 People of the internet tonight. We are debating is there evidence for God and we are starting right now Good evening everyone. We have dr. Ben Burgess crossing swords with Stuart connectly for your enjoyment. Unfortunately tonight James couldn't be here. He's being prepped as a witness for the defense in the Elizabeth Holmes trial We wish him good luck with that. So going first and actually we're gonna let our debaters have a quick moment to introduce themselves Stuart, could you introduce yourselves real quick? Yeah, my name is Stuart connectly. Thank you guys for having me on Ben It's a pleasure to have a discussion debate with you and I am a pastor in Connecticut also a mental health therapist an apologist I travel around College campuses just got back from Texas State and University of Texas speaking there We if you want to check us out more with the apologetics My tiktok is where we have our biggest audience other than TV, which is just my name Stuart connectly So tiktok Stuart connectly and then our YouTube channel is asked Cliff, which is my dad's name and That's about all Thank You Stuart dr. Ben Burgess. Would you like to introduce yourself really quick? Sure, so I'm a columnist for Jackman magazine. I've been an adjunct philosophy professor at Rutgers And I wrote a few books most recently most relevantly Christopher Hitchens What he got right how he went wrong and why he still matters which is coming out at the end of December Thank you, dr. Ben Burgess. So tonight going first dr. Ben Burgess is going to go first He's gonna be this off the format is a 10 to 12 minute openings We're gonna have 45 minutes of open discussion followed by 45 minutes of Q&A I want to let everybody want to let everybody know especially if it's your first time joining us tonight on Monday debate that we are a Neutral platform hosting debates on science religion and politics and we want you to feel welcome no matter What walk of life you come from if you have any comments or questions for one of our Debaters tonight fire them into the old live chat and be sure to tag us at modern day debates Superchats go to the top of the list and we ask that you please make sure to keep the comments Civil attack the arguments not the person as insults will not be read and that goes for the general discourse in the live chat as Well our valuable Moderators work tirelessly to elevate the conversation So please show them and each other and the debaters the respect of not hurling it personal attacks and insults Our guests are linked in the description below whether you're listening on YouTube via podcasts So please click the links if you like what you're hearing hit the subscribe button because we have lots more live juicy debates Coming your way including the Saturday. We have the perfect Dawa Versus the postate prophet debating the question is long is Islam harmful and with that We're gonna go ahead and kick it over to our debaters for the opening discussion I'm sorry. No, we're gonna have our opening statements from dr. Ben Burgess for 10 minutes And I'm gonna start the timer on your first 12 minutes. Yes, you're right I'm gonna start the timer on your first word dr. Ben Burgess All right. Thank you Kaz and thank you for doing this Stuart before we get into the meat of the argument I do want to spend just a minute clarifying the position I'm gonna argue for if only because I wouldn't want anyone to be unclear about this part I'm an atheist, but I'm not an anti-theist As I just mentioned just wrote this book about the late Christopher Hitchens And while I'm sympathetic to aspects of his critique of a lot of religious beliefs This is a point where I really do part ways from him Hitch was an anti-theist. He famously said that religion poisons everything. I don't really think that's right I think unjust social hierarchies poison everything and that religion is often used as rationalization for those hierarchies Whether we're talking about you know gender relations and contemporary Saudi Arabia or for that matter contemporary Moscow, Idaho Or the divine right of kings ideology undergirding European feudalism But religious traditions are big broad things with lots of warring interpretations And I personally have a huge soft spot for Christian socialists like Martin Luther King or Cordell West or Just to pick a third example of progressive Christian at random my wife, Jennifer Christian leftists like that don't want to impose their religious beliefs on anyone else But they do find inspiration those beliefs for fighting for a fairer and more equal society and that sounds good to me Certainly, I like MLK and Cordell West and Jennifer a hell of a lot better than I like the kind of atheists who love Iraned or maybe want secularism to be spread to Iran by the 82nd airport But even so I am an atheist and that's what we're here to talk about tonight So let's get into it first point if we're arguing not just about whether there's some sort of transcendent being But about whether there's a god who's both all powerful and morally perfect I actually think the world is soaking in evidence that at least this kind of god doesn't exist To borrow an analogy from my friend mark Warren If I told you that there was an invisible giant who walked around all day every day painting the sky yellow Your first question wouldn't even be where's the evidence your first question would be Why isn't the sky yellow? There's a similar problem with the belief that the universe was created and it's ruled by an all powerful morally perfect being Uh, the problem with this is usually called the problem of evil Although that word evil sometimes throws people off Because we're not just talking about people doing evil things to one another We're talking about undeserved unnecessary gratuitous suffering whether it comes about from evil human actions or cancer Or earthquakes or accidents on the highway One of my favorite professors in grad school quentin smith points out in one of his papers that you could run the problem of evil just based On natural laws that lead some animals to kill and eat other animals in really cruel ways that involve a lot of suffering Unflicked a lot of suffering on the pray We don't think the predators themselves are evil because you know, we don't think they have free will in the matter But that's not the question the question is would a morally perfect being have set it up that way Would even a morally kind of sort of okay being have set it up that way and I've got to say that doesn't seem plausible to me Now theists have all sorts of ways of trying to explain this problem away I'm sure we'll get into some of those later in the discussion Right now I just want to throw down a marker on the proposition that none of those attempts to explain it away are very convincing But hey, maybe i'm wrong about that Let's assume for the sake of argument that I am that there's a super convincing answer to the problem of evil If so That just brings us back to the question of whether there's any evidence for the existence of god any serious evidence I don't think so to give you some sense of why not Let's take a quick look at some of the main pieces of evidence that have been offered over the centuries Start with the teleological argument. That's the fancy name, but in plain english the argument from design Even a century before darwin david hume had a lot of fun with this one and his dialogues concerning natural religion Hume points out that even if for the sake of argument You do accept that someone or something outside of the universe had to create it There's absolutely nothing about the evidence around us that suggests that something would have to be an all powerful Loving personal god it could just as easily be a committee of gods In fact, there's a lot about our world that would make a lot more sense if it was designed by committee And the committee members weren't always on the same page and sometimes they got in each other's way Or it could be something totally impersonal like a kind of cosmic spider mindlessly spinning universes That sounds silly to us But hume points out that's because we're not spiders We're rational creatures who design things in a conscious way using our reason and we attribute that to the unknown cause of the universe, but that's arbitrary And uh, he points out that Underlined assumption that anyone or anything did create the universe is also arbitrary. Why would you believe that? Why shouldn't we think that some version of the universe has always existed? Well, fast forwarding from hume to the present day contemporary physicists Tell us that the universe we live in expanded out from this zero-dimensional spacetime point. That was the big bang singularity About 13.7 billion years ago But even if that's true that still leaves open the question of whether our bag was the first bag Their strength theorists who postulate that are expanded and then die in soap bubble of a universe Coexists with a multitude of other soap bubbles with every black hole in one universe being the big bang of a new baby universe And if we're asking whether that's true That gets tricky. It's very hard to have direct evidence for against string theory Just it's very hard to have direct evidence for against the Contrary speculation that our bang was the first bang But from what I understand It seems like what string theorists are saying is a mathematically elegant way of connecting the dots of a lot of pieces of empirical evidence that we do have And so many scientists believe it's rational to accept it as a matter of inference to the best explanation Fans of destiny's youtube channel will know that i'm a big fan of this concept from philosophy of science inference to the best explanation That's the principle that when you have two theories that are both logically consistent with all of the evidence You need to judge which one is a better explanation By trying to figure out which one is simpler and cleaner And which one has more of what philosophers of science call explanatory power those two don't always Port in the same direction and so on But hey, i'm not a physicist Stuart isn't a physicist and neither of us heard much of a position to make a well-informed argument one way or the other about the Details of this part. So just as an intellectual exercise just for the sake of argument Let's assume that string theory isn't true. Let's assume that our bang was the first bang great Do we then have a good reason to think that god created the big bang singularity? Well, some people say yes and if you push them, you know about why they say yes They'll say it's because something can't come from nothing push them a little further and what people usually say Is well, why can't something come from nothing? They'll say well because everything has to have a cause All right, fine. Let's go with that principle. Everything has to have a cause But here's the problem if the chain of causes goes back forever Then every link in that chain does have a cause. It's cause it's caused by the previous link Whereas if there's a first cause then by definition that first cause would be an uncaused cause We've actually violated the principle that everything has a cause Now to be fair, there are more complicated and sophisticated versions of the cosmological argument out there I'd be happy to talk about some of those in open discussion or q&a But if we do my position is going to be that the more complicated and sophisticated versions All end up falling prey to a more complicated and sophisticated version of the what about god? Why doesn't god need a cause objection? But let's say i'm wrong about that and there's some way to get around this problem Here's the bigger issue in another one of his papers the late quentin smith pointed out that even if you totally buy the argument That there has to be a first cause There's no reason at all to say that the first cause has to be any sort of god It makes at least as much sense to say that the original big bang singularity itself was the first cause Then to knock it back one step by saying that god was the first cause Say that the first cause is an infinite mind that loves us and cares about us might fit better with our poetic sensibilities as human beings Then say it was a mindless zero dimensional space time point But in terms of the structure of the argument It's hard to see why we actually have any more reason to think that god was the uncaused first cause if there was one Then that the big bang singularity was the uncaused first cause But even if the classic arguments for the existence of god are as bad as I say they are That by itself you might think doesn't get me all the way to atheism Why am I not just diagnostic reserving judgment one way or the other? Well, we talked a little bit about the problem of evil and actually do think that the problem of evil Gives us a good reason to be atheists and not just agnostics at least if we're talking about a morally perfect god But even if we assume for the sake of argument, there's some good answer to the problem of evil That's still being atheist not just agnostic and here's why Earlier I mentioned inference the best explanation if we have multiple explanations They're all logically consistent with the evidence What we have to do is to compare them see which one's better So let's say that you say that there's an invisible giant, but he doesn't paint the sky yellow He just repaints it blues already blue and he adds another blue layer And you further say the giant doesn't crush farmhouses and skyscrapers as he moves around repainting the sky blue since You know the giant is magic It just passes through the buildings like a ghost And assuming you keep adding qualifications until we have to admit that the existence of this invisible giant repainting the blue sky More blue is logically consistent with all of our evidence Just like his non-existence is logically consistent with all of our evidence I still don't think that most of us Would be agnostic about whether there was a giant. I don't think we'd reserve judgment I think we just say no, that's probably not true And for similar reasons, I think we should say the same thing about god Sorry, I was muted. Thank you. Dr. Ben Burgess for that wonderful opening statement and stewart So sorry Connectly neckly nailed it Got it Kicking it over to you for your opening statement and let me reset this timer reset and I will start your timer on your first word Great cas ben amy. Thanks again Okay, so three points here I'm a pastor so I will use points shamelessly with extreme illustrations. It's typically how it goes My wife hates that I totally understand why she does but the three points are one it takes faith to reject god As you heard that right it takes faith to reject god Two you have big problems if you don't posit god And then three the beauty of this world If you have god makes sense So one it takes faith to reject god Two you have problems if you don't posit god and then three the beauty within the worldview of theism So I would say ben and I are not brains and vats I would say we probably have an emotional side A the rational side as well Social side. I do believe we both live in plausibility structures the great Boston university peter burter sociologist. I used to know him passed away not too long ago He talked about he invented the plausibility structure and we're all impacted by our Surroundings more than we realize so I think that's true for ben. I think it's true for myself But I think we need to look at this debate Again, not just from the classical arguments and whether the classical arguments intellectually are Correct or not because we're more than just brains and vats. We're more than just intellectual human beings I'm not going to live out my life behaviorally for example Simply by some intellectual game playing No, it's going to be does this worldview an atheistic worldview or a theistic worldview makes sense Of you know sociologically relationally emotionally rationally There's so many things to really consider which is important, but further takes faith to reject god I was glad that ben went with the problem of evil and suffering I was told by a couple philosophers that that debate ended 20 years ago But i'm glad ben brought it back up. I know suffering is the toughest one suffering is not but the problem of evil That's what I was told alvin planiga and those boys But it takes faith to reject god and what I mean by that is starting off with the suffering and evil piece You know, you there's so many examples where for example One is if I told my two-year-old right now That she had to suffer because she was She did something really bad and she was in time out and she would ask and she wouldn't understand She still doesn't understand why she has to go to time out. What exactly is doing something wrong? And so she's getting punished She's going through a form of suffering especially for a two-year-old That she doesn't understand and she doesn't know what could potentially be behind it And after a while I explain it to her and she begins to understand some of it And I think we get partial explanations from god. He's an omniscient being we are very Finite in who we are and our understanding of things and so we need to leave room For god's knowledge and potentially see here's where the faith comes in because automatically ben thinks that we need to have a total clarity a complete understanding of why god allows suffering to happen and that when suffering happens and we don't know why Then there could be absolutely no good reason for it. Okay philosophically. That's just completely bunk and so You know one example another example would be in alvin planiga is in a pump tent for example St. Bernard you're going to go into a a pup tent. You're going to see a st. Bernard But no see him's coming through the screen, which I do have some camping up here in the east coast You're not going to see them and you're not going to see the reasons for them and that you're getting bitten And you don't even realize why or how you're getting bitten So we have to leave that and there takes faith again From ben to say to make this incredible leap of god has to make it clear to me Why any and all types of suffering occur? So I think that's a large leap. I think he also Not him specifically of many atheists. I hear the exclusive Claims of christianity are tremendously offensive for example So this is more My faith in god and who god is jesus christ and there can't just be one way Well, how do you know that there can't just be one way? I think you're being influenced by your western culture which says No, be as egalitarian as you possibly can Have absolute freedom and what that basically means is All decisions are good. You judge for you. What's right for you and I'll judge for me. What's right for me and Hey in a pluralistic society that's relativistic Everything's good, man. Everything's equal and don't you dare judge me and tell me my ideas are wrong So those are some leaps of faith that I oftentimes hear atheists make when it comes to Theism now the problems you get Obviously, there's many if you posit Atheism, I mean they're endless, you know Think about this one the belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason Creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself in the most perfect way Perfect way, so fine-tuning you could have touched on that imaginable for no reason whatsoever into self-replicating bits Which then turned into dinosaurs? That is atheism It starts with the virgin birth of the universe then and I both believe in virgin births I believe mine makes a little bit more sense. He believes his makes a lot more sense so The problems you have without it. Well, you can start with gosh matter mind and morality matter mind and morality think about matter Then name some of it. I believe you absolutely Everything that has a beginning needs a cause the universe has a beginning according to the big bang studies that I've seen So it needs a cause then goes with something called the infinite regress And we know that the infinite regress is not possible. We never see that in our experience whatsoever He didn't call it the infinite regress, but he called it just something behind everything creating everything No, there needs to be something outside of space and time That created what we have here, which is space and time here on earth in our universe That's crucial. Then you look at the constants for example I mean endless amounts of Constancy nature the mathematical constants the gravitational pull you think of the variables The values there's so many different ways to Look at how this place is just balanced on a razor's edge and it looks like Clear to me it looks like um light foot out of mit professor light foot out of mit Who wrote in harper's magazine that science has a major crisis of faith when it comes to fine tuning because everything looks like Someone prepared this place for us to show up And the only efforts I hear from people to try and debunk fine tuning is physical necessity and multiverse And if you look at both of those they are comical So that's matter How about morality? Moral absolutes, you know, I hear atheists trying to get out from underneath this one all the time. They'll talk about Relativism or they'll say we get our morals from the powerful or they'll say we get our morals from those around us Maybe social contract theory or they'll say we get our morals, you know, we all decide our own morality or they'll say You know evolution decides our morality, which perhaps ben goes more so with So there's so many different types or my favorite the one that I love atheist skirting With oftentimes I was with a professor at new jersey not too long ago You know, he loves going with the whole moral Platonism So let's say that there's some type of Moral transcendent value out there and we'll just call it justice, you know, it just just exists Let's just kind of have a personal god It just it's up there floating somewhere even though we know justice is kind of personal It feels pretty germane to our lives But somehow that's how we can get rid of god and it's just floating up there Well, again, you need a personal being in order to have Something like justice that makes a lot of sense and then you need the obligation something above our culture I found it really interesting that ben went to gender roles Yes Yes, moral absolutes moral obligation and duties make way more sense when it comes to gender roles Then if you don't have a god and moral duties and obligation Because how are you going to convince? certain people in certain tribes of Africa that I know who Their gender roles are very different from yours been extremely different if I had to guess I would hope How are you going to go down there with your atheistic white western approach and try and convince them That your understanding of gender roles is correct. No, it's just a feeling and that's very ethnocentric of you Potentially I'm not saying this is you I'm just hypotheticals here Very ethnocentric and very elitist, you know get out of here with your try your effort for egalitarianism when it comes to gender roles That's there's there's no place for that. It's it's completely unfair and I think that's very judgmental of you personally So then lastly It comes to the mind consciousness beauty meaning Yes, we can go on and on reason Atheism can't touch any of these Can't can't even come close consciousness Look at tom nagel for example out of nyu. He's an atheist He says when it comes to naturalism as an atheist He has such a major issue with consciousness doesn't make any sense From the materialistic atheistic worldview. He says and I don't think it'll make sense for a long long time. Maybe maybe never And basically there's different Qualities when it comes to consciousness your ability to have a very self you experience a self consciousness Your ability to do abstract complex mathematical problems your ability to have Memories to be able to remember things in the past and then imagine things in the future that could be better and different Your ability to gosh Dabble in the existential or have the very debates that we're having right now Then you go over to your reasoning capabilities Everything about evolution and adaptation and where we're at now and I believe in evolution Everything about it is geared towards survival Nietzsche talked about this when it comes to And I didn't know this about Nietzsche until recently actually. I was pretty impressed He said if you're an atheist and he's you know our atheist prophet at least he's mine He said that if you're an atheist Then you're gonna have a tough time holding to a certain type of truth And a very tough time holding to a type of certainty in your own ability to reason and to search for that truth He said it's near impossible Another guy tom nagle talked about that as well avan alan planet goes talked about that So again evolution is geared towards survival I mean flea fight Not truth And so one minute Ben having me having this conversation with me right now is kind of ridiculous because Evolution set him up in a way to survive not to seek after truth And so in many ways a highly evolved monkey mind You need to start doubting it your ability to even grasp and attain Truth because it's geared towards survival And that's it and I see consensus with most atheists in that regard and theist. That's the one area of consensus I see All right. Thank you stewart for that opening Statement and we're about to kick it into open discussion. I just want to let everybody know again to send your super chats in Again super chats go to the top of the list, but send your questions in if you'd like We may not get to all the questions, but super chats do go to the front of the list and If the questions are insults, they won't be read, of course The like share and subscribe button, please Don't forget about those the Speakers their links are in the description if you like what you're hearing Please don't forget to hit those and check them out if you like what you're hearing And thank you again to Amy for helping me out tonight. Thank you to our moderators in the chat for doing such a wonderful job I see that you guys are working really hard right now and With that we will go ahead and kick it into the open discussion gentlemen. The floor is all yours Yeah, so I'm very surprised when you said that they're gonna problem of evil was solved 20 years ago Um, and you know because it seems to me, right? I mean the most recent polling data I could find uh 72 percent of philosophy professors are atheists And I think about another 12 percent are agnostics And I think the problem of evil is like one of the main reasons now I'm not saying you should agree because the majority is already always right Nothing like that, but I think that does go to It not being something that most people are satisfied has been solved I think what album planagas says about it is well, it's not logically incompatible that uh, there could be undeserved suffering and a Morally perfect god and the the example that he uses to show that it's not logically incompatible as well If you think the free will defense works, which by the way, I don't even think works for humans But let's put that aside If you think the free will defense works for humans that it could be that natural disasters and all this stuff That the free will defense doesn't seem to touch All those other forms of suffering planagas says it could be that that's like demons exercise in their free will It's like, yeah, okay, it could But this takes us right back to inference to the best explanation anytime you have evidence against something It's always possible that there's some crazy explanation that you never would have thought of that explains it a way like, you know Oh, uh, this person is on you know is on camera over here where the crime was committed This looks like an alibi, but it could be that it was a deep fake and that the fingerprints were faked and you know, etc Etc that's not the question. I'm not taking a leap of faith to say that there couldn't be an explanation I'm just saying if we're looking at the evidence and trying to see You know Does it seem to be the case that given the evidence? It's more likely that there is or is not a morally perfect god It seems to me that the evidence would suggest that's more likely that there's a not and you know, you talked about beauty And I would just say before I throw it back to you that the that's sure, you know that That you know beauty and goodness and all that stuff if we were debating the possibility of the existence of a perfectly Morally evil like lovecrafty and hell god that all of those things would be problems You know, how do you explain beauty? How do you explain puppies and sunsets? But of course, nobody's suggested that right? We're talking about whether there's a morally perfectly good god And it seems like the problem of evil is going to be a big problem there Absolutely the problem of evil and suffering is still the biggest issue I typically find in one-on-one conversations with believers and non-believers From an academic level, you'll be hard-pressed to go to too many debates that are simply focused on the problem of evil now though I So I I could possibly get on board with your statistics. They're 72 of philosophers. Although I hear there's a major shift I think it's the religious professors. They're growing in atheism Philosophers are actually there's a shift and there's they're growing in theism now scientists, for example, right out of the scientific journal So I don't think they're lying the majority of them are atheists. They said that 40 percent 40 percent of harvard scientists are theists 40 percent are atheists and 20 percent are semi-agnostic so So those stats are fascinating, but Those change overnight sometimes as well now I think in academia at certain at the universal in terms of gosh universally speaking at at colleges, I would say The majority I mean there's a reason why 75 percent of high school students lose their faith when they go to college because At in the halls of power. It is still secular But I digress that's a different job. I want to talk more. So about you kept talking about the invisible giant and I usually The Loch Ness monster and just to Just to clarify briefly I am I don't want to defend or or call you out on that I'm okay with that in the sense of It's it's the invisible friend sitting on my left like sure I could go there I've never heard a voice for example But I'm talking more so like Steven Evans the great philosopher down there Baylor He says it's it's not a question of the invisible giant of the Loch Ness monster It's the character of the universe in the world and the human being that we're talking about here And whether that makes the most sense in connection to positing a god or not It's not just jumping to oh We're gonna make up some Loch Ness monster and somehow, you know, we'll find him over there in scotland somewhere Potentially or the pink elephant Whoever it might be. No, no, it's the character of this place and how it makes sense I have a connector to that but I'll let you go first Okay, so I think you might be slightly misunderstanding the port about the invisible giant, you know, it's it's not an insult It's not like a you know saying like oh this Invisible friend the port is just saying that If as I was arguing in the opening statement, you know, there's no evidence for the existence of god Then you might say well, there's no evidence for but apart from the maybe the problem of evil which again Most of the people who think most about it think is very unsolved But the but apart from maybe the problem of evil you might think there's no evidence against the existence of god And then the question is if that's the case should be you being agnostic or an atheist And thinking about the invisible giant example is the kind of thing that leads me to think That atheism would make more sense than agnosticism But but because you do think that I mean I do want to you know Because you mentioned a lot of interested stuff in your statement, you know And I do want to talk about fine tuning and moral relativism and other things But just to stick with the problem of evil for a second because you are so confident that there's a good answer to it I mean, I didn't quite hear what it was right. I mean like like are you somebody who thinks like the The free will defense, you know is what really like helps us, you know get out of the problem of evil or what do you think it is I think it's the same reason that c.s. Lewis the most reluctant atheist and probably the most well-known one there at um oxford and and cambridge came a christian because he originally Said there's no way I could become a christian because of the problem of evil But they said hold on a second Wait, why am I so bothered by it to begin with there is no god if there is no ultimate standard of justice and goodness Then why am I bothered by evil? Do I need a lobotomy because i'm crazy because I think it's so bad and it's just natural It's kind of like any dealer to you know pilgrim. What is it? What was that best? You're the academic Pilgrim at tinker creek when she was out there looking at how nature Attacked each other in such a vicious kind of way. She basically said why don't I just get involved here and say this is not Evil This is not a bad thing This is just how it is Am I the one who needs the lobotomy? Because I think that this is so nasty and brutish and so c.s. Lewis Became a christian because of the problem of evil and I know many people who have so it's not so easy just to say By the way, and the reason why people oftentimes say that the problem of evil Academically philosophically the debate is over is because simply one man alvin planninga who said philosophically You cannot be certain that god does not have good reasons to allow evil and suffering. That's what but did it That's just what I've heard Okay, I For what it's worth I've spent the last 20 years of my life out around academic philosophers And you're the first person i've ever met who thinks the problem of evil is like solved and that's not an issue anymore Uh, I I think what alvin platica in I kind of already addressed what he said I I think that his point is that it's not logically impossible that there's some Explanation, uh, you know, and so he thinks that if we have because he believes that we have good reasons to believe in the existence of god And it's at least possible that there's some explanation that we can't think of from the problem of evil Then that's not a good enough reason not to believe it But that's very different from saying that you know, this doesn't give us a good reason to think Probably there's no god unless unless you can come up with a better argument for for the existence of uh of god and I didn't again I did not really hear an explanation from you. I heard it's it's possible Which of course it is the same way that you know, if we have Fingerprints and you know dna evidence for blood stains that uh, I don't know, you know, oj Simpson committed a murder It's possible. There's some elaborate conspiracy We can't figure out to fake all that evidence, but you know, probably not it's possible that there's some uh That there's there's some reasons that we can't figure out But probably not and all I really heard you say as far as reasons to think That this evidence should be disregarded Is well, you think that's like incoherent to talk about the problem of evil if you're an atheist because if you're an atheist You should just be a moral relativist or something Which again Is something that you're going to find very few atheists who would agree with you the atheism entails moral relativism That same study from david chalmers from 2014 that showed that uh 76 of philosophers are atheists about another 12 of agnostics Show that at least a good 56 percent are moral realists, you know So mathematically, you know, there's gotta be an awful Lot of overlap there and I think the reason in fact the reason that even a lot of Philosophers who are theists, you know, who are even maybe believing christians or muslims or jews Don't really think that you can make sense of the idea That you need god to make sense of morality is the euthyphro dilemma Which has been known for, you know, 3 000 years since plato, which you know is is the dilemma where Socrates is arguing with this ancient great coley man euthyphro and he asks You know and euthyphro says that the holy is that which the gods love and socrates says well Do the gods love it because it's holy or is it holy because the gods love so to translate to these terms If you say well, uh, we could somehow make sense of justice more easily give it a personal god I mean, I don't see any connection there. In fact, I think if anything The idea that you could make sense of justice by talking about a personal god makes no sense on its face Because you end up just being a different kind of moral relativist If you're if you're saying Well, this is just a unjust Because god wants it right then you're saying it's just arbitrary god doesn't have a good reason So if god decided that you know that that torturing small children for fun Was morally just well if all that it means for something to be morally just is that god wants it Then you'd have to admit that in that scenario torturing small children for fun is just if on the other hand God wouldn't like that because it's unjust that it has to be unjust for some reason other than god not wanting it and I've got to say I mean this is something i've never really heard You know maybe you'll be the first but i mean i've never really heard a A good response to this it seems like if you want to reject you know moral relativism what you should moral relativism is a terrible position Then that you can't believe that things are morally just or unjust Because of what some personal being thinks No, and that's why I totally buy into the third alternative which god will something because he is good So god's own nature is the standard of goodness and his commandments To us are expressions of his very nature Uh, so in short, I mean our moral duties are determined by the commands of adjust and loving god So moral values and in no way they're not dependent Rather independent of god because god's own character defines what is good So he's essentially compassionate fair kind All these attributes impartial His nature is the moral standard though determining good and bad And so his commands necessarily reflect in turn his moral nature Therefore, they're not just arbitrary like you had said the morally good and bad is determined by god's nature And the morally right and wrong is determined by his will so So if god will something because he is good and something You know is right. It's because god wills it you know this view of morality it's um It's been eloquently defended by many people, you know, robert adams, you know, william allston philip quinn So I don't know your big problem with it. I don't hear atheists. Well, this is another one that I find very hackneyed Because I don't I'll tell you if you want to hear a lot of atheists and this one doesn't come up So so you you you just hit one that I never hear anymore and I hit one that you never hear too So we're okay Well, well, well you said you didn't know why I rejected. I'd be very happy to tell you Which is that I think that if you say well god's commands are arbitrary because god commands You know god wouldn't command that because god is good Well, the question is need to say that god is good Why does god's nature count as good and you've just pushed the problem back one short step You say that god's nature is compassionate kind and partial and you might have used another adjective I missed but the question is why is it morally good to be compassionate kind and impartial? Are those are those characteristics morally good because god has them or does god have those characteristics because they're morally good And if you say that god has those characteristics, you know, god is compassionate because it's good to be compassionate God is kind because it's good to be kind god is impartial because it's good to be impartial Then being kind and compassionate and impartial are morally good for some reason other than that they're god's nature And that reason is going to be every bit as available to the atheist or the agnostic as to the theist if on the other head You say well what finds kindness and compassion and impartiality is being good is that they're god's nature Then you've got a different problem, which is that if god were not compassionate but cruel You know if if god were not impartial, but you know, but but petty And jealous etc Then cruelty would be morally good And if you don't think that cruelty would be morally good if god were cruel rather than kind and compassionate Then that's because you think that being kind and compassionate are good completely independently Of god being kind and compassionate Sure, I mean again, you need a standard though you need a straight edge And I would love to hear your straight edge And so we all have a he and I would have a similar understanding of goodness and again, it's it's God will something because he is good and so he's the straight edge And it's his own nature is the standard of goodness as in his commands those commandments They are Let's let him finish his uh You just finished Yeah, so Again, it's our moral duties are determined by the commands of a just and loving god And that makes that makes all the sense in the world because Values cannot be independent of this good god Or they become relativistic and we're just shouting over each other. That's exactly what goes on in the political realm right now we have no basement Of shared understanding of moral values anymore instead everything it just seems so relativistic So it just breaks out into all different types of in groups That are just viciously attacking each other. See this is the the very issue right now that you're talking about Okay, uh, if you say god's nature is the straight edge I mean you never answered my question, but let me try to ask you in a different way that maybe we can move on to fine-tuning Well, if you know what good is right Is is the straight edge if if we know that these that If the way that we know the kindness of compassion and impartiality or whatever that other adjective was are good is because god has them then if god had Different characteristics if god was cruel and capricious and all the rest of those things Then those things would be good and that sounds a lot like moral relativism to me The problem with moral relativism Was saying that whatever your culture says is good because it's what your culture says so in your example about the african tribe Or I would say the uh, the american mega church That has terrible values on jester That you know that you can't tell them that's wrong because that's their culture Like we agree that that's a silly view that we shouldn't be cultural relativists But the problem with cultural relativism is that you're checking Your moral sense of the door and you're just saying well, you know, whatever some culture says no matter how terrible it is Must be good for that culture That's the same problem as saying that whatever Characteristics god happens to have are good because god happens to have them But surely we can imagine a hypothetical where there was a god who was not kind of compassionate There was a god who's cruel and cool cruel and capricious and sometimes at this point in the argument people like to say Well, that wouldn't really be god. There'll be some other being Okay, fine. So Collin schmah, right if schmah created and ruled the universe and schmah Was cruel and capricious Would it therefore not be morally good to be kind and compassionate to me that sounds like say that This of the war and brainwashed us all into agreeing with them That therefore like nazi beliefs would count as morally good in that world like, you know In that world you might have a prudential reason to do what schmah wanted, right? Which is that you don't want to be punished or whatever But you wouldn't have any moral reason not to do it and similarly I would say That whether or not god exists has absolutely nothing to do with whether moral realism or truth. Those are very separate questions but I do want to if it's okay Right like I know we could spend forever on this but if it's okay I do really want to talk about fine-tuning because you brought that up If you're open you pick the first two i'm gonna pick the third Sure, I know I'm supposed to be on the hot feet. Let me get the third though I mean, we don't mind shooting and it's interesting, but like you said neither of us are astronomers So we're only gonna get But well, I don't think we have to be astronomers. So the first Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. I want to go back to what you just said right there Because you're a little you little prod at the church is fasting your good friend martin luther king jr Would smack you right now because because of that little What because I don't think you would Become less religious. He would say through all of his writings become more religious become more christian. He would say letters letter Less religious The letters to the letters to the bourgeois jail is is directed at They do want to hear from you guys Letter from the bourgeois jail is directed at pastors who are opposed to the civil rights movement who are the equivalent for the 1960s Of those right-wing mega churches for today. I have nothing against christianity Depends entirely on your interpretation of christianity. Some christians Find good moral values there. That's great. Some christians interpreted and find terrible moral values like the sex churches Hold on That's getting off track Let's let him finish his thought really quick. Just let him finish his thought really quick Yes, sorry go ahead Sure, I'm not I'm not telling anybody, you know, I mean look, I think christianity is is false It's based on a false metaphysical presumption But I'm happy to agree to disagree with people about philosophy If they're on the right side of history like martin luther king was as opposed to being on the wrong side of history Like the sexist mega churches that I was just talking about Okay, so you're saying that that wasn't the point go ahead Yeah, you were going off in different directions that I don't necessarily disagree with My whole point was I mean Martin Luther king jr. More than one occasion Said that those white racists who are claiming to pull certain passages out of scripture Slays away your masters in order to to have racist tendencies He said no, I don't think they should throw away their bibles or their christian faith They should become more christian and start and then he said, you know, let justice roll down There's a reason why he's quoting scripture and saying that because he's saying they're totally misunderstanding what the scriptures are talking about And then you read a stone of hope It's totally secular academic book where he talks about how it was the white pastors and black pastors who were together Believing in christ who actually stood for change that was able to increase and sustain all the beatings that they receive Rather than those secular people who just had hey, it's a good idea if we do this But it's not christo centric In our ability to have the greatest resource to deal with suffering Because we worship a suffering god, jesus christ That's why mlk jr. Said okay Now we have a real resource and motivation to be able to push through racism to be able to push through suffering and that's why we're not going to stand and Respond in a retaliatory way But instead for peace because the only single religious leader or philosopher who's made an incredible change over the last 2000 years is jesus christ who he was completely new to the scene when it came to forgiving your enemies and Love and egalitarianism And that is what you stand for and your humanistic values I am sure it's what I stand for and we are still riding the fumes of what christ has said So I want to push you though on you know, frances crick for example We'll kind of go into the mind If you will if you're up for that so consciousness, you know reason you brought up beauty So I thought we go to beauty um You know just to start us frances crick Leading molecular biologists when he talked about you know, your joys your sorrows Your memories your ambitions your sense of personal identity and free will Are in fact no more no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules Do you really believe that you would say? Um So I think so first of all, I don't want to let what you said before go go by I think that deserves a response uh about martin luther king and all that martin luther king Uh, you know his interpretation of christian beliefs Uh, and the bible and all that was pro civil rights plenty of other people's interpretation of those things was anti civil rights I don't I don't think that one of them was right and one of them was wrong I think it's a big messy contradictory, you know tradition There are lots of passages you can find in both directions and because I don't believe in any of this I don't have to say one of these is the one true faith and the other one is it I think they're you know, I think they're just different interpretations of something with plenty of fodder for both But as far as the idea that only people who are christians were standing for civil rights That's just not historically accurate whatsoever. I mean if you go back to like a you know A decade or two before the letter to the birmingham jail Uh, you know, there was exactly one predominantly white organization in the united states Uh, that was prioritized in civil rights and integration and taking risks of that cause Uh, and that was the communist party, you know, those people were mostly atheists that a lot of those people worked with martin luther king later So I I think that the idea that there aren't atheists, you know, who who worked for that is is just completely wrong Oh, no, that's not what I think as far as Okay, well or that they weren't willing to suffer as much for it. I don't I don't think any of that is true I think that they have that there are people who um, you know from all faiths or no faith You know who were willing to do that but but i'm francis quick and the mind question Uh, yeah, I mean, I don't think that I think that's a completely separate question from atheism I think that whether you think that um, you know that that minds are um, Are just you know, brains, you know mental states are just brain states or there's something like functional states of brains You know, I'm a little agnostic about that. It's a complicated subject I don't claim to have a well-worked out answer But I don't think I think any answer is completely consistent with saying there's no god But but I assume just just just so i'm clear about this because this actually is interesting and does Go straight into exactly what I was I was curious about Uh, that you you know, I assume that your position is is dualism that you think that you think that minds are not just like physical You know like like physical systems or anything like that that you know that we're really What's doing the thinking and the feeling and all of that is this you know Inaterial thing that happens to be hooked up to a physical body, but it doesn't have to be that's your position or no That would be mine and your buddy chris hitch Would would not have that position just like when he was on the gurney when he was dying from cancer That great story of him looking at the doctor's face and say Stop telling me that your body Is in a lot of trouble and dying and in pain for this that and the other reason he said stop saying your Just call me body brain And that is tremendously consistent and it's connected to what francis grick is saying and he would applaud hitch on that And so do I and that's why so many atheists who I see are not intellectually consistent I'm not impressed by tom nagel says he sees it all the time They'll just go along with whether it's human rights Justice whatever it might be And they'll say oh, yeah, we've got a great reason for it But they won't state what that reason is or they won't give one Instead it's just again Saying hey, I'm not going to dig into the why I'm just saying I'm going to do it Okay, well, uh, I think I have Said the why I care about compassion and kindness and justice in themselves You only care about them because you happen to think that those are the features that god had and if he had some other features I guess you would care about those which seems totally amoral and relativistic to me But uh, why do you care for? I'm so the reason I'm so fascinated by this that your answer to the mind question Yeah, it's because I actually I actually think this gets right into Fine tuning because if you say oh, well this universe seems to have been arranged specifically for us, right? I mean the the usual problem with that and I think it's a very good objection is to say well You know, that's like saying because you got delta, you know a particular card It couldn't have really been a random shuffle because there was only a one and 52 chance But of course that argument doesn't work because no matter what card you got You know, there's only one and 52 chance And there'd be a hundred percent chance that you get that card if it was uh, if you know if the dealer was was cheating The equivalent of conscious design and you know, it doesn't matter that it's you know One and 52 it could be one and 52 million or billion or trillion or google plex And the argument would still apply but the bigger thing, right? So nielson ababo at the national university of singapore has a fun paper about this Is that if you say well the reason that these, you know, physical constants have to be fine tuned in this way The reason that god would want that is that he wants specifically us to exist because he wants to be in communion with us well uh, what specifically us be creatures with this particular physical makeup or creatures that have minds and you know and and and can uh and and can have you know Morality and guilt and be in communion with him and all that stuff. Well, if you're a dualist if you think That uh, we're actually immaterial minds that just happen to be hooked up to physical bodies Then you can't use the fine-tuning argument That doesn't make sense anymore because if you're a dualist and you think well Just happens to be that this particular matters what our minds are hooked up to but they could be hooked up to anything Then you know, you could have all those physical constants be totally different and whatever existed could have minds You know, you could have sentient electrons and those could and those could be in communion with god You could have sentient black holes and those could be in communion with god You know, if you're a dualist the fine-tuning argument doesn't make sense anymore I don't I don't see how it still doesn't what why why can it not still make sense if this place Balanced on a razor's edge You throw out any illustration you'd like in terms of the amount of cards you're dealt Say a hundred times over The the shot of the gun from across the entire universe where the bullet has to land within a half inch Of a certain mark like these are the chances we're dealing with or you take the illustration of the 20 marksman Experts who are lined up just 10 feet away From the person that they're supposed to execute and they all miss somehow These are the percentages we're dealing with and i'm not saying it's i'm saying it's outside of Matter and mind it's like a separate question That I don't know how you're pulling that because never do I hear atheists try and connect those to the fine-tuning and the mind matter I I always hear they're going to try and go multiverse or physical necessity. It's not it's not it's not original to me Like I said, this deals to the babba, but also like just to be clear about the connection, right? Sure Yeah, it doesn't matter. It doesn't it doesn't matter how long the odds are That's the first point that you could say instead of a 52 card deck This could be a 52 trillion card deck or a 52 google plex card deck and it would still be true That no matter which card you're dealt there would only be a one and 52 trillion or one 52 google plex Chance of getting that particular card So it's always going to be a bad argument to say Well, if it was a random shuffle, there would only be a one and 52 trillion chance of beginning this card Therefore, it probably wasn't a random shuffle because that argument would be good pretty equally good or equally bad No matter what card you were dealt right that like oh this particular card There was only a one and 52 trillion chance of whatever whatever card you got There would only be a one and 52 trillion chance of you know that Whatever those dials were set, you know for the fine tuning metaphor There would only be a one and 52 trillion or one and 52 google plex or whatever chance of that So it's an equally good and therefore an equally bad argument no matter where the dials were set Now the only way around that is to say well, no Because here's the difference, you know that it wouldn't be an equally good argument if The dials were set anywhere else Because if the dials were set anywhere else There couldn't be the kinds of creatures that existed that god could be in in communion with that they that All that would exist would just be mindless, you know matter spinning around or whatever because because you If the physical constants weren't set the way they are But the problem with that is that if you're a dualist then Um, no matter where the dials were set you could have beings existing in that version of the universe who could be in community with god So i mean like that there's no You know, it becomes totally arbitrary. I mean why should this particular arrangement of physical matter tell us That there's a designer any more than any other possible arrangement of physical matter Yeah, so that's similar to your evil Is you you want It seems to me if you go back for example is connected to your original argument with evil You want to rewrite the script in a way Where I don't mean to offend you here Where you're playing god because you want the narrative to be completely different Like why couldn't he had just set it up this way? And it's kind of like when I was debating on this channel once and somebody said I could write the bio You're not saying it this way. I'm just saying it in a more much more extreme version I could write the bible in a much better way Just easy it would be very simple And so I think you know, you were struggling with the goodness of god God is not going to act in a way We don't have it where he's just evil and he's arbitrarily setting up Ways to live which he's commanding us to act in an evil vile way No, the standard of goodness is is what god is and that's how it is And there's no contradiction again when it comes to his very character and the commandments coming out and the obligations coming out of his very character So I think you know back to the teleological You also have to I mean again within the big bang that's where these constants originally were And if you posit that there was no big bang Then you're looking at one in affinity And one in infinity is is obviously impossible and so Whatever it may have been Multiverse physical necessity or a mind I don't know how because you said earlier as well in your opening You said that In terms of occum's written. No, you didn't say ocum's razor. You talked about. Yeah simplicity Well, yes God as a mind Is is incredibly simple And that a mind created the universe is very Simplistic now the ideas that come out of the mind. Those are very complex But the mind itself, you know, you don't have to turn it into this crazy computer That has all these wires coming out of it endlessly throughout the universe. No, it's just a mind a personal Mind that created and that makes way more sense to me than any other alternative Well, I mean, I think it makes sense to you because uh, you know, because we have minds So we project that, you know on to the cosmos, but I actually think it's totally arbitrary assumption that, you know, whatever created us Did it, you know had had a mind in fact I think that if you just say in the broad sense, right, you know, what are the chances that You know, what are the chances that you know, you would have had, you know, the big bang singularity unfold, you know The the way it did I think you're very dismissive for no particularly good reason of physical necessity and multiverse, which are both serious physical theories that I think need a much more serious argument to dismiss them than anything that I heard But let's say for the sake of argument that those are both wrong, you know, that they so there's only a one in whatever chance It's not going to be infinite Uh, you know, I people who make this argument never say that but they say it's one over some Unfathomably large number. Well, again two things about that one Whatever happened There would only be a one over that same number chance of it happening So that's like saying well, you got a three of hearts therefore It probably wasn't really a random shuffle the dealer was cheating because if he was cheating to give you a three of hearts That'd be a 100 chance of you getting the three of hearts Whereas if it was a random shuffle is only one in 52 But if you got a seven of diamonds or a nine of clubs, you could run the same argument in the same thing here for all However, Betty, you know 52 google plex possibilities and in fact Uh, if you want to say Well, given the starting assumption, there's only a one in blank chance Then I think we have to compare like to like so don't just say Well, if there is a god who specifically wants This sort of physical matter to exist for some reason that we haven't really heard yet because it can't be to Be a community with creatures like us because it could be a communion with sentient black holes but If you're a dualist But uh, but whatever that, you know that reason is you know, don't do that say look if you're gonna say Well, uh, one of the chances that we would be created given You know that we would come into existence Given this range of things that could have happened with the big bang That you should compare that to one of the chances that we came into existence Given the range of things an all-powerful being could have created And presumably the range of things an all-powerful being could do is actually could be much bigger That that unfathomable, you know, sea of possibilities of ways that the big bang could have unfolded Sure that big bang piece again if someone's If there's a big bang over there where my door is I'm gonna imagine somebody kicked it most likely That the big bang led to somebody And yes, there's a lot of Dead space and time in the universe you could Easily go there and try and make that argument in terms of why would god create so much dead space and time When he's such a creative good god supposedly But it comes back to no the big bang there has If there's going to be these types Well, let's let's shift here because we've already gone here. Well, I'm guessing you're not a dual I'm guessing I'm guessing you're not a dual. We're gonna stick. We're gonna stick on it Just just to be just be clear about that last about that last point Yeah, uh, you know, because uh, I mean, I think as far as the kick in the door That was answered in the opening statement that just pushes the question back one very short step, right? What causes god? We could certainly get into that But I think it's going to be this structurally identical problem to what causes the big bang But the point about all the possibilities Is that if we're comparing like to like if we're saying well You know, given a totally naturalistic origin of the universe Here are all the different things that could have happened with the big bang If there's so many different possibilities. Why is this one the one that happened? You have the same problem with god Well, given the hypothesis that an all-powerful being who could literally do anything created the universe Well, given that one of the chances that he would have created this particular universe It's going to be one over actually infinity in that case Because there are an infinite number of things that god could do So I don't see how you can say that there being some incredibly large number of physical possibilities Shows that it's really unlikely if there was a purely naturalistic beginning of the universe We could just as easily say You know This sheer number of things that an all-powerful god could do And one of the chances that an all-powerful god would have done this rather than any of the others Therefore, it's probably not an all-powerful god I don't think either of them are good arguments, but I don't think one of them is better than the other Yeah, and I would say it's better than the multiverse Which doesn't have a shred of evidence for physical necessity the brute fact of it I think you have a very tough time getting around it for an atheist talk about that You know, but back to dualism because I'm guessing you're an atheistic reductionist I think Earlier, yeah I mean, I said I said earlier that I'm somewhat agnostic about philosophy of mind But that adds it's completely separate question from philosophy of religion. You know, you could be You know, you could you could have any position on philosophy of mind You know functionalism, you know reductive materialism Non-reductive materialism property dualism. So all of these things are consistent would say that there's no god but the you know, but the point About you know the point about the You know the the big bang, you know is is just that you know, you can't say Well, um There are all these different possibilities. Why did this one happen given the naturalistic origin hypothesis? Therefore there probably wasn't a naturalistic origin because you can equally say there are all these different universes that could have been created given a theistic origin Why this particular one therefore there probably wasn't a theistic origin and also what you said is no evidence for the multiverse theory Again, I think physicists who know more about it than either of us Not all of whom are atheists, by the way, some of whom are Christians would disagree with you about that And they would disagree with you about that because they would say that of course it is very hard to have direct evidence for or against Any of these things, you know, because it's so incredibly theoretical, but uh, the uh, but they all get a multiverse theory that say does is a Mathematically elegant way of connecting a lot of empirical dots that we do have and we can compare that to different theories And a lot of scientists not all of whom are atheists or agnostics Would say that this is the best explanation now I don't think either of us is a much more position to weigh in on that one But I certainly don't think it's a a serious response to say Well, there's no evidence for that. I think you should talk to a physicist about that one Sure, and I've just Like I said, it's anecdotal, but I've read it a good amount too from a number of of atheists so But you know we're in terms of I think the dualism issue If you for example were to go let's just do a little mind game here because I want to see where you're coming from If you were to look if you were to go to your favorite restaurant and say read on the menu and it says your favorite roast beef But you just have random marks there of pen and ink um, so they're semiotic But the way obviously they come together it carries meaning, right? So as an atheist, I mean, how do you begin to explain the the semiotic dimension in terms of carrying meaning in those marks from purely physics and chemistry in that in that ink because I think personally You cannot explain it From a bottom up you would need a top down just like it makes total sense for an intelligent being god To explain that semiotic dimension that we have here on earth because the fact is that symbols carry meaning and we Automatically every single time we see marks on a page or other forms of semiotics in this world we pause it and argue upwards to a mind And so it is not a mind of the gaps or anything like that It's just so clear That for a naturalist a physicalist Any atheist that I know has a very difficult time with semiotics when it comes to dealing with meaning Well, that's a new one, uh, so I think that you know, there could be two things that you might mean there One would be a philosophy of language question. Like how is it? You know that that that words refer to things. That's a big thriving debate in philosophy of language And I've never heard anybody in that debate including lots of philosophers who are theists suggest that postulating god Is somehow going to help with that? But the other question is just an empirical question that like how is it that our brains process marks as Convane information and you know and and that we associate, you know The marks of the page with the idea of roast beef and that sounds more like a question about Neuroscience or empirical psychology cognitive processing Uh, and I don't see what you think that the god question has anything to do with that because that's uh, that's just a question of How is it that our brains Are working and whether you think that our brains evolve to work that way Or whether you think that they're created by god to work that way or some combination like you kind of indicated before Um, you know, whatever the right answer is it's going to be the same answer, you know regardless of whether or not there's a god Now it was a I got it from a Pulitzer Prize winner and then I got it from a very gifted mathematician at oxford was a christian and then another atheist who I believe he was philosophy of science who said wow, this is actually completely mind-altering thinking because I don't know how you don't postulate a god in terms of from strictly physicalist Or naturalist if you remove any Spiritual realm if you remove god any kind of way, how are you going to get inks on ink of you know An ink pen and what it carries on a page getting meaning from it and not postulating Up down versus down up It's crucial to think through How do you carry meaning and that meaning is clearly intangible? It's not a tangible thing. And so for you just to say it's a matter of a word game or Semantic three seconds guys figuring out language. That is nothing to do with the issue whatsoever Well, I didn't say any of those things, but I'm very confused I'm very confused about how you think these two issues have anything to do with each other whatsoever I really wish these very impressive people who gave you this problem That I could I could see exactly what they said because all I could say is at least based on the way that you just explained it now I'm still completely in the dark about what the relationship between the subjects of meeting and you know processing Incon papers communicate. He has What on earth that's supposed to have to do with the god question You brought up dualism mind matter. I I believe in mind and matter You strictly believe in matter and this example was beautifully connected to it in every kind of way And it has I brought up dualism, but that's not because whether you're an atheist necessarily says whether you're a materialist or a dualist or what? Those are separate questions I brought up dualism because if you're a dualism If you're a dualist then the fine tuning argument doesn't make sense because no matter where the dials were set Whatever existed could be a communion with god So there's no particular reason to assume that a god who wanted to be a communion with creatures like us would have to set the dials there Okay Thank you guys So that's bearded discussion dr. Burgess stuart Well, let's go ahead and move on to the q&a. Let me stop that timer and reset it and uh, let's go ahead and get into it Shall we? We shall Okay, how long are we going for here Kaz on the q&a? I have 45 minutes. Is that okay? Do you have a hard time out? Do you need to get out of here? um I start to get a little little itchy after a little while with the q&a No, yeah, I'll I'll raise a hand. Don't worry if I if I gotta go to the bathroom or something here Okay, we'll just try to rip through these as fast as possible. Okay. Um $20 from experiments in pre-biotic chemistry at stewart God hardened pharaoh's heart in the o testament So the pharaoh's free will was undetermined, but he couldn't stop the nazi holocaust Explain that one What was the benefit of allowing hitler to have free will? Yeah, so hitler if you read the text carefully Hardened his own heart And then just like connected to a roman's chapter one God eventually giving people over to their desires god ended up hardening pharaoh's heart So go back and read the text and it'll be good for you to read the text the second time as many times as possible being that bible And you'll see it's it's he hardened through his own free will and then god Let him go and it's it's a searing of the conscience What thank you so much Another super chef from experiments in pre-biotic chemistry for ten dollars at stewart When you define what morality means the definition becomes the objective standard No god required who gets to define what the word purple means You don't have to read that one again Okay When you define what morality means the definition becomes the objective standard No god required who gets to define what the word purple means It's totally false I don't hear anybody say that we all define reality and that's an objective morality No, it's it's a personal feeling you probably have And whether you evolve to have that type of feeling is typically connected with the strong eating the weak And so I would not encourage you to have A morality based on love and self-sacrifice. I don't think that has anything to do With how you're hardwired from evolution. I would tell you to take more of a nichian approach Which is the superman, which is don't live out humanistic values And so the idea of me determining objectively what purple is has nothing to do with objective morality Okay, thank you so much Another super chef from experiments in pre-biotic chemistry for two dollars awesome job. Dr. Ben brilliant You have a fan out there. Oh, I don't think that's a question, but thank you Um, actually that's on here twice. So again awesome job, dr. Ben Two dollars from mr. Monster if god told me to kill would it be okay to do so I think that's for you stewart It depends if you're going to genesis chapter 22 with abraham and isek You start to get that feeling but then you look and abraham clearly told the servants We will be back god clearly told abraham. I will eventually provide which was a ram in the thicket and so No, I as a mental health therapist. I've dealt with schizophrenics And if they're told by a voice in their head who they think is god To go out and kill somebody I'm going to tell them they're probably wrong on that one. It's probably not god and so did god command The israelite civilization to judge people groups in holy war at times. Absolutely They were also judged themselves through holy war at different times But no, I would not take the god that we understand through scripture, especially After the old testament was fulfilled an understanding who christ was And an understanding of discipline and punishment having shifted into the new testament and say individually Go out and kill somebody got a god just called me to do that. He told me to do that. I'd say get some help Gotcha Okay, can I can I do 10 seconds on that? So so I So I understand saying that if somebody thinks god told them to kill somebody that they're probably mentally ill and that seems like a good answer but But that seems like a little bit different from what the question was asking which is if it were actually objectively true That god, what do you do that? Would it be good to do that? So in the abraham and isaac case just assume hypothetically that god actually had Wanted abraham to kill isaac as a sacrifice and there was no switching up and substituting the ram at the end and all that stuff In that hypothetical would it have been right for abraham to do that? Sure. He's god Absolutely God is god. He could he could do whatever he wants and if there was some type of Bigger purpose to it. Obviously the purpose of that story is like st. Augustine talked about It's like our buddy who wrote infinite jest talked about which is have something at the very top Of your hierarchy chain when it comes to what you're living for have that be god In order to live a fulfilling flourishing life And that's what god was calling abraham to but isaac who it took so long for him to actually bear isaac obviously Had become number one in his life But no you look at again this comes back to the fulfillment in the new testament Which we are living by the new testament certainly with the old testament still in mind But the fulfillment has is there now and You show me where you think jesus would say then you go out and kill somebody and that's objectively right And i'll be pretty impressed It's not the question the question is if you did would that be right? I think I heard your answers Yes, you're gonna keep going back to youth afro youth afro as your stick you you love the old I mean, I mean Okay, so um again for mr. Monster for two dollars. How did the mark of cane? I'm sorry. How did the mark of cane survive the great flood? Um, this is an entirely atheist audience. So i'm guessing that's for me again, right? Just to be clear Just say cane how did cane survive the flood? Well, well, yeah, it's not alive at that point, right? That's the mark can't survive without cane himself. So Right, so I would say You have Your um your calendar a little mixed up there Okay, let's move on uh five dollars from mike rio I'm sorry if I pushed your last name sir of steward Can you name five objective morals and duties? And also can you name those that only christians can do and no other theist or atheist can? Give me the second half Can you rate? This is five objective morals and duties that you can name that only christians can do that no other theist or atheist can't No, I cannot Gotcha 499 by made by jim bob Ben the truth is absolute and conceptual concepts require minds humans can't create absolute concepts We can reason an absolute mind thoughts Uh, my main thought is I'm a little unclear about what the questioner is said Could you move that one more time? Then I'll take a shot at it. Mm-hmm Ben Truth is absolute and conceptual concepts require minds Humans can't create absolute concepts We can reason reason and absolute mind thoughts We can reason an absolute mind We can reason an absolute mind I mean, I I think that the core of that is probably that they're just saying that Things aren't true just because we think they're true, which I completely agree with I I you know, I'm not a Any sort of relativist about truth or any of that, you know I I think that I think that some things are objectively true included that there's probably no god and And that's not a question of what I think they're saying that the fact that we can reason an absolute mind entails somehow that An absolute mind must exist because we can conceptualize it Okay, so the idea that an absolute mind meaning like a perfect mind like god Must exist because we can conceptualize it. That's roughly the ontological argument From from Anselm and Descartes has a version of this, you know, which is that you know, we have an idea of perfection In our mind and that somehow or another we're getting from this to their their being a perfect being a real life So Anselm's version of this is saying that well god is by definition The greatest being that we can possibly conceive of and so if god if god didn't exist Then Then we could actually conceive of being that's greater than god, which is one just like god except he had the additional advantage of existing I don't know if that's what they're asking about or not But if they are real quick, uh, I would just say that the obvious problem with that was actually pointed out By somebody who's not an atheist or an agnostic, uh, Guadillo who's another medieval monk Who said well that you know, the problem is you could just as easily say that the most perfect conceivable island You know must be one that exists because if it didn't exist then it would have the imperfection of not existed And we can imagine a you know more perfect one that existed or we can run the argument with the most perfect chocolate chip cookie Or you know most perfect whiskey or whatever and and and I I think it would be an equally bad argument in all cases Gotcha. Thank you so much. Um From silver Harlow for ten dollars The elephant god has a trunk and steward the elephant thinks the universe is fine-tuned To create beings with trunks and that it's perfectly obvious No, I'm sorry. It's perfectly obviously that I should have said obvious It's perfectly obvious that trunks are necessary to commune with god So the elephant god has a trunk and steward the elephant thinks the universe is fine-tuned to create beings with trunks And that it's perfectly obvious that trunks are necessary to commune with god That's for you steward Was that a question? I think it's kind of like a little statement Uh parable Oh parable. Yeah Sure, I mean Yeah, that could have been how again there are Endless amounts of ways god could have created how he could have set this place up I mean basically I think Believe in god never comes down without a story about kind of what's wrong with us What's going to be put right with our deepest hopes and and desires I think you get again tonight what we did I think I gave some some I poked a little bit of holes in atheism Ben poked some holes in theism But I think when it when it comes to actually believing in god and having a relationship with him These are just probabilities. These are just clues that I gave tonight A few of them were arguments, but no in order to get to home base It you know, you have to actually grow in a relationship with god Just like a marriage You know, you can only do so much For me looking for my wife when we were dating. Okay. She's got this got that evidence is good here I don't know about that here here here But eventually you have to step in to see if the relationship actually works well Or not so so we can keep ping-ponging as much as we want on arguments Etc But if it's about really finding out the existence of god and having a relationship with him This is just hopefully getting some level of probabilities, but but not driving anything home Gotcha. Thank you Um from chess 119 for five dollars Do people actually believe in god nowadays or are they just dishonest with themselves? Also, why not believe in Zeus or the tooth fairy? Yeah, so i'll i'll give pure research statistics and some washington post new york times on this and some sociologists The world is becoming more religious shockingly China is going to be the most Christianized country in the world within a few years over a hundred million christians Obviously, they are hiding out mainly in the underground church um atheism is going to be It's increasing a little bit in the u.s. But it's going to be decreasing worldwide Fair a good amount in the next 10 years and I think you know ben you probably it's anywhere between 8 to 14 percent, but it's coming down even below that projected to at least the pure research i saw and in terms of the god question no more specifically it's a good one because I religious non's are increasing But they're hyper spiritual so a religious non is typically someone who just stopped going to church And a religious non still is typically some some type of theist And and so you could say the u.s. Has gotten more spiritual You could say according to a few research there's pockets in the u.s Of people who've become christian and that's growing largely in protestant denominations people actually thinking through because protestants They believe very intellectual christian faith thinking through the issues, which is very encouraging But then in the kind of the wishy-washy areas, you know, say bible belt some areas there are decreasing in faith But you look at latin america africa china The world christianity is spreading I mean, it's the largest religion in the world islam is spreading a little bit quicker than it but you know if you believe I think if you're you know, if you believe in evolution You should become a christian Because atheists are dying out because they're not having enough kids and if you if you believe the purpose of your life Is to grow the species and a better the species then you need to become a christian Maybe a Mormon Just just just just really quickly if I if I could answer the question on the on the first part Yeah, I think plenty of people very sincerely believe in god. I know plenty of them I don't know if the slightest doubt about that. I think they're wrong But you know, I think that they sincerely Sincerely believe it and I could respect that I think that on the on the question that steward is raising I mean, that's a You know, what percentage of people, you know, we forecast in the future will believe this or that I mean, you know, that's sociology. I couldn't care less about that. I'm interested in philosophy What's actually objectively true not what percentage of the public? believes what And and I think that the um, and I think that the second part of the question is actually a very good question you know, why Uh, you know, does it make any more sense given any of these arguments, you know to to believe the christian god rather than zoos or these other things and and and I think that it goes back to Actually, something steward said earlier about plausibility structures that you know that it's it's These other things sound silly because they're culturally alien, but they don't actually make any less sense And so just uh, just to stay within the rules. I guess I'm supposed to finish here Zeus and all the other ones There's not a shred of evidence for and those are the god of the gaps If you look at the history of zoos in them, there was always positing something behind lightning, for example, or fires or Something behind the bush rustling You don't posit god of the gaps with judeo christian god whatsoever So that's another part and I would say again It's crucial to yes, look at the intellectual look at the evidence for the faith the bible encourages looking for evidence and then taking that step into You know, I'm gonna try this and just at university of texas We had a big crowd out there and a bunch of college students really smart Came to know christ Not because we necessarily did anything special But because they started actually thinking deeply through these issues and realized that a lot of their atheistic Arguments were totally bankrupt Gotcha. All right. Thank you so much. Uh next super chat from sudo nim for two dollars at ben What's being human when you're animal in atheism? I read that verbatim Yeah, so, uh, I Don't think it's the clearest question ever, but I think that probably what they mean by you know being human Is uh, is is something like what's uh, you know, what's a good life or what's the purpose of life or something like that I mean because if they really just mean being biologically human the question makes no sense If they if they mean something like that, then I could maybe understand what they're getting at Uh, but again that that youth of pro dilemma Uh, you know, we heard no nothing that even sounded a little bit like it might be a good answer to it tonight In fact, what we eventually heard was an embrace of one of the two forks of it Which was yeah, if god tells you to set to to kill your child as a human sacrifice You should do it. Uh, which is one of the purest expressions of world relativism. I've never heard of my life I would I would say that uh compassion kindness justice These are things that I care about in themselves trying to be a good person I care about them in themselves and not because I believe that anybody's gonna like reward or punish me for doing them Which are actually moral reasons at all Can I just take one second on that? I think the questioner was saying you are just an animal if you're not creating the image of god history I know you don't like history history backs it up Luke free the national bestseller atheist talked about how Basically humans were just considered animals and women were dirt kids were dirt Then all of a sudden this idea of being created the image of god came and that sprint took over the roman empire And much of the known world and if you look what happened there then all of a sudden people had value outside of what they did who they were And that created something where you had egalitarianism where you had people caring about those who were not in their tribe So they would go into the roman empire when the plagues were breaking out when the pandemics were breaking out Christians that is saving those of outside groups bringing them out dying by doing so self-sacrificing And that's where you got the spread not not classical greece For example, the greeks did not do it. They did some good stuff That's where you got all the values you just mentioned that you hold dear That's where you got them from and you're just stealing from christianity. I'm sorry ben All right. Well, I know philosophy is good to stay to stay To stay within the rules I'll take the last word on this because it was a question for me as you did last time And I will say I love history. I was actually a double major in history and philosophy undergrad very nearly went to history graduate school and I think in this case I might have a slightly better command of it than that that you are because The roman empire was not exactly secular. They believed in a lot of gods Yeah, which were christian christian christian The pre christian. There were many gods You know, but they believed in many do have to let him have the last word on this. Yeah, yeah And um So, you know, so whatever the moral problems were with them You know, it certainly wasn't that they were that they were too secular To to put it mildly You know, you you do you do in fact have A lot, you know, you do in fact have people long before the advent of christianity Accepted various versions of things that you would accept You would probably want to falsely claim as christian values You know, like like hillel the talmud has a version of the golden rule. So it is Confucius, you know long before You know long before christ, these aren't specifically christian values. You look at different groups of greek and roman philosophers They have moral values at least, you know stoics epicureans, etc They have moral values at least as good as anything that you have in roman era or medieval christianity as far as egalitarianism And treating women as dirt or not treating women as dirt goes. I think the record there is overwhelmingly clear that That increased secularization in the enlightenment and afterwards is what leads to greater egalitarianism particularly around Gender that some of the best gender egalitarianism in the world is in the nordic countries That are also some of the most secular countries in the world. Whereas You know in in both, uh, both loaded christian cases intensely religious places tend to be intensely misogynistic Gotcha. Thank you so much. All right. The next question is from Click Blip click for five dollars ben How do you personally ground your belief in justice slash what is right wrong morally, etc? sure, so, uh, I think that Again, uh, if you care about other people then you care about their dignity and autonomy And you're not callous in the face of their suffering and if you ask okay, but why should you care about other people in these ways? Uh, then that could be one of two things Why should you in a moral sense of should right in which case? The only possible answer is given in terms of other moral values Or why should you in a prudential sense now in a prudential sense? Like why is it going to be you know in your interest to do it? Then sure, uh, you know Theism could definitely be relevant there, you know, because you can be rewarded or punished Just like if a morally, you know wicked god existed, you know, you'd be morally rewarded You'd be rewarded for doing uh for being cruel and callous and punished for being kind and compassionate But that has absolutely nothing to do with morality. I mean that's like saying that because you know, you live in Stalin's russia Installing will you know will punish you uh for you know for for being a dissident therefore it's morally wrong to uh to be uh to be a dissident again the idea that somehow moral values are on a firmer footing because Of the views of you know, the views or thoughts or even the character traits of a uh of a personal being Is just a recipe for accepting complete moral relativism that morality is just relevant Is just relative to whatever this being thinks or whatever this being commands or whatever character traits This being happens to have so if god is kind and compassionate the kindness and compassion are good That's the straight edge. Uh, whereas if uh if god Is uh is cruel and capricious then cruelty and capriciousness are the straight edge You know if you want to be a non relativist about moral injustice then you should care about other people For their own sake rather than because you think that there's some personal being who wants you to care about them Gotcha, thank you so much and our next question is for five dollars from mr monster If god created man in his own image, then that means god looks like an ape true or false I think that's for you steward false You want you want me to go theological or we'll just stay false Oh cas I think you're muted. I'm muted. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um made by jim bob for four ninety nine Ben any argument against the existence of god can be used against the existence of truth Why if there is no evidence do you have any faith in truth? So Well, I think that the premise is just false that the uh that I don't know if any of the arguments against the existence of god would apply to thinking the truth doesn't exist In fact, I can't think of which one the questioner could possibly think that would be true of Problem of evil that certainly doesn't give us any reason to think that truth doesn't exist and you know that That you know that there is gratuitous suffering and by the way, remember it's a complete cop out to say Well, you can't explain why suffering is bad if you're an atheist Even if that's true, which it's not we've been over that again and again and again, but even if it was true that wouldn't that would Take you no distance whatsoever to explaining how it is that a loving god would allow this Gratuitous suffering. That's completely separate. Uh, that's a completely separate question So the problem of evil would apply to god but not to truth The uh, they you know the sort of simplicity arguments That given the evidence that we have You know that if uh, that It's a simpler explanation that there's no god. There's a god, you know that there's I don't know what the argument against truth Along those lines would be it's not a simpler hypothesis To say that absolutely nothing is true. In fact, that sounds like an incoherent thing to say So, um, so no, I think the premise of the question is just wrong Gotcha. Thank you so much Um, another five dollar super chat from contrarian for 20 Ben aren't you letting the word god obscure a viable theory of the hard problem of consciousness being As it seems universal happening Aren't you letting the word god obscure a viable theory of the hard problem of consciousness being as it seems universal happening Yeah Yeah Okay, I'm not going to say that that's meaningless, but I I sure don't know what it means to say that the Viable theory of the hard problem. I mean, I know what the hard problem of consciousness is I don't know what it means to say the viable theory of it is uh, is universal happening. I mean that just seems like um Yeah, okay, I I'm I'm not I I want to I want to try to give this a go and uh and uh and answer it but uh, I I don't think that I said anything one way or the other about the hard problem of consciousness So no, I don't think I'm letting the god obscure me from understanding I mean I would love to know what the what the what the question is, you know, what's question means by that But right now I just don't I think he's saying that the that like the god is a solution to the hard problem of consciousness But um contrarian for 20 if you'd like to clarify your question Um Moderators if you could please look out for another message from him and just throw it in the document for me Um, even if he doesn't pay, um, that'd be very helpful. I'm sorry. Um, thank you guys Moving along made by jim bob 499 ben. I didn't say the truth doesn't exist I say there is no evidence of truth Why do you have faith in it? Please don't dodge Well, please don't dodge is is an awesome way to answer to to end a question We should all You know, we should all add and all of our questions that way, you know, that's like, hey Here's a thing that I think uh, that you know, and don't you agree that it's true? Please don't dodge uh, yeah, I I think that um I don't know what it means to say there's no evidence for truth I mean to say that something is true is just to say that things are that way And so, you know, if I say, you know Snow is white is true and attributing whiteness to snow and there is evidence for that. There's evidence from our perception That's not absolute evidence We could be brains and vats being subject to complex electrochemical simulation to make us think that there's been called snow We could be disembodied minds being, you know, tricked by a Cartesian even but it's pretty good evidence Uh, and and I think that that's true of most, you know, of quite a lot of things that there are I mean anything that you have if you have evidence that something You know is the case that you have evidence that it's true. That's what true means. So um, so I I don't think that there's any coherent way of making sense of the idea that there's no evidence for truth It less it less the question is just using the word truth in some eccentric way Gotcha. Thank you so much From sunday warship Is steward a psychologist or a psychiatrist? If not, what exactly does he mean by the phrase mental health therapist? Hmm. That's a great question First off, I'm glad ben went back to suffering. We'll take one second on this Because I did not get to answer it during our discussion Suffering evil. So from the christian perspective You got to start with I don't know I do not know why there is suffering evil anybody who doesn't start there Yikes Genesis chapter three we had a free will Sigmund Freud was correct. The id is absolutely in there. Sigmund Freud said there was original sin He said a lot of warped stuff, but that part I agreed with him And that opened the door for Cosmic consequences Sociological consequences psychological consequences broken this you can call it sin natural disasters divorce depression You know, you have to have some type of worldview that answers the why to these things Um the cross then I would go to Christianity is known as the suffering Religion because you have the actual god dying in the most painful way imaginable in the cross we get excruciating the word from cross crux And and so you have a suffering god, which is important in terms of thinking through Okay, he can't be too far from our suffering If he went through that type of suffering himself So it's not like Buddha who is standing off just smiling during suffering saying it's an illusion that you have cancer You're not really dying of cancer. So it's all just, you know, mind over matter um, and then lastly When i'm at the deathbed of people in my In my job my profession If I were an atheist a person would look at me and say you are not comforting me whatsoever with your worldview if you're going to be honest with your worldview And they could point to things like hey, i'm not going to have eternal life I'm not going to see my relatives again. So ever I I have a lot of regrets in this life There's so there's typically no grace my regrets. I work too much didn't spend enough time with my kids I spend way too much time in trivial pursuits with an anxiety And then they would also say hey, there's there's not going to be a judgment day either Pretty depressed about that from an atheistic worldview because a lot of people in this world get ripped off And we know the cycle of abused becomes the abuser and we see in the middle east, obviously You kill my family i'm coming for yours and there's these cycles of retribution You enter in sociologically right out of yale miroslav volt you enter in that there will be a judgment day You see peace Unlike anything you'd ever imagine occur because there doesn't have to be retribution here on earth So I see that with people if i'm an atheist i'm telling you going to Go to somebody's bed saying hey, no eternity out there There's not going to be any justice. Sorry. Suck it up, buddy You just got a poor poor look in this life. You know others almost got a nice shake The christian worldview I can promise you makes a lot more sense at that time Sorry, what was the question though cas I wanted to answer ben's because ben was asking it was a good It was a good point. He was making um The question is um, what does mental health therapist mean? Yes. Okay. So thank you So I've done all my internship practicum hours I have a master's in mental health and a master's in marriage and family and then I have a master's in divinity And I do not have a license yet though So I am not a psychologist and I have to be careful saying mental health therapists and get away with it But I have to define it. So i'm glad you're asking me that my wife is a mental health licensed therapist So I do a lot of mental health counseling alongside of my other jobs at my church Gotcha. Thank you so much And let's move along. Um, I do think we got some more superchats in actually and I have accidentally Moved away from that window. Here we are. Okay from mr. Monster for five dollars If god is truly omnibenevolent wouldn't he still forgive me after death even for being skeptical If god loves me why torture me for being skeptical? No, there's there's no Torture for being skeptical. You got right out of the book of deuteronomy 29 29 We talked about those things that have been revealed to us have been revealed to us now chase after them But there are many other things Moses talks about that have not been revealed to us Then you have Nathaniel john chapter one saying come and see come and check me out You have Jairus saying jesus. I don't believe help my unbelief and jesus uplifts that He's not scolding for that You know, you have doubting thomas was yes told not to doubt But he's given been given the evidence already from those who have witnessed the risen christ So jesus is not saying suspend your critical thinking and don't doubt Not at all and a lot of atheists will go to that passage and say hey steward here you go Jesus says you're not allowed to doubt you're going to help And it's just it's totally it's just it's just offensive to the text in every kind of way So no, yeah your idea is getting at perhaps purgatory. Why doesn't god let us work off Or somehow perhaps other people have talked to me about why aren't there levels potentially in heaven? I believe you got to fall back to the character of god Is jesus christ and all loving all good God who is going to give us a fair shake each and every one of us the boy in malaysia Who didn't even hear about him as well as the kid living across from the presbyterian Or the Or the baptist church in indianapolis who's heard about him, but as as not seen. Let's just say good follow through with An elder who's a close friend in terms of living out the faith So fall back on his character fall back on hebrus chapter 11 Many of the patriarchs never heard of jesus christ yet. They're going to be in heaven fall back on roman's chapter two The knowledge that has been given to you that is what you'll be judged on Fall back on a manual cunt who says the starry skies and the conscience within That is evidence enough for me to actually believe in god And so that conscience is everybody does know what's truly right or wrong And everyone's ultimately going to accept believing in god And living for god Rather than ultimately living for self Gotcha. Thank you so much. Um, we did get the clarification from contrarian 420. Um Let's just scroll back up and see what he said before he said aren't you letting the word god obscure your viable theory of the hard problem of consciousness So his clarification says as an atheist You are throwing out the theory of god as an external being Like the abrahamic religions believe And throwing out the more eastern concept of god as consciousness Okay, so if god means i mean He's right. I should have stressed and and throwing out the more eastern concept of god as consciousness Got it. Okay. Uh, so it's right that the uh, that everything that i've said tonight has been directed at the idea Of god meeting a being external to you know prior to the universe that created the universe Uh, you know rules over it, etc Because i've taken it that that's what's the dispute between me and steward that that's uh, that that's you know That's what he means by god as far as i could tell and so that's what i've been arguing against now If you're going to use the word god and uh to mean Something else then that's just a different debate. Uh, and i'm happy to have that one too Uh, but i i i guess i'm a little skeptical that just saying that well You know, there's some other way of using the word god where god is consciousness or consciousness is god That that by itself is going to tell us much about the hard problem of consciousness the hard problem of consciousness is the problem of um of how it is that um You know, how to explain our sort of experience of of consciousness, you know It's what's sometimes called, you know, qualia right qualitative Mental states how to explain that in in physical terms of that, you know, and I just don't uh, I mean You could just be a dualist, right? I mean, maybe that's what he means But again, that seems like a slightly separate question to me from god or no god but uh, I just i'm i'd be very skeptical that just having some sort of you know I don't know if this is some kind of like christina consciousness thing or something else But like having some sort of mystical conception of god and consciousness to be the same thing I'd be very skeptical that that's going to shed any light on that problem Gotcha. Thank you so much ladies and gentlemen. Um, we have just over five minutes left in the q&a A few more questions left. We probably won't get to any more Superchats if you send them in now. So just letting you know if you are thinking of sending a super chat It probably won't get read So uh, moving along made by jim bob for four ninety nine ben You must have faith in a plethora of things before you can describe anything as true in the external world I mean, I I guess the question is what uh, what he means by faith. So if if the claim is that Uh, anytime, you know that like I I make some sort of simple, you know, observational statement, you know, uh Snow is white. It's snowing right now. It's not snowing right now, you know the um, you know, I'm holding up three fingers, you know, whatever that If you ask me to justify that and I'm gonna justify it by appealing to some other statements and that You know, you say, okay, but why should I believe that's true that I'm gonna have to you know, I'm gonna have to justify that further And I I suspect this is what he means that eventually, you know that like um, I'm gonna get back to stuff that I I can't provide a further justification for uh, and so, uh, you know, there are there are views according to which, um You know the stuff that you know that I'm eventually gonna have to fall back on Is is self-evident or I could somehow be sure of it out priori But I think, you know, I don't know that I accept any of that but I I think that Um, it could be right that there is that there are certain beliefs Like my perceptions are sometimes accurate, you know, that there is an external world I'm not just a disembodied cartesian mind being tricked by a demon into thinking there's an external world That it could be that those beliefs, you know are are things that that can't be further justified Those are just sort of basic assumptions That you know that you can't justify outside of them And that could be true, but even if it is true, I'm not quite sure You know, I mean, I mean presumably the point of the question is that This is somehow going to undermine everything I'm saying about why, you know, it's god probably doesn't exist but I really question that connection, right it made because You know, even if some of our most basic assumptions about the world for the sake of argument, right can't be justified That's not a very good reason to say and this other stuff, right that we also can't justify is is also True, right? I mean like presumably if we're engaged in a project of reasoning about everything if we're not just sort of Giving up on trying to use reason to figure out what's true. What's false? Then we are rejecting some things, right? I mean that the that you know, we all agree That the you know, vast majority of gods that people believed in human history don't exist Nobody's arguing, you know, nobody's arguing against that, you know, we're you know, we all agree that You know that the That it's not the case that That, you know, the tooth fairy exists. We all agree that it's not that, you know, there are lots of lots of things That nobody or almost nobody Is going to argue exist And so Either you let open the floodgates everything you say well because there are certain basic premises that I don't know how to further justify Therefore I could just never throw anything out. I just have to accept it all and then you just end up believing in everything in a totally incoherent way Or you say, okay There are certain things that seem to be true that I might not be able to justify But then there are these other things that don't seem to be obviously true And I can at least try to figure out if they fit in with all the things that seem to be true for my evidence around the world around me And I'd say that the first one is just a path to insanity The second one makes a lot more sense to me. And by the way, I would also apply that to moral reasons Stuart just quoted Kant who thought that there was objective moral truth that had nothing to do with god that That there are things that could you know, the things are morally right because they fit with the categorical imperative and wrong otherwise And that has absolutely nothing to do with whether there's a god You don't know that quote though. I I agree kanthi and I think I I know I know the quote but the point the point is just that like the point is just that kanth You know is somebody who just who's not on your side here, right? Like he's somebody who is a moral realist Um, but is not a fierce You know, it's not a divine command that's you know, it's a theist maybe but he's not a He doesn't believe that god is the basis of morality. He thinks the reason is the basis of morality Uh, and that it's it there's no sense to which god being the way that god is is the reason why everything's morally right or wrong But I like the quote though You like to get through fair enough Okay, dr. Burgess. Are you of this is for um, Pedro hm for twenty eight dollars or I'm not sure of his dollars Dr. Burgess, are you familiar with the godel model? I'm sorry the godel theorem if so There is a what is there a way to fit god in this paradigm? Okay, so uh, godel's incompleteness theorem Is uh supposed to yeah, kirk godel is is a Austrian I think uh, you know mathematician and logician from You know the uh early to be in 20th century Uh added it's supposed to show that you can't have a system that's both uh, complete and consistent that that in other words that you That if you have a sort of set of axioms that you're driving further things from Uh, then uh, that it's supposed to be impossible You know, there's supposed to be a way to prove that you're always going to have things that seem to be true that you know that aren't uh Provable within the system I suspect that I just mangled that explanation at the end forgive me. It's late, but uh, But the but the takeaway right is that Is that it's it's supposed to be impossible to have a system of that, you know axiomatic system That's both complete right so it could justify its own axioms and also internally consistent uh, and You know, of course, that's a result about a very narrow kind of mathematical Reason but some people was raw big conclusions about You know philosophy of mind and you know how consciousness works and other things from that I'm pretty skeptical about those arguments. Although that's probably neither here nor there for now But as far as as how it's supposed to relate to the god issue Uh, the only way I can see that that would be related would be to take us back to the question that we were just talking about right in other words, uh well, if there are certain things that you can't justify right in this case because the System, you know, if it's internally consistent at least some stuff out, right, you know, can't just file its own axioms Uh, if there's stuff that you can't uh that you can't justify Are you still allowed to say that there are some things that are probably not true? And I certainly hope so because if you can't still say well, here are some things that given the best evidence that we have are probably not true that again, like Taking that seriously would just need to be a trivialist thinking that everything is true And you know, I don't think it's even psychologically possible for a person to really be a trivialist like Everybody disbelieves some things. I mean that would just be a total psychotic break for reality Okay, gotcha. Thank you so much. We have one more question. Um for stewart and then that's it. You want you ready to store it? Can you take it? Sorry, hey, okay for five dollars from molasses Stuart the onk Egyptian god Horace on cross predating christianity by 3200 years Evidence is natural. You can't have evidence of the supernatural Evidence is natural You can't have evidence of the supernatural Okay, so that story Osiris and what happened with I would say the cutting up of certain members of one's body and being given Let's just say In different I'm gonna have to go back and look at the story But the story is radically different from From what happened if you look at the pagan deities and their stories and the crop cycles and The dying and rising of gods, and I think that's where that person is going Radically different from from the historicity of Jesus Christ his life death and resurrection and all the evidence there so If you want maybe the person wants to reword that into the sense of This claim that I'm making with the resurrection that we didn't go over tonight is Perhaps you need You know extraordinary evidence for an extraordinary claim kind of thing And I'm glad that ben did not bring that up Glad ben didn't get too detailed in defining what kind of evidence he needs Because I hear atheists usually one-on-one debates They move the goalposts so much. It's scary. Like it's actually comical It's honestly many many well known Very well educated atheists will honestly say to me stuff like Yeah, there's zero evidence and I said, okay, all right. What kind of evidence do you need? Uh, I don't know. I don't want to tell you. I don't know. Okay. Well, and then I'll say stuff like, okay Well, if you get a full message written to yourself in the sky And then say an essay after that all the stars aligning and everybody's watching it happen Is potentially that even a little bit? No, no, no nothing whatsoever. I need extraordinary Okay to find extraordinary. I I can't define extraordinary. I don't need I don't even know And they're they're totally misdefining Ben I I said it I actually said in a talk recently who who came up with that definition of extraordinary But atheists are actually totally misquoting the person. I can't remember who the person is right now But completely ripping what they said out of context that person's rolling over in their grave So I think the whole definition of like what this person just said the difference between Earthly evidence and supernatural evidence It just just be careful like explanatory scope explanatory power like we absolutely got to look at look at definitions, but You've got to be able to say like just I'm glad I'm glad I got the last one here I got very lucky with the last one you've got to be able to say That I doubt my own worldview to be an honest truth seeker And there are many Christians out there who are overly dogmatic And have not looked at looked at the foundations for why they believe and there are many atheists out there Who think it is just a joke to even entertain the possibility of a god and typically at least the vast majority and I run into thousands of them um just about every year I will say this vast majority of them is for emotional reasons emotional not intellectual emotional reasons and so continue just to doubt doubt your worldview and and doubt other worldviews and then and then be a truth seeker so I think that's all I got Gotcha. Thank you so much. Um Do you guys want to just take 30 seconds real quick? Dr. Ben you went first so You should go first here so that sewer can have the final word again But do you guys want to just take 30 seconds and just say goodbye or no? Uh, sure, uh, so so appreciate the discussion For the record. I agree that if the stars spelt that out of the sky that would be evidence for god Uh, it's possible that god still wouldn't exist But it'd be pretty good evidence just like the problem of evil in our world is pretty good evidence that god doesn't exist But I appreciate the discussion. Uh, I had a lot of fun. Thank you for doing this Ben, I loved it. Thank you so much Love how you discuss love how you think And always open in to doing something like this again All right. No, thank you guys so much. Thank you. Dr. Ben Burgess. Thank you stewart You guys are the lifeblood of the of the show. Thank you to all our debaters. Thank you, Amy for doing all the hard work Thank you to the moderators in the chat for keeping everything civil Thank you to James wherever you are right now for setting up this platform Thank you to the audience and everybody who sent in super chats and elevated the conversation Thank you to everybody for like sharing and subscribing to the modern day debates We have many more debates coming up Joining us saturday is is islam harmful will be debated here on saturday. So please come and check that out Our debaters are linked in the description below. So please don't forget to check out their links. You don't want to miss that You know that they have a lot more interesting conversations for you to hear and once again Thank you to everyone for coming out and have a great night and remember keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable Have a great night