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 # 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.
Monday, April 02, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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?
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Wednesday, April 04, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 907
The God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam claims to be "Omnipotent"-a Being who is all-powerful. Can this Omnipotent God do everything? Literally everything?
Thursday, April 05, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 1001
Friday, April 06, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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?
Monday, April 09, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 912
Why does the mystery of consciousness lead some to the existence of God and others to only the brain? I'd like to believe in God. Can consciousness help me?
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 913
Call all-that-exists "something." Why is there "something" rather than "nothing"? The question haunts me. Why is there anything at all?
Monday, April 16, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 401
How does consciousness weave its magical web of inner awareness-appreciating music, enjoying art, feeling love? Even when all mental functions may be explained, the great mystery-what it "feels like" inside-will likely remain.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 403
The expanding universe is humanity's monumental discovery. Beginning with something infinitesimally small, the universe has become something majestically large. How could this happen? What could this mean?
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 404
What makes a human being a "person?" What provides our sense of unity and continuity? While most people assume that to be a person is to have a soul, most philosophers-and some theologians-believe that persons are all material.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 405
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.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 406
Extra dimensions-beyond length, width, height-seem the stuff of science fiction. What would extra dimensions be like? Is time the fourth dimension? Could deep reality be so strange? And, anyway, why would we care?
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 407
Whether extra-terrestrial intelligences exist has profound implications for human religion. We are either alone or not alone in the universe, but no matter the ultimate answer, theists and atheists will each mold that answer, alone or not alone, to fit their opposing worldviews.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 1004
Friday, April 27, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 408
Whoever believes in the existence of God must explain the presence of evil. To theists, it's "the problem of evil," which they struggle to resolve. To atheists, it's "the argument from evil," which they wield like a sword. Moreover, if God is all-powerful and all-knowing, how could God not have created evil?
Monday, April 30, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 409
Mathematics describes the real world of atoms and acorns, stars and stairs, with remarkable precision. So is mathematics invented by humans-like chisels and hammers and pieces of music? Or is mathematics discovered-always out there, somewhere, like mysterious islands waiting to be found?
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 410
Many theologians take angels and demons seriously. Why? Certainly, most human beings believe in angels and demons. Certainly, such nonphysical beings, in one form or another, populate most of the world's religions.
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 411
What's real? What's fundamental? There are regularities in nature, things that are or work the same-always, everywhere, across the universe just like in your kitchen. Down deep, what are the laws of nature? What makes them "laws"? And where do they come from?
Thursday, May 03, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 1005
Friday, May 04, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 412
Every religion thunders its day of reckoning, and to examine God's judgment is to probe God's character and perhaps assess God's existence. If God does not exist, God's judgment may expose it. If God does exist, and assuming God is merciful as well as just, maybe we've missed the meaning of God's Judgment.
Monday, May 07, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 413
The search for meaning and purpose is humanity's never-ending quest. It is said that "How Questions" belong to the realm of science, but "Why Questions" do not. Yet startling scientific discoveries offer radical powers of explanation. Can "Why Questions" belong to science? What about the biggest "Why" of them all?
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 505
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?
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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?
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 1007
Friday, May 18, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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?
Monday, May 21, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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?
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 510
Time seems natural and absolute: the flow of moments one following another from the indeterminable 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?
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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?
Monday, May 28, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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?
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 601
From biblical times to Darwin, natural theology tried to detect God by sensing His presence in the world-without revelation. But after Darwin's theory of evolution, natural theology was rejected, even ridiculed. Why, now, its surprising revival?
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 601
From biblical times to Darwin, natural theology tried to detect God by sensing His presence in the world-without revelation. But after Darwin's theory of evolution, natural theology was rejected, even ridiculed. Why, now, its surprising revival?
Monday, June 04, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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?
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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?
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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?
Thursday, June 07, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 606
Does metaphysics help us to understand the world? It asks the most profound questions: What kinds of things exist? How does causality work? Sound too abstract? How about: Does God exist? Are you a soul?
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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?
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 1011
Friday, June 15, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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?
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 611
For centuries, science and religion have been battling, with science advancing, religion retreating. We follow the current battles. We propose no truce.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 701
God exists? God does not exist? I find flaws and fallacies in both sides. So I step away from "arguments" about God and ask how to approach God's existence. What's the process?
Monday, June 25, 2012
Length : 26 min
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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.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 703
How has "inner experience" radically emerged from cosmic dust? Is consciousness only an accident of biology? Or does consciousness have deeper meaning?
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Length : 26 min
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Episode # 704
I search for God but keep clear of miracles. Believers exhort me to accept that miracles are real, to recognize that miracles demonstrate the existence of a supernatural Being. I resist.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Length : 26 min
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