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

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