God, Energy, and Consciousness: A Physicist's Mystery Explained!

Transcript

I was talking to about a thousand scientists and a man came up to me afterwards, a physicist, and he said it was very interesting all that talk about God, but he said, "Do you know I detect you're a Christian?" And I said, "You're very astute gentleman." Yeah. Well, that's what I said. I said, "You're pretty sharp." And he said, he said, "Come off it." He said, "Now look, as a Christian, you're obliged to believe. that God is a triunity, that Jesus was God and man. And he said, "Now, come on, you're a mathematician at Oxford.

This is absurd. Can you explain it to me?" Well, I said, "Can I ask you a question first?" He said, "Sure." So, I said, "Tell me what is consciousness?" And he thought for a second and then he said, "I don't know." I said, "That's okay. Okay, let me try an easier one. What is energy? Well, he said, I'm a physicist. I can measure energy.

I could use it. I said, you know, that's not my question. What is it? He said, I don't know. Oh, I said that's very interesting. You don't know.

Tell me. I said, um, do you believe in consciousness? Yes, he said. Do you believe in energy? Yes, he said. So, I said, you believe in these two things and you don't know what they are. I said, "Should I write you off as an intellectual?" And he said, "Please don't." And I said, "But that's exactly what you were going to do with me five minutes ago." Now, I said, "If you don't know what energy is, and nobody does, and if you don't believe that, you physicist, read Richard Fineman.

If you don't know what energy is, don't be surprised if energy, light, gravity, and consciousness are a mystery. Don't be surprised if you're going to get an element of this in God. You're bound to get it. But now I pushed him a bit further. You see, and I said, why do you believe in these things if you don't know what they are? And that was a bit difficult.

So being kind chap I try to help him out. And I said um you believe in these things because of their explanatory power as concepts. And he said that's exactly right. And I said look of course I can't explain to you how God became human. But I said it's the only explanation that makes sense of the evidence as I see it.

Now I said I've got a simple analogy that might help you. It's a very low-level analogy, but at least is biblical.