Stephen Meyer's Debt to New Atheists Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss — Transcript

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1. 0:00New atheists such as Richard Dawkins and
2. 0:01Lawrence Krauss
3. 0:03and I are obviously on opposite sides of
4. 0:06a very big and important question, the
5. 0:07question of what can science tell us
6. 0:09about the reality of God.
7. 0:11But I I'm in a
8. 0:13very real way indebted to the new
9. 0:15atheist writers. They've done a very
10. 0:17good job of framing issues really
11. 0:20clearly. Dawkins has a special talent
12. 0:22for that. Uh Lawrence Krauss has has
13. 0:25done a terrific job of that in his book
14. 0:27uh Universe from Nothing. Uh and I had
15. 0:29the opportunity to debate Krauss and in
16. 0:32the preparation for that debate, I got
17. 0:35to do a deeper dive on the physics that
18. 0:38lies behind Krauss's idea that you can
19. 0:41explain the universe from nothing. And
20. 0:43as I got deeper into the physics, I
21. 0:46realized that not only had Krauss not
22. 0:48explained the universe from nothing, but
23. 0:51that the physics that he had invoked
24. 0:54subtly implied the need for a
25. 0:57preexisting mind to account for the
26. 0:59origin of the universe. And at that
27. 1:01point I realized that the argument for
28. 1:05design that I'd made in biology had a
29. 1:07perfect counterpart in cosmology and
30. 1:10physics.
31. 1:11And I realized it was time to write
32. 1:13something that I'd been chewing on for a
33. 1:15very long time, that evidence from
34. 1:18biology, physics, and cosmology
35. 1:20converged to help us answer the
36. 1:23question,
37. 1:24what can science tell us about the cause
38. 1:27of the ultimate origin of life in the
39. 1:29universe, and what can we learn about
40. 1:31the identity of the designing
41. 1:32intelligence responsible for life in the
42. 1:36universe?