Concluding Comments

Concluding Comments

QUESTION #1: I thoroughly enjoyed being here. My question is to both Dr. Carroll and Dr. Craig: What would you say was the greatest weakness in your argument for this debate, and then, the greatest weakness in your opponent’s argument. Thank you.

CRAIG: I suppose the greatest weakness would be the tentativeness of the empirical evidence that universe began to exist—that our conclusions are always provisional and not certain. I suppose the greatest weakness I would see in Carroll’s argument would be that we do have good tentative evidence that the universe began to exist. So, the necessity of having recourse to elaborate schemes to explain away the evidence that we do have seems to me to be a weakness in the other side.

CARROLL: I don’t think that the universe beginning to exist requires God in any way, so I don’t think that is a weakness. I think the greatest weakness in my own case is the weakness that science will always have in that we are not done yet. There are plenty of questions that we don’t know the answer to. Conceptually, it’s always possible that someday in the future, we will hit a point where we try again and again and we find that the best explanation that we can come up with is not a purely naturalistic one. We have to be open to that possibility. Naturalism is extrapolating into the future the idea that we would still, someday, be able to come up with such an explanation. I think that’s very, very, very, very probable, but it might not happen. The greatest weakness in the other side is I think that it’s pick your poison: either the universe in which we live looks nothing like you would expect it to look under theism or you can justify that it does only because theism explains almost nothing about what the universe looks like.

QUESTION #2: Wittgenstein said the greatest conception of modernism is the idea that laws of nature explain the phenomenon of nature. Now, I love science, but I think that we are deceived into thinking that the sheer power of science gives us all the explanations. Now, nobody fully knows what gravity is or fully knows what . . .

STEWART: What is your question?

QUESTIONER: Here’s my question: If we don’t fully know what things such as gravity or time are, but yet, we say, “Science explains . . .”[said in a deep voice], why is science the only explanatory category allowed? What evidence do any of you have that only science can provide a full explanation?

CARROLL: I’ve never heard science use that voice before! [laughter]

ROSENBERG: I’d be happy to respond. Explanation is more than the reduction of curiosity. It’s not a matter of scratching a psychological itch. Scratching the itch of curiosity is not the criterion of explanatory adequacy. Among philosophers, there has been at least one hundred fifty years of debate about what the nature of explanation is and what the criteria are for explanatory adequacy. About the only thing on which I think there is significant consensus is that prediction has something to do with real explanation. It’s not the symmetry of prediction and explanation that the positivists urged. It’s a much weaker requirement when you offer an explanation, in order to establish that your explanation is an improvement on competing explanations or does more than satisfy itches, the way that narratives we were lulled to sleep with do, you’ve got to have some new predictive consequence: indirect, direct, eventual, or immediate. And it’s because only science holds up the promise of that kind of predictive consequence that its explanations pass that epistemic test.

MAUDLIN: The question seems premised on something I’ve certainly never asserted. I don’t know anyone who has. The main issue isn’t, “Can we segregate science and give it all credibility and put everything else on some other side?” The question is: “For any belief, what are the grounds upon which you hold it? And can you see why those grounds would be reliable or give you good grounds, good reasons?” One can just say, I would tend to say almost any enterprise that meets that criterion, I’ll call a kind of science, right? Mathematics sits in the science department, but it’s not an empirical science. And it sits in the science department because what it has in it are proofs, and you think those proofs give you good reasons to believe the theorems. So, why does math sit next to physics? In certain ways, they are completely different. But it’s called a science just because it seems to have this strong concern about articulating the grounds, the evidence, and so on. From that point of view, the reason that you should only pay attention to science is because by this definition, science is those things that you have good reason to pay attention to. Anything else that you choose to believe in just doesn’t have the credentials to show that it is reliable. So then, it’s kind of a nomenclature thing. But I don’t think that puts theology on one side or the other. As I said, I can perfectly well imagine good evidence for a theological hypothesis. Sean can as well. It’s because we don’t see a world that looks like that, that we are not drawn in that direction.

QUESTION #3: My question is for Dr. Carroll. I’m wondering if you could clarify something regarding the slides last night with Alan Guth. The way I take Dr. Craig to be citing the theorem is: our observable universe, the one that’s nearly fourteen billion years old, certainly satisfies the only assumption of the theorem, the H-average being greater than zero. So, is Guth saying that he doesn’t believe our universe satisfies that condition, or is he saying that there’s a cyclical model that he believes is eternal, or what was actually the gist of what he was talking about?

CARROLL: Great question. It’s not nearly enough to apply the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin [BGV] Theorem that the part of the universe we observe has an expansion rate greater than 0. That is one of the assumptions of the BGV theorem. It says that if the universe has an average expansion rate greater than zero, then you cannot extend that behavior infinitely far in the past. So, the fact that it extends for nearly fourteen billion years tells you absolutely nothing. And when Alan says he thinks the universe is probably eternal, he’s saying, “Well there are two large loopholes in the theorem.” One is: maybe the universe has an average expansion rate of zero. For example, in one of these bouncing universes, it’s changing all the time, but it’s changing one way on one side and the other way on the other side, and the average is zero. Or, I think more plausibly, what I suspect he believes in because we’re writing a paper together about it, is that it’s just extremely clear to us as cosmologists that the chance that classical physics is telling you anything interesting and relevant about the very first moment of the history of the universe is very small. You really have to think quantum-mechanically, and the BGV theorem only tells you when you need to start thinking quantum-mechanically, not what the result of that thinking is going to be. The simplest quantum mechanical models that hold the most promise for explaining cosmological puzzles seem right now to us to be those that are eternal. If someone has a better idea tomorrow—if I have a better idea tomorrow—I’ll change my mind about that, but right now, given what we know about the state of the art, that seems to be the way to go.

QUESTION #4: My question is for Alex Rosenberg. Would you explain for us the concept of irreducible complexity, as it is expressed by Michael Behe in his book Darwin’s Black Box, and by Steven Meyer in the book Signature in the Cell?

ROSENBERG: I’m sorry, I don’t quite get the question. Do you want me to explain Behe’s idea of irreducible complexity?

QUESTIONER: Yes.

ROSENBERG: Well, Behe holds that there are some complex combinations of matter that have functions or causal relations with their environments that are of a sort that they could not have been produced by the set of small, blind variations filtered by an environment because there’s no adaptive advantage to any one of the components and only an adaptive advantage to the combination of the components. That’s Behe’s thesis. Would you like me to say what’s wrong with the thesis? . . . In short, it’s an argument from ignorance, ignorance which we are constantly pushing back, and the example that Behe has used—the flagella of the euglena—is one about which we now have a detailed understanding of the evolutionary trajectory that produced it, and about which we have some idea of the adaptive advantages of the earlier components. It’s quite remarkable that Darwin, in the sixth chapter of On the Origin of Species began by saying that the eye is an organ of extreme complexity. It’s obvious that half an eye, a quarter of an eye, an eyelash, an iris, a cornea alone would convey no adaptation to the creature that had it. So, unless he could provide an explanation of its emergence by a series of gradual steps, his theory was refuted. Darwin said this in 1869 in the sixth chapter of On the Origin of the Species, in which he gave a sketch that remains with us, as to the broad outlines of what we now know in much greater detail to be the evolution of the eye by natural selection. And that’s a much harder problem that Behe’s euglena flagellum.

QUESTION #5: Dr. Carroll, you grant that the study of the nature of the universe can be undertaken with at least similar critical rigor in both Naturalism and Theism alike. What is gained by such an endeavor with Naturalistic presuppositions rather than Theistic presuppositions?

CARROLL: Well, I think that it’s not a presupposition. I don’t think it should be a presupposition. I think that Naturalism is the conclusion we reach by empirical investigation and trying to understand what is the best framework in which to understand the universe that we see, given the data we have. As data get better and better, one’s best-fit model changes over time. I’m happy to say that 500 years ago, the best-fit model was theism. But now, we know better. Given advances in physics, in biology, in cosmology, Naturalism is the conclusion of thinking about what empirical information tells you about the universe. If you did go in with a presupposition, I would agree that would be a mistake.

QUESTION #6: The word “consciousness” came up a couple times last night. I think Dr. Craig referenced consciousness, and we’ve talked about cosmology, origins, and beginnings. It seems that we have been talking about material things for the most part. I would like someone from both sides to explain where does the immaterial come from in regard to cosmology, i. e., consciousness, belief, act of will, things of that nature.

MAUDLIN: All right, I know that on our team, there will be wild disagreements about this. So, you shouldn’t think of us a representing some general state of mind. I think consciousness is the hardest problem there is. The relation of conscious states to matter, to the body, is the hardest nut to crack, and there’s some reason, some very general reason, that I think that physics can’t crack it. Some people will disagree with me on that. What we know, we know. We do know some things. We know that if I poke your head in certain ways, which is a physical event, there is material interaction that changes your state of consciousness. We know that your states of consciousness depend in great detail on the material state of your cranium. We know that you can get a lesion in a part of your brain that will eliminate nothing but your ability to recognize faces. Now, if you take all that together, it seems pretty obvious to conclude that if your brain is not in any working condition, if it’s moldered away, then there will be no attendant state of consciousness there, even though I can’t explain how consciousness arises from matter, and I’m not pretending that I can. I think we know enough about the relation of states of matter and states of consciousness to say, “You better have an operating brain if you want to have a state of consciousness,” which is why I don’t think there is anything after [death].

CRAIG: I think it’s evident that consciousness, and particularly intentionality, the “aboutness” of our mental states, fits much better into a Theistic worldview than in a Naturalistic worldview, because on Theism, you’ve already got an ultimate, unembodied mind or consciousness, who is the personal, transcendent Creator of the universe. So, the idea that there would be finite, embodied minds wouldn’t be very surprising on Theism. It fits in with that worldview, whereas the existence of mind in a Naturalistic worldview is much more difficult to fit into that worldview. And that’s why many naturalists will deny the reality of intentionality, personal selves, identity over time, and things of that sort.

ROSENBERG: Do you know any? [laughter]

CRAIG: I didn’t mention your name!

COLLINS: I find it quite amazing that people who believe that consciousness is just reducible to particles actually take their cosmological theories seriously because all those cosmological theories are is just a certain state of the brain. And if that’s all it is, it seems to reduce its significance. How does it correspond to anything in the world? I think there are really deep questions there, if you take that line.

QUESTION #7: This question is for Dr. Carroll, and it’s actually from someone who’s watching on the live stream. He says, “If there are multiple models that work for describing the nature of the universe, but no one knows which is right, epistemically what justifies one to believe one model as opposed to the other?”

CARROLL: This is the kind of question where I suspect that I’m missing some hidden thrust. The way that we decide between models is the way that we’ve developed over the last several hundred years in the scientific method: the hypothetico-deductive method. We try to invent all the different hypotheses that we can, and we see which of them seems to provide a plausible account of the data, and if it is a really, really good account of the data, and a really, really simple theory, then we say that theory is probably right. If there are different ones, and none of them fits exactly right, and some of them are more complicated and ill-defined, then we are more tentative. We say, “Well, there are different levels of credence we give to different theories.” But ultimately, it’s about hypotheses and comparing them to the data. There is no algorithm that is hard-and-fast and can easily be formulated. We try to decide whether one hypothesis is a better fit to the data. This is a famous problem in the philosophy of science. But in the way that science actually works, if you wait long enough and continue to collect more and more data, one theory always gets better and the other theories get worse and worse. I would say that’s what’s been happening over the last five hundred years with Naturalism and Theism.

QUESTION #8: My question is directed to Dr. Craig. You’re saying that the universe has a beginning, but I’m still not exactly convinced why I should go from the universe had a cause, supposedly, to that cause is a personal God who cares about us, and loves us, and so on. So, I just want more clarification on how you get from a supposed cause to God.

CRAIG: Right, I was actually going to say something about that in my response to Dr. Maudlin’s paper, but he dropped that part out of his written paper, so I cut that paragraph out of my response as well.^[1] In my published work, I give philosophical arguments for why I think the transcendent cause of the universe is personal.^[2] It’s important to understand that the cosmological argument is primarily a philosophical or metaphysical argument for a personal Creator of the universe. And my primary reason for believing the second premise—that the universe began to exist—is the philosophical arguments against the infinitude of the past. I think there are multiple arguments that make it plausible that the past cannot be infinite. And so, for me, the empirical, scientific evidence is just icing on the cake. It is just remarkable that we have empirical confirmation of a premise for which we have independent philosophical arguments.

Given those philosophical arguments and scientific evidence for the beginning, we then ask, “What sort of a being could be the transcendent cause of the universe?” Given those arguments, it would have to be a being that is beyond space and time, is therefore non-physical, immaterial, and changeless. Now, metaphysically, there are only two sorts of candidates that could fit the bill for that: either an unembodied mind (or consciousness) or an abstract object, such as a number. But abstract objects don’t stand in causal relations, and therefore, it follows that the cause of the universe is an unembodied mind. In my published work, I give two other additional arguments for why I think the cause is plausibly personal.

QUESTION #9: My question is for the speaker who had the Socrates argument. You showed the slide that said, “What’s right is right because nature makes it right,” correct?

MAUDLIN: Yes, “what is right and wrong is right or wrong in its own nature. It’s not made right or wrong by anyone’s decision to make it right or wrong.”

QUESTIONER: So, if nature were to create humankind, then my definition of right may be different than someone else’s definition of right. So, how do we decide whose definition is right?

MAUDLIN: You’re misunderstanding the word “nature” here. What I mean is that it’s right in its own nature, of its own essence, or in what it is in itself. It doesn’t have to do with nature in the sense of natural science. If you happen to believe that chattel slavery is fine—and people have over the course of humanity—and I happen to believe it is a moral abomination, then I’m right and you’re wrong. And that’s because of the nature of justice and equity and human dignity.

CRAIG: I think that your question was misstated. You want to ask, how can you decide whether Maudlin is right and you’re wrong.

QUESTIONER: Correct.

CRAIG: That’s not the right question. As Dr. Maudlin says, we can have a moral grasp of objective moral values and our moral duties, if they exist and are real and objective. The question, rather, is ontological, not epistemological. Why think on Naturalism that human beings do have intrinsic dignity and have equal value? It’s very difficult to see on Naturalism why this relatively recently evolved primate species should be invested with this sort of objective moral worth, and especially, why they would have moral duties to one another. Where do these moral values come from? Who or what lays such prohibitions or obligations upon man? And so a good many naturalists, such as Dr. Rosenberg here, will say, on Naturalism, “there really aren’t any objective moral values and duties, moral nihilism is true. Get used to it!” That just comes with the worldview. So, I think this ontological question is an important one, and here I think Theism provides a real basis for it, because on Theism, the good is God. God is what Plato called the good, and that is an objective transcendent reality independent of social mores and cultural evolution. God’s nature expresses itself toward us in the form of certain moral imperatives: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” “Thou shalt not kill,” and so on. And these, then, constitute our moral duties. So, our moral obligations are rooted in God’s commands and these are not arbitrary, as Euthyphro thought; rather, they are reflections of the good, of God Himself, who is the paradigm and locus of absolute moral goodness. So, I think Theism makes good sense of human value and dignity, whereas Naturalism has real difficulty.

MAUDLIN: Well, let me respond to the response. The argument I gave was that the nature of the good is exactly like the Platonic good. The Platonic form of the good is not personal; it doesn’t know about us; it doesn’t know about anybody. It didn’t play any role in the creation of anything. It is an objective standard. Now, if you think there is a theological agent who knows that standard, and somehow conveyed it—although you don’t seem to need it to be conveyed— everybody, every society has come, on carful thought, to realize that murder is wrong, that theft is wrong, and so on. It took a long time to figure out that slavery is wrong, that was moral progress. It took a long time to figure out that segregation was wrong, that was moral progress, and it was held up, as much as it was advanced by religious doctrines. Right now, we’re figuring out that it is wrong to discriminate against people who are homosexuals, and some people haven’t figured that out yet. But what you are going to do is figure it out by thinking—by thinking hard. If you believe there’s objective truth about it, which I believe. Dr. Craig says it comes with the package. It doesn’t come with the package. I think I figure out what’s right and wrong by thinking hard. And I don’t think a God would have the power to make chattel slavery moral. It’s not a command that even God [could make right], just as God couldn’t make one plus one equal three. So, objective moral values are above that level, and separate from him.

STEWART: Boy, that one touched a nerve! This will be our final question, and then, we’ll turn it over to our panelists to give their final concluding comments.

QUESTION #10: Dr. Craig, if the universe is eternal, does that mean that universe doesn’t need an explanation for its existence?

CRAIG: No, it doesn’t; but it would mean it’s a different kind of argument. There are different versions of the cosmological argument that sometimes get conflated. One version, one I’ve defended and I’ve called the Kalām Cosmological Argument because of the Islamic tradition which developed it during the Middle Ages, is based on the notion that the universe began to exist, and that since something can’t come into being without a cause, there needs to be a primordial cause of the origin of the universe. But suppose Dr. Carroll is right, and the temporal becoming is merely a subjective feature of human consciousness, that the universe begins to exist merely in the sense that a yardstick begins to exist at the first inch. It doesn’t come into being at the first inch; that’s just the front edge of the yard stick. Suppose the universe is like that and just has a front edge. Then, the question, “Why would it come into being?” would not be pertinent. Instead, what we would ask is, “Why is there a tenselessly existing universe rather than nothing, or rather than something else?” That is the form of the cosmological argument developed by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. This Leibnizian form of the argument seeks a sufficient reason or explanation of the existence of contingent reality, and it finds it in the existence of a metaphysically necessary being whose non-existence is impossible. So, these are quite distinct versions of the argument, and we haven’t talked about the contingency argument because that’s not an argument to which cosmological data is relevant. That’s a purely metaphysical argument, like the ontological argument. But the cosmological data are very pertinent to the kalām argument in virtue of that second premise, which is susceptible to scientific confirmation or disconfirmation.

STEWART: All right, thank you for the questions. Let’s give our panelists a chance to give us their concluding thoughts.

ROSENBERG: Thank you, Bob. And thank you all for your attention and for you simulating questions. It’s always a pleasure and an intellectual treat to sit in company such as this and listen and learn, as well as get a chance to put your ideas forward. I think the last idea that I’d like to put before you is this: If there’s an intellectual struggle between Theism and science, and it’s the basis of the decision you make regarding your religious values, then you are very likely to find yourself in an unstable equilibrium at best and to fall off that equilibrium in the direction of science because when it comes to matters of evidence and reason and argument, science is the product of the persistent demand for evidence, reason, and argument over a period of several thousand years and has become the dominant form of an assessment of cognitively significant claims in our civilization across the entire world. And therefore, if you’re concerned about your theological commitment, it’s far better to ground it on faith than to hope for a justification in science.

CRAIG: I’d like to commend the Greer-Heard Forum for having this kind of a conference that brings together persons holding opposing views to debate in a civil and collegial manner these tremendously important questions. This is a modern continuation of the medieval practice called Quaestiones disputate. These disputed questions in Theology were practices of medieval universities, where persons of different points of view on important questions would come together. They would publicly debate these questions, and then these questions would be published, where they became the basis for commentary and reaction by other thinkers. That’s exactly what the Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum is doing. So, I think this is a wonderful format and forum. Now, that doesn’t mean that this kind of debate format is the only type of forum in which one engages. On the contrary, next week I’m going to be in Chicago at the Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, where I’ll be presenting a paper on God and abstract objects, and there will be a pair of commentators there to talk about it. That will be a very different sort of forum, and a very different sort of discussion, but it’s not mutually exclusive with one like this. Similarly, one will often have exchanges of papers in professional journals or in books where these things can be discussed. I say, “Let a thousand flowers bloom!” All of these different types of forums are valuable ways in which to discuss these issues. And one of the great advantages of this kind of debate forum is that I don’t know of any other way that is as effective in bringing this sort of material to the attention of a popular audience. A popular-level audience will love to come out and hear a debate on these issues much more than just an individual lecture. It is a way to get the public’s attention. And it doesn’t matter if anybody changes his mind. You should not judge the success of the debate by how many minds are changed. I think far more important is how many people will be stimulated to inquire further, to begin to read, to take a major in philosophy—and I’ve met people like that here at this forum. I know that these types of forums are tremendously provocative in terms of leading persons to further study and deeper inquiry. And for those of us who are Christians, it can make our faith more informed, deeper, and more relevant to the world in which we live. So, I’m thankful to Bob Stewart and to the Greer-Heard Forum for an event like this and the privilege of participating in it.

MAUDLIN: Of course, I’d like to thank the Forum, and Bob for organizing the forum, and Sean for picking me to be here. Most of all, I have to thank my wife, who is the one who insisted I not read the paper. She was absolutely right, and actually, I want to talk for a minute just at the end to come back to one of the arguments that’s been floating around, the fine-tuning argument, and just make a point about it, and maybe this stuff about if we’re all so contingent, if humanity evolved, where’s human dignity, maybe it connects in there too. So, there’s a tendency to think that if something really happened just by chance, without any overarching determining thing that aimed at it, that if it’s just an accident, then it can’t really be significant. I met my wife by accident. We met at a conference. I was going to the conference because another colleague who got invited was sick and he couldn’t go, and he recommended me. We can all trace out these funny little things that happened in our lives that played a very central role as to how our lives evolved. If you start thinking more deeply about it, our own individual existence is the result of numerous wildly unlikely accidents. I don’t want to get graphic, but when you were conceived, there were a billion other competing sperm in the game. Your existence was a one-out-of-a-billion shot right there. And for you to be conceived, your parents had to have been conceived, and there was a one-out-of-a-billion shot for them, and so on back, generation after generation after generation. By any reasonable standard, we are all here by accident. I could calculate that number and say, “Look how unlikely it is that I’m here! Could I believe it’s by chance?” It is by chance. I can believe it’s by chance. It is by chance. Does that make my existence less significant? Does it make my wife’s existence less significant? Does it make my child’s existence less significant, less important? That it was a matter of just blind luck over very, very long odds, and the same, I think, is true for the entire human race, and for life on earth. It can be disquieting to realize that. It’s hard to take in. But I think you can take it in and maintain a sense of dignity and significance in spite of that. Then, you can learn a lot about the world because you don’t have this barrier, a resistance to taking the results of science that come from feeling upset about them.

COLLINS: I want to make a couple of comments. First of all, I really do not see the success of Science as undermining Theism. It seems just the opposite. If you look back at the scientific revolution, a lot of the inspiration and motivation for the key thinkers, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, was that they thought the universe had a mind behind it, an intelligent mind. Galileo famously said that the language of nature, that God endowed the universe with, was the language of mathematics. And then, beauty and elegance were used as a criterion because they thought, “God wouldn’t just create an ugly universe but a beautiful one at the fundamental level.” That has been widely confirmed just by the success of science. It’s truly amazing how successful we have been in not just understanding our everyday world, but when you look to cosmology, understanding the very origin of the world. If you really took seriously the complete naturalistic story that we were just here purely by chance and natural selection without any guidance, our minds would only be selected for a practical sort of reasoning in the ordinary realm, how we get around in the everyday world. We wouldn’t have, as Thomas Nagel emphasized, any expectation that our intellectual capacities would work to understand the underlying world, and yet, they do—incredibly so it seems. In this larger picture, the very success of science confirms a Theistic worldview. Then, when you look to other features we have discovered, that of the beginning of the universe, and particularly, the fine-tuning, it seems completely implausible to say that these fine-tunings are just a brute fact. They are so precise. It’s not just like the improbability we find in the case of the sperm, because we can glimpse under Theism why that occurrence wouldn’t be surprising. So, the difference is in the level of expectation for Theism versus Naturalism for those occurrences. I’m almost out of time, so I’ll just leave it at that.

CARROLL: I’m going to do three quick things first. First, two errata. One for my fellow team member, Alex Rosenberg: the guy who figured out stellar nucleosynthesis was the German physicist Hans Bethe (pronounced Bay-ta), not Hans Beth. And one erratum for Dr. Craig: as someone who is interested in the arrow of time, I took up the hobby of collecting wrist watches. So, I need to correct the analogy with Timex and Rolex. A Timex watch is much less expensive than a Rolex watch, but it is actually more accurate because a Timex is a quartz watch while a Rolex is a mechanical watch. Even the cheapest quartz watch is much more accurate than a mechanical watch. And the third point is, I’d like to explicitly thank Bob Stewart. Bob was up here making sure that everyone else got a round of applause, so please give a round to Bob for the amazing job he’s done.

The substantive things I have to say are on the table, but let me point out that there is a way of slicing the intellectual pie that puts us on obviously different sides in the last two days: the Theism versus Naturalism debate. There’s another way of slicing it, in which we’re all on the same side, which is the slicing of “who cares?” How is this going to cure cancer or make me a better smart phone or anything like that? To me, and to everyone up here on the podium and in the audience, all of this stuff fits together and is important: where the universe came from, how it works, where morals and values came from, how we evolved—all this stuff matters. As human beings, we do more than just exist from day to day. We would like to understand where we are, and all of us are trying our best to make that understanding happen, even if we end up in different places. Having said that, if there’s one lesson that science has taught us about trying to understand the world, the lesson is this: we’re bad at it. We human beings do not act in anything like a purely rational fashion. That’s why science is so wonderful: because it has developed techniques from double-blind studies, and so on, to correct the human impulse to make the data fit our favorite theories. So, the one methodological principle that everybody, theist, atheist, whatever, should always keep in mind is that if we would like something to be true, whether it’s conservation of energy or the existence of God, that we think should be true, that is not evidence that it is true. Not only is it not evidence that it’s true, it’s evidence that we should be especially skeptical of that principle being true, and we should always keep that in mind when we try our best to understand this world. Thank you.

SINCLAIR: Ah ha! I finally get the last word. [laughter] Well, I just want to be positive. One of my great concerns is that we seem to be so sharply polarized in the United States that I wonder if we are moving toward a post-civil society. And that’s where I really see the value of forums such as Greer-Heard. And I feel so privileged to be able to serve on a panel with scholars of this caliber, and to have had the discussions that we’ve had, like the one Tim and I had on climate change at lunch the other day, and how your wife and you have such a heart for that issue. On the Christian side, there’s a ministry called Reasons to Believe that I work with, and many at Reasons to Believe have a heart for this issue as well because the Bible teaches us that we are supposed to take care of the environment. So, there is actually room for cooperation on issues such as these, even if we don’t fully agree on the approach to take.

I wish I’d had some chance to talk to Dr. Rosenberg more often, but, Alex, I’m definitely going to read your book. One thing that I’m really pleased about is you make what I call a proactive, or affirmative, case for atheism rather than just treating it as a default position. That’s something that I find valuable.

Dr. Carroll, I hope that this has been a positive enough experience that you continue to do this and have these types of dialogues and that you find the positive and continue talk to us theists. Yes, we have our warts, but we appreciate talking to you.

CARROLL: I’ll introduce you to some atheists.

SINCLAIR: Okay, that’s all I have to say. Thank you.

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