The universe’s greatest mystery: God or Science? with cosmologists Dr Niayesh Afshordi, Dr Hugh Ross and Atheist Phil Halper

When you're juggling everyday life, carrying your faith isn't always easy. Introducing Jürner, premier's new devotional journaling app created in partnership with WorldVision. Each day, Jürner gives you a Bible verse, a short reflection, a question to sit with, a written prayer and space for your thoughts, all in one place, wherever you go. Find Jürner in your app store today available on iOS and Android. iOS and Android. Jürner in your app store today available on iOS and Android. Research explores whether our universe may have emerged from a black hole, fellow Englishman, Phil Helper, science communicator, and co-author of the new book, Battle of the Big Bang, which dives deep into the rival theories that challenge the traditional narrative of cosmic origins. Phil's no stranger to unbelievable, check out some of his other shows with us, and finally, a bit of a hero of the Christian apologetics world, Dr. Hugh Ross, astrophysicist, Christian apologist, and founder of Reasons to Believe, who argues that Big Bang cosmology points powerfully to the God of the Bible. Welcome to all three of you. Thanks. It's great to be back. Pleasure to be here. Yeah. It's not often we have Dar Tanya and the three musketeers. So it's an interesting show, but it's going to be a fascinating feast, speaking of which, the new book by Nei Esh and Phil, which is called Battle of the Big Bang, the new tales of our cosmic origins, has been called an Intellectual Feast by Carlo Revelli, and a must-read for anyone curious about where everything comes from by Sabine Hassanfelder. So from bouncing universes and multiverses to timeless truths and theological claims, this is going to be a riveting conversation and let's get started. Boom, part one. Let's start with some backstory. Phil, fellow Englishmen, start with you if you don't mind. People of different levels of understanding will be watching and listening to this. So can you explain what we mean by the Big Bang model? And what is the current status of it as a model for understanding the creation of the universe? That is an excellent question. We actually did a. I always put one good question in first show. We've picked early. Clearly, clearly we have. Yeah, so it can mean different things, and this is a big area of confusion. So in the book, we distinguish between what we call the Hot Big Bang and the Big Bang Singularity. So the Hot Big Bang just says the universe evolved from a very hot dense state, completely leaving open the question of what happened before that hot dense state, whether it was a beginning of time or not. Then you've got this other definition, Big Bang Singularity. That's based off of theorems proven by Penrose and Hawking, which says that when you go back about 14 billion years, then the universe gets to a point where you have infinite curvature, pressure, density, temperature, and time sort of comes to a stop. Now, we did a survey of physicists in Copenhagen recently. And we ask them, what do they think the Big Bang means? And we actually ask many questions to controversies and physics. And this was the only one where they actually agreed, where we had more than 50% support for any particular answer, and all the different controversies and physics that we serve it. And they agreed that we should use the definition that says the universe evolved from a hot dense state, that says nothing at all about whether the universe had a beginning or not. So these singularity theorems, they're very impressive pieces of mathematics, but of course, they're only as good as the assumptions that they have. And we point out various assumptions that now cosmologists are questioning. So though I think that in, let's say, 70s, 80s, 90s, the singularities were taken very seriously, nowadays, I think most people would assume it's an artifact of pushing our theories beyond their domain of applicability. So we shouldn't trust as a singularity. And then that has to be replaced by something. What does it get replaced by? Unfortunately, we don't know, but there's all kinds of different options on the table. And that's the subject of our book. Yeah, fantastic. Nihayesh bringing you in. We'll come to hear Ross shortly. So just gleaning what I can from what Phil has said is the Big Bang model still the best story we have available or are there alternative models like bouncing cyclic or black hole origins that are gaining ground and looking to supersede it? That's that's an excellent question. And one can get added from very different points of view. So I don't know. I think you haven't quite picked yet. I think because since they're getting better and better. So Big Bang is kind of a placeholder in some sense. Now, historically, if you look at the history of Big Bang, this is one of the things we get into kind of how the term Big Bang came to be. And there are kind of some myths and some truths about kind of their urban legends about what the phrase Big Bang came from. But historically, there was kind of two ideas. Our universe has always been the way it was. There's somehow not much has changed. Either it's been a static, very long ago, I thought that. Or maybe it's just when we discovered cosmic expansion, maybe it's always in expanding the same way. Or maybe it had a hot dance beginning. I think at some point things were very, very different from the way that they are now. And that was the debate that was won very much thanks to the experiments that we got a lot of observational data. And that observational data is currently pointed to the fact that the universe was very, very different 14 billion years ago or something around that compared to what it is now. It was much hotter, much denser, everything was much closer. The conditions were very different. And in fact, this is not very widely known. But the term Big Bang, particularly like it, is now historically, it may have come. I mean, people argue about very exactly it came from. It was invented by one of Big Bang's main critics, Fred Hoyle. But I think it actually fits very well because when you think of it as a Big Bang, it's something that's very loud that happens. And in fact, now that our best evidence for what happened 14 billion years ago is our probes of the sound that was emitted at that very beginning. So when we say Bang, we literally mean Bang. We cannot see the light that came that was emitted 14 billion years ago. We can see some light, but it was already emitted 400,000 years after the Big Bang. But the sound that was emitted, basically the fluctuations that were made a tiny fraction of a second after the singularity or whatever that was there, we can actually see evidence of these sounds. And that is the Bang. So I think in that sense, Big Bang is very successful. But at the same time, it is not a theory if you think about it. It is a description of what we see at the beginning of the universe, or from the beginning of the universe. There was a hot phase. There were sound waves moving around. We can measure the properties of these sound waves very well. But what caused these sound waves? What caused this hot state of the universe, the plasma, the weird primordial soup, that's an open question. So that's that we don't really have a theory for that. We have many hypotheses, hotly debated, and that is what we discussed in our book. We have 25 of them, according to the last count that we'll have. Yeah, so that is not a theory, that is just the subject of our speculation. So we've got plenty of symptoms, but no reason for a diagnosis, perhaps, at this point. We'll bring in Dr. Hugh Ross. Welcome to the show, Hugh. Now, you believe that Big Bang cosmology supports the biblical worldview, the Christian worldview. Do you want to expand upon that? And say whether you think the Big Bang is still the best theory in support of the biblical narrative? Well, I think I agree that there's a whole family of Big Bang models. And so often the public thinks we only have one Big Bang model. We actually have a whole family of Big Bang models. But what I've noticed over my career is that this family of Big Bang models keeps multiplying, but the boundaries of the family get narrower and narrower. And so the breadth of Big Bang models 60 years ago was a lot greater than it is today. And I see that as a sign of success of the idea. And I think we're always going to have a multiplicity of Big Bang models. But hopefully through observations, we'll be able to narrow the family down even more than we've been able to do so far. Do you think, well, you believe, do you not, that the Big Bang model supports the biblical worldview, the biblical narrative? Yes, I do, because I was born, raised, and educated in Canada. And I didn't really know any Christians growing up. Yes, I love Waterloo, but when I began to look at the different holy books of the religions of the world, the thing that struck me about the Bible is how thousands of years ago it predicted several of the fundamental features of the Big Bang. I didn't see that in any of the holy books. And that's what kind of got me into studying the Bible and realizing, okay, it has these features. It actually predicts the history of the development of life on planet Earth, the geology, the earth accurately. And so those were steps that led me to finally commit my light to Jesus Christ. And I recognize that from a Christian perspective, God reveals himself through two utterly reliable books, the book of nature and the book of scripture. And so I've founded reasons to believe on this two books model that we should be, as Christians, very much pushing the study of science, the study of nature, the study of scripture, and looking for more and more congruiting, and where we see anomalies, things that don't fit. Those are opportunities dig deeper into researching it. But anything I've noticed too, every time we resolve an anomaly, we find more anomalies. But the anomalies at our lower level of significance. And you'll have scientifically as a sign that you're on the right track towards truth. If the anomalies get less and less significant, as you learn more and more. So that's my story. Yeah, fantastic. Phil, back to you now. You interviewed for the book Lots of Provenant Thinkers, like Penrose and Gooth. What did you learn about the state of cosmology today? Maybe people listening in think, well, it seems like the scientists and these thinkers are just groping in the dark, not just groping in the dark, but groping back in time in the dark. How accurate is that? What's the state of play? So what I think I learned the most is that there's much more uncertainty than what people think. So people think that we have this definite picture of a universe having a beginning, but that's just not the case. Penrose and Hawking are the scientists that came up with these theorems that supposedly proved that the universe had a beginning. Both of them are pandering. I mean, I sat with Hawking and with Penrose. Penrose now thinks the universe is eternal in both directions of time. Hawking has this idea that's hard to interpret. Some people interpret it as having a beginning, but others of his own collaborators didn't interpret it that way. There's this theory called inflation. A lot of people think that's confirmed, you know, I think the Hugh in his book said it was shown beyond a reasonable doubt, but I think there is a reasonable doubt. And this is something we explore in the book. That the leading theory of how galaxies form, you know, might not be right. I mean, there are good reasons to take it seriously. I don't want to say they're on, but there are problems with it too. So there's a very active debate. So when we say, oh, they're challenges to the big bang, it's still the right model. Remember those two definitions of the big bang. If we're using the hot big bang as our definition, I don't think there's any question that that theory is correct. But if we're talking about big bang singularity, I think very little support for that. And it's quite possible that the universe has always existed, although it might have had a beginning, we just don't know. So I would say the big lesson is much more uncertainty about this topic than some people would have you believe. Yeah, sure. And now, yes, I've got a question for you about black holes pending, but I just want to turn it back to Hugh. Hugh, should some of these, should the majority view become that the universe was eternal, didn't have a beginning, didn't have this singularity? What does that do to Christian apologetics? I'm thinking specifically about the very famous cosmological argument from William Lane Craig that starts with his first premise as the universe began to exist. And what would happen in apologetics? Would it be what it calls jitters? You know, I already enjoyed reading battle of the big bang. And as I read through the book, I said, "This reads a lot like theology debates I've been involved in." So for example, several years ago, I was at Cambridge University and there was eight physicists and eight philosophers. And we all had to debate how one of our peers and debate someone was not one of our peers. And so my debate partners were William Lane Craig and John Polkinghorn. And the whole idea of this week-long conference was we were debating God, eternity and time. And Nyesha and Phil, our debates were a lot like what I saw in your book "Battle of the Big Bang" because most of the debate is what does the Bible mean by the beginning of the universe? So there's a lot of debate about this. And it's kind of like what we nail down is that. When you look at the Bible, it talks about cosmic expansion, talks about how the laws of physics don't change, how there's this pervasive law decay. I mean, that fits really well with this thing where we have this consensus. When we look at the big bang, yeah, we can trace it back to a very hot dense state. And so, and you got this, you only place in the Bible actually defines what the beginning of the universe is, is Hebrews 113 in the New Testament, which says that the universe that we can detect did not come from that which we can detect. And all the models I saw written about in your book, they all fit that paradigm that the universe that we can detect did not come from which we can detect. And what I found interesting, theologians are bringing up some of the same ideas that these different physicists are bringing up. I also enjoyed the book because I know a lot of the same people that you addressed in the book. I mean, I'm a third of a century older than the two of you. So like that, you know, I knew 14 billion years, though, is it come on? I mean, you know, the oldest entity in the conversation here. So thank you. But I really could, I mean, some of the personalities you discuss is, oh, yeah, I remember those days. When I got to talk to Rich Gotton, how even back in '73 and '74, he was talking about these cosmic strings and really pushing us observers, hey, I think this might be detectable. I knew you didn't need to get some telescope time. Turns out it wasn't that easy to detect. But I love the fact that the theoreticians have often sit down with us observers and say, hey, and I love that about your book is that when you look at these different models, it's like, it doesn't matter if we can't come up with some way of observation and putting this to the test. And you came up with, oh, I thought it was a very good array of means with which we can test these different models, try to make some headway. And yeah, there may be reasons to be pessimistic about how much headway we can make. But like you, I think I'm competent. We can make at least some headway. In fact, I think there's other observational tests. I'm excited about the event horizon telescope. I think that can test some of these models. So anyway, I really loved your book and I actually recommend it for theologians to use in their courses because it basically goes through the same kind of thinking. What was interesting is when I debate a Bill Craig, he didn't like the idea I was bringing up, hey, from what the Bible says, we have to consider the possibility of dimensions beyond length with height and time. I mean, there's doctrines in the Bible that can't be thick within length with height and time. You know, things like the simultaneity of human pre-choice and divine predetermination. And so some of the mathematics you bring up again, remind of me, hey, this is like deja vu for me, but it's an apathyologians, not a camp of theoretical astrophysicists. Wonderful. So kudos on your book. Yeah, kudos indeed, guys. Let's, let's bring the first part to a close by me asking Niayesh about one of these models, one of these theories. Can you talk to us about black holes, the idea that the universe may have emerged from a black hole? And specifically, how do we test something like that, Niayesh? So, do you mind, I just wanted to take a moment to, I mean, I think, thank you for I think the compliments and the book. I think it's very hard to disagree with him when he's complimenting us so well. But still, and we actually, I just wanted to specifically agree with him that this debates in between cosmologies and theologians are kind of similar. And in fact, we do have a chapter, chapter 11 of our book, where we talk about religion of science and science of science of religion, where we are saying that many of these discussions actually do sound bizarrely similar to theological discussions and between Christians and Muslims and different sects. And of course, this is, this is a, I mean, this is an issue, which I think at the first thing is we have to recognize it. And the second is that what makes them different may be, is empirical evidence that we ultimately, I mean, we might be do have these debates, it's the empirical evidence and not kind of the confidence or the passion we debate each other that decides the debate. It's not the popularity of the point of view, it is experiment, it is observation that eventually would decide this. And unfortunately, I mean, not everyone necessarily, I mean, in principle, everyone should agree on this, but I think in practice, I mean, things that dominate are not necessarily because of their empirical evidence, but rather maybe due to popularity or other social forces that we've seen elsewhere. So, so I think the point that I'd like to take on that is that we have to recognize that religion or religious thinking is an important driver in human dynamics. And that that doesn't just disappear when we do cosmology, that's still there. We may either see it in a novert way or maybe in a covert way. There's, yeah, so there are different types of religion that we may or may, may, may, may, may adhere to or may, may adhere to without even knowing. Now, black hole is an interesting story. Black hole in some sense is a dual to the big bang, or like the evil twin of the big bang or whatever you want to call it. So they kind of always come together. There are these two things that are sources of mystery. And indeed also, again, when I agree with Matthew, that the big band horizon telescope is an amazing feat. It was this this way that we can actually image black holes. For the first time, some of my colleagues here in what to do are working on this actively. So, making better and better images of these gigantic black holes. And there isn't black holes and big bangs are basically cut off the same cloth is that you could think of black holes as big bangs, but upside down in a sense that big bang goes this bizarre phase, the singularity that was taking a talking about happening in our past, but black holes is a singularity that happens in the future. Not for everyone, but for the people who fall into black holes, they kind of meet this fate, which involves basically very high curvature, very high density, very high temperature, which is very much like big bang, but but basically with the time switching signs. So instead of happening in the past is happening in the future. So understanding these two has been kind of one of the primary mission of missions of theoretical physicists for the past century. But while in some sense, they're very similar as I was describing. In other senses, they're also very different. So, like, for example, you may decide not to jump into a black hole, but big bang, I guess, we all came out of the big bang, we didn't really have an option. And kind of understanding the differences and similarities between these two singularities have been kind of one of the most exciting, fascinating lines of inquiry. And one of the things that I looked at was, okay, how much can we push this analogy between these two types of singularities, the big bang and back holes. And one possibility for the origin of the big bang was maybe it was actually a black hole. So one of the models that we worked on with some of my collaborators and students was what if when a star collapses, not like the kind of stars we've seen in the sky, but maybe stars in higher dimensions, if there are other dimensions that we haven't yet seen, the stars collapse in those dimensions, then out of that, we may form a universe like ours. And we kind of showed that a lot of the math could work and we could explain some of the observations in that framework. And later, we kind of pushed further and scrutinized the model more and then there were some cracks and some issues. So it is one of the proposals that have things going for it and then there are other things going against it. But as it turns out, that's the case for all the proposals we studied in this book. Great. Well, there's lots more to talk about. We've covered a lot of ground already. We're only in part one plenty more cosmic journeying to go through, but we're going to take a short break there. You're listening to unbelievable with me. And you kind, we're talking about the big bang and the models and theories surrounding it. So you can subscribe to the podcast to be listening on Apple podcasts. Give us a follow if you're watching on YouTube, like and subscribe. You can contact us unbelievable at premier.org.uk and we've got guests. Niayesh, Phil and Hugh, they have surnames as well. Maybe we'll find them out in the second half, but we're going to have a quick break now. Stay tuned for part two of this show on unbelievable. Introducing Jürner, premier's new devotional journaling app created in partnership with World Vision. Find Jürner in your app store today, available on iOS and Android. Jürner, an app to help you stay connected. Hi, it's Gavin and Phil. I don't know about you, but it can sometimes feel like we're living in a bad news world. Wars scandals, crisis after crisis. But if you're ready to change the soundtrack and hear what God is really doing, we have a brand new podcast just for you. We're driving the UK, seeing people come to faith. Churches grow a new life breakout with real stories, fresh research and inspiring leaders. We are ready to give you a front row seat to God on the move. Good news people is a new podcast from Premier and the Evangelical Alliance. So listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. We are good news people in a bad news world. Welcome back to part 2 of Unbelievable with me Andy Keindt and my three very esteemed guests. The iOS, Phil and Xu, as we've taken to calling them on the show, we're talking about the big bang. You shouldn't dig up the past, but we're asking what happened. What really happened? 14 billion years ago, like some sleuthing detectives, we had a very strong start, which you may or may not have understood. I have to say that my mind is already in a hot, dense state, but you don't have to be sheldon Cooper to realize that these three chaps do know what they're talking about. We want to look in this part about whether the universe can explain itself. So Phil helper, we'll go back to you. We've written a lovely book and I wanted you to ask you about Steven Hawking, if that's okay. The book explores one of the many things that it talks about. It explores Hawking's final theory. Now, did Hawking really believe that the universe created itself? He had an interesting view. I mean, he had a proposal. Now, it was, I spoke with his daughter about this as well as with him. And his daughter said it was the thing he was most proud of. Have all the things that he did in theoretical physics and his achievements and many. This thing with the no boundary proposal is what he was most proud of. And the idea is that you have a sort of self-contained description of the universe. Now, in his earlier work, he had proven this singularity that the big bang could supposedly come out of. And there you might argue that the laws of physics break down. And some people had suggested, oh, well, maybe you need God to come in because the laws of physics have broken down. But what he did was to write down an equation, if you like, or create a model where the laws of physics apply everywhere. And what happens in this idea is it's not somewhat strange, but I can relate it back to the Klam cosmological argument that you asked about in the first part. Because what the idea is is that in some sense time disappears. That you have a, you enter a timeless state if we go back to the big bang. So now, how does this might relate to the Klam cosmological argument? And arguments about God and so on is that usually people say, well, everything that begins to exist as a cause, but God doesn't need a cause because God didn't begin to exist. But it's not that God existed for an infinite amount of time in the past. But rather, they think that God was in a timeless state and then entered into time. So God needs no cause. That's basically the thinking. Well, we could apply this to the no boundary proposal that Hawking worked with James Hartle famously, it's also known as the Hartle Hawking model. And similarly, you might say that in this state, the universe needs no cause because it has no beginning. Even though it's not necessarily eternal into the past. There are other ideas, which is where the universe is self-contained. It could be infinite into the past, maybe. So there are all kinds of ideas. It could be cyclic universes or there could be bouncing universes, which might sound like they're the same, but not necessarily because you could have an expanding universe and then there's just a contracting universe and they mirror each other. One of the most intriguing ideas and the ISH is where it's on a model like this is that in relativity, space time can curve. We're probably familiar with the picture of a ball on a trampoline and that curves the fabric of space time, but there are mathematical solutions where it can curve into a loop. So you might think of the movie Groundhog Day and maybe the universe is in something like Groundhog Day. So just like when you go back in time and you give something to someone in the past and then when they grow up, they give it to you and you go, well, who had it first? If that, I'm thinking of a movie with Nicholas Cage. I think it was called Peggy Sue Got married and he writes a Beatles song and then the question is who really wrote the Beatles song because he went back in time. So maybe the universe could be on a time. And then the question of what's the first cause becomes kind of mute because there's no first point on a circle. So there are all kinds of ideas where the universe could be self-contained. We have to be clear that we're not sure if any of these are right, but they all, I think, have some things going for them. Something to raise their plausibility, they're not just mere flights of antsy. They do achieve things that solving particular puzzles in cosmology. So that gives them some standing, but that's still, we want empirical confirmation to make sure if they're actually right or not and we're far from that. Yeah. Heurost, Dr. Ross, what's your response to various theories that try to eliminate a beginning of the universe altogether or that suggests that the universe could create itself? How do you respond to that? Yeah. Well, the Bible is clear that the universe has a beginning, but there's a lot of debate amongst theologians. What does the Bible really mean and says the universe has a beginning? Already mentioned the only real constraint is Hebrews 113. So it allows for quite a bit of speculation just like you see amongst these theoretical physicists. The debate I had with Bill Craig on "God, Eternity, and Time," we got into this whole concept that Phil worked out. What does it mean when people like Augustine say that God dwells in timelessness and spacelessness before he created the universe? That seems very different than the ideas that Einstein brought up. And I tried to argue that Augustine and Einstein would agree. It's just that they had different dictionaries of time. They're 15 centuries apart after all. And so, and the idea that Hawking and Hardle brought up about bringing in this imaginary mathematics, I thought you to explain that well in the book, this is equivalent to bringing in a second dimension of time, which is something that Christians argue about. There's God, how many spacetime dimensions did he create? Is he even subject to spacetime dimensions? Are there dimensions out there that are completely distinct from space and time? And does God is he able to dwell completely apart? So these are kinds of debates that we theologians have when we get together. And again, what impressed me about your book is a remarkably similar that debates amongst unbelieving astrophysicists are to the debates that you see within Christendom. Although I do appreciate the fact that you made it clear that some of these astrophysicists that are speculating actually are believers. They are Christians. I mean, like you, I knew Rich God, and he was very a forthright in saying, "Hey, I do believe in God." His beliefs were very remarkably similar to mine. Don Page, for example, is a Christian. So there are a number of Christians that are involved in this. And I think that's important to point out, because lay people often get the idea. All these theoretical cosmologists, they're all these evil atheists. That's not the case at all. There's a good mix of believers and unbelievers, and they all get along well. I mean, the most outspoken atheist cosmologists get along well with the Christians that are, and they often work together and publish papers together. And so I'd like the fact that you actually had a charitable tone in your book. It's unlike a lot of other books I've written by, "Theoretical Cosmologist," but I do agree with one point you made. When you get together with the observational cosmologists, they're open to a variety of models, whereas your typical theoretical astrophysicists, they're kind of locking into one model that they hold on to, and they do have quite bad, I would say, dynamic debates with one another. And again, I think you need to be complemented for saying, "Hey, we theoreticians also need to be open to a variety of models." And Nyesh, I noticed that you promoted not just one model, but several models. So I don't put you in the same camp as others that I've met where they're just locked onto one model no matter what. You're safe for now, Nyesh. He was giving you his passive safety. Now, Nyesh, are there models of the ones that you've worked on that you think are particularly in line with a theistic belief? You said earlier that you can't avoid overlap completely. You can't avoid overlap completely between the theological and the scientific and the philosophical. But are there particular models that you think, actually, if I was a Christian, this is the one I would latch on to? That's very good. So I just want to say, I love this Canadian fist fight that we're having, that we are really fighting each other. If I didn't it was polite, very possible. Very good. Rich and I in the background just having a cup of tea. Watching on. So it is a fascinating topic as a Christian now. I mean, this one thing I do discuss in my book in our book that I grew up in a in a Muslim country. So the first 20 years of my life grew up in Iran, which is a Muslim country. And it is I mean religion plays a significant role in the politics and everyday life. So it's a very important part to be done. So I do kind of have this nuance view of religion that I kind of have seen various effects that in my half and not just Christianity, but kind of various types of religions because it's I mean, in the Middle East, there is different types of religions that play significant roles. There's India and Pakistan, there is Israel and Palestine and there is of course the relationship of Iran with the rest of the world. So there are multiple facets of religion and I think it's in some sense, it's almost impossible to separate it from our thinking even though I mean, we may have scientific methods. And the way we approach the world might be very sophisticated and we try to kind of have an academic approach, but then at the end of the day we are humans and then humans had this way of living with religion true and true religion for the past few thousand years. I have I have mount criticism of many approaches to religion because it has had negative effects in people's lives. So but on the other hand, the fact that religion isn't involved or even implicitly involved even though we may not say it in some sense is baked into science because science is an exploration into the unknown and by definition kind of we have it has understanding, you understand some things, but there are other things that it doesn't understand and that's why there is a scientific enterprise. So there is always this gap and what lies in that gap is or beyond that gap is yeah, so it's a feature of science and you could call that mystery god and you can and you could say that we wouldn't have a scientific enterprise if it wasn't for that mystery. So there are ideas that maybe we could explain everything so people talk about theory of everything, but that's more of a fantasy. The real theories that we have in science are theories that are incomplete, the so-called effective field theories or effective theories and there is a there is a war in effective theories which are the known as cutoff. So the cutoff is this place where kind of our understanding stops so our theory can explain things relatively well in some with some errors within the cutoff, but when you get to the cutoff and what happens beyond that is completely unknown, you have no idea you could speculate whatever you want and I mean sometimes I joke that for physicists cutoff is their god so basically they say that so they explain things and then they reach this cutoff and that beyond that it's the mystery so we are at the mercy of the forces that we can understand or explain. Now we may push this cutoff and that has happened over the history and right now this cutoff is at the big bank or these singularities but we've had mysteries before some of them have been solved others haven't but the fact that there are mysteries and these mysteries drive science you may argue is a feature of science and that's what we share with religion if you want. Fantastic and Phil we'll bring you in because you've been the silent observer for a while there. Do you think it's impossible for someone's worldview not to impact their science or for their scientific research not to impact their worldview is is there this continual conversation between and I'm sure it's the same in lots of disciplines the work you're doing and the sort of presuppositions or predilections you bring to that work. How do those two sheets of iron rub up against one another? Well I think none of us can escape our past and the influence of the environment that we've come from so I think that's definitely true. Having said that though as you pointed out you know there are Christians not only involved in early universe cosmology but proposing ideas that you might think are odds with what Christianity might you might think teaches. So here mentioned Don Page. Don Page thinks the universe is eternal into the past and Rich got another Christian Presbyterian if I remember rightly. He's got a model where the universe creates itself so you first it might you might think that that's opposite to to their Christian upbringing but we have to remember that although he is convinced that the Bible discusses a beginning of the universe or implies a beginning of the universe many scholars do not think that so the right of the beginning Genesis one it you might think it says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and that you think of that as the universe but other scholars might say actually there's been a mis-translated rather it says when God began to create the sky and the land so it's very very different not talking about the universe at all it doesn't say in the beginning it has this Hebrew word bear a sheet but how to translate that is tricky. So in fact the scholars I've spoken to say no it should be when God began to create and then it says the earth was in a state of chaos so the translation you'll know is formless and void but it's this sort of weird Hebrew phrase which could be translated in many ways and one way is just chaotic so one way to interpret the Bible is to say God took something that was already there and it was in a chaotic state and he made it into an order's state and that could be perfectly compatible with a with an eternal universe and in fact you know people often say well in fact Bill Craig we've mentioned before he said eight years typically believed in an eternal universe but actually a lot of the years believed in an eternal universe Aristotle of course famously wasn't the as he wasn't a Christian theist obviously but he was a theist and he believed in eternal universe Newton the same and it was actually Newton's picture of a static universe that I think enshrined it into into modern cosmology so I think you know yes we are influenced by our intellectual environment but actually what the installation environment really looks like how to interpret the Bible is is I mean what we say in the book is about embracing uncertainty and I think it's true of the physics of the other universe but it's also true about what your religion or religious tradition actually teaches because the idea that the universe had a beginning is debate would I come from a Jewish background and it was hardly debated I mean a lot of rabbinical tradition says that the Torah existed before the universe and that God you know sort of creates the universe like a shadow like what they they're two co-atonal with each other so it's not clear what what the environment is supposed to be influenced here is actually saying wonderful what a wonderful whistle stop tour of a number of different subjects there Phil thanks very much Hugh any response to what either NIESH or Phil have spoken about there you've had plenty of time to sit back and enjoy the conversation there I think the Bible is explicit that the universe is not a static system that it's actually changing there you know 11 passages written by five different authors that talk about the expansion of the universe that it does trace back to some kind of beginning again Hebrews 113 the universe that we can detect did not come from which we can detect that opens up a lot of speculation amongst Christian theologians and Jewish theologians what would fit within that realm and as already mentioned every one of the models I read in your book does fit within that so it allows for a lot of a discussion what impressed me though is that you have Jewish theologians a thousand years ago picking these elements out of that the Bible the Old Testament saying hey the universe has these features and it wasn't till the 20th century that we discovered hey this big bang picture we see in the Bible actually seems to fit the observations we have another place I think we haven't talked about is in your book battle the big bang you also talked about how these different cosmological models speak about the future of the universe and how will the end well likewise which is seeing both the Old and New Testament our number of passages that talk about how the universe will end and also found an interesting that the models you discuss the talk about this are remarkably compatible with the Bible making a comment that the end of the universe we're going to see God wrapping it up like a scroll that seems to be some kind of manipulation of the spacetime dimensions it's going to end on a fiery heat so maybe that's a collapse into something like a singularity but again as Christians debate this they're kind of over the map and remarkably the same kind of map that I saw in the models that you are presenting about the end of the universe so in that sense I think this debate between philosophers theologians and physicists needs to include the beginning as well as the end and yeah I've been active in my work and actually trying to get theologians and physicists to talk to one another it's not easy but I think it's something that needs to be done and we need to invite the philosophers in here because I've noticed a lot of philosophers think this is their turf and you scientists need to butt out and I see theologians saying this is our turf you scientists and philosophers need to butt out we really need to be talking to one another well so far there's been no interplanetary warfare amongst our guests have there it's not but also galactica there's the pity as far as I'm concerned you can just stay with you because it certainly seems doesn't it whatever your theology is it certainly seems that there are parts of scripture phrases in scripture that do seem to apply to some of these scientific models to Big Bang cosmology I just wonder what what you think or how far you think we should see that as as appropriate is is that God's spirit um prophetically impressionably speaking through the writers is are these writers trying to make these claims about the universe or are they just speaking hyperbolicly are they speaking apocalypticly what what's your view on the sort of coincidence if you like that there does seem to be in scripture even if you use a bit of confirmation bias that do seems to be these these phrases that do apply to what we're discovering about cosmology yes i mean that's how i became a follower of jesus christ is looking at the world's holy books and noticing outside of the bible they did not do a very good job of accurately predicting future science or future history and uh you know what i spent two years going through the bible and said hundreds of times of predicts future historical events in human history uh never without an air and look at all the places that accurately predicted things are way beyond the science of the biblical authors and so uh as i mentioned already i was impressed that several the fundamental features of Big Bang cosmology were noted some people think i'm reading that into the text because of a hindsight however you can quote jewish theologians still you come from a jewish background eight hundred nine hundred a thousand years ago you got jewish theologians drawing the same thing out of the text that i'm drawing out of it and one book i wrote basically i featured a debate between theologians how much does the bible say about the big bang and i chose for the debate a theologian it takes a minimalist view and a theologian it takes a maximalist view of how much the bible says about what we know to be the big bang model and what's interesting you know the one that had the most minimalist view wasn't that far away from the one that had the maximalist view so there seems to be these centuries of consensus with the bible says about this and uh i do like the fact that you brought up fine tuning in your book i think that's a place that we can actually uh move i mean i've got 50 books in my library on fine tuning and throttic principle what i notice what those that are written by people who don't claim to be theas they seem to stop at the level of the universe and what we've done in our work at reasons to believe is notice the fine tuning as ubiquitous throughout the sciences it's on all cosmic size scales not just the level of the universe we see it in the uh clusters of galaxies uh the clusters of clusters of galaxies we see it in the cosmic web we see it in stars we see it in big bang you know one of the papers i wrote is how wonderfully designed the population and characteristics of big bangs and universe are to make advanced light possible in the universe and my colleagues here at reasons to believe they're doing the same thing at the biochemical level or at the level of a human anatomy and so and this is something you see in both Psalms and Proverbs that the more we study nature the more evidence we're going to see for the handy work of God and making everything just right so that we can not only exist but fulfill the purposes for which God created us and that to me is what makes the fine tuning arguments so powerful is that it points to not just one but multiple purposes and therefore to a mind that's behind it all well uh well look at that in part three Hugh certainly i think this uh oscillating conversation is finally tuned for life if you don't mind me saying we've expanded and we have not yet imploded in on ourselves it's unbelievable we're talking about the big bang you've probably worked out that already if you've been listening my guests today are Dr. Hugh Ross and we've also got fellow cosmologist Dr. Neillesh Afshaudi and Englishman Phil Helper so you must stay tuned we've got lots more to dig into and we're going to talk more about fine tuning and and whether cosmology points towards God it wouldn't be unbelievable if we didn't ask that question would it so follow us on Apple podcast like and subscribe on youtube email us unbelieveria premier.org.uk that's unbelievable at premier.org.uk and stay tuned we'll be back welcome back to the third and final part of this unbelievable episode with me Andy kind and we're talking about the big bang the battle of the big bang and can the universe explain itself we've got Phil Helper and Neillesh Afshaudi who've written a wonderful book the details of which are obviously in our show notes the sleeve notes if you will at the end of part two Dr. Hugh Ross was talking about how the bible described the big bang Phil and Neillesh I wonder what you guys think about that Phil what do you think about the idea that an ancient religious book describes something that was theorized within the last hundred years in science yeah I think we have to be careful about imposing a meaning on an ancient text that probably isn't there so it's true that there are passages where God is described stretching out the heavens in an English translation but remember the Hebrew word is the Shemaim or Hashemaim and that's the sky so we don't think the sky is expanding so if you actually took it literally which should be wrong now we can ask why is it though why is it stretching out there at all you know isn't that incredible isn't this a perfect match to big bang cosmology but I think there's a much simpler explanation for this phrase and that is a lot of scholars think that the bible copied from an earlier Babylonian mish called the enuma ellesh and the enuma ellesh gives an account of creation and what happens in the enuma ellesh is that Marduk becomes this primal primary god so there are other gods but Marduk becomes the top god and he kills Tiamat Tiamat is a is a primeval god of the sea and what he I'll read you the tablet four from the enuma ellesh and what this is what Marduk does with her body it says he split her into like a dried fish on half of her he set up and stretched out as the heavens he stretched the skin and appointed a watch with the instruction not to let her waters escape he crossed over the heavens and surveyed their celestial parts so there's this view in ancient cosmology you find it very very common that there are different waters that have to be separated and so that's what you see in the enuma ellesh there's separation of the waters and a firm solid barrier that has to be stretched out to protect us from the waters above so I think that's what's actually going on in this text and it's what it's showing is it's ancient roots there's a lot of commonalities between the enuma ellesh and genesis in fact there's a bit that people might think it's quite strange it says in the bible god moves over the face of the waters or what are these waters how is their primeval primeval waters that doesn't match modern cosmology at all we don't think water is primeval um so the the answer is it's borrowing it's like a retelling of these ancient myths repackaging it from a polytheistic version to a monotheistic version there's also like seven tablets and the gods have to rest at the end I mean there's so many similarities in particular though the goddess of the sea Tiamat in the bible he uses a word a very very similar um I think at the name of it Tiamon I think it is in Hebrew and it's translated as god moves over the face of the waters but you could think of it as a wind from god this is actually many people prefer this translation a wind from god moved over Tiamat you know moved over the waters and in fact the way Tiamat is killed by a marduk is a wind he sends a wind into her mouth it opens her mouth and then they can get their weapons in so I think the best explanation for this passage about um stretching out the heavens is that it's taken from the enuma ellesh this was probably um inspired by ancient people thought that the sky was a solid dome and it meant the bible mentions us by being a solid dome the thome and the rackia is the Hebrew word so I think there's much simpler interpretations of this text that don't require any kind of match to to mollan cosmology well we'll let dot heurus respond to that but nihayesh anything to add add to that uh yeah I think that's the field actually made this point very well with this example but I think there are kind of more well-known examples of this this interpretations of religion that or biblical text which kind of have gone awry I mean the famous example is example of Galileo who kind of said the earth is moving and then the Vatican thinking at the time was that it was not and now why that was the case I mean that was that was the doctrine at the time and whatever the reading of of the religious text was at that time that has changed but that doesn't I mean we have a reading now which is maybe right now in in accordance with what we think is a big bang theory but in 600 years maybe we have a different theory are we gonna are you gonna stick with the big bang model and then there will be like new Galileo's who are new scientists and then they're gonna be tried because of because they're just refusing to believe in the big bang theory I don't know I mean it seems that putting kind of a specific scientific interpretations on religious texts could be actually harmful and I mean in when we had kind of examples in the past that is going to arrive so the question is are these really there or are we just reading into these what we want to read because we really want to believe these religious texts. Well Dr. Ross we've had the tag team turn up like a couple of wrestlers Neihäscher and Phil they're wearing Lea Tards listener just if in case you are not watching on YouTube Dr. Ross how would you respond to those claims? Yeah well the idea that the bible borrowed from the Numolish we need to recognize there's way more differences in our similarities and I would attribute the similarities from the fact that they came from roughly the same geographical in historical era so I'd expect the Mesopotamian counts to get a few of the things there but notice they're in sharp disagreement with what we know about established science that's not the case for the biblical texts and in terms of you know what the bible says about the big bang as I mentioned I put in my book rescuing an erensee the fact that there's a minimalist view on how much the bible says the minimalist view is that the bible does speak about a beginning it's not a static universe that the laws of physics are immutable at least all through the places where we can observe and detect and that one of those laws is a pervasive law decay. Where you do see debate is how we interpret these texts that talk about the expansion of the heavens and you know the people who take a more maximus view will point out the Hebrew verb natal shows up in all three Hebrew verb forms implying that the universe was created with the property that would ensure that it would continue to expand it says that God alone is responsible for the expansion of the heavens the fact that you see it in five different biblical texts they would argue that this is the case when the big bang was first proposed nearly part of the 20th century notice that the nontheists immediately reacted to its biblical implications so even the skeptics of the big bang say in the 1930s saw the connection between you know Christian theism and what you see in the big bang model and I don't think the big bang is going to go away least not in the point that both Phil and you know the other pointed out that hey there is widespread agreement that there is this universe that evolves from a very hot very dense state so you know which kind of big bang that's open to discussion and those different kinds aren't going to be a threat to the Bible I'd also say that the Bible is explicit in both Job and in Genesis and indeed earth did begin with water over the whole surface of the earth and that's now well established by planetary physics that indeed the earth began as a water world and later became a realm where you had continents and oceans on the surface and what you see in Job is once you get those landmasses that from that point onward earth will never again become a water world I use that to point out that the Bible doesn't teach that the flood of Noah is global it teaches that it's less than global you know indeed universal to humanity but that did not encompass the whole surface of the earth based on what you see here so but I mean these gentlemen are right there's quite a bit of fervent debate amongst cosmologists or pardon me theologians what does the Bible say about the big bang it doesn't give all the details but it does describe four features that we would recognize as fundamental and again it's not just theologians today that are debating this this debate has been going on for at least eleven hundred years well outnumbered but not outgunned there Dr. Hearth Nihayesh and Phil we've talked a little bit about whether it's possible to have a purely scientific motivation I do want to ask about wonder and metaphysical intrigue? Nihayesh when you're when you're studying when you're researching when you're looking into these things do you have that sense of wonder or beauty or something approaching longing we could call that metaphysical intrigue and and and if you do where would you where would you point that that to is that one of the things that you said that science can't explain yeah I think the wonder is is a great is a great term I called it also mystery but that's a that's a fuel like that's what drives us there are these questions there every now and then there is there is this word crisis that pops up and I think this is an interesting story that I don't know some of you might have watched this Netflix series three-body problem and it starts with all these scientists like noticing that all their theories are going wrong and experiments are breaking down well I mean the things are happening that the theories cannot explain and then they're starting to commit suicide they're all very depressed and I mean it's the fun it's it's a fun TV you can you could definitely watch it I it but it couldn't be farther from the truth in fact the most depressing thing in science as it turns out that it then all your theories match your data and then you don't have much to do because okay everything works what are we supposed to do now certainly for science the real science there are always these crises which seem maybe like a bad thing but in fact these crises are the things that drive science and the crises are basically you have our best efforts for a theory of the universe and we try to we we fitted all the data we could until now but then the next set of data comes around and we see how it doesn't fit and that's why there is a job left for us to do so that's the mystery that's the wonder that drives us and then there are there are lots of mysteries I mean we talk why we were writing this book this this book this was actually during the pandemic and that was pandemic itself was I think a mystery of itself in fact I spent a lot of time even though that's not my background I ended up working a lot on trying to model how the pandemic or the COVID is spreading and I mean there is a big bank problem there where did it come from and people are still talking about that and that's I mean I don't know I mean it's the big bank is the origin of COVID that's another mystery you could is there an empirical aspect to that I'm not sure maybe there is but the science is full of these mysteries some of them may lie 14 billion years ago or some of them may lie here in this room or somewhere just next door so these mysteries there are things that emerge that we think we should understand from our current theories but we don't and is this wonders drive us and then what gives us hope and what keeps us going is that every now and then some of these mysteries get solved we come up with theories that could explain some of these or sometimes they don't but instead we can keep trying and the fact that sometimes maybe 1% of the time we can succeed that's that gives us hope that's that's that's the aspect that I think in some sense this mystery is similar to what we have is something we have in common with religion and I mean I'm not saying that I'm not a religious person but I'm just saying that I'm not going to separate myself from from from religion I mean I'm cut from the same cloth really but I'm saying the scientific method even though it wants to be rigorous and it wants to be academic and systematic it's really driven by humanity because the reason scientists do the job that they do is it's driven by human impulses and these are the same mean impulses that may may drive through believers or may drive yeah may have driven people over over the past few millennia I love that though did you did you catch that listener it's the mystery that drives scientists there's a wonderful humility in that you can never it's not a computer game you can never get a hundred percent completion on science which is why Niayesh and Phil and he continue to do the the work that they they do and Phil within the Christian world within the water Christian apologetics certainly when I speak to people who wouldn't call themselves Christians and I and they know their stuff and I ask them what they find the most compelling argument were they to sort of turn tail towards the gospel they will often say it's the fine tuning of the universe it it's the idea that the universe seems to be rigged in our favor um I wonder what you what you make of that purely from a scientific point of view and and again whether you think there's there's a sort of deeper meaning to that whether as as somebody in your line of where you just say well no I just I just stop my boundary is what it says scientifically I'm I'm not stepping over that metaphysical threshold any thoughts on that Phil sure well actually I want to bring it back to the survey that Niayesh and and colleagues and I did all physicists on controversial topics within physics this is called the Copenhagen Survey you can you can google that and find what physicists themselves think about this topic so we we ask them what do you think about fine tuning and what's the solution and unfortunately for the Christian apologist that that God was right at the bottom I'm afraid that was not a popular solution cancel the show sorry guys the most popular solution was that this isn't like brute it's a brute fact what the consul nature are that doesn't require any gram metaphysical hypothesis it doesn't need a multiverse or a guard or anything like that and you might think well how can that be surely we've established that this stuff is all incredibly unlikely but um there she's not so well established um the problem is often with our notions of probability um how do you establish something is improbable you you might say well look I can calculate what what the constants would be here and here and here and it looks like there's a only a very small amount of the parameter space is life permitting so therefore life permitting constants are improbable but it that's that's actually controversial amongst philosophers of probability um so one way to say it is is well actually just in brightest I host this show and he had this great video where he said fine tuning is like rolling the dice and you keep getting six every time time and time and time what are the odds of that and it's right that's incredibly unlikely but that's because you understand how dice work you know and you know what you should expect um without some intervention but for the constant nature uh we don't know what to expect we don't know which values are possible we don't know that they're all equally likely so there's a lot of uncertainty actually whether there is any fine tuning which is why I think that was picked as a number one solution this uh I'll give you the top three solutions basically so that was number one um number two was uh a multiverse so it's no surprise that you know if you think we measure when in the lottery you might think it's very unlikely someone's going to win the lottery but it's not very unlikely if lots of lots of lottery tickets are sold now there's a bit more subtlety to it about you know what sort of reason you can do on this it's it gets quite complicated but that's simply per you know if lots of lottery tickets are sold and no surprise that somebody won and of course we would have to be in the universe that had the winning lottery ticket we couldn't have been in any of the other ones um now the third one is less well known I'm actually kind of excited about this one not because I think it's the most convincing answer to my tuning but it's I think it's got the most promise compared to how much attention it's got and that was one suggested by Lee Smolin um and watch out because they are she's going to be giving a talk at Lee best at the perimeter institute and what Lee Smolens suggested was this is very similar to what we see in biology so if you arrange genes randomly you're not going to get a living organism so what's the answer not that it was designed by an intelligent being but rather the natural process is not purely random so there could be some selection pressure so that's how Darwinian evolution works so maybe there's a Darwinian evolution for the cosmos and Lee came up with a way that the cosmos could reproduce via black holes we talked earlier it brings us back to the earlier part of the program that the black holes could maybe give birth to baby universes and then maybe their constants would change slightly and that we would select for those universes and make the most black holes and they would make the most stars and really fine tuning is not so much for life it's more for stars or maybe complexity so this could be a way to solve that problem I'll just point out one other um point that we didn't mention in the survey but there's a there's a very interesting philosopher of physics at Princeton which is where Nihash did his PhD called Hans Halverson and Hans is a Christian and he is a philosopher of physics at Princeton professor of philosophy of physics at Princeton and he actually thinks fine tuning is evidence against God and you might think hey what but the reason he thinks this is because what he's saying is well if we accept the claims of fine tuning then the data is life is unlikely now you might say well how does God solve life is unlikely well God loves life so he's going to twiddle with the knobs and make it likely but what Hans says is that by the Christian this is Hans speaking now and and I think God's responsible for the base layer of reality so he sets the probabilities for life now what should I expect the probabilities to be high or low well if there's a God that loves life and he sets the probabilities for life I should expect them to be high and the fact that I find them to be low is this confirmation of Christian ideas and not confirmation and I you can ask him then why is he still a Christian theist well it's because he buys into these arguments that we can't make sensible statements about probabilities for things like the conservation when we're just totally in a dark about how they are set. Well Dr. Ross what do you think about that? God as an explanation not even making the playoffs in this in this survey of scientists we've got a couple of minutes really before we need to wrap up but Hugh why don't you why don't you have at it with your response to fine tuning? This is one reason we've developed an interdisciplinary team of scientists here at Reasons to believe is that when it comes to like the fine tuning argument you can't just look at it from one narrow sub discipline and one of the common features of physicists they tend to be focused not just on physics but a very small sliver of physics and I saw that when I was at Caltech we would take over a restaurant at Caltech they had different tables for the different specialties and if you sat at the wrong table you couldn't follow the conversation that's a specialized science has become and we realized that when you look at what scripture says about fine tuning it's highly interdisciplinary so you want to bring in the disciplines you don't just want to look at the constants of physics you want to look at everything and this is where I think you come up with a compelling argument that the fine tuning does point to a mind it points to a mind that's got multiple specified purposes and those specified purposes match what we see the Bible saying about the reason why God created in the first place why He designed us the way He did and the number of theologians I know when they look at fine tuning they actually mesh it with the fact that we look at nature something point that's already brought out we see this mystery we see this beauty we see this elegance in this symmetry and doesn't that say something about the causal agent is behind all of this and those are actually features of the characteristics of God that are described in the Bible so again you want to put this what you see with the cosmological argument for God in the Bible it's very broad you know and people like Emanuel Kant basically took what the Bible said about the universe chopped it up in the nine small pieces and said each piece by itself does not give an adequate argument for God but the Bible never does that it argues with all nine pieces together so again we get into these issues we have to get outside of our subdiscipline and actually begin to bring in other people that's why I'm highly motivated we need to bring in the theologians the philosophers and not just physicists but bring in the biologists bring in the paleontologists mean one thing is impressed me well look at the fossil record I see that the mass speciation and mass speciation it's extinction events the timing of them they extend to them perfectly fits what you need to compensate for the increasing luminosity of the sun so that's a good example we want to bring in a solar astrophysicist with the paleontologists and with the geneticists and say what is the best explanation what we see across these multiple disciplines and I've written in my books really the only rational explanation is that has to be done by the mind that we see described in the pages of the Bible you know the God of the Bible thank you to all three of you I need to bring our ship in to land now the good news is we managed to avoid any intellectual black holes but we have flown through an asteroid shower of competing models and theories but it's been absolutely splendid thank you to my three guests fill helper heurosh and niayesh afshordi and I wonder what you make of it we've certainly learned a lot I don't know whether you're any closer to making up your mind on whether the universe could create itself or whether God is the best explanation for the fine tuning of the universe but it all helps in the long one it's great to have fine minds wrestling in this friendly arena don't forget of course to pick up a copy of battle of the big band available big bang not big band battle of the big band is something you go to when you're at university don't forget to pick up a copy of battle of the big bang by Phil and niayesh available now in the US coming soon to the UK and of course you can check out Dr. heurosh's numerous books including the creator and the cosmos how the latest scientific discoveries reveal God at reasons to believe so what happened 14 billion years ago was there a beginning or has the universe always been is the big bang still the best theory or are we on the brink of a new cosmic revolution well we haven't reached that event horizon yet but we have reached the end of the show so on behalf of me and a kind and all the team here thanks for watching and listening to unbelievable we'll be back soon with more cosmic content goodbye when you're juggling every day life carrying your faith isn't always easy introducing jrna premier's new devotional journaling app created in partnership with world vision each day jrna gives you a bible verse a short reflection a question to sit with a written prayer and space for your thoughts all in one place wherever you go find jrna in your app store today available on iOS and android jrna an app to help you stay connected hi it's gavin i'm filka i don't know about you but it can sometimes feel like we're living in a bad news world wars scandals crisis after crisis but if you're ready to change the soundtrack and hear what God is really doing we have a brand new podcast just for you we're driving the UK seeing people come to faith churches grow a new life breakout with real stories fresh research and inspiring leaders we are ready to give you a front row seats to guard on the move good news people is a new podcast from premier and the evangelical alliance so listen now on apple podcasts spotify youtube or wherever you get your podcasts we are good news people in a bad news world