The Best Guest I Never Had: An Elegy for Steven Weinberg ​(#203)

This episode is sort of "fan fiction" conversation with a dead man
who will cast a shadow over physics, philosophy, and theology for
decades to come: Steven Weinberg, co-recipient of the 1979 Nobel
Prize. Long before audiobooks and podcasts were a thing, in 1992 I
took a night train from Cleveland to Buffalo to Binghamton to meet
my girlfriend. To while away the hours, I brought with me
Weingberg's epochal popular science book, "The First Three
Minutes". A few months later, as a graduation present, I received
from Lawrence Krauss, CWRU's incoming physics department chairman,
"Dreams of a Final Theory". “Weinberg” is the most mentioned name
in my The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast notebook where I keep
thoughts on possible/upcoming guests. I never got to host him on my
show. I did try, most recently in February 2021. For a long time, I
held off, insecure in my ability to bring anything new to the
table. Weinberg was a brilliant scientist but as I show, had overly
simplistic thoughts on religion and practitioners. Often he claimed
science, at its best, SHOULD make religion less plausible. Using
quotes drawn from his many interviews and lectures, including one
in his own voice, I bring you this slightly combative interview
with a very complex individual. For the record, Stephen Weinberg,
Sheldon Glashow, and Abdus Salam shared the 1979 Nobel Prize
for his work on Electroweak Symmetry Breaking or the, so-called,
‘Standard Model for particle physics’. He also made many
contributions to both particle physics and cosmology. With respect
to the latter, the question addressed is whether or why our
universe is fine-tuned for our existence. Past guest, Lenny
Susskind explained that Weinberg calculated that if the
cosmological constant was just a little different, our universe
would cease to exist. This paper is behind a paywall, but see a
public lecture (with advanced math):
https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Weinberg/Weinberg3.html.
Weinberg believed the Anthropic Principle may be appropriated by
cosmologists committed to nontheism, and refers to that Principle
as a "turning point" in modern science because applying it to the
string landscape "may explain how the constants of nature that we
observe can take values suitable for life without being fine-tuned
by a benevolent creator".  I cover some of Steven’s ‘greatest
hits’ including: "I can hope that this long sad story, this
progression of priests and ministers and rabbis and ulamas and
imams and bonzes and bodhisattvas, will come to an end. I hope this
is something to which science can contribute … it may be the
most important contribution that we can make."  "With or
without religion, you would have good people doing good things and
evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
things, that takes religion." "In our universe we are tuned into
the frequency that corresponds to physical reality. But there are
an infinite number of parallel realities coexisting with us in the
same room, although we cannot tune into them."  And my
personal ‘favorite’:"It seems a bit unfair to my relatives to be
murdered in order to provide an opportunity for free will for
Germans, but even putting that aside, how does free will account
for cancer? Is it an opportunity of free will for tumors?" So, let
me know what you think of this episode. Should I do more solo
episodes like this, or make this my one and only ? Resources: 
Stephen C. Meyer “Weinberg and the Twilight of the Godless
Universe” Dan Falk: “Learning to Live in Weinberg’s ‘Pointless
Universe’ “ Find more quotes from Weinberg here: Please leave a
rating and review of The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast: Simply click
here, scroll down to the ratings and leave a rating and review:
Please subscribe to my YouTube Channel, just click here Please join
my mailing list; just click
here http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php  Please
contact sales@advertisecast.com to learn more about sponsoring Into
the Impossible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit
megaphone.fm/adchoices