The Eric Metaxas Show - #91 - Stephen Meyer

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric talks with Stephen Meyer about his new documentary The Story Of Everything, the Big Bang, fine tuning, the digital code inside the cell, and why modern science keeps pointing beyond materialism to God. Later, Eric speaks with Gerson Moreno Riano about Christian education, truth, America’s founding, and the Cornerstone Core, then wraps with Bill Armour on gold, the dollar, and why many families are rethinking financial security. Subscribe for clips from The Eric Metaxas Show to hear politics and culture from a Christian perspective.

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Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the program. If you know anything about me, you know that I care about, oh, I don't know, call it science. Call about the intersection of science and faith. And as far as I'm concerned, one of the leading voices in that world today is my friend, Dr. Stephen Meyer, who is out with a new documentary film called The Story of Everything. Dr. Stephen Meyer, welcome back. Yes.

Great to be with you, Eric. Not that our title is pretentious, but it is a big story. No, no, no, no. It's not pretenanted. It's a great title. It's a perfect title. It's the story of everything. It's a documentary film.

And people who follow me know, I just, I love this stuff. And I was so thrilled to hear that you were making a film. Some people know your recent book, The Return of the God Hypothesis. And you and I have talked about this privately a lot. It's very, very exciting. Obviously, I write about it in my own book as atheism dead. Something is happening where the world of science is more and more and more dramatically pointing to God.

And I think the only question is, how do we get this news out so that everybody knows the good news? Because it's good news, but a lot of people are just not aware of it. And your film, the story of everything, goes a long way toward that. Well, and you spotlighted that beautifully in your op-ed, was it 2014, the one that got an unprecedented response at the Wall Street Journal highlighting one of the things that we talk about in the film, which is the

evidence of the fine-tuning of the basic laws and constants of physics and the basic parameters of physics that make life possible. And you did a great job in that op-ed explaining that and spotlighting that. And that story has only gotten richer and deeper as people

on the materialist, atheist, agnostic side of the worldview divide have tried to explain the exquisite fine-tuning, the improbable arrangement of all these parameters within very narrow tolerances. They've tried to explain that as the consequence of a multiverse rather than the obvious explanation that if things are fine-tuned, it's probably because there was a fine-tuner. So we take that on in the film.

We show that even if the multiverse is true, it presupposes other prior fine-tuning in order to generate an ensemble of new universes. So you never really got. I think you lost some people there, Stephen Meyer, because this is so, I mean, honestly, I find the whole thing comical because what we're talking about is so preposterous. There are people who, you know, you say, I flipped the quarter and it landed heads a thousand times in a row, but I think it's just a coincidence. It can happen.

Any human being with a brain would say, you're. you have a problem with pattern recognition. If you think that could just happen, something's very, very wrong. Maybe you're dealing with the weighted coin, right? Yeah. Maybe there's something going on here. You better investigate it because that can't happen.

And there are people effectively saying that, yeah, the universe just, you know, created itself. And I guess that could just happen. And the more we know from science, the more we can now see how impossible it is for that to happen. I mean, years and years ago, anything's possible because we didn't know. But now that we know, we look into what's in a cell, you wrote a book on this, I mean, it's so complex, it's so obvious that there is a designer, that there's a coder.

You have to reckon with that. And I think there are people who just, like children, they just refuse to reckon with it. So they come up with something kooky like a multiverse theory and they move on because they don't want to deal with it. But what you do and what I try to do, we try to hold their feet to the fire and say, sorry, people really want answers here. There's a lot of new information. You need to deal with this new information. Right. You could call it a scientific and metaphysical accounting.

We're doing an audit here on some of these explanations. But yeah, sorry to lose people by diving right into this. the extremity on the deep end on this, but maybe I should just explain that the film, and you address this in your book, I address this in Return of the God hypothesis. The film looks at three big discoveries in recent science that have obvious to many theistic implications.

The first is that the universe is best we can tell how to beginning, the material universe of matter, space, time, and energy, such that whatever caused the universe can't be matter, because it's matter that comes into existence at the beginning. So the new discovery does not lend itself to a materialistic explanation. The second discovery is the one we've been talking about, the discovery that the basic parameters of physics are exquisitely finely tuned. That means they fall within very narrow ranges or outside of which,

or tolerances, outside of which life and even basic chemistry in the universe would be impossible. and the collective improbability of those is minuscule. It's infinitesimally small of all of those parameters falling in the just right zone. So you have physicists now talking about us living in a fortunate universe or a Goldilocks universe where the mass of the elementary particles is not too heavy, not too light, the forces of gravitation and electromagnetism, not too strong, not too weak, the expansion rate of the universe and the cosmological force push. the universe out, not too strong, not too weak. All these things fall in the sweet spot.

And one of the first scientists who discovered this was a man named Sir Fred Hoyle, who was a staunch scientific atheist, and he ended up changing his worldview as a result of his own discovery of the fine-tuning and was quoted as saying, a common-sense interpretation of the evidence suggested a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics to make life possible. So there you get the monkeys into the origins discussion. I thought he said physics, biology. and chemistry. Yeah, exactly right. Physics and chemistry. I think yeah, is exactly right. He said there's no blind forces in nature to speak.

He was himself flabbergasted by this. And as you say, he starts out as a materialist, atheist. But over the decades, more and more and more, the evidence piles up. And he's an honest scientist. Right. So he is actually trying to deal with this. But of course, there are many scientists that they're made so uncomfortable by the implications.

I mean, in the chapter, I write about the big bang. I find it funny that Einstein, you know, the greatest scientist outside of, you know, Maxwell and Newton, that he was made uncomfortable by the implications of his equations, the idea of an expanding universe, a universe with the beginning. If Einstein was made uncomfortable by this and was willing to sweep it under the rug, I guess we shouldn't be so surprised that lesser scientists are willing to do that if they can. Have continued to do that right up to the present. but we tell the story of Einstein's reversal in the film, and we've got some wonderful footage of his aha moment when he's urged by the Cambridge physicist Sir Arthur Eddington to get with the program and go out to California

and see what Edwin Hubble has discovered of the galaxies receding away from us in all quadrants of the night sky, suggesting an expanding universe outward from the beginning. And we've got the newsreel footage of Einstein poking his eye into the eye piece of the telescope with Hubble in the background puffing on his pipe. 1931. Two weeks later, Einstein goes to the New York Times, does an interview and says that Hubble and his colleague Hummison have shown that he was wrong, that the universe is dynamic,

is expanding, it was not static, therefore it must have had a beginning. And so it's just a fascinating story of someone who had a strong presupposition that the universe must be static, eternal, and therefore in no need of an external creator. So he presupposed the universe was eternal and had always been here. And his own equations challenged that. He then fiddled with his equations, just tried to obscure that implication, but then was later decisively refuted by the empirical evidence by the scientific evidence of the expanding universe.

Reality called him on the carpet, as reality will do, eventually. Well, and to his great credit, he said the three hardest words to say in the English language, I was wrong. So he admitted his mistake. It was great.

Yeah, yeah. Well, God bless him for finally doing it. I mean, when we talk about the Big Bang, it's an interesting thing, Stephen, because I think most of us of our age, whatever, we take the Big Bang for granted. In our lifetime, people have been talking about the Big Bang. And we forget how the implications of the Big Bang, when the idea first came up, were truly horrifying to materialists. Because, and you said at the beginning of

this segment, if the material world, the world that we know of time and space can be shown by science to have had a moment of beginning, that's the ultimate miracle. I mean, that makes parting red sea. Yeah, I like to say there's no matter left over before that or independent of that. We really should say independent of that because time itself begins. So there's no matter independent of that to do the causing. So you can't have a materialistic explanation. And that's what was so disturbing. That's why it got called the Big Bang, by the way, is Fred Hoyle didn't like the idea. He thought it smacked too much of the Genesis 1-1 account in the beginning God created. And so he gave it a pejorative label that was meant to kind of stigmatize it. And the label

stuck. It's now the name of the theory. And ultimately, Hoyle, for other reasons, came around to a theistic-friendly view with his discovery of the fine-tuning. Folks, before we go, if you care about Israel, if you love Israel, if you love the people of Israel, you know that they're enduring great, hard chips right now. Well, the folks at Magin David Adom, that's the emergency system that they go with their ambulances and help out these people. If you want to help them, please visit savinglifeisrael.org, savinglifeisrael.org. Welcome back talking to Dr. Stephen Meyer, author of many great books. And right now, he is the man behind a new documentary film called The Story of Everything. Stephen, how can folks see this film?

I am so excited about this film. How can folks actually see it? I think you for asking the film will debut in theaters across the country on April 30th. There are over 500 theaters that have already signed up to take it, and we have an arrangement with our distributor, the Fathom Company, for up to 1,000 theaters. So if folks find that it's not airing in their or being shown in their area,

they should get in touch. They can contact us at Discovery Institute and share another theater that they would like to see, take on the film. The Fathom people will go to work and make that happen. But in any case, it's out in theaters. It's going to be widely viewed. And then it will be out following its theatrical run

on multiple digital platforms. So keep an eye out for that. Well, fantastic. And I want to know more. about what's in it, but before I let you tell me, I keep saying, and we've had this conversation, we need to educate Christians about this stuff. Part of the problem is that just because this is true, if nobody knows it's true, it might as well not be true. So science is pointing to God. It's incredibly dramatically clear, but most people just don't know about it. And so, folks,

I beg you, drag everyone you know to a theater to see this film. Tell everyone you know. It is vital. This is how revival happens. People start thinking differently and start being open for the first time to like, you know what? I never thought of that before. I didn't even consider that before. This is part of how that happens.

We have had so many conversations like that, Eric, where people, even people of faith who are surprised that there's, that someone like me, is interested in science or that science is important to understanding the evidential basis for belief in God, thinking that, well, we don't need evidence. We just need faith. But we send our young people off to colleges and they encounter what we call the other story of reality. That's what we've talked about the story of everything. There are two stories. There's the materialistic story that says that matter is eternal and self-organizing and self-creating. And then the other story is that there was an external creator behind the material universe. And those two stories have been in contrast and in conflict, even going back to the ancient Greeks. And what's exciting is that

we live in a time when the scientific evidence is pointing decisively in favor of the theistic story, that there is a purposive, intelligent creator behind the universe who is responsible for the origin of the universe. It's beautiful, finely tuned structure. And the third thing that we we address in the film that we haven't talked about yet is the inner workings of a living cell, that inside cells were finding an exquisite realm of digital nanotechnology. When did you publish your book on that? My first book was called Signature in the Cell, and it was all about the evidence for intelligent design at the foundation of life inside the living cell, the digital code that's

stored in the DNA molecule, and the little tiny miniature machines that the digital code provides instructions for building. It's absolutely fascinating what's going on inside life the furthest thing away from what people thought in Darwin's time, the cell was a homogeneous globule of undifferentiated protoplasm, said one of Darwin's colleagues, Thomas Henry Huxley. In the 19th century, we thought it would be pretty easy to explain the origin of life from materialistic chemical processes. No longer, we've got to explain the origin of information, which we know is the product of an intelligence or a mind. And so that's the third act in the film, looking at the discoveries of modern biology. And we take people from way out in space visually

to deep inside the cell. There's 400 visual effects in the film. It's just a gorgeous cinematography and animation. And it really allows people to experience the evidence we're talking about. I'm so excited about the quality of the filmmaking, I have to say, and that's why, ladies and gentlemen, you've got to drag people to see this.

This is game-changing stuff. This is game-changing stuff. And what year was it that your book's signature of the cell came out? That came out in 2009, and then Darwin's doubt was 2013. You and I did Socrates in the city about that in Washington, D.C. It's a ton of fun. And then my last book is Return of the God Hypothesis, and this film is the film adaptation of that.

third book. Right. And I should mention, too, if people, I should have said when you asked before, if people in their own towns are not finding a theater nearby that's planning on showing the story of everything, April 30th, you can contact the theater directly, send a market signal and say, we would like to see this, better yet, say, we would like to come with friends to see this, and the theaters will respond by getting in touch with their parent company, whether that's regal or AMC or whatever. Okay. All right. So this is the story of every, thing. Very exciting new documentary. We'll be right back with Dr. Stephen Meyer. I don't like alarmism. I don't like fear-mongering. I especially don't like people who profit from panic. But I do believe in

telling the truth, especially when the markets are reminding us how fragile things are. Over the last few weeks, we've all watched the volatility, stock swinging, confidence-shaking, long-standing assumptions, suddenly looking less solid. Many economists are calling this moment the everything bubble, where nearly every asset class has been inflated at the same time by years of cheap money and reckless global policy. This isn't political, it's not partisan, it's math. And when confidence erodes, history shows us what tends to happen next. That's why I've taken time to educate myself on one of the oldest ways people have protected wealth during uncertainty. Physical gold and silver. I've partnered with Genesis Gold Group, a faith-based, values-driven company offering

clear information, no hype, no pressure. They've put together a free financial survival report explaining what's happening why multiple markets can fall together and what prudent steps families can consider now. I encourage you to read it and decide for yourself. Please go to metaxusgoldir.com. That's metaxusgoldir.ira.com. You don't need to panic, but you do need to be informed in times like these. Wisdom matters more than optimism. Welcome back talking to Dr. Stephen Meyer. The new film is The Story of Everything. Now, Stephen, it's kind of funny because there are many Christians that get themselves very, they're very hidebound in terms of their feelings about science. And the minute you're talking

about the big bang or, you know, billions of years, they get uncomfortable. And I think that's part of the problem in a way that they're, they're not so interested as you are in, in what is. They already have some ideas in the same way that the materialist, secularists, have some ideas. And there's an orthodoxy there and it makes them uncomfortable to depart from it. Yeah, let me speak to that. There's a big misunderstanding about the Big Bang among a lot of Christian people. Many people think that the scientists are saying that the Big Bang caused the universe to come into existence as if it's an alternative theory to the God hypothesis. But the Big Bang is not the first cause. The Big Bang is the first effect. And it requires a cause outside of matter,

space, time, and energy, which means that it's very theistic friendly. It's pointing to the need for an external creator. So in a way, it's the ultimate creationist theory. We don't get into the whole question of the age of the earth or the age of the universe in the film. Most cosmologists date the Big Bang a very long time ago. My own personal view is that the Bible does not actually teach a young earth. When you get to the day four account in creation, you find that either the sun and the moon are created, the heavenly bodies here that created are caused to appear. And the text tells us that they're given as markers of the days, the years, and the seasons. So we've had three days of creation prior to that with no human time markers. We mark time or measure time with the

movement of the sun across the ecliptic. That's a day. And if you don't have the sun yet, if it's either not visible to us in day four or hasn't yet been created, we don't have a way of marking time the way we mark time today in the previous days of creation and arguably through the whole series of days of creation. So it's the idea that it was, I think that's just a cautionary note as we read the text. If we read it carefully, we read it literally, it's telling us we should be careful not to impute God's notion of time onto our time, that the two might be different. And so I've always thought it was completely legitimate to look to the science, to find, and in fact, important to look to the science to be able to figure out questions about age. But the film itself

takes an age neutral position. It doesn't get into that. And there are people who hold to a young earth and young universe who also think there's powerful evidence for the beginning of the universe, much of the same evidence that we cite. So this shouldn't rankle people. But the key thing is the Big Bang is not a causal theory. It doesn't replace the need for the God hypothesis. It supports it. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology. Learn more at about Amazon.ca. No question about that in my mind, but there's some people that they seem willing to die.

on this hill alone, that they are just, you know, they act as though if you do not agree with them on that, it's like saying, I don't believe in the bodily resurrection. And that's a very dangerous place to be because we have to have discernment. I mean, the scripture says, you know, that Jesus says, I am the door. And you can imagine somebody saying, well, it says he says he's the door. Literally, it must mean he is the door. And you'd say, well, no. In this case, we have to read it in context. Right. And we have to be careful if we want the true meaning of what the scripture says. There's a wonderful book on the subject written by our friend John Lennox called Seven Days that Divide the World. There's very careful biblical exegesis. Nobody has a higher view of scripture than Lennox.

And he shows that we need to be careful. The biblical text does not teach an old earth. It doesn't teach a young earth. But it teaches a sequence of creative events by reference to God's in a time period that's indeterminate from a human point of view because we don't have the time mark. occurs when the days of creation are established. So we need to allow God to, you know, it says in the New Testament in one of Peter's epistles that a day in the side of the Lord is like a thousand years. So there's a, a biblical teaching of the time relativity of God's time and our time. His time may not be our time. So we just got to be careful not to impute our ideas. It happens that I, in addition to holding that the earth is young, I think humans were relatively recently created. So I have an old earth, recent humans view, kind of a hybrid view in this controversy. But again, that is not the issue.

The issue is not how long ago God created. The issue is whether or not we can tell from the scientific evidence, as it says in Romans 1, from the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities is eternal power and divine nature, sometimes translated wisdom, are clearly seen from the things that are made. And what we examine in the film are some of the awesome things that have been made. The universe is finally to instructure and especially the inner workings of the cell. If you've got digital code inside the cell, Bill Gates says it's like a software program, but much more complex than any we've ever created.

We know software comes from programmers. The presence of software in life points to a master programmer for living systems. We're going to have to leave it there. Thanks for having me, Eric. Hey, folks, before we get back to our guests, I just want to say a lot of people donate when there's a headline, but MDA, Magan David Adom, doesn't get to slow down when the news cycle moves on. is Israel's national EMS system.

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