“THAT’s a Loving God to You?” — CosmicSkeptic DEMOLISHES Priest on Suffering

[00:00:00]In the United Kingdom just today, we pass 100,000 people who've been d who've been killed by the virus. And the Christian has to say that this is morally justified. And they're welcome to do so with reference to theodysies by saying that, you know, this is pain.

[00:00:13]People like to speak kind of abstractly about how pain and suffering might be necessary to obtain certain goods or it will be compensated in the afterlife or something of this sort. We have to say specifically on an issue like this, >> God doesn't cause evil, but God is so good that he draws good out of evil that might not have existed without evil. He permits evil to bring about a greater good.

[00:00:32]>> Christian is still perfectly entitled to say that they're upset by this, that they're sad, that they're angry that they don't understand the reasons, but ultimately philosophically they have to say this is a cause for celebration.

[00:00:41]Thank goodness that this has been allowed to happen so that we can draw out some good. Thank goodness that there's 100,000 people in the killed by this virus so that some good can be achieved. No, that's an emotional appeal though, Alex. I don't think that's right. I mean, >> um, Alex, tell us a little bit of your your journey because you also did grow up in a sort of Catholic setting, didn't it? But it it certainly didn't stick as it did obviously with Bishop Baron. Tell tell us your journey then.

[00:01:04]>> Well, I mean, it sucked for a while. Uh, as much as it perhaps would of anybody of my age. I mean, I remember being sat on the back of a bus on a school trip praying my rosary and essentially being bullied for doing so. You know, I was I was fairly devout as a child. Uh a lot of people have a decon conversion story like uh my my own dad had a decon conversion story from when he was much younger when his own dad died. And when that happened, he just essentially immediately concluded that there is no god. Interestingly, some people do the exact opposite. When a loved one dies, they cling to religion because that's that's one way that they uh kind of cope with the thing that they're facing. For me, there was no kind of singular event that happened that made me say, "I no longer believe this." It was more a realization of the baselessness of what it was that I did believe. Now, that's not necessarily to say that the Catholicism to which I ostensively subscribed is baseless, but that my reasons for subscribing it uh to it were baseless. And I think that's a product uh of bad teaching or or at least in the same way that Bishop Baron describes our religious education was similarly uh kind of like doing PE or something. It was something it was just one of these classes you did. Nobody took it particularly seriously and so it was very easy to brush it off. But the thought that I had was why is it that I believe this? Where does this come from?

[00:02:23]And and I suddenly realized that there was nothing there. So it wasn't a process of me saying I'm now going to say this was false, but a process of me saying okay let me find out what it is that underlies this worldview and let me see if I can work my way back to where I was. And I'm still working to this day.

[00:02:40]You know the the the climb has never stopped. I'm still happily weeding through the arguments in literature as best I can to potentially one day regain the the Catholicism that I once had or or another religion because of course while it is true that if Catholicism is true it's the most important truth it's trivially also the case that any other religion uh this would apply to any other religion as well. So, there's a very live potentiality for me to regain that that religious uh religious persuasion, but I just haven't had any success thus far. Would it be fair to say that any of those new atheists um Christopher Hitchens and Co had an impact in your own journey as you started to investigate whether there was, you know, uh a foundation to to the beliefs you held?

[00:03:25]>> Absolutely. I mean, reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins probably single-handedly uh opened that conversation in my mind, you know, and I I go back and read The God Delusion now, and I I I find it embarrassingly poor in many respects. Um, but at the time it was the first time that I'd seen someone say, "Hey, like, have you have you thought about this?" Like, and the thing is because Dawkins kind of has this old man in the sky type caricature of of God. um that that's one of the things that would would trouble the Christians whom he was debating. But that was also the view that I had as a Catholic, right? I mean, it's not like I'd been taught the the uh the the minutia of Christian doctrine. I kind of had this childish image of some guy in the sky who'd give me a big hug after I die. And when Dawkins kind of said, "Look, that doesn't make sense." Well, he was right.

[00:04:14]Of course, that doesn't make sense. And so, it it kind of pulled me away. I then migrated on to Christopher Hitchens who probably had singularly the most influence over the at least the way that I present arguments and the way that I would kind of shape my discourse in the earlier years of my channel at the very least. Um, but I think the influence there was more stylistic than actually substantive or at least as far as uh my content stands today. I think the stylistic influence is still very much apparent. But the substantive influence has pretty much gone ever since I made that video accusing Christopher Hitchens of being a sophist, >> which probably didn't go down all that well with with his his hardest fans. Um, Bishop Baron, you want to >> Yeah, jump in because I resonate very much with something Alex just said about Dawkins. Um, do you know your your countryman, he died only about 20 years ago now, Herbert McCabe, the great Dominican theologian, one of the great contemporary toists, I think. And McCabe often debated atheists publicly in England, but he always made one stipulation that the atheist would speak first and then he'd respond. And invariably, he would listen to the atheist make the presentation and he would say, "I completely agree with you." And what he meant simply was this, that atheists serve, and I mean this very seriously, a very important function. And that's to debunk forms of idolatry. So there's a very good example, the crude presentation of God as a being, as some some big being alongside of others, where the mainstream of our tradition has consistently denied that of God. And when you fall into that trap, now there's a very crude version of it, the big man with the white beard, but there are less crude versions of it that are still just as problematic. When God is construed as one competitive being among many, a lot of the problems that the atheists put their finger on emerge. And I mean now going back to Foyerblock and Marx and Jean Paul Sard and company when God is construed competitively competing for us on the same onlogical playing field a lot of the typical atheist reactions occur and they're right they're right to put their finger on that and say that God doesn't exist and so I'm with McCabe a lot of the time with atheists I'll say yeah good I agree foyerbach you know if God is simply a projection of my idealized self-standing Isaiah knew about that. He called it idolatry. Ezekiel knew all about that.

[00:06:38]If God is just opium for the masses to assuage our our suffering, well, of course, that's a that's an idol. We we put a crucified criminal at the heart of our religious uh imagination. You know, Sart, if God exists, I I can't be free, but I am free. Therefore, God doesn't exist. Well, he's right. If God is a great competitor to my freedom, so I say thank God for all those atheists who who rid us of certain idols.

[00:07:03]Yes. And and as as has been said before, um many a Christian can say, "Well, I don't believe in the God that you don't believe in either in the sense that often it's a God that neither side really wants to believe in." But but why why do you believe in God and specifically the Christian God, Bishop Baron, because um perhaps if you could make, if you like, the positive case and then we'll we'll hear Alex respond to it and perhaps he can make the case for why he believes atheism makes more sense.

[00:07:30]This is our central question on the show today. Christianity or atheism, which makes best sense of who we are? How would you respond to to that overall question then?

[00:07:40]>> Well, again, we could look at some of the classic u ways Aquinus called them paths. I I like that much better than, you know, arguments or, you know, absolutely convincing rational demonstrations. I think ways hits it much more accurately. I think you look at it both sort of protologically, esqueologically.

[00:08:00]Where does a contingent world come from?

[00:08:02]Or more precisely, how do you explain contingent states of affairs? The endless appeal to other contingent states of affairs won't work. You must come finally to some non-contingent ground. Now, I'm sum summarizing that famous argument in just a couple of lines, but something like the quest for a foundation for a world that is uh radically eancent, that's radically nonselfy, that exists but doesn't have to exist.

[00:08:31]Now, that goes back to the beginnings of philosophy and the earliest philosophers were on that quest. And I think God is a very uh compelling answer to the question of how to explain contingent states of affairs. But I do it the other way. I'm calling it esqueologically.

[00:08:46]There's a a drive within us both intellectually and at the level of will toward what I would call the the unconditioned. So the mind is is looking for truths all the time and it finds them but it's never satisfied. It's one of the great marks of a real intellectual that you're never satisfied with every question you answer opens up a hundred more questions and the mind just goes out out and it's by an inner dynamism pressing toward what I'd call the unconditioned truth or truth itself.

[00:09:18]The will you seeks the good and finds it in in great acts of justice and so on, but it it's never satisfied. It it keeps opening to wider horizons. God, if you want, is not any of the things in the world that I might find, any of the truths my mind might discover. It's not some good that I might achieve, but a kind of luring horizon for the inner dynamism of the spirit. A lot of religious belief starts with trust, not evidence. Children are taught a story before they are old enough to question it. And later, many realize they never had strong reasons for believing it.

[00:09:55]Even the Bible defines faith as the substance of things hoped for in Hebrews 11:1, which is not the same as proof.

[00:10:03]Science asks for testable evidence.

[00:10:05]Religion often asks for belief first.

[00:10:08]That is why doubt is not rebellion. It is intellectual honesty. And I think God is a is a compelling answer to that. if you want, how to explain the the contingency of the world and then how to explain the the inner drive and dynamism of of the human spirit. Um, those are, you know, two kind of classical paths. I I want give Alex's talk. I actually like to say a few words about the onlogical argument because it gets at something that the arguments classically aren't getting at, but I'll leave it there for a second.

[00:10:41]>> Okay. Okay. Well, maybe we'll come back for the ontological argument, not one we do often on this show, but maybe we can open it up a little. Um, Alex, before we sort of hear your your sort of case against God, if you like, what do you think of this particular case for God that that Bishop Baron has spelled out?

[00:10:57]>> Well, I agree with many of the implications of what Bishop Baron is saying. I mean, for instance, I I very much uh agree with the idea of an expanse in knowledge essentially never being able to satisfy our curious minds.

[00:11:09]And there's that image of a of an expanding circle. As it gets bigger and bigger, so do the edges. You know, the the edges, the frontiers of our knowledge get bigger and bigger such that there are more and more things we don't know. Now, that's one of the things that I find so incredible and and and beautiful about uh the scientific and philosophical endeavors that we that we partake in because there's just endless things to discover. I find it quite strange how the Christian might be able to say that yes, our circle is getting bigger and bigger and the frontiers of our knowledge are getting bigger and bigger, but once we get to that certain point, there it is. We've got it. We have the full circle. We know what it is. We're now satisfied.

[00:11:46]The thing about atheism is that for most atheists that I know, it's it's more of a passive thing than an active thing.

[00:11:52]It's more just saying, listen, I'm not the one who has to do the explaining here. I'm perfectly content to say that our knowledge will continually expand and with it so will the frontiers. If somebody else comes along and claims that they have the answer, that they have the thing that kind of that that cuts off that progress and says, "We've we've found the answer. We know what's at the base of all reality, then they better have some good evidence for it."

[00:12:15]And there are plenty of ev plenty of evidences that are put forward and many arguments that are made such as the contingency argument which I've discussed on your show in in uh in more detail before Justin with Cameron Patuti of course. Um the the thing about it is that my job as an atheist is essentially to pick holes rather than to necessarily present an argument to say why it's false. It's more of an undercutting uh approach than a rebutting approach is what I like to use. Um, with contingency, when I was on your show before, uh, there's an assumption, for instance, that contingent things exist.

[00:12:46]Um, which is an assumption that often goes unanalyzed. You know, the idea that actually I could have not been born or, uh, that that, you know, this this glass that I've got on the table here could have been a mug instead or something like this is how contingency is often described. But, as I spoke about before on your show, Justin, that's not entirely it's not clear that that's necessarily true. uh if for instance we live in a deterministic universe where everything is following a causal chain whereby it actually couldn't have been different. Um so there are there are certain assumptions that I think often go unanalyzed in these arguments and you can have an entire discussion about the nature of contingent objects and whether they exist. But you can also have an entire discussion if you just grant that they do and say is it not the case as David Hume suggested that if you have each contingent object explained by another contingent object you've explained the whole uh and there's plenty of discussion to be had there.

[00:13:39]The problem is that these discussions are so large and so wide ranging that to say actually no we we we've solved the problem. We've solved all of these all of these poles that you can pick. We're going to plug them up with God and we and we're and not not just not just as a god of the gaps. not just as a well we don't really know let's just say that God did it but as a kind of no this is the best explanation for all of these things I I just I I fail to see it >> response Bishop Baron and then we'll go to a quick break firstly >> perhaps elaborate a little on that contingency argument but also this other issue Alex raises where he says it feels to him like Christians are saying we've got it covered we've got the ultimate answer and and sort of put a cap really on on how far our our quest for for for knowledge can go >> first about contingency I mean the word itself just from you know kum tandere I mean to touch with so this state of affair it's obtaining right now that that I'm speaking to this machine which is conveying information to you across the ocean that lights shining on me right now this state of affairs is contingent in the measure that it depends upon a set of causes extrinsic to itself so I put the question of determinism to the side I we can discuss that separately but the contingency of this state of affairs is simply the fact that it's being caused by a another state of affairs. Now, is that state of affairs itself contingent or non-contingent? If it is contingent, it's explained by some other set of causes. So, I don't think it, you know, look, people in the religious sphere who believed in determinism also accepted the argument from contingency. So, I don't think determinism really affects the meaning of contingency. That just means it's it's being touched upon by some kind of causal agency. Now, can that process proceed to infinity? So, I'd quarrel with Hume there because Aquinus distinguishes between a infinite causal set subordinated what he calls paroxidens and subordinated per se.

[00:15:34]Peroxidines would be you know you had a father who had a father who had a father back back back in that kind of causal theories that could be infinite because the the present existence of of the first element is not dependent here and now upon the higher elements but one subordinated acquaintances per se is where there's a here and now causal dependency. So, the fact that it's not a thousand degrees in this room right now, the fact that whatever is making those lights go is going, the fact that I have oxygen to breathe, all that's making this state of affairs real, it's actualizing a potential. Well, how do you explain that? Well, that has to be explained through another set of causes, etc. that kind of causal series I'd say patch Hume cannot proceed to infinity because then the suppression of a first element would indeed entail suppression of the subsequent causal elements. So I think that's the kind of causal theories that the argument from contingency is is quarreling with. Now let me say a quick thing too because I loved your comment actually about God and the setting of limits because what came to my mind was Augustine's famous dictim where he said see comprehend this nonest right if you understand that's not God which is why we purposely use language like horizon the sort of like ever retreating uh think of Ignatius Lyola God is semayor always greater always more. So, you're right. If we were to say, "Boom, end of it. Got it. Understand it. Got it figured out." That's not God. We're talking about the the arguments are kind of gesturing in the direction of this ultimate horizon. But if we become very univical in our language that see comprehendos um or Aquinus, you know, he says whatever can be known or understood is less than God. So if if you ever you're tempted to say you're quite right, I I got it. End of the argument. That's not God you're talking about. So I I would add that um observation uh which I think is a very valid one that you make. The problem with the God explains reality argument is that it does not explain enough. It gives mystery a name and calls that an answer. If the universe needs an explanation, then saying God did it only raises the next question.

[00:17:55]Why does God get a free pass?

[00:17:58]Science does not pretend to have every final answer, but it keeps testing, correcting, and learning. Religion often stops the search too early and protects the claim from being tested.

[00:18:09]>> Uh, just in that last section, Alex, um, Bishop Robert Baron was responding to that question about whether God is a sort of arbitrary stopping point in in, you know, as an explanation. And he he obviously believes that no God God is in that sense opens up you know the field rather than closes it down. I mean I could imagine someone coming back to you um and saying well a naturalist um someone who is a materialist as an atheist they've kind of got their stopping point which is the laws of nature and the material stuff of the world. That's sort of the boundary of their explanatory uh viewpoint. Um and they might equally ask well why that particular stopping point you know why how have you arrived at that particular belief that that's that's the case. Um so perhaps take a moment to explain where where you do sit on that um do you call yourself uh in that sense an atheist naturalist um uh or something else and and you know how do you what makes you confident that atheism or naturalism is indeed the best explanation for the world we live in?

[00:19:16]Well, this all very much depends on how we interpret the terms. Uh, for example, we were talking about God as being a kind of explanatory stopping point. And you could say the same thing about naturalism if you are a naturalist. If you're someone who believes that the only thing that exists is is is physical material essentially. But something like naturalism can also be a methodological process. In other words, as we investigate the world, we make the assumption that there's no supernatural agency at play. So the scientific method for instance tends to assume naturalism.

[00:19:46]It says that we're going to investigate the world only in in regards to physical material. Now that doesn't necessarily commit them to the conclusion that that's all there is. It just means they're using that as a methodology. I would say that uh in in the in the former sense, in the explanatory sense, I wouldn't call myself a naturalist. I wouldn't make the claim that there's no supernatural dimension to the universe.

[00:20:08]I couldn't possibly know this. What I can say is that I've seen no evidence to suggest that there is uh such a thing and so I I kind of abstain from really holding a belief on that position. I remain rather agnostic. Um but for that reason I employ a methodological naturalism which says that I know that the physical world exists at least to some extent um on on most accounts of knowledge that can be made sense of. Uh and so for that reason when I'm investigating the world I'll make that assumption. Now, I would have no problem incorporating a non-naturalistic framework into the way I investigate the world if it turns out that uh there is some reason to think that that that does exist in the universe. But if you see what I'm saying, whilst I I wouldn't assert that I'm a naturalist in the sense that I believe that that's all that there is in the universe, I may employ it methodologically speaking. Um, I would also say just to respond to what Bishop Baron Baron said a moment ago, um, because I I think it it's beautifully put and one of the things that a lot of people misunderstand about causation is that there are there are there are two two types of causation that can be at play here. When we were talking about causation on your show, Justin, we were talking about causation in the latter sense that Bishop Baron mentioned like I was caused by my parents, my parents caused by their parents. uh but as you as as Bishop Baron implies there is another type of causation which is a more kind of simultaneous causation. The thing about parentage is that if my parents cause me, if my parents then then go away, then die or whatever, I'm still here, right? But there's another kind of causation, this kind of uh hierarchical causation, as Ed Faser describes it, which is the kind of causation that says that the laptop I'm speaking to you on is being held up by a table and the table is being held up by the ground.

[00:21:51]Now, if you if you if you get rid of the table, the computer doesn't say where it is, right? the computer being caused to be where it is as it is. It's being caused by the table, but not in such a way like with my parents where if you took it away, it then disappeared. Uh it would it would still be here, but rather if you take that away, it completely disappears. The interesting implication of this is that when we talk about a cause and a cause and a cause and a cause and a chain of causation, that's not what we should be describing because the intermediate steps actually have no causal power of their own. Right? The table only has causal power to hold up the computer in so far as the ground gives it that causal power because if the ground takes that away, the table doesn't have that causal power on its own. And so the very language that we speak about these things in when we say, well, actually there's this kind of causation which works hierarchically speaking, right? I'm not sure that that's entirely accurate because of the fact that we're not really talking about causes here. We're kind of talking about an intermediary stage of things which don't have any causal power of their own accord. The crucial question there is then what gives this entire chain of contingent things its causal power as one block? That's the question that needs to be discussed. And the Christian says that it's God. Uh the atheist might say that it's the necessity of the chain itself or perhaps the necessity of the universe or something like that. But talking about causation in that manner I think is uh ill advised. But I would recommend to people who are who are listening who want an accessible version to understand this kind of causation that isn't the kind apparent in the calam cosmological argument. You know, a cause before an effect kind of thing, but this different slightly less intuitive form of causation. I' I'd certainly recommend reading Ed Faser's book uh five proofs for the existence of God on on on that topic. Um but I just wanted to make that observation before moving on completely.

[00:23:40]>> Sure. Did you want to add anything to that, Bishop Robert Baron? Well, simply this that I I I wouldn't use the language of the intermediary elements not having causal efficacy. It's a borrowed causal efficacy just as the state of affairs obtaining now exists but doesn't have to exist. It doesn't contain within itself the reason for its own subsistence. And so it's a borrowed subsistence if you want. And the same is true of all the elements within the chain. They they are truly causes but their causality is borrowed or they're actualized by a higher and higher chain.

[00:24:13]But the important thing is whatever we want to call that it has to be grounded somewhere or else we can't explain the state of affairs in front of us that needs to be explained as you say the computer resting on the table. We can't explain what obtains now if we simply infinitely postpone the explanation which is what's in implicit in a infinite causal theories of that type.

[00:24:35]Now, now Quinus will say, "And this all people call God." I I'm happy for the moment to say, "Let's just stop there."

[00:24:41]And there's got to be something like a non-contingent source of contingency.

[00:24:45]And now by several other steps, I think we can get to something that really resembles what's classically uh characterized as God. But that's a second or third move.

[00:24:55]>> Yeah. Now that's why in these discussions and in fact I would still quarrel slightly with what you're saying in the sense of the terminology of of borrowed uh borrowed causal efficacy um in the idea that the table does have causal power that it's borrowing from the ground that kind of thing. I'm imagining an analogy that's often used to describe this kind of causation is that of a paintbrush and the idea of a kind of infinite paintbrush somehow painting a picture that wouldn't make any sense. I would say if you had a painter who is painting an image, I don't think it would make sense to say that the the paintbrush itself has artistic efficacy that it's borrowing from the p from the painter. I'd say if the painter puts the paintbrush to paper, it's the painter that has that that efficacy that has that artistic efficacy and through the paintbrush which has none of that efficacy itself, it's getting to the paper. In the same way, I would say that whatever kind of causes a naturally sustaining another thing's ability to to to create or to withhold or to uh to sustain something, I think it does make sense to say that actually no, it doesn't have causal power if its entire ability to to do that causation comes completely from something else which is which is giving it that power in the same way that the painter gives the paintbrush artistic efficacy. I don't think you would use that kind of language. Naturalism works because it produces results. Medicine, electricity, vaccines, space travel, and modern technology came from studying the physical world, not from invoking invisible forces. Supernatural claims have had thousands of years to prove themselves, but they still cannot be tested, measured, or reliably repeated.

[00:26:33]Even the Bible says to test all things in 1 Thessalonians 5:21. When religion is tested by evidence, it keeps retreating into mystery. That is not knowledge. That is an escape route.

[00:26:47]>> No, you're equivocating there, though, because you don't give the paintbrush as such aesthetic efficacy. It has the efficacy to put color on canvas. It's got that kind of e efficacy. I just use plonic language there of participation.

[00:27:00]You've got a kind of participated causality. All of it quite right is grounded in the supreme causality of God. It wouldn't like Aquinus talks about the um being given the the privilege of participating in God's causality. So the way that we share in God's providence um God is providential over all things but I can participate in that causality. Um material things do it uh unconsciously. We can do it through conscious cooperation. But I don't know to me though, whatever we want to call that, it wouldn't really affect the argument that we have to come to some first uh instance.

[00:27:36]I I what I'd love to move on to at this point um and again there's a great um conversation on the contingency argument uh uh you can find on the unbelievable channel elsewhere but is in a sense um the question of well presumably Bishop Baron you you you're not a Christian you're not a Catholic just because of some great arguments that um Aquinas made uh century you know a millennia and a half ago or whatever right um so what's what's the um what for you is faith? Um presumably it's more than just those intellectual arguments that obviously have been part of your journey along the way. You know, let me start with I'll do a very quick little anecdote. Um I don't know if you over in in the UK, you know, Bill Maher, Bill Maher's program. He's a very well-known kind of left-wing political and cultural commentator, fiercely atheist, hates religion. Well, one time he had a Christian on his show who was a political lobbyist. So they they talked politics for a time. But then he said to him, "Now you're a man of faith." And he said, "Yes, that means you accept all kinds of things on the basis of no evidence." And the man said, "Yes."

[00:28:45]Well, I had the the channel switcher in my hand. And I'm I threw it at the camera at the TV because I thought, "No, man. That's the whole problem." uh Paul Tillic the great Protestant theologian said faith is the most misunderstood word in the religious lexicon because it's construed just that way you know faith means some wild credul some crazy superstition believing any old nonsense on the basis of nothing that's not what faith is in our great people that's not what faith is in Thomas Aquinus or Anselm or Augustine or any of the great figures to put it simply faith is never in for irrational. So superstition, gullibility, accepting any old nonsense, that's all infrarational. I'm against that. The church is against that. That's superstitious nonsense. Faith authentically construed is always suprational. It's it's a surrender at the far side of reason. Um I think that the best the best analogy to it is in our coming to know a person, right? So I I'm meeting both of you at least virtually now for the first time.

[00:29:57]I I watched videos of you. My mind was alive to see what you're like and listen to you talk and I drew conclusions and so on. Uh I hope someday I can meet you in person. I'll have an even more thorough knowledge of you. My mind will be fully engaged around that. But I mean, let's suppose we continued to get to know each other and we developed into real friends. Well, my mind has never gone to sleep in this process. My mind is still alive and awake and alert and studying and but at some point in that friendship, you would reveal something to me that I could never have learned through my own reason by reading about you or or even talking to you or or talking to others about you. you'd you'd speak some truth about your life that I could never have guessed unless you had told me. And see, at that point, I have to make a decision whether I believe you or not. Uh you could be making some crazy stuff up. I don't know. Or you could be telling me the deepest truth of your heart. I have to decide at that point, do I believe you? Now, I I haven't put reason to sleep at all. At no point in this process have I set reason aside. But at a key moment if if I really want to get to know you, I have to say, yeah, based on a lot of things and hunches and intuitions and experience and knowledge and and what I've gathered about this person, I'm willing to say yes, I believe that truth about you. That's an analogy, it seems to me, to religious faith authentically construed that we would hold and we could talk about what this means. Doesn't mean voices coming out of clouds that God speaks.

[00:31:48]If if I accept things on the basis of no reason or no argument, it's just any old nonsense. That's credul and superstition. But a surrender on the far side of reason to the self-revealing God. That's faith authentically construed. I think >> well I mean look I I I would I would put it rather plainly and say that with the proposition you put forward is quite a simple one. You know someone you know puts forward a piece of information and you've got to decide whether to trust them or not. There are two options here.

[00:32:21]You're either basing this on some form of reason. That is you say listen they've never lied to me before. I understand that person. I know who they are. I know what their motives are. And therefore, I conclude that what they're saying is true. I wouldn't call that faith. I'd call that perfectly in line with what the average person would call reason. The other option is that you're doing it as you describe on a kind of hunch, an intuition, that is to say, >> lack of evidence. I I would say that what you're describing there is either an instance of believing what they say because you have reason to do so >> or believing what you say or believing what they say despite having no reason to do so on a hunch or an intuition. If it's the first then I'd just call it reason and if it's the second then I'm supposing you wouldn't call it faith.

[00:33:06]>> No, take the first part of our conversation. So we've been going through some of these classical paths to God which I think very convincingly show that belief in God or acceptance of God's existence is a reasonable position to hold. So when someone out of a religious tradition, so let's say out of the biblical tradition says that God has spoken and again I'm not talking about voice from clouds that's a symbol of what I'm talking about that God has spoken. Well, I have a very reasonable context for that claim that God exists and I can show I think by a number of steps too that God is intelligent, that God has will, that God is connected to his world, that God has created the world out of love. Within that context, it makes perfect sense to say that God would want to communicate precisely in human history to his uh intelligent creatures. So, that's not an unreasonable claim. It it's in a reasonable context. And so I accept that when I said hunch intuition, I really meant that sort of thing that that there's a a context provided by reason for the claim that God has spoken. Now, what's it mean to say God has spoken?

[00:34:15]I I rather like Paul Tillik's uh description of the breakthrough of the unconditioned into our ordinary experience. That's why a lot of contemporary theologians don't use classical arguments. They'll talk often about limit experiences. At at the limit of our knowing, at the limit of our capacities, at the limit of our attainment, we often look toward that which transcends those limits. Right? He Hegel's line about to know a limit as a limit is already to be beyond the limit.

[00:34:45]At the limit, we we gaze into what transcends that limit. Are there some people who have experienced the breakthrough of the unconditioned? that the unconditioned being itself. If you want God speaks, God breaks through our ordinary experience. Faith is the sort of epistemological move that corresponds to that event, that event. The Bible witnesses to those moments, it seems to me. Uh now, poets point in that direction often, too. But the Bible witnesses to people that have had the experience of the breakthrough of the unconditioned. The word faith gets dressed up to sound reasonable. But the problem stays the same. If you believe something because the evidence supports it, that is reason. If you believe it beyond the evidence, that is guessing with religious language. Christianity asks people to trust ancient claims about miracles, resurrection, demons, angels, and divine voices.

[00:35:47]Even 2 Corinthians 5:7 says, "Believers walk by faith, not by sight." That is exactly the issue. Site, evidence, and testing are how we separate truth from imagination.

[00:36:00]But >> I I feel like uh interesting as it may be, this is this is off track from the original point, which is to say, look, I mean, you I think what you're making is a distinction without difference. Here you say that faith needs to be distinct from reason. Otherwise, there's no point in having the term, right? But we're talking about something that's distinct from the average kind of here's a reason for believing something so I believe it.

[00:36:22]And you've said well no it's it's not that I kind of use reason to come to this conclusion. I just have a context of reason from which I arrive at this belief is I think the terminology you used. I I'm failing to see the distinction here. In other words that the question is quite simple. It's like when it comes to something, some proposition which you would say you need faith to believe, whether that be a religious claim or or a claim that a person you've met is is is making, you either have sufficient reason to believe what they're saying, in which case you're relying on reason, or you don't, in which case, sure, you're relying on faith, but then faith would entail a lack of sufficient reason. I I feel like those are the only two options available to you. No, but I think we're probably just using terms in somewhat different uh senses because I think when that person speaks her heart to you, your reason is not in control. Your reason has prepared the way, your reason provides a certain condition for the possibility, but accepting what she says, that has to be an act of of real belief that that goes beyond your capacity to control. See, one of the marks seems to be between that differentiates a philosopher approaching God and one of the great biblical figures. Philosophers are always for the most part in control of the situation.

[00:37:38]They're proposing the premises. They're analyzing. They're proposing arguments, drawing conclusions. They're in the driver's seat epistemologically. the great biblical figures, uh, you don't find anything like an argument for God's existence in the Bible, which is very interesting because they're very much in the in the passive voice. They've been addressed. They've been uh spoken to, you know, uh Isaiah's vision in the temple, that that's a symbol of what it's like to be addressed by God. So, it's not repugnant to reason. In fact, reason provides a a context for that.

[00:38:16]But it it goes beyond it. It's something that reason can't control on its own.

[00:38:21]>> I mean, what might help here, Alex, is just for you to to kind of explain, just just to help move move this on here, is what what would be for you a reasonable evidence for God, if you like, and if that were presented to you, would you still say, "Well, I'm not believing by faith at this point. I'm simply believing by reason God." But what would that sort of a reason have to look like?

[00:38:45]>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, see, I'm I'm not sure exactly. Well, I'm I know what the reason would kind of look like, which is some form of sound valid argument in favor of God's existence. If the onlogical argument uh is sound, then the conclusion of the onlogical argument is true. You know, it's it's as simple as it gets. Now, I find this interesting because I mean it's it's actually fairly recently that this analytic style of philosophical thinking has been applied to religion. And traditional systematic theologians were at least originally quite hostile to the introduction of analytic philosophy to doing theology.

[00:39:16]And they say that the reason that this is is because, you know, religion requires narrative. It requires poetry.

[00:39:23]It requires this kind of faith-based thinking that analytic philosophy, you know, reason alone can't really grasp at this. I find to be telling, right? We we have someone coming along and saying, "Listen, I I am going to accept what can be reasonably shown to be the case and systematic theology essentially rejecting it on the basis of it not being able to to to properly handle the content uh of of their beliefs." I find it incredibly telling that when we try to apply this kind of analytic style of thinking to theological thought, the response is never to try and show why um actually you know we can we can provide an analysis which shows that this is in keeping with our reasonable logical thinking but rather to say that actually you know the methodology is is inappropriate to use in this case and we should be using this vague concept of faith instead which I still haven't heard precisely defined from from Bishop Baron which would would be quite helpful actually if if uh rather and kind of talking around the subject as I think we've been doing here. I think it would be helpful to the listener and to me if we could have a a sentence perhaps that sums up what what faith is as a as a dictionary theological definition.

[00:40:29]>> Faith is a response to the revealing God.

[00:40:33]>> Faith is responsing God. The response of the whole self in the presence of the God who reveals himself. Now, that's not repugnant at all to what we were doing 20 minutes ago in talking rationally about God in terms of philosophical proofs. I think those are very uh uh effective ways to approach the mystery of God. But then there's the claim, the strange claim from the heart of religious traditions that God has spoken, which means God has revealed something of himself beyond what the mind on its own can grasp. Now, the mind can understand it. It can take it in, think about it. faith-seeking understanding etc. But make it more specific in in the Christian context we're talking about the incarnation we're talking about the uh trinity two realities that reason can't on its own um grasp but were given to us were revealed to us and faith is the response of the entire person to the revealing God.

[00:41:34]>> This is where religion hides behind special words. When reason cannot prove the claim, it gets renamed as revelation.

[00:41:42]But every religion can say the same thing. Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, and Christians all claim divine truth was revealed to them. They cannot all be right, but they can all be sincere. The Bible even warns that false revelations exist in Deuteronomy 18:22.

[00:42:00]So, the question is simple. How do we test it? if it cannot be tested, it should not be treated as truth.

[00:42:08]>> But um I suppose at a practical level, most people if they accept or indeed often reject faith, it comes at a more experiential kind of level. Um they're not necessarily thinking about the argument for God or against God of Aquinas or Richard Dawkins. Um it's it's often, you know, most people's journey involves some experiential element to it. Um as I said we're living through a pandemic uh where people are asking big questions around the nature of life suffering uh and everything else and I suppose at some level I see um I see people both rejecting faith and being drawn to faith during this pandemic. Uh people who you know when they see suffering it actually they throw themselves upon God and others who say well I I want nothing to do with God if this is the kind of world he creates. Um I mean does atheism per se, Alex, have anything to say to this issue or or is atheism more just as you've said a kind of a point of view on one issue and people will have to kind of deal with the issue of pain and suffering in whatever form they can if they do happen to be an atheist.

[00:43:23]>> Atheism doesn't claim to have any explanatory power. Okay. uh what we can say is that we would we would expect if there is a if there is a world in which there are conscious creatures which you know I recognize some people think is unlikely given atheism generally um but if if that's our premise what would we expect to find? Well, we'd have no reason not to expect there to be all kinds of unpredictable and seemingly arbitrary suffering. It's not me who has to do the explaining here, you know, and and you're right, Justin, that during a tragedy like this, you find that people come to religion and people go away from religion, but that's that falls within the realm, I think, of uh of a psychological discussion. It's like people might come to God because they find it's a good way to to deal with the immense tragedy of the suffering that we're facing. But that says nothing about whether or not religion provides a sufficient explanation for why it's happening or justification for for why it's happening. Because here's the problem.

[00:44:19]in order to assert that there is an allloving God who is supervising this and because you know I'm not the one here who is claiming that this is being supervised that somebody is watching this somebody knows that this is occurring and somebody's allowing it to occur if we're going to assert that there is a benevolent being who is allowing this to occur then it must follow that there is morally sufficient reason for this to occur in the United Kingdom just today we passed 100,000 people who've been d who've been killed by the virus And the Christian has to say that this is morally justified. And they're welcome to do so with reference to theodysies by saying that you know this is pain. People like to speak kind of abstractly about how pain and suffering might be necessary to obtain certain goods or it'll be compensated in the afterlife or something of this sort. But we have to say specifically on an issue like this that yes, this specifically 100,000 people who have died of COVID have done so because God allowed it.

[00:45:16]That's the first thing that needs to be admitted by the Christian. And most Christians have no problem accepting that. The difficulty comes in in the second proposition, which is that it's justified. This needs to happen or this should have happened or at least there's no kind of uh moral quam with this having been allowed to happen. That's the problem that needs to be fixed.

[00:45:34]>> And and and can I just from you Alex just understand is this a major reason why you don't believe in God? I.e. The problem of evil is for you a major objection to God.

[00:45:46]>> Yeah. Call it not an active cause of my atheism, but a sustaining cause. It wasn't the reason why I left the faith originally, but it's one of the reasons that uh prevents me from from re-entertaining the the the idea. I mean, as as we've discussed, there are plenty of seemingly plausible arguments to say that there's a necessary being at the bottom of contingent chains in the universe, that there's a a being who sustains things, that there's an arbitrary first cause or something like this. But to say that this first cause is a loving God who will preside over the kind of suffering that we've seen not just in the human context of something like the corona virus but also the hundreds of billions and trillions if you include sea life of animals who are going through suffering that we wouldn't even be capable of imagining.

[00:46:29]There seems to be no explanation for this.

[00:46:31]>> Okay. So this is a huge question that we're trying to you know >> small questions today.

[00:46:37]>> Yeah. Do where where are you going to begin with this? Uh, Bishop Baron.

[00:46:41]>> Well, how about with Aquinus, you know, in the in the suma when he poses the question utram deusit, is there a god?

[00:46:48]And Aquinus famously puts up objections first, right? Well, two of them we've talked about. One is that nature is a self-contained system. There's no need to go outside of nature to explain what's going on within nature. That's objection one. Objection two, and Thomas um states it, I think, more elegantly than anyone in the in the tradition, and I include the atheist tradition. Thomas said, "If one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed." So if there were an infinite heat, there'd be no cold. That's his little example. But God is called the infinite good. Therefore, there there should be no evil if there's an infinite good. But there is evil. Therefore, there is no infinite good. Um, that's a good argument. That's an elegantly stated argument and it's what has been argued for millennia, right? It's the perennial uh objection. Now, I'm sure everyone here knows the classical response rooted in people like Augustine, repeated by Aquinus, that God doesn't cause evil, but God is so good that he draws good out of evil that might not have existed without evil. He permits evil to bring about a greater good. Now, can we see that sometime?

[00:48:01]Sure. I mean, there's obvious examples in our ordinary experience of of evils that actually produce a great good. Can we very often not see it? Well, yeah, of course. I'd say even typically we don't see right away, oh yeah, that's the reason why that was permitted. So, do we hold as theists that God is providentially uh ordering the whole of the universe?

[00:48:25]that as Jean Pierre Deosad put it everything that is is in some sense the will of God either actively or permissively. Yeah, I think we are obliged to hold that view. Therefore, something like this formula has to obtain that God permits forms of suffering to bring about a greater good.

[00:48:45]Now, can we see it? As I say, sometimes yes. Typically, no. But that shouldn't surprise us, right? If we're talking about not one contingent cause among many. So someone who might be ordering things in one corner of his of the universe but of God Ipsum essay the creator of all things whose whose um preserve is all of space and all of time. Is it at all likely that we're going to see the the full implications of whatever is happening? the full implications across space and time of what's being permitted. And the answer there is obviously no. And I think now go back to the book of Job is the is the classic biblical answer in in the presence of great evil, great suffering is we we don't know what God is up to.

[00:49:36]And we're in no position, now I'd put that back on Alex. We're in no position to say definitively there is no morally justifiable reason for this particular evil because we'd need a godlike perspective on all of space and all of time in order to make that claim. And that's the import of of God's speech to Job, the longest speech of God anywhere in the Bible. Where were you when I made the, you know, the the heavens and the earth, etc. But it just means you're in no position to pronounce or to articulate that premise that you have clear knowledge there can't be a morally justifiable reason for a given suffering. It seems to me that from a purely logical standpoint the argument is not that compelling. It is filled with emotional power. I completely get it. Like anybody who's lived more than, you know, two years on planet Earth, I've suffered in my life and wondered why and and asked the question, "Of course I do." And then, as Alex and many others point out, that the really horrific suffering that we can see at all levels of of a sentient being.

[00:50:45]Sure, I get it. I totally get the the emotional power of that. But it seems to me from a strictly logical standpoint, it's not a compelling argument because it assumes you have a god-like perspective.

[00:50:56]>> The suffering argument hits religion where it is weakest. If a loving all powerful god exists, then every disease, disaster, child death, and animal suffering happens under his watch.

[00:51:08]Saying maybe there is a greater good is not an answer. It is a way to excuse anything. The book of Job does not explain suffering. It tells humans they are too small to question it. That is not moral clarity. That is submission.

[00:51:24]Atheism does not need to justify suffering. Christianity does.

[00:51:29]>> This of course is not uh it doesn't need to be framed in a logical uh in a logical way. Of course, the logical problem of evil has been famously made by a number of atheists. But this can also just be seen as an inductive point, right? Because what's being said here in in many elegant words I believe uh is essentially in the context of the corona virus which is how you originally brought this up Justin is is the claim that it's worth it. We don't know what for but it's worth it. You know 100,000 people have been killed by this virus which you know if it is the case that some good was necessitated by the death of these people humanity seemed to have been getting on just fine for around 200,000 years before the corona virus appeared on the scene. I don't see why now all of a sudden it's now necessary to bring in this new virus to produce some good that everybody else seemed to do without. And you have to turn around and say that the reason this is happening is because it's worth it. And someone asks you, well, what on earth for? What on earth is this worth it for?

[00:52:25]A 100,000 people. Why couldn't it be why couldn't it be 9,999?

[00:52:30]Why couldn't one person have been spared? Why couldn't one person's of suffering have been marginally less?

[00:52:34]Surely the same kind of goods of community spirit or whatever it is that you think the good is that's come out of this corona virus could have been achieved with one less person dying. And not only does God turn around and say, "Well, listen, you know, you don't know what I know." Yeah, just just wait and see. He turns around and says, "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? How dare you even suggest that you know better than me?

[00:52:56]How dare you even ask the question? How dare you question that me allowing this to happen is a good thing, is worth it?"

[00:53:03]And you have to look at your dying father in the eyes and say, "I'm sorry.

[00:53:08]I I I'm I'm not allowed to say that this is a tragedy because I know that from a from a divine perspective, the only way to reconcile my Christianity is to say not just that this is some kind of tragedy with an explanation, but no, this is worth it. This is good. This brings about something better." I I don't think that's a task that can be done.

[00:53:25]>> Yeah. But who are you or I or anyone to say? How do we know? How would anyone you we'd have to have a godlike grasp of all of space and all of time to make a judgment pro or con? Neither one of us, no one can make that judgment. And I mean, you can characterize it the way you did in a sort of flip manner, but that that God permits evil to bring about some greater good. I don't know what that is. How do I know specifically what that is? Though I can state the principle, I think legitimately, but I don't know. How do I know? How does anybody know? I think it's arrogant on either side in a way to claim that knowledge.

[00:54:03]>> Well, then >> I know that God exists on other terms.

[00:54:06]So I mean I I think through various paths and various rational means I know that God exists. I also know that evil is present in the world. So I got to find a way to reconcile those. It seems to me the principle u achieves that. The details of it I don't know how would I possibly know. Well, perhaps I can I can elucidate the problem I have with this view by asking you a question. Um, Bishop Baron, would you say, for instance, that it is uh that it is bad when you know uh a a woman has a miscarriage or a baby is ripped from the arms of its mother in a tsunami. Would you say this is a bad thing?

[00:54:44]>> Sure.

[00:54:45]>> Well, how could you possibly say that?

[00:54:47]How how could you be so arrogant as to suggest that you know enough about the ultimate reasons for this happening that you can conclude that this is overall all things considered a bad thing. The problem is that if we say that because we don't have this divine universal perspective that allows us to understand the exact complete kind of field of play that's going on here. I'm not allowed to say that actually there's no justification for this because I I I can't possibly know that. Then we then we forfeit our right to use any kind of moral language because we are never ever in a position to judge these things. And so we can never say that something is bad or something is good because we don't have that perspective.

[00:55:25]>> No, I don't see why that would follow. I mean I can say like a moral action is is bad. I can say what Hitler did is bad.

[00:55:30]It's morally wrong. Now did God permit that? Well, sure in the measure that God permitted Hitler to come into being that God didn't interfere with Hitler's activity. So God allowed that. God permitted it. But I can still say it's bad. Uh but does it does God allow that evil to bring about some greater good that I can't see. That's the principle.

[00:55:50]But I I have no hesitation calling things good or bad.

[00:55:53]>> I mean earlier on you said as well, Alex, that you can't call the death of someone's father a tragedy if you're a Christian because it can't be a tragedy if if God has some greater purpose in mind. But presumably, Bishop Baron, you would say tragedy exists for Christians, even if we do believe there's an ultimate.

[00:56:11]>> Yeah. You know, >> well, again, we're we're probably equivocating a bit. I mean, I would subscribe to Dante's, we're ultimately dealing with a divine comedy. So, in that grandest possible sense, there's no tragedy. I'm dealing with a comedy finally. But sure, within that, sure, from our perspective, we can identify something as tragic or or deeply sad or or wicked. Um but God's perspective, God is not one fussy competitive object among many. God's not one little fussy cause among many. But God is Ipsum essay more like the author of a novel than a character in it. Right? And so Doski allowing all sorts of darkness within his great novels, but still having a commanding uh viewpoint. And it's an analogy that limps like all analogies, but God's more like that than one fussy character among many within the novel.

[00:57:01]Well, yeah. I mean, when Dosski allows a character to be mistreated, it's certainly good for the plotline, but it's not good for the character. And that's the point here. The Christian at least the theodysy that's been proposed here is one saying that uh you know, evil is allowed because some greater good can be can be brought brought from it. Which which means the corollery of this is that anytime an evil exists, anytime bad exists, it exists precisely because some good is going to be brought out of it. That is to say, evil is actually an indication that something good is happening, which means that all of these evil instances, and I specifically uh avoided using instances that have the complication of free will.

[00:57:37]So, I wouldn't use something like the Holocaust, but I use something like the Corona virus or something like a miscarriage. Um, the implication of this, the implication of saying that evil is always an indication that some good is being obtained is to say that these are things worth celebrating.

[00:57:50]Anytime that one of these things happens, anytime that a tragedy, and of course, you can see it as an emotional tragedy. A Christian is still perfectly entitled to say that they're upset by this, that they're sad, that they're angry that they don't understand the reasons, but ultimately philosophically, they have to say this is a cause for celebration. Thank goodness that this has been allowed to happen so that we can draw out some good. Thank goodness that there's 100,000 people in the killed by this virus so that some good can be achieved.

[00:58:16]>> That's an emotional appeal though, Alex.

[00:58:18]I don't think that's right. I mean, the Christian would look gravely at the situation and acknowledge God's will is at work here, though I can't see it. I I think that's the right attitude to say I would celebrate it.

[00:58:30]Seems to me the wrong uh point of view.

[00:58:33]You you'd look at it and acknowledge there's a dimension to this that I can't fully appreciate. I I place it within the context of God's ultimate purposes, but I do so I mean obviously in a very grave manner typically in the presence of great suffering. So I wouldn't say that we can celebrate it, but >> we can of course we can we can have grave celebrations, right? I mean would you not say that God's will being done to produce good ends is worth celebrating? Of course if if if God's will is being done to produce a good end, that's something worth celebrating.

[00:59:03]Now, in the same way, if if we win a war, if if we if we win World War II, we celebrate that that happened, but it's a kind of solemn celebration because we recognize the cost that was paid. But it's still a celebration. It's still a good thing that we won that war. If if evil is actually an indication of God's will being done by the procurement of some good through some evil, then as solemnly as that celebration may occur, it should have to be something worth celebrating, which which seems to me totally anathema to the way that any person could, let alone should uh entertain these kinds of tragedies.

[00:59:35]>> This is where the greater good defense becomes disturbing. If every tragedy is allowed by God to create some higher purpose, then suffering becomes part of the divine plan. Miscarriages, pandemics, tsunamis, and pointless animal pain are treated as pieces in a cosmic story. That does not defend morality. It weakens it. A decent human response is to reduce suffering, not explain it away as necessary. What do you think? Does suffering make Christianity harder to believe, or do you think religion explains it? Comment below and don't forget to like and subscribe.