This month the world thrilled at the first ever image of a black hole, this one in the galaxy M87. Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and philosopher Jay Richards are the co-authors of The Privileged Planet, and in a new ID the Future episode they talk about how black holes figure in the thesis about cosmic intelligent design. And what is a black hole, anyway? (Hint: It is not a hole.)

The takeaway in a nutshell: What Steve Meyer calls the God Hypothesis got what is arguably its biggest boost with the confirmation of Big Bang cosmology. That the universe had a beginning, coming into existence apparently ex nihilo, would seem to be the most powerful evidence for theism yet from the world of science. In the face of this, materialists scramble for a variety of self-defeating counter-hypotheses. The Big Bang was a straightforward inference from general relativity. And so are black holes. The two are, in a sense, intellectual siblings. It’s a great conversation between Dr. Richards, as host of the episode, and Dr. Gonzalez. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Photo credit: Event Horizon Telescope [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.