Dr. Stephen Meyer

Maybe there's a master programmer behind everything, and we're just a simulation, and that's where it gets a little wonky.

I mean, why say you could infer to a master programmer, but why say that our experience is just a simulation?

It goes back to the old Descartes argument about the evil demon concept

persuading us that we exist when we really don't.

The evil demon then is too clever by half because if he's persuaded us that we exist and we're aware of our existence, which is a necessary condition of being persuaded that we do exist,

then we do exist because we're aware.

So the simulation hypothesis, I think, is subject to the same problem.

We're not a simulation in someone else's reality.

If we're aware ourselves of having conscious experiences, then we have a reality too.

But what's interesting about the simulation is

It seems to imply that there's a mind behind everything.

Yeah, very contentious question within the Christian world, I guess, right?

Yes.

As I mentioned, I don't have any problem with the basic accuracy of the radiometric dating methods.

I think they're pretty good.

You can always have contamination of samples.

So I accept that the Earth is very old, that the universe is very old.

I think the evidence we have of light coming from distant objects in space, et cetera, provides pretty compelling evidence for a very ancient universe, but one that's still finite.

And if you set that finite date at whatever you like, 13.8 billion, it's not enough time to explain the origin of the fine-tuning by chance alone or to explain the origin of proteins on planet Earth.

Same thing.