Belief  25 December 2000 - 5 January 2001 1900-1930    JOAN BAKEWELL TALKS TO PAUL DAVIES  BELIEF BBC Radio 3 29 December at 7.00pm Producer : Janet McLarty   

Joan Bakewell Good evening.  We live in times of proliferating  beliefs.  Despite the expectation by some that science would  demolish religion, it hasn't happened.  Atheism, while the choice  of many, is by no means paramount.  All the traditional religions  flourish, though some more vigorously than others,  and round  each of them adjacent sects and interpretations continue to  spring up.  Besides all this, new age faiths take firmer hold  and continue to extend their scope.  This is an age of individualism  with few people willing to accept without question what is on offer.  As a consequence, each of us have our own highly  idiosyncratic set of beliefs ranging from clear and specific  convictions to looser less formulated notions of how the world  is and how we fit within it.  And at the start of a new century,  personal beliefs have never been more diverse, with many more  people questioning and exploring aspects of existence.  Within  this series, I ask people from different disciplines what they  believe and how they arrived at their particular outlook.    My guest on tonight's programme is a scientist, Professor of  natural philosophy, Paul Davies, whose international reputation  rests not only on his distinction as a scientist, but on his  commitment to seeking answers to the big questions.  What does  it mean to exist?  Is God necessary?  Was there a creation  event?  His many books explain his answers in terms the  non-scientist can understand.  So, Professor Davies, you call one of your books  "The mind of God" - which is of course the last phrase  in Stephen Hawkings famous book and I wondered if it's  an indication of your belief? 

 Paul Davies   I think it's an indication of the belief of  many scientists, particularly physicists, that there is a  real order in the world out there and that in doing our  science, we're uncovering the way the world is and the  early scientists, like Galileo or Newton, supposed that  what they were doing was uncovering God's handiwork for  the world.   If you like, thoughts in the  mind of God,  although for most scientists we've killed God off, that  notion that there is something out there, something  ordered and rational and intelligible that we uncover  through doing science, I think that's prevalent among  all scientists including those that would call themselves  atheists.

  Joan Bakewell Do you know the set of beliefs at which you  have arrived, or are you always in a state of re-believing  all the time, the more you discover.   

 Paul Davies    As a scientist, I am always prepared to  change my mind when there is new evidence or new ideas come  on the horizon and so for me, my life has been a continual  search, a state of perpetual turmoil.  Of course, some of  the ideas that I kicked around even in my teens have come  back to haunt me - I've revisited them time and time again,  but I think it's really important that we adopt a spirit of  openness and the possibility of progress in the realm of the  spiritual just as we do in science and technology.  After  all, the last 300 years have witnessed an enormous advance  in science, technology, material well-being, health and so  on, economics.  Wherever you look, there has been enormous  progress, but most people's ideas of religion or spirituality  tends to be rooted in the past, in some cases in ancient texts  that were written 2000 years ago and they don't seem to have  moved on very much.  

Joan Bakewell Or rooted in their own childhood.  I mean,  people seem to very often formulate beliefs out of a Sunday  school notion of things and don't seem to update them very much.   You sound as though you're constantly revising, what you think? 

 Paul Davies   Well I take these things  seriously and I think most people, you're quite right, most people are exposed to  religious ideas at a rather naïve level in their childhood and  then when they get to their late teens and have to think about  building a career, getting married bringing up families, that  sort of thing, they really don't have time to think through  the issues involved and those few people who still go to church  or some other religious institution expect that that's the job  of the priest, that they're there to give you the answers and  most people really don't spare too much of a thought.  Well I'm  fortunate that I've been able to make a career as a scientist  and as a philosopher and I have had time to reflect on these  issues and I spend a lot of time travelling around the world  talking to other people who are doing the same and I'm completely  open-minded. 

 Joan Bakewell Well now , let's go back then into your own  childhood and how the ideas that you hold now have arisen from  them.   You grew up in the 50's in a London home, comfortable  I assume and I wonder, was it a devout home in any way?    

Paul Davies   My parents were religious in a fairly conventional  way, so it was Church of England, I joined the Cubs and went to  Sunday School, and church parade and that sort of thing.  I  always felt virtuous when I went to church, but terribly bored  and I suppose it was a case of no pain, no gain - it would have  to be miserable to be doing you good.  And I dutifully went as  children do without thinking too much about what was going on.    I think it would be too much to say my family is or has been  very religious - church was something that was more or less  obligatory, Christmas and Easter, but otherwise pretty voluntary and by my teens, of course like all teenagers  I was rebelling  and questioning all these things, I did join a church youth club,  largely to meet the girls, and from time to time, the curate from  the church would come along to the youth club and we'd have a  discussion about something deep and meaningful and I suppose by  about the age of 16 when I had entered the sixth form and I was  doing physics and mathematics, starting to think about what all  this meant, I then really began to quite seriously question what  was this church business was about.  

Joan Bakewell Yes, but the actual taking for granted, as you  say, it was more or less taken for granted , it wasn't  particularly high profile in our life, nonetheless, that simple  assumption about the way life is and what we believe, even if  it isn't remarked on, is profoundly influential isn't it?   The fact that you took it for granted, that the world was  explained by the Christian ideology and the Christian story  must have influenced your values from very early on. 

 Paul Davies  Well, it, look let me say one thing and I think  it's important because it's often lost in this sorts of  discussion that whatever we may conclude about church attendance  and theological issues and science and religion and so on,  there is one way in which, living as we do in a notionally  Christian community has of course affected me and everybody  else and that is Christian values.  Quite independently of what  I thought about the Bible or theological issues in my teens, I came away, I mean I grew up with a very clear idea of the  difference between right and wrong and the importance of Christian ideals like loving your enemy even if it meant just clapping the  other side when they scored a goal - those sorts of things, I  think,  never leave you and even if, in a country like Britain,  most people have abandoned church-going, nevertheless, I think  they will still subscribe to broadly-speaking Christian ethics.  Now, Christianity doesn't have the monopoly on virtuous behaviour  and clapping the other side, so I wouldn't want to make too much  of that, but certainly, having a framework of moral and ethical  ideals was important, has been important in shaping who I am and  I'm sure that of everyone else around me, including militant  atheists. 

 Joan Bakewell Now, the turbulent adolescent years, of course,  are very thrilling and for you, with a good brain and a sense  of curiosity, very challenging, were you then confronted by  serious and alarming doubts, or by the thrill of discovery? 

   Paul Davies When I think back on this, to me the formative time  was probably when I was about 16, maybe 17, in the sixth form,  beginning to learn some more advanced physics and mathematics  and worrying about things like free will and determinism, in  fact I can well remember speaking to this long-suffering curate  at the church youth club about free will, after all if our brains  are made of atoms, subject to the laws of physics, those atoms  will do what they have to do and what difference does it make  whether we want a, b or c.  Well, he couldn't give me a straight  forward answer to that and I think I saw that if I really was  interested in issues like the mind-body problem I'd have to become  a physicist - but I was particularly influenced by reading two  books more or less simultaneously.   The first of these was by  Fred Hoyle, the British cosmologist, called "Frontiers of  astronomy" and this was a wonderfully refreshing and exciting  look at the then emerging subject of cosmology, how did the  universe begin and how will it end, how do stars evolve, what  is our place in this great cosmic scheme and this was a  wonderfully uplifting discussion of the universe and at the  same time I read John Robinson's "Honest to God" which was a  similar attempt to rebuild theology, start all over again,  demolish the notion of God as a cosmic magician or an old man  in the sky, somebody  who's just up there or just out there  and to begin afresh and I thought, well it is possible to  look at these deepest issues of existence from the side of  science and theology in a spirit of open minded enquiry and  research and I thought this was wonderfully thrilling because  after all, this questing young mind wanting to understand how  things work and realising that for the first time that we didn't  have all the answers, you know you learn science at school and  it's sort of handed down like received wisdom as though it's   a closed subject and you're just being told how things are but  then you get to realise that, goodness me no, they're discovering  new particles, new astronomical objects, nobody fully understands  it.  There's everything to play for and that's the way I saw it,  as you know, great open opportunity to question all of the things  people thought must be so and to see what's new out there. 

 Joan Bakewell As a slightly rebellious teenager intellectually  in this background, as someone who had quite a questing mind, did  you suffer doubt - did you feel that the world that you were  abandoning or the supernatural elements of the Christian faith  which you'd taken for granted at school, Sunday School and so  on, did you feel a loss? 

 Paul Davies   I suppose so.  John Polkinghorne expresses this rather  well, he says that there's a God-shaped hole in most of our lives  and I think once you abandon those childhood images, particularly  the notion of the guardian angel type of god, the idea that  there's someone out there, up there who's watching out for me  and will fix things up if they get really bad, so long as I  obey a few rules, I mean that's a very appealing prospect and  it took many years for me to finally decide, well it can't  really be that way can it.  So yes, there has been a sense of  loss.   I might say that that's been compensated to some extent  by the wonder that science has presented to me.  The fact that  science exposes a universe of such thrilling and stunning  ingenuity and beauty, that is so inspirational.  But this is  really a glimpse of what we might call God the grand architect,  the grand designer, a sort of remote abstract entity, not the  personal God of popular religion, not the God who's going to  respond to prayer and I find it almost impossible to believe in  that sort of an intervening God, a God who would really fix  things up.  

Joan Bakewell And do you find that a depressing prospect,  because the Archbishop of Canterbury has said "…we must spread  the faith because those who live without it live impoverished,  depressed, doubting lives and are wretched."  I find that hard  to believe and I don't see that characterised by you in your  behaviour at all, but did you suffer doubt and depression at  there not being the truth of this explanation, as you saw it?  

Paul Davies  I suppose I've always been an optimist, I have  enjoyed reading science fiction which is, almost by definition  optimistic about the future.  Science itself, you've got to be  optimistic because you've got to believe that we're going into  discover new things and make progress and that the fruits of  science are not going to destroy us all.   Like everybody else,  I have periods of depression, as I get older, of course I think  about my own mortality, it would be very nice and comforting to  suppose that all this would be taken care of, some small part  of me thinks, well existence is so extraordinary that maybe  continued existence after death would be no more extraordinary  but it's very hard for me to look at that as a scientist as a  realistic prospect.    I think conventional religion is a comfort to people.  I think  there is  no doubt when you look at people who attend church  services that it fulfils a social and psychological function  for them and I don't want to belittle that, but long ago, and  we're talking about the age of 16 or 17, I think at that stage,  that I had gone beyond that function of the church, I'd gone  beyond feeling that it was something that I needed, you know,  as an intellectual, er as a psychological prop and felt I  really wanted to see if there was anything deeper, anything  really behind it, so I'm in a very curious position that I  take theology and spirituality very seriously, but I don't go  to church, I don't attend acts of worship except the usual  ones, weddings and funerals and so on.  

Joan Bakewell Do you feel uplifted by church music, for  example? … 

 Paul Davies Oh, yes, yes … 

Joan Bakewell … because it's religious, I mean?

  Paul Davies You see the trappings, the trappings of religion,  I mean this is why it's so successful, are so incredibly  powerful.  You know, the hierarchy, the buildings you see, I  mean I still think churches are such wonderful places,  cathedrals I think are tremendous.  I mean here we have the pinnacle of the combination of architecture, science, music  and religion all coming together, so I think, um,  the  trappings of religion are tremendously inspiring. 

 Joan Bakewell Trappings of science aren't are they?  

Paul Davies No, I mean they try to copy, you've got things like  the Royal Society and so on um and occasionally, people will  dress up for degree ceremonies, but it's hard to take any of  that stuff seriously.

  Joan Bakewell No, can't match it.  

Paul Davies So,  no….  

Joan Bakewell But you use and explore the vocabulary of  religion itself in your scientific exploration for example,  you're very up front about your use of the word God. 

 Paul Davies Yes, yes, yes  

Joan Bakewell You use God happily, what do you mean by God.  

Paul Davies I'm not alone in doing this, you go to a physics  conference and people will sit around and they will often talk  about God, or maybe nature with a capital N, Mother Nature even,   because to be a scientist, you really do have to believe that  there is a real world out there and that it is ordered in a  rational and intelligible way and that what we're involved in  is a voyage of discovery, that we're trying to figure out actual  properties of nature, that we're reading these properties out of  nature, not imposing them on nature.   A lot of people don't know  this, they think that science is just an exercise in inventing  human categories and imposing them on nature.  I really don't  believe that, I believe that there is a real existing order in  nature that we discover through doing science and so since this  is an intellectual exercise, you can't avoid the fact that there's  got to be an intellectual input, that there's something clever,  something really ingenious, rational and intelligible to us out  there in nature and the word God seems to encapsulate that very  well.  Einstein was always talking about the Good Lord did this  and God does not play dice with the universe and …  

Joan Bakewell Science without religion is lame, and religion  without science is blind.  He was very used to the vocabulary  of religion and I wonder how confounding it is for people who  hear a scientist talking about God and if they are religious  think that scientists have come into the, as it were the  Victorian fold, the Darwinian fold - Darwin was a devout  Christian, whereas in fact what you are saying is that science  is God, the explanations, the investigation into creation is  looking at God.  

Paul Davies    Well, what I wouldn't want to say is that science  is in some sense a religion or will substitute for religion.  I don't think that people should look to scientists in the same  way they look to priests, because as we've been discussing,  religion is about a lot more than explaining the world, but  when it comes to the physical universe I think unquestionably,  science is the way to go and I include in that, the origin of  the universe, the big bang that started it all off.  A lot of people want to find God in the big bang or before the big bang  or something and I think that's a deep mistake - that's not  the place to look for God, so the one thing you must beware  against is the so-called God of the gaps, the idea that because  scientists at this particular time can't explain this or that phenomenon, that we must wheel in God to plug the gap - that's  been the way it's worked for hundreds of years and of course  God's got squeezed out of those gaps successively until he's more  or less pushed right back to the beginning of the universe to  the big bang itself and that's the only place you need this poor  old God.  

Joan Bakewell But you see Paul - you yourself use, "it's not  the right place to look for God", suggesting that the search for  God is a legitimate intellectual activity. 

 Paul Davies Oh yes, I don't think there's any doubt about that  but the God we're talking about is not a cosmic magician, not  some miracle working super-being up there in the sky who's going  to intervene from time to time.  

Joan Bakewell So, what is God?  

Paul Davies Well, the first thing you conclude, of course,   if you're a physicist and cosmologist is that time is part of  the physical universe - Einstein showed us that - time is not  a backdrop - space and time together don't form, as Newton  thought, an arena in which the universe happens, in which the  great drama of nature is acted out - they're part of the cast.   Space and time can change and move.  Now it's a very hard concept  but the important point is that time began with the big bang,  now that's in a simple model of the big bang, there are  complicated models where it didn't, let's stick to the simple  model, the standard model.  

Joan Bakewell I have to ask something - is there anything  before time? 

 Paul Davies   People always want to ask that and of course by  definition there is nothing before time.  I think Stephen  Hawkings expresses this rather well by saying what lies north  of the north pole, well you can answer nothing lies north of  the north pole, that's not because there's some mysterious land  of nothingness there, it's because there ain't no such place as  north of the north pole.  In the same vein, there ain't no such  time  as before the Big Bang because it was the origin of time.  Now people always look baffled and think, oh, that's just a  trick - you're just trying to get God out of the picture by  saying  that it's meaningless to talk about the prior epoch,  but let me remind you that St Augustine already in the 5th  century said that the world was made with time and not in time.   I think that this is an absolutely crucial point because what  it means is that if we want to talk about God, we've got to  talk about a being, an entity, whatever you call it,  that  is outside of time and after all, if what we're after is an  explanation of the universe, that universe includes time and  space and so it's got to be something that transcends time and  space and whilst that makes a physicist very comfortable, it's  not much comfort for those people who want a God who can dip in  from time to time.  Now the old fashioned God is a super-being  who sits there for all eternity and at some particular moment  decides I'll have  a universe, presses a button, bang, the  universe appears, and then maybe from time to time, prods it  and moves atoms around so for example, people … 

 Joan Bakewell And sends his son to redeem.  

Paul Davies That of course is absolutely the crucial for  Christians, that's one point where you cannot duck the issue  about God intervening in nature, but people also thinks  there's a bit of mystery  about the origin of life, so have  God fix that up by moving a few molecules around there, and  the origin of consciousness and the origin of humankind and  so there's these various episodes in the development of the  universe where a lot of people feel that they would like God  as the explanation and I think this is really horrible on  theological and scientific grounds, to have a god who's meddling  from time to time as a force of nature in competition with the  other forces of nature, that's not the way to look at all.  So  I think you're too wrong to vest too much significance in the  origination of things and in particular, the big bang.  What  I think instead is more fruitful, is to look at the underlying   laws, the laws of physics, which explain all this.  We can now  understand er, most recently from the work of Stephen Hawking,  how the laws of physics can bring the universe into existence  from nothing, that is bring space and time into existence where  there was no space and time, where there was, literally,  nothing.   We can understand that that is not necessarily a  supernatural act; it could be a natural process and this I think  is very significant because people used to suppose well, science  is good for explaining what happened after the big bang but the  originating event itself lies beyond the scope of science…  

Joan Bakewell The creator in fact,  

Paul Davies Yes, I think that's not true.  I think the originating  event can be brought within the scope of science, I think we can  have a thoroughly scientific account of the universe at all times,  including the origin of things.  But you have to ask where do  these laws come from.  Why those laws and not some other set.   Is there anything special or peculiar about the actual laws. 

 Joan Bakewell And also in terms of, um, our own destiny.  Is  there a purpose behind this creation? 

 Paul Davies    If you want to ask me what do I mean by this word  "god" , I would that something like the rational ground in which  these wonderful laws which could bring a universe into existence,  and bring life and reflecting beings like ourselves into existence,   the rational ground in which those laws are rooted and if you ask me to take a sort of  cosmic view, I would say that it strikes me  that there is something purpose-like, design-like, goal-like in  all this.   I mean these words are loaded because they're taken  from human discourse and projected onto nature, we have to be  very careful how we use them.  But nevertheless, I think it's  legitimate to say that in some sense the universe is about  something.  It strikes me that it's not just arbitrary and  absurd.  You see a lot of people say, oh, well perhaps there  is a grand design, grand architect it's got nothing to do with  human beings.  Well, it would be wrong to suppose that human  beings are the pinnacle of creation or at the centre of the  universe, I wouldn't want to get us back to that stage, but  we're not insignificant either.  You shouldn't just shrug human  beings aside… 

 Joan Bakewell We're not just specks whirling in space? 

 Paul Davies Quirky, little thing like that.  No, I think the  existence of mind, the fact that we can come to understand the  world through science and intellectual enquiry I think is a  fact of tremendous significance and the more I look at it,  the more convinced I am that our own intellectual capabilities  link in to the deepest processes of the universe in a way which  is not accidental, so if we want to be very crude about it and  say there is a plan or purpose to the universe, then I think  that we are a part of that a modest part, not a central part,  but nonetheless a significant part.  

Joan Bakewell Are we unique …. are we unique within that?  

Paul Davies Well, I think that homo sapiens is going to be  unique, if you were to er, replay the great cosmic movie again,  there certainly wouldn't be species identical to us; there may  not even be life on earth.  But I think the emergence of life  and minds somewhere and somewhen in the emerging universe is  assured by these wonderful, ingenious underlying laws and so  it's to those laws, if you want to look for something like God,  you look to these timeless, transcendent laws that do such a  wonderful job.  After all, if you were going to promote me to  God and say, well, that's fine, you can be omnipotent, make us  a universe that's interesting and here's a magic wand, that would be dead easy, we'll have a bit of this, a bit more of  that and then you look at it and say, no, order something else,  how easy but now, if you say, well you've got to design a set  of mathematical laws that are simple and elegant and they have  to bring forth the richness and diversity and complexity of the  universe that we see without tinkering and meddling, that's a  much more challenging job - that's much, much more impressive.  

Joan Bakewell Let's talk about the views that other people  hold, as opposed to your particular set of concepts.  You have  written that people who hold beliefs especially in the field of  religion which might be regarded as irrational, that they are  held irrationally, doesn't mean that they are wrong.  Does that  mean that you include all these other visions that people have  of religious explanation and so on as equally valid to your own?

  Paul Davies   Well, I think you have to decide with ultimate  explanations and so on, just how far science can take us.  And  I suppose that most physicists rather arrogantly assume that  their techniques are going to reveal everything, that in principle  all of existence would be explained by those techniques.  But  I'm actually rather sceptical that that is the case.  Um.  That  there may be areas of human enquiry that simply won't yield to  those sorts of methods.  I love my wife.  If you'd never had the  experience of love, I could never communicate to you the fact  that this was real for me and I don't think there's anything in  physics that is ever going to convey to you what it means for me  to have that experience.  And there are many other aspects of  nature, not necessarily just within the human realm that may  simply be not so much outside the scope of scientific enquiry,  but simply the methods of fundamental physics are simply  inappropriate for them.  

Joan Bakewell   Now, are there areas of your life which are  non-scientific, are there areas in which you set aside the  insights of your discipline, simply to perhaps behave and  feel irrationally?  

Paul Davies Oh yes, of course. I mean in daily life, I don't  go round analysing  everything from the physicist's point of  view …  

Joan Bakewell No, but your behaviour must be governed by the  set of beliefs you hold which are largely based on this  exposition.  

Paul Davies   Well, yes I suppose so - I mean most of our  behaviour is pretty much socially conditioned anyway.  We  all go round having breakfast and going off to work so from  that point of view, no. but where I think I do increasingly  find myself, or at least my judgements coloured by science is  less from physics, more from biology, recognising that you  know, I'm an animal, I have evolved, that my minds my wishes  and desires have been shaped by evolution and that there  might be good sound evolutionary reasons, sometimes of a  rather prosaic nature, that determine the way I feel about  things and I think it's very important to recognise that,  so this whole rather contentious subject of evolutionary  psychology which is still in its formative stages, I think  is actually very useful in helping us to understand human  nature and making judgements particularly about things like  criminal behaviour and so on that before we rush to condemn,  it really is rather useful to see the biological basis for  some of this.   

 Joan Bakewell And free will?  

Paul Davies Oh, you see I keep coming back.  That's what  got me started on this great  quest.  Have we really got  freedom?  And again, you see where one had, the physicist  had, looks like free will is either non-existent or  meaningless and then you go off you know to do some sort  of day-to-day chore and of course, you act as if you had  freedom …

  Joan Bakewell As if, though …

  Paul Davies Well it is as if.  It's very, very hard to pin  down whether it's a meaningful thing.  Is free will just a  feeling we have or does it have cause and efficacy, can we  really actually change the world, is there an openness to  the world ,through which we can act?   I'm still undecided  on this issue, I keep going round and round in circles.   It's part and parcel of the great mystery of consciousness.   We don't understand the nature of consciousness we  know a  lot about how the brain works but consciousness in the sense  of what philosophers call the qualia, the actual sensations  we get of the world the redness of red and the greenness of  green, is still deeply mysterious and I see free will as part  of the mystery and I really haven't made up my mind on that  one yet, I'm still working on it.  

Joan Bakewell Finally, let me ask you Paul, er do you, as we  all get older and face human mortality, whether you feel  comfortable with your beliefs.  Whether your beliefs give  you rooted confidence in the way things are or do you have  as it were, panic attacks in the middle of the night about  what it's all about. 

 Paul Davies Well, comfortable enough to conduct radio  interviews like this because I think I've sorted a few things  out in my own mind and I feel I have a half-way coherent  point of view about life, the universe and everything that  I find useful but …  

Joan Bakewell But at the deathbed of a friend, for example …  might doubts assuage you? 

 Paul Davies But yes, because we come back to these things  that at the end of the day, really matter.  Which is things like our personal freedom, our feelings for other people, love and so on, our fear of death, and what lies beyond and  really, science has done so little to touch upon those  things except to either sweep them under the carpet or else  to define them away.  And yet, at the end of the day,  they're ultimately the things that are most important to  us and yes, I frequently wake in the night, I'm a terrible  insomniac and I lie there worrying sometimes, the worry is simply  the level of being puzzled about a problem, not a  technical problem so much as a conceptual problem about our  existence, sometimes it's a deep terror or depression  because if you stand back and look at our fragile position  in the world, particularly any given individual, it is  absolutely terrifying and then of course when you wake up  in the morning you get on with the daily round and there's  some reassurance in that.  

Joan Bakewell Professor Paul Davies.  Thank you.