Samuel Varg interviews Kenneth Miller

While searching for the source of this cartoon, I ran across the website of Samuel Varg, a Swedish magician and skeptic. Mr. Varg has posted an interview with Kenneth Miller on YouTube and promises interviews with Candida Moss and John Safran.

Mr. Varg and his colleague Anders Hesselbom were unusually well prepared. Professor Miller, in turn, was an excellent spokesperson for theistic evolution, though I had to take issue with his claim that the universe is “overflowing” with the possibility for life. His position seems to me to be very close to deism, but you can listen to the interview and decide for yourself.

Professor Miller testified in the Kitzmiller trial and probably needs no introduction to PT readers. Candida Moss is a Professor of New Testament at Notre Dame and is the author of The Myth of Persecution, a book that attempts to debunk the conceit that the early Christians were persecuted more or less continuously. John Safran is a documentary filmmaker noted for the movie John Safran versus God.

I asked Mr. Varg a bit about himself, and he told me

You want my background? OK. I’m a Swedish guy, and I’m 31 years old. When I was around 17, I became involved in creationism and bought that whole concept of this black-and-white worldview with evolution as a big lie. Around 20 I started to look into the actual debate and wanted to know “the enemy,” so to speak. So I started to read up on evolution and realized that I had been wrong. So around the age of 22-23 I made a big turnaround, and since then I have been a big promoter of the science of evolution. I also got very interested in why I was able to fool myself and buy this big fat lie of creationism, so I started to look into deception. I always had a big interest in magic, but this really sparked my interest. So now I work as a full-time magician and have seminars about this kind of stuff.

That’s me in a nutshell.