AS242: Einstein, Godel, and God

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 242, and I am your slightly under the weather host, Thomas Smith. Alright, bit of a change of pace for you guys on this. I love finding interesting, unique topics, and this one certainly was that. I had a listener email me asking and talking about Gödel's incompleteness theorem and the implications it had for God and all this. I was fascinated by it, and we ended up having a discussion about Gödle and Einstein's views on religion, religion, quantum physics, and the implications on religion, and Kurt, the person I'm about to talk to here, is is in a place that I wonder if maybe some others of you are in where he doesn't want to call himself an atheist, really, and it's funny because we have a bit of a debate about it and can be a little frustrating at times.

0:01:18 Thomas: I think there's some resistance maybe due to upbringing and all that, but I hope you like what you hear and And don't worry, I wasn't sick when I recorded this, so it'll sound better.

0:01:34 Thomas: Joining me right now is a listener by the name of Kurt. How are you doing?

0:01:37 Kurt: Great, Thomas, how are you?, yeah,

0:01:39 Thomas: Doing pretty well. It's a little rainy today, so sorry if that's in the background. I'm not sure if it's making it to the microphone, but I'm enjoying it since, as usual, California is still in a drought. Even though we get tons of rain, we're still told water could just run out any minute and we'll all be dead. So that's good. That's how I am. How about you?

0:01:57 Kurt: Well, you know, here in Michigan, we have our great lakes, so, it's my fear that your water runs out, and you steal mine, so., you

0:02:03 Thomas: See, we should should have thought of that. We should have had like some great lakes. I don't know why we didn't, you know, in California when, when the gold rush happened, they should have built some great lakes like you guys did. That's what you did, right? Pretty sure that's how it worked.

0:02:12 Kurt: Yeah. Well, I think what's gonna happen is we'll channel it into your aquifer, right?, and then you pull it back up, and then, you, you build your, your almond fields, and just let it evaporate, I

0:02:23 Thomas: Right. We just transfer. Yeah, that's what LA does to the rest of California. They just have to take it. Oh, you got water up there?

0:02:29 Kurt: Was looking into this recently,

0:02:30 Thomas: We'll just, uh, so you So, uh、 Kurt emailed me very, very interesting email to consider some stuff. And I thought there was a lot there. We went back and forth. I think there's a lot to talk about, but I don't totally know how to introduce it. But I do want to ask a bit about your background, where you're coming from here, maybe how you found the show, that sort of thing, where are you in your atheist journey? What do you think?

0:02:30 Kurt: There's, there said desalination is a big business out in California that I think it's gonna pick up, so yeah, Yeah, I found your show through a friend, actually. Been listening for maybe 20 or 30 episodes, so not long. And I guess my journey from a spiritual perspective, whether you want to call it agnostic or atheist, is relatively new. I mean, I grew up Catholic, so I went through the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. They call it the CCD in Catholic Church.

0:03:14 Thomas: Right, right. Hmm. Yeah, they always have like some fancy name for stuff that's like, wait, what are you saying really?

0:03:31 Kurt: Right, right. Right. So I went through that process, you know, all the way through high school and kind of fell out of it in college. And honestly, when you go to engineering school, you don't really have much time for else. So anything else, you kind of get stuck where it's like life just is that. So self-reflection is relatively minimal. So now that I'm breaking out of that period of my life, re-evaluating.

0:03:47 Thomas: Hmm, yeah. Right, and so I'll say a little bit about the email and then I'll probably let you set some stuff up. But you emailed about, you know, well, first it was relating to Gödel's incompleteness theorem and that sort of thing. But mainly the reason I was interested in what you had to say is because it sounds like you're coming from a place, and feel free to correct me later on if I get any of this wrong, of course, but it sounds like you're Coming from a Place where you're still, you're not really calling yourself an atheist. Is that accurate?

0:04:23 Kurt: Yeah, I don't want to outright say that. However, I was looking at at this religious tolerance website and they define weak atheism as basically one who doesn't deny uh god outright in the sense that if it were to be proven later on they would be a theist, so there's weak atheisme, and then there's strong, yeah, right,

0:04:25 Thomas: Right.

0:04:41 Thomas: Well, again, there's so much to talk about here, and we'll get into it, because I think anyone, any rational person of any kind, whether it be religious or otherwise or whatever, when something is quote-unquote proven, I think they're going to accept it for the most part. I don't know who you're going to ask, hey, if something is proven, will you accept it? No. Like, who's going to say that? But anyway, yeah, so that's an example. I mean, it sounds like you're maybe still sort of agnostic or calling yourself that, or at least questioning.

0:04:58 Kurt: You'd hope yes, I would define myself as agnostic, yeah.

0:05:15 Thomas: Sure. And where you're coming from, what I find so interesting and worthy of conversation is, A, you've referenced, you know, Einstein, Gödel, a lot of people like that where, and part of your questioning has been, look at these brilliant people and look at how illogical they were, etc. And, you know, Einstein was agnostic. I want to talk about that also because I also have considered doing a whole episode on like, what did Einstein really think about God? Because I think that's an interesting topic too, and we can kind of cover that a bit in this conversation. So you're coming from a place that I would say I was at maybe 10 years ago. I don't know. Where I didn't really believe, but I also was like, I kind of wish this were true.

0:06:01 Thomas: And I kind of, well, I wish there was a God and I'm hesitant to say, you know, like I outright don't believe. So it's interesting.

0:06:08 Kurt: It's less about there being a god as much as maintaining spirituality. You want there to be something a little bit more to life than just, you know, the cold hard physical truth, right?

0:06:16 Thomas: Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, I don't know about that. See, that wouldn't describe me. So maybe I was, sorry if I was projecting a bit onto your view, because I don'T, I've never thought of myself as any sort of spiritual anything. My thing was, I wished there was was an afterlife and I wish things weren't so final. I wish it wasn't just, hmm,

0:06:17 Kurt: Oh.

0:06:33 Kurt: No, I have no, I have no like desire to go to heaven or anything like that. For me it's more of like, uh, I guess you could kind of think of it in the Buddhist sense where you have, I wouldn't say strictly reincarnation, but the fact that we're all just like made of atoms, and then once we die we become other types of living creatures. So you can kind of think about it as a spiritual, spiritual universal truth.

0:06:52 Thomas: Interesting.

0:06:53 Kurt: Where you don't, you don't necessarily die like your soul, but you're still part of the universe, right?

0:06:58 Thomas: See, and that's funny because I don't care about that because I take that as obvious. I mean, yeah, you're part of it. But what I care about is all the memories and the knowledge and everything like that. Unfortunately, on the pure naturalistic view, it is true that no matter how much meaning you want to try to put into life, in some odd billion or trillion years, there won't even be a universe anymore. There's literally no point to anything. And that's what scares me and I have a hard time dealing with personally.

0:07:00 Kurt: Right. Right.

0:07:25 Kurt: Well, okay, actually you can't say that there will be no universe, because you don't know that it won't turn into another universe or something, doesn't, you know, warp or alter over time.

0:07:38 Thomas: If it turns into another, let's put it this way, without getting into a detailed physics discussion, I think it's pretty uncontroversial to say that that there is a point in time when human life will not exist anymore and not even evolved

0:07:39 Kurt: Yeah. Oh, human life, sure, but you're saying universe. What?

0:07:55 Thomas: Human life. Well, yeah, but I mean, no, it may, if the universe starts over or if there's like a mini universe or, you know, if there'S any of those wacky things, some new life may evolve, sure, but it won't have any connection to us. I mean if, so we all, I think, I

0:07:57 Kurt: About Life in general, I'm just saying you can't say that life will cease to exist entirely, I mean, sure. Certainly, not, but if you look at a physics perspective, you got the conservation of matter, right, so it doesn't just disappear.

0:08:23 Thomas: Don't know. I mean when you start, well, okay, this is getting into a physics discussion. So, I don't think we should have that discussion.

0:08:27 Kurt: It could go down so many different roads, right? Now.

0:08:29 Thomas: Yeah, so I think we should get back to your original thoughts, and sorry for putting so much into that. Go ahead.

0:08:33 Kurt: Okay. So right. The initial questioning had to go from, you know, okay, so engineering, you typically take a broad base course list, right? So for me I'd look to, to the leading, I guess, ideas and individuals in the scientific field, whether that be like physics or math. I'm thinking, okay, what do these people see in terms of theism? Are they outright denying it? Are they uncertain? Or are they, you know, just basically what I'm seeing across the board is that most people are uncertain, because the more that you learn, the more you you realize you don't know, and fundamentally this is like, I guess, the root of my argument, that we really just don't no, there are certain unknowable truth.

0:09:23 Thomas: And this is something I may, and I apologize for this, but I may try to convince you of this if you don't mind.

0:09:24 Kurt: Okay, sure. No.

0:09:30 Thomas: Did I interrupt? Do you want to say more on that? So, the first question I have for you, which can open up some other discussion, is, why would you be looking to mathematicians for a question, or even, I guess, you, sure, yeah.

0:09:33 Kurt: That is my pitch, not strictly mathematicians, but I'm saying scientists in general, so like Einstein was

0:09:47 Thomas: Okay, why Would You Be Looking to Them for a Question on God? I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong, I'm just questioning it. Wouldn't you think a philosopher might be a more appropriate field? Like, philosophy would be where this is dealing with the question in general, rather than, you know, numbers and theorems and all that. What do you think about that?

0:09:48 Kurt: Okay.

0:10:06 Kurt: For me, one is objective and one is subjective, okay? So if I'm gonna look for truths, I'm going to look for an objective truth, not something that's subjective that you just kind of thought your way through. I want, obviously, as a scientist, you want to have as much evidence as possible, right? If you can like derive some sort of mathematical truth about the universe, that speaks more to me than someone's opinion, or I guess philosophy on life, because, you know, there's lots of different philosophies that can apply, but it doesn't apply universally. Universally.

0:10:10 Thomas: That. Hmm. Sure, sure.

0:10:41 Thomas: Okay, but we, there is, we haven't, no one has derived a mathematical truth about God or a scientific experiment about God. So, when you reference these people, like Einstein and Gödel, and is there anyone else I'm missing that you, that you're looking to?

0:10:56 Kurt: One that was in the book, Einstein's God, that was a lot of the preliminary research, I guess you could say that it did. There was a few others like John Polkinghorne, Freeman Dyson. And then they also, oh,

0:11:08 Thomas: So, these people are still giving their philosophy. I think that's where I would disagree with you, because, yes, Yes, they are in the sciences and they are dealing with hard data on some stuff, but there is no scientific question, I don't think, and this is something we can debate, of whether or not God exists, because God as a concept can elude science. You can always say, well, no, he's not there. You can't find him in this test because... So, therefore, these people are still giving their philosophy.

0:11:34 Kurt: Absolutely. Definitely. But they're much closer to the objective reality. Reality.

0:11:41 Thomas: How do you know that?

0:11:43 Kurt: Because they, I mean, if you're looking at, okay, quantum physicists, for example, I mean you can't, they're not measuring electrons per se, but they're doing lots of experimental evidence-based conclusions, right?

0:11:58 Thomas: What do those tell you about God?

0:12:02 Kurt: I guess you can infer certain types of conclusions, but this is my point. My point is that we don't know. So you can philosophize all you want, but I look to these particular highly logical, I guess that's the key, they're very logically oriented individuals. Sure.

0:12:21 Thomas: Right. Right. Well, I think, I mean, I, I think, now you could just accuse me of being biased the other way, but I think it could be a bias of yours, given the field you're in, to think that philosophers are not incredibly logical because I,I think philosophy is, is,is a, a big, uh, portion of where you're going to get the most logical people who are really systematically thinking through things. And over on the philosophy side, uh... I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm pretty sure the consensus is a lot higher that there's not enough evidence for any sort of God. I don't know that they would all be atheists necessarily, but I would think they would be not theists, you know, not convinced. And why

0:13:00 Kurt: What about the evidence for a lack of God, though, because otherwise there's the potential that it still is a truth that God does exist. Oh.

0:13:04 Thomas: Would you need evidence for a lack of God?

0:13:12 Thomas: Well, there's several things I would point you toward. So, I would say Russell's teapot is a great example. I'm sure you've come across this kind of thing. I I mean, we don't have evidence that a teapot is not floating in outer space, orbiting the sun somewhere where we just can't detect it because it's too difficult. I mean we don'—we don't know. That's not proven. Cannot be proven. But it's not worth thinking about. I mean it's—I think that would be the big difference. I believe maybe you are looking for a definitely there's no God, 100% we know there's no God. And I don't think that many people hold that point of view. I certainly don't. I'm convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the God of the Bible doesn't exist, for sure.

0:13:57 Kurt: Yeah.

0:13:57 Thomas: I mean, there's no doubt in my mind.

0:13:58 Kurt: Like we can agree on that, right?

0:13:59 Thomas: Okay, well, there you go. I mean it's important to confine and sort of define what we're talking about here, because I think that's another thing that is a problem with Einstein's views, not with him, but with people interpreting what he said, is they apply their own version of God to a lot of it. And he even, in some of the quotes I've looked at, he said like, yeah, sure, I don't, you know, I'm not, he's not an atheist. Einstein definitely said he wasn't an atheist, but people would write him and say like, oh, so then this Jesuit priest, you know, like he convinced you to do whatever. And Einstein says, no, no. If you're going to go by what this Jesruit priest thinks, yeah. Sure. I am an atheist relative to that. I mean, if you're gonna put all the, like a personal God and a God who does all this.

0:14:00 Kurt: Okay.

0:14:49 Thomas: Oh, not, not at all. In no way does he believe in that. So I think it's very important to limit how we're applying these terms.

0:14:56 Kurt: Sure, well, we'll define the scope of my definition of God, I guess, going back to the beginning where I guess I spoke about spirituality. I would think of God as being more pantheistic, where it wouldn't be a direct interaction, and I guess is where we get into the quantum aspect, because you have these uncertainty principles where you don't know the outcome, strictly speaking, at a quantum level. Okay, so there's... there's room, I guess, and this is, this is whole, the whole argument of John Polkinghorne, is that there's some room for God to act at the, like, like, most minor, minute level,

0:15:00 Thomas: Okay, and that filters up somehow into the bigger things?

0:15:32 Kurt: So, I guess the concept is, like, the butterfly effect. That's the idea, right,

0:15:36 Thomas: Okay, I have all kinds of questions for this now. So one of the interesting things in reading about Einstein's views is, as you might know, and a lot of listeners might know he has the famous God does not play dice quote with the universe. Universe?

0:15:50 Kurt: And that's totally taken out of context. That's so misused.

0:15:53 Thomas: Well, maybe. Okay, let me know if I'm taking this out of context, but it does apply to what you're talking about. It does apply it to quantum theory. He thought the probability, yeah, he didn't like it, and we know now, to a reasonable degree, that he was wrong. I mean, he expected that that view of the universe wouldn't hold, that the quantum theory where there's, like, the probability distributions for what's going to happen, he thought, no, there's got to be And to be fair, I mean, he could be right eventually, but, you we have to be, I think, honest with the state of quantum physics, which is the predictions it makes are confirmed and experimentally confirmed to incredibly high degree, and it looks as though that is the truth. It looks as though Einstein was wrong about God playing dice. And so what is interesting about that is he was also expressing a pantheistic point of view, which I think is what he said he might subscribe to as some sort of pantheism.

0:16:02 Kurt: He didn't like the idea of quantum.

0:16:54 Thomas: But he did so for the opposite reason of the guy you're talking about. He thought, oh no, there's no, this has got to be wrong. I think he thought everything was 100% deterministic, but he still believed in pantheismus, whereas this person you're taking about thought the indeterminism of quantum physics was the very place that God could live, which I find interesting.

0:17:04 Kurt: Right, right. And that's his whole argument. And he also, this is another interesting point that I, typically people attribute God to being all-knowing, right?, which would mean that, technically, it is deterministic in the way that things play out over time because how would you not know the future if you weren't all-knowing, right? So, yeah.

0:17:33 Thomas: Right. There's a lot of philosophy there, but I'll take that for sure.

0:17:37 Kurt: So one interesting point that he made was that, no, God doesn't know the feature. So he plays in the quantum level and all the effects go up from there, like the butterfly effect. But then, I guess I just don't understand because there was a few different points that he mad. And this, this is, this could be an interesting discussion eventually. But he did make a statement about Christianity, though, at the same time, that was like basically accepting the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. So I was very confused by his interview. With Krista Tiff.

0:18:11 Thomas: Well, see, that's what I'm talking about. I think he's, I think people try to smuggle stuff in. I thing people try to say, oh yeah, there's room for God somewhere way out in, you know, deep space, somewhere in a pocket of quantum physics. Oh yeah, yeah, God can exist. And then Jesus rose from the dead. You know, like that does happen a lot. And so

0:18:15 Kurt: Yeah, I agree.

0:18:31 Kurt: It doesn't invalidate his argument, though, entirely. It just I just don't understand that point of view. But from that perspective, I still think that there is the potential that, you know, God could exist at that level.

0:18:43 Thomas: Let's Talk about that. Well, let me real quick finish one last thing with what we were talking about. The reason I think God is a philosophy question 100% and not really tied to quantum physics at all is because of what I just said, where Einstein and this guy you're talking about are apparently both pantheists, but they had conflicting and opposite views of how physics really worked, which shows you can hold that view without, you know, being tied to the science, really. You can always find a place for God to go, which is why it's a philosophy question to me.

0:19:17 Kurt: Right. Sure.

0:19:19 Thomas: But let's turn toward your particular God. So, you think there, and you spelled it out a little bit, but do you think There Could Be, rather? I know you don't exactly believe in God, but But I

0:19:30 Kurt: No, no. So really, this is what the fundamental belief of an agnostic is, that we will never be able to prove the existence or non-existence of a God. So I couldn't be atheist because I can't prove that God doesn't exist.

0:19:43 Thomas: Think, well, I think atheists don't prove God doesn't exist. That doesn't happen. None of us do.

0:19:48 Kurt: You just believe it. Right.

0:19:50 Thomas: No, we don't accept the claims. This is brought up all the time. There are any number of claims that we can't prove. Unicorns, magic fairies, whatever. The whole universe is a turtle shell. You don't have to prove things don't exist in order to say, I don't, you know. Know?

0:19:51 Kurt: You just belief that. Sure. Yep. Yes. No. Right. Which brings me to my next point. To be an... Okay.

0:20:13 Thomas: Well, but hold on, clear up what you just said, because you just said that you couldn't be an atheist because you would never say you could disprove God. But I'm telling you right now, I'm an atheist and there are all kinds of atheists out there. It's within the definition of atheism that you don't have to disprove god.

0:20:16 Kurt: Okay. Oh, yeah. Sure, but this brings me to my next point. I'm not saying that you have to disprove God. I'm saying that it takes as much faith to believe in God as it does to not believe in God.

0:20:32 Thomas: Okay, sure. Now, there's where I have a big disagreement with you there. Do you need to explain that further? When

0:20:45 Kurt: Okay, go ahead. Yeah, I would like to hear your response to the hypocrisy of faith.

0:20:50 Thomas: Someone Someone comes up and tells me, have a 5,000 ounce brick of gold buried under my property. I have it. It's there. I can't show you it, but it's just under there. And I say, I don't believe you. I don'T have as much faith as the person who's making the claim. It doesn't take faith because

0:21:15 Kurt: Why is that? If they tell you that, how do you know that's not true? How do you knows that they don't believe that?

0:21:20 Thomas: You see their, oh no, they might believe it. I'm not saying they don't believe it.

0:21:23 Kurt: Okay, also, for the sake of this discussion, before we go further, we have to remember Remember that the scope of these arguments have to remain within like a reasonable example. For example, I don't believe in a personal God. I think that's outrageous. So keep it at the pantheistic quantum level where things could potentially happen.

0:21:42 Thomas: Okay, let me think about what implication that has. So, well,

0:21:44 Kurt: So you can't say unicorns. There's not a floating unicorn inside of a tea kettle somewhere in sector nine because obviously that's crazy.

0:21:52 Thomas: Right. Well, it is applicable when you make broad statements, and maybe we do need to clarify here. So, you're not saying it takes as much faith to disbelieve in a personal God as it is to believe in a person of God. You're not seeing that then.

0:22:07 Kurt: We're not talking about personal God here because we both agree that's great.

0:22:09 Thomas: Well, but just clarify. Do you think

0:22:11 Kurt: Crazy, um,

0:22:11 Thomas: That it takes less faith to be an atheist with respect to the God of the Bible than it does to believe in the Godof the Bible? Just answer it for the sake of people knowing where you stand.

0:22:23 Kurt: It would take more faith to believe in the God of the Bible than to not believe in it.

0:22:27 Thomas: Fair enough. Okay. So, just to make sure we're all on the same page. So you're saying once it comes to a God... Now, I may need you to define this God a little bit, which is impossible. This is the hard part to do, but it's important.

0:22:31 Kurt: Yes. Hey, okay, Sure, I'll do my best. It's basically the way we've been talking, it's at the quantum level, where you can't prove or disprove, but there is room for action from, uh, I guess maybe a universal being or something similar along those lines, right?

0:22:52 Thomas: There being room for action does not not necessarily even entail that there's something there to take action. So that seems like inarguable. I mean, if the argument is there is room here for a deity, then I can't argue with that. Yeah, sure, there's room. I means, you could also say there's a room outside of the universe. There's all the room in the world. There's as much room as you want. It's whether or not that that you're asserting there is something there moving, pulling the strings.

0:23:26 Thomas: Okay. So, you're saying it takes just as much faith for me to say, well, well first off, but again, atheists always say, like, and I would say, there's no reason to believe there's anything pulling thestrings there. That's what I

0:23:12 Kurt: Right, yes, yes, right, there's nothing pulling on those, right? And

0:23:43 Thomas: Would Say. I mean, I don't say, go ahead.

0:23:43 Kurt: That's to me that's a philosophy now, because that gets into what's the purpose, what's the meaning, right?

0:23:50 Thomas: Well, it's all philosophy. Me ask you this. Tell me about this hypothetical God. I mean, does it have wants? Does it want something from us? Is it all powerful? Is it all knowing? What is it?

0:23:52 Kurt: Yeah, absolutely. Right, This is not my God, this is a theoretical God that I'm saying could exist, right? So, I, I don't know, I don't know, I

0:24:11 Thomas: Right, but you have to tell me the qualities of something that could exist before I could even make a decision.

0:24:17 Kurt: Can't, I can't lay claim to know the intent, all right, because I have no idea. This is, this is a matter of why I think that religion potentially is not bad, okay? I think that modern day religions have warped any sense of spirituality to the personal gains of whoever's leading that group, okay? But I'm saying the purpose of religion, maybe a long time ago, millennia ago, would be to answer the questions of purpose and meaning and apply basically additional reason to live.

0:24:52 Thomas: Okay, now we're not talking about a God anymore. So where, why, and how would you suspect, uh-huh, what

0:24:57 Kurt: Because Well, you asked me to define the God, and I'm saying that the God would be defined upon whatever the particular needs of that community were, okay?

0:25:05 Thomas: Would be the connection between that and the quantum, uh, you know, uh quantum space?

0:25:10 Kurt: So, say I'm, say that I don't know what the intents of this God are, but there could be a greater idea that we're completely unaware of that would be motivating this, I'm, we don't, we can't claim to know what the end goal of this superior being is. No.

0:25:29 Thomas: Is it safe to say the quantum thing is kind of irrelevant or not?

0:25:34 Kurt: No, because that's the space that it acts in, the superior acts at that level.

0:25:36 Thomas: Why, uh okay, so you you think it needs a space to have act to act in in order to have any sort of chance at existence. Now, what if the universe was discovered to be 100% deterministic? Would that then get rid of your

0:25:54 Kurt: That would know that would be Einstein's universe, right? Not the quantum.

0:25:55 Thomas: God? Right, but I'm asking you a hypothetical. We discover that tomorrow somehow. What would that do to your, I know it's not your God, but the God we've outlined here, what would that due to that?

0:26:11 Kurt: So, are you saying that determinism now exists in the sense that, uh, I guess I don't understand the question. Uncertainty

0:26:16 Thomas: Here's what I'm saying. You open the newspaper tomorrow and it says, you know what? Turns out they figured out the underlying, somehow the underlying mechanism.

0:26:24 Kurt: To quantum physics or something like that.

0:26:24 Thomas: Yeah. And it's not actually uncertain. Somehow. I'm just, just a hypothetical. What would, would that eliminate the space for your God that you're outlining? Interesting. See, this is why I actually think that that quantum stuff is not really really relevant? Because I would say, if I were you, my answer, well, I wouldn't have shaped the God that way to begin with, but what I would think would be, well sure, there's space outside of the universe for God to have just lit the match, you know, set the spark off.

0:26:34 Kurt: Um, yes, sure.

0:27:00 Kurt: That's another. Yeah, that's another idea, too. That's another philosophy.

0:27:03 Thomas: Exactly. So the whole universe could be deterministic still, but he started it. And so it doesn't really, I mean, that's why I find that kind of irrelevant to the question.

0:27:08 Kurt: Yeah, the clockwork universe. Yeah, that's a common idea. Well, that idea is old. That will never happen. I mean, if you're going to look at the scientific basis for quantum mechanics, this is the world we operate in now. Okay? You've got the different... You look at the different scale. Okay? At the quantum level, things behave way differently than they do at our level where Newtonian physics take over.

0:27:37 Thomas: Right.

0:27:37 Kurt: Okay? But this is just a reality. You can't say, in the newspaper tomorrow, what if they prove quantum mechanics is not unpredictable, this is the inherent quality of quantum physics, no.

0:27:44 Thomas: No, they could. You don't think we could ever discover an underlying logic to it?

0:27:50 Kurt: And that's my point, that's the whole point of Girdle, is that there are certain things that are completely unknowable, hence why I'm agnostic, because there are things that aren't knowable. I

0:28:00 Thomas: You, wow, that's interesting, because I don't know that that follows, because otherwise, way back in, you know, wait, when was Gertl around? Now, Now I'm blanking.

0:28:12 Kurt: Think that was the Earth, early 1900s. He

0:28:13 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. So not, not too terribly old, but way back then, then that's

0:28:18 Kurt: Was friends with Einstein, actually, interesting. Well,

0:28:20 Thomas: Right. That's right. So I don't, I don'T think what you're saying is true because it's almost like you've proved an indeterministic universe just by knowing about Gödel's theorem, which I don't think, and as you know, Einstein believed in a determined, but

0:28:33 Kurt: That's just one application that would be the the pure logic approach, okay, but you still have to look at it from the physics perspective. There's quantum physics, you just can't get around it. That's the way things are. Yeah.

0:28:45 Thomas: It's not, but I think what what I'm struggling with right now, and it's sort of a, I'm not sure it's exactly the topic we want to be talking about, but I don't know that it's true to say there's, you're 100% certain, and you could be 100% sure that we will never discover an underlying logic behind quantum indeterminacy. Like, yeah, sure.

0:29:10 Kurt: I'm 100 certain of that because there's certain things, like I will never travel at the speed of light because of the way that light and matter work. Right? There's just certain inherent limitations to the universe. We can't know how an electron is moving as well as its position. Right. There's just, you can't know that.

0:29:32 Thomas: It's so curious. I know that's the current state of science, of course, but it's so weird to me to think that it's impossible. And I'm not even saying it's probable. I'm not saying that at all, that we would discover something. But to say it's not even possible that we could, in discovering a new theory, somehow uproot that and say, oh, wait, it turns out with this new theory maybe there is a way. It just seems weird that, I mean, maybe you know more about it

0:29:33 Kurt: Are. Yeah, right. If things. Yeah.

0:30:04 Thomas: Than I do. But what would people have said the limits of of the universe were 100 years ago. It would have been totally...

0:30:04 Kurt: To me, you're not accepting the limits of the universe. OK, there's just that's I don't understand the question. That's that's an irrelevant question. Who cares what people thought 100 years ago? What we're doing is we're looking at the state of science right now. Now, it's irrelevant because it's like saying that, I don't know, there's lots of deities or something because, I don't want to say God of a tree or something like that. I mean, what's the point in talking about that? It's not what science says nowadays. You know, it's like you got to look at the most recent advancements and these aren't even recent. These have been around for almost a half a decade or half a century.

0:30:21 Thomas: I don't see how you don't see how that's relevant. When it comes to... yeah, they actually have been longer. It's crazy how long they've been around. And again, I'm not making the claim that, look, because we've always advanced in science and our theories, we are definitely going to advance to a new theory that will undermine quantum theory. I'm NOT saying that at all. I'M just saying I don'T know how YOU can can make the claim that we definitely will not. That's what's confusing me. That's all. I mean, because I really, I, a hundred years ago is relevant because we're speculating about the future state of science. I mean it seems like it's somewhat relevant to look at, okay, what did things look like back then and what do they look like now? Like how did we advance our knowledge? Maybe we, okay.

0:30:46 Kurt: Yeah.

0:31:26 Kurt: Well, this is the difference. The scale at which we are studying has changed. You can look at things that are a lot larger, objects that were a lot larger back 100 years ago, but now we're approaching, we're essentially measuring the tools themselves. So if we're looking at light, we'RE measuring light with light. That's just a really fundamental example. You can't measure light other than using, you just can't measuring itself. It's a tool that's measuring itself, that's all I can give you for an example of the insert principle.

0:31:42 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:57 Thomas: Well, okay but let me give you an example. Example, when they were running the, know, the hard-on collider, the large hard-ons collider. There were interviews where people were like, well, we expect to find the Higgs boson, right? We expect to see evidence of that. Now, what would be really interesting is if we didn't, if we somehow discovered that that wasn't the right picture of reality, isn't it possible, I'm just talking about possibility that we could make a bigger collider. We get to the level where we're breaking stuff down so much that we see, oh shit, it actually, we had this picture wrong and it could change our picture enough to where somehow we come up with the underlying logic behind. I'm juste saying possibility, but you're saying that's not even possible.

0:32:00 Kurt: The Large Hadron collider, right? Yeah.

0:32:29 Kurt: Right.

0:32:52 Kurt: I'm saying that there are proven uncertainties. It

0:32:56 Thomas: All right, fair enough. So I, I mean, I'll, I don't know that I a hundred percent am on board, but I respect that if, if it sounds like you may know more about this than I do, so maybe I'm wrong about this.

0:33:09 Kurt: Would be interesting if there were a theoretical physicist listening that could either agree with what I'm saying or point me to something that says no, I'm wrong. But

0:33:19 Thomas: Again, I, it would be something that changes our, our fundamental theory. So yeah, yeah, so, okay, another response I would have to looking at people like Einstein and Gödel and all that about what they thought is, wouldn't you think, and again, going back longer, but I do think it's relevant because we're judging opinions based on who holds them right now, which is something we're not entirely supposed to do. But Isaac Newton has got to be maybe the biggest genius that ever lived. Arguably one of the biggest geniuses that ever

0:33:26 Kurt: When these things happen, you do have to reevaluate as a society.

0:33:55 Kurt: Sure. Sure.

0:34:01 Thomas: Left, believed all kinds of weird stuff, all kinds of weird stuff. I don't even know that he was a deist. I thought he was, well, but he believed in lots of weird things, like not just standard Christianity. I thought he had a bunch of other weird beliefs, but anyway, let's suffice to say he has beliefs that you would find ridiculous. He had beliefs that you would fine ridiculous. Now, how is this fundamentally different to you?

0:34:01 Kurt: He was a theist. He was.

0:34:25 Kurt: Sure. Well, because he lived 400 years ago. And the current state of science was totally different.

0:34:31 Thomas: Well, what about 400 years from now, or 300 years from now, when people look back at Einstein and and Gödel?

0:34:40 Kurt: We only have the ability to look at what we've been given, right? We're standing on the shoulders of giants. I can't know the future. All I know is what I know that has been presented to me. And what I've seen and what has been presented to me is that there's a lot we don't know. There's a Lot of Uncertainty, and there's Proven Uncertainty.

0:34:58 Thomas: That's just my point. There's stuff we don't know. So, yeah, I don't know. The point is, well, my, oh, here's what my overall point is. It's, it's worth considering for certain. It'S worth considering what Einstein and Gödel would, would say about God. ItS worth considering.

0:35:00 Kurt: Right. Yeah. We're arguing about different abstracts of uncertainty right now, actually. This is the problem.

0:35:21 Kurt: Yeah.

0:35:21 Thomas: But in the end, sure.

0:35:22 Kurt: The reason I got down the girdle path was because he is considered one of the most revered logicians, okay? So I don't claim to be entirely logical. I could definitely be saying all sorts of inconsistent things over the course of this episode. However, this guy just sat pretty much isolated for years and just published things. And if he can reach this conclusion after just basically thinking about this obsessively for years and years and years, which is way more time than I've spent, and he reaches the conclusion that there are fundamental unknowns and that he believes in God, I think it's just worth discussing. That was really the whole point, right?

0:36:02 Thomas: And I, I am, I'm doing my best to discuss that because I don't think, A, I think it's a fallacy to say there are unknowns, therefore there's a space for God There might not be. There may be unknowns, and yet there's not a space for, I don't know, a square circle. There are things that are logically impossible, and there are things that are pretty much impossible. Let's just put it this way. Once again, I'm not going to say that it's 100% that there is no God of any kind. There There may be

0:36:03 Kurt: Yeah. Yeah. Right. No.

0:36:36 Thomas: Some kind of God, some somewhere, but the details matter because you're taking the approach, I think, of more, well, therefore, we need to be more agnostic or maybe even call ourselves agnestic or you're just saying it about yourself. I'm not accusing you of...

0:36:37 Kurt: One could make that right I'm saying that it to say that there is no God. I can understand weak atheism, where it says that the current state, there's no proof of God, therefore I don't believe in God. But if there is a proof that says God exists, then I will believe it. But strong atheism is what I take, I guess, offense to, because just be humble. You can't know these things, okay, according to that Religious Tolerance website, a strong atheist is someone who firmly denies the existence of specific deities, right?

0:37:13 Thomas: Can you define strong atheism for me?

0:37:24 Thomas: Well, that's easy. Yeah, I firmly deny the existence of specific deities. You have done that all day right here on this show. Joe. You have said, oh, the God of the Bible? No, I firmly deny that. Doesn't that make you a strong atheist? Well, what sense are we talking about? That's why I asked you to find it. I think, well, but that is, but then you're applying, but Then you're using that to say that, therefore, we shouldn't be strong atheists, but That is what strong atheism is. It's taking these specific claims that, like Christian, the Christian God, the, you know, the god of Muhammad, the the God of Abraham, and we're saying that is a bogus claim. That's

0:37:32 Kurt: Yeah. Right. In a sense, yeah, because I'm, okay, here's the difference. I'm not saying a specific deity. We defined earlier, we defined personal God. As being a deity right right?

0:38:07 Kurt: Exactly.

0:38:07 Thomas: Strong atheism.

0:38:07 Kurt: So in that sense, I am definitely an atheist, okay.

0:38:10 Thomas: Okay. Okay, so we've clarified. So, I worry that there's a bit of moving the goalposts going on when you're sort of talking like, therefore, that means strong atheists completely reject any possibility of any kind of God. I'm not totally sure that's true. Mm-mm.

0:38:28 Kurt: So you would say that you're probably a weak atheist? Then show me the proof and then I'll believe it. I

0:38:33 Thomas: No, I would say I'm a strong atheist because strong atheism, as you just defined it, was denying specific deities, which I would gladly do. Give me a deity specifically and I will deny it like the Christian guy.

0:38:46 Kurt: Guess the confusion lies in how you're defining a deity, deity, or how I'm defining a deity, I guess, because I don't, I guess it seems like in this article a deity is being a personal type of God that interacts directly at a Newtonian level, where I could move an object, or I know I'm going to cause a storm here

0:39:03 Thomas: It's so funny that you're caught up in where physically he interacts, whereas I think the more important question is whether a God that would interact with us at all makes any sense. I'm not actually caught. I'll grant you whatever you want to say about how he interacts. That's fine. I will say, sure, if there were a God who wanted to interact, I'm not pointing to science to say, no, he can't. Actually, that's a good clarification. Some people may do this. I would not. I wouldn't point to science and say, ah, we know that this is a closed system and ignore what you said about the quantum space for God or whatever. We know that that nature follows these laws, therefore there's no way a god could interact with the universe.

0:39:04 Kurt: Yeah

0:39:50 Thomas: I actually would not make that claim. I would reject it just on the idea of why would you believe that there is a personal god at all? That's where I would project it. And it comes down to philosophy.

0:40:05 Kurt: Agreed, I guess my obsession with the, uh, the physical aspect is because you, you get, if you're brought up as a Christian, you, you hear about Jesus rising from the dead. It just sounds so crazy. Like, why would you, what? That doesn't go with anything that you've ever seen in your entire life, right? Like miracles, like, what does that mean? So I guess my obsession with the physical realities, it has to do directly with the miracle that so many people are like, oh, the miracle of Jesus, all this stuff. Like, what? He's just, in my mind, he's just a spiritual leader that just shows you how to act morally. It's not about turning water into wine, it's just like, be a good person, you know, and you look at all these other religions and that's really the core of it, just how to behave to your fellow man, and I support that, but I don't support the closed-mindedness where you get just bigotry rampant, and I think we can all agree with that, sure.

0:40:23 Thomas: Yeah, sure. Now I'm curious as we likely should come to a close because I know there's more we could talk about, but I'm not sure that a giant dose of it is good. Maybe we should step back and re-clarify stuff and come back at a later date.

0:41:15 Kurt: We need a framework to operate in.

0:41:16 Thomas: Right, but so where do you think we are? Where are you in this question and where have you, did I change your mind on anything or are you still where you were?

0:41:25 Kurt: So, yeah, I guess so, because from a cultural perspective, I would say I'm an atheist. From a personal perspective, with respect to how we define our deities, I still think I'm agnostic because I still think there's room for, I wouldn't say a personal God, but a pantheistic God.

0:41:45 Thomas: Do you have, okay, fair enough. I appreciate you saying that, that do you have any reason whatsoever to believe that that pantheistic God exists? Or are you just saying it could exist, or

0:41:58 Kurt: No, that's really a matter of philosophy. Okay.

0:42:01 Thomas: Just straight faith or belief? See, well,

0:42:03 Kurt: Right. This Is the one thing that I said in my email to you originally was if you want to believe in God, God exists. If you don't believe in God, God doesn't exist, right? So they can both simultaneously be true.

0:42:15 Thomas: I know that's not true.

0:42:19 Kurt: Well, I mean, your reality is your own reality. If you believe, you may be disillusioned, right, and, because, this is in your head, this is your personal philosophy.

0:42:24 Thomas: Now, why does that not apply to gravity and economics and stuff like that? But then it wouldn't actually be true. If it's just true in your head, that's not, I mean, I could still, still, right, exactly.

0:42:36 Kurt: Well, Then what about, like schizophrenia, there's not really monsters in your head, I mean, in

0:42:41 Thomas: They don't, yeah, so they're not real.

0:42:41 Kurt: Yourheather is, but no one else sees it, it's it. Are you saying that, what I'm saying is that it could be very true for an individual, even though no one else sees it that way, it's yeah.

0:42:45 Thomas: They're a phenomenon of the brain. If you want, if you're just saying that someone could think something's true that's not, and it could feel like it's true when it's not actually true, that's fine. But I'm talking about the things that are true, whether or not you believe them, which is not, right. But, I just think that's a meaningless statement. I really don't think there's any usefulness in that. I mean, but that

0:43:02 Kurt: Yeah. Yeah. I'm saying it's true to them, not to anyone else, it's their personal reality. Well, it's a matter of, it's a matter of your own faith, that's all I'm saying, no,

0:43:17 Thomas: That has no impact on the world. So, it's, it is, yeah, it could describe how someone feels, but I'm just saying, I think you used, you linked Gödel's theorem to that, which I just don't think even applies. I mean, people can, whether or not Gödel theorem existed at all, people can believe things that are wrong, and it's still true to them. That doesn't hinge on Gödel, you know, I mean it's just, you can be deluded, and there can be questions where there's not a knowable answer, there's not a provable answer that you could still be deluded on, you know? I mean, so I don't know. So, sorry, I'm sure I've interrupted you at this point, but so to get back to where we are, you think there's room for some sort of deity, but that you don't think there's any necessary reason to believe in it, right?

0:43:20 Kurt: Well, I mean, potentially, it does, because you behave with the world, right, right,

0:44:13 Thomas: I would say, here's what I would say, this may surprise you, it may not, I I bet you virtually everyone listening holds that same position and they're all atheists.

0:44:24 Kurt: I guess it's just a matter of cultural definition. My whole, my whole point is that, uh, we should all be humble in our conclusions. I would, I'm wouldn't, I'm not someone, so many cultural implications, right? I don't want to tell someone that they're just outright wrong for certain ideas. But at the same time, if I just find them outrageous, is it worth the fight? Are you supposed to fight the good fight every single time someone says something about a personal theistic belief?

0:44:26 Thomas: Yeah.

0:44:53 Thomas: Hey, now we're branching off, man. I think you're, I think your, uh, branching off onto different questions a little bit. Um, and what I would say is, no, you don't have to, there's no reason we have to fight every battle, but I'm, you're the one who emailed me. So, so that's what I'm telling you.

0:45:01 Kurt: Yeah.

0:45:10 Kurt: I'm just thinking out loud

0:45:12 Thomas: So let's, let's leave it at that. I want to thank you so much for the email and actually encourage people. Maybe I'll, let me link the videos that you originally sent me because they talk about, or I just linked one, but it has three parts. It's a lecture about Gödel's theorem. And it's very interesting. I really liked watching them. And, it's fascinating to think about and even for completely unrelated reasons. I mean, just, it is an interesting mathematical theory or or whatever you would call it, and I liked watching them. So I'll link them. People should watch them. Let me know if you think that applies, as I think Kurt has expressed,

0:45:12 Kurt: Here, you know?

0:45:50 Kurt: Yeah,

0:45:50 Thomas: That it applies at all.

0:45:51 Kurt: It would be interesting to see if people think it applies because I feel it does.

0:45:54 Thomas: Right. So we'll do that. We'll see what the comments are. We'll See What People Think. Maybe we can regroup if it's worth it. Maybe there won't be enough to discuss at a later time. Either way, I've enjoyed this discussion, andI want to thank you so much for coming on.

0:46:10 Kurt: Great. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

0:46:22 Thomas: Alright, that's my show, thank you so much for listening, and... I am very, very excited about who I'm interviewing this weekend. I don't want to jinx it, the interview hasn't happened yet, but if it does, it's going to be awesome. It is somebody I am a huge, huge, huge fan of that is going to be an amazing thing. So look forward to that, hopefully, or you'll hear a disappointed me on Monday trying to pretend that whoever I ended up with was just as good as who I didn't get. No, that won't happen. I think it's going to happen. Can't wait to announce it. You'll see it on Twitter or Facebook or something. So thank you. Thank you so much to my patrons. Got some new ones to thank? Ooh, Apathetic Moron. That's a good name.

0:47:07 Thomas: Fun. So thank you, ApatheticMoron! Wilco came back to us. And Ronn, thank you new patrons. I really appreciate it. If you'd like to pledge, go to patreon.com/atheist. And of course, if this really, really awesome, amazing interview happens, which I'm very confident it will, and it's two parts, you'll get both the parts right away if you are on the Patreon-only feed. So I want to thank so much to Andrew Northcutt, Al Lehman of the Inciting Incident podcast, Kaylee Reiser, Zimu Zinu Jr., Adrian Borshoff, Jonathan Moyet, Jay Aldenwalt, Bangs Naughty Bits, Peter Skelton, Brian Gareford, Dale, Matt Garrett, Ian Rosano, Lizzie, Samantha. Thanks for being my top patrons, who I am privileged to thank every week.

0:47:54 Thomas: I really appreciate it. All right, that's my show. I'm sure you're tired of my sick voice. Hopefully I'll be better by the time I have that interview, right? All right, see you guys next week.