with a
0:40:08 mind-directed process
0:40:10 and not as some
0:40:12 biologists or zoologists you might have
0:40:14 mentioned before believe a purely
0:40:16 non-teleological non-directed process
0:40:19 which is utterly random and purposeless
0:40:22 we're dealing with teleology here that's
0:40:23 what i'm trying is that now coming back
0:40:25 in
0:40:26 well um
0:40:29 i think it is utterly wrong to say that
0:40:31 the processes of mutation in biology are
0:40:35 random they're not random they're
0:40:38 probabilistic
0:40:40 that's their whole point i mean that
0:40:42 they're governed by the laws of physics
0:40:44 and there are laws of physics i mean
0:40:46 there are laws you can't turn into an
0:40:48 elephant overnight i mean there are laws
0:40:50 which did direct give you certain
0:40:53 possibilities but the laws are
0:40:55 probabilistic so they give
0:40:57 open alternatives but not infinitely
0:41:00 extended alternatives just within a
0:41:02 limited range so to talk about
0:41:04 randomness is a bit misleading i've
0:41:07 heard biologists
0:41:08 talk about um
0:41:11 errors transmission errors when you when
0:41:14 cells mutate as they do
0:41:17 and they say there are copying errors in
0:41:19 mutation but these copying errors led to
0:41:22 us i mean that's hard to see them as
0:41:24 errors
0:41:25 really they're changes and mutations in
0:41:28 accordance with the probabilistic laws
0:41:30 of physics so that's what many
0:41:33 publishers hadn't grasped the
0:41:34 probabilistic nature
0:41:37 of things which has
0:41:41 changed the universe from
0:41:43 an unconscious
0:41:45 uncomplicated unstructured inelegant
0:41:48 beginning the big bang
0:41:50 when there was no complexity and no
0:41:52 organization at all to the existence of
0:41:55 life forms which are able to understand
0:41:58 their own natures and change them to
0:42:01 some degree now if that's not progress i
0:42:04 don't know what is really then there's
0:42:05 clearly progress
0:42:07 so
0:42:08 it looks as though
0:42:09 uh mutations are probabilistic changes
0:42:13 which tend towards increasing organized
0:42:16 complexity over millions of years
0:42:20 and that's so obvious i don't see how
0:42:22 anybody could deny it really
0:42:25 but they do because they've got they're
0:42:27 myopic relief biologists i hope you're
0:42:30 all listening bulgers
0:42:32 they just think that uh
0:42:34 this we take this little bit of organic
0:42:37 history and look at that and look at all
0:42:39 the mistakes that happen but they forget
0:42:41 about the overall change from
0:42:43 unconscious rocks
0:42:45 to conscious human beings capable of
0:42:48 love and understanding and wisdom
0:42:50 and that's the universe changing growing
0:42:53 developing unfolding surely
0:42:55 teleology is fundamental right so the
0:42:58 teleology the trajectory is is clear
0:43:00 there's a there is a a a trajectory from
0:43:03 uh as you say that this point of
0:43:05 singularity at the very beginning if i
0:43:07 can talk in temporal turns to
0:43:09 today when the universe has become
0:43:10 conscious through us very least to us
0:43:13 and that's remarkable and you see this
0:43:15 ever increasing
0:43:17 uh complexity and order and beauty and
0:43:20 wisdom and you mentioned and the higher
0:43:22 the higher uh values of love and uh joy
0:43:26 and many other things also are part of
0:43:28 that they're not just
0:43:29 random
0:43:31 phenomena they're just kind of
0:43:32 byproducts they seem to be
0:43:34 the as one physicist said the universe
0:43:36 seemed to know we were coming there
0:43:37 seems to have been
0:43:38 babies
0:43:40 is a lovely uh expression yeah yeah i
0:43:44 think that's right and um
0:43:47 it's very hard to deny and and of course
0:43:50 uh
0:43:51 a lot of
0:43:52 scientists actually calling themselves
0:43:55 transhumanists
0:43:56 are aware that the process will go on
0:43:59 we're not the end of it the
0:44:00 consciousness will
0:44:02 carry on and
0:44:03 presumably evolve further so that gives
0:44:06 a perspective to it which uh
0:44:08 um
0:44:10 is more attractive you know than uh some
0:44:12 people think evolution means we're all
0:44:14 monkeys actually it means no
0:44:17 that uh we we were little eggs at one
0:44:19 point and literally all of us
0:44:22 but we're developing into conscious
0:44:24 rational feeling thinking beings and
0:44:28 that
0:44:29 if everybody says that's not
0:44:31 a progress i
0:44:33 i don't know what what they would think
0:44:34 progress was
0:44:36 yeah
0:44:37 just striking the odds is the elephant
0:44:39 to use the elephant again the elephant
0:44:40 elephant in the room is this
0:44:42 extraordinary trajectory uh which uh is
0:44:45 apparently denied by some anyway um
0:44:48 just in conclusion
0:44:51 to end uh are you working on any any uh
0:44:54 projects at the moment in terms of books
0:44:56 or other projects yourself
0:44:58 well i'm thinking that i ought to stop
0:45:00 really i i i've written quite a lot of
0:45:03 books and um the i suppose i prefer what
0:45:08 i talk about the the one that i just
0:45:10 happened to have with me
0:45:13 wherever i put it i can't get it
0:45:15 anywhere
0:45:18 yes i can see it the priority of mind
0:45:20 yes it's quite a short book
0:45:22 um but that really puts the points that
0:45:25 um
0:45:26 that we've been talking about today so
0:45:29 i've just finished that and um
0:45:32 it's just been published and oh it has
0:45:35 been published so i can link so we can i
0:45:36 can link to it in the description below
0:45:38 can i on the yes yes yes it's published
0:45:41 by cascade
0:45:42 right it's american publisher anyway um
0:45:46 so i've done that so i'm having a rest
0:45:48 at the moment i'm i haven't stopped
0:45:50 thinking but uh
0:45:51 no
0:45:53 it's impossible if you stop thinking
0:45:54 well no i'll link to that that's
0:45:55 fantastic priority of mine i like the
0:45:57 title there suggests a world of
0:45:59 possibilities so yes
0:46:01 very very good uh well thank you very
0:46:02 much indeed professor keith wall for
0:46:04 your valuable uh time really appreciate
0:46:07 it um i think i actually might link also
0:46:09 to um the uh gresham college lecture
0:46:12 which is actually still online uh yeah
0:46:14 all right
0:46:15 um because i i dug it up earlier on to
0:46:18 see if it was around it is that's
0:46:20 the same
0:46:21 did i say the same things do you think
0:46:23 yes well um
0:46:25 no you didn't mention the um the
0:46:29 um
0:46:30 uh so there was something that was
0:46:31 discovered in the last 10 years that you
0:46:33 uh you mentioned um i've got what it was
0:46:35 called now but there's one more recent
0:46:37 scientific development you you couldn't
0:46:39 have because this lecture was more than
0:46:41 10 years ago but other than that um
0:46:43 broadly yeah it's the same yeah yeah i
0:46:45 think actually
0:46:47 yeah you haven't changed your mind now
0:46:49 oh good good good um
0:46:52 um so yeah so that's it so thank you
0:46:53 very much indeed
0:46:55 and there's been an absolute pleasure
0:46:56 thank you okay bye
0:46:58 thank you
0:46:59 sorry about