Preaching on Newport Beach - Sye TenBruggencate

[RasheemH]

Sye made that dude look like a fool xD love it

[HamdiBosni]

It's a sin to lie, right? Well, then he shouldn't be claiming that the Muslims who oppose flying planes into buildings are going against the Qur'an. He shouldn't be telling lies like that. The Qur'an talks about fighting the enemy in a war context, it's a reference to an historical situation with the pagan Arabs of that time who fought the Muslims. It's like saying that Christianity teaches that every infidel should be killed since Elijah killed the priests of Baal.

[guendoloena1]

that sye guy just rambles and repeats himself over and over

[RasheemH]

@guendoloena1 Why don't you debate him then :-P commenting on a video, in a channel that doesn't belong to him won't do any good.

[guendoloena1]

@RasheemH thats fair, whats his channel?

[RasheemH]

@guendoloena1 youtube.com/user/ProofThatGodE­xists

[Vainslain]

Anytime these atheists reason it proves they are relying on the God who give them reason to think. I know because you can't get them from molecules or atoms. trying to say so means they attribute concepts and abstraction to physical matter. How did chemicals have self awareness or even judgement that they are mere chemicals??

[tulips32375]

(cont.) ". . . Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival [Churchland's emphasis]. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost." Journal of Philosophy 84 (October 1987), 548.

[tulips32375]

Atheist physicalist philosopher Patricia Churchland said this, "Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive . . . " cont. . . .

[tulips32375]

And so my question for you is this:

Given naturalism, evolutionary theory, and the relationship between those two, what basis do you have to believe that your cognitive faculties are reliable given the conjunction between naturalism and evolution? In other words, if what naturalists claim about reality is true, how can you know *anything* since the very cognitive faculties you use to know them are called into question by the very process they supposedly arose from?"

[Venaloid]

@tulips32375 - // If you can't know things about others with any degree of certainty, whose to say you can know it about yourself.// 1. Because your thoughts are different than your senses. 2. If we accept this point, then you're in the same boat as me: God isn't going to come down and tell you that your brain is messed up or that the Matrix just happened. So you too wouldn't be able to 'know' anything (if I'm understanding you correctly). This is my original, pre-modification argument.

[Venaloid]

@Venaloid - As for evolution: Individuals who are better able to model reality, both in the moment and in the future (validity of senses and validity of thoughts respectively) are going to survive better than ones who, for example, have brains that hallucinate tigers or that add 2 and 2 and get 8.

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - Whose to say false beliefs don't produce survival value? Some cannibalistic tribes believed that eating the brains of your slain enemies makes you stronger. This is the case of a false belief producing survival value. Also, if secular humanism is true and secular humanism supports abortion, then this "true" belief produces no survival value since your genes aren't being passed on to the next generation because you are killing those next generations via abortion.

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - Thus, what promotes survival value doesn't necessarily tell me what is true and in the case of ethics what people *ought* to do, it just tells us what they did or are doing.

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - By the way, that is exactly what is happening now among the indigenous populations in the most secularized countries in Europe. They are aborting their offspring and it's creating a negative replacement rate. Ideas have consequences.

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - You've missed the point. Not only can you not trust your own senses, but the very cognitive faculties you use to interpret sensory data (i.e., your thoughts) are undermined given the conjunction of naturalism and evolutionary theory. You have a worldview that not only *in principle* undermines the intelligibility of all human experience, but one that damns the souls of men.

[tulips32375]

Also, Richard Vitzhum, who wrote a definitive work titled 'Materialism: An Affirmative History and Definition' also commented similarly,

'A revised and modernized materialism concludes from all of this [i.e., what he was arguing for in his book], that all human thought and feeling is the product of a series of unthinking and unfeeling processes originating in the Big Bang.' [pp. 218-219]

[tulips32375]

Modern thinkers such as C.S. Lewis, Victor Reppert, and Alvin Plantinga have developed Darwin's thought (as well as the statements of other unbelievers in this regard) and have convincingly shown that *if* naturalism were true, one couldn't know it were true since the human brain didn't necessarily evolve to create behaviors that code for truth, but for survival value. Thus, your entire epistemology is undermined given naturalism, including the knowledge you think you know about yourself.

[tulips32375]

Modern thinkers such as C.S. Lewis, Victor Reppert, and Alvin Plantinga have developed Darwin's thought (as well as the statements of other unbelievers in this regard) and have convincingly shown that *if* naturalism were true, one couldn't know it were true since the evolutionary development of the human brain didn't necessarily form to create behaviors that code for truth, but for survival value. Thus, your entire epistemology is undermined given naturalism.

[tulips32375]

Darwin worried about the philosophical implications of his biological theory. As noted in the quote below, his concern was whether man’s cognitive, or, belief-producing faculties, which he believed had evolved from the lower animals, could be trusted to produce reliable, true beliefs about reality itself.

[tulips32375]

Charles Darwin said, "With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?” Charles Darwin to W. Graham, July 3, 1881, in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin (1897; repr., Boston: Elibron, 2005), 1:285.

[Venaloid]

@tulips32375 - //Modern thinkers such as C.S. Lewis, Victor Reppert, and Alvin Plantinga have developed Darwin's thought (as well as the statements of other unbelievers in this regard) and have convincingly shown// - Link please? You haven't addressed my rebuttal about survivability intersecting reality. Additionally, if you want to argue that "If you can't know things about others with any degree of certainty, whose to say you can know it about yourself?", then you are no better off than me...

[Venaloid]

@Venaloid ... because you too could be in the Matrix or on drugs, etc. And, sorry to skip around, even if evolutionary theory means that our thoughts and senses don't bring us objective truth, just that which helps us survive, and we had no way of seeing this, so what? If we all perceive cubes as spheres, and they always seem to behave like spheres, who's to say that it ISN'T a sphere? Quite simply, it doesn't matter for any practical purpose if it is actually a cube.

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - First, you don't really believe this (as you admitted earlier), you are just using this to avoid the obvious logical implications of your position; namely, that you can't know anything if what you believe about reality is true. Second, you are admitting that *in principle* your worldview can't account for knowledge. Third, as has been pointed out several times already, this is self-defeating for *your* position, though not for the Christian (as I've already demonstrate above).

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - I am better off than you because God guarantees by His own authority that the very sense faculties I use to read His word are guaranteed by His word. One must presuppose the reliability of sensation and justify it by Scripture. This is a form of non-fallacious circular reasoning. But this results in two non-fallacious circles: sensation is justified by Scripture and Scripture is justified by sensation.

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid The same goes for reasoning: reasoning is justified by Scripture and Scripture is justified by reason. These aren't fallacious circles because they go out of their plane and gather additional information to prove themselves; i.e., they don't arbitrarily argue that the senses are valid because we sense that they are, or that our reasoning is valid because we reason that it is.

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - They use the senses and reason to assume the non-arbitrary promises of Scripture - i.e., that God guarantees to maintain a general uniformity to nature, that we reflect His rational nature and will continue to do so based upon His promises (Gen. 1:26-27, 8:22).

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - Thus, Christians trust that God will provide a general reliability for our reasoning faculties, sensory perception, etc. based upon knowledge that was gained by utilizing those self-same faculties in reading Scripture (Pro. 20:12). cont. . . .

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - Then, we trust that our all truthful and faithful God will continue to uphold those faculties in a uniform way (barring obvious disease or injury) to allow us to take in more information through those faculties as we read or hear the Scripture (Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18).

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - This is circular indeed, but it is non-fallacious as it doesn't assume the very thing it is trying to prove in an arbitrary way but takes in additional information. Most importantly, it proves to be the only way to ground intelligible experience in a coherent way. The sensation and reasoning of most people will be maintained by God based upon God's promises to do so. These promises come to be known initially through senses and reason. cont. . . .

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - On the other hand, our senses and reason can be trusted to give us a generally reliable picture of the external world as we depend upon God's promises to maintain those faculties to allow us to rightly understand His world through His word. cont. . . .

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - This demonstrates that for the Christian, all experiences presuppose faith and that for all human experience to be intelligible (i.e., sensation, induction, intuition, logic, free agency, morality, etc.) we must first assume the truthfulness of the Christian worldview.

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - YouTube will not allow me to link to URLs. Thus, Google Alvin Plantinga, An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism and Victor Reppert, C.S. Lewis' Dangerous Idea.

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - Be sure to read the Churchland quote I just posted. She admits that given the conjunction of naturalism and evolutionary theory that ". . . truth, whatever that is, takes the hindmost".

[Venaloid]

@tulips32375 - Is there a chance you could you send that in a message? This is getting too big to do in a comments section. Plus we'll have a consolidated record for future use (feel free to divulge our conversation). 

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - No problem. Take a look at the quote at the top of this series of comments. I posted it yesterday.

[Venaloid]

@tulips32375 - Do you mean the one from the Journal of Philosophy 84 (October 1987), 548?

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - Yes.

[Venaloid]

@ProofThatGodExists - Um, I'm alive. Saying something in a comment thread isn't going to kill me, what are you talking about? I'm saying that because I think that's how it works. And there's the second paragraph I wrote to consider as well.

[AaronKnudson1974]

Wow Chad nice catch!

[Venaloid]

How would a Christian know if the Matrix actually happened and humans became batteries trapped in a virtual reality? They wouldn't. Through this example, nobody can prove that they can know things, but we all have to assume it to get anywhere.

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - They would know by virtue of the impossibility of the contradiction.

[Venaloid]

@tulips32375 - I don't understand, are you saying that the Matrix couldn't happen?

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - Indeed.

[Venaloid]

@tulips32375 - Well something like it: virtual reality, drugs, brain surgery where the corpus callosum is cut (which does happen), some sort of genetic brain defect (also happens); the specifics don't matter, the idea is the important thing. I've asked Sye this same question and he admitted that God wouldn't come down and let him in on what had happened, so he wouldn't be able to know anything about his life for sure.

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - I'll let Sye speak for himself, but your examples (. . . virtual reality, drugs, brain surgery where the corpus callosum is cut . . . , some sort of genetic brain defect . . .") are ridiculous because you are appealing to the exceptions to argue for a general principle; namely that we can't really know anything. That is not only a self-defeating position (you can't know that you can't know), but it commits the fallacies of composition and hasty generalization.

[Venaloid]

@tulips32375 - I'm saying that any one of these COULD be how we are living, and since those possibilities exists, you can't claim to be able to know things any better than I can claim to know things, because we COULD be on drugs and not know it, etc.

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - "Through this example, nobody can prove that they can know things, but we all have to assume it to get anywhere." How do you know *that*?

[Venaloid]

@tulips32375 - How do *you* know that I even said that? Couldn't your thinking I said that be the result of drugs or an brain condition? (Or even a virtual reality machine you've been living inside unbeknownst to you?)

[ProofThatGodExists]

@Venaloid Let's make this real simple. Are you suggesting that an all-knowing, all-powerful being COULD NOT reveal some things to us such that we could know them for certain? If so, how do you know THAT for certain?

[Venaloid]

@ProofThatGodExists - If you're trying to show me that I must start with the God of the Bible, then convincing me that I can't know anything won't do you any good. Suppose I agreed with your argument and I accepted that I couldn't know anything. Now, hypothetically, since I can't know anything, I can't know that this means I must use God as a starting point, because the question remains "how do I know that I must use God as a starting point?"

[ProofThatGodExists]

@Venaloid //"If you're trying to show me that I must start with the God of the Bible, then convincing me that I can't know anything won't do you any good."//

How do you know?

Fact is, you do know things, but suppress the truth of your only possible justification for knowledge.

[Venaloid]

@ProofThatGodExists - So basically you're saying that I need to invoke God in order to explain why I can know things, correct?

[ProofThatGodExists]

@Venaloid //"So basically you're saying that I need to invoke God in order to explain why I can know things, correct?"//

In order to justify ANY knowledge claim - yes. You see, even in your subsequent posts you made many knowledge claims, but, according to your worldview, you can justify exactly none of them. God does not send people to Hell for denying what they do not know, but for sin against the God that they do know.

[Venaloid]

@ProofThatGodExists - Alright, so we'll both agree that, to a reasonable degree of certainty, I *can* know things. So what if I can't explain why? There's a lot of things we can't explain, but the sky being blue is not contingent on my being able to explain *why* it's blue. Similarly, my ability to know things isn't contingent on me being able to explain how it's possible. It comes from the fact that I cannot conclude that I can't know things, because then that conclusion is defeated.

[Venaloid]

@Venaloid - That establishes that I can know things (or that I am forced to assume so). Any explanation as to what caused this situation of being able to know is secondary.

[ProofThatGodExists]

@Venaloid //"Similarly, my ability to know things isn't contingent on me being able to explain how it's possible."//

The difference, of course, being that the preconditions to knowledge, i.e. truth, absolute laws, the uniformity of nature, etc. do not comport with your worldview, whereas they do with mine. Kinda like saying that you don't have to know how a car works to be able to drive it. True, but nonsense if your worldview cannot account for steel, and rubber, and galss and engines.

[Venaloid]

@ProofThatGodExists - So basically, if can't explain X, then my worldview is irrational? Does that mean that it was more rational for people to believe in Zeus than to simply admit that they didn't know where lightning came from? Your conclusion would follow IF I was claiming to already have all the answers, and yet somehow I still couldn't explain X. However, I have never claimed to know or even to be *able* to know everything, so any UNknown is easily compatible with my worldview.

[ProofThatGodExists]

@Venaloid //"So basically, if can't explain X, then my worldview is irrational?"//

"Irrational" means "without rationale" or "without reason," so yes, if you cannot explain X then your view is irrational. As far as positting other deities, let just stick with your actual irrational worldview.

[Venaloid]

@ProofThatGodExists - Okay, so IF, for example, I had no idea where lightning came from, would it be more rational for me to admit that I didn't know where it came from and investigate, or would it be more rational to become a Zeus-worshiper or otherwise make something up in order to explain lightning? If the latter, then why do you trust medical science which "irrationally" does the former?

[Venaloid]

@Venaloid - You seem to be saying that if I can't explain everything, then the entirety of my worldview is wrong, as opposed to simply incomplete, which is why we have scientific investigation in order to get a more complete picture of the world we live in.

[ProofThatGodExists]

@Venaloid //"You seem to be saying that if I can't explain everything, then the entirety of my worldview is wrong"//

Nope, I am saying that if you can't justify knowledge, then you have no basis for making knowledge claims, expecially since the preconditions for knowledge do not comport with your worldview. The same does not apply to lightning, as lightning is not a necessary precondition for rationality.

[Venaloid]

@ProofThatGodExists - So what does "justify knowledge" mean, exactly?

[Venaloid]

@ProofThatGodExists - I think you're combining two questions: One is "How can I prove that I can know things?" and the other is "*Given* that I can know things, can I explain how this came about?" Which one are you asking me?

[Venaloid]

@ProofThatGodExists - So basically you're saying that "If we accept atheism, then we wouldn't be able to establish that we can know things", correct?

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - *IF* what you said were true, then you couldn't know it to be true. So, your position is self-defeating, hence, false. In logic this is called a reductio ad absurdum and all reductios are false. Thus, not only is your position false, but worse, you have openly admitted to all of us that you can't know anything. My friend, that's what happens when you don't begin all of your thinking with the God of the Bible.

[Venaloid]

@tulips32375 - If you're trying to show me that I must start with the God of the Bible, then convincing me that I can't know anything won't do you any good. Suppose I agreed with your argument and I accepted that I couldn't know anything. Now, hypothetically, since I can't know anything, I can't know that this means I must use God as a starting point, because the question remains "how do I know that I must use God as a starting point?"

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - You are right if you begin with your own presuppositions. That's my point. *All* unbelieving worldviews ultimately end up undermining reality, knowledge and ethics. Not only could you not know anything, but *nobody* could know anything. This is utter skepticism; which was the same argument proffered by the ancient Greek school of skepticism.

[tulips32375]

@tulips32375 - The point is, *if* you are completely consistent with your skepticism, you can't know anything whatsoever. However, you *do* know things, you live like you know things (which is evident by your interaction here even as you argue that you don't know things), and so your skepticism is refuted even as you interact with us here. However, *how* do you know things? If you say "I don't", then why argue as if you know something to argue for? Otherwise, you are contradicting yourself.

[Venaloid]

@tulips32375 - I *am* able to know things to a reasonable degree of certainty. Indeed, it is impossible for anyone to conclude that they *can't* know things, since doing so would invalidate the idea. However, attempting to justify that you can know things relies on the *presupposition* that you can know things in order to reason it out (circular logic). Everyone has to presuppose that they can know things, from there the question is "Can I explain how this came about that I can know things?"

[Venaloid]

@Venaloid - And of course, you can explain *anything* with magic, but that doesn't mean that believing in Zeus was ever a more rational position than simply admitting that we didn't know what caused lightning.

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - I agree that you are able to know things, but given your previous argument, you wouldn't be able to know anything. You initially argued that we really can't know anything because we all might be on drugs, have brain defects, etc. Are you ditching your original argument? Also, before we talk about "magic", are you saying that your own worldview can't account for the preconditions of intelligibility? if you say that it can, please tell us what you know and how you know it. Thanks.

[Venaloid]

@tulips32375 - I would argue that, through the Matrix example, neither theists nor atheists can know anything for *sure*, but given that we must assume our thoughts are trustworthy (since doing otherwise would invalidate itself) we must all recognize that knowledge beyond information about myself (how I feel, what I'm thinking, etc) is tentative to varying degrees given different situations. I guess *am* modifying my original argument, but I think it makes more sense this way.

[Venaloid]

@Venaloid - This is the classic "I think therefore I am". Basically I'm arguing that we're all in the same boat of agnosticism; tentative conclusions.

[tulips32375]

@Venaloid - Thanks for the modification, but it doesn't help. If you can't know things about others with any degree of certainty, whose to say you can know it about yourself. After all, if your brain and central nervous system is the result of time, chance, and natural processes alone, then upon what basis do you trust the deliverances of your cognitive faculties? Charles Darwin said . . . (con't).

[Venaloid]

Tripod needed.

[enos426]

Aww I shoulda been there i live like 30 minutes from this beach:(