Stephen Meyer

with great gusto, proclaiming that God does not exist.

So it seems to me you have to choose.

Well, exactly.

I think he's defined down what atheism means.

I'll just give one example, though, to show that I think the shoe is actually on the other foot.

The fine-tuning argument for the existence of God, I think many scientists—in fact, Hitchens himself has said it's the most persuasive argument for the existence of God.

I don't think it's the most persuasive, but it's a very persuasive argument.

The argument is that the incredible improbability associated with the life permitting physical parameters of the universe suggests the need for a fine tuner, for some sort of intelligence to have set the parameters in that just right way.

The most persuasive counter argument to that is something called the multiverse, which posits a near infinite number of alternative universes where some kind of universe generating mechanism produced

an ensemble of different universes that had a variety of different laws and constants and parameters and that we just happened to be in the lucky universe where they were all just right.

Well, that turns out to be a very unpersuasive counterargument to the original theistic argument because it turns out that the universe-generating mechanisms that are necessary to make the concept of the multiverse plausible in the first place themselves

have to be exquisitely finely tuned.

That is the universe-generating mechanisms that would be spitting out the different universes that allow the atheist or materialist to portray our universe as the winner of a kind of giant cosmic lottery.

I think we might actually have a TikTok coming up when someone tries to appear.

But that's a very good example of a theistic argument, a materialist counterargument, where the theistic counterargument to the counter is a lot better than the counterargument.

At the end of the day, your multiverse itself requires prior fine-tuning, then you're right back to where you started, which is grounds for a fine-tuner, for believing in a fine-tuner or intelligent designer.

So I think that's a reversal of what he's claiming.

It's interesting in the Summa Theologiae, Thomas will sometimes come up with as many as 12 arguments that he wishes to respond to.

As you know, when it comes to God's existence, he can only think of two, namely the problem of evil and the idea that the God hypothesis is superfluous.

which isn't really an argument against God.