Taken from JRE #2008 w/Stephen C. Meyer:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3woccDLWFU1cvOcQ5Oflue?si=7d478cb7407a4642

Yeah, there's been a lot of media reports suggesting that the findings of the James Webb telescope have undermined the case for the Big Bang or the Big Bang theory.

But there's an interesting backstory on this.

Most of these media reports were based on the writings of a single physics researcher named Eric Lerner who's been since 1990 kind of carrying a torch to refute the Big Bang.

And Lerner, in 1 of his articles, quoted a University of Kansas astrophysicist saying that she stays up late at night wondering if based on the on the the James Webb that everything that we know is turning out to be false.

Turns out that that researcher, that astrophysicist, disclaimed his use of the quote explaining that he took it completely out of context.

She was talking about theories of galaxy formation, not about whether or not there had been a Big Bang, and not about whether or not the universe is expanding as we would expect.

Yeah, and in a sense also taking somebody way out of context to make a point of his own.

So, here's, and there have been a number of leading astrophysicists, in fact people who would like to know more about this, I'd recommend what Brian Keating from University of California, San Diego, great astrophysicist, has been writing about this.

I wrote an op-ed in the Daily Wired distilling some of this stuff.

What the James Webb telescope is able to do is to, in fact, what it was constructed to do was to detect extremely long wavelength radiation, stuff that's outside the visible range.

It's actually in the infrared range is the more accurate physics term.

So it's looking for very long wavelength radiation coming from galaxies that are very, very far out there.

Well, because if the universe is expanding as we would expect based on the Big Bang theory, then the radiation coming from things very, very far out in space and therefore very far back in time should be very stretched out, more stretched out than stuff that's closer at hand.

So the James Webb was constructed in hopes of detecting that type of radiation if it existed.

It's not assuming that it necessarily would, but it would be a way of confirming the expansion of the universe has been going on for a very long time.

And in order to do that, the NASA people created some amazing technology.

They supercooled the detection apparatus to, I think, 567 degrees above absolute 0 so that the heat coming off of the instrument itself was not creating infrared that would interfere.

And what they were in fact able to detect from these very ancient, very distant galaxies was super red-shifted radiation, uber red-shifted stuff out in the infrared.

And were able, on the basis of that, to synthesize images of these very, very distant, remote galaxies.

Now the very fact that they were able to do that confirms that you have what you would expect on the basis of the Big Bang Theory, that the amount of red shift that you would expect to be present if in fact the galaxies had been expanding throughout that vast stretch of time was in fact present and was detected.

The whole focus was on the fact that there were galaxies that were more mature, there were more of them early on than we would have expected based on our theories of galaxy formation.

And so those are anomalies that need to be addressed and have not yet been explained as I understand it.

Maybe the astrophysicists have made more progress on that in even recent recent days.

But the basic picture of an expanding universe outward from the beginning has not been undermined but rather confirmed in a very dramatic way at very great distance and with it and for galaxies that are a very far look back time, way way back in time.

So I think it's a rather dramatic confirmation.

There have been many others, the cosmic background radiation that was discovered in 1965, the COBE radiation that George Smoot discovered in the 90s.

So there's been this pattern of confirming evidence of this basic picture of an expanding universe out from the beginning in observational astronomy from the 20s right up till now.

And so that, I think, gives us good reason to think, best we can tell the universe at a beginning.

What is the, when she was discussing the formation of galaxies, what had thrown that into question?

Like, What was about the formation of galaxies that undermined previous ideas?

I'm going to answer tentatively because I don't know this as well as the other that I just described.

But as I understand it, it's that there are more galaxies that formed earlier and are more mature than we would have expected because they were able to do look back to 13.5, 13.6 billion years ago.

They think the origin of the universe is about 13.8 billion years ago.

So apparently galaxies were forming faster than we would have expected And I think that's the anomaly that is on the table.

Does that just push the timeline further back, but still come up with the data that points to the idea of a beginning?

Maybe the origin of the universe was further back, but you're still getting this picture of a collapsing sphere in the reverse direction of time back to a point.

But is it possible that with further detection, we can, with new data, have a better understanding of what is actually going on, rather than just saying it all points to this thing?

Because it seems like there's data, but what you're describing seems like it's possible, at least in the future, to have better detection methods.

Yeah, it's always possible that we can change our minds on things because science is always provisional.

But there are many stable theories that have persisted because of a preponderance of evidence that points to and continues to point to the same conclusion.

And I think we've had a hundred years now where we've had repeated new types of observations that point towards the beginning.

And there are 2 other classes of, 2 other developments in theoretical physics that also, I think, reinforce this, that I also wrote about in the book.

1 is the singularity theorems that Hawking and Penrose and George Ellis proved in the 1960s and 70s.

And then there's something called the Borg-Guth-Volinkan theorem, which I think is even a tighter physics proof of a beginning.

I think there is a loophole with the Hawking-Penrose-Ellis singularity theorem, although it's I think very suggestive and highly indicative of a beginning.

Let me run it just briefly, because it's a fun thing to think about.

So Hawking is doing black hole physics for his PhD in the 1960s.

And he's at Cambridge, and he's having these neurological symptoms, and He's diagnosed with ALS.

And he's encouraged to press on by close friends, and he does.

And he ends up writing this brilliant thesis where he has 1 chapter where he's thinking about what the cosmologists are talking about, is that we've got this expanding universe, and if the universe is expanding in the forward direction of time, then matter's getting more and more diffuse over time.

Now, Part of his thesis involves general relativity, Einstein's theory of gravity.

According to Einstein, a massive body actually curves the fabric of space or space-time.

So if you're going in the forward direction of time, space is getting less and less curved and matter more and more diffuse.

But if you're going in the reverse direction of time, the matter is getting more and more densely concentrated at every successive point in the finite past until, again, you reach a limiting case where the matter gets so densely concentrated that space gets so tightly curved that it can't get any more tightly curved.

It can't get any more densely concentrated.

And you move towards a point of infinite density and infinite curvature.

Now, infinite curvature corresponds to 0 spatial volume.

And so the picture of the origin of the universe that sort of intuitively flows from this is 1 where you get not just matter and energy arising, but space and time come into existence at that 0 point.

The story of this is told really nicely in the little film, The Theory of Everything.

And he's fear and trepidation getting examined, but 1 of his examiner, they're nitpicking all these different things, but then they say, hey, the idea of a black hole at the beginning of the universe, a space-time singularity, this is brilliant, congratulations Dr.

Hawking, and they shove the thesis book back over to him and he's passed.

But 1 of them says, now go work out the maths.

And he ends up working out the math of this intuitive proof that he develops with Sir Roger Penrose, with whom you have done a wonderful interview, and George Ellis, whom I've had the occasion to meet.

And so they end up producing several of these singularity theorems, suggesting that if general relativity is true, then there must have been a beginning.

This is on grounds independent of all the things from observational astronomy.

Now there's a loophole with that, And that is that in the very tiniest smidgens of space-time, inside 10 to the minus 43rd of a second, or what they call Planck time, quantum effects might have been such that we would have to alter our ideas of how gravity worked.

And so out of that has come something called an impulse or different theories of what are called quantum gravity or quantum cosmology.

And I think you've had some conversations on the show about that as well.

In my book I show that that is a possible, another possible cosmological model, but like the conclusion that the universe had a definite beginning, I think those models also have theistic implications, and I can explain why.

Then the third, there's yet a third proof, though, of a beginning that comes by 3 physicists, Borde, Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin.

And it's not based on general relativity.

It's not based on ideas of what gravity was like in the early universe, but based on ideas of special relativity.

It's a little tricky to explain easily, but basically they show that there is, again, a limiting case and therefore a definite beginning to time, And that it does not have the same loophole that the singularity theorems of Hawking and Penrose.

So what I argue in the book is that a body of evidence from observational astronomy, a strong indicator from theoretical physics, namely the singularity theorems of Hawking et al, and then a very compelling proof from Borg, Guth, and Vilenkin all point to the same conclusion, that as best we can tell, the universe had a beginning.

And I think that's the best we can do in science, But that is a pretty weighty range of testimony supporting the same conclusion.

Terrence McKenna had a very funny thing that he said about science.

He said, science wants you to believe that it's all about measurement and reason if you allow them 1 miracle.

That all things come from the most preposterous idea ever.

That everything came from nothing and 1 big miracle.

Well, this was this was Sir Fred Hoyle's objection to the Big Bang.

He didn't believe and he said nothing comes from nothing and I simply refuse to believe that the physical universe came from nothing physical.

And moreover, he said it smacks of the Genesis account, which he detested.

And so he rejected the Big Bang and formulated this steady state model that was later, I think, decisively refuted by the discovery of the cosmic background radiation.

It happens, I've had funny coincidental meetings with Hoyle, Herman Bondi, and Thomas Gold, all 3 of the architects of the steady state model.

I met Bondy and Hoyle when I was a PhD student in Cambridge.

And Hoyle held on to his dying day for the steady state.

But Bondy, actually, we had a conversation about it.

And he said that, well, it turned out that it was a brilliant idea, it was a beautiful idea, just that it turned out that everything about it was wrong and he rejected it.

So, but later, Hoyle had his own conversion to a kind of quasi-theistic worldview because of his discovery of the fine-tuning parameters.

But the point is that the materialists did not expect to have this evidence from the beginning.

Hoyle thought that, you know, the laws of physics were such, the first law of conservation of matter and energy.

Matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed except at the Big Bang.

And he didn't like that, but eventually I think the physics community came around.

There were so many indicators of that beginning event.


Speaker 0: The Joe Rogan experience.

Speaker 1: So James Webb. James Webb telescope. And James Webb.

Speaker 0: Yeah, there's been a lot of media reports suggesting that the findings of the James Webb telescope have undermined the case for the Big Bang or the Big Bang theory. But there's an interesting backstory on this. Most of these media reports were based on the writings of a single physics researcher named Eric Lerner who's been since 1990 kind of carrying a torch to refute the Big Bang. And Lerner, in 1 of his articles, quoted a University of Kansas astrophysicist saying that she stays up late at night wondering if based on the on the the James Webb that everything that we know is turning out to be false. Turns out that that researcher, that astrophysicist, disclaimed his use of the quote explaining that he took it completely out of context.

She was talking about theories of galaxy formation, not about whether or not there had been a Big Bang, and not about whether or not the universe is expanding as we would expect.

Speaker 1: So he's confirmation biased.

Speaker 0: Yeah, and in a sense also taking somebody way out of context to make a point of his own. You know, he misused the quotation. On purpose. Apparently.

Speaker 1: Apparently.

Speaker 0: So, here's, and there have been a number of leading astrophysicists, in fact people who would like to know more about this, I'd recommend what Brian Keating from University of California, San Diego, great astrophysicist, has been writing about this. But here's the short story. I wrote an op-ed in the Daily Wired distilling some of this stuff. What the James Webb telescope is able to do is to, in fact, what it was constructed to do was to detect extremely long wavelength radiation, stuff that's outside the visible range. I call it uber redshifted.

It's actually in the infrared range is the more accurate physics term. So it's looking for very long wavelength radiation coming from galaxies that are very, very far out there. Now why would it be looking for that? Well, because if the universe is expanding as we would expect based on the Big Bang theory, then the radiation coming from things very, very far out in space and therefore very far back in time should be very stretched out, more stretched out than stuff that's closer at hand. So the James Webb was constructed in hopes of detecting that type of radiation if it existed.

It's not assuming that it necessarily would, but it would be a way of confirming the expansion of the universe has been going on for a very long time. And in order to do that, the NASA people created some amazing technology. They supercooled the detection apparatus to, I think, 567 degrees above absolute 0 so that the heat coming off of the instrument itself was not creating infrared that would interfere. And what they were in fact able to detect from these very ancient, very distant galaxies was super red-shifted radiation, uber red-shifted stuff out in the infrared. And were able, on the basis of that, to synthesize images of these very, very distant, remote galaxies.

Now the very fact that they were able to do that confirms that you have what you would expect on the basis of the Big Bang Theory, that the amount of red shift that you would expect to be present if in fact the galaxies had been expanding throughout that vast stretch of time was in fact present and was detected. Now that didn't get reported. The whole focus was on the fact that there were galaxies that were more mature, there were more of them early on than we would have expected based on our theories of galaxy formation. And so those are anomalies that need to be addressed and have not yet been explained as I understand it. Maybe the astrophysicists have made more progress on that in even recent recent days.

But the basic picture of an expanding universe outward from the beginning has not been undermined but rather confirmed in a very dramatic way at very great distance and with it and for galaxies that are a very far look back time, way way back in time. So I think it's a rather dramatic confirmation. There have been many others, the cosmic background radiation that was discovered in 1965, the COBE radiation that George Smoot discovered in the 90s. So there's been this pattern of confirming evidence of this basic picture of an expanding universe out from the beginning in observational astronomy from the 20s right up till now. And so that, I think, gives us good reason to think, best we can tell the universe at a beginning.

Speaker 1: Can I pause you on that? What is the, when she was discussing the formation of galaxies, what had thrown that into question? Like, What was about the formation of galaxies that undermined previous ideas?

Speaker 0: I'm going to answer tentatively because I don't know this as well as the other that I just described. But as I understand it, it's that there are more galaxies that formed earlier and are more mature than we would have expected because they were able to do look back to 13.5, 13.6 billion years ago. They think the origin of the universe is about 13.8 billion years ago. So apparently galaxies were forming faster than we would have expected And I think that's the anomaly that is on the table.

Speaker 1: Does that just push the timeline further back, but still come up with the data that points to the idea of a beginning?

Speaker 0: I've wondered that. That seems to me a logical possibility. Maybe the origin of the universe was further back, but you're still getting this picture of a collapsing sphere in the reverse direction of time back to a point.

Speaker 1: But is it possible that with further detection, we can, with new data, have a better understanding of what is actually going on, rather than just saying it all points to this thing? Because it seems like there's data, but what you're describing seems like it's possible, at least in the future, to have better detection methods.

Speaker 0: Yeah, it's always possible that we can change our minds on things because science is always provisional. But there are many stable theories that have persisted because of a preponderance of evidence that points to and continues to point to the same conclusion. And I think we've had a hundred years now where we've had repeated new types of observations that point towards the beginning. And there are 2 other classes of, 2 other developments in theoretical physics that also, I think, reinforce this, that I also wrote about in the book. 1 is the singularity theorems that Hawking and Penrose and George Ellis proved in the 1960s and 70s.

And then there's something called the Borg-Guth-Volinkan theorem, which I think is even a tighter physics proof of a beginning. I think there is a loophole with the Hawking-Penrose-Ellis singularity theorem, although it's I think very suggestive and highly indicative of a beginning. Let me run it just briefly, because it's a fun thing to think about. So Hawking is doing black hole physics for his PhD in the 1960s. And he's at Cambridge, and he's having these neurological symptoms, and He's diagnosed with ALS.

He gets very, very discouraged. He thinks he's going to quit. And he's encouraged to press on by close friends, and he does. And he ends up writing this brilliant thesis where he has 1 chapter where he's thinking about what the cosmologists are talking about, is that we've got this expanding universe, and if the universe is expanding in the forward direction of time, then matter's getting more and more diffuse over time. Now, Part of his thesis involves general relativity, Einstein's theory of gravity.

According to Einstein, a massive body actually curves the fabric of space or space-time. So if you're going in the forward direction of time, space is getting less and less curved and matter more and more diffuse. But if you're going in the reverse direction of time, the matter is getting more and more densely concentrated at every successive point in the finite past until, again, you reach a limiting case where the matter gets so densely concentrated that space gets so tightly curved that it can't get any more tightly curved. It can't get any more densely concentrated. And you move towards a point of infinite density and infinite curvature.

You get to a limiting case. Now, infinite curvature corresponds to 0 spatial volume. And so the picture of the origin of the universe that sort of intuitively flows from this is 1 where you get not just matter and energy arising, but space and time come into existence at that 0 point. And he presents this in his PhD thesis. The story of this is told really nicely in the little film, The Theory of Everything.

And he's fear and trepidation getting examined, but 1 of his examiner, they're nitpicking all these different things, but then they say, hey, the idea of a black hole at the beginning of the universe, a space-time singularity, this is brilliant, congratulations Dr. Hawking, and they shove the thesis book back over to him and he's passed. But 1 of them says, now go work out the maths. And he ends up working out the math of this intuitive proof that he develops with Sir Roger Penrose, with whom you have done a wonderful interview, and George Ellis, whom I've had the occasion to meet. And so they end up producing several of these singularity theorems, suggesting that if general relativity is true, then there must have been a beginning.

This is on grounds independent of all the things from observational astronomy. Now there's a loophole with that, And that is that in the very tiniest smidgens of space-time, inside 10 to the minus 43rd of a second, or what they call Planck time, quantum effects might have been such that we would have to alter our ideas of how gravity worked. And so out of that has come something called an impulse or different theories of what are called quantum gravity or quantum cosmology. And I think you've had some conversations on the show about that as well. In my book I show that that is a possible, another possible cosmological model, but like the conclusion that the universe had a definite beginning, I think those models also have theistic implications, and I can explain why.

Okay. Maybe we could bracket that. Then the third, there's yet a third proof, though, of a beginning that comes by 3 physicists, Borde, Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin. And it's not based on general relativity. It's not based on ideas of what gravity was like in the early universe, but based on ideas of special relativity.

It's a little tricky to explain easily, but basically they show that there is, again, a limiting case and therefore a definite beginning to time, And that it does not have the same loophole that the singularity theorems of Hawking and Penrose. So what I argue in the book is that a body of evidence from observational astronomy, a strong indicator from theoretical physics, namely the singularity theorems of Hawking et al, and then a very compelling proof from Borg, Guth, and Vilenkin all point to the same conclusion, that as best we can tell, the universe had a beginning. And I think that's the best we can do in science, But that is a pretty weighty range of testimony supporting the same conclusion.

Speaker 1: Did you ever read any Terrence McKenna?

Speaker 0: I haven't.

Speaker 1: Terrence McKenna had a very funny thing that he said about science. He said, science wants you to believe that it's all about measurement and reason if you allow them 1 miracle. 1 miracle is the Big Bang. That all things come from the most preposterous idea ever. That everything came from nothing and 1 big miracle.

Speaker 0: I Completely agree. I totally paraphrased it.

Speaker 1: I probably said it far more eloquently.

Speaker 0: Well, this was this was Sir Fred Hoyle's objection to the Big Bang. He said he was a a democratean. He didn't believe and he said nothing comes from nothing and I simply refuse to believe that the physical universe came from nothing physical. And moreover, he said it smacks of the Genesis account, which he detested. And so he rejected the Big Bang and formulated this steady state model that was later, I think, decisively refuted by the discovery of the cosmic background radiation.

It happens, I've had funny coincidental meetings with Hoyle, Herman Bondi, and Thomas Gold, all 3 of the architects of the steady state model. I met Bondy and Hoyle when I was a PhD student in Cambridge. And Hoyle held on to his dying day for the steady state. But Bondy, actually, we had a conversation about it. And he said that, well, it turned out that it was a brilliant idea, it was a beautiful idea, just that it turned out that everything about it was wrong and he rejected it.

So, but later, Hoyle had his own conversion to a kind of quasi-theistic worldview because of his discovery of the fine-tuning parameters. But the point is that the materialists did not expect to have this evidence from the beginning. Hoyle thought that, you know, the laws of physics were such, the first law of conservation of matter and energy. Matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed except at the Big Bang. And he didn't like that, but eventually I think the physics community came around.

There were so many indicators of that beginning event.

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Intelligent Design Expert on the the Big Bang and the James Webb Telescope