Egnor vs. Shermer: God, Science, and the Search for Truth

Intelligent Design the Future

Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

Society & Culture, Philosophy, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science

4.3 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2026

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

ID The Future listeners now get to enjoy two episode a month from our sister podcast Mind Matters News, a production of the Discovery Institute’s Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. The Mind Matters News podcast features interviews from experts in computing, engineering, science, and philosophy who bring sanity to the conversation about natural and artificial intelligence. And although the Mind Matters News podcast will not often explicitly discuss intelligent design, it regularly explores the nature of intelligence, the origin of information, and the things that make us uniquely human, concepts that are central to the theory of intelligent design. On this episode of Mind Matters News, host and neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor welcomes Michael Shermer, historian of science and founder of Skeptic magazine, to discuss Shermer's new book Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters. The conversation quickly evolves into a deep philosophical debate between Egnor and Shermer over whether truths about morality and the universe are created by humans or discovered as objective features of reality.

Source

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to ID the Future.
0:01.7	I'm Andrew McDermott.
0:03.5	Today's episode comes to us from our sister podcast, Mind Matters News,
0:08.1	a production of the Discovery Institute's Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.
0:14.0	You can learn more about the show and access other episodes at mindmatters.a.I.
0:29.1	Fantastic. episodes at mind matters.a.ai. Thank you for joining us on Mind Matters News today. This is Mike Egnor. I have the pleasure and privilege of having Michael Shermer join us. Mike is a historian of
0:35.3	science, the founder of Skeptic Magazine, and I believe the Skeptic Society,
0:40.3	and he's published widely on skeptical issues, and he has a new book out called Truth.
0:47.7	And I'd like to ask Mike to talk about what's in the book and what's on his mind.
0:53.6	So welcome, Michael.
0:54.9	Oh, well, thanks.
0:55.5	Thanks for having me.
0:56.3	Yes, and nice to see you again.
0:57.4	We were just in person in Scottsdale, I think it was.
1:01.1	Right, right, right.
1:02.8	And the weather here in the Northeast isn't that much better now than it was in Scottsdale.
1:06.9	Oh, well, sorry to hear that.
1:07.9	I don't want to tell you what my days like here in Santa Barbara. I already went for a bike ride this morning and short sleeves and shirt and shorts.
1:15.3	Well, I'm looking at snow and temperature in the 30s.
1:18.9	Oh, boy. Okay. All right.
1:21.3	So welcome, Michael. So your new book is entitled Truth. Could you tell us a bit about it? Yeah, here it is. Look at that cover.
1:29.6	I just got my copies in a case of them today, which is always kind of fun. Well, so this is sort of a
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.