EP. 30 | Alex O'Connor & Dr. Francis Collins debate God's existence

Is there a God it is the most important question that exists when I say that I'm violently agnostic I'm talking about the existence of God if there is a God and I'm ignoring that that feels like a really bad waiting to live your life much less whatever comes after if there isn't a God and I'm wasting my time uh by worshiping something that's not there that's a really bad outcome too this is a really important question the question We're exploring today is a big one does God exist and to tackle this question we've brought in

two intellectual powerhouses on one side we have Alex o' Conor the Oxford philosopher and atheist Who Rose to fame as a teenager debating people three times his age Alex recently crossed 1 million subscribers on YouTube on the other hand we have Dr Francis Collins the former director of the Human Genome Project and the bestselling author of the language of God Dr Collins Is widely celebrated as one of most decorated scientists in in history the problem of evil it's a hard problem I will grant you that this seems trivially true to me that an omnipotent deity

could have organized the world so that there was not this kind of suffering I entered medical school as an atheist and then recognized that that point of view could not really hold up to even rational argument what do we find the existence of a universe okay score one For theism because that is pretty incredible something rather than nothing finally chewed constant once you get part past that sort of fundamental origin point the resurrection is a strange moment in history like something very weird happened on Easter morning the most likely explanation is that he really was

raised from the dead how do we know that because of do you know that God exists like are you certain about it doesn't sound to me like you're 100% Sure you're right and can you imagine such a thing that would change your mind when people ask me you know what would it take I would say today we dive into perhaps the most important question to human existence does God exist for Millennia this question has echoed through ancient temples fueled debates among the greatest minds and inspired both scientific inquiry and spiritual exploration it transcends cultures Generations

and beliefs challenging us to confront the deepest aspects of our reality whether approach with faith skepticism or sheer curiosity the pursuit of an answer has been a Cornerstone of human history shaping civilizations and guiding individual lives what you believe about the existence in God and by extension who or what God might be has the power to profoundly influence your worldview values and the course of your life to Explore this question from opposing perspectives we couldn't think of two better guests than Alex o'conor and Dr Francis Collins Alex is an Oxford philosopher and self-proclaimed atheist who

has described himself as violently agnostic about the existence of God in recent years he's gained substantial recognition in the academic world and Beyond with nearly a million subscribers on YouTube his show has featured intellectual heavyweights like Jordan Peterson Richard Dawkins William Langan Craig and Sam Harris on the other side of the conversation we have Dr Francis Collins one of the most distinguished scientists of our time from 1993 to 2003 he led the Human Genome Project the Monumental effort to map all human genes Dr Collins is perhaps the most famous scientist to transition from atheism to

belief in God famously chronicling his journey in the New York Times bestseller the language of God in it he presents Compelling arguments for the existence of a higher power in this episode we explore the various lines of evidence for and against the existence of God We Begin by diving into the concept of evidence itself before delving into topics such as the fine-tuning of the universe the moral argument the resurrection of Jesus and the world's holy text this was a deeply stimulating conversation and we believe it will be for you as well so join us as

we Navigate the complexities the debates and the profound Mysteries surrounding the existence of God all right gentlemen thank you for being here today the question the question we're exploring today is does God exist and by extension of that um if he does exist is he actually knowable so I thought it'd be um a good starting point to explore just kind of brief like your personal stories what your position is currently Alex I thought we would start with you U I've Heard you described yourself as an atheist but most recently I was watching an interview who

said violently agnostic about God's existence um so what's your current position and how did you arrive there in the online atheist Community atheism is sometimes defined as just a lack of belief in God that's it's actually something that's pressed quite a lot people have have wasted a lot of ink over this particular question of what it means and so I think when I was Calling myself a a hardcore atheist I would have been the kind of atheist that says well I just lack a belief in God and that's all atheism is um I find that

the agnostic label is a bit more accurate in the when I'm sort of having General conversations with people to to explain where I'm at which is I obviously can't say that God doesn't exist interestingly when somebody says you know well I know you say you're an atheist but do you know do you know that God doesn't exist or are you technically an agnostic fine but a lot of time when I speak to a Christian or a theist and I say but do you know that God exists like are you certain about it well no you

know I'm not certain but I I believe it I wouldn't say oh well technically you're an agnostic then because really what you're saying is sort of what side broadly do you fall on here and for me when observing the world around me I I find so many inexplicable Mysteries so I Have to uh die on that fence of agnosticism as I put it before uh but if you ask me to sort of place a bet I think that I'm I'm at least suspicious of the idea that this is compatible with a with a traditional Creator

type figure and so I'd sort of fall in that in that camp but strictly speaking I I have no idea and sorry to disappoint but I'm not sure we'll get to the bottom of the question today counting on that we'll do the best That we can how would you I mean obviously uh in the early 2000s new atheism uh Richard Dawkins Daniel Dennett Sam Harrison Christopher Hitchin how would you differentiate the way you think about this question versus maybe the way that they would have thought about this question if at all well new atheism is

made up of two components that God doesn't exist and that ReliOn is evil there's nothing new about atheism people haven't believed in God For just about as long as they have um Humanity I mean the thing that's different about the new atheist is that they came along and they they they did the the sociological uh analysis and sort like people don't believe in God anymore this isn't really part of our culture but they said but we don't need it because you can regain your spiritual autonomy and we can ground our Ethics in secular humanism and

the virtues of if It's Christopher Hitchens you know Thomas Payne and the American founding fathers and that I think is where I have to depart company because like I think the saying religion is bad is like saying politics is bad it's kind of I I get why someone would say that it's kind of true but it's a little bit naive of a statement doesn't mean that there isn't a correct political position I mean I could I could say that politics has caused all kinds of wars and politics Has driven people apart and that's true but

it be naive to say therefore we can throw off politics and all be anarchists you can still think that there's a correct political position or that you know having or developing a better um relationship with politics and a more thought out political view would help that problem but to sort of throw it out all together uh I think is maybe a mistake the trouble I find myself in is that I I can't say you know religion is Terrible and evil and we better off without it but I just don't believe that it's true yeah and

so I can't like lie to my children for for want of a better Society so I'm in a bit of a tough spot I'm agnostic as well on that question in other words whereas they would say religion is bad I would say I don't know I think it's it's uh probably too simplistic an analysis well I appreciate your channel and uh you know the Curiosity that you bring to each episode And I could I could really feel that and feel even what you're saying right now so I think that's very interesting way to go about

it Francis what about you uh where what's your current position and how'd you arrive there you know I appreciate what Alex is saying that sometimes uh we try to put these categories of belief or non-belief into very specific subsets maybe we TR cutomize it you're an atheist or you're a ostic or you believer I think it's Really much more of a spectrum and I think I've traveled across that Spectrum during my whole life and not found it like I was jumping from one box to the other it was sort of sliding along and going well

maybe not and then this way so let me tell you how it started I was born in a family about 3 hours from here in Virginia my dad was a college professor my mother was a playwright um we lived on a farm that had no indoor Plumbing uh there was no interest in faith in my childhood upbringing uh it wasn't denigrated it just wasn't considered to be relevant or important it was all about music and theater and the Arts and literature and a bit of History I went uh no I I did not go to

public school until the sixth grade and not for religious reasons it's because my parents thought they were better teachers than what was available in the public schools in that county and um They were right um so I learned a lot from my mom and dad particularly about the joy of learning new things which I carry with me my whole life but I didn't learn a thing about what religion was all about or whether God exists so in that Spectrum where atheism is over here and really strong no doubt in your mind belief is over here

I was undefined then I landed in college and you know how it is those 2:00 in the morning discussions where what do you believe or what do you Believe I thought the atheist had the better hand in those conversations and decided okay I'll I'll throw myself in with that lot so I was an atheist left College went to graduate school who studied quantum mechanics love the mathematics love the beauty of science that equations could describe things didn't occur to me that that might not have been the obvious outcome for the universe but I was completely

focused on what you call Scientism that any question that was worth asking was a scientific question and any question that couldn't be answered that way was off the table and then I had this change in my life plan about exactly where I wanted my professional career to go I was a little bit disillusioned with the abstractness of what I was doing in quantum mechanics even though it was kind of fun and felt this urge to do something more directly connected to People and so I went to medical school which was quite a 180 Dee turn

scientifically from where I had been thinking that the life science was just much too messy by the way it is but it mattered now I entered medical school as an atheist over here on this end of the spectrum and I left kicking and screaming having crossed over all of those intermediates and landed somewhere over here um as a Christian but a Christian who had lots of questions and Lots of doubts but who had made the decision that this is this is true enough for me to throw myself into it and to have this be my

Foundation until there's some reason not to and that was 47 years ago and I'm still a Christian and I have you know waffled around a little bit over there on that end of the spectrum depending on what kind of challenges come along but the more I get deep into what the real Foundation of that faith is and particularly the Person of Jesus that's now such an anchor uh to the way I think about about everything that I can't really imagine walking away from can I prove it no do I believe it yes well I think

as we embarked on this conversation it's important to Define terms you said can I prove it um and you know you you spoke about truth a lot in your in your latest book and so you seem to make a distinction I think this is important when we talk about God's existence Because we throw on the term evidence um so you make a distinction between proof and evidence so how would you differentiate those terms I think that's really important uh the book I wrote 18 years ago about my own faith Journey called the language of God

that subtitle is a scientist presents evidence for belief that's I don't think God intended for us to have proof if there was we would all be running around being good little Believers uh following what is in Controvertible evidence that we absolutely have to accept this I think God had in mind something much more interesting and something that called more to us to make a decision uh not to have it forced upon you by some mathematical proof and maybe point that Eugene Peterson said if if God wanted us to have an mathematical proof it would have

been tough to say I love you and algebra there's a lot more here than what you would call that s of a proof so I do think there evidence and I can take off a few of the things that appealed to me as I was Kicking and Screaming giving up my atheism and ultimately my agnosticism because I didn't want to to recognize that there was a lot here that was hard to dismiss some of it of course is the nature of the universe and how it's put together and we may end up talking about that

yeah will the fact that the Universe did have a beginning and that seems to cry out for a cause Here we are in cam um and that it has this remarkable fine-tuning of all these constants that even the astronomer Martin Ree who's not a believer that wonderful book he wrote about six numbers seem to have had the dial set in an exquisitly careful way in order for there to be anything interesting and not just a bunch of particles so of course the retreat from that is the Multiverse option which is an option but seems to

May require at least as much Faith uh as the one that says actually there's an intelligence behind this that explains I mean Maxwell's equations that that are the way in which electricity and magnitudes operate simple beautiful equations I mean as somebody who used to be in that field first encountering Maxwell's equations it's like wow this is like watching an incredible work of art being generated why should that be it does seem to cry Out for on intelligence and of course Einstein would have agreed with that part now we're just talking about deism not theism the

theist part for me a lot of it comes down to the moral law the idea that there's good and evil and the ability to try to explain that purely on the basis of evolutionary psychology yeah fall short it doesn't explain the kind of radical altruism that we as humans tend to admire and we see it and which is sometimes a scandal To Evolution why should that be so the moral law and then the whole phenomenon of beauty I don't find it easy to dismiss experiences that sort of lift me out of myself which for me

is often music this Exquisite uh longing poignant longing that's inspired in your whole being by a particular beautiful piece of music it feels like it's some kind of an Outreach to your very soul and I don't know how to explain that on the basis of Neuroscience although I imagine Neuroscience will find there is some properties of the brain that supports it so again not a proof but for me at 27 having walked down this Trail bit by bit realizing that my arguments of strict atheism really couldn't be sustained I got to that place where I

had to decide whether to take the lead there was no going back that had already crumbled behind me the only real alternative was to stay In this awkward uncertain space or to say okay I find it no longer possible to stay there and to resist yeah that's good I trust you God uh to meet me on the other side of that Gap yeah I mean we you spoke lot of different areas philosophical arguments science I'm curious how you go about this this process you had a couple videos on your YouTube channel Arguments for atheism and

Arguments for theism as well and so just curious to unpack your mind on like How you think about this in terms of evidence and reason and all that stuff yeah well when I say that I'm violently agnostic I'm talking about the existence of God um I don't know what God is I I don't know what this this word is supposed to refer to right and if you I remember like for some reason this stuck out to me I was speaking to somebody once who who's not really into philosophy or science or anything and we were

just talking and and he sort of Said you you know I I don't believe in God but and carried on talking and something about the way he said it I just thought to myself what is the thing that you have in your head yeah when you say that like what is the reference for the word god there what is the thing that you don't believe in um the cliche is for the Christian to to find out and say well guess what I don't believe in that God either you know whatever it is that you have

in mind but it's true Because God is if if we listen to the way that God has described in Scripture but also in the traditional philosophical um schools of thought it's not the man in the sky but it's also not like a creative mind I mean ainus would say that God is not even powerful God is not like loving God is not knowing god is not any of those things because those are all just analogous terms that somewhat approximate the kind of thing that God Might be like right and so if there is a God

I think it's sort of far beyond comprehension and so my agnosticism is partly due to that I think that without the guidance of some form of scripture the reason we know that we can use these analogies accurately even if we can't understand the thing they point to is because we have it on the authority of Someone Like Jesus the problem is that my agnosticism doesn't extend to religious Traditions Like Christianity those I unfortunately do think are are false um at the very least I don't think there's good enough evidence to believe in the truth claims

of Christianity The crucial parts of the Resurrection uh for example I I that's a sticking point for a lot of people that brings a lot of people to Faith it doesn't do it for me also the moral qualms the same moral intuition that I'm told I'm supposed to rely upon to prove the existence of God Is that same moral intuition that I'm supposed to ignore when I encounter the less than um less than enviable situations of the Canaanites old Hebrew slaves or non-hebrew slaves to make things worse but also in the New Testament the treatment

of women uh is something that raises a lot of eyebrows interestingly I think the atheist has an escape fruit there because I think that Paul didn't Write a lot of what we find attributed to Paul in the New Testament but that's not really an option for the uh for the New Testament trusting Christian so I'm sort of the one who can absolve Paul here I don't think he wrote those words in First Corinthians where he says that women should uh you know if they have a question they should go home and ask their husbands it's

a disgrace than speak in church I don't think he wrote those words and I think we have good Evidence to think he did didn't I don't think he wrote the entire book of First Timothy and so a lot of those problems sort of go away from me but if I'm looking at the Christian religion that moral intuition that so powerfully tells people well you know certain things are right or wrong you know it even if you want to sort of try to psychologize it or talk about Evolution or anything you know somewhere that there's a

moral feeling that certain things are right or Wrong and even if I say okay sure yeah great so what does that mean I should do well that should lead you to Christianity and then the first thing I see opening that book is something which contradicts the very moral intuition that I was supposed to to get there in the first place that leaves me with some cause for concern um when it comes to the actual existence of God the fine-tuning and the the first cause type stuff I'm kind of okay with this um like I mean

what like what are we thinking about God as being if we think of God as someone who's sort of like finely tuning constants the strong and weak nuclear forces and the gravitational constant sort of like almost like typing them all into a computer or something then we're starting to imagine God is more of this sort of intervening agency which is what I was trying to avoid before um I do Have specific responses to each of these arguments by the way so so like the fine tuning first call stuff whatever which we can do but just

as a broad overview I find it impossible to to really say what would count as evidence or proof of God's existence because I don't even know what this God figure is but I do know that the religious Traditions that have sprung up in response to apprehension of the Divine had given me cause for yeah I mean well Francis talking about faith being a spectrum I think also looking at this question and and zooming out and and I do want to zoom out because if you subscribe to a particular belief system like Christianity um there are

things from the Bible that we learn about God right but I think a lot of people are in this place of like you're talking about agnosticism where you know even if fine-tuning were true like does that necessarily indicate that that is the Christian version of the god and so we have you know atheism agnosticism then we have maybe theism or theism um which is like a more detached picture with theism of maybe a Creator but isn't necessarily this loving depiction of God seen through Jesus and so I kind of want to work through each of

those individual points um and so you both mentioned the fine tuning of the Universe um and so that Discovery comes from science um and so in your last interview with Richard Dawkins he said this was the nearest approach to a good argument uh so and so concering most people are listening to this are novices to science can you unpack what what fine tuning is sure and it's a fairly recent realization actually you know we do have this remarkable set of equations that govern the behavior of matter and energy the gravity uh follows an inverse Square

law uh that the speed of light is fixed um that U all all of the properties of The Adam follow certain abilities and rules about how they stick together or fly apart those laws beautiful as they are have constants in them that I don't know really anybody who will say we can derive the value of those constants from first principles they're related to each other so maybe there's some connection between them but you can't figure out what they have to be on the basis of theory you have to go and measure them and so they

have a particular Val and Maybe the easiest one to explain is gravity because that's certainly familiar to us in every day so yeah there's that inverse Square law and there's the gravitational constant and that is of course important uh in the beginning of the universe for the way in which after a inflationary period of everything flying apart they began to actually coals and that's how we got clouds of gas which then became ultimately stars and planets and moons And ultimately us here talking about it so gravity is pretty important but if you tweak the value

of that gravitational constant just a little bit depending on who you ask and whose calculation you did I mean a very little bit maybe one part in a million what is the one part in a million a one like how can you contextualize that okay if you imagine the gravitational constant out to seven Decimal places and you change that last decimal place that was an eight into a seven and the rest is all the same and then you go through the math about what would happen if it was just a little bit weaker there isn't

quite enough there uh to get the coalescence to happen and so you end up with things just flying apart in a pretty boring sterile way if you make it just a little stronger then B come together a little sooner but also the expansion of the universe has a Limit and knowing that it takes billions of years before you get to the point where something like complexity of chemistry can happen because of all the things that have to happen in Stars you'd never get to that point uh everything would collapse back in a big crunch so

in order to have this possibility of something beautiful and interesting that had to have exactly that do and the strong and the weak nuclear force and multiple other Constants all have to have that same proper so you're talking about the conditions needed for life to exist on Earth or for anything interesting it's not just about this kind of life or this kind of Earth just anything beyond some particles which hard to me imagine much Intelligence coming out of particles flying apart by themselves so anything that you would call thought seems to require these particular parameters

to be set in a very precise way and that Seems to cry out for an explanation and again as somebody who also finds Beauty in the equations I find awe in the values of those constants and they do call out to me for an intelligence that is far beyond anything I could possibly imagine who I don't think had to sit there and punch and it just knew and thought and here it was and I get it that the alternative is that there are an infinite number of other parallel Universes and of course we have to

be in the one where something interesting could happen to have this conversation but the inability to ever measure except in the weirdest sort of way uh the possibility that those really exist seems then to require a great leap of faith uh to believe in the Multiverse maybe for me greater than believing in a Creator who made it this way for our universe so yeah I I think it seems a little too easy to dismiss That and go well it's the Multiverse think about that the other thing is that doesn't solve the question of why there's

something instead of nothing yeah sort of the big ultimate question and that also seems to require some kind of an uncaused cause to have their Bea yeah so I mean in essence was fine tuning I think I saw this online somewhere but someone was saying like if you took a pencil or something and you Like threw it across the universe at a bullseye on like Pluto or something that like the like and hitting it would be like that would be the chances that life would exist or something and so the argument essentially is that with

fine-tuning life is just so incredibly unlikely that like what do explanation for that I've heard you talk about this a little bit in um in in your podcast and interviews and I think you said that this you find this compelling but Doesn't really move you really but so can you explain what your yeah mean of course it's compelling it's a great mystery and it's an amazing finding right that if we were to adapt these values then nothing could exist there are so many questions that spring up in my mind there are just so many it's

just difficult to know where to begin I mean we said for a moment ago you know God doesn't punch in those numbers he just kind of knows that that's how it has to Be doesn't have to punch anything is is God is God constrained by these constants he chooses to be he chooses to be I don't know that in his existence those constants exist he's not part he created but he is not himself part of the created universe so this is the thing that that sort of confounds me is that before the universe exists and

you just have sort of God up in The Ether he's sort of thinking about creating this universe to put it crudely and for Some reason God is is confined to these very narrow restraints and in fact could not create a life permitting universe but within those constraints and those and and and therefore before this universe is even created God is in some way constrained by the strong and weak nuclear forces I don't understand that at all uh you're suggesting that God is part of the Creation that God put in place for the universe God doesn't

have to be constrained that way God is outside of space outside of time yeah not not B basically having to adhere to any of such I don't mean that God is constrained by those forces that they're like acting upon him I mean that he's constrained in the sense that he can only create a material world that abides by those particular constraints oh I think you could create any material World I think he wanted to create one that was interesting and so he made the selection of those equations and those constants in order for it not

to just be a big waste of time would it have been impossible for him to create a universe that's life emitting and just as interesting in which gravity was Stronger well I don't think it would have been as interesting God was interested in thought but but I mean a thought for Missing Universe right so so like a universe where basically everything is the same as it is now let's say that um the the gravity is stronger but this dark energy that's causing the universe to expand is a bit stronger or there's some other introduced force

or or in other words when God goes to create the universe is he constrained in the sense that if he wants to create this thought permitting universe that everything has To be so finely balanced in other words I'm not sure why the meta conditions are set up so that everything is on on such a knife edge maybe I can spell it out like this right so imagine I have a friend who um Phil Halper who made this documentary about the the funi argument and there's a really interesting response that made reference to the Gnostic Christian

tradition the the Christian gnostics believed in the the sort of the Material world being the product of an evil demiurge it's like uh this God of the Old Testament is the is the evil creator of the material world and Jesus represents the true God who is you know spiritually pure and above all and he was like well doesn't the fine tuning argument kind of fit in better with this kind of picture of the universe why because the spiritual Creator who who realizes that the material world is evil and terrible doesn't want the material World to

come about and so he makes it so that it is near on impossible for a material Universe like this to exist and yet the evil Demi urge wants to create that universe and so he comes in and he perfectly Tunes everything so although it's completely improbable he just makes it right that the material world can can be created what I think that this kind of slightly um contrived image can help to demonstrate is that the very fact that it is so difficult to bring About the the material world but by finally tuning these constraints is

itself sort of a a backfiring against the existence of a Creator God who wants there to be a universe like this and has the power to do it in any way which he pleases for example another analogy from the same documentary if if you were to if you were to have like a a bag of of of balls and you were pulling out pulling out a ball and you were trying to figure out what the f color of the of The creator of the of the bag was and you reach in and you pull out

a purple ball that might be confirming evidence that the creator of the game likes the color purple but if you then tipped out every other ball and looked at every single other one except for the one that you picked was yellow you might actually think to yourself oh okay the the creator of this game clearly prefers yellow but I just happen to have picked the blue one now obviously that analogy Doesn't work cuz that revolves around chance but the point specifically being that if the conditions are set up so that there are an almost infinite

number of ways that things could have been where none of this could have happened and only one very precise way that it could have happened the person who sets up that meta condition what are we to make of of of their view of of the universe you see what I'm saying I think I see where you're going and I don't Think there's just one way where you could set the constants and the equations to end up with something interesting this happens to be a really well studied one that we happen to live in the middle

of again going back to Martin we's book are just six constants or whatever it's close to that uh he would argue that these constants are related to each other so they don't have to have the precise values they do now as long as their ratios are quite so the Six dimensionless constants that he outlines including the cosmological constant and if those are off by just a little bit things don't work but there's lots of solutions within that so I think more of God is an artist and of course an artist can paint a lot of

things that are really not very interesting and then occasionally a masterpiece but not usually just one Masterpiece so God has the opportunity to decide which of the masterpieces are going to be considered Worth doing because they're interesting and you live in one of those I'm not saying it's the only one that could have been it's just the one that we have and it fits the description of what would need to be a very precise thought process to end up with something that would be more than just sterile particles MH well you keep using the word

interesting and it really makes me think of I mean the thing that sticks out About this whole thing is how unlikely it is that that life would be exist and so it almost makes me think of even you know in America you know if there's an underdog sports team that that that wins that was so incredibly unlikely that they would win it like it sticks out to humans like as something that's remarkable and you keep talking about interesting and beautiful um is that is that kind of really what you're getting at is that is that

God made that that Sticks out to us because of how unlikely it is because it's unlikely and because it has complexity I guess that's when I'm say interesting I I don't think small particles flying apart forever is very interesting I think something where you have a coalesence of stars and planets and chemistry that gives rise to amazing constructs I that's really interesting and especially if it gives rise to some something that allows through an Evolutionary process the development of creatures with big complicated brains that can have a conversation like this and can even feel some

draw upon them somehow to reach back out to God who we're not sure is there but certainly feels like we're called to that's interesting yeah but to be clear I mean do do you think that it would have been impossible for God to create that universe that interesting Universe in which atoms and nebulas and and planets And humans ultimately form it would have been impossible for him to do that with gravity being stronger I think it would not have been impossible I don't think God chose to spend the energy of creation on something boring at

least just judging by what's around us I I mean I mean to to create the same universe so so not a boring Universe it's still an interesting universe everything is the Same we're we're still acting as we're acting now it's just the gravity is stronger I think if that had happened we would have had a big crunch before there was time for the complexity of chemistry to form in the heart of those stars and it would have been not very so it would have been impossible for God to create that universe and then not be

a big crunch I think if the only thing that was altered was gravity everything else kept the same the the theoreticians Would say yeah we had had a collapse of the universe before now we would not have made it to 13.8 billion years so means then that provided God wants to create this interesting universe as it is today God is constrained in doing so he chooses by the conditions of GRA yeah so once he's made that choice that he wants this universe he wants an interesting he can't make that interesting universe but by this very

specific value of the constant of Gravity and so that acts as a constraint on God's creative power because God wants to create this beautiful thing it it's kind of like saying it's kind of like saying you know if God wanted to create the Mona Lisa without using like a paintbrush like traditionally I think theists want to say well he could do that he could just pop it into existence there are ways of God to sort of get around a physical constraints and if I Said well no no I I think that God chose to use

a paintbrush because otherwise the monisa couldn't have been created and that would have been uninteresting but the question I'm asking is could he have made the mon Lisa without the paintbrush could he have created the world as interesting as it is today with a stronger force of gravity you know what I mean like I I I understand what you're saying that he's that he's that he wouldn't choose to have a a gravity That has a universe that has a big crunch because it wouldn't lead to life that would be so uninteresting but what I'm saying

is why couldn't there be a stronger uh constant of gravity that in our current model would lead to a big crunch but because God is God he can create that Universe nonetheless and avoid a big crunch somehow or is he constu drained by the the constant of gravity and what he can create I think I think I see where you're going I Think God is a god of order and that meant that in any Universe God would choose to have matter and energy uh follow orderly laws we happen to have a set of those they

might have been otherwise we haven't talked about whether you could come up with a completely different Universe where gravity was an inverse Cube instead of an inverse square that sort of makes my head hurt but within the nature of the laws that seem in this Universe to government an energy if God is a god who's interested in something complex and let's come back to my faith here God is also a god of love go God wants to have creatures that God can have relationship with and that is going to guide the decision making then about

what kind of universe will achieve that goal I don't think that's it's constrained by the fact that God wants to love his creatures that's who he is and if that's the case I don't know that It's constraining him in terms of physics to choose the right parameters to make that happen it's a it's an it's a means to the end the end is What mattered but he couldn't have got that same outcome through different parameters that's the constraint that I'm talking about unless you change the laws also and I don't know how you would do

that if you're going to stick with the laws we've got MH and just change one constant gravity and expect that to End up with complexity it won't work even for God even God couldn't make that happen you know this sort of feels like well God could decide two plus two can be five and that's right right right so so but that that's what I'm asking is is are these fundamental constants something like you know laws of logic like like two and two is five in which case like because if if I ask if I ask

a believer in God do you think that God is Constrained by the laws of logic often times they say in like in a sense yes but that's not really a problem because these are just the laws of logic what I'm asking is are things like the the strong and weak nuclear force and the strength of gravity like the laws of logic and that they plausibly constrain God in the way that the laws of logic might that that seems to me a really unusual thing like when someone says God couldn't make 2 plus 2 Equal 5

I don't see that as a as a challenge to his unipotent because it's logically impossible that that that that kind of thing like a four-sided triangle he can't create that because it literally has no reference it's not a thing God can do all things four-sided triangles just aren't things and so I totally understand that but if it's well God couldn't create a life permitting Universe in which everything was the same except for gravity being two times As strong he couldn't have done that well I do see that as a challenge to his omnipotence because that

doesn't seem like logical contradiction in the same way seems like a physical contradiction but not a logical one I guess the other Factor here that we haven't said explicitly is that God apparently is interested in nature following order and the fact that there are those equations covering matter and energy they didn't have to be there but if You'll give if you'll take as a giver that God is interested in order of Nature and also that God is interested in having relationship with complicated creatures like us then I think the only means to that end is

to have that gravity constant in our universe be what it is and so yeah I guess you could say There's a constraint there because otherwise God's goals are not achieved well I think the second point that you made I think lends to the next couple Topics because I think from someone who is in a naasty position would feel like a jump to say that that this being let's just say that whatever there was an intelligent designer behind the fine tuning um again like I was mentioning earlier that would only indicate that maybe a deist perspective

of something created us but then there's another further jump of this being wants to be in relationship with us which kind of Begs the question of you know the moral argument that we were talking about but then also kind of line of reasoning that really popped up in my mind when you talking about that that the reasoning you using with the fine tuning I've also heard with the of evil one which is basically that they couldn't have God created a world where there was Free Will and they Al there wasn't evil or there wasn't suffering

or something like that people would wouldn't have free Roam I mean there are there are questions to to ask on either side here right and by the way I offer these questions and objections to fine tuning I mean it may just be that that yes God is in so far as we grant that he has a particular will he is constrained by things like the strong weak nuclear force that seems strange to me that might just be true and I still think it's a powerful argument I I'm not a scientist I I don't understand this

I'm Sort of raising these questions but but I I totally understand the power of the fine argument I do and so when confronted with the with the universe as we find it I think the best thing we can do is ask on either hypotheses a hypothesis atheism or theism what we would expect to find and then look at what we do find right and so what do we find the existence of a universe okay score one for theism because that is pretty incredible something rather than Nothing finally chose constant that's great once you get part

past that sort of fundamental origin Point explaining those points then we look at what the universe is okay sort of mostly cold lifeless place don't wrong it's very beautiful and very very cool and all of that yeah but in so far as there isn't an observer to see that there's there sort of there's no conscious life going on conscious life finally evolves on planet Earth billions of years the Beginning of the universe and does so in the most brutal imaginable way natural selection as the process by which humans came to be on this planet which

I'm told is the ultimate end of this of this entire veil of Tears was for the sake of humanity and the mechanism that is chosen to bring that about or maybe it was necessary again a further constraint on God but it seems plausible that this naive popping into existence Adam and Eve type thing could have been done but It wasn't what what happened instead was a series of slow brutal Evolutions over billions of years in which 99% of the species let alone the animals who've ever lived on this planet have been wiped from existence sometimes

in the most painful imaginable circumstances survival of the fitst is the same thing as the death and destruction of the unfit the problem of evil always comes up in a human context and people can say okay well Maybe evil exists because of human free will or maybe because it develops our soul or because it allows us to achieve higher order goods things like animals as well but animals have undergone much more suffering at times in terms of the actual crude physical pain that they're feeling but in terms of the numbers as well even just today

the number of animals alive experiencing pain suffering the world is unfathomably Huge and so I ask okay what would I expect to see if this was being sort of organized with the intention of bringing about human beings with the intention to enter into a loving relationship with them I don't think I'd expect to see anything like this circus of suffering and yet if I assume that it's all mindlessly evolving accidentally in some competition for survival and some like unconscious competition for survival not only do we explain What we see in the history of our planet

in the world today but we also come to expect it and so I think that this is definitely score one for scorn for atheism and I understand the problem of evil I'm not the first person to to bring this up right but I do think that the theodes that are often put forward about why evil exists such as free will such as Soul building such as higher orderer Goods just simply do not apply to the suffering of non-human animals That seems to me utterly inexplicable even the very existence of animals at all seems superfluous and

unnecessary if God creates the world with the intention to bring about human beings well maybe he invent maybe he creates animals because they're beautiful and they're great and they bring us joy but at what cost like if I gave you the opportunity to become a wild animal a random wild animal right now I could press a button and you're about to become a random wild Animal somewhere in the world and you think about the life that you're about to live the death that you're probably about to experience the fear that you're going to live until

that happens I think you kill yourself before I press the button and I think that says everything we need to know about the state of suffering how do you through this question I mean I'm sure it's come up for you oh it has uh and it's it's a hard problem I will grant you that I do Think your description uh with the use of the word brutal throughout is maybe a little extreme uh that in fact over all of these hundreds of millions of years of living things there is incredible beauty in this tapestry of

the things that have come to pass and some Joy has been experienced by those animals as well recognize most animals are not in position really to be aware of their own mortality so the idea that our idea of fear of death which we carry around Every hour uh would be also felt in a broad way I'm not sure that's true but that's not sufficient I can only understand this in the sense that again I see God as a god of order having put in place natural laws that are going to govern the behavior of matter

and energy the idea that a creative process that involved a lot of Supernatural inter positions in that effort uh was not the path that fit together uh with this rigorous sort of Scientifically well-designed plan whereas evolution is this incredibly elegant way to achieve those goals yes with a lot of pain and suffering to be sure although I don't think we have a full grasp of exactly what that experience might have been like uh hundreds of millions of years ago by all of those species as long as you're going to say that life doesn't go on

forever all of those had to be ultimately dead anyway so it's not as if It was only Evolution that caused them to die many of them died a natural uh death it's a hard problem I grant you that the data says that's what happened so perhaps you will accuse me as a Believer and then trying to rationalize that with the idea why would God let that happen and I do keep coming back to the idea that this feels like a reflection of God's interest in being a god of order or once those laws are established

they're going to be followed And at the very moment at the Big Bang the plan that would lead to us was in place and it didn't have to be tweaked along the way the way the intelligent design people would say in order to turn out light it was perfect from the beginning with that outcome assured and it wasn't blind and it wasn't mindless it was all all kind of baked into the plan from the beginning it may look random to us I don't think it's random to God I I there's there's so much to say

uh of course one thing I do want to point out at the outset here is broadly speaking a lot of the time when I speak to theists and they say look I I I don't obviously I don't know why there's so much suffering I can't explain that but I can say that I I I believe in God and I know that even if I don't know what the explanation is I TR that there probably is one I just don't know what it is a lot of people say that and I say Okay fine but then

if we rewind a moment to find tuning and I say look this is this is a strange mystery in the same way that for a Christian suffering is a great mystery but I'm sure there's an explanation even if I don't know what it is when I'm confronted with the great mystery of fine tuning I think I reserve the right to say look I don't know what a scientific explanation for this could look like but I'm sure that there is one and we'll get there someday right I Think in in other words the the the cop

out but it crudely if we were treating it in that way uh in the context of discussion about it can go both ways so I just want to make that um sort of put a pin in that on the point of suffering again we run into this problem that okay broadly maybe maybe God has to bring about the world in a particular way maybe there has to be a kind of order maybe there has to be a kind of ecosystem but it seems trivially true to Me that an omnipotent deity could have organized the world

so that there was not this kind of suffering for example animals could we have animals who are obligate uh herbivores right they exist we know that they can exist we know that they do exist he could have made all animals herbes it that doesn't seem to like may maybe that would sort of affect the ecosystem in in a in a pretty dramatic way but if from the very Beginning you had these self-replicating uh beings and then life who who were still sort of competing with each other for habitats and and still still maybe killing each

other not for food but for other reasons but just were herbivores you've eliminated an un fathomable amount of suffering and and when we say like okay maybe I was being too dramatic when describing the the brutality of life on earth like I I don't think that's true David atenor Once said um when people were had criticized his documentaries for how much violence they they included he said if you're upset by what we include you should see what we leave on The Cutting Room floor the natural world is filled with starvation and disease and predation and

just taking predation when a when a lion kills a zebra the zebra is usually too big to be killed instantly so it will die over an agonizing death with its windpipe caught in the jaws of A lion this could have been avoided it doesn't seem to me that this kind of outcome is something that was necessary for producing the kind of ecosystem only through which could conscious human agents have come into existence to have loved God I'm not even sure why the material world would need to exist in the first place if we're supposed to

be old you think all those observations that you're making are moral observations though no but that's a good Question because of course people will say to me look Alex you don't believe in Morality or you don't have a grounding for Morality how can you make these moral criticisms that's not what I'm doing what I'm saying is as Lincoln said of slavery if this is not wrong then nothing is wrong I have no problem saying that like yeah no there's nothing wrong with predation and disease and salvation and all this kind of suffering but that's an

atheist Paradigm The Atheist can say well there's nothing wrong with it but we also expect it on our worldview right the Christian says that this is a bad thing we don't like that this is happening but it is compatible with the existence of a good God so I don't have to say that it's bad I just have to say that I'm suspicious of the fact that if there were such a thing as objective goodness that this would somehow be a part of that Paradigm this animal Suffering is inexplicable to me and again if we say

that well God had to create a a balanced ecosystem that followed particular laws it seems like a an odd constraint that God simply had to use the process of animals tearing each other to to shreds for billions of years and starving and dying in confused Agony for billions of years and that's the only possible way that we could have brought About human life to be honest the amount of suffering that's that's that's happened on this planet if that really were the only way to bring about intelligent life on Earth I'm not sure that it was

even worth it I know what you're saying I think it's not one that I find it easy to dismiss um hulking horn the Anglican priest who is also a physicist writes about this and has designated this something he calls Physical evil that it is evil of the sorts but it is a consequence of physical laws uh an earthquake that kills animals and people because of tectonic plates that are moving around that are part of the way in which the laws of physics apply to our planet many of those were innocent people and animals but they

died anyway that in his description as a physicist once again sort of fits this it all comes with the package and unless you want God to start Intervening at every step along the way then it's unavoidable and it must mean that God cared so much for the Advent of people like us that could actually have a conversation like this about God that it seemed in God's judgment worth it you don't think it's worth it that means you're disagreeing with my God so decide whether he would like to enter the conversation yeah but but also I

don't know if that would be particularly Consoling to the deer with its leg trapped under a fallen branch and dying of starvation with a broken leg and you say to it well look I know that you're suffering but you have to understand all of this is in the service so the one day Francis colins and Alex Conor can have an intelligent conversation about God's existence appreciate that of course if the deer had not been hurt in some uh predatory way would had die eventually and probably an unpleasant experience Either way are you trying to argue

there shouldn't be death no it's not death that I see as the problem it's it's suffering and in fact a moment ago when you said that animals Don't Fear the mortality I I completely agree but I do think that they experience fear and anxiety about predators in the acute and sorry in the acute moment yes yeah yeah exactly so that's the kind of fear that I was talking about death is death is not the problem for me especially uh When we're considering the possibility of a of a Christian Paradigm where death is just the beginning

rather than the end of course no problem at all um but you want every animal to have a soft sweet death I well if possible then yes but maybe that's not possible what I do think is possible is a is not having a system which is designed from the ground up to require the miserable brutal death in order to progress the evolution of the Species that's what I think is possible it might be that animals Still Still suffer I I totally understand to see how that wouldn't be the case quite like suffering suffering is a

is a is a natural result of creating a world in which there are free agents living in a material world of course there are questions about why that Paradigm needs to be created in the first place but sure suffering but the problem of evil is not so much about the existence of Evil per se but it's sheer depth the level you know that there are so many ways conceivably that God could reduce the suffering that's baked into the system he might not need to intervene in particular cases sure so I understand if this particular animal

is about to suffer and and God sort of comes down from the heavens and protects him then he's playing favorites and that just is is a totally unfeasible situation and he couldn't do that every time but when It's baked into the system and it seems like that little tweak well let's make the animals herbivores or let's let's have the the teeth of predators contain a kind of um natural anesthetic so that when they sort of eat the prey you know the prey sort of you know what I like just there so many conceivable ways those

are also Supernatural interventions because that would not happen by natural process well unless it was unless it was in in the same way That there are there are natural um there all there're all kind of natural things which have effects on on on on our lives like you know there there are plants that give us hallucinogenic experiences and stuff like it doesn't seem crazy to me to think that they could have evolved saliva in a lion that has anesthetic properties that that doesn't seem like a supernatural intervention in that case because then that means that

there would be some Other pressure than advantage to the lion it may not be at all to the advantage to the Allon to have some sort of anesthetic in in its jaws uh that may actually be a disadvantage so if you're once's going to accept the fact that it's an ordered universe and life is going to evolve according to that then it's going to evolve according to that no matter whether it feels like I wouldn't have done it that way because of suffering do you feel the same about The the like the herbivore example and

these are crude examples but like the herbivore example I I had really thought about it I it's hard for me to think how God could sort of step in and make sure that the evolution of those genomes avoided a pathway that led uh to a carnivore uh that does seem like another one of those Supernatural interventions that for what I can see uh is a very strong reason God decided not to interfere with we can come to Miracles Later on about things that God chose to do to lift those rules and very special circumstances those

great ganglions of history as Lewis calls them what God had a message to say yeah I mean a lot of these questions that you're asking then you know you could look at philosophy and then people obviously look to more of religions to try to answer some of these questions and so even when I think about you know the word suffering that keeps Coming up over and over and over again um you know the next thing we would talk about was the resurrection of Jesus because the Christian story at least would propose you know that there

is a reason even though we don't fully know the reason why these things are being allowed but that God subjected himself to that same suffering and that was seen with Jesus on the cross and so let's talk about the resurrection a little bit and how that Intersects with so so why do you find the resurrection to be compelling as something that actually happened in human history like what led you to that conclusion well there's a lot of records that one can look at and those who are inclined to pick at each one of them can

probably do so but certainly uh the records of the New Testament of jesus' life and uh the teachings that he put forward in that very short period of time where we have that information um Seem for the most part pretty reliable on the basis of multiple individuals writing down very similar findings and the fact that he was in fact crucified uh seems to fit quite well with practices that were going on at the time I think it's pretty hard to say Jesus was a myth that's what I thought when I was growing up but I

think the evidence for Jesus literal historical exist that seems to be accepted pretty much as convincing as you know the same Of jodia Caesar uh and the fact that he was put to death on a cross also seems entirely supportable by the data that we have from various sources and before we get to the resurrection part the fact that he did die on the cross an unimaginably painful and difficult way to have one's life ended is something that of the Christian faith I find particularly helpful when I'm struggling with suffering for people I love or

even sometimes for myself I don't have to Explain to God what suffering is like and while it's really horrible because God isn't an observer God's a participant in that that's somehow reassuring and that's not true of all Fai but it's true of my faith and then the resurrection that three days later the tomb was empty the stone had rolled away and that multiple Witnesses saw what appeared to be the Risen Christ in various settings before the Ascension those require serious Attention and when you consider that many of those individuals went to their deaths um asserting

that as a reality and were not recanting that claim to save themselves at the last is impossible to set aside how many people would do that if they knew it was not true um if you have not read um Tom wri's 738 page the resurrection of the Son of God uh that had a big influence on me he's at awford right yes he is yes Yeah he's a friend um but I read this long before knew him and the way in which he puts together the case from both biblical and non-biblical sources I found very

compelling is it absolute proof no otherwise everybody would have decided to agree with it but I find it very compelling I think on the basis of the evidence there uh trying to decide what's the most likely outcome apply aam's razor to this situation the most Likely explanation is that he really was raised from the dead now you might say to me wait a minute you're a scientist and you've just been talking about how God put these natural laws in place that weren't to be broken this is breaking them in a huge way well yeah but

if they're God's laws and God chose in this exceptional moment to suspend them to do the most important thing that had ever been done then sure God has the power to do that too I can I can go with That I mean you you've you've had so many people on your podcast uh talking about this about the resurrection yeah yeah you've had William L Craig on you've had Bart Armen on uh you know a lot of people opposing viewpoints what is your current perspective of the Resurrection I what do you got against it well I

think it would be I think it' be greater Christianity were true there there's a lot about if we look at what the the gospels actually Say I think might be out of accord with what Christians tend to actually believe about Jesus but the resurrection is something that the the gospels press press quite hard and the New Testament presses quite hard um I am broadly speaking suspicious of the veracity of the accounts for a number of reasons I think that there are particularly the gospels are a big mix of Legend attempted biography and theologizing I Think

that for example the birth narratives I don't believe that this actually happened I I believe I I I think there's good reason to think that in at least one case the birth narrative was added later uh as uh then then the rest of the Gospel was written um I think these are quite obviously legendary accounts of the kind that we often see in ancient biographies of trying to give people spectacular births somebody sort of imagining that this Must be the case with Jesus that there there are a lot of reasons to think that that might

be the case we don't have you are aware that lots of people disagree about those of course how do you so how do you talking back and forth how do you discern and I I talked about this stuff about evidence proof earlier and then just trusting source of information how do you guys go about being like I think there's good evidence to suggest that this so like where would you be getting Your sources and where would you be getting your sources for this when it comes to the gospels I think that we have to sort

of look at Cross Source corroboration right and so broadly speaking we have the synoptic gospels which most scholars believe Mark comes comes first and then Luke and Matthew use Mark they're aware of Mark they copy it sometimes for the batim but they also seem to have this uh source of quotations of Jesus which has been Called Q for for quell the German word for Source right we don't know if that exists or not if it if it does then we've got this extra source Q if we don't then we essentially just have you know Matthew

and Luke's other source wherever they got that information right um there's also stuff that's only in Matthew so Broad speaking Scholars will refer to that whatever that wherever that came from is just m and the stuff that's only in Luke as L and then you Have John's gospel which seems to not know of the synoptic gospels and it's like totally different right and so we have different sources that we can pull out from these stories is kind of what you would expect exactly right and so so we have we have um we've got Matthew Mark

Luke John we've got Q we've got M we've got L got all these different sort of sources and what I think is that when a story occurs in dependently across numerous of these sources there's good Reason to think that it happened and when it only occurs in one we can't say it didn't but we have less good reason to think that it did you know so for example uh the story of doubting Thomas only appears in John's gospel Uh I that makes me sort of like less confident that it happened as a historical fact than

I would be of stories that appeared in all of the gospels for example so like the crucifixion for example happened we have all kinds of evidence Produ that happened from all kinds of different sources right maybe the story D and Thomas happened maybe but I can't say that with the same time do you believe that Jesus was crucified yes yeah yeah yeah and I think that I I can't think of a scholar who would not think that's the case except for someone like Richard carrier or someone who's a Jesus my mythicist all together he wasn't

really killed on the CR oh and of course Muslims of Course yeah that's that's another large group of people who probably don't think that but but Alex you're coming at this with priors that we should probably talk about approach the gospel you're approaching as a skeptic and so when you find evidence of something that doesn't quite measure up with the cleanest possible explanation you intend to ascribe value to that as something aha there you see there's a reason for me to be skeptical about tting Thomas because It only appears once oras I come at that

and think there are four different perspectives one of them very different and it has this particular story that's a really interesting story I don't know why I should feel doubtful that it's true on that basis because my prior is there's a lot here that really Rings true for me it's not that you should you should think that it it probably didn't happen or something what I'm saying is that we have less confidence in the Historicity of the story of doubting Thomas than we do in the crucifixion I think you'd probably agree with that too right

like if if you had to say which are you more certain have exactly so that that's what I'm saying is as as a starting point to see how we can but your introduction to the gospels was all about the skeptic part and L is more about wow there is such truth and and Beauty here yeah our priors are different of course for me I'm looking At these as ancient texts and trying to uncover what they mean what what were the authors trying to do what did they achieve in doing and like you know what is

the genre of this text like what what what are we attempting to do here for example I think that John's gospel is much more theological it seems like the author of John's gospel was trying to be more theological yeah that comes across and so well that might be if we were talking about doubting Thomas for Example doubting Thomas is a very moralized message blessed are those who believe without seeing you know it's it's about empiricism it's about it's about what and so it seems that if you've got a a author who's trying to do theology

more that sort of fits in with that picture right so when I'm trying to understand these texts I'm I'm I'm looking at like like what am I dealing with here right and the reason that I bring up those different sources is to Say that if something occurs in all of them then I think we've got very good reason to think that it's true one thing that Bart Man uh presses quite hard and I think he's probably right about this is Jesus as the apocalyptic Prophet it seems that Jesus believed that the world was about to

end and and we have like a few reasons to think that those quotes where he's talking about the world as about to end are probably accurate um And that they wouldn't be made up by by like you know future followers of of Jesus one interesting example of this by the way is when Jesus says that to his 12 disciples he says that you know after this all happens the 12 of you will be sat on the 12 Thrones which is a weird thing to say given that Judas was among the 12 he was talking to

implying that Judas is going to be one one of these 12 Thrones that doesn't seem like something a future Christian would have made up When they knew that Jesus betrayed him and so it's likely that this is something Jesus actually said right because it wouldn't have been made out and he s so okay we got this like apocalyptic Jesus so so there are things that I think we can be more confident about and things we I think we can be less confident about where does Jesus claim in his own words to be God in John's

gospel before Abraham was I am right in invoking the The Godly name That only appears in John's gospel the theological gospel it doesn't appear in any of the other gospels now does that mean that we can think it it didn't happen well maybe maybe not like it's it would be an argument from Silence to say that the other sources don't mention it but it does seem strange that if Jesus did actually just explicitly say at one point that he is God that the other gospel writers just sort of didn't think that it was Relevant to

include in their stories but what so you think you and so because it only appears in One Source in other words I think that's another reason to think that it's that it's that it's less likely to happen so so you believe Jesus was a real person he was crucified what is your interpretation of the events afterwards what do you believe happen so the reason why I'm bringing all of this up is to say like well what what can we know actually happened well It seems that Jesus was crucified and then what do our what do

our sources say about the resurrection well Mark's gospel the earliest manuscripts don't have the end of Mark's gospel there's a longer ending of Mark which isn't in the earliest manuscript so the earliest account that we have of Jesus or or rather sort of biographical account because Paul's letters are earlier than that but a biographical account the earliest biographical Account we have is Mark and the earliest versions of Mark doesn't contain or don't contain any post-resurrection appearances at all the story ends with the woman coming to the tomb and the tomb is empty but that's where

it ends and as the sources get later so we get Matthew and Luke and John the witnesses increase and the stories become more fanciful and Theological so then you in in in Matthew you get the appearance to the disciples in Luke you Get the road to Emmas which is you know further in in John it's only in John that you get the stories like doubting Thomas where he's so so the the later the source is it seems like the more witnesses we have and the more fanciful and Theological the story gets and so again hypothesis

did this really happen and it just so happens at the later the source the more detailed they become or is it the case that this was a mythological development that happened After Jesus died and that's why the later the source is written the more mythological and the more convoluted these appearances become it seems to me better explained by that methodological development especially considering that even the earliest gospel was already written decades after the death of Christ and the fact that all of the disciples went to their death except for John proclaiming this um and were

martyred as a result how do we know that By the descriptions we have so I I I I'm I'm and I'm genuinely asking by the way because I'm not sure about this again I'm also not a historian I'm just Nei an atheist YouTuber right like and and and by the way that's one of the things I love about these conversations and why I've so liked doing the podcast and having people like William Lane Craig and Bart ER on because unlike previously where I'd make a video essay did Jesus rise from the dead or I do

a debate you Kind of have to have the the argument and the point where I can sit down with these guys and be like but but hold on like Bart like how how do you explain how what happened then you know or like or like with right that would be F I'd beay I would love to I'd love to have to have that have doctor right on the show um but but uh yeah so so so the the the disciples going to their death I think the gospels record the death of two of the disciples

if I'm not mistaken you've Got uh judas's suicide and and and and one and one more I think but in other words I'm I actually don't know how like historically uh accepted it is that the disciples went to their death for their beliefs and it it may very well be go church church tradition stuff like that and then even CR cross referencing so William and Craig what he goes back to is Paul's statement I think in one Corinthians about the the Creed that was established which he says is within what Five years of Jesus's death

or something like that and then Paul's established all the main facts of the resurrection and that he points to at least as something that is proof of this entire thing actually taking place corroborated with other so Paul this is this is it gets really interesting right like there's so there's so much to to un pack here because people will say okay Alex you've said that as the stories go on the Stories become more more fanciful and the resurrection becomes sort of more of a cemented thing but what about Paul because Paul is earlier than the

gospels and Paul writes about like 500 people you know witnessing Jesus and Paul seems to believe in the resurrection yes but but Paul is not an eyewitness to the resurrection no right I I I don't think the gospels were written by ey Witnesses either but like a lot of Christians believe that they were and so Technically he says he in Damascus he was he Witnesses the Risen Christ in a in a in a very particular kind of way he's not witnessing a bodily resurrection of Christ which is the kind of thing we're trying to establish

right now yeah and so like I can totally imagine that Paul believed in in a resurrected Jesus and that he really did see a big blinding flash of light on the road to Damascus and that convinced him of of of Jesus's existence he did not Meet a physically resurrected human being that he'd spent years years traveling with and was able to sort of look at and interact with and press the hand into the the wound to make sure it was him and so it it seemed much more plausible to me that Paul could have been

mistaken than that like a disciple who thought he saw a physically resurrected Jesus who he'd spent years with could be mistaken Paul is the earlier Source sure but he's also the Less reliable source because he wasn't an eyewitness for that reason again your prior is to be suspicious of his conclusion well you talked about in your most recent book you talked about cognitive bias a lot and I think I think we do we like whatever your worldview is I think you you default to that doesn't matter if you're a Christian if you're not a Christian

or and can I just say as well like like with the fun tuning thing like like something very weird happened On Easter morning right like something something very strange happened at this point in history and and even if you're just trying to sociologically account for the beginning of a Christian Movement I mean it's it's a it's a it's a fascinating thing to to try to explain and I guess yeah I'm kind of coming at this with the prize of Suspicion but part of that is because that's the conversation that I'm trying to have right in

the same way and I mean this Sincerely if I were if I were sat with like a like a hardcore atheist or a Jesus mythicist I would be like hammering the uh the Christian scholarship as best as I could to sure to to to do that too but but I'm interested in what in what your priors are here Dr Collins like what what um what do you think you sort of bring to the table when you when you open this book again I came to faith in this journey uh that began in an atheist Perspective

and then recognized that that point of view could not really hold up uh to even rational argument if somebody once said to me suppose you had to draw a circle that represents all the knowledge in the universe uh what would that look like and of course okay now draw within that the circle represents what you know and you ever will know on this Earth so suppose the knowledge of God's existence is outside your circle seems Plausible on the scale how could you then say I know there is no gu and should it yeah and I

think anybody who says that is is is firstly mistaken about their epistemic capabilities and secondly probably not thinking of the right kind of God right I think that's probably the case right an easy way to kind of get away from the far end of that Spectrum into something that was more of okay let's figure out what might be Outside of what I currently know and what would it say about this question and again we traveled as we talked about earlier through the structure of the universe as an indicator of for me a pretty impressive mind

that is behind the way in which the whole thing has been put together and then onto the direction of does God care about me and onto the direction of Good and Evil we talked about that earlier and I wanted to come back to it I'm because You are arguing that if I understood you that you can't really say uh that the judeo-christian tradition claims to have an insight about Good and Evil because you can see things in the Bible that we would now say are evil that were considered okay that's part of that practice the

treatment of women slaves the Canaanites and so on I think there's a really important distinction here if you look down Through all cultures people of faith and not I will I will be challenged to find any culture that didn't agree there was such a thing as good and a thing that was evil but they might disagree profoundly about what fits in each list and things that we would now say are evil might have been considered not just okay but actually laudable in other face other cultures but they would still argue yes there's a good and

there's an evil and we're Supposed to do the good thing M and why is that and that's again where I found it difficult to explain that away on a purely evolutionary sociobiology kind of Direction and that forced me into this recognition that there is a source there that I can't explain scientifically and if I was looking for a source outside of science it seems like it's a holy source that cares about good and wants me to follow that rule even though I'm pretty lousy at it and That adds a whole another dimension to this mathematical

physicist God who now is a god of love and of goodness who's calling me to do the same so I approach the New Testament in that same perspective and I be quite honest I have not delved into a lot of the debates amongst New Testament theologians about M and Q and what got added here what got subtracted there um I just have not felt the need for that because what I read through there Is actually ringing true to me as something that represents what I think I need to know in big sweeping terms about God

and about Jesus I do find it compelling as far as not just the life and the crucifixion but the resurrection but I know I can't prove that but sometimes I get tired of all the arguments of the Jesus group and the theologians on one side or the other Sort of seem to be missing the point what what is it really trying to take away from this yeah did Jesus really walk amongst us did he really speak the words uh in Matthew 56 and 7 the sermon on the mouth which is just so radical so incredibly

outside of what you would have expected for the Son of God to be saying calling us to love not just our neighbors but our enemies it must have been radical at the time it must have set people completely on the hears to Hear that and we're still supposed to hear it and that that calls to me I can't unread that and I can't take away from what I see and again I maybe I'm too much influenced by those 738 pages on writes resurrection of the Son of God to build as he builds there a really

compelling case not an absolute proof but a compelling case for the most likely conclusion that the resurrection really happened and if so that's the most Important event that ever happened in history and I don't want to waste my time unnecessarily in in debating points about this bit of scripture or that it conveys a certain kind of compelling truth that I'm willing to take on board without being certain that it's absolutely true yeah I I think most most Christians probably uh think in in the same way about the resurrection of Jesus and I I think that

makes a lot of sense and people people come to believe for All kinds of reasons right there are people who say that they come to believe in God Lee Strobel is a good example of this someone who seems to just investigate the evidence for the resurrection and that's what does it I think like that's not the most usual case I think more commonly people come to believe in God for other reasons for sure for for moral reasons for social reasons or because it speaks to them in a way that they can't quite explain and Then

they they come to the gospels with this sense that they know it's true and they sort of want to learn more about it right and I think that that is perfectly legitimate but of course in in in my sort of worldview here as as an atheist or someone who doesn't believe in in Christianity and the resurrection of Jesus when somebody comes to me and says well then hold on what about this this you know historical case of the Resurrection that's where I kind of have To get a bit nitpicky cuz I'm like okay well well

if you're going to confront me with with evidence for the resurrection then I'm going to say well what about this what about this what about this but I totally understand that as a personal quest to understand you know the the the nature of Christianity and and coming to know Jesus as a Christian this is probably like an inappropriate approach to that right but as somebody who's confronted with the evidence that's the Approach that one has to take I think I got to ask you then is the is the path towards making a decision about belief

or non-belief is that a totally rational path or is there room for Revelation oh I think it's I think if if I experienced Revelation I think that could be a kind of rational uh depends what you mean by by rational but but but if like what do you mean do you mean will it be purely um like Argumentative oh no I mean there are certainly people who come to Faith on a purely emotional basis I've had this experience I realized God is real Jus spoke to me I honor that I recognize that that's not happened

to me but I have had those moments of feeling like there is something more than I can explain that seems to be part of a relationship that I am trying to build on and often wondering if it's there but once in a while it is I'll tell you a Story just a year and a half ago as I'm praying about um a book I had read which is about sort of the kind of spiritual discipline that ought to utilize if you're really going to get yourself closer to an understanding what your faith is all about

and praying about that and realizing I'm not very disciplined in my faith and my prayer life uh Alex is mostly a seeking of understanding of something I'm wrestling with and the skeptic would say well That's fine we should all do that and so it's just in your head but it feels like more than that feels like it's an opportunity to get some incoming insights that I maybe can't quite manage on my own and I almost never get a real specific message almost never and this time I did and it was quite jarring because it wasn't

a particularly happy message but it's changed the way I'm thinking about things for the last year half and the message was this don't Waste your time you may not have much left hm now that was true the day I was born you don't any of us have much time left if we're willing to think about it but this seemed very pointed uh it came a few months before I got a diagnosis of prostate cancer so maybe that was part of the premonition of what what lie in but it's really affected me that this is a

message that requires attention and that I don't Think just came out of my own head because it's not one I would have chosen but it's a calling of some sort not to put yourself in a place where days go by uh and you're just spending your time on things that really don't matter invest in relationships especially loving relationships invest in things that might alleviate the suffering that you and I post worry a lot about uh in my Cas as a doctor in in human suffering uh invest in ways that Maybe could bring people back together

at a time where we all seem so divided and uh mad at each other about everything it has that a fact now again that was Revelation that was not a okay I sat down and did a logical experiment here and figured out that was the message I need to hear and then I had it it's like wow surprised me that's what I mean by Revelation my coming to Faith had some of those moments as well where I could Reason myself close to the answer but it required something more than that to actually take the lead

and I guess coming back to you because this I want to turn the tables on you what kind of that Revelation have you had or would it take for you to put aside all of the rational arguments which clearly Lead You In This Direction but doesn't sound to me like you're 100% sure you're right and can you imagine such a thing That would change your mind yeah I mean I would love for that to happen I mean I I know exactly what it's like I was I was going to ask you a question I don't

want to sort of answer your question with the question but like what does it feel like or what did it feel like to to to be sat there praying and there were thoughts flittering through your head and you're thinking about taking out the trash and and then there's this one thought that appears in your head that You feel sort of isn't yours and how it is that you identify I mean you said a moment ago that it's because it feels like the kind of thought that you wouldn't have had or wanted to have so there's

that but like I don't know does it does it does it strike you do hear it do you see it you know what like what I felt it uh the the words were very explicit it wasn't like a nebulous kind of idea because those specific words don't waste your time you may not have Much left um and it did not make sense for this to be something that my mind was likely to have come up with because it was not what I wanted to hear as I'm in the middle of that um prayer moment which

it was a serious prayer moment I was reasonably well focused not expecting this yeah well I I can say that if I if I had that kind of experience I don't know if I had that experience in Isolation that I would sort of believe in God just just because I've I've heard some kind of thought that maybe if the nature of the thought was different if if the nature of the thought was distinctly like here I am something like that then i' if some if if I sort of Heard a Voice so to speak that

said something like you know don't waste your time you might not have much left or said something like you should spend more time with your mother Or you something like that then I would think that's pretty that's pretty that probably like you know increase my my Credence in God's existence to some minimal degree but I'd consider it this this sort of happy mystery if the if the nature of the message was theological in tone and it struck me with that kind of um that kind of surprise and intrigue then I I would absolutely I I

would love for that to happen I really would and I I wouldn't rule it out and I think that One of the most legitimate ways to come to believe in God if not the most legitimate way is through sort of personal experience Revelation it's not the kind of thing that's going to convince another person that's why it's laughed out of the room in debates if you're doing a public debate with somebody like if we were if we were here having a debate and you were trying to sort of convince me that God existed and you

said well I had this this sort of Message from God then everyone would laugh out the room because that's not going to convince anybody but but that's not supposed to convince anybody as far as it's convincing you yeah it's like the most legitimate way imaginable that's right to to come to believe in God and so of course that and so when people ask me you know what would it take I would highly doubt that I would be reading the blackw companions in actal Theology and I'd be on objection Two subheading three to the modal ontological

argument I don't think that one's in there actually but maybe like the the LI nitan cosmological argument and I and I'm re and I go like ah there and I get out my pen I underline it I'm like there he is found it you know I don't think that's how it's going to happening there exactly and and also there's a kind of um there's a kind of like it's kind of elitism that comes along with that kind of thought which is That if you have the time and the intellect and the and the studious sort

of int intellectual Constitution and the schooling and whatnot that you can understand this argument and you've got the money to buy the book and the time to sit down and read it and that's how you come to believe in God if that's how you're supposed to come to believe in God then that would make God a pretty unfair administrator of his love right and so it's it's clear that that's not How it's supposed to be done things to mind Matthew 11 uh Jesus words I thank you or I praise you our God that you have

hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to little children and he's talking about their awareness of fairy F reality yes so yeah we've been talking about things maybe appeals the I'm not sure having said that I'm sure that God meets you where you're at as they say and and of course if God is everywhere and God you know pervades the Natural world then of course you would find you will find him in the biological cell and and you will find him in the the the galaxies and the laws of the universe and whatnot

I want to ask you that too because again for me looking back when I was an atheist or an agnostic the moments where I had those glimpses of something that made me worried that I missed out were those surprising moments of the numinous um for me oftentimes music the the second Movement of Beethoven's Third Symphony the the the the funeral March in that C minor incredibly aching music that brings tears to your eyes even though you didn't expect it and somehow that aching longing comes into mind and you're like there's something here I'm supposed to

be part of more often but it's gone about as soon as you grasp it or something beautiful in terms of art an art although it's often for me the music does that happen to you to get Those glimpses of I mean CS Lewis calls that joy that we're surprised by Joy name of his book do you get those and what do they mean yeah well I I'm glad I'm glad you brought this up again I remember earlier when you used the word longing and I've always identified the the feeling of beauty as something a bit

like longing in a way that's also okay so I think that the word beauty is one of the most like promiscuous terms in the English language I think that like It Jo we refer to to a bunch of different like categorically different uh things and and kinds of things as beautiful I think that music is beautiful I think my wife is beautiful I think that that meal was beautiful we're meaning totally different things right and so we have to sort of we have to sort of hyper Focus here right so like with music for example

it is an incredible mystery that you can like play some Notes on a keyboard that vibrates the air in such a way as to bring up very specific emotions in a person that that's incredible and like yeah I've I've I've experienced that right I like that's and I feel very lucky to have experienced that with painting and art um it took a long time I used to sort of not really enjoy it or get it a lot of it had to do with contextualizing the art and learning a little bit about why it was painted

when it was painted what The world was like what this bit of art would have meant there and then that that now I'm I'm I'm I'm a sucker for for art and and galleries I think it's I think it's great and I've tried to pay attention to like what is going on what is going what's happening there right what do this say to you and I and and I wonder I've often felt like it's it's a it longing seems to fulfill the bill at least in in some of those cases because Longing for what if

you look at if you look at the well that that's the question right that's the question if you look at and and this is why by the way I understand why people use this argument from from beauty to God because like what is this thing that you're longing for well maybe it's something like a some kind of intrinsic maximum of of of beauty I find that quite difficult to cognize I find that difficult to sort of look at a painting and a bit of music And a really good pizza I think the thing that they

all sort of have in common that's pulling me to them if I sort of push those together I sort of get a godl looking figure maybe though maybe though I I I don't know but I do think that if you pay attention to someone's facial expression right when you when you walk around the corner you see a beautiful painting and someone's captured by it what face do they do they look at it do they smile do they go like Oh no it it's they sort of go like their face is like it almost looks if

you took a picture of the face and showed it somebody it looks almost like scared or it looks upset or it looks like like uncomfort it's sort of like a you know what I mean like it's sort of like H oh it's that that that crunched up face yeah I want to have that it's an ache so it's almost like an it's almost a negative emotion like the feeling of beauty is almost negative rather than Positive so why is it that people love it so much why is it they chase it out and that's where

I think you also get this um this stereotype of the well there's awe and wonder too or what this is so so the the the what is it that um Rudolph Otto said the mysterium tremendum at pass in and the the the Mysteria the mystery that that sort of fascinates you but also makes you tremble or something like that you know it's this and he's using that to Describe the numinous the the holy um it's it's terrifying at the same time as being fascinating you're like pulled in and pushed away at the same time and

I think if you think about the the cliche of the suffering artist you know the poet and the painter and they have a terrible life and you know they almost enjoy the suffering because it brings them better art what does all of this telling us it's it's telling us that there's something about beauty which is About negativity and disconnect and suffering and maybe it's something about feeling the suffering if somebody suffers enough they get the feeling that there's a way the world is supposed to be that it's not yeah and once you realize there a

way that the world is supposed to be that gives you teeology and once you get that thology you can start expressing the desire for that end in art but but I mean that the fact that that is a negative Emotion I think is interesting that's an open question to me by the way I I remember once I was I was sat uh we were in Corinth on on top of this this hill sort of looking over the view of Corinth and I I said to my friend I said he's a Christian and I said to

him what do you what what do you make when you see like a beautiful view like this like what's what's going on in your head trying to trying to understand you know someone Who believes in God what do they make of beauty and stuff and he kind of just shut me down he turned around and said um Alex when you analyze something you try to take possession of it when you enjoy something you let it take possession of you and that just about shut me up I was like that's not a b response I was

like fair enough maybe I'm spending too much time doing the analysis the moment you begin to ask the question what's going on in my brain as I look at this painting you're kind of doing the wrong thing oh yeah that's not going to help you experience the armor much yeah so so in other words I do experience that I don't know what to make of it I think it would be a bit crude as some like analytic philosophers uh do to sort of say well this is an argument for the existence of God but it

I understand what you're saying that it seems to sort of point to something a bit sign a bit sort Of out there a bit sort of nous if you were looking for evidence that you could experience that God is out there and looking for a relationship with you this feels like one of those candidates I think music is is is the best there because paintings are tricky because they're human-made and of course like music is human made as well but humans didn't make that effect humans didn't didn't create that ability for they they discovered it

you Know and there's a similar way in which that's true with like the way that colors are beautiful and put together but paintings are so often representations of real is just which also by the way seems completely unnecessary it seems that like there's no reason why we would need as like evolved creatures to develop this this faculty for beauty there is there our brain now that responds to Music differently than it does to speech which means it's there for a reason it's Evol really to recognize musical tones there's a circuit that recognizes pitch there's one

that recognizes intervals between the preceding note and the note you just heard and most interestingly there's a circuit that predicts the next note but do you think there's a survival benefit there must be in but but in in like not just being able to tell different pictures apart and stuff but Like of of the ability to enjoy music enjoy and draw others together with you mothers singing lullabies to their babies before maybe they even could speak a language uh people getting together to mourn uh a disaster situation or a loved one okay or are getting

together to sing a fight song well okay maybe there is a reductionistic evolutionary explanation I don't know maybe should maybe we should be the one to no there's some There but that doesn't mean it doesn't have the same significance for us just as I I don't think the fact that we can talk about these things means that they are less likely to be important to God our brains are intended to provide the substance by which we can achieve Revelations that we wouldn't have been able to do yeah I I do wish I had a bit

a bit more interesting to say about from like an atheist side about the beauty stuff I think the only way to do that Would just to be to offer some kind of like reductionistic account of why the human brain has evolved to sort of be able to tell pictures apart and some of them are more pleasing and others and then we've like co-opted that to create you know artificially stimulating things with like pianos and guitars and I'm sure we could do that but like you say let's not waste time I think most people probably are

aware that that kind of argument could be made it's still it's Still a wonderful mystery isn't it and and I think that the the the key thing here throughout all of this is that like I'm not convinced by fine-tuning that it's like a good reason to believe in God but it's a great mystery the Christian isn't convinced by suffering that there is no God and that this undermines everything but it is a great and terrible mystery you know the beauty is a is a is a great and perhaps terrible mystery As well the resurrection is

a strange moment in history like what happened on Easter morning it's all it's all an incredible mystery and I think anybody who professes confidence in in the knowledge of of any of these things is is either like a really really talented physici uh physicist who actually just does know a ton about fine tuning he can probably like school both of us fine but But when it comes to those sort of big consequential questions about the existence of God and stuff like that and what beauty really means man like if if somebody professes that kind of

confidence on questions like that then I immediately treat them with suspicion maybe that's one of my priors we've covered a lot of ground today the last question I wanted to give both of you cuz you're you're coming from different perspectives but why do you feel like This question matters that we've been exploring this entire conversation like you clearly talk talk explore these Realms on your own podcast constantly and you've you know dedicated your whole life after com coming to Faith it's the most important question is there a god I defy anybody to come up with

one that matters more than that I don't want to go all the way to Pascal's wager but if there is a God and God cares about me And I'm ignoring that that deals like a really bad waying live your life much less whatever comes after if there isn't a God and I'm wasting in my time uh by worshiping something that's not there that's a really bad outcome too this is a really important question and yet I think until I was 25 years old and one of my patients lying in the bed suffering from terrible heart

disease asked me what do you believe doctor I had paid no attention to that question And I didn't like it but it was the right question it's still the right question I have my own answer Alex has a different one but we're both on a road it's hard to know exactly what that road will lead us to yeah um I think Christopher hiton once said that the road to Damascus is not a oneway street so we don't know which way uh we we're we're traveling necessarily but but you're quite right that we're on that road

I think that it Is an interesting question at at sort of first crude analysis like it's it's an interesting I mean think this question of God's existence you sit down at the pub with somebody you're talking about God and you could go anywhere with this person if if if if you meet if I meet a Christian in a p and say why do you believe in God I might be about to talk about physics I might be about to talk about beauty in poetry or history or biblical scholarship I might be there's So much contained

in this world of discussion that even if you're just interested in science or you're just interested in ethics or you're just interested in history this like God question just allows you to explore all of that so it's interesting what is it leou said about the I don't know if talking about the resurrection particularly or about Christianity that it's either the most important truth in the world or if it's not true then it's Like it's like trivially false the one thing it can't be is uninteresting or un is is sort of important it's either the most

interesting or the least interesting question in the world it can't be kind of important and so why is this important well if God exists as Dr Collins says it is the most important question that exists if God doesn't exist and all of this is is fabricated or mistaken then more important questions would include things Like what are we going to have for dinner tonight and you know what's your favorite song right because if it if if it's untrue whatever it's sort of inconsequential but in that sort of pascalian spirit as long as there is that

possibility of that truth the sort of infinitude of of of utility that comes from that is makes it probably worth exploring even for for an atheist see this one totally agree well Thank you guys for being here it's good to end on a point of agreement is yes it is