Stephen Meyer: Did Belief in God Make Modern Science Possible?

Intelligent Design the Future

Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

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

4 • 993 Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this ID The Future, philosopher of science Dr. Stephen Meyer sits down with Praxis Circle’s Doug Monroe to offer insights into the intersection of science, philosophy, and religion. In this section of a multi-part interview, Dr. Meyer begins by discussing the nature of information. He explains the difference between mathematical information, or Shannon information, and specified information, a more meaningful type of information that conveys the quality of the content, not just the quantity of it. Dr. Meyer then turns to the theistic assumptions that fueled the scientific revolution. Why did modern science begin where and when it did? What was the spark that ignited that famous flowering of human scientific thought? Dr. Meyer has answers. Source

Transcript

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0:00.0	ID The Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
0:10.0	Welcome to ID the Future. I'm Andrew McDermott.
0:15.0	Today, Philosopher of Science, Dr. Stephen Meyer, sits down with Praxis Circles Doug Monroe to offer insights into the intersection of science, philosophy, and religion.
0:26.6	In this section of a multi-part interview, Dr. Meyer begins by discussing the nature of information.
0:32.6	He explains the difference between mathematical information, or Shannon information, and a more meaningful
0:38.8	type of information called specified information. Dr. Meyer then turns to the theistic assumptions
0:45.0	that fueled the scientific revolution. Why did modern science begin where and when it did?
0:52.0	What was the spark that ignited that famous period in human learning in history?
0:57.0	Dr. Meyer has answers.
0:59.1	The episode concludes with Dr. Meyer explaining why he's bullish about the Intelligent Design
1:04.2	Research Program, and he offers some examples of his reasons for confidence and optimism.
1:10.6	Let's join host Doug Monroe now with his guest, Dr. Stephen Meyer.
1:16.1	This is the thing that really struck me down in Dallas, which you had written about,
1:23.6	but, you know, sometimes it has to smack you in the face.
1:26.5	And that's this idea of information.
1:28.3	And you were very attuned to that as a young man, apparently.
1:33.3	So what is information to a scientist and how does it trace us to the mind?
1:42.3	Maybe the best way to get into it is to distinguish a couple different kinds or definitions of information.
1:50.0	There's a mathematical theory of information that was developed by the computer scientists and mathematician Claude Shannon,
1:58.0	the MIT scientists in the late 1940s. Shannon's idea was that information
2:05.6	is related to the reduction of uncertainty. If something informs you of something,
2:10.2	it's reducing your uncertainty about something. So if you have a coin and you flip it,
	...

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