Reflections on Joe Rogan, Stephen Meyer, and Intelligent Design

Stephen Meyer recently appeared on The Joe Rogan Podcast to make his case for theism and Intelligent Design. Overall, I thought it was a great conversation, and though I take a definitely different approach to God than Dr. Meyer, there is much to respect about his apologetic, particularly his demeanor. Here are my reflections.

1. First, about Rogan. While some points were definitely missed (unsurprising, since Rogan is not a philosopher, let alone one specialized in matters like these) I was quite impressed with Rogan’s questioning and dialogue ability. I don’t listen to Rogan much, because I don’t have time for podcast listening generally. Either way, what stood out was how much he listened, how much he wanted to dialogue about these matters, and how well he objected to certain points. He was a friendly, but not fawning, interviewer.
   

2. As always, any philosopher making the case for theism should immediately distinguish between theism and religion. Almost always in conversations like these somebody is going to assume that theism just means religion and more often than not Christianity. This is a crude assumption but exceedingly common. Demarcating these two — that is, making it clear that someone can believe in God without being Christian (though I am both, like Meyer is) — helps keep separate things separate.
   

3. Meyer’s apologetic for ID was articulate as always, whether one agrees with it or not. Rogan, not a specialist, offered higher level push back for the most part. Namely, if God exists, then why the problem of evil? “Why did God create war?”, Rogan asked at one point. This is obviously a fair objection to theism, but it does not affect the thesis of ID much, since ID is not *technically* committed to the designer being the classical theistic conception of God. Nevertheless…
   

4. Miller issued the standard free will defense to the PoE (problem of evil). Rogan then made a swift push for determinism which was met with some capable resistance by Meyer. Understanding that freedom of choice is not Meyer’s specialty, he did a pretty good job; these are not easy issues to handle “on the fly” or “off the cuff”. Nevertheless, some problems at this point in the conversation arose from not defining terms: for example, I would have tried to make clear that determinism means there is some factor that is both logically prior to and sufficient for some effect, and that libertarian freedom is incompatible with determinism, yet the incompatibilist thesis does not mean there are no disposing or influencing factors on our thoughts or behavior. Of course there are, including instances where a person’s rational willing is overridden, from injury, disease, addiction, or what have you. Ultimately, Rogan seemed be conflating the idea of free will with something like maximal autonomy. Free will does not mean freedom from all influences; rather, it simply rejects the idea that for every decision or action of ours there was some factor that was both prior to and logically sufficient for that decision or action, over which we had no control.
   

5. Concerning Meyer sharing his personal experiences of God… Meyer suggested at one point this aspect of the conversation was “unproductive” since he would never try to convince somebody that God exists from his personal experience. Rogan, nevertheless, kept wanting to hear about it, while objecting (implicitly) that many people claim to have experiences similar to Meyer, including those in cults lead by demonstrable conmen. The implication being that Meyer should be skeptical of his experiences, since others like his are presumably false — that is, not real experiences of God. This objection is not a serious blow to Meyer’s project, since he continually emphasized the need for objective argumentation rather than subjective reports. Still, it might have been helpful for Meyer to insist his experiences certainly seemed real and because they accord with the overall evidence, he has little reason to call them into question. Thus, he is justified in believing his are legitimate experiences of God, whereas those under the influence of some charlatan are not in a parallel situation — they have clear defeaters. A minor point, but worth emphasizing, IMO, if only because it would probably have steered the conversation back around toward an evaluation of the overall evidence.
   
   PS - A similar “quick” point can be made about design intuitions or design seemings. We look around at intricately arranged structures and, because of a strong intuition or seeming, infer “this thing must be designed by some intelligence.” In the overwhelming number of cases, this intuition is confirmed. We then apply this intuition to various worldly phenomena, including biological systems. From there we can ask, does anything defeat this intuition? Meyer gives reasons to think evolutionary theory definitely does not, but even if Neo-Darwinism were conceded, we can just go to physical fine-tuning, which is more fundamental. So, does anything defeat the design intuition at that level? Again, the answer seems certainly to be, “No.” The multiverse is the strongest attempt at defeat, but so far as we can tell, any theoretically feasible multiverse model itself requires fine tuning, as Meyer pointed out. So, our intuition is undefeated “all the way down”, as it were. Thus, we are justified in inferring to some grand, designing intelligence, I would say.
   
   Perhaps that is the best way to run the fine-tuning argument? Of course, it requires something like phenomenal conservativism, but so what? PC (or something near enough) seems quite safe so far as epistemological starting points go.
   

6. There was some back and forth over the word significant, which came up with respect to whether life has any meaning. Meyer suggested that if naturalism were true, life is meaningless or insignificant. Rogan took issue with the word significant and here, I agree. What we should ask if whether there is any Grand Narrative to reality, not whether life has meaning or significance. For even if there is no Grand Narrative (or Grand Purpose), people can find meaning or significance in various things, as they often do. Nevertheless, this still leaves open the question of how meaningful, ultimately, our personal interests are (and whether our personal interests are what we should be most interested in), which pushes us back to the question of Grand Narrative. Naturalism has no Grand Narrative, being run by a principle of indifference — there are no ultimate aims, no life after death, “everything will be expunged in the heath death of universe,” etc. Theism — specifically, Christianity — obviously does have a Grand Narrative, that is, a reason for God creating and an ultimate, objective (attitude-independent) purpose for everyone involved.

I could go on, but I’ll refrain. I do suggest watching the conversation. Also, comments are open if you’d like to share thoughts of your own relevant to the interview.

Finally, you might enjoy the conversation I had with Stephen Meyer several months back as well.