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Joe Rogan’s first public encounter with a Christian intellectual was as fascinating as you might expect, and is a much-watch for every believer.

In a recent conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience, America’s most popular podcast host had his first public encounter with a Christian intellectual heavyweight—in the form of geologist, philosopher of science and intelligent design proponent Dr. Stephen C. Meyer.

Rogan’s podcast is enormously popular. On YouTube, it has over accumulated over 15 million subscribers and over three billion views. Rogan’s full podcast episodes, hosted exclusively on Spotify, reportedly received 190 million downloads monthly in 2019 or around 11 million per episode.

For context, in 2021, the most popular mainstream media show in the USA was Tucker Carlson Tonight, with a viewership of 3.24 million per episode—less than a third of what Rogan receives. Fox News Primetime receives 2.37 million views, while CNN Primetime is watched by an average of just 822,000 people.

In Australia, the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup Semi Final, broadcast on the Seven Network, had 7.13 million viewers—the highest-rated broadcast in Australia since Oztam ratings began.

Rogan is known for his willingness to have difficult—and often unpopular—conversations and host controversial guests, but until his discussion with Dr. Meyer, Rogan had never engaged with a Christian intellectual or apologist.

Introducing Dr. Stephen C. Meyer

After graduating college with a degree in physics and earth science, Meyer moved to the United Kingdom to study the history and philosophy of science—ultimately graduating with both an M.Phil and PhD from the University of Cambridge, one of the world’s most prestigious educational institutions.

Known as a capable thinker in his field and an excellent communicator, Meyer has debated a number of top atheists, including Oxford University’s Professor Peter Atkins, and the director of The Skeptics Society, Michael Shermer.

Meyer is best known for his controversial, but robust, criticism of the Darwinian theory of macro-evolution and the naturalistic account of the origins of life. His articles on the topic have been published in a range of journals, including the highly prestigious peer-reviewed Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies and the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington—although his contributions have not always been received without controversy by the scientific establishment.

In Meyer’s three seminal books—Signature in the Cell (2009), Darwin’s Doubt (2014), and The Return of the God Hypothesis (2021)—he cumulatively makes the case for intelligent design, provides a critique of macro-evolutionary theory, and argues for theism as the best explanation for the origins of the universe.

As a formidable intellect and a capable (if controversial) scholar, Dr. Meyer was an excellent choice to introduce Rogan to the world of Christian intellectual thought.

 

Although I encourage you to listen to the entire conversation, after listening to the three-hour-long podcast, I thought it would be helpful to share four of my key takeaways.

1. The Evidence for God is Compelling

Whether or not one believes in Christian truth claims or has personally committed their life to Jesus’ service, I don’t think anyone can deny that the evidence for God is compelling.

However, as Rogan himself demonstrated in his conversation with Meyer, one can always find a way out of the logical conclusion that God exists—you just need to be creative enough.

I think God has orchestrated this deliberately. He won’t provide so much evidence that people are compelled to believe in him. He will always provide a “way out”, so to speak. It is those that seek God who find Him.

On the other hand, He does provide enough evidence to ensure that we are “without excuse” (Romans 1:20-21 NIV). In other words, for someone who is genuinely seeking the truth, the evidence for God is as convincing as it needs to be.

2. Being in a Minority Doesn’t Make You Wrong

In the intellectual world, Christians will often be in the minority and Christian viewpoints will rarely be accepted by the secular establishment. But that does not mean that we are wrong.

We are often implicitly led to believe that fields like science and philosophy are democratic and that a simple majority decide what is factual or true.

But this is simply not the case. It gives human reason far too much credit.

As Meyer points out to Rogan in his interview, all science is provisional. In fact, all major scientific advances were at some point an obscure hypothesis in the mind of an individual or small group of scientists.

We also need to remember that, in many ways, humans’ natural inclinations are hardened to the truth about God (Romans 1:18). As a result, we cannot expect people to come to accept Christian truth claims through intellect alone. In fact, Scripture indicates that intellectualism, according to the standards of the world, can be a major stumbling block to the truth (1 Corinthians 1:26-31).

Just because more people hold to a view doesn’t mean that it is necessarily true. And just because fewer people hold to a position doesn’t mean that it is necessarily false.

We need to assess arguments on their merits, not on their popularity.

3. Christians Can Be Smart

Christians can be, and have every reason to be, intellectually engaged. Some of the greatest thinkers and scientists down through history have been motivated by their Christian faith.

The list is extensive:

• Paul of Tarsus (first century AD).
• Athanasius of Alexandria (c. AD 296–373).
• Ambrose of Milan (c. 340–397).
• Augustine of Hippo (354–430).
• Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109).
• Peter Abelard (1079–1142).
• Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274).
• Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464).
• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543).
• Galileo Galilei (1564 to 1642).
• Johannes Kepler (1571–1630).
• René Descartes (1596–1650).
• Blaise Pascal (1623–1662).
• Robert Boyle (1627–1691).
• Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971).
• S. Lewis (1898–1963).
• Alvin Plantinga (1932–present).
• Richard Swinburne (1934–present).
• Peter Van Inwagen (1942–present).
• John C. Lennox (1943–present).
• Francis Collins (1950–present).
• And many, many more.

Anyone who says to you that Christianity is fundamentally anti-intellectual is lying to you.

Christians should not be scared of engaging intellectually in fields like science, philosophy, history or politics. If what we believe is in fact true, we have nothing to fear. Intellectual exploration in these fields can only bring God greater glory and prompt us to worship Him even more (Psalm 19:1). As Augustine of Hippo so appropriately put it, “All truth is God’s truth”.

Needless to say, we are not all called to primarily serve God with our intellect. However, we are all called to love God with our whole minds (Matthew 22:37). As Christians, we should be excited about God’s world—and we should always be ready to give a justification for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15).

4. It’s Okay to Say ‘I Don’t Know’

Christians should never let knowledge of the truth puff us up (1 Corinthians 8:1) or make us arrogant. We should be ever humble and teachable in our conversations with unbelievers, not pretending we have it all worked out or have all the answers. We don’t!

In my opinion, Dr. Meyer exemplified this in the conversational, non-confrontational posture he adopted throughout the interview with Rogan.

In a world of hyper-opinionated TikTok influencers—the hoard of “experts” sharing their sub-seventeen-second intellectual gems with the world on a near-hourly basis—it was refreshing to see an intellectual giant like Meyer acknowledge the limitations of his own knowledge in a number of fields.

As Meyer pointed out, we rarely demand absolute empirical certainty in our everyday lives—so why should we demand it when we are talking about the truth claims of Christianity?

In your conversations with non-believers, it is okay to say that you don’t know—or to flag that the conversation is veering into a field over which you don’t have a good grasp. Most people will understand.

And as Dr. William Lane Craig points out in his book Reasonable Faith, Christians often need to differentiate between “knowing” and “showing” our faith to be true.

Many of us are convinced of Christian truth (i.e., we know it to be true) based, at least in part, on the internal evidence of the Holy Spirit working through God’s Word—or because of certain spiritual experiences. However, as Rogan’s scepticism towards Meyer’s testimony of his personal spiritual experience demonstrated, this aspect of our faith is rarely compelling to non-believers.

Accordingly, Meyer flagged that personal experience is not an argument he would typically use to demonstrate to a non-believer that God exists or that Christianity is true. Because of the subjective nature of personal experiences, such an approach is rarely effective.

In contrast to knowing, “showing” something to be true often requires one to resort to a more empirical or objective line of reasoning—sometimes different from how we were personally convinced of the truth of Christianity.

It is important to remember this distinction when we find ourselves providing a defence of our faith to non-believers.

More Good Content From Academic Christians

It is encouraging to see gifted, thoughtful and humble Christians like Dr. Meyer being provided with a platform to speak to a wider secular audience. May we as believers find encouragement and instruction from conversations like this—and may we continue pray that God uses such content to challenge and convict non-believers.

I encourage you to check out the full conversation on Spotify if you are interested.

I would also encourage you to check out some other recent high-profile interviews along a similar vein to this one—for example, the conversation between Mikhaila Peterson and Jon McCray (apologist and Christian YouTuber at Whaddo You Meme?); Jordan Peterson’s interviews with writer Eric Metaxas and Indian philosopher Vishal Mangalwadi (author of The Book That Made Your World); and Ben Shapiro’s episodes featuring the likes of analytic philosopher Dr William Lane Craig and pastor Dr John MacArthur.

 

These Christians don’t all agree with one another on points of theology (far from it), but they all make articulate, gracious and thoughtful cases for the Christian faith. And each, in my humble opinion, makes a positive contribution to public discourse.