Schweizer Monat

Science Tells You How to Live, Not God | with Michael Shermer

Donnerstag, 27. August 2026 · 1 h 24

MP3

Shownotes

Michael Shermer and Alex Buxeda get into where morality actually comes from, and why "God did it" doesn't explain a thing.
From the Bible and abortion to evolution, markets, tolerance and demographic collapse, they make the case that ethics comes from human nature, not sacred books.
Skeptic Magazine: skeptic.com
Michael Shermer's books: michaelshermer.com/books

– Teaser: "God did it" isn't an explanation

– Can you identify as a horse? The borders of sex & species

– The Bible's morality vs. the morality we actually live by

– Abortion isn't actually in the Bible

– The Bible as a "wiki" & why Shermer quit theology

– Scripture that evolved: variation, selection & the roots of charity

– The ultimate decentering: from Copernicus to Darwin

– Religion got there first: morality as game theory

– The Leviathan, the eye in the sky & the Wild West

– Deriving an "ought" from an "is" & the naturalistic fallacy

– Hitting rock bottom: Gödel & the universe that just exists

– Stephen Meyer & why theology always chases the science

– God of the gaps: dark matter, James Webb & bad explanations

– Wokeness as a Trojan horse of the Enlightenment

– Trans rights, conflicting rights & classical liberalism

– You can't change sex: gametes, biology & six fingers

– Does fitness decide morality? "What if the Nazis won?"

– The march to democracy & the invention of "genocide"

– Stein's Law & the great fertility reversal

– Polygamy, the spandrel of male desire & memes vs. genes

– Bottom-up innovation, broken windows & time preference

– Trust, the marshmallow test & the roots of GDP

– Gold, Bitcoin & liquidity across time

– Stocks: a bet on human ingenuity

– The Mag Seven & what comes after the iPhone

– David Deutsch: to predict the future is to build it

– Nothing is impossible except what physics forbids

– The darkness: is the Enlightenment even fit to survive?

– Leaving Spain for Switzerland & the "effective" fertility rate

– Butterfly or cockroach? Entropy vs. the Enlightenment

– Immigration done right & "A Few Good Men"

– The welfare state & why bureaucracies never shrink

– Status, not money, is what drives people to have kids

– "Collapsing Is A Not": the essay & morality as fitness

– Trust is a Law of Nature
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