Episodes

  • Richard Swinburne on Evil, Atonement, and Evidence Against God
    Jan 15 2025

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    Robert Lawrence Kuhn sits down with philosopher Richard Swinburne to embark on a retrospective of his views and arguments over his illustrious career. In this episode, they'll explore the problem of evil, atonement, resurrection, and more.

    Richard Granville Swinburne FBA is an English philosopher. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years, Swinburne has been a proponent of philosophical arguments for the existence of God.

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    1 hr and 30 mins
  • Robert Lawrence Kuhn on "A Landscape of Consciousness"
    Jan 8 2025

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    Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn recently published an extensive new article titled "A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications". The paper covers the field of consciousness studies in its entirety as well as the consequences of consciousness including artificial intelligence (AI), life after death, and virtual immortality.

    Read Kuhn's article on the Closer To Truth website.

    Robert Lawrence Kuhn, PhD., is the co-creator, executive producer, writer, and host of Closer To Truth, the PBS/public television series on Cosmos, Life, Mind, and Meaning that presents leading scientists, philosophers, and creative thinkers discussing the fundamental questions of existence. He recently published an extensive article—"A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications"—covering the field of consciousness studies in its entirety.

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    55 mins
  • How is God the Creator?
    Dec 25 2024

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    If God exists, did God create everything? Did God create out of literally "nothing"? Suppose there was no beginning to the cosmos, just the universe going through endless cycles, what then? And what about "abstract objects" like logic and numbers, which seem to exist without any cause and no creator?

    Featuring interviews with William Craig, Robert Russell, John Polkinghorne, and Brian Leftow.

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    27 mins
  • What's Real About Time?
    Dec 18 2024

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    Time seems natural and absolute: the flow of moments one following another from the unknown past to the knife's edge present to the unknowable future. But this is not so. Einstein shocked the world by showing that time was "relative." What's the latest about time?

    Featuring interviews with Gregory Benford, Kip Thorne, Nima Arkani-Hamed, and Lee Smolin.

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    27 mins
  • Arguments Against God?
    Dec 11 2024

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    All who affirm that God does exist should examine the strong attacks of those who conclude that God does not exist, and then assess the sharp counterattacks of scholarly believers. Belief in God is too important to be determined by cultural circumstances.

    Featuring interviews with Susan Blackmore, Peter Atkins, Alvin Plantinga, and Steven Weinberg.

    You can watch the full episode on our YouTube channel here.

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    27 mins
  • What is the Large-Scale Structure of the Universe?
    Dec 4 2024

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    Galaxies and clusters of galaxies, untold billions of them, adorn the cosmos. How did such large-scale structure of the universe come about?

    Featuring interviews with John Richard Gott III, Abraham Loeb, George Smoot, and Saul Perlmutter.

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    27 mins
  • Solutions to the Mind-Body Problem?
    Nov 27 2024

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    Are human beings purely physical? Evolved at random and destined to die, extinguished forever? Or are we something more? A spirit or a soul, with existence beyond? What's the relationship between our brains and our consciousness, between the stuff in our skulls and the essence in our minds?

    Featuring interviews with Ned Block, Dean Zimmerman, Colin McGinn, Charles Tart, and Henry Stapp.

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    27 mins
  • Sara Imari Walker on Physics, Emergence, and Life on Other Planets
    Nov 20 2024

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    Astrobiologist and theoretical physicist Sara Imari Walker shares an intriguing new scientific theory that explains what life is and how it emerges. What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None help us understand how life originates or the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might look like.

    Walker's latest book Life As No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence, is available for purchase now.

    Sara Imari Walker is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist interested in the origin of life and discovering alien life on other worlds. She is deputy director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. She is also a fellow of the Berggruen Institute and a member of the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. She is the recipient of the Stanley L. Miller Early-Career Award for her research on the origin of life, and her research team at ASU is internationally regarded as being among the leading labs aiming to build a fundamental theory for understanding what life is.

    Watch more Closer To Truth Chats here.

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    1 hr and 23 mins