ASM005 Chaos Theory, Disproving the Big Bang, and Why God is Such a Meanie

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chaos theory researchers who disproved the big bang and why god is such a meanie all that and more on this episode of ask science mike

[Music]

welcome to ask science mike a weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life it's been a really wild week i got to see both this show and the liturgist podcast in the top 20 on itunes and the religion and spirituality category so i want to thank you guys for help making this show a success already i love where you're going with it lots of great questions this week so let's get it started our first question this week came from over a hundred people seriously over 100 people asked the same question this week it was some variation of have you seen this and then a link to an article on the internet that indicated some physicists may have debunked the big bang theory whoa they're actually egyptian researchers who have um come up with a mathematical model that they believe describes the universe more elegantly that accommodates some degree of quantum gravity and moves towards a unified theory of everything which is kind of the holy grail of physics it's fascinating um it's one paper it's just one paper it's one mathematical model that lacks any experiment or observational support so here's an important thing to understand about science journalism people love big news they love it that's why the news the regular news always reports the most dramatic things even if they have to get a little sensationalistic about it because we love it we tune in science journalism is no different so even if there's mathematical validity to the ideas in this paper there's a long long long way to go before they change the consensus of the understanding of the universe in physics the big bang model is well supported with evidence and it makes predictions that we see in the sky the cosmic microwave background radiation was found you know where we expected it to be at the energy level we expected it to be we look into space and we see really consistent red shifts that correlate with intergalactic existences and pretty much everywhere we look the big bang theory gets stronger and not weaker now that doesn't mean that the big bang theory won't get revised or that ultimately new discoveries and new insights could overturn it uh that's how science works nothing is sacred other than your data we go where the data leads and over time that can upend major understandings of how the world works but that hasn't happened yet with the big bang theory all that's happened is two mathematicians published a paper that's it and uh you know peer review is just starting on that i don't know where that discussion is going to lead and frankly i'm not qualified to evaluate the math so i'm going to sit back and see where the scientific community goes with this but i can tell you there is no big bang conspiracy there's no uh you know international consortium of scientists who are trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes the reason the big bang theory is the dominant theory in cosmology is because it's so well supported by evidence great question all of you [Music] hi mike this is cassie from kansas and i have a question regarding chaos theory as you probably know chaos theory studies behavior of dynamic systems that are very sensitive to the initial conditions within that system one famous metaphor that is used all the time is known as the butterfly effect basically it states that the formation of a hurricane is being influenced by minor disturbances such as a butterfly flappy that's wings several weeks prior to the formation of the hurricane and on the other side of the world nonetheless i was just wondering what your thoughts on the chaos theory are and how the theory might pertain to how god created our universe uh thanks for the podcast by the way you're doing a great job mike keep it up i'm excited to hear more from you thanks chaos theory is familiar to anyone who's seen the movie jurassic park because uh rockstar mathematician ian malcolm specialized in chaos theory i've actually did a decent job explaining what it is in the film but so for anyone who's not familiar or obsessed with science uh and doesn't love to hear science explained in movies i'll give you a refresher chaos theory is known because of computer science we couldn't come up with a theory like that before because our our brains aren't really good at holding lots of numbers in our skulls and paper and pencils are finite resource very finite compared to computers and their ability to hold and store and process numbers and basically in the 60s i think a guy named edward laurens was working on a computer model for weather and climate now if you know anything about weather forecasts you know that they're not terribly accurate more than a couple days out and that's because weather is a chaotic system designed and composed of all the particles in the earth's atmosphere there are a lot of particles in the earth's atmosphere and even though those particles behave under consistent rules when you get that many of them interacting you can't make any meaningful predictions about the system not with any accuracy but using chaos theory you can determine trends and possibilities over time right so uh chaos theory and studying it lets us build models where we understand that the climate is warming but not necessarily what the weather is going to be like in three tuesdays it's very interesting and this happens anytime you have a lot of components to a given system even though the system is behaving in a way that's mathematically valid and predictable the math gets away from us in something called a non-linear equation that can be expressed graphically as a fractal and systems that have any kind of self-feedback loop are especially prone to being chaotic the stock market's a great example weather of course is another it's chaos theory so in the film jurassic park ian malcolm drops uh some water on someone's hand and lets her see which way the water rolls down uh her hand and then he drops another one and it rolls a different way even though it hit the same point on her hand and the idea here is that you know the the shape of her hair follicles and her skin and the bumps and movements in the jeep they were riding in all those things created a chaotic system that could not be precisely predicted it's quite remarkable stuff um maybe it was a little hyped up for a while but without being the source of any popular media for a while has uh subdued back into just an everyday idea in computer science but what does that say about god what does chaos theory have to do with god and this is why this show is called ask science mike and i answer questions about science faith and life because i actually think something like chaos theory does tell us something about god if you follow my work you know i consider myself a mystic and as a mystic i think that language is inadequate to completely describe god that god is beyond language we can create language that points to god i think the scriptures do that and we'll talk more about that in the next couple of questions but i think in a very similar way uh the reason i look so deeply into the sciences is that they also tell us things about god our creator and what i see in chaos theory is that patterns and templates and a flexible system of mathematics creates incredible possibilities that you can take a universe that has set laws and set starting conditions but whose ultimate destiny and whose method of unfolding is very open our universe has tremendous creative potential thanks to things like the uncertainty principle we can never know precisely you know where every little particle is in the universe it's not possible and because of that we can't make predictions about how all those particles will come together and create outcomes now this is important because it means even if the universe is deterministic meaning everything that happens is sort of unfolding in a set way and every every particle from the beginning of the universe onward can be precisely predicted we can't because we can never know with that level of detail what's going to happen and so at our level of existence this sort of macro level large mammal on a rock existence is wide open you have immense influence in your destiny and the universe is structured in such a way that you do and to me that is one of the little signings on the canvas of life left by god chaos theory tells us that we are here to co-create that the template is set the universe is there we've got particles and we've got systems but we can be a part of them and influence them and that the outcomes of our actions are never certain [Music] hi science mike my question has to do with the two almost opposing natures of the god of the bible in the new testament jesus seems to be this peaceful radical who promotes respect for life and encourages us to love one another and turn the other cheek but before that there's the old testament where quote the god who never changes is ordering his people to go in and kill whole cities so my question is is how do you reconcile these two seemingly opposing natures of god this has been a real hang up for me for the past couple years i can get behind jesus i don't have a problem with that i just have a really hard time getting behind a god who would advocate for the slaughtering of children so how do you reconcile these two natures in your paradigm thanks i wrote a doubt series on my blog um because i had this sense that people were struggling with the ideas of faith that i struggled with that led me to atheism and this is one of the most common questions the the violence the brutality the immorality of the old testament god that really trips people up especially those of us who grew up in some form of fundamentalist or conservative evangelical faith tradition how can the god who sent jesus to save mankind order the people of israel to commit genocide [Music] well for me as the question so eloquently said in my paradigm um he didn't i understand the bible to be a collection of books written by people about god it's a collection of books written by people about god the bible tells me the most about those people's experiences and how they understood them nt right uses a phrase the word of god through the words of men and you know i might just say it's the words of men about god now i understand that that's a very upsetting proposition to a lot of people i get it but that's how i see the bible that's how the bible works and as you look at the arc of the bible it seems that as time goes on god is revealed as more and more compassionate and loving and peace creating god a central theme throughout every book of the bible from beginning to end is this idea of shalom of peace of wholeness and the bible seems to have the trajectory towards greater and greater shalom as it goes on so we have these accounts in the old testament where people were killed and they said that was because god wanted it done but in those days you understood that your god was the most powerful because you won because you defeated the other tribe for the scarce resource of land or water now uh an encouraging thing is um anthropology and archaeology really make us doubt those stories in the old testament that are the most horrific it seems unlikely that this this tribe that grew into a nation was ever able to commit such broad genocide there's just not the evidence in the soil in the ruins that these things happened so what this book tells us is how they understood god and what's interesting about what god was teaching them is that often they had moral progress for their day so we may read the bible and be horrified for example that you could take the wife of a fallen enemy as a slave and that is horrific by modern moral standards but at the time it was progressive because when you took this woman as your slave she got all the rights and privileges of a wife and that was progress that was a greater treatment of a human being than existed before so when i read the old testament i'm looking for how those people understood god at the time and how that compared to the contemporary understanding of god and how god moved in the world in other cultures what's interesting to me about the bible is the ways in which this god was more trustworthy and more loving and more about the creation of shalom now i have a couple friends who've written books on this topic that you may be interested in they're they're easy reads but they're also uh deep ideas and very encouraging peter enz wrote a book called the bible tells me so which is fantastic i'll have a link to it in the description of this episode on asksciencemike.com and rob bell wrote a book called what we talk about when we talk about god that does a great job exploring the moral progress of the bible over time the ways in which the scriptures got more and more encouraging because frankly humans got more and more ready for a loving god hey science mike i'm marissa and as i have in the past i first want to thank you again for what you're doing so as i look at christian teachings faith and ideas about what it means to follow jesus in a new light and from fresh perspectives i'm still struggling with some of the more negative implications of traditional doctrine and who god is or was or who they were writing about in the bible and the idea that we deserve nothing but eternal punishment that the literal evangelicals who insist on rejecting science or the ideas that all non-christians have it wrong and possibly worse fates await them i know there's different ways to think about all of these things and to consider god and the biblical stories in their historical context and lessons that we can glean from them i can appreciate that the bible and jesus had a lot to say that was full of poetry and symbolism parables with deeper meaning and a lot of it really was intended to capture experiences and ideas that are kind of beyond words but it's hard for me to take it further than that to keep the good and let go of some of that bad without feeling kind of hypocritical where the cross kind of used to be a symbol of love and self-sacrifice for me now it almost becomes a disturbing symbol of a barbaric form of punishment that was used in ancient history and a religion that's based on human sacrifice and the wrath of god and the death and dissension discrimination destruction and marginalization of people around the world that has been related to christianity and i know that all religions and everything has its good and bad and i can get on board with the idea of taking something and making it new turning the bat into good but sometimes i feel like there's just too much baggage there too much hurt too many people thinking that billions of others are going to be tortured forever or even that i am because we don't believe the right things about history or the bible and in some ways it feels like it might just be easier to let it all go to whatever extent that's really possible since it ultimate for many of us who were raised in this tradition it is deeply rooted as a part of us sometimes it's still hard to hang on to so do you have any thoughts on that thanks again we live in really interesting times one generation ago the word of god was used to defend the idea that it was immoral for a black person to marry a white person one generation ago a generation ago the bible was used to defend an idea that whites and blacks were unequal in american society the bible has been used and continues to be used to defend the idea that women hold an inferior position in life to men in the very brief history of america the bible has been used to defend the belief that it is moral for one human being to own another as a slave christianity has baggage it does and because of that many people like you once saw the cross as a symbol of hope and now see the cross as a symbol of brutality of barbarism more people than ever believe that religion and spirituality are holding back human progress and uh i once believed that too that's why i was an atheist and a secular humanist i get it i do sometimes it seems that faith does more harm than good but then there are those times when faith creates such beauty when faith provokes in me some generosity or some appreciation of beauty when faith allows me to contemplate my place in the universe both very small and also capable of affecting the lives of others tremendously i'm just a a tiny animal on a mode of dust and a sun beam but my actions can affect other human beings dramatically for better or for worse that's why i'm a person of faith it's because in all of that immense universe somehow i feel the creative force behind it all in my life but that has nothing to do with christianity does it any faith can make you feel connected to a creator so why the cross why christianity well in christianity i see the cross as a symbol of brutality and a lust for violence and a need for vengeance in the cross i see a way that the most powerful empire of its day intimidated lesser civilizations that it struck fear into the hearts of men you see the cross was not god's invention it was ours and in all the suffering and all our need for an eye for an eye i have to wonder sometimes if god listened to us cry for blood and offered his own that if jesus's sacrifice on the cross was not to sate god's wrath but to show god's response to ours now there may be too much baggage for christianity to be redeemed i don't know [Music] but i'm part of many things that have a brutal past i live in america a country that exists because we subjugated and minimized native inhabitants and america does many great things and it has also done many terrible things is there too much baggage for america to exist we are faced with choices in life what do we do with what we have i am an american so i will do what i can to make america the best positive force in the world that it can be and i am a christian and therefore i will do what i can to make the movement of jesus christ in this world be the best that it can be to do the most good but i have to understand something i cannot control other people other people will do things in the name of christ that i find horrifying but here's the thing i do things in the name of christ that other people find horrifying i stand for marriage equality i think any adult should be able to marry an adult of their choosing and other christians think that's a perversion of god's word they think that that is a great great and grievous immorality that i'm supporting what do we do with that i think the point of christianity is to come together broken in front of this table in front of this ritual this eucharist where we're presented with a broken god for the salvation of the world and to become broken to to offer ourselves as a means and a mechanism for peace it means that i may disagree with how others pursue the gospel and they may disagree with me but what matters is that we are trying to create justice and peace and mercy in this world so if there's so much baggage let go of it don't try to control how others approach the faith don't try to control how others approach god simply live your life following christ the best that you can find a spiritual community that helps you do that and immerse yourself in it and then don't be so concerned with the way that other churches are moving throughout the world that doesn't mean we ignore abuse for example we don't ignore injustice we do what we can to comfort the afflicted but our goal is on that comfort our goal is helping we are the helpers we are the good samaritans who pour oil and wine on the wounds of those who have been hurt as jesus was broken and poured out for us we are broken and poured out for others and that's all the freedom you need to escape the baggage of the world's largest religion [Music] well that's another episode of ask science mike in the books you know uh i was really afraid when i started this program that we'd run out of questions really quickly and that was i guess kind of dumb because there's so many questions now i'm actually having a hard time dealing with them so if you've submitted a question to the show i have read it i've read every single question that someone has tweeted me with hashtag asksciencemike that someone's posted on soundcloud with hashtag asksciencemike uh or put on youtube now some people um are not using the hashtag they're just writing ass science mic and i found a lot of those through google but there may be some i haven't seen so you really need to use ask science mike if you want me to see the question that's the only way i can make sure it's seen also i've had a few people tweeting from private twitter accounts hashtag sciencemike and i can't see your question so you gotta make sure to do an at sign ask science mic as well so that i'll be able to see it if you're confused about how to use hashtags just go to asksciencemike.com and use the ask science mic button to send me a link to your question and i can see it there several people have done that actually more people do that then use the hashtag and that's fine i can handle that there are hundreds of email questions at this point i am going to work through them and i'll be picking my favorites but unless questions suddenly stop there there is a good chance that we're gonna miss a lot of the questions that get emailed in so your best shot at being on the program is to record an audio question and post it with hashtag asksciencemike i've had several people ask me about live events and if i'll come to this city or that city and yes absolutely i will if you go to ask sciencemike.com in the upper right hand corner there's a button that says book mic if you click on that you'll get a little more information and that will take you to the chaffee management group they're the people that handle all my event booking and they'd love to talk to you and love to explain to you how i can come to your city at science mike is produced by greg nordin he's been doing a great job with the episodes i appreciate his help in making the show sound more polished and uh professional which is pretty tough because he's dealing with me and our theme song is by jeff botifer he wrote the ask my king song if you've got a podcast and you'd like some theme music uh go to asknightsmith.com and look in the show description and there'll be a link to jeff's twitter where you can learn more thanks for listening guys and i will see you next week