Saturday, September 25, 2010

Penrose vs. McGrath on the radio (UK)

This episode was about theology, cosmology, and Stephen Hawking's new book, and featured two bright men who really know their stuff.

They talk about physics and theories of cosmology for a bit, and it's fun to hear, but this show doesn't quite rise to the level of a theological debate, because the disputants don't really get into it over what (if anything) we can say about the causes of the material universe from what we think we know about the universe itself. They touch on M-theories, cyclic cosmological theories, the anthropic principle, and various other fascinating ideas, but don't make an attempt to estimate the conditional probability that the universe might exist (in its current form) either with or without transcendental fine-tuning or some other divine design.

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