Does Dr. Stephen C. Meyer Have Evidence for Intelligent Design? (345)

Whose arguments more persuasive, Professor Dave, or Stephen C. Meyer? Can you be devoutly religious and also a real scientist?

What blows my mind is we live in a time where these conversations are available to the public and not behind the doors academia. Think about that we are lucky to even have these conversations.

as an agnostic I am glad we give a voice to alternate ideeas outside mainstream science. Let the debate go on. Don't silence ideas.

It's nice to hear an intelligent conversation

I think of myself as a smart guy, smarter than anyone around me. But then I listen to this podcast and it reminded how really smart some people are. I appreciate Dr. Keating for inviting Dr. Meyer on this episode. I have always suspected there is a higher power and listening to Dr. Meyer gives me additional confidence to think I might be right.

Steven meyer is frighteningly smart. And good at this. Love his personality.

Dr. Keating is the prime example that you don't need to resort to fallacies to counter-argue a position. This guy is the most fair, good faith, respectful, but combative individual out of the whole bunch. It's a pleasure to see this discussion.

One of if not the best episode. Watching it a second time

I absolutely loved this conversation Dr. Keating. Thank you stimulating our minds with these great discussions.

Even Christopher Hitchens considered the fine tuning argument the best argument for the existence of god he had encountered. I consider those who outright dismiss what Dr Meyer says without even listening to he has to say to be just as dogmatic as the most religious fundamentalists out there.

Dr Meyer is amazing!

Many thanks. It's privilege to be able to listen to such discussions.

When a program gets to a place where people complain about “platforming” this, that, or whom you know you have arrived as a serious public intellectual. Well done.

In answer to Brian’s questions as to how God manifests differences in the universe, this is answered easily by an analogy. How does a non-pixilated computer engineer, who isn’t digital in nature, create a video game universe of digital laws and codes and rules with general order?” By using the physical reality and manipulation of the physical with willful, rational intent to form the digital world. God’s being is as different if not more different than ours than the engineer’s being is different to Mario and Luigi’s. Mario and Luigi can argue over whether Nintendo exists and one may say there is no “digital evidence” for Nintendo being this company with non-digital beings with minds that made their world. Asking for digital information is the wrong demand just as asking for scientific evidence for God is the wrong question. We wouldn’t have hieroglyphics without intelligent minds, and we wouldn’t have the information we have in biology without some kind of mind as creator. Also answers the miracle question as cheat codes are easily added to video games without destroying the game. Momentary suspensions of the rules don’t necessarily break the universe.

I really enjoyed the discussion. Applaud both men for stepping out of comfort zones.

Happy birthday Dr. Keating. Keep doing your thing

Ive been listening and reading Dr Meyers work for years. Thank you for giving this man a chance to speak. Its a little BS how most including yourself didny have him on until after his Rogan appearance, even after saying you've studied his work for years. Regardless thank you because he has a lot of researchers who still attack his religious beliefs and not his work.

Regardless of what your preferred theory is of the origin/s of our universe, ultimately, one has to admit this glaring universal fact: Only sentients have the capacity to choose life over non-life, a universe over no-universe, natural laws over chaos, order over disorder, etc. Science is able to exist because our universe is comprehensible with patterns that can be studied. And science and our observations tell us that non-sentients like planets, gravity, the sun, stars, energy, etc. do NOT have the ability to make choices simply because they don't have feelings and thoughts. Only a Being can, ultimately, be responsible for any universe because nothingness tends to stay nothing left on its own, don't you think?

It's so refreshing to hear a discussion like this between respectable and respectful, brilliant scientists. There's so much to learn not just about the subjects they're discussing, but about how to treat people we don't always agree with. Great lessons in human behavior, not just scientific principles! Thanks guys!

Thanks to all ! - What delightful, ongoing excursions! The perfect teaser for the episode: 35:02 So you can't absolutely prove the existence of God. But the consequences of denying the existence of God as a theoretical postulate at least is a system of physics which ends up eating its own - which ends up destroying for epistemological reasons our ability to rely on our own reasoning capabilities about the world around us. 35:23 So at the end the choices between God and science or no God and no science. HOWEVER, don't Prof. Meyers' arguments actually force us to choose "between effective mindbodies and science; or no effective mindbodies and no science?" Yes, if there's a UNIQUE potent mindbody, then that unique being is the powerful and knowing creator, God. BUT... Yes, if you DECLARE that you don't exist, or that you can't know, or that you are impotent -- then you tend to bring about the consequence of those declarations (just as any consistent performative may bring about what it implies) - nescience, impotence, swoon! Drive yourself out of existence, and (to the degree that your declaration act effectively) you're driven out... but you're left with the previously-less-problematic exercise of "saving the appearances." Wasn't it CS Lewis who pointed out that, before approximately the period of the Renaissance, it didn't occur to scientists (i.e. philosophers of Nature) to center their investigations on "Laws of Nature" (as though God had injected these fiats onto and into Nature, from some alienated stand-point outside the World)? Rather, they preferred to allow the REASONS for thing to remain WITHIN the THINGS themselves, and interrogated Reason, Purpose, and Value IN THE FIRST AND SECOND PERSONS: MY Reason, my Purposes, my Values, immediately at hand; YourAndMy Reasons, Purposes, Values - fresh and joyfully open to our assays... unalienated, unexiled, immediately accessible to Reason gracefully according with Value. At their best, Kabbalists (up through at least Leibniz) are SO much more sensitive to the promptings of Nature Naturing, and so much more productive at creating better questions (as well as better answer), than are self-depotentiated Galileans, and Aristotelians in general.