Closer to Truth Podcasts: Recent Episodes
Closer to Truth
The greatest thinkers exploring the deepest questions. Your source for Cosmos, Consciousness, Meaning.
CONSCIOUSNESS — What is the nature of art? What makes something “art”, and why should we value it? What are aesthetics and art theory? Can philosophy of art enhance appreciation and practice of the arts?
CONSCIOUSNESS — What is happening in our brains when we perceive and appreciate the arts? What are the neural substrates of artistic sensations, feelings, and emotions? How do diverse arts affect the brain?
COSMOS — It’s the ultimate puzzle. It’s the haunting question. Why is there “something” rather than “nothing”? It seems impenetrable, uncrackable, unfathomable. But are there ways?
CONSCIOUSNESS — Can art inform the classic mind-body problem? While the relationship between mental activity and physical brain continues to baffle (especially consciousness), can the existence and process of art provide insight?
COSMOS - What’s the ultimate stuff of reality? What’s absolutely fundamental and non-reducible — the fewest number of categories within which every specific thing, of every general kind, can be classified?
MEANING - It’s intended as ultimate purpose: salvation means eternal life with God. For believers, what actually happens, what kind of life? For non-believers, what can we learn about how religion works?
MEANING - Can atonement absolve sin? For believers, how could The Atonement work? What’s the process? For non-believers, what does The Atonement say about the kind of God that supposedly designed it?
MEANING - Why the astonishing claim that Jesus is God? Not like God. Not representing God. But literally God? One need not be a Christian, or even a theist, to appreciate the arguments.
COSMOS - Here’s the claim: each level of the scientific hierarchy — physics, chemistry, biology, psychology — has its own special laws that can never be explained by deeper laws (physics). How can this be?
CONSCIOUSNESS - What makes a human being a "person?" What provides our sense of unity and continuity? While most people assume that to be a person is to have a soul, most philosophers-and some theologians-believe that persons are all material.
CONSCIOUSNESS - How does consciousness weave its magical web of inner awareness-appreciating music, enjoying art, feeling love? Even when all mental functions may be explained, the great mystery-what it "feels like" inside-will likely remain.
COSMOS - Here’s the claim: conditions of the universe relate to the presence of observers. Does the Anthropic Principle convey deep insights? Or thwart science? For sure, it’s often misunderstood and controversial.
COSMOS - We search deepest levels of cosmic reality, the big picture of the puzzle of the universe — beginning, size, structure, future, far future. We seek significance in cosmology, if there’s any to be.
COSMOS - Why do the “constants of nature” — masses of subatomic particles and strengths of forces like gravity and electromagnetism — have the values they do? Does fine-tuning “cry out” for explanation?
COSMOS - Here’s the claim: cosmic conditions that allow complex structures — galaxies, stars, planets, people — depend on a few “constants of nature” lying within tight ranges of values. But is fine-tuning valid?
COSMOS - More than one universe? A ridiculous question no more! How could multiple universes be generated, and can we ever find evidence, one way or another? Talk about expanding your horizons: you can't imagine what's in store!
COSMOS - More than one universe? A ridiculous question no more! How could multiple universes be generated, and can we ever find evidence, one way or another? Talk about expanding your horizons: you can't imagine what's in store!
COSMOS - What could be more startling than many universes – multiple universes, innumerable universes, perhaps an infinite number of universes? But does the multiverse really exist?
COSMOS - Is there more than one universe? According to current cosmology, our entire gigantic universe is only one of innumerable universes, each universe like one tiny bubble in a limitless ocean of universes. What could all this mean?
MEANING - Most people believe that God exists and religion is God's revelation. But some claim that religion needs nothing supernatural; that religion, without God, can flourish because personal psychology and group sociology drive religion.
MEANING - Arguments for God, and against God, each call the universe as witness, each count the universe as evidence. God believers invoke the universe's apparent fine-tuning. God deniers envision a vast number of universes, so that anything can happen by accident, including us.
MEANING - I hope God exists, which is why I listen to atheists and follow their arguments. If hope trumps reason I may be entombed in false belief.
MEANING - Can the analytic enrich the theological, sharpening distinctions of doctrine? Can deep questions about God be addressed with methods and practices that are precise and rigorous?
MEANING - How can we have confidence in what we know or believe? What is knowledge? What is belief? How is belief justified? And, is justified belief, knowledge? How can we not doubt everything?
MEANING - Is analytic theology for the better, clarifying beliefs? Or for the worse, undermining faith? How does it compare with philosophy of religion, biblical studies and exegesis, and systematic theology?
COSMOS - The relationship between science and theology has easy conflicts and hard harmonies. Is consonance possible? What is consonance in science and religion that we should quest for it?
COSMOS - Don't let the heated argument or the smooth talk fool you: the struggle between science and religion carries deep significance. Meaning and Purpose hang in the balance as battle rages on many fronts.
COSMOS - To most physicists, mindless laws generated the universe. A few believe that a supreme being is the creator. But don’t the discoveries of cosmology eliminate the need for supernatural causes?
CONSCIOUSNESS - Parapsychologists are sure ESP is real. Skeptics are sure it is not. But if ESP is real, would ESP need to go beyond physical laws, reaching into unknown non-physical realms?
CONSCIOUSNESS - Extrasensory perception (ESP) probes reality. If ESP does not exist, then today’s physical world may be all there is. If ESP does exist, then reality may go beyond the physical world. But can ESP be tested by science?
CONSCIOUSNESS - If ESP were real, would it transcend space and time? How could our minds know stuff, and do stuff, not only beyond our senses, but also beyond the laws of physics? What are possible mechanisms?
COSMOS - To appreciate Time is to touch the texture of reality. Does Time differ from our common perceptions of it? Is Time fixed or flexible?
COSMOS - Information is all the rage in science, changing how we think about fundamental questions. Information has many descriptions, some of them surprising. Why is Information so important to scientists and philosophers?
COSMOS - Perhaps we cannot know the reason for the universe, if there is any. But is it even possible for the universe to have a reason? If yes, how would natural regularities and rules compare with some kind of goal or God?
CONSCIOUSNESS - Religions offer life after death. Many people are skeptical. Evidence for post-mortem survival? Again, skeptics abound. Can death ever be defeated? Are these possible ways?
MEANING - Whether God exists may depend on whether God is necessary. Even if God exists, would it have been possible for God not to exist? In other words, even if God does exist, could it have been otherwise?
MEANING - The God debate is not a game. Is there a God? If so, what are God's essences and traits? What are all the ways that God could be? Or could not be? We discover different beliefs of different kinds of Gods.
MEANING - How to think about God rationally, logically, profoundly, critically? Have no illusion that metaphysics can find God, but can a kind of progress be made?
MEANING - In searching, striving to know God—if there is a God—we discover contrasting ways that God could be. It is good to wonder about God, see a landscape of possibilities, get the big picture of what God may be like.
MEANING - Where do miracles fit in belief systems that center on God? If God exists, how could God make miracles happen, and what would miracles imply about the way God relates to the world?
COSMOS - What remarkable discoveries are being made in cosmology! Cosmologists now develop credible theories about the beginning and end of our universe and theory-based speculations about vast numbers of multiple universes. But does the cosmos have a reason? Could revolutionary ideas support some kind of 'universal reason'? The bar is set high, and it is OK to say no.
CONSCIOUSNESS - It is standard medicine that mental states can affect physical states. That's how placebos work—when sham drugs improve health, working by inducing the body to generate hormones. But some claim that the mind goes even further in healing the body, operating through consciousness in some nonphysical manner. Can this make sense?
CONSCIOUSNESS - Consciousness is what we know best and explain least. It is the inner subjective experience of what it feels like to see red or smell garlic or hear Beethoven. Consciousness is baffling.
CONSCIOUSNESS - Is the self an illusion? Decades roll by; every molecule of my body changes many times. Yet I sense myself the same-continuous, a unity. How can this be?
COSMOS - The universe works for us because of deep physical laws. But if the values of these laws would much change, then all we see and know could not exist.
COSMOS - Is time the ultimate stage on which all events play? Some physicists and philosophers say No -- time is an Illusion; time is not real. How can that be?
MEANING - Judaism, Christianity and Islam teach the ‘resurrection of the body’, the person brought back to life. But isn’t a ‘body’ out of place in a nonphysical hereafter? Isn’t a body a burden throughout eternity? Moreover, how to resurrect a body?
MEANING - What kind of God would create hell? Does the truth of Christianity, Judaism and Islam depend on the reality of Hell? Does the nature of Hell offer Insight into what that God would be like?
MEANING - Judaism, Christianity and Islam each proclaim a resurrection of the dead, a bodily reconstruction of all people from all time. How would it work? Does it make sense?
CONSCIOUSNESS - Humankind has learned so much, so fast. What are the risks of scientific knowledge? Look to the future. Artificial intelligence. Genetic engineering. Benefits? Dangers?
COSMOS - Scientists split on whether the universe confirms or denies God. Though most leading scientists do not believe in God, some do. What can we learn from the dispute?
COSMOS - Why is an observer key to quantum physics? Does the act of observation affect what exists and what happens in the external world? Why is Observation in the quantum world a mystery?
COSMOS - Lots of things exist. But what’s truly fundamental? The challenge is to discern the minimum number of basic categories that explains the entirety of existence.
COSMOS - How things start helps reveal what things are. How to conceive the beginning of the universe? What are latest theories? Are they all speculation? What’s the recent evidence?
COSMOS - The observable universe may contain two trillion galaxies and there may be innumerable universes. Is there ultimate unification, a final theory? Search for deep harmony. Discern deep meaning.
CONSCIOUSNESS - What makes me a self? I see. I hear. I feel. How can separate perceptions bind together into a coherent mental unity? How can all be me? And how does my self persist through time?
COSMOS - Some think metaphysics is ancient nonsense; others that it's the bizarre occult. Real metaphysics asks the most profound questions, seeks the deepest truths.
COSMOS - It is the Holy Grail of physics: All the particles and forces of nature unified and explained by equations so simple that you can print them on your tee shirt. Are we getting there?
COSMOS - I look up and I look down and I chill with awe. I look up to the universe and envision hundreds of billions of galaxies. I look down to the atom and imagine minuscule, infinitesimal particles and forces. This is reality.
COSMOS - Of all human knowledge, the most stunning may be multiple universes—very many universes, perhaps an infinite number of universes. Are multiple universes—the ‘multiverse’—scientific fact, theory or speculation?
COSMOS - The expanding universe is humanity's monumental discovery. Beginning with something infinitesimally small, the universe has become something majestically large. How could this happen? What could this mean?
COSMOS - How does metaphysics contribute to our understanding of the world? It asks the most profound questions: What kinds of things exist? How does causality work? Sound too abstract? How about: Does God exist? Are you a soul?
COSMOS - Call all-that-exists "something." Why is there "something" rather than "nothing"? The question haunts me. Why is there anything at all?
COSMOS - Are there revolutionary discoveries yet to be made? Radical revelations and shocking secrets? Does physical reality go beyond what we know today? Far beyond?
CONSCIOUSNESS - Parapsychologists are sure ESP is real. Skeptics are sure it is not. But if ESP is real, would ESP need to go beyond physical laws, reaching into unknown non-physical realms?
CONSCIOUSNESS - Episode Synopsis
Our human sense is that our will is fully free. Our scientific sense is that every action is determined by a prior action. Free will versus determinism is a big question, affecting morality, responsibility, even consciousness.
MEANING - The tension between human free will and God’s knowledge of the future threatens both. It’s called God’s ‘foreknowledge’—God knowing now what will happen later—and one need not believe in God to appreciate the puzzles.
CONSCIOUSNESS - Since God (supposedly) knows everything and can never be wrong, including about future events, how could those future events not come to pass? If we cannot do other than what God knew prior, how then free will?
CONSCIOUSNESS - For God to be God, God must be infallible and know the future perfectly, including all my actions from birth to death. For my will to be free, my actions must not be constrained. But if God knows the future - if God literally knows now what I am going to do later - then how are my actions later not constrained? How then free will?
MEANING - I desire God to be real, so I know that the easiest person to fool is myself. That's why I favor rational arguments for, and against, the existence of a Supreme Creator.
MEANING - The more I want God to exist, the more I must question proofs of God's existence. "Bad arguments for God" scare me. Maybe all the "God Arguments" are bad? I hope not.
MEANING - God exists? God does not exist? I find flaws and fallacies in both sides. So I step away from "arguments" about God and ask how to approach God's existence. What's the process?
COSMOS - What’s the deepest nature of things? Our world is complex, filled with so much stuff. But down below, what's fundamental? Only the physical world? Or anything nonphysical?
COSMOS - Is the physical world real? Or an expression of consciousness. Is consciousness real? Or an illusion? Is there a spirit world? Many dismiss anything other than the physical.
COSMOS - Does ordinary stuff have mysterious properties? Take anything; find all its parts; combine those parts any way you like. What do you expect? Nothing at all like what you have. It's called "emergence" and it describes how wondrously our world works. But is it a real mystery?
MEANING - How on earth could God be reconciled with massive, monstrous Evil? If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, and if God is the creator, wouldn’t God be responsible for evil?
MEANING - Theologians have no tougher task than explaining evil, its enormity even more than its existence. Give the clergy their due: they've devised clever, even profound, rationale. But at the end of the long day, do these explanations, or rationalizations, really work?
MEANING - Whoever believes in the existence of God must explain the presence of evil. To theists, it's "the problem of evil," which they struggle to resolve. To atheists, it's "the argument from evil," which they wield like a sword. Moreover, if God is all-powerful and all-knowing, how could God not have created evil?
CONSCIOUSNESS - Death is the ultimate defeat. No matter our successes, we are all doomed to suffer the final failure. But some claim that death is not final. Can the defeat be defeated?
CONSCIOUSNESS - Do human beings have immortal souls? Science dismisses anything nonphysical, and even some theologians reject immortal souls. But if no immortal souls, what happens to eternal life?
CONSCIOUSNESS - I'd like to live forever. Wouldn't you? But what would "living forever" mean? Almost every religion offers life after death. What would immortality and eternal life be like?
CONSCIOUSNESS - Consciousness is the great mystery of inner awareness. Where does it exist? Humans, obviously. Animals? Which animals? Chimps, elephants, dolphins, dogs? Termites, snails, amoeba, bacteria? What about non-biological intelligences like super-supercomputers of the future?
MEANING - God is supposed to be all-powerful, all-knowing and all good. In addition, is God is supposed to be 'all-free'? What does it mean for God to be perfectly free? Can God do literally anything? Can God make choices or must God always do the 'best', whatever 'best' may mean for each action? Are there any limits on God's freedom?
MEANING - How to imagine the experience of eternal life? Would we sense ourselves? How would we feel? Whom would we know? What would we do? What would God do? Living forever seems so absurd, yet eternal life is the promise of almost every religion. But if we cannot even imagine what eternal life will be, how can we have hope in its reality?
CONSCIOUSNESS - Physically, humans and animals seem similar. Mentally, humans seem so superior. What's so special about human nature?
COSMOS - Some scientists claim that the universe did not have a beginning. Some theologians contend that the universe did not need a beginning.
COSMOS - What if nothing ever existed? Scientists claim that the universe came from nothing. But what's the nature of nothing? That's where the confusion lies.
CONSCIOUSNESS - Why do we spend so much of our lives not awake? What do sleeping and dreaming reveal about consciousness?
COSMOS - In the far, far future, what happens to planets, stars, galaxies, black holes? What’s the ‘Big Rip’ and the ‘Big Crunch’? And if 'multiple universes’ exist, if one universe ends, do others begin?
CONSCIOUSNESS - Some claim their scientific study of ESP overturns the worldview of science. Should we take these startling pronouncements seriously? If so, what would it mean for events in the physical world to defy all known physical laws? Either there is something misleading about those events or something beyond those physical laws.
CONSCIOUSNESS - If ESP is real--that's a big "If"--then our entire worldview would change. Existence would be somehow enlarged. But extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
COSMOS - More than one universe? A ridiculous question no more! How could multiple universes be generated, and can we ever find evidence, one way or another? Talk about expanding your horizons: you can't imagine what's in store!
MEANING - God is supposed to have perfect knowledge, which includes all true statements about the future. Does this mean that God knows everything about what is to come? But if the future doesn't yet exist, then there is nothing now to know. Theologians battle among themselves.
CONSCIOUSNESS - If it seems obvious that you are perfectly free to choose and decide, then it seems perfectly clear that you underestimate the problem (and have never questioned a philosopher). Free Will is a huge problem.
COSMOS - Science and religion-each pursues Big Truth and offers total solutions. Science works. That's for sure. Religion? Not so sure. Does any reality exist beyond the expanding reach of science?
MEANING - No one denies the diversity of human religions, and the apparent incompatibility of their core beliefs. Many believe only their own religion to be True. Some claim all religions reflect the same Truth. Others assert that differing dogmas expose the emptiness of all religion.
CONSCIOUSNESS - Is our mental life a random accident, solely the product or byproduct of physical brain? Or is there something deeply special about conscious awareness that may reveal a hidden reality?
COSMOS - Consider humanity's astounding progress in science during the past three hundred years. Now take a deep breath and project forward, oh say, three billion years.
MEANING - Turn the tables on whether God exists. Atheists take their best shots at disproving God; theists deflect the arguments, defending God. Atheists come harder still; theists fight back. We keep the arguments tough-minded and the thinking critical.
CONSCIOUSNESS - Do we survive bodily death? Can our personal awareness transcend physical decay? There are no bigger questions and there are no shortages of answers. Some claim to have evidence.
COSMOS - Some scientists take time travel seriously. Should you? What does time travel reveal about the nature of space and time and the laws of physics under extreme conditions?