Transcription
[Music] Here we are on a planet which is, uh, about 5,000 million years old. The sun, around which it goes, is not much older. It is part of a galaxy, uh, which is perhaps, uh, 10 or 12,000 million years old, which is one of perhaps hundreds of thousands of millions of other galaxies. And none of these planets, suns, galaxies was around at the time of the Big Bang. At the time of the Big Bang, there was, uh, energy, elementary particles, which slowly evolved into the kind of universe we know today. We are the product of a grand evolutionary sequence, cosmic evolution, uh, about which we are only occasionally aware.
One of the great accomplishments of Dr. Hawking is to plug us better into the knowledge of this long evolutionary sequence. There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly right. It's the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of [Music] science.
Our ability, uh, to, uh, understand things instantly, so-called common sense, derives from a certain range of size and speed and duration, uh, that are appropriate for human existence. We know about things from a tenth of a millimeter to a few kilometers, from a fraction of a second to a lifetime, uh, and so on. So when we are dealing with matters of quantum physics, where, uh, particles have a size of 10 to the minus 13th cm, or in cosmology, where, where we are talking about, uh, 10 billion light years or more, it is very reasonable that intuition is not adequate to the task.
One point I'd like to make about this is that every human culture has a set of creation myths, uh, but they're in the realm of mythology or religion or folklore, uh, and they are, of course, all mutually inconsistent. The great thing that is happening in our time is that we are able, through a method which can actually make some progress towards the real universe out there, to find out something about origins. And this is the scientific method applied to the science of cosmology.
The thing about science is, first of all, it's after the way the universe really is, and not what makes us feel good. And a lot of the competing doctrines are after what feels good and not what, what's true. I think the essence of the scientific method is the willingness to, to admit you're wrong, the willingness to abandon ideas that don't work. Uh, and the essence of religion is not to change anything. That supposed truths are handed down by some revered figure, and then no one is supposed to make any, uh, any progress beyond that, because all the truth is thought to be in hand.
My sense is that the scientific way of, of thinking, uh, some delicate mix of creative encouragement of new ideas and the most rigorous and skeptical scrutiny of new and old ideas, uh, I think that is the path to the future, not just for science, but, uh, for all human institutions. We have to be willing to challenge because we are in desperate need of change. It's, it's not that, um, pseudoscience and superstition and new age, so-called beliefs and fundamentalist zealotry are something new. They've been with us for as long as we've been, we've been human.
But we live in an age based on science and technology, with formidable technological powers. Science and technology are propelling us forward at accelerating rates. That's right. And if we don't understand it, by "we" I mean the general public, if it's something that, "Oh, I'm not good at that. I don't know anything about it," then who is making all the decisions about science and technology that are going to determine what kind of future our children live in? This combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it?
And the second reason that I'm, I'm worried about this is that science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If, if we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along. It, it's a thing that Jefferson laid great stress on. It wasn't enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a, in a constitution or a Bill of Rights. The people had to be educated, and they had to practice their skepticism and their education. Otherwise, we don't run the government. The government runs us.
What is faith? It is belief in the absence of evidence. Now, I don't propose to tell anybody what to believe, but for me, believing when there's no compelling evidence is a mistake. The idea is to withhold belief until there is compelling evidence. And if the universe does not comply with our predispositions, okay, then we have the wrenching obligation to accommodate to the way the universe, you, I mean, but I mean, you. So you step forward to say, "I deny all religion because I can't see it."
Proscientifically, the value of religious experience and the value of, of, of reaching for higher experiences. Let me say, religion deals with history, with poetry, with great literature, with ethics, with morals, including the morality of, uh, treating compassionately the least fortunate among us. All of these are things that I endorse wholeheartedly. Where religion gets into trouble is in those cases that it pretends to know something about science. The science in the Bible, for example, was acquired by the Jews from the Babylonians during the Babylonian captivity of 600 BC. That was the best science on the planet then, but we've learned something since then.
Roman Catholicism, reformed Judaism, most of the mainstream Protestant denominations have no difficulty with the idea that you have evolved from other creatures, that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, with the Big Bang. They don't have any trouble with that. The trouble comes with people who are biblical literalists, who believe that the Bible is dictated by the creator of the universe to an unerring stenographer, and so therefore they, and has no metaphor or allegory. And from there, they make their political and economic choices, uh, and so and scientific and scientific choices and scientific and that's part of your problem with that idea. It is that because for the wrong reasons, we make the wrong choices about science. That's right.
So who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says, "Everything in this book must be considered the literal truth," and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved in the writing of this book?
My question is, given all these demotions, what is your personal religion? Or do you, is there any type of God to you? Like, is there a purpose, given that we're just sitting on this speck in the middle of this sea of stars? Now, I don't want to duck any questions, and I'm not going to duck this one. But let me ask you, what do you mean when you use the word "God"? It, it seems that through the ages, we have humans have created a mythological framework that is always involved some kind of higher spiritual powers. And as every human culture does that, as that goes away, as we know more and more that, and it seems harder and harder to prove that anything might exist like that, where does that leave us on our own?
[Applause] Which, to my mind, is much more responsible than hoping that someone will save us from ourselves so we don't have to make our best efforts to do it ourselves. And if we're wrong, and there is someone who steps in and saves us, okay, that's all right. I'm for that. But we, you know, hedged our bets. It's Pascal's bargain run backwards.
Um, I, I'll say another word. The word "God" covers an enormous range of different ideas. And you recognize that in the way you phrase the question, running from an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard sitting in a throne in the sky and tallying the fall of every sparrow, for which there is no evidence, to my mind, if anybody has some, I sure would like to see it, um, to the kind of God that Einstein or Spinoza talked about, which is very close to the sum total of the laws of the universe. Now, it would be crazy to deny that there are laws in the universe. And if that's what you want to call God, then of course God exists.
And there are all sorts of other nuances. There is, for example, the deist God that many of the founding fathers of this country believed, although it is a secret whose name may not be spoken in some circles. A, a do-nothing king. The God who creates the universe and then retires, and to whom praying to is sort of pointless. He's not here. He went somewhere else. He had other things to do. Now, that's also a God. So when you say, "Do you believe in God?" If I say yes, or if I say no, you have learned absolutely nothing. I guess I'm asking you to define yours, if you have one.
But why would we use a word so ambiguous that means so many different things? Gives you freedom to define it. It gives you freedom to seem to agree with someone else with whom you do not agree. It covers over differences. It makes for social lubrication, but it is not an aid to truth, in my view. And therefore, I think we need much sharper language when we ask these questions.
I lost both my parents about 12 or 15 years ago, and, uh, I had a great relationship with them. I really miss them. I would love to believe that their spirits were around somewhere, and I'd give almost anything to, uh, spend five minutes a year with them. We, we demand the most rigorous standards of evidence, especially on what's important to us. So if some guy comes up to me, a channeler or a medium, and says, "I can put you in touch with your parents," well, because I want so terribly to, to believe that, yeah, I know I have to reach in for added reserves of skepticism because I'm likely to be fooled, and, and, uh, much more likely to have my money taken.
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