Latest / Crosswalk Talk: Celebrity Christian Interviews / Stephen Meyer on The Story of Everything and the Case for a Designer

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Stephen Meyer on The Story of Everything and the Case for a Designer · Crosswalk Talk: Celebrity Christian Interviews

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  Speaker 1: Life Audio. Hey, doctor Meyer, thanks for joining me.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you Michael. Good morning.
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  Speaker 1: Doctor Stephen Meyer, author and philosopher of science with the
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  Speaker 1: Discovery Institute, is our guest today. He's the person behind
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  Speaker 1: the name movie The Story of Everything that examines the
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  Speaker 1: scientific evidence for a designer behind the universe. The website
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  Speaker 1: is the story of Everything dot film. Doctor Meyer. I've
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  Speaker 1: read your stop many times.
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  Speaker 2: Over the years.
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  Speaker 1: I've enjoyed your writings. You've written many books on this subject.
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  Speaker 1: Why did you want to make a film about the subject?
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  Speaker 3: Well, a local Seattle film company that had had several
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  Speaker 3: successful theatrical release documentaries approached us about converting my book
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  Speaker 3: Return of the God Hypothesis into a cinematic experience. That's
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  Speaker 3: the way they put it, and so they've done a
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  Speaker 3: very good job of doing exactly that. Where the film
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  Speaker 3: that my book was, you know, four hundred and some pages,
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  Speaker 3: lots of footnotes, and we thought we could convert it
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  Speaker 3: into a more accessible and a highly visual message, and
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  Speaker 3: so we set out to do that. It took four years,
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  Speaker 3: but the project is finally over. It'll be released in
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  Speaker 3: theaters across the country on April thirtieth, So we're very
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  Speaker 3: excited and.
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  Speaker 1: Of course the the book we're referencing is this film,
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  Speaker 1: isn't it adaptation of your book Return of the God Hypothesis.
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  Speaker 2: You know, one thing that.
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  Speaker 1: I think a lot of modern Christians don't understand is
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  Speaker 1: how this viewpoint there's a designer behind the universe, that
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  Speaker 1: was the majority viewpoint for most of the history of
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  Speaker 1: the world that we know of what happened? How did
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  Speaker 1: we get to the point where all of a sudden
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  Speaker 1: people are rejecting that what we think is a common
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  Speaker 1: sense viewpoint.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I tell that story in effect in the book Return
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  Speaker 3: of the God Hypothesis, and also reprise it in the film.
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  Speaker 3: It's a kind of a rise fall rise plot structure,
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  Speaker 3: if you will. And in the history of science in
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  Speaker 3: Western civil in pre Christian civilization, certainly in the Jewish world,
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  Speaker 3: but even in the Greco Roman world, there was strong
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  Speaker 3: support for the idea that the physical universe is giving
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  Speaker 3: evidence of a mind behind the universe. There were always
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  Speaker 3: two competing stories, as we put it in the film,
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  Speaker 3: two stories of reality. One was the idea that matter
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  Speaker 3: and energy arranged themselves into everything that we see around us.
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  Speaker 3: This didn't start with Darwin. It goes all the way
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  Speaker 3: back to the Democritans, the atomus in the Greek world,
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  Speaker 3: but the dominant view in Western civilization, with figures like
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  Speaker 3: Plato and Aristotle in the Greek world, Cicero in the
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  Speaker 3: Roman world, Memonides in the Jewish world, but especially throughout
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  Speaker 3: the Christian West, was that there is clear evidence of
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  Speaker 3: a designing intelligence behind the universe. You get that in
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  Speaker 3: psaulm nineteen the heavens declare the glory of God.
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  Speaker 2: You get it in romans Ie.
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  Speaker 3: The invisible qualities of the Creator, eternal powers, divine nature,
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  Speaker 3: and divine nature are clearly seen being understood from what.
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  Speaker 2: Has been made.
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  Speaker 3: So there's this idea that nature is revealing something about
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  Speaker 3: its author. And that view was crucially important to the
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  Speaker 3: rise of modern science in the period we call the
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  Speaker 3: Scientific Revolution, with figures like Sir Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle,
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  Speaker 3: Johannes Kepler before them, and it wasn't really till the
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  Speaker 3: late nineteenth century when that view began to wane and
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  Speaker 3: was through in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth
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  Speaker 3: century was really kind of lost among elite intellectuals. You
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  Speaker 3: have figures like Darwin, Marx, Freud and others Darwin tells
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  Speaker 3: us where we came from in strictly materialistic terms. Freud
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  Speaker 3: tells us what to do about our human condition and
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  Speaker 3: even our guilt, and Marx has a materialist utopian vision
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  Speaker 3: of the future. So you get these three great materialist
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  Speaker 3: thinkers at the end of the nineteenth century, materialism in
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  Speaker 3: this case meaning the worldview that says that matter and
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  Speaker 3: energy are the things from which everything else have come.
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  Speaker 3: And they address all the main questions that Judaeo Christian
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  Speaker 3: religion had always addressed. And so coming into the twentieth
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  Speaker 3: century you have this very dominant materialistic way of thinking
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  Speaker 3: that takes over the academy, percolates into culture, and affects
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  Speaker 3: even major political regimes. Marxism in the Soviet Union, Nazism
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  Speaker 3: in Germany there are very affected by Darwinian materialism. But
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  Speaker 3: the story of the film is that the classical story
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  Speaker 3: of reality, the story of a mind behind the universe,
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  Speaker 3: of an intelligent designer, is coming back not in spite
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  Speaker 3: of but because of new discoveries and science. And the
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  Speaker 3: film tells the stories of those discoveries and of the
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  Speaker 3: scientists who have changed their minds about scientific atheism or
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  Speaker 3: scientific materialism, and come back to a theistic view because
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  Speaker 3: of those discoveries.
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  Speaker 1: Would you say that we can prove the existence of
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  Speaker 1: God with science or or or you say we can
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  Speaker 1: simply point in that direction.
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  Speaker 3: How would you so use the word point? But it's
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  Speaker 3: a strong point. It's the difficulty with the word proof
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  Speaker 3: is that, strictly speaking, the only disciplines that prove things
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  Speaker 3: are mathematics and logic. Scientists typically avoid saying proof a
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  Speaker 3: good scientific theory will provide a better explanation than all
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  Speaker 3: the other theories. So what scientists do is they will
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  Speaker 3: say that we infer to the best explanation, and in
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  Speaker 3: my book return to the God hypothesis, I argue that
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  Speaker 3: not only intelligent design, but the idea of a theistic
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  Speaker 3: designer provides the best explanation for the major discoveries that
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  Speaker 3: we've made about biological and cosmological origins. The evidence that
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  Speaker 3: we have that the universe has a beginning, the evidence
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  Speaker 3: that we have that the universe has been fine tuned
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  Speaker 3: for life against all odds from the beginning, and the
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  Speaker 3: evidence especially that we find inside living cells of an
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  Speaker 3: exquisite realm of digital and nanotechnology that I think really
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  Speaker 3: screams calls out for the activity of a designing mind
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  Speaker 3: as its best explanation.
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  Speaker 2: So it's a.
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  Speaker 3: Strong, a strong pointer that we have, and I think
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  Speaker 3: that theism provides the best overall explanation for what we're
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  Speaker 3: seeing in the sciences.
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  Speaker 1: Doctor mar How has this debate been impacted by the
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  Speaker 1: fact that our modern world is so intertwined with cities
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  Speaker 1: right now? People live in cities, they never see the
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  Speaker 1: vastest of the skies and never see the majesty of
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  Speaker 1: the sky at night. In other words, they don't see
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  Speaker 1: the creation like King David did long ago, you know,
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  Speaker 1: right by the time hear the sow. I'm just curious,
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  Speaker 1: what were you're talking about?
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  Speaker 3: The sell aide for example, right, Yeah, you know, I
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  Speaker 3: don't think too much about that, but maybe I should
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  Speaker 3: because I live in a very wooded area. And I
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  Speaker 3: remember having a conversation with a postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge
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  Speaker 3: my first year when I was there. He was on
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  Speaker 3: a one year post stock and I was a master's
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  Speaker 3: degree student. But I was beginning to think about this
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  Speaker 3: a whole question of the digital code inside DNA and
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  Speaker 3: what it pointed to, what it implied. I was doing
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  Speaker 3: my master's nphd theses at Cambridge were an origin of
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  Speaker 3: life biology and the whole field of origin of life
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  Speaker 3: studies that had come by that time in the late
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  Speaker 3: eighties to a state of impact.
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  Speaker 2: It's worse now.
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  Speaker 3: No one has any idea how life arose from undirected
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  Speaker 3: chemical processes. As the chemists who's also in the film,
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  Speaker 3: Jim Tour from Rice University, says, chemistry does not move
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  Speaker 3: towards life. It doesn't want to do. The chemicals. Chemicals
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  Speaker 3: on their own do not arrange themselves in any life
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  Speaker 3: friendly direction. And instead what we find in life is
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  Speaker 3: a code.
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  Speaker 2: Four character digital.
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  Speaker 3: Code that Francis Crick realized was the sub units in
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  Speaker 3: the DNA molecular functioning like alphabetic characters in a written language,
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  Speaker 3: or zeros and ones in a section of machine code.
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  Speaker 3: And I remember having a lot of arguments with my friend.
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  Speaker 3: He was doing biochemistry but starting to really get the point.
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  Speaker 3: And the day he was leaving Cambridge he said, you know,
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  Speaker 3: you shouldn't think that your argument has had no effect
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  Speaker 3: on me. He said, Now when I look at a leaf,
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  Speaker 3: I don't just see something green. I realized that inside
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  Speaker 3: every cell is the code that makes the leaf green.
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  Speaker 3: And gives it all its other features. So the evidence
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  Speaker 3: of a mind is that close to us because we
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  Speaker 3: know information whenever we see it, whether it's in a
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  Speaker 3: section of software, or if it's in a paragraph in
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  Speaker 3: a book, or if it's in the DNA molecule, it
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  Speaker 3: always points to a designing mind. Information is a product
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  Speaker 3: of mind, and we're seeing that. That's been the big
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  Speaker 3: discovery of late twentieth century early twenty first century biology,
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  Speaker 3: is that life is governed by information, and we've discovered
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  Speaker 3: where that information resides, and it's a four character digital
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  Speaker 3: code inside the molecule of DNA. So there's the kind
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  Speaker 3: of things we've discovered from science. But when we look
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  Speaker 3: at the world around us, we should look at it
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  Speaker 3: with new eyes.
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  Speaker 2: I think.
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  Speaker 1: You've written books on this. I'm curious if you have
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  Speaker 1: a go to argument if you're in a two minute
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  Speaker 1: conversation with an uber driver or someone and they don't
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  Speaker 1: believe in God?
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  Speaker 2: Do you have?
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  Speaker 1: Is there an argument that you always begin with If
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  Speaker 1: you only have a few minutes of someone and they
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  Speaker 1: say they don't believe in God or our designer, what
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  Speaker 1: do you say in.
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  Speaker 3: Just a few moments, Well, this happens to me all
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  Speaker 3: the time actually, because people will, you know, I'll be
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  Speaker 3: being driven to a conference setting or a talk or
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  Speaker 3: something and then get a conversation or on an airplane,
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  Speaker 3: people will want to know, you know, they'll look at
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  Speaker 3: over my shoulder at the power points I'm working at
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  Speaker 3: and say, what what is that? And I said, well,
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  Speaker 3: it's a it's a miniature machine and it's inside that
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  Speaker 3: lives inside cells.
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  Speaker 2: They said, what what is that? What are you? Are
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  Speaker 2: you a scientist? You know I'm a scientist. What what?
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  Speaker 4: Well?
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  Speaker 3: What kind of Well then I explained what your conference about,
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  Speaker 3: and I explain it's about intelligent design. And then and
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  Speaker 3: then people will say, so, well, it takes almost no
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  Speaker 3: time to convince people that there is a designing mind
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  Speaker 3: behind life. Then well then what people want to know is, well,
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  Speaker 3: who do you think the designer is? And then we'll
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  Speaker 3: get into the god discussion. But to me, the three
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  Speaker 3: each of the three arguments that I make in my
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  Speaker 3: book are compelling in their own right and pumulatively even
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  Speaker 3: more so. And the first is that the material universe,
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  Speaker 3: as best we can tell how to beginning a finite
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  Speaker 3: time ago, which means that whatever caused the universe to
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  Speaker 3: exist was not material because it's matter that came into existence.
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  Speaker 3: So you have some some need for some kind of
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  Speaker 3: transcendent cause.
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  Speaker 2: But also we know that the material universe was it.
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  Speaker 3: Was intricately structured, finely tuned from the beginning, suggesting that
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  Speaker 3: that transcendent cause was also intelligence, fine tuning, suggestifying tuner.
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  Speaker 3: And then the third argument is the one I just
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  Speaker 3: reprised that inside every living cell of every living organism
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  Speaker 3: there is information stored in a four character digital code,
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  Speaker 3: Bill Gates. And here's the one I'll pull out in
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  Speaker 3: thirty seconds. Bill Gates has said that DNA's like a
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  Speaker 3: software program, but much more complex than any we've ever devised.
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  Speaker 3: We know that software comes from a programmer, So the
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  Speaker 3: discovery of information in a digital form that the foundation
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  Speaker 3: of life suggests a master programmer for life.
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  Speaker 2: Amen to that.
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  Speaker 1: I always one of my go tos is why is
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  Speaker 1: there something rather than nothing? And just how did all
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  Speaker 1: this began? I think that just philosophically, I think that's
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  Speaker 1: a good one. You referenced that when, of course.
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  Speaker 2: How did it begin? And why did it begin?
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  Speaker 3: A finite time ago before which best we can tell,
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  Speaker 3: there was no matter, no energy. You can't invoke matter
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  Speaker 3: and energy to explain the origin of matter and energy,
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  Speaker 3: so materialism as a.
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  Speaker 2: Worldview really fails.
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  Speaker 3: You need a transcendent cause which is capable of a
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  Speaker 3: volitional act to bring the universe into existence at a
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  Speaker 3: discreet moment in time, and that sounds an.
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  Speaker 2: Awful lot like God.
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  Speaker 1: This film features a number of well known scholars and scientists.
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  Speaker 1: Was one of your goals with this documentary to challenge
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  Speaker 1: the perception that belief and design lacks serious academic support.
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  Speaker 2: Well, of course, and.
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  Speaker 3: We have I think twenty two different scientists and philosophers,
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  Speaker 3: mainly historians of science. The style of the film is
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  Speaker 3: really interesting. There's no narrator and there's no host. No
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  Speaker 3: one's taking you on a journey except the scientists themselves
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  Speaker 3: who tell the story of the stories of the discoveries
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  Speaker 3: that are pointing back to God. And so it has
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  Speaker 3: a nice pacing. If people saw the Big Short the
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  Speaker 3: story about the financial collapse, the principles in that story
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  Speaker 3: told the story. They were in that case actor playing
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  Speaker 3: the people who had been part of the financial collapse.
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  Speaker 3: But this is the same style of storytelling where the
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  Speaker 3: testimony goes back and forth between people who have insight
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  Speaker 3: into what happened, and it's lots of historic footage of
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  Speaker 3: people like Einstein and Francis Crick and wonderful animation that
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  Speaker 3: takes you deep out into space and also deep into
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  Speaker 3: the interior of the cell.
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  Speaker 2: So it's a beautiful film.
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  Speaker 1: I was just going to add that it's in terms
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  Speaker 1: of just how it's made and produced and the scores,
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  Speaker 1: My goodness, it's like a It really makes you think
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  Speaker 1: and really pulls you into the story. Final question for you,
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  Speaker 1: what kind of response are you hoping from moviegoers and
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  Speaker 1: viewers of this film, doctor Mayer.
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  Speaker 3: Well, this is a film that Christians and Jews who
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  Speaker 3: believe in God can bring their non believing friends too
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  Speaker 3: without fear of embarrassment.
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  Speaker 2: It's, as you said, the production values are very high.
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  Speaker 2: It is.
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  Speaker 3: Really an elegant presentation of my book. I was so pleased,
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  Speaker 3: and so we're hoping Number one, that students, in particular,
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  Speaker 3: you know, college aged students, late high school aged students,
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  Speaker 3: will find the film to be very reassuring of beliefs
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  Speaker 3: that they may have been taught growing up that there
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  Speaker 3: is a God. For example, many times when students get
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  Speaker 3: to university they get scientific atheism ram down their throats
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  Speaker 3: and they're proselytized by or are ridiculed for belief in
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  Speaker 3: God by professors. This should provide them with a lot
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  Speaker 3: of confidence that what they believe is true. And for
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  Speaker 3: the skeptic, we hope this will open hearts and minds.
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  Speaker 3: I think it gives people a lot to think about.
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  Speaker 3: I get a lot of mail from people who have
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  Speaker 3: physics degrees or biology PhDs or professors who were skeptics
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  Speaker 3: who read Return of the God hypothesis and have changed
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  Speaker 3: their mind, And we think the film can do the
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  Speaker 3: same thing, and that for skeptics, this is something that
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  Speaker 3: I think they'll enjoy because of the the rich science content,
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  Speaker 3: but also it gives a lot of food for thought.
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  Speaker 4: If you enjoy today's interview, please make sure to subscribe
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: and share the episode with a friend. A big thanks
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: to the team at life Audio for their partnership with
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: us on the podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com,
• 15:18
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  Speaker 4: their network.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: See you next time.