Today we have Michael Shermer and Philip Goff on the podcast. Michael is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers Why People Believe Weird Things, The Believing Brain, and Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality & Utopia. Goff is an associate professor in philosophy at Central European University in Budapest. His main research focus is trying to explain how the brain produces consciousness. His first book, which was published by Oxford University Press, is called Consciousness and Fundamental Reality. Goff is currently working on a book on consciousness aimed at a general audience.

In this episode we cover the following topics:

• Is reasoning the ultimate route to truth?
• What if human rational faculties can’t comprehend the ultimates realities of existence?
• Will the hard problem of consciousness ever be solved?
• Panpsychism as a scientific alternative for explaining consciousness
• The latest neuroscience of consciousness and its implications for understanding the hard problem of consciousness
• The insights that can be gleaned through understanding subjective experience
• Will we ever discover if free will exists?
• To what extent can our understanding of cognitive neuroscience and genetics can elucidate the extent of our free will?
• The possibility for “free won’t”
• Can science ever solve the mystery of the existence of God?
• How can the science of consciousness, free-will, and God help alleviate fundamental existential concerns of humanity?

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