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Our next question is a video.
It comes from Andrew Watson in Blackburn Victoria.
Question for Richard Dawkins.
The big bangers believe
that once there was nothing,
then suddenly, poof,
the universe was created from a big ***.
If I have nothing in the palm of my hand,
close my fingers,
speak the word "***",
then open my fingers again,
still I find there is nothing there.
I ask you to explain to us in layman's terms
how it is that something as enormous as the universes
came from nothing?
Richard Dawkins?
Well, obviously you're not a physicist...
and nor am I and...
I am delighted to say that
during my time in Australia I shall be having a number of conversations,
public conversations, with my colleague Lawrence Krauss,
including one in the Sydney Opera House,
later - I think it’s next week -
and he's written a book on exactly that topic
of how you can get something from nothing and I shall be questioning him about that.
Of course it’s counter intuitive that you can get something from nothing.
Of course commonsense doesn't allow you to get something from nothing.
That’s why it’s interesting.
It’s got to be interesting in order to give rise to the universe at all.
Something pretty mysterious had to give rise to the origin of the universe.
Now, if you want to replace if you want to replace a physical explanation
by an intelligent God, that's an even worse explanation.
It’s even a more difficult explanation.
What scientists are trying to do is to explain
how you can get not just something but the immense complexity
of the world, of the universe and of life,
and science is making a pretty good fist of doing that.
Life is now completely solved barring the details.
That was Darwin's contribution and Darwin's successors.
Physicists are still working on the origin of the cosmos.
Among them is Lawrence Krauss whom I shall be talking to next week.
Now, it is very mysterious how the universe came into being.
It’s a deeply mysterious and interesting question.
And can I just interrupt? It’s an old question, a very old question.
Thomas Aquinis in the 13th Century
was asking this same question.
He said there must have been a time when no physical things existed
but something can't come from nothing.
That was his view. It’s just been repeated by...
Something can come from nothing
and that is what physicists are now telling us.
I could give you - you asked me to give you a layman's interpretation.
It would be very, very layman's interpretation.
When you have matter and antimatter and you put them together,
they cancel each other out and give rise to nothing.
What Lawrence Krauss is now suggesting is that if you start with nothing
the process can go into reverse
and produce matter and antimatter.
The theory is still being worked out.
It is a very difficult theory, mathematical theory.
I’m not qualified to answer the question
but what I am sure about is that it most certainly is not solved
by postulating an intelligence, a creative intelligence,
who raises even bigger questions of his own existence.
That certainly is not going to be the answer, whatever else is.
- George Pell. - Thank you.
The trouble well, there are many troubles with Richard's teachings
but a fundamental one is that he dumbs down God
and he soups up nothing.
He continually talks as though God is some sort of upmarket figure
within space and time.
Now, from 450, 500 BC
where, with the Greek philosophers,
God is outside space and time.
God is necessary, self-sufficient, uncaused, unconditioned.
That’s the hypothesis you’ve got to wrestle with.
The second thing is that Krauss says nothing about
the big *** coming out of nothing
and admittedly he comes clean
about six pages from the end of his book
and I don't know whether Richard has read it that far
because he gave it a forward.
What he says is...
...what he... what Richard is describing as nothing
is a sort of mixture of particles and perhaps a vacuum
with electromagnetic forces working on it.
That’s what Krauss is talking about under the heading of nothing
and there's a very good review of this in the New York Times,
not a pro religious paper at all,
where Krauss is absolutely...
denied and demolished,
although especially by his supporters
claiming that he says things come out of nothing.
He doesn't say that.
- It’s a matter... - You can quickly respond to that.
You can dispute exactly what is meant by nothing
but whatever it is, it's very, very simple.
Why is that funny?
Well, I think it’s a bit funny to be trying to define nothing.
Well, can I put that to you as a question?
Is it equally feasible,
since you can't prove the existence of God
that the nothing you're talking about is, in fact, some creative force?
If you talk about a God who is a creative intelligence
then that is something very complicated
and very improbable
and something that requires explaining in its own right.
The nothing that Lawrence Krauss is talking about,
whether or not it's what a naive person would conceive as nothing
or what a sophisticated physicist would consider to be nothing
it is going to be something much, much simpler
than a creative intelligence.
We are struggling - we are all struggling, scientists are struggling -
to explain how we get the fantastic order and complexity of the universe
out of very simple and therefore easy to understand,
easy to explain, beginnings.
Lawrence Krauss calls the substrate of his explanation nothing.
It’s possible to dispute whether nothing is quite the right word,
but whatever it is, it is very, very simple
and therefore is a worthy premise for an explanation.
Whereas, a God, a creative intelligence
is not a worthy substrate for an explanation
because it is already something very complicated
and it is no good invoking Thomas Aquinis
and saying that God is defined as outside time and space.
That’s just a cop out.
That’s just an evasion of the responsibility to explain.
That’s just setting out what you want to prove
before you have even started.
OK, let's move onto a question...
Let's move onto a question on evolution for Cardinal Pell.
It’s from Jo Blades.
As a young Catholic scientist,
I'd like to ask the Cardinal to clarify the Roman Catholic Church's position on evolution
and comment on whether the dichotomy between science and religion is, in fact, real?
Well, science and religion are two different activities
and in the Catholic Church
you can believe, to some extent, what you like about evolution.
I think Darwin made a great contribution.
I remember talking with Julius Kornberg,
a very distinguished biologist, and he's worked with ants for years
and he said, you know, he's managed to change them by changing they conditions
but there are a number of things that
evolution doesn't explain.
Darwin realised that.
Darwin was a theist
because he said he couldn't believe
that the immense cosmos and all the beautiful things in the world
came about either by chance or out of necessity.
He said: "I have to be ranked as a theist."
That just not true.
- Excuse me it’s... - It’s just plain not true.
It’s on page 92 of his autobiography.
Go and have a look.
Sorry, can I just bring you,
in a sense, to the point of the question?
Do you accept that humans evolved from apes?
Yeah, probably.
From Neanderthals, yes.
- Whether... - From Neanderthals?
Probably.
Why from Neanderthals?
Well, who else would you suggest?
Neanderthals were our cousins.
We’re not descended from them,
and we're both descended from...
These are extant cousins?
Where will I find a Neanderthal today if they're my cousins?
They’re not extant, they’re extinct.
Exactly. That’s my point.
Your point is that because they're not...
... that because they're extant they can't be our cousins.
I really am not much fussed.
That’s very clear.
Something in the evolutionary story seems to have come before humans.
A lot of people say it’s the Neanderthals.
But can we say this:
humans - you accept that humans evolved from non humans
so let me put this to you as a question: at what point
in this evolutionary scale
was a soul imparted to the humans from God?
Look, a soul is not like
putting a spot of gin in a tonic.
The soul is the principle of life.
So whenever there was a principle of life that could question,
that could be open to awe,
that was able to communicate then we had the first human.
Now, we believe that the first humans developed in South Africa.
I’m not quite sure how long ago and that all,
you know, humans have developed from that.
We know most about that. There aren't remains.
We know most about that
because of the drawings they left
on the on walls and caves and that sort of thing.
No such thing from Neanderthals,
so we can't say exactly when there was a first human
but we have to say if there are humans
there must have been a first one.
They might have been equal first
but if there is a progression there's got to be first.
So are you talking about a kind of Garden of Eden scenario
with an actual Adam and Eve?
Well, Adam and Eve are terms - what do they mean: life and earth.
It’s like every man.
That’s a beautiful, sophisticated, mythological account.
It's not science but it's there to tell us two or three things.
First of all that God created the world and the universe.
Secondly, that the key to the whole of universe,
the really significant thing, are humans,
and thirdly, it is a very sophisticated mythology
to try to explain the evil and suffering in the world.
But it isn’t a literal truth.
You shouldn't see it in any way as being an historical or literal truth?
It’s certainly not a scientific truth,
and...
it's a religious story told for religious purposes.
Just quickly, because the Old Testament in particular is full of these kind of stories,
I mean is there a point where you distinguish between metaphor and reality?
For example, Moses receiving the Ten Commandments
inscribed directly by God on a mountain?
I’m not sure that the Old Testament says that...
God inscribed the Ten Commandments
but leaving that aside it's difficult to know
how exactly that worked but Moses was a great man.
There was a great encounter with the divine.
Actually, with Moses
we get the key that enables us to come together with the Greeks
with reason because, Moses said: "who will I tell the Egyptians"
and he tell that my name is "I am who I am".
- Okay, I’m just going to... - And we'll come back to that.
I’m just going to bring Richard Dawkins back in here because
we've moved from evolution obviously to the biblical versions of it.
Your response.
Well, I’m curious to know if Adam and Eve never existed
where did original sin come from?
But I also would like to clarify the point about
whether there was ever a first human.
That’s a rather difficult and puzzling question
because we know that the previous species
from which we're descended is probably *** erectus
and before that some sort of australopithecine
but there never was a last *** erectus
who gave birth to the first *** sapiens.
Every creature ever born
belonged to the same species as its parents.
The process of evolution is so gradual that you can never say,
aha, now suddenly we have the first human.
It was always a case of just a slightly
different from the previous generation.
That’s a scientific point which I think is quite interesting.
I’m not sure if it has a theological significance except
that I think successive popes have tried to suggest
that the soul did indeed get added, rather like gin to tonic,
at some particular point during evolution;
at some point in evolution there was no soul
and then later there was one
so it is quite an interesting question to ask.
Now we have rather a good fossil record from Africa
of the descent of humans from australopithecines to...
to various species of ***, perhaps *** habilis, perhaps *** erectus,
then archaic *** sapiens and then modern *** sapiens.
At what point did the soul get injected
and what does the idea of original sin mean
if Adam and Eve never existed?
I’ll just quickly let you respond to that...
Well, I mean God wasn't running around giving injections
and if there is no first person we're not humans.
Where did the soul come from then
- in the point of evolution? - The soul is the principle of life.
There are animal souls.
- Do jellyfish... - All living things have some principle of life.
An animal has a principle of life.
A human has a soul, a principle of life,
which is immensely more sophisticated.
We even have a voice box,
which is one of the great miracles,
so we can communicate our thoughts to one another
rather than just grunting.
I’m pleased we're not grunting tonight. Let’s move along.
You can... - by the way - don't forget you can still vote at qanda.vote.
Sorry qandavote.tv, I should say, on the question:
does religious belief make the world a better place?
Over 15,000 viewers have already voted
and we'll check before the end of the program for the final results.
Our next question for Professor Dawkins and Cardinal Pell
is a video and it comes from Kieran Dennis in Ferntree Gully, Victoria.
My question is for George Pell.
George, as a climate change sceptic you demand a very high standard of evidence
to support the hypothesis that global warming has an anthropogenic cause.
My question is why then do you not demand
the same standard of evidence for the existence of God?
George Pell?
I am very, very happy to answer that.
First of all I’m not a sceptic about climate change.
I grew up in Ballarat.
The weather was always... I worked for years in Melbourne.
If you don't like the weather in Melbourne, wait 20 minutes.
Think of all the nonsense people like Flannery told us
about years of drought here and now we're coping with flood.
- But the droughts will be back. - So can I just clarify...
that you're a sceptic about global warming leading to climate change?
I am sceptical...
I'm sceptical about the human contribution
to dangerous climate change.
I think that is not established.
And, sorry, is that because you're sceptical about scientific consensus
and is that partly driven by what scientists believe about religion?
No, got nothing to do with it.
On the weather question, I go on the evidence.
When you come to talk about God,
that is not a scientific question.
The scientists concede that.
It is a question, that is open, I believe, to reason.
You have to reason about the facts of science,
ask whether you believe the suggestion that - you know -
random selection
is sufficient
and also most evolutionary biologists today don't believe that.
Don't believe what?
They don't believe in random...
so this crude fundamental version of random selection that you propose.
I do not propose it and I strongly deny
that evolution is random selection.
Evolution is non-random selection.
- Non-random. - So there is a purpose to it is there?
No.
Could you explain what non-random means?
Yes, of course I could. It’s my life's work.
It’s a hard thing to say but keep it brief.
There is random genetic variation
and non-random survival and non-random reproduction
which is why, as the generations go by,
animals get better at doing what they do.
That is quintessentially non-random.
It doesn't mean there is a purpose
in the sense of a human purpose
in the sense of a guiding principle which is thought up in advance.
With hindsight you can say something like
a bird's wing looks as though it has a purpose,
a human eye looks as though it has a purpose
but it has come about through the process
of non-random natural selection.
There is no purpose in the human sense.
There is a kind of pseudo purpose
but it's not a purpose in the human sense of conscious guiding.
But above all I must stress that Darwinian evolution
is a non-random process.
One of the biggest misunderstandings,
which I'm sorry to say the Cardinal has just perpetrated,
is that evolution is a random process.
It is the opposite of a random process.
A brief response to that if you can?
Yes.
That is fascinating because most evolutionary biologists today
believe that the animal world is developing accord to patterns
which we're starting to know more and more about them.
And...
Are you referring to intelligent design?
No, I’m not.
I’m leaving that right to one side.
Do you believe in intelligent design?
Or that there is an intelligent designer?
I believe God is intelligent.
No, but...
but it's obviously a loaded question
but do you believe in intelligent design
and an intelligent designer?
It all depends what you mean.
I believe God created the world.
I am not entirely sure how it works out scientifically.
But I wonder... - you know -
whether Richard believes that the order, the patterns we see in nature,
whether they are real or whether they're an illusion.
I’m going to leave that question for the...
They are real.
All right. Okay.
That’s a quick answer.