Closer To Truth is the definitive series on Cosmos, Consciousness and God, a global journey in search of the vital ideas of existence. It is the most complete, compelling, and accessible series on Cosmos, Consciousness and God ever produced for television. Closer To Truth explores fundamental issues of universe, brain/mind, religion, meaning and purpose through intimate, candid conversations with leading scientists, philosophers, scholars, theologians and creative thinkers of all kinds. The shows are a rich visual experience, shot entirely on location in high definition with multiple cameras generating film-like production values. The visual lushness of the high definition, on-location productions, combined with the intriguing titles of the shows, builds audiences already interested in such perennial topics. Each 30-minute episode features four to seven of the world's foremost thinkers. The series as a whole features 128 such authorities in what we believe to be the most comprehensive and definitive treatment of these topics ever presented in visual or electronic media.
Episode # 208
Theologians have no tougher task than explaining evil, its enormity even more than its existence. Give the clergy their due: they've devised clever, even profound, rationale. But at the end of the long day, do these explanations, or rationalizations, really work?
Monday, February 13, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
Episode # 607
Whether God exists may depend on whether God is necessary. Even if God exists, would it have been possible for God not to exist? In other words, even if God does exist, could it have been otherwise?
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
Episode # 608
Arguments for God, and against God, each count the universe as evidence. Believers invoke the universe's apparent fine-tuning. Non-believers envision a vast number of universes, so that anything can happen by accident, including us.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
Episode # 609
Free will seems the simplest of notions. Why then does free will vex philosophers? Here's why: No one knows how free will works! Science, seemingly, permits no "gaps" in which free will can operate.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
Episode # 610
Agnostics claim that they do not know whether or not God exists. Theists surmise they're reprobates. Atheists suppose they're cowards. Can agnostics be passionate?
Friday, February 17, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
Episode # 113
Science can deal with God in at least three ways: Showing how God is not necessary; showing how God is likely; not relating to God at all. Only one way can be correct.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
Episode # 612
Cosmos and consciousness seem utterly different, the former encompassing the vast universe, the latter emerging from tiny brains. Yet consciousness founds most religions, and some cosmologists speak profoundly about consciousness.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
Episode # 613
The Judeo-Christian scriptures tell of "a new heaven and a new earth, " when all shall be made new. What could this mean? Could this ever make sense? Believers say, "It's God's mystery." They should say more.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
Episode # 702
I look up and I look down and I chill with awe. I look up to the universe and envision hundreds of billions of galaxies. I look down to the atom and imagine minuscule, infinitesimal particles and forces. This is reality.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
Episode # 703
How has "inner experience" radically emerged from cosmic dust? Is consciousness only an accident of biology? Or does consciousness have deeper meaning?
Friday, February 24, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
Episode # 210
If it seems obvious that you are perfectly free to choose and decide, then it seems perfectly clear that you underestimate the problem. On one hand, since the universe is a closed system, every event is determined by prior events. On the other hand, if one postulates nonphysical souls, how could they interact with physical brains? Free Will is a huge problem.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
Episode # 705
Einstein showed that space and time are essentially the same thing-a single entity, space-time. But space and time seem so radically different. How could space and time be literally the same thing?
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
Episode # 706
Everything I know - everything! -- comes from my brain. Consciousness, our private sense of inner awareness, is the one big question to which we might find answers.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 605
To know reality, one must confront the quantum. It is how our world works at the deepest level. What's the quantum? It is bizarre, defying all common sense.
Rebroadcast
Friday, February 10, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 604
What does it mean for God to be all knowing? Does God being "omniscient" make sense? If so, can deep insights be gleaned about God? If not, could the whole concept of God be flawed?
Rebroadcast
Thursday, February 09, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 603
Parapsychologists are sure ESP is real. Skeptics are sure it is not. But if ESP is real, would ESP need to go beyond physical laws, reach into unknown non-physical realms?
Rebroadcast
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 602
Galaxies and clusters of galaxies, untold billions of them, adorn the cosmos. How did such large-scale structure of the universe come about?
Rebroadcast
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 108
Is the "Real You" a special substance that is both nonphysical and immortal? Most people think "Certainly". Most scientists think "Certainly Not". What some theologians think may trouble you.
Monday, February 06, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 513
I like pushing boundaries, trying to discern existence, searching the foundations of reality, knowing all that can be known. Overly ambitious? Sophomoric? I don't care. I do it anyway. Here are ultimate questions. discoveries offer radical powers of explanation. Can "Why Questions" belong to science? What about the biggest "Why" of them all?
Rebroadcast
Friday, February 03, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 512
If God exists, perhaps the most important question is whether God is a "person". Only a person has awareness, beliefs, intents, goals, relationships. An impersonal force has none of these. If my hope counts, God exists and God is a person. But that's absurd: my hope counts for nothing.
Rebroadcast
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 511
What does it mean to be a "self"? Look at an old photo. Then look in the mirror. Those two images are of the same person, right? How so? They don't look the same. Their memories are different. And virtually every atom is different. We feel unity across time, but is this solidified self an illusion?
Rebroadcast
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 509
Most people believe that God exists and religion is God's revelation. But some claim that religion needs nothing supernatural; that religion, without God, can flourish because personal psychology and group sociology drive religion.
Rebroadcast
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 107
How can so many numbers of nature, the 30-odd constants and relationships of physics, be so spot-on perfect for humans to exist? Beware: there is more than one answer lurking here.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 508
Consciousness is the great mystery of inner awareness. Where does it exist? Humans, obviously. Animals? Which animals? Chimps, elephants, dolphins, dogs? Termites, snails, amoeba, bacteria? What about non-biological intelligences like super-supercomputers of the future?
Rebroadcast
Friday, January 27, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 507
Is there more than one universe? According to current cosmology, our entire gigantic universe is only one of innumerable universes, each universe like one tiny bubble in a limitless ocean of universes. What could all this mean?
Rebroadcast
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 506
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?
Rebroadcast
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 504
When we speak about the future of the universe, we mean when the sun burns out, when galaxies collide, when everything flies apart and ultimately evaporates. Do the untold billions and trillions of years from now make it irrelevant for us today? No. The far far future of the universe conveys meaning now.
Rebroadcast
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 402
What can we know about God? The easy answer is "nothing": God is not like anything. But that's not good enough. If there is a God, God must have traits.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 503
The God debate is not a game. Is there a God? If so, what are God's essences and traits? What are all the ways that God could be? Or could not be? We discover different beliefs of different kinds of Gods.
Rebroadcast
Friday, January 20, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 502
We human beings sit roughly midway between atoms and galaxies, and both must be so perfectly structured for us to exist. It's called "fine tuning" and it's all so breathtakingly precise that it cries out for explanation. To some, fine-tuning leads to God. To others, there are non-supernatural explanations.
Rebroadcast
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 501
Nothing means anything without our brains: not science, not theology, not politics, not love. Everything we know and do-all the sense of human thought, all the feelings of human emotion-all are the product of the brains in our heads.
Rebroadcast
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 913
Call all-that-exists "something." Why is there "something" rather than "nothing"? The question haunts me. Why is there anything at all?
Rebroadcast
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 105
As far as we know, brains are the most highly organized matter in the universe. How they make their magic is just astonishing.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 911
Theists and atheists debate whether God exists. But what God are they arguing over? There's enormous variation in the kinds of gods that populate religions.
Rebroadcast
Friday, January 13, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 910
Free will seems so obvious. Whatever I want to do, I just do. But could "I" be fooled? Some say that free will is an illusion. Others, that it's a mystery.
Rebroadcast
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 909
Our universe began with a swirling, seething plasma-everything, everywhere, all the same. Today we have galaxies, stars, planets, people. How did such structure come about?
Rebroadcast
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 908
Some think metaphysics is ancient nonsense; others that it's the bizarre occult. Real metaphysics asks the most profound questions, seeks the deepest truths.
Rebroadcast
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 203
More than one universe? A ridiculous question no more! How could multiple universes be generated, and can we ever find evidence, one way or another? Talk about expanding your horizons: you can't imagine what's in store!
Monday, January 09, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 906
The very early universe likely underwent a period of enormous expansion called "inflation." The theory stunned cosmology. Here's the story of its discovery.
Rebroadcast
Friday, January 06, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 905
Creation is God's glory; creating is God's essence. I've heard this so often and so long it seems to make sense. But does it make sense?
Rebroadcast
Thursday, January 05, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 904
Do intelligent aliens exist? Who knows? But here's what I do know: The potential existence of intelligent aliens probes meaning and purpose in the universe.
Rebroadcast
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 903
I desire God to be real, so I know that the easiest person to fool is myself. That's why I favor rational arguments for, and against, the existence of a Supreme Creator.
Rebroadcast
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
09:30 AM
Episode # 901
The more I want God to exist, the more I must question proofs of God's existence. "Bad arguments for God" scare me. Maybe all the "God Arguments" are bad? I hope not.
Rebroadcast
Monday, January 02, 2012
Length : 26 min
MPT2
