"Now the other thing that Dr. Craig has talked about is logic. And the interesting thing about the universe is it is not logical. At least it’s not classically logical. That’s one of the great things about science. It’s taught us that the universe is the way it is whether we like it or not. And much of what Dr. Craig has talked about and will talk about again tonight is the fact that he doesn’t like certain ideas. He doesn’t like the idea of infinity, he doesn’t like the idea of beginning, he doesn’t like the idea of chance. And in fact, it doesn’t make sense to him. He doesn’t like a universe in which morality is defined as allowing rape; doesn’t make sense to him. But the point is, if we continue to rely on our understanding of the universe on Aristotelian logic, on classical logic, by what we think is sensible, we would still be living in a world where heavier objects, we think, fall faster than light objects, because they’re heavier, as Aristotle use to think, instead of doing the experiment to check it out.
"We cannot rely on what we perceive to be sensible; we have to rely on what the universe tells us is sensible. What we have to do is force our beliefs to conform to the evidence of reality, rather than the other way around. And the universe just simply isn’t sensible. I think I have an example. I have two quotes from Richard Feynman because I just wrote a book about him which I hope you all buy. But this is really important. This is one of the reasons I’m a scientist, is that crazy ideas end up not being crazy. If you see something that seems impossible, but it happens, the onus is on you to understand why and to force your thinking to conform to that. And it’s been one of the great pleasures of doing 20th and 21st century physics that we’ve been able to do that in many areas from quantum mechanics to relativity. And this idea that something which is completely paradoxical at first, if analyzed to completion in all its details and in all experimental situations, may in fact be paradoxical is of profound . . . may in fact not be paradoxical, I should say, is of profound importance.
...
"Let’s go to some of the things Dr. Craig talked about. In fact, the existence of infinity, which he talked about which is self-contradictory, is not self-contradictory at all. Mathematicians know precisely how to deal with infinity; so do physicists. We rely on infinities. In fact, there’s a field of mathematics called “Complex Variables” which is the basis of much of modern physics, from electro-magnetism to quantum mechanics and beyond, where in fact we learn to deal with infinity; without the infinities we couldn’t do the physics. We know how to sum infinite series because we can do complex analysis. Mathematicians have taught us how. It’s strange and very unappetizing, and in fact you can sum things that look ridiculous. For example, if you sum the series, “1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6…” to infinity, what’s the answer? “-1/12.” You don’t like it? Too bad! The mathematics is consistent if we assign that. The world is the way it is whether we like it or not."
