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This pod cast is directed towards an audience with a strong drive to learn and who are open to new and different opinions/perspectives.
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This pod cast is directed towards an audience with a strong drive to learn and who are open to new and different opinions/perspectives.
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This pod cast is directed towards an audience with a strong drive to learn and who are open to new and different opinions/perspectives.
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The podcast discusses whether there is a higher power or not. It explores theories from Isaac Newton and string theory. The philosophers St. Thomas and Aristotle also provide arguments for the existence of a higher power. The complexity of the world and the perfection of the universe are seen as evidence. Personal opinions vary, with some believing in a traditional God and others leaning towards the idea of intelligent beings creating the Earth. History shows that belief in a higher power has existed for thousands of years. Welcome back, everyone, to the Nolan Experience podcast. We've got a really interesting podcast today. We're going to be talking about if there's a higher power or not. We're joined by my close friends Bryce Stensrud, Preston, and Ben here. Guys, say what's up. Hello, everyone. Hello. How are we doing? We've got some really great talking points today. We're going to be talking about the more science-y side of it. The second one is going to be the philosophy side, and the last one is going to be our personal opinions. So, yeah, let's jump right into it. One of the first talking points I have for you guys actually relates to one of Isaac Newton's theories of gravity. Crazy, right? Well, his theory of gravity actually explains that if the universe is finite, meaning that it's not infinite, and gravity always attracts, then eventually everything in the universe will be attracted to each other, coming together, right? But that doesn't make sense. He ran into a problem. But then he said that if the universe is infinite, then eventually every star would just tear each other apart. You know what I'm saying? And he eventually said that he can't prove his theory, so he said the only way to prove it is that there must be a God keeping all the stars apart from each other. So, you know, I'd love to hear your guys' opinion on what you think of that. I agree. You agree? Yeah. Why do you think that is? Isaac Newton, one of the smartest people ever in history, why would he come to a final conclusion that the only way to prove his theory is there's a God that can either keep these planets apart or make sure that the universe is always expanding so that nothing ever collides like that? I mean, you could make the point that he said, until I prove that the universe is infinite, I can't say. And that's defined out by the law of times. You could also make the same argument that how could you claim the universe isn't infinite without proving it? Because we have these satellites that are being produced every few years that are seen further and further away, and it doesn't seem like there's an end point. So you kind of say, like, we just don't have the science yet to know? I don't think so, no. Because we don't know if it's infinite or not. We don't even live off the planet yet. Right. I don't think we have the science to explore the universe yet. I would agree. Well, science is also made up of theories, and theories are, they are correct until proven otherwise. So, you know, Isaac made this theory, right, and he's been, you know, like, if the universe is infinite, which I think many scientists believe that it is, we have yet to be proven otherwise. So most people, when they're doing their research and, you know, scientific explanations and whatnot, they go with the assumption that the universe is infinite. So, I mean, it's really hard to say whether, you know, God is an enacting force on, you know, whether life, you know, the planets would be pulled together or not, you know. But, I mean, according to, you know, the science that we have nowadays, I mean, everything points to it. What I've been taught, you know, growing up is that gravity only reaches a certain extent, you know. So, on the scientific side of things, gravity is not going to, like, if Earth, for example, our gravity is not going to enact on something like, you know, Pluto. That's all the way out there. And if it does, it's very small. You know, it's not significant enough to say that Pluto is going to be, you know, crashing into us anytime soon. So that's just what I believe. Okay, so you're saying that basically theories, you know, they can be correct, but they're a theory because you don't have any way to prove it. And you're saying, like, he could be correct, but he just can't prove it. We don't have the science to prove it yet. Well, there are ways to prove it. And in some scenarios, like, it really can't be proven sometimes. But in most scenarios where there's theories, it is proven. It absolutely is proven through research. But that only is until we disprove it. Like, there's been some theories out there that everyone, all the scientists thought they were true and right for sure. And then they're disproven. So, you know, at any time, any given theory can be disproven at any moment. So they're only true until they're disproven. I think in this situation, it's definitely just a theory right now. Like, we definitely do not have the science to prove that. I would agree. For me, I think there is a higher prize. There is a God. I think there's no way this Earth could come about like this. You know, all right, yeah. You know, I agree. These are all good points. But building off that, which is one of the big arguments of if there's a higher power is, how did the universe start? You know, and this brings us back to another theory, actually, which is called string theory, which is basically, if you don't know what string theory is, it's one of the theories of how the universe is created. I'll give you guys a little back information of that. Basically, what string theory is, is that, let me look it up real quick. Basically, it's saying that each reality that we're in are different strings. Now we're kind of just going through each of these strings, basically, to each reality, each universe. So I have a good quote here. This is from the book, The God Equation, by Michio Kaku, which is a renowned scientist, physicist, wrote a great book about if there's a God. He says, furthermore, each solution of string theory is an entire universe, and there seems to be an infinite number of solutions, and that only a God can truly test a theory directly. So basically, what he's saying is similar to the Isaac thing, is that the theory of string theory can only be proven by a God. So what exactly do these theories mean? Why are we making these theories if we ultimately come to the conclusion that it can only be proven by a higher power? I think that string theory, I've mostly seen in things like DC or Marvel Comics. Things like I've watched, like The Flash, and they've, it's all going off into this part of our universe. It's another Earth, but it's the same timeline type of shit like that. And I don't really see that to be a reality. I think 100% there is a higher power like God, because God knows what our next move is going to be, knows what we're going to do in our whole entire life before we're even born. God knows what our path's going to be, knows where we're going to go. And I think that even though making a simple decision in life could change your outcome greatly, like if you're waiting to cross the street and you say, alright, I'm just going to go across the street, you could get hit by a bus. And if you say, alright, I'm just going to wait, and that doesn't happen. Just simple decisions in a daily lifetime like that, that could just change your outcome. But I feel like a higher power like God knows that's already going to happen. And the string theory is just like, I feel like it's unrealistic. You think it's a more far-fetched theory, sort of? Okay, so here's my thing. So why do we create theories that only God can prove? It's in our human nature to ask these questions. One of the fundamental questions of our being is where do we come from? How was the universe created? And we have yet to prove exactly where we come from. And there's two sides to every story, right? So one side is God. God is all-knowing. In the Bible they teach omniscience. God knows everything. So obviously people who believe that are going to think that God already knew everything and he put these events into place. You know what I'm saying? I can understand what you're saying from that. So if you're going to question the theory of how the universe was initiated or how our universe started, you can start with when life on Earth was discovered. So I'll just give an example. A scorpion is dated to have not evolved except in size for 420 million years that creature has existed. The first mammal ever was, I believe, a mammoth. It was 200, or not a mammoth, it was a mouse, I'm sorry. 205 million years ago. The first human was about 4.5 million years ago, supposedly, and that's like if we're going off evolution, primal era. And only in the past one million years, or one to two, has it been known that a human is existent in modern history, or something of the sort. And that doesn't happen by chance. With all that time in between and now, that has to be, if it's not a high power, I don't know what it would be. I agree. That's a point we're going to discuss later. You actually brought up one of our talking points. But I have a quote here and I'll give a little back story for it. We're not going to discuss it, but it leaves some room for interpretation to the viewers, or the listeners, I guess. But this is from a book by Roy Closier called Can We Know God Is Real? He's also a scientist, philosopher as well. This is, and I quote, he says, Taking at face value, this requires that God is the creator of all laws in the cosmos, including the laws of proof, the laws of mathematics and logic, since these are amongst the invisible realities. There are two created, but in that case, the laws of mathematics and logic do not account for their own origin. There are created laws that hold true in creatures for God's self manifestation in the cosmos. But since whatever can be proven by use of them must be governed by them, nothing that can be proven using them could be their uncreated origin. Basically what this is saying is that it's well known that we discovered mathematics and physics. We did not create them. Since they're such complex things and we can't point to a specific origin of them, our only way to point is that some higher power or God or gods created it for us. I'll leave that for interpretation. Moving on to our next talking point is the philosophy side. We're going to go at this from a very non-biased point. One of our talking points is from a Catholic philosopher called St. Thomas. The next one is from Aristotle who is, if you know anything about philosophy, he's a really big philosopher. He's not known to be Catholic. I think he's actually an atheist at one point. But yeah, jumping into the philosophy side, we can first talk about the, I think it was seven or so, six or seven proofs from St. Thomas. I think only three or so of them have been proven to be, I guess, reliable. The other are kind of just not really valid proofs. But yeah, looking at the three of them, the first one is, or there's actually five proofs, sorry. But one of the proofs is actually the proof of complexity. I think I said that right. We're not going to talk about all three, but we'll talk about this one. Basically what St. Thomas is saying here is that our world is so complex, just the fact that we're the only intelligent beings on the earth just the fact that we're exactly the right distance from the sun, our atmosphere is perfect so that we don't all disintegrate, we have the perfect weather for life, etc. Basically what he's saying is that how could this not be the doing of a higher power that every single thing in the world is perfect so that we can have life. I'd love to hear your guys' opinions on this, but yeah, that's basically what he's saying. Well yes, I absolutely agree with him that there is a higher power out there that came onto earth and created us. I don't believe in the conventional way that most people in America think. You have the Bible, Jesus, God. I think it was a different higher power that literally came to earth and created us. If anyone at home looks up the Sumerian tablets and the Anunnaki, you can see exactly what I'm talking about, but I think there is a higher power and I think there's one true God out there, this higher power, that created us. So going off this quote, I absolutely agree with him. Whether he was talking about God from the Bible or anything like that, that's a different story, but I absolutely agree with that there was a higher power that created us. Right, yeah. Even St. Thomas talking about these proofs, he doesn't even mention the Bible. Another way to look at this is, say you have a painting or a statue. You look at it and you don't say, oh, this statue just came out of nowhere or this artwork just created itself. You look at it and you're like, who designed this, who's the designer, things like that. But you look at earth, you look at life, you look at our brain, things like that. Something so simple as art, how could you look at that and say, oh, someone created this, but you look at our earth and all these complex and sophisticated things and you don't think, oh, someone didn't create that. How could you look at it like, yeah, everything in our earth is so complex, but it didn't have a creator. One quick point, there's also a lot of evidence out there that supports what he is saying. There's a lot of evidence that talks about whether it's God or higher power that created us. For the viewers at home, you just got to look into it and find it. But there is a lot of evidence out there. I would agree with that entirely in the sense that if you look in South America, Egypt, and I believe it was somewhere in India, which are three completely different continents. If you look at, there's pyramids or the way certain temples were made in South America, pyramids in Egypt, and then certain temples and monasteries in the Buddhist religion in India. All across the world, you have three similar structures, and especially in Egypt, they're made with monumental amounts of stone. I'm trying to describe to you guys, I believe each stone itself was a matter of 13 tons of rock for each stone in one of those pyramids, which we're dating back a couple thousand years old. Think about what it would take for them to do that. Because in modern day history, that would take years, if not a century. It's something so impossible that you look at it and you're like, how the hell did a human create that? Not another species on earth is able to do something close to that. They had some different sort of, not machinery, but a different mechanism. You think they're more advanced than what we would think? They had more advanced technology than us. Not maybe mechanical or electrical type of what, but they had more advanced technology than us. Maybe a whole new thinking we don't even know about yet. That we have no clue about. This brings us to our next point. Actually, the philosopher Aristotle gives a very similar argument. He's got technically three causes, which are similar to what St. Thomas is saying. But Aristotle's first, he says, is the material cause. This is all hypothetical situation. Basically what Aristotle says is that, think about we're building a house. You have the lumber, the nails, the bricks, and the windows, and so forth. Without those materials, the house cannot be created. Next is the efficient cause, which is the work, the building, the effort that goes into actually building it, putting these pieces together. Third is the formal cause, which is the blueprints for the house. You need a blueprint to give to the builders in order for them to know what they're building to build it. Then there's a final cause, which is the house that results from the materials, the work, the blueprint. All those combined make the house, and that the house that is built has a purpose. It's saying that you do all this, and then you build it, the house has a purpose. You can relate that to anything on the earth. The earth does exactly what it's supposed to. Our bodies do exactly what they're supposed to. We have every component, we have every blueprint necessary that it works exactly perfectly. What are your guys' opinions on that? I mean, think about gravity, laws of physics, laws of math, they're all perfect so that our world can work. All of the math, like you said briefly earlier, the distance between us and the sun, if we were an inch closer, we would burn up. If we were an inch farther, we would freeze up. All of the math adds up perfectly to make this universe work. Everything in the world is made for a specific reason. Why is there evaporation that goes up to the clouds to make rain? Why is there gravity to keep us attached to the earth? It's all perfect, it all works perfectly. Think of the house hypothetical that Aristotle said, and bring it to a larger scale, is basically what he's saying. Think of the house, but on the scale of a universe. Everything works perfectly. Just the fact that we haven't collided with anything else, that's just the argument itself. That everything's perfect and that a higher power is somewhat influencing everything that has been, will be, or is created now. And also the fact that not only on earth we see that all the math adds up and all the perfection like that, we also see it throughout our universe, throughout the whole Milky Way. We can see these different planets and these different solar systems in our universe that are also rotating just like us, and they all have the same... I think the craziest part about mathematics would be the fact that it is the language of the universe. And I don't just say that because that saying goes. Math isn't the same on every planet, gravity would be different on other planets, or in space a different type of math is used, for example. But it's still the only language that helps us understand the way things work, why they work, how, when, time, and the ability to use math with time. But math itself is just legitimately the greatest tool the human has been given. Yes, and the other side of that argument would be, okay, why didn't this just happen by chance? Why didn't we just have the science that is able to make it work? And also, another argument would be, okay, let's take a look back in history. 65 million years ago, or whenever it was that the dinosaurs were living on the Earth, and the meteor just wiped them out. You know what I'm saying? Perfect situation to create human life, right? Yeah, was that something that a... I never thought about that. Then, you know, what if we were in that position? What if we lived 65 million years ago? What if we were in that position, we got wiped out? Is that the doing of some higher power? But to counter that, me personally, I believe that we are put here on Earth by other intelligent beings, other intelligent people, gods, if you will. They put us here. So, in that way, that... Who are you quoting? From which one? Aristotle? Yeah, Aristotle. In that way, from what Aristotle said, it is really an interesting thing to think about, because I think that these higher beings created... You know, it's like what he was saying, like a house, but they are the ones that created this perfect house called the Earth. You know what I'm saying? It's a house, but on a larger scale. So, that's where I think Aristotle is correct. Yeah, that's a perfect opinion. That's a really great, like, sort of different perspective. We're open to a lot of different perspectives, you know, coming from either if you don't believe in a higher power, if you do, if you're a god, gods, whatever, but that's a great perspective to look at. One of the last talking points, I guess, would be sort of a logical standpoint, slash, I guess, sort of personal opinion, I guess. But one of the quotes that we'll look at, let me find it real quick. Give me a second here. Stand by, hold on. All right. Yeah, I'm sorry, Ben, to cut you off. But one of the things we can look at here, this quote is actually from this little book called Does God Exist? from David Beck, W. David Beck. I'm not going to quote his whole quote, but basically what he is saying is that from our very first documented history, not even documented, just very first history that we even know, from over 10,000 years B.C., people have always believed in God. You know, we have these transcriptions on caves and temples and whatnot. How come throughout all of history there has never been a country, a region, a culture, dynasty that has not believed in a higher power, dating back to however far we can look in history? You know, that itself can just be a proof, I guess, for there being a higher power. Well, that's an interesting point you bring up. But I also think that part of that is just human nature. I'm going to pause you real quick. Continuing that quote, even isolated cultures and tribes and regions that are uncontacted even believe in a higher power. Some that have no outside information, language, knowledge or anything going on in the current era, even they believe in some sort of higher power. Bryce, please continue. Yeah, so what I was saying is I think it's partly human nature to just believe in some sort of higher power. Whatever the reason is, you know, maybe it makes you sleep better at night. Very fair point. But also, I do personally believe that there is absolutely a higher power. Now, the fact that there's so many different religions out there and gods, that's also very interesting to me. I believe it all stems from a single higher power dating back, you know, all the way in human history. All these religions and gods, I believe that they're all representing just one singular higher power. But, you know, as time goes on in history, all these stories of that higher power gets passed down and whether it's through translation or things lost in translation, things of that nature, it's just changed into different bits and pieces of the one main story. So, I think that there absolutely is just one higher power and the fact that we have all these gods and religions is due to just the long period of human history and how things get changed and lost in translation, etc., you know, things of that sort. Yeah, you know, I agree. Bryce, again, provides another perspective to look on it. I mean, it's not a sort of religion perspective, it's just a higher power. But, just to end it off as we're running out of time here, coming from personally, I am a Catholic, we've all been here trying to support a non-biased position on this, but coming from a Catholic, something I'll leave you guys with, a very interesting fact here. If you look at the Bible on sort of a timeline basis, a little background to the Bible, the Bible has 40 authors spanning over 1,500 years and three different continents and, I think, three different languages. And if you lay it out, there are over 63,000 cross-references in the Bible, meaning that even from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible, each of the authors talk about the same thing and connect the same things. You can look up Bible cross-references. It's a really interesting thing to look at, thing to read. I highly recommend. But, yeah, thank you guys for listening. We're not here to change anyone's religion. We were just here to provide facts, theories, to, I guess, yeah, just provide another opinion and give you something to think about. But, yeah, thank you for listening. Thank you guys for being a great audience. Yeah, of course. Pleasure to be on the podcast. Appreciate it. Love to say thank you as a guest, provide some really good insight. And, yeah, thank you guys. Thank you.
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