'Hey Bill Nye, If There Is a God, Should We Obey It?' #TuesdaysWithBill | Big Think

Hello Bill. My name is Cameron and I am a junior at Libertyville High School in Washington. And I was wondering about this hypothetical question if there would be a completely intelligent and omniscient entity, whether human or not, if it existed and was our leader, if we

should

be completely subordinate and submit to its rule, if it really existed. our best interest at heart. This super entity we

should

serve, I don't know. I see that there is no evidence of a super entity with a plan for everyone's life. And this goes back a long time. Charles Darwin wrote about this, he speculated about this.

And another way to put it, if there's a superentity running things, why is everything so screwed up? And it seems like there are reasons for all humans to interact, everyone trying to get food and shelter and raise their children, and there are conflicts between us. That's how humans are. So if there is a super entity, I would prefer that she or he be a little more organized, take care of things a little better. And in my opinion, the thing to watch out for is when the people you know are sure that they have a super entity telling them what to do and that it affects you.

That is, when they tell you that you can't do this or you can't do that because my super entity is telling me that I should tell you that you can't do that. That's when there is conflict. And I'm assuming you're in Washington state and you know that Washington state is very far west in North America. Many people who came from Europe came here to get away from certain religions that, by modern standards, were received as conflicts in wars around the world, they were quite tame. Religious expectations were not so onerous. However, they were burdensome enough to force people to leave.

Don't tell me what to do, that kind of thing. So I have an open mind but, as we say, you can't prove a negative. And by this I mean that if you say or if someone says right, can you prove that there is no superentity? You can not. Because any proof you offer that there is no superentity, the other party would say, well, that's just what the superentity wants you to

think

. The super entity hides from you. The superentity makes it so that you can't find the superentity. Anyway, that's arguing in a circle. You'll never be able to figure that out.

So whether you should serve the superentity or not is up to you. But I strongly recommend that you seek proof of the superentity before you get caught up in trying to serve him or her. It's a fantastic question. You are asking a deep question. But for me, in understanding nature and the world around us and how I should interact with our fellow human beings, I get much more satisfying answers from the scientific process than from people who claim to have a superentity that will tell us what to do. do. And the worrying thing in science is that you quickly realize that you can't solve everything.

That there are unknowns. There are things you just don't know. And for some people that's really worrying. But for people like me it's empowering because we have a process. The process we call science that allows us to learn about nature. And the example that everyone is excited about right now, wherever they go, is: are there other universes? Do multiverses exist? Universes beyond our universe. And the big argument for the existence of these multiverses is that there's no really good way to exclude them. There is no way to ensure that they do not exist. So maybe they will.

And that's cool and exciting. And by the way, you were alive when people discovered dark matter. Apparently there is five times more dark matter than normal matter and do you know why? No one knows why, but discoveries may be made during your lifetime that will tell us about dark matter and dark energy. In my grandfather's life relativity did not exist. People didn't know anything about relativity. However, if you have a smartphone and it tells you which side of the street you are on, that information comes from spacecraft in orbit around the Earth that must be adjusted for both special relativity and the speed of the spacecraft relative to with the surface of the Earth and general relativity, the effect that the Earth's gravity has on clocks, on time.

The speed of time as I like to say. So who knows what discoveries will be made soon? And what I'm saying here is that science carries this uncertainty. We don't know everything. We accept that we don't know everything, but we have a process to try to find out. And that to me is elegant and beautiful. Continue.