Michael Huemer, philosopher at U.C. Boulder, joins me for a wide-ranging discussion of arguments for and against the existence of God, with special focus on his new argument for atheism: the impossibility of an infinite God. Check out Mike’s book, Knowledge, Value, and Reality: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy.
Video of this interview is available on YouTube.
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EPISODE CHAPTERS:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:42 Huemer’s research on consciousness
00:05:42 Could LLMs be conscious?
00:08:11 Physicalism and consciousness
00:14:36 Why physicalism became so popular
00:17:16 Metaphysics and scientific evidence
00:21:01 Could God be empirically detected?
00:23:37 Why Huemer is agnostic
00:25:48 Philip Goff’s limited God
00:27:23 Can a limited God explain evil?
00:36:03 Divine psychology and skeptical theism
00:38:37 Can theism make predictions?
00:46:54 Scientific confirmation and theistic arguments
00:51:59 Which theistic arguments fail?
00:53:14 The ontological argument
00:58:06 The modal ontological argument
01:01:03 Necessary beings and modal intuitions
01:07:23 The Kalam cosmological argument
01:08:54 Could time have a beginning?
01:12:22 Can God create time?
01:18:22 Cosmology and the Big Bang
01:23:48 Actual and potential infinities
01:26:00 Huemer’s new argument for atheism
01:29:28 Divine infinity and omniscience
