[00:00:00] Speaker A: It was a debate that brought light as opposed to just heat. It was a debate that brought real understanding and value to the people that watched it because they really showed how their differing assumptions about reality shaped how they interpreted the data and how those assumptions shaped their expectations of what would be discovered in the future.
Idaho the Future A Podcast about Evolution and Intelligent Design
[00:00:26] Speaker B: does the evidence for the Big Bang and the fine tuning of the universe support or undermine the argument for a creator?
Welcome to Idea the Future. I'm your host Andrew McDermott. Today my guest is Dr. Brian Miller to give us a breakdown of a recent debate between philosopher of science Dr. Stephen Meyer and science communicator Phil Halper about the Big Bang, the fine tuning arguments and the compatibility of signs and faith in general.
Meyer and Halper sat down for a lively three hour conversation moderated by host Justin Brierly for his series Uncommon Ground. The two thinkers took turns communicating their positions on the Big Bang, fine tuning and the relationship between science and faith. They were also given opportunities to summarize their opponents views leading to further clarity, admission of common ground, and just a better understanding of perspectives for the sake of each other as well as the audience.
Now, Dr. Miller is with us today. He's a Senior Fellow and Research Coordinator for the center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute. He helps manage the ID 3.0 research program and helped launch the biennial conference on Engineering and Living Systems or Cells. He obtained a B.S. in Physics with a minor in Engineering from MIT and a Ph.D. in Complex Systems Physics from Duke University.
His research focuses on thermodynamics, information theory, protein rarity, and the origin of life.
He has contributed to multiple books and technical journals covering the debate over intelligent design, including the Mystery of Life's Origin, the Continuing Controversy, the Comprehensive Guide to Science, and Faith and Inference Review.
He regularly contributes to Science and Culture Today as well as this wonderful podcast, ID the Future.
And most relevant to today's discussion, Brian was a lead technical consultant for Dr. Stephen Meyer while Meyer wrote Return of the God Hypothesis, a project that, as we're going to find out, served as inspiration for the Meyer Halpert debate. Welcome to the show, Brian.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: It's a pleasure to be here again.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Well, let's start with the book Meyer's book Return of the God Hypothesis. Remind us what that book covered and what prompted Steve to write it.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: Well, it really has a fascinating story that Steve talks about in the book is that it really started with a debate between Steve Meyer, Lawrence Krauss and another individual in 2016 and they're talking about the evidence of design in nature. And one of the topics was cosmology and the fine tuning of the laws of nature.
And Steve Meyer had prepped himself to debate Krauss. And he realized that a lot of attempts by Krauss and others to rationalize away the evidence for design and cosmology was based on appealing to highly questionable theories. So what happened during the debate is he had a terrible migraine, so he didn't perform as well as he would have liked to. But that encounter with Cross inspired him to research this topic in much more depth. And that led him to actually write Return of the God Hypothesis. And what he did in that book is he first talked a little bit about the history of science. He talked about the. The evidence for a beginning of our universe and how that points to a mind behind our universe. He talked about the fine tuning of the laws of nature and the fine tuning of the initial conditions of the universe that were essential for life. And then he talked about the standard arguments for the evidence of design in biology. But what was really new about this book that was different from previous books is he looked at all the evidence of design at once and looked at the implications. The because if you just look at the evidence of design in the laws of nature, that could point to a traditional understanding of God, it could promote a idea of a deistic God or something different.
In contrast, if you looked at the evidence of design in biology, that could point to a creator, but could also point to aliens. But what Steve argued in this book is if you look at all of the evidence at once, it really does point to the traditional understanding of a personal God, which is why the book is called Return of the God Hypothesis.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Okay. Now, you and I were both part of Team Steve is what it affectionately became known as just the small team of folks that were helping Steve put this book together.
I helped him with the bibliography and finding pictures of scientists and all the figures. Tell us how you helped him put the book together in terms of the concepts, the topics included, all. All the research that needed to be involved with this.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Well, I was very, very closely involved with this process in the discussion about the origin of universe, cosmology, the arguments about fine tuning. And I read a lot of the basic research, a lot of the technical papers by people like Stephen Hawking, by people like Alexander Vilenkin. I helped to coordinate conversations with people like Bruce Gordon and Frank Tipler and Luke Barnes.
So I was kind of in the heart of this analysis when it comes to the physics. So I learned a tremendous amount in this process.
And I was really grateful to work with Steve to help make these arguments very, very compelling.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: And you know, what's great is, you know, you think you know about something until you kind of dive into the other side. But also just the breadth of literature out there.
And it really is wonderful when you can just grow in your knowledge and then be able to pass that on to folks like Stephen Meyer as they're making their arguments.
Really multiplies the force there.
Now the book is marking five years, actually the fifth anniversary of its publication. How has it been received, do you think, since it was published in 2021?
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Well, it was received extremely well. In fact, you've got people like Brian Josephson, who is a Nobel Laureate in physics from the uk and he gave enormous praise. In fact, he said that this shows that Intelligent Design is legitimate science.
You have positive endorsements by people like Brian Keating, who is a very respected cosmologist. But even, even more remarkable is even people like Michael Shermer, who's a very prominent atheist and skeptic. He actually praised the book for being very well argued. He didn't ultimately agree with the conclusion, but he even said this was a serious work that needed to be dealt with. But also it was really telling is the critiques of the book. Because when you read critiques of Steve's arguments, what you consistently found is people wouldn't actually address the actual arguments. They would represent misrepresentations of the content and they'd also even misrepresent research that they cited to try to oppose Steve.
So both the very positive endorsements and the difficulty critics had of responding to those arguments was very, very telling.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And as far as reception from readers, have you come across folks that really had their minds changed or were greatly influenced by when they read the book?
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Well, that was what was very encouraging because I had several people that would actually send me messages either over Facebook or over my message app on my phone. And they would talk about how they had people they knew or people in their churches or just people they met who were strangers. He would talk about how the book really, really shaped their understanding of the debate, how it caused some people to take belief in God much more seriously, to help people overcome doubts that they had.
So the positive impact of the book has been very, very significant and also caused some really high level scientists to take the whole Intelligent Design research program much more seriously.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And had there been no book, there likely wouldn't have been this debate. So let's turn our attention to the recent debate between Meier and Halper. First tell us, who is Phil Halper and what led to the two men sitting down together?
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Well, Phil Helper is a British science communicator who's very, very bright and an excellent communicator and writer. And his expertise really is cosmology because he's interacted with many of the top level cosmological theorists and researchers in the world.
He's a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.
He oversees a podcast called before the Big Bang, which interviews a lot of prominent cosmologists.
And also, Phil Halper helped write the book Battle for the Beginning or Battle for the Big Bang with a cosmologist named Matt Schwarti. So he is really familiar with most of the major cosmological models trying to explain our universe.
So he really was perhaps one of the best people Steve Meyer could have possibly debated over this book.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: Okay, and has Helper debated much in the past, or has it been more conversations to learn different perspectives?
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Well, Phil Halpert is a very avid atheist, and he has debated several Christians and probably people of other faiths about whether God exists, whether science points to a creator or not.
And he is one of the most formidable debaters I've ever seen. Like, he's very knowledgeable about the science. He understands philosophy, history.
He even has dabbled in theology.
And he's just very rhetorically effective. So he is an extremely effective debater, and he has done very well in his debates in the past.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Okay, so how has he performed with other Christians in debates?
Does he have a combative approach? Is it more of a conciliatory or just looking for clarity? Tell us how he's stacked up with other believers.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: Well, Phil Halper is.
He is a very good debater, and he is a very honorable debater. Like, he doesn't do citation bluffing. He doesn't just make empty appeals to authority. He's. He's very polite, very courteous, but he definitely wants to win the argument. So when he debates someone about these topics, he wants to bring the full force of his knowledge and his rhetorical finesse to win the debate. So he's not conciliatory, but he's also.
He's also very. He's an honorable debater. So he's very good person to watch. So that's been my experience, and what I found is he's done extremely well against many Christians because he has debated people that aren't scientists. So he was able to overwhelm them with some of the scientific arguments and Even many of the Christians he's debated who are scientists, those Christians have often embraced what could be called an accommodationist model for faith and science. They've essentially uncritically accepted all of the scientific arguments by the mainstream scientific community and they've even reshaped their faith to accommodate modern perspectives of science. So when Phil Helper has debated them, it's often been a very easy debate for him because he basically just puts his arguments out there and there really isn't much response to them.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Okay, now let's talk about this debate in particular. Can you review the topics that the debate covered?
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Yeah, certainly. And there's a really fascinating story behind the debate. What happened was Steve Meyer was interviewed by Sean McDowell, who's a popular podcaster who talks about different issues of religion. And Steve was talking about a return of the God hypothesis and was giving a critique of the model of Roger Penrose trying to explain away the beginning of the universe.
And what happened is Phil Halper actually interviewed Penrose and Penrose critiqued Steve Meyer's critique of him. And that's what really prompted this debate with Justin Briley, which is this three hour conversation, which was really an amazing debate. In fact, it was one of the best debates I've ever seen. Like both brought their full arguments to bear. They were very effective, they were courteous. It was a very substantive conversation. And Justin Bradley really moderated it beautifully. And the debate covered, it started with like the history of science, like did Christianity help science? Was it a hindrance?
It talked about the evidence for a beginning. What are the implications of that evidence? What are alternative theories? It also talked about the evidence for fine tuning and how different people respond to that evidence and the implications. And also what was really beautiful about the debate is it talked about their different philosophical starting points.
And what was the relevance of these starting points to how you engaged the evidence? So those are the main topics covered.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Yeah, and I really think I give some credit to Justin Brierly for the richness of the, the conversation because of the format that he had the two men agree upon and follow. And that was, you know, both men were given ample time to, to share their own positions, but also to try to summarize their understanding of their opponent's position. And I think that format added to the richness of the dialogue. Can you review for us the arguments that Steve and, and Halper presented?
[00:13:29] Speaker A: Yeah, and, and I, and I agree with you very much that the format was the perfect format because you really needed three hours to un arguments. And for Each side to address them and do the counter responses. And what happened is Steve was arguing that when you look at the scientific evidence, you see very strong evidence of a beginning. Things like the Borg Valencian theorem, the fact that our universe is expanding, evidence supporting the standard Big Bang model. And also he talked about how there's a great deal of evidence that the laws of nature appear to be designed for the purpose of supporting life.
And Steve also argued how whenever you see carefully chosen parameters that achieve a purpose, that always points to a mind in our experience. So he gave a lot of the standard arguments he would give for his arguments for the inference of the best explanation.
And Helper responded by saying that, well, there's a lot of proposals out there that can explain our universe without appealing to a beginning. They can talk about a cyclical universal, which is eternal, or something along those lines. And he also said there's so much uncertainty in our knowledge of the science that it's not unreasonable to expect that eventually we'll be able to explain all the data without appealing to a designer. And then Stephen Meyer responded by saying that yes, there are proposals out there, but every proposal that attempts to eliminate a beginning has to invoke what appear to be highly implausible assumptions.
They have to deny assumptions about science that are well accepted. They have to invoke new fields or new particles, and also they have to invoke large amounts of fine tuning. So what he argued was that models that try to avoid the beginning can only do so by employing assumptions that point point to a mind as much as the evidence they're trying to avoid. So you have to have fine tuning for the purpose of having an eternal universe that could support life. And the same holds true with attempts to argue against fine tuning.
So every attempt to appeal to something like a multiverse or some higher laws that can explain our parameters, they themselves, those higher laws also have to be fine tuned to get a multiverse that could, that could generate lots of universes with different parameters. It has to be designed with that purpose in mind. So Meier was saying that every attempt to avoid a beginning or avoid fine tuning itself has to employ features that point to a mind. And what Stephen Meyer also argued is the fact you've got so many models out there, all of which have to employ so many ad hoc assumptions and dubious ideas, shows that the entire framework, the entire program to avoid the evidence to design itself, is collapsing itself, is showing how moribos that entire process is. So that's basically the different arguments that were presented.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought Meyer did a good job of showing that the implications of the Big Bang needed to be, you know, not 100% proven or satisfied to the point where you could go home and we're done, but needed to be addressed, you know, needed to be accounted for.
And, of course, science is provisional, so you don't have to choose one and then say everything else is out the window. But, you know, I just felt like halper had these 25 things on the menu, and he was happy not picking one, but.
But he also wasn't, you know, wasn't ready to commit to any, or at least provisionally choose one or the other. And I thought that was a bit of a strange position to be in.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: No, I agree. And what I thought was.
I thought both were very impressive. I think both presented their case the best that they could, but what you could really see is their different. Different assumptions that they came to the table with. And this is why often what's referred to as a Bayesian analysis is really important, because it's not just about the evidence.
It's about the assumptions you bring to the table before you even look at the evidence. So what happened was Meier was open to the possibility of design, and he made a very compelling case that you see positive evidence for design.
And every attempt to explain away that evidence or to explain fine tuning or the origin of the universe with a model always requires a model that has features that have to be designed to achieve that purpose.
So he made that case very clearly, but that was because he was open to the possibility of design.
Now, Halpert came to the table assuming that there really was really no real chance that the universe could be designed. He assumed it had to have been the product of natural processes with no intention in mind.
So he was willing to consider any theory, even if that theory. Theory had a lot of deficiencies, even if it had a lot of ad hoc assumptions, even if it seemed implausible, because he would accept any theory, no matter how seemingly implausible, over the possibility, accepting the possibility that there could be a creator. So it was really helpful in looking at their conversation that those assumptions were brought forward very, very nicely for the audience.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And Halper did talk about his background in religious faith. I don't know if you could remember that and just touch on that.
He was a practicing Jew.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: But he bumped up against some things that he found pretty hard to stomach or swallow, and that sort of led him away from the faith. Is that a good characterization?
[00:19:25] Speaker A: Yeah. He talked a bit about when he was going through the story, he's Jewish, so he was immersed in the Hebrew scriptures or what's called the Old Testament others.
And he basically said there are certain stories he had trouble with, like the idea that God would kill all these innocent fish in the Nile during the plagues, or obviously things like the conquest. So there was these things that really gripped him emotionally, these things that bothered him and that set the stage for him to doubt Judaism more and more and more until eventually he. That led him to atheism. And I think that's a very common story that when you find people that are opposed to opposing the evidence of design in nature or they're arguing for a universe, that's simply an accident. Often there's, there's some story, some background story that led them there that was more than just the evidence, but it was, it was more of other issues. And that's true with everyone.
But what I would argue, and I think this is a point that Steve Meyer made very clearly, is that if you come to the table with an open slate, you say, I'm willing to consider the. To be a designer or not be a designer. If you really start with your priors at that place, then you're going to see that the evidence points very, very strongly designed. So I think that's really significant.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Now, the two men did find common ground. Can you maybe touch on a couple of things that they found agreement on that were quite helpful?
[00:20:48] Speaker A: Well, I think they articulated each other's arguments reasonably well, and that was very helpful.
And I think they both would acknowledge that there is evidence that the laws of nature are very special.
In fact, Halpert did the survey about how physicists responded to the evidence of fine tuning. And I think most of the people in the survey would recognize that there is this evidence out there that's significant. But then either they would say it's just a brute fact, or they appeal to a multiverse, or for some other argument, they would deny design.
But they did acknowledge that fine tuning was there.
Both acknowledged that there are alternative models out there that attempt to remove a beginning or explain the fine tuning without a designer. So they both would agree with that. And I think they both agree that those models have serious issues to them. In fact, Helper acknowledged that he didn't necessarily think any of the models were true, but he simply felt that because there are all these models out there that that gives hope that maybe there will be some explanation one day. And I think both of them would agree that it's not a open and shut case that There's a real debate taking place that it's not like a deductive proof that there either is design or not design. But then they would recognize that based on your assumptions, one could reasonably say that design is a good inference to the Beck's explanation.
Or if one assumed that there couldn't be design, then you could sort of justify that belief with various models out there. So I think overall, both sides did very well and showed that the acceptance of design is more than just the science. There's going to be more philosophical assumptions behind it. So I think there was a lot of common ground and I think it was a very productive conversation to bring these assumptions to the forefront. So I just really give a tremendous credit to both of them and to Justin Brierley with how it was moderated.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And on the topic of science and faith and their compatibility, both men, it turns out, did not agree with the warfare hypothesis put forth within the last century or century and a half, where science and faith have always been at odds and always will be. Right.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
And Phil Helper, again, he's very honorable and a very good researcher, so I have a lot of respect for him.
And both acknowledged or recognized that this common story you hear that faith and science are inherently in conflict and people of faith have always slowed the progress of science, really wasn't true. Like, they both recognize that the founders of modern science were largely Christian. A lot of them were very involved. Now, where they differed was how much their faith was the reason for the. The productivity of the scientists. And Helper was trying to argue that if you go back to the ancient Greeks, they did something like science, that the Chinese did something along the lines of developing technology and science. But what Stephen Meyer argued was that the specifically Christian assumptions of these scientists in Europe gave them particular advantages over others.
So to recognize that there is a mind behind our universe is what would lead you to expect that there's a uniform set of laws.
And to believe that we're created by that mind, in that mind's image would lead us to believe that we have the capacity to understand the order that was created in the universe. Also a point that I believe Steve Meyer brought up, if not in the debates, certainly in his book, is that the recognition that there's a fall, that there was a relationship that people had with God, but that relationship was broken through. Rebellion has led to empirical science because often people would have an enormous trust in their rationality. So they would come up with ideas about the universe, and they wouldn't always test those ideas. Empirically but the Christians had suspicion in their rationality because they knew people were fallen. They said, we can't trust ourselves too much. We have to do experiments to test our ideas. So Stephen Meyer gave a very strong case that the unique features of the Christian faith is what gave unique advantages to the modern scientists.
And many of the modern scientists actually will actually give credit to their faith for helping to inspire them to study science and for giving them insights on what to look for.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: Okay, so they were able to find some common ground, but there were clear differences in perspectives and assumptions. Yeah. So what are your general observations about how both performed in this debate?
[00:25:28] Speaker A: Well, one, I think they both performed really well. They both brought to bear science and philosophy and theology in history.
They responded to each other's arguments forcefully and thoughtfully.
So I think they both did extremely well. And they brought forward. It was a debate that brought light as opposed to just heat. It was a debate that brought real understanding and value to the people that watched it because it really showed how their differing assumptions about reality shaped how they interpreted the data and how those assumptions shape their expectations of what would be discovered in the future.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, I like that. Light and not just heat. We've seen a few heated debates here and there, but to bring light is really valuable for not just the man involved, but the audience as well.
Now, your takeaway then.
Why is this debate important?
Why is the bigger conversation important?
You know, who cares, Basically?
[00:26:30] Speaker A: What would you say? Yeah, and it's a really significant debate because it gets to the issue of what does it mean to be human? What is our place in the world? What's the purpose of life? Because if we're just an accident, there is no purpose, then people do not have inherent value.
There's no clear parameters to live by. And there's just not that much hope, because eventually our universe will run out of free energy and everyone will be gone and there'll be no minds left.
Versus if we're created, that means that we do have a purpose. That means there may be some way we're supposed to live based on the constraints in our bodies built by our designer.
And really, when you think about design, you have several levels of design. And design in the universe is really important because if our universe is designed, then that means that there's a creator outside of time and space. That means that the entire universe was designed for a purpose that relates to humans.
And that's why this evidence is so important to understand. And now, Steve Meyer didn't address other levels of evidence because the debate was just about cosmology.
But if you go to all the evidence that Stephen Meyer has presented and returned the God hypothesis and in his other books, what we see, it's not just that there's a creator outside of time and space, but the design in life shows that that creator was involved in the world, that that creator was actively moving our planet towards a certain purpose. And then when you look at the design of the human body, that shows that we're designed. And if you go even beyond that and look at the design of our planet, like in the book the Privileged Planet, how our planet is not just designed for life, but for technology, for cultural advancement, what that shows us is that we're not just here as an accident, but we're part. We're part of a grand story that we're meant to participate in, which gives us hope, which gives us joy, which gives us a sense of purpose.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Yeah, beautifully put. And on that note, I want to leave our viewers and our listeners with a few resources to dig into if they want to learn more about this. Now, we're obviously going to include a link to the debate, the actual debate, in the show notes. But where else can they turn for coverage of the debate between Meier and Halper?
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Well, there's some wonderful sites to go to. Like if you go to the Return of the God Hypothesis website, you'll see a lot of responses to critics, you'll see summaries of arguments. That's a really good place to go to. But also if you go to Science and Culture Today, the flagship news site of Discovery Institute and the Intelligent Design community, there's articles. I'll be putting up articles dealing with the debate in the next few months. Also, Bruce Gordon has already put up many wonderful articles. And what Bruce Gordon is doing, if you're not familiar with Bruce, he'll be on a future podcast. And he's also a person who's a philosopher with enormous expertise in cosmology and general relativity and a lot of the science. And he's showing how every single argument, every single model that people are putting forward to either remove a beginning or to explain away fine tuning itself, as Steve Meyer said, has features that point to a designer. It has to be fine tuned. It has to have many highly unusual assumptions that would only be true if a designer designed it that way. So again, that's a beautiful place to see additional commentary about the debate, also by people like the leader of the site, David Klinghofer, and also about future conversations about the science.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to having Bruce Gordon on the podcast at his expertise and his insight into how to evaluate the the menu of cosmological arguments, you know, for the universe or the existence of it and the origin of it. So that's going to be a fun conversation, too. So just to reiterate what you said, we can go to scienceandculture.com and we can read coverage of that from yourself, from Bruce Gordon. And ReturnOfTheGodHypothesis.com is where you'll learn more about Stephen's book and get the resources there you need for that. And of course, there's the movie, right? The story of everything.
It touches on some of this evidence for fine tuning and the beginning of the universe. So if you want to see this in stunning visual detail, the movie is where it's at and it's currently streaming on Amazon prime after a successful run in theaters. Brian, thank you so much for helping us wrap our heads around this substantive debate. It's an important conversation to be sure, and I appreciate your help today.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: Well, you can follow our coverage, as I said, of the Meyer halper
[email protected] that's scienceandculture.com get your hands on a copy of Stephen Meyer's book Return of the God Hypothesis. And don't miss the Story of Everything, the new documentary film featuring Meyer and many other scientists making these arguments for ID the future. I'm Andreme Dermot. Thanks for joining us.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org this program is Copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
