Don Page - Is the Universe Theologically Ambiguous?

Don, you are not the only brilliant scientist I know who believes in God. There are several, but not a whole lot, and most of the scientists that I know, especially physicists, do not believe in God. So how can that be explained? How can a group of scientists, some of all of whom are trained in the same way, all of whom are brilliant, and yet some believe in God and some don't believe in God? So when I see that data set, I can only conclude that the universe, in a sense, is theologically ambiguous. Is there any other way I can conclude? Well, I think it's not always immediately obvious. I mean, it does take a certain amount of faith, and I guess I might even state it in Bayesian analysis that the probabilities we assign to hypotheses such as God depend not only on the probabilities of what we see, given the hypotheses, but also on the prior probabilities you assign. And so if somebody assigns an extremely low prior probability to the existence of God, then the evidence he sees is probably not enough to convince him. I think if one's more open to it, to say that there's a reasonable prior probability for the existence of God, then I think the evidence of the order around here is strong. And then I guess for me personally, I think that the historical evidence for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is very strong evidence for his being the Son of God, and therefore for God to exist. But if someone says, well, that's just extremely, just from the get-go, it's extremely improbable, or very, very probable, then even the evidence that's there that I think is quite strong would not be strong enough for that person. Evidence is a very good word, because I'd like to say that if each scientist, one believing in God, one not, presenting their own court case, each would introduce into evidence the structure of the universe. The atheist would say, if there were no God, this is exactly what you would expect to see, the planets flying, and randomness, and lots of suffering, and misery, and just all mixed up together. And the scientist who believes in God would say, the universe is so ordered, and mathematically logical, emergent life, and sentient creatures like us, and fine-tuning of the universe. So both trends are coexisting. Yes, I think it, I mean, it does depend a lot on what lenses you take to look at the problem, and what your prior suppositions are, and so on. And it's, yeah, I don't think that there's any clear proofs of it. I mean, to me, it seems like the evidence is very strong, but I can agree that if somebody said, you know, they have a viewpoint that discounts it, you know, then they may not. I mean, that's why... So when you talk to your physicist friends, many of whom are atheists, do they express amazement that you are a theist? Well, the majority seem to accept it. I mean, some have expressed amazement that I am. I mean, some, you know, I mean, Leonard Susskind has sort of said he doesn't quite understand how I believe it, and he, you know, he accepts it, and seems to, you know, not try to give me a hassle about it, but he's kind of a bit perplexed about it. But yeah, so I think, I mean, generally people have given, within the physics community, have given a lot of respect to that, you know, not how, I mean, there's occasionally people have been a little bar on me, but it's usually people that, not close colleagues in the physics community, so I've been very appreciative that people have at least respected my point of view, even if, you know, even if they don't agree with it.