Hey everyone, thanks for tuning into test tube plus today.
I'm Trace, this is episode 2 of 5 on our series about God.
We take a big topic here on test tube plus and we break it
into a bunch of different chunks so we can all understand it a bit better, myself
included, and yesterday we talked about how God might be a real thing even under
science and how science and God might go hand in hand, but today we're gonna flip
that and we're going to talk a little bit about how science and God might not
go hand in hand and scientists that don't think that science and God can
coexist as easily as we think. So if you're talking about scientists, one of
the first scientist you're ever gonna think if you talk to a layman about
science is going to be Albert Einstein. Everybody knows Albert Einstein's name,
everybody in the world it would seem like, and Albert Einstein is often thought of
as a religious man because he uses the word God a lot in his writings.
A handwritten letter sold for three million dollars on eBay which clearly
states though that Einstein does not believe in God. In the letter, he wrote
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human
weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends
which are nevertheless pretty childish." Some folks have issues with the
translation of this message in the truth of its validity but the letter did sell
for three million dollars on eBay so there are people who believe that this
is a real opinion of one of the most famous scientists ever. Another famous
scientist, one of the most famous ones still alive today, is Stephen Hawking.
In his 1988 book "A Brief History of Time", Hawking writes "Then we should know the
mind of God." This is something that's said a lot when it comes to Hawking, but
Mr. Hawking said during an interview "What I meant by 'we would know the mind of God'
is we would know everything that God would know if there were a God, which
there isn't. Also, I'm an atheist." He was very explicit about his opinions and he
added "Religion believes in miracles but these are not compatible with science." So
is there scientific proof of no god? No, there's not, there's not any scientific
proof that there was or wasn't, as we said before, but there is definitely room
to imagine a divine character. Science
has not revealed why the universe came into existence: what preceded the big
bang and so on and so forth. But there is historical proof that some of the
religious figures that we talk about in relation to God existed. But first
let's talk about one of the most famous ones, at least here in the United States,
and that is Jesus. Jesus in the Bible, absolutely 100%, but outside of
specific religious texts from after his death, there doesn't seem to be any
historical evidence that Jesus existed. The Romans kept track of everything, and I do
mean everything. They weren't a huge empire with no organizational scheme.
They had bureaucracy. They had all of these public buildings with records and
construction records and military records and so on and so forth. We know
what time of day Mount Vesuvius erupted because there are records that survive
to this day that said so. It was lunch time. You think we'd have tons of stories about
a magical prophet guy who can walk on water, come back from the dead,
heal the sick, and cure the lame, but there doesn't seem to be any verifiable
primary source proof of this man's existence. That being said, historians
would probably tell you there are a lot of secondary sources, letters written
from people by other people to other people,
things talking about Jesus. But nothing that says "Hello, I am Jesus and here is
my writings." Nothing that says "Hello this is Jesus, and me and Jesus are chillin
out." Nothing that they can show as a primary source. I was surprised by this.
I imagine you're also surprised by this if you haven't done this research before.
We have tons of art and books and documentation from before during and
after the lifetime of Jesus, if he allegedly lived, but we don't have
anything about this very important person. It's debated by modern scholars and
historians if these folks existed at all,
Jesus being one of a group of people who are religiously important, because it's
really hard to say a lot of religious experience is by word of mouth and
it's very difficult to link across references and writings from one
religious group to another or
one person to another for religious purposes. The only real references to Jesus
that we have are by his friends, and of course they all wrote very positive
things. If he was this incredible dude, don't you think there would be counter
texts or supporting evidence or you know evidence defaming him, especially
considering he was a pretty polarizing bro. Alternatively, Buddha is widely
agreed to be a real guy named Siddhartha Gautama and scholars and historians all
kind of agree on this. He probably lived around 500 BCE, and that's before Jesus,
and there are biographies, there are accounts, there are ancient texts, all that
cross reference to the same Siddhartha Gautama. He gave his people the Word of
God, so if you believe that Siddhartha Gautama is a messiah of God or is telling
you about God, teaching you about God, and you believe he's real and what he is
saying is real, then God is real to you for that reason, which also sheds a
little more doubt on whether or not Jesus could be in a real place.
Nobody wrote about him.
Muhammad has records. Jesus doesn't. It's very strange. But all that aside, just because
Jesus did or did not exist does not mean that God does or does not exist.
We're not trying to say that. What we're trying to say is that it does cast doubt on the
whole religion thing, from a scientific standpoint. It doesn't mean that Jesus
wasn't a prophet, wasn't a messiah, doesn't mean that Jesus was or was not anything.
What we're saying is it's difficult to prove that he was really
there in the same way, and there are still people working on finding that
proof, and maybe will find it someday, maybe we'll find something interesting
in the future, but as of right now we don't really have any primary sources.
So if there is no God, under science, and there is no prophets, then why are we
talking about it? Why does it dominate the news, the culture and politics?
It does so because it incites passion in people in the same way that science
insights passion in a lot of people. It's an impassioned argument and it's an
impassioned word to invoke the name of God when talking about something.
When Hawking says "We shall know the face of God," it sounds awesome
and makes you wanna know that thing, but he's also not saying we'll know the face
of God. He's saying we'll know the face of this caricature and this idea, this feeling,
this emotion, and this passion. Everyone, down in the comments, I'm sure you're already down
there typing away feverishly, but let us know what you think down there, and
do you believe in God, do you not believe in God? Let's continue the discussion from
yesterday's episode, and subscribe for more test tube plus so you get tomorrow's
episode as well,
more about God coming then, and if you haven't watched yesterday's make sure
you do that. Thanks for watching today. We'll see you tomorrow.