When someone claims that a god exists, they have adopted a burden of proof that they must meet; since no one has met this burden of proof for any god, the default position should be that no god exists until someone demonstrates otherwise. This principle applies to all claims, not just religious ones, and the absence of evidence for God's existence should not be taken as evidence against God's existence, but the burden of proof remains on the claimant.
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Is Your God ACTUALLY Real? Prove It! Call Matt Dillahunty & Aaron Rabinowitz | The Hang Up 05.27.26Hinzugefügt:
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Hey, good evening everybody. Welcome.
It's Wednesday. This is the Hang Up. Um, man, at at some point I I'm gonna So, I know you guys just got to hear that awesome I don't know, dad rock guitar thing or whatever else. There's some weirdness that happens in the audio on my end. The volume goes way loud, way quiet, way loud, way at different times.
And I know it's not affecting you guys, but it freaked me out every time. And it's because, oh, you know, hey, I Oh, wait. Somebody saying they were hearing the volume strikes. You were hearing the volume fluctuating. That was awesome. I thought it was just me. I was like, what's going on? Well, welcome to the show. Uh, I'm Adel Honey. you're watching the line. That is our network.
And by the way, we're at 198,000 subscribers. So, we're closing in on the uh the 200k. So, if you haven't subscribed, you might consider subscribing. Uh things are things are a bit of a mess and kind of sluggish getting started uh today, but it this is a call-in show like all the other shows here on the line network. 720619-2288.
and in particular um I'll get to my guest here in a moment but I'd like to hear from apologists and you know not nec not maybe not even to to offer an apologetic defense of you know their religious beliefs but to give what they think the current state of apologetics are or the current state is I suppose is is grammatically correct because I have my own thoughts about this as somebody who's been, you know, I've been in the callin space for 20 some odd years and I've been in the in-person uh, you know, organized, structured, everybody shows up and attends uh, debate for that long as well. And then there's the online debates. All of those things are different.
the formal structured debates that have a format where you you know you're there in person. They come in a number of different varieties. There are some that take place in churches and some that take place in universities and um they have varying degrees of seriousness and scholarship um in those kind of structured debates.
Then there are the in-person debates, um, which are basically just they're the online WWE style let's trash talk and and the whole purpose is to generate clicks in an online sense. They're not I don't think they're actually accomplishing much to move the conversation forward. And I'm I'm as responsible for the the popularity of those as as anybody I would complain about. Um, but I did stop engaging in those sorts of things where you just, you know, you grab anybody from anywhere who's got a YouTube channel and they think they've got something important to say. um and and you end up spinning your wheels in circles or you know just you know yelling and or defending something terrible. I don't I don't see what the value is. I mean it's one thing to say okay you know do we have good reason to believe there's a god? Do we have good reason to believe that there's a god interacting with us in some detectable way? Uh is there a good reason to think there's an afterlife?
Something to aspire towards? Do we seek the best afterlife? avoid the worst afterlife or do we have actual evidence that directs us? Those types of conversations are I think valuable.
Um what I've seen and you know in in both the online structured and the and and in-person debates is hey let's say the thing that's the most shocking.
Let's say the thing that's going to get us views. You want to get a Muslim man in to defend four-year-olds um being permitted by Allah to to marry because of and and engage in adult activities because of precocious puberty. Sure. Sure. We'll do that debate and pretend like we're actually, you know, doing something significant rather than just propping up the least moral, the least intelligent, the least respectable positions.
Oh, you think the earth is flat? Well, that's all all the rage right now. Let's let's get some flatearthers in here and you can talk about, you know, whatever whatever mathematics you think you've got to get there. it it's not stuck merely in the realm of religion.
You can debate almost anything and if you find the thing that is going to get you clicks and attention or the format that's going to get you clicks and attention like there's the uh a handful of formats that have gained popularity.
Oh, it's one person versus 20 or 40 or 50 or 9,000 or whatever else. Um, there are good things that come out of that, but I'm not convinced. I don't know. May maybe it's more important to get people watching. Maybe it's more important to get people paying attention. Maybe despite the fact that people are going to watch their side and leave thinking their side won no matter what. Um, maybe it's enough that there are some people who are going to watch this and actually think.
I I don't know. But I do know that I I don't care to do like I I'll do the call-in shows. Call-in shows aren't debates. Um and the people calling in, it's a coin toss. I mean, you might get somebody who's incredibly knowledgeable and can have a good conversation. You might get someone who's calling in to basically do a baba buoy, and you might get anything in between. And it's a difficult um position to be in to say, "Oh, okay. Let me let me see out of the six callers that we've got on hold, um which of these is likely to move the needle on a conversation about the existence of God or foundation for morality or an afterlife or any number of things like that. And if we can, you know, if we can sort it out, we can get some.
And I'm optimistic that maybe tonight we'll actually get some. When it comes to the state of apologetics, for the longest time, we had apologists calling in to shows here and elsewhere.
Um, and they would engage, I don't know, seriously. But we've we've leveled the access playing ground a little bit to where there's I don't know at at a rough guess 9 million I think Tik Tok, Facebook and YouTube um preachers pretending that they're engaging in some sort of discord, pretending that they're presenting evidence. And because of that, because it's it's a a flooded market, you can just keep going. It doesn't matter what you say. We we live in and not just within the realm of of religion and a religion religious discussions. We live in in a quasi post-truth mode world. You know, it doesn't matter what Trump has said or what he's done or how much he's lied or how ridiculous he is or how much gas prices are going up or how much food prices are going up or how many foreign wars there are or how many lies are told or how many Epstein files still haven't been released or how many convictions and felonies he's got or how many times he's going to the hospital or how many times he takes a cognitive test uh and just gets an absolutely glowing review that's basically a have you recovered from being hit over the head with an anvil? type of test. None of that matters because there's so much there's so much going on that it's becoming impossible to pay attention to everything and to keep keep all those irons in the fire and say, "Okay, we need to focus on this."
And it often, you know, in the political realm doesn't feel like there's much of anything we can actually do about it.
like I I'm sitting here waiting to see, you know, okay, we we've essentially lost the Supreme Court. We've lost our federal government. Um it is I mean I'm I'm in the category of people who are being labeled a violent domestic terrorist or a violent domestic extremist um while not advocating for violence, which is really strange. Um, and I find the world just weird in part because I grew up with the understanding that if you make a good argument and support it with evidence that should convince a reasonable person to if not to accept your position to at least acknowledge that your position is among the reasonable candidates for something.
I don't think that's the world we live in as much anymore. I will make one prediction and that's that um I think Federman's going to change parties uh and and good and good riddens somehow or another Federman and I don't know if it's from injuries or or what I don't I don't know but he is so absolutely confused that he thinks the Democrats are likely to put him up as a vice presidential candidate and the reality is that the Democrats hate him and the people who work for him are leaking this information specifically to mock him. Um he's I I was going to say he's like MAGA light, but he's not even really that light anymore. And yet he thinks, "Oh yeah, the Dems are likely to put me up as as VP." And now that they're actively mocking him, I predict that he's just going to go ahead and and and flip and identify as just come out and say, "You know what? I find myself agreeing with MAGA and the Republicans far too much.
I'm just going to switch parties and maybe they'll put me up as a as a VP."
No. No, Federman. Nobody's going to put you up as anything. You have vacated your responsibilities.
you are an absolute train wreck of confused thoughts and and suckupery um and shilling for um the center right to moderate right I guess at this point it's just weird but back to the religion thing I like I was saying I don't know when I last read a book by an apologist that was attempting to reach someone like me I have spread and skim some that were more of a preaching to the choir sort of thing.
And when they do that, well, we'll see. Uh because to me, I I find it to be an incredible disservice if you if you are training up people to go out and defend your position and you're loading their weapon with blanks. I mean, in this in the case of apologetics, you're not even loading with blanks because blanks can at least make, you know, some smoke and noise, even if they're not actually going to going to do any damage.
But the apologists are are taking the people who are like, I really want to know how to defend my beliefs to somebody else. And the dirty little secret is if you have to go to somebody else to learn how to defend your beliefs, you're not qualified to defend your beliefs. You don't understand them well enough. You're no longer defending your beliefs. You're defending somebody else's beliefs. And that's where the overwhelming majority of people are.
But my guest tonight recently read and wrote uh a review on a specific book by a couple of apologists. And I have loads of questions. I I wanted who was this written for? How did it go? What did you find? Was there anything in there at all? So, help me welcome Erin Ribowitz to the show tonight.
How are you, man?
>> Hey, how you doing? Thanks for having me back.
>> My pleasure.
>> Uh, yeah. Go ahead.
>> No, I was just going to say, what was this book? Tell us what's going on with this particular book.
>> Uh, yeah. So, it's called God, the Science, the Evidence, the Dawn of a Revolution. Um, and I should say I don't spend a ton of time in apologetics. I I like dip my toe every once every 10 years just to see how things are going or you know have to write a little bit about the history of the intelligent design arguments sometimes in papers.
Um, but like I I you know have often found it to be a very repetitive space and so um I first you know want to say uh kudos to being able to stick with it.
Um this came around to me. got on my radar because it was getting some like positiveish reviews from some pop, you know, like bigname religious folks. Um, there was, you know, one article that was, you know, not so much a defense of it as actually kind of an objection to it by a religious person basically being uh this was this was Liz Bernig's article about it. um where she was sort of like giving evidence for God is not actually the right way to do things or not the way I want to do things. She just wants to have faith and have that faith be faith-based. Um so no evidence, you know, not the right approach. But even in that review, she was kind of like, "This is an interesting book. It's got some good stuff in it." Um, but it was being promoted, that article in the book was being promoted with these very click-baity links I kept seeing that were like, "This book shows the evidence that science now favors the existence of a creator god."
And I was like, "Okay, I'm I'm bored.
I'll bite." Um, I was like, "I'll get, you know, I'll get a copy. I'll write a review for The Skeptic. I'll just see where where things are at in this domain right now."
>> Yeah. For those who aren't familiar, um the book is basically being advertised as tw more than 20 scientists, four years of research, one question. Does science support the existence of God?
Now, it seems to me that uh four years is not really all that an impressive amount of research. Um but, you know, depending on what's available, that might count as evidence. Uh it might be about 3 years and 360 days too long. um you know cuz by the time you sit down and get the work done to say okay what can we appeal to but if they're actually saying they're saying this shouldn't be a matter of faith this should be a matter of evidence. So what did you find as far as what they're considering evidence and what they're presenting as evidence.
>> Yeah it's really weird and messy is what I found. Um it's a 600page book and a lot of that is often touted as like that's proof that they're very thorough.
Um but as you're familiar with a Gish Gallup that you know 600page you know number is actually concerning because it suggests that they don't have a well refined argument. It's rare that you need that many pages to make an argument. What you get here is a kitchen sink kind of argument where they're going to give us everything. they're gonna um you know the fir the book is divided in two parts. The first part is nominally evidence from science even though a large portion of it is not in fact evidence from science. Uh and the second half of it is evidence from outside of science which is where things get really weird Matt. Um, and they're deliberately ordered that way, I think, so that people look at the first half and they think, "Oh, this looks very rigorous, reliable, SC, you know, like formal." And then you get to the second half and there's a whole chapter about how we can know that God exists because the Jews haven't been killed off yet.
Um, which feels really weird. Uh, so yeah, the arguments are not great.
>> How how big are the You said the whole book's like 600 books, 600 pages or so.
How much of it is this is part two?
>> It's about half and half. I would say maybe slight like 6040. Um so part one the science side. Um you get kind of an updated view of like the intelligent design god of the gaps kind of argument. Where is it now kind of thing. Um and we can talk about that some. And then part two is just a mish mash of like there's a chapter about the Jews. There's a chapter about the Virgin Mary having a rave in a field in Portugal. There's chapters that are like rushed. Like what's really silly is there's 600 pages to this book. How many of those do you think are given to like the argument from like the problem of evil? Like addressing the problem of evil objection?
>> Oh, I maybe three pages. It's five paragraphs.
>> Wow.
>> So, you know, in terms of do they take their 600 pages and use them properly, I would argue no. Like, there's a whole chapter in the first part of the book that's nominally about science, which is really here's the history of a bunch of scientists who were oppressed because they argued in favor of the Big Bang theory, which this book is going to argue is, you know, the strongest case for the existence of God. Um they >> I could almost see somebody making a Tik Tok where they take that 600page book >> and they they hold it up and they show the cover and they're like right here it says God the science the evidence and then just open the book in half and rip out the second half because if part one is the scientific evidence >> right >> and part two is evidence from outside of science Then part two is irrelevant to their whole case to begin with >> and it would make the book much better in the sense of it would so there are a couple of major problems with the book because of its structure. One is it's a moving target. Um the goal of the book changes from the beginning to the end very noticeably because at the beginning you have your very narrow it's it's a mton bailey essentially at the beginning you have your very narrow uh we're only going to be arguing for a creator god that is you know um uh atmporal and omnipotent and has a purpose for things um but isn't you know anything more complex than that or any no specific religion very non-denominational vibe Um cuz all you know science can only say look there's probably a creator god is the way they want to lay it out at the beginning and then over the course of it they just start to add in more pieces like it's a benevolent god and it's a it's a abrahamic god and then they get to the chapter where it's about you know the virgin Mary and you're like oh it's a Catholic god. So the second half of the book really argues for a different god than the first half of the book. It also does so with some really terrible arguments that like if you just had the first half there would be a lot less to object to. The book is still not good but it would be less bad.
So I've tried o over the years. Um I you know all I would all I really want we've not heard really a new argument or a new evidence and that's not all that surprising.
>> Um we we do hear like re-pins on things or here's here's why we think this may have been misunderstood. And so when you look at like for example objections to the existence of God, you know, I think the biggest most popular ones or my favorite ones are ones like um the argument from or arguments from divine hiddenenness or from inconsistent revelation. Those those seem to be the biggest. I'm not as much of a fan of the problem of evil, but I understand that that's that line of argument has managed to impact probably the most people of you know I I have a real difficult time.
Some people would say uh thinking that there's an all good God while you know infants are dying of bone cancer that you know that sort of thing seems to not line up. And I grew up >> in a sort of a Southern Baptist, evangelical, you know, God's taken care of everything. He's he's got his reason.
And yes, from our perspective, this seems bad, but that's cuz we don't have a sufficient understanding of this. And so, we just need to, you know, trust God. And then, uh, God is by definition good. So, even if it seems bad, it must be good. It it is it is a lot of you know emotional and intellectual manipulation to get you to handwave away >> those problems. And it was successful in my case because I think there is a an internally consistent rebuttal which is this isn't the way God would have preferred things. This is the way humans preferred things and God's allowing it and Yep.
>> I think there's I think there are objections to that, but you can do this kind of treadmill.
The the ones I don't get are the ones that are like, "Oh, the second they say Virgin Mary."
And and it seemed like I thought you said that in the evidence from science side there was a Virgin Mary rave on that portion of the book.
>> No, that's in the non-science side. They really try to lay it they really try to lay it out as like a science thing though. They're like this many people saw it and there was you know prior prior registration of the miracle before it happened. Like they're like we did double blind studies on this miracle.
It's very funny.
It >> It's interesting. By the way, 7206192288 is the number if you're going to actually call in. And if any of you apologists out there have read the book, are familiar with the book, if you were one of the many scientists involved with it, um, let us know what you think about this as well. Because what I'm seeing from the book and from what Aeron's reporting on it is like it doesn't feel like there I feel like I've seen this exact book more than once. And I and I don't mean just Hey, here's the science. It's let's get together a bunch of people.
Like for a while it was, hey, Lee Stroel is going to put out 23 books, but some of his books are going to be let me go interview 20 scientists and ask them the really difficult questions, which turn out to be the the most benol basic questions you could ask, and compile it.
And then you you act like you've oh, like the plural of anecdote is data.
Like I asked 18 scientists this question and these guys were convinced. So see we've got an overwhelming consensus right here in this book. Um when they're going through what what's what's the strongest like hard science that they were keen to point to?
Um yeah and I'll mention I also think it's important to note in the particular case of this book's list of authors of scientists who they say you know got quotes from the scientists saying that this is real good science and really supports the arguments. One of them explicit and I mentioned in the in the article, one of them explicitly, oh yeah, Robert Wilson uh has since explained that he was only shown the first half of the book. Um which I think should still be sufficiently damning, but he only gave a comment on the first half and having seen the second half of the book, he said he should have refused to endorse it. So that's a useful data point for how reliable a lot of the stuff in the book is. Um, speaking of evidence, um, the biggest argument that they're leaning on is your argument from fine-tuning. Um, so they they they do like a false dichotomy thing where they're going to say either you're a materialist or you believe in a creator god. And then they're going to make the case that materialism doesn't work in various ways and the creator god does.
Um, and there's a more plausible explanation. and the the gaps the gap, you know, the giant statistical gaps they're going to try to push the argument through is going to be the fine-tuning of the cosmological constants and then to a far lesser degree the problem of the emergence of life from non-living things on the planet. Um, so they're not doing so much the uh irreducible complexity argument like eyeball stuff that they used to do back at the beginning of intelligent design. Now it's a lot of math. Um and you know one big problem with the book is in that 600 pages less you know like 300 pages or less actually are relevant to the topic. So there's whole chapters about the beginning of the cosmos. And that, you know, their argument is just look, there was a singularity. That singularity was timeless and causally comp complicated or weird. And the only way that could have come into existence was something that was non-causal, non-temporal, etc. Therefore, God. Um, but they they're going to spend, you know, a 100 pages or 50 pages laying out, you know, at five minutes into the universe, the atoms are doing this nonsense, which is interesting if you're interested in early universe cosmology. You could get it from a better source, but it's totally irrelevant to the argument, right? It doesn't matter what happens after the big bang. All you're saying is you want to argue, you want to just do, you know, the cosmological argument.
there's a beginning, therefore there has to be some sort of prior cause, therefore God. Um, and it's just dressed up with a ton of numbers, you know, that really don't matter.
>> Yeah. I mean, we I'm not remotely the I think maybe Hitchens was pointing out that clergy have no demonstrated expertise in anything real and that people with doctoral degrees in um uh in um theology, they're not experts on God. They're experts on the stories people have made about God. They're they're far closer to what an expert on Spider-Man would be.
And yet they're because they're portraying it as if the subject the ultimate subject of their um studied discipline. They play it as if it's real even though they don't have the justification for it. It it looks more credible. Frankly, I'd rather listen to somebody talk about, you know, Spider-Man and the Spider-Verse than, you know, let's speculate about God for the billionth time. Um but at least we we can identify what the expertise is in. People with degrees in theology uh people who are speaking about ancient uh holy books and the doctrines that developed around them. They have an expertise in the writings in the history surrounding those writings in their impact on so on on social structures and societies.
They don't have any demonstrated expertise on any god, any being or anything supernatural. And when you start looking at the scientists who inevitably some of them get, you know, roped into writing about this stuff, I mean, there are scientists who believe in a god. There are scientists who don't. And if you get the ones who who don't who are just looking at their discipline who are not used to engaging in you know back and forth debates about these things and don't know the potential dishonest tactics uh of the apologist then you can ask them ah what are the odds of this occurring you know without some kind of intelligent guidance and they will give you the honest answer and if you frame the questions that you ask uh your as your follow-up questions you can probably get them to acknowledge that this seems incredibly extraordinary and outlandish and and so unlikely. And of course it would be more likely if there was a being that actually intend to do this. If if you if you talk to me, I would have to say the same thing despite not having the expertise, which is if you posit the existence of a magical being that can create a universe, what you're going to see is going to automatically be more likely on the existence of that being than, you know, on on natural processes that are that are going to be, you know, outlandish. The thing is the scientists in much the same way that the theologians have no demonstrated expertise in a real god just in the subjects around it. The scientists don't even have an expertise in the subjects around it where where they're drawing inferences. You might be the best statistical analysis and you might know the best. You might know big bang cosmology and uh origins of the universe better than anybody else, but you might have zero zero ability to take those facts and extrapolate towards does this more likely point to a god or not? Because when we talk about evidence for something, we're not just talking about facts consistent with something. We're not just saying, would this be more likely under, you know, magic? Hey, if I could snap my fingers and make the universe disappear, uh, it would be a 100% likely that I could make the universe disappear. And when you ask the scientists out, if they don't have any expertise in in drawing these inferences, they're just they're just sitting there being honest and it's it's a spin put on uh by the apologist. So, when we're talking about like fine-tuning, I'm assuming that the the evidence that they're pointing to is an argument from the unlikelihood of things occurring naturally.
>> Yeah. And they do a couple of different they bring in all the sort of classic moves to try to make that more likely, less likely argument seem plausible. Um, so you know, they they do this one interesting thing, I guess, where uh they're going to try to argue that the the hypothesis that God exists is a more testable scientific hypothesis than the multiverse theory. Uh, to try to argue Yeah. Right. I got you with a new one. I got a new one on you finally. I was wondering if I could ever like anything you hadn't heard before.
>> That X is more probable than the multiverse theory. I don't find particularly impressive if I don't find the multiverse theory particularly.
>> So the move they're making is, you know, you're trying to say like how unlikely is our universe, right? Like someone who knows statistics is going to ask, well, you have to know what the denominator is, right? So you have a hidden denominator problem, right? If there's an infinite number of universes in that denominator, then a numerator of one is not actually that impressive no matter how unlikely it is. Um, so what they have to do is argue that the multiverse theory or what they decide to do is argue that the multiverse theory is untestable in a way that the argument from God's existence is not untest. The argument for God is not untestable.
>> So they're going to lay out like to do that they do some very silly moves now.
Like I've I've reached the end of the interesting rope on this cuz what comes next is they you know they lay out testable hypotheses that would be commensurate with the existence of a creator god such as the universe having us in it and us you know like seeming to have advanced capacities. um the fine-tuning arguments, but also again the Jewish people having been very successful despite being a small population is in their sort of lists of evidence for like if God exists then this would be the case, right?
>> Well, the Parah have managed to survive all this time without even a god concept out in the middle of the Amazon. So, are they then proof for a god that they don't understand and don't believe in, or are they the uh the defeater for the popularity of the Jewish people?
>> I would much prefer that they used them because an argument that begins with, "Hey, isn't it weird how successful the Jews are and globally powerful they are is not an argument that I want anyone to be making for any reason."
>> Um, >> it's really problematic.
>> It's really bad. It's really weird. It's creepy. feels a lot like um wow, how do I phrase this best? It feels a lot like the Isn't it isn't he so well spoken?
Like it's the lowered expectations of we would have expected you know these people to have a different existence.
>> Yeah. And a lot of this book really is very preaching to the choir in terms of like you know the chapter about all of the scientists getting murdered for being for believing in the big bang by materialists. The reason they arguably they is justified as including that as evidence is because we all know that those materialists understood that these arguments are evidence for God and they're right about that and that's why they were killing off these people. And doesn't that suggest to you that you can't really trust materialists to actually engage with these arguments fairly given their history of murdering people for these arguments? So, it's a lot of like nudge nudge wink wink kind of arguments at the end of each chapter.
>> I'm wondering when when there were people murdered for big bang cosmology.
>> Like they give a very unnecess like un irrelevant unnecessary unless you're very interested in the history of political like meta arguments around science. You have people in like Soviet Russia who are scientists who are arguing for things like the big bang or arguing, you know, essentially for cosmology that these folks think are proof of god and then they're being, you know, suppressed for doing so. Like I don't like it doesn't matter to me if any of those arguments like everything in that chapter can be entirely correct >> and it doesn't move the argument one way or the other one inch. So, I don't really care to like fact check that part of it, right?
>> Yeah. My only concern is that I sure um it's it's basically just an ad hom fallacy of, oh, look what the materialists are doing as if that is remotely relevant. And yet you could do the same thing only it would be more sound um by pointing out what they did to Galileo or how they tried to suppress scientific because in this case they're actually actively suppressing scientific information or killing people or burning witches or what you know whatever >> they're happy to pull the Galileo fallacy too. They really pull off like they pull out the Galileo fallacy, you know, at defense at one point and they're like, you know, of all we're all being oppressed for this view, it must be true.
>> Wow, that's pretty cool. When you can be the oppressor and the oppressed, >> you get to write both >> pushing on your own face meme, you know.
>> Um, you mentioned the poem of evil and like I know that's not your number one concern. I think it's interesting for a couple of reasons that it's in there at all. First of all, there's no reason for it to be in there if their original premise is what they're going for. If you're going for a creator god that is powerful enough to create the universe and has some purpose, there's no need to assume that it's omni benevolent, which so you don't have no you have no reason to generate the problem of evil in the first place. It's only if you actually really want to argue for a specific god with a, you know, capital J at the beginning that you're going to want to end up arguing for like an omni benevolent god. And so you're going to have to respond to the problem of evil, which they do acknowledge is the one of if not the most effective like emotive argument I think for compelling people to question the existence of God. Um >> that yeah and and like I think one that deserves a lot more consideration if you're going to spend 600 pages on the subject. It's worth like their argument is, you know, is the same boilerplate response that you were just mentioning which is free will plus you know unknowability essentially like they basically say a humans have free will so everything's our fault and also we don't if there's any problem with our understanding of God the problem is on our side and not on God's side so just figure your [ __ ] out.
you mentioned something if I if I heard you correctly a little bit ago that when they were comparing some god models to the multiverse one one of the things is that there was the issue that it was more probable which okay I don't I always go back to the blackhatter thing about you know so something you've never seen is slightly less blue than something else you've never seen and so when they're saying oh this is more probable But I thought I heard you say that. They also say it's more testable. And for me, testability, I mean, for a given proposition, it's either testable or it's not. I can understand how a package of things could be more testable in that it this package includes more individual testable things. What did they include that was testable about the God proposition?
>> Yeah. And and testable may not be exactly the right term for what they're doing. They're doing a kind of you know they're trying to do just a modus ponins like if you know you know if they if there are these really un improbable events if miracles appear to have occurred for example therefore God miracles have occurred there for God.
Um, so it's not so much you can measure God or something like that as there are there are empirical pieces of evidence in their view that they think can be pointed to that acrue towards the plausibility of the premise that God exists. Um, so yeah, like I don't like maybe like so given that they've now laid up these terms, for example, if tomorrow all the Jews disappeared, uh, that would in theory disprove part of their argument.
I don't know how much of an effect it would actually have, but that would be the argument like their view is technically falsifiable if things go even more sideways for the Jews, I guess, or something.
Or you know like if you if we found out for example one of the things they argue is cosmologically if there is a if if the heat death of the universe occurs if there isn't a uh expansion and contraction a big crunch as it were um which they argue has been disproven though I'm told there's more debate about that again now um then that would be another piece of evidence for God and therefore if you found out that you know that the endless expansion view was wrong that would another piece of evidence against God.
>> There's uh we got some callers lining up and I'll I'll move over and get some callers here in just a minute. But this argument that you're talking about with regard to miracles, it's essentially it appears as you're representing it, which might not be fully accurate, but it appears that it's if miracles occurred, then God did it. Miracles occurred, therefore God did it. And and even if you were to change that to if miracles occurred, there's an incredibly strong likelihood that God did it. Miracles occurred, therefore there's no matter doesn't change anything. I think though their entire argument is going to fall apart when you actually define what you mean by miracles. Because if something for which we do not have a naturalistic explanation occurred, then how do you determine whether it's probably God, probably something unknown, probably blah blah blah. You know, when you're making a list of candidate explanations, they've skipped all the other candidates and just declared >> God is the probable candidate, best candidate.
>> Yeah. Yeah, they don't even address Hume's counterargument to miracles, which I think is a pretty definitive objection. Um, they also spend a chapter, I would argue, pretty heavily misrepresenting the anthropic principle.
So, your other argument that often comes up in response to fine-tuning, as you're aware, besides things like the multiverse um is uh essentially the argument goes like this.
Yes, from one perspective, the odds of our universe existing are incredibly low or incredibly, you know, like unlikely.
Um, but from the internal perspective of an individual observing our universe who exists in a universe that allows them to exist, the odds of that universe existing are exactly one. They're 100%.
>> Right?
>> Probability of one. probability of one which is I think a really useful idea for people who are being challenged on atheism or something who are being challenged with these arguments from the unlikelihood from from cosmological arguments like the answer is just if it wasn't that way we would not be here um why it's that way I don't know the causality is really weird when you include non-temporal singularities and none of us understand it and the log breakdown so what they're doing is, you know, one answering one mystery with another mystery, right? Like the laws of physics don't make sense in a singularity. Therefore, we're just going to go ahead and posit something else that doesn't make sense in the causal universe as an explanation for the existence of the thing that precedes the causal universe. Um, but they they misrepresent the anthropic principle by drawing on a couple of authors who use it essentially as an intelligent design argument. So they take the the implication of the universe must ex must be the kind of universe that allows for us to be more teological and less just a obser observer uh assume an observation bias, right? Um they want to say uh this universe had to have us in it and therefore it must have either been caused by a creator or our existence must somehow be necessary to the universe. just they go through a couple of different options sort of to wave them away before they obviously pick their >> nice to think that my existence is necessary but uh I don't uh so hey we got a bunch of callers that are that are queuing up now we're going to get to all that as a reminder we're going to read all the super chats over 10 bucks at the end of the show but we're here to take your calls 720619-2288 uh you can also go down below here to a link to call-in studio if you need to try to connect that way. Um, you can I'm here to take questions. Uh, Erin's here to take questions. I'm probably not quite as here as much for uh stories, but I'm genuinely interested in uh in defenses of apologetics and things like it. And so, on that front, even though um we don't yet have a an actual theist calling in, we've got a couple atheist and a theist. Um, our DAT friend here has um has something that I'm confused about and would like to understand better. So, Brian is a deist from Missouri. Uh, pron he him. And Brian says he doesn't believe in the Christian God, but he does believe Christian values are integral to a functioning society. Hey, Brian, how are you?
>> Oh, just lovely. How are you, gentlemen?
>> Not too bad. I'll uh I I'll make you a deal.
Okay, >> I won't ask you about dism uh >> okay as to >> today you can call in another time and do it but I desperately want to know what do you think are Christian values and which ones are essential and why.
Um, I recently read Tom Holland's book, Dominion, How the Christian Revolution Changed the World.
In that book, he makes the argument that in our developed western society, we are the fish and Christianity is the water. I'm sure you're familiar with the comic. One fish says to the other fish, "Does the water feel different today?"
Other fish says, "What's water?"
All of the values that secular humanists have and judge Christians by are inherently Christian.
>> Well, that's [ __ ] Prior prior to the Christian Revolution, >> there were no human rights.
>> There was no value of the individual.
>> Can you not hear me, Brian?
>> Sorry. I heard you say that was [ __ ] and I was elaborating on my stance.
>> Okay.
>> Are you going to allow me to finish?
>> Christianity. No, Christianity is founded on what?
Um, it's founded on theoretically, I say theoretically because I don't believe the literal interpretation of the Bible. God sent his only son to die the death of a slave to prove that we are all valuable and that we should not pass judgment on each other. Although there's I could make an argument against that, but just to steal man the argument to love others, to accept others, to value individual life, and that every life is um a part of God.
>> Okay. So, so basically, you're cherry-picking some interpreted highlights out of the Bible because you don't want to take the Bible literally, and you're going to call that Christianity. So even though Christianity does not have uh equality, let's say between the genders, I'm assuming your version of Christianity does.
>> No, no, I would push back against that.
I would say that um I'm re I'm rereading the Bible, I should say. I'm reading it for the first time all the way through.
I'm still in the Old Testament, which is nuts, I will admit. Um from my readings of others interpretation of the New Testament, um Paul makes the argument that um the woman is subservient to the man and that >> right >> um >> so am I correct then? I I thought I thought you were you would have acknowledged that the genders should be equal primarily um which is a value of secular humanism and you said the secular humanism values come from Christianity. So are you saying that equality between the genders does not come from Christianity?
>> I think the values of secular humanism have taken the values of Christianity.
>> I'm sorry that's I don't know what question you think I asked you.
>> I'm elaborating on the answer. So they're elaborate on the answer. I just need to answer the question.
>> Well, I'm trying.
>> I'm trying to figure out.
>> So, they don't have the ground.
>> It's really It's really simple. It's really It's really I I don't think you're trying. It's really simple.
>> Go ahead.
>> Do you think Do you think there should be equality between the genders? Yes or no?
>> No.
>> Okay. So now now I understand where you're coming from because I presumed that >> do you think that secular humanism advocates for equality between genders?
>> Um yes and if I can >> hang on hang on hang on hang on hang on this is real easy.
>> So you don't think there should be equality between the genders?
>> You don't think that Christianity advocates for >> in a marriage? I I I'm sorry. I didn't say a [ __ ] word about marriage.
>> Well, that's what I'm talking about.
>> Well, then you're not talking about this. Are you going to talk about the same subject I'm talking about, or are you just going to change subjects in midstream and pretend like we're talking about something else? Should there be gender equality according to Christianity? Yes or no?
>> It's complicated. Yes. And no.
>> Okay. No, it's No, it's not. Here, let's make it easy. Let's make it easy. Should there be equality between the genders or among the genders from a secular humanist standpoint?
>> Yes.
>> Okay. How can you declare that secular humanist values are all borrowed from Christianity and give an easy yes to something that you're opposed to when it's in secular humanism, but then say it's complicated for Christianity?
>> Okay. Can I answer without you getting >> I literally Okay, listen. I literally just asked you an open-ended question and >> angry when I try to answer it. I got you.
>> No, no, no. I'm getting angry because you're being a pretentious, obnoxious prick.
>> I asked you a different line of questioning. I'm just I'm just curious.
>> Hang on. I've got to I've got to mute it. I I need to get back to this because this guy is deciding to do the you won't let me talk. Every time I tried to answer you, you shut me down. You're being Oh, he ran away.
Yeah. Here's the reality.
It would have been really nice to be able to ask you some questions, but you ran away because I'm asking specific questions to get to the truth of the [ __ ] that you spewed when you say every principle of secular humanism comes from Christianity. All right.
Well, I can start rattling them off and show that they're not consistent with the Bible, but you you tried to to to pull an end around on that at the beginning by saying, "Hey, I don't take the Bible literally." So, you think there shouldn't be equivalence between the genders in a marriage. I'm going to also assume because I get to assume that now because you ran away that you're also a bigot who's opposed to there being marriage between the same genders and and I really can't I I'm I'm sorry that you ran away because I was absolutely going to make you look like the bigot that we all know you are because anybody who calls in here as a deist who thinks that I'm going to defend Christianity's view where there should not be equality between the genders or at least not in a marriage, whatever the hell. What What kind of I I really wish you were still here. What kind of bizarre world are you in where you're fine with equality outside of a marriage but not in a marriage that you would think the place where you would be most respectful and caring and and considerate of the person? Like I don't give the slightest [ __ ] about you, but if we were married, I would. I don't know. I'm sorry, Aaron. He ran away.
>> I was trying to get him on track for you, but what were you going to ask?
Well, I mean, I do think the first question for me is what about all of the other sources of secular humanist values that aren't religious in that ar that aren't Christian in nature, uh, Buddhism and such. Um, but the other like thing I was I think there's worth pointing out here at least to diagnose these kind of arguments is that this is part of, you know, I've argued this is part of the larger immoral non-believer argument.
So, there's there's different versions of the argument that atheists can't be ethical. there's the grossest sort of behavioral version where it's just they're vicious, they act viciously, they're bad people, they can't hold hold to a set of morals, etc. But these days, people don't really make that one as much. They make these more covert arguments like, you know, uh, morality requires the existence of God or objective morality requires the existence of God. the kind of metaethical arguments that folks like Craig make where they don't explicitly say and therefore you can't trust non-believers as much, but it's implicit because they're going to they're going to argue, look, if a non-believer says they're going to act ethically, then at best they're irrational because they don't understand the basis for their moral judgments. And so like you don't really want to trust an irrational person and at worst they're lying, right? So this is just a culture level version of that kind of argument, right?
This is the argument that like >> any secular modern morality has to have arisen from a religious morality and can't really be separate from it. But Brian is worse than that though because so Brian's a deist who doesn't accept the truth of Christianity, doesn't think that the Christian God is real, but he really is fond of particular Christian principles.
And what he's done is he's bought into some some newer uh propaganda re-spinning of ooh Christianity fundamentally changed the world. That's true. And it fundamentally made the world better. No, I reject that portion.
Um what it did was it allowed for order by imposing control >> for a lot of colonialism. Yeah, it it it certainly benefited the colonizers and it benefited a lot of men um and it it benefited a lot of wealthy individuals because for them um you know right up to King James for example, it is useful to manipulate these religions for your own goals and your own ends. And when somebody like Brian calls in, >> and by the way, Brian, I let you say quite a few things and waited until you spouted something that was obviously objectionable, and yet you just keep talking as if there was no attempt at interruption. When you say that all the principles of secular humanism come from Christianity, you're lying or you're very confused. Um, but the statement you made is simply not true. When you go back and you read all three of these secular humans manifestos, not only do they contain things that are wholly inconsistent with Christianity, in many cases, the body of work surrounding those documents, um, includes where those thoughts were pulled from.
And at no point see there there's this kind of >> Christianity of convenience, >> right? I mean I would argue they got it backwards like Christianity better comports with conservatism by nature because religious beliefs by nature conform with conservatism because the cosmic justice illusion is an illusion that reinforces the status quo. It is an illusion that like the reason it did good for colonialism, right? The reason it is good for um oppression on average, even though you have things like liberation theology is that it is part of a cluster of illusions that allows people to think that the current injustice is fair, it is deserved or it's corrected for on a cosmic scale. Either of those things undercuts the motivation to actually make things better. Um so, you know, the secular humanist worldview is pretty directly at odds with a lot of the cosmic justice beliefs.
Yeah, the the kind of it's not so it's I guess the right word wasn't going to be cafeteria Christianity, but there's here here let me do this.
Hi, I'm now pretending to be the old me, the man who walked down the aisle at the age of five and accepted Jesus into his heart, who was actively uh working and in church on a regular basis and whose understanding of Christianity was this.
It's not about the legalism. It's not about the Pharisees. It's not about the rules. The rules exist, the prohibitions exist to convict you, to show you you are never, ever, ever going to be good enough. It's impossible for you to be good enough. You are a repbate. God has given you over to a reprobate mind. You are suffering in your sin and iniquity because sin and death was brought into the world by one man. And God has provided a way by coming down and taking human form, sacrificing himself to himself to to to offer salvation despite the fact that you don't deserve it. And it's nothing you can attain by yourself. Even the sinner's prayer that you know we used to advocate for and all that, that's not still not an act of your valition. God saves who he will. God either grants you as a matter of his grace the faith to understand accept repent and follow or he doesn't and that's why there's many people according to the Bible who will say Lord Lord and God will say depart from me for I never knew you when you get a deist who doesn't know what Christianity is they're going to fall prey to this new and new age here's what Christianity really is it is about these particular rules. It is about these things here. It's and when you listen to him talk about it, it was more about you know order and and doing things and obeying and you know >> um it it is that is not Christianity in a doctrinal sense as you know I learned it as a Southern Baptist evangelical Protestant. Um, >> yeah.
>> But more at no point at no point is the is it the case that you can say, "Oh, I I think the world needs Christian values, but not Christianity."
Because what you're saying is we need to pretend like we're terrified of the prospect of hell. And we need to pretend like we've been given the gra through, you know, as an exercise of God's grace, the faith to do these things. and that the rules that we're pointing to because we only have this one book are right.
And so, of course, there shouldn't be equality between the genders. Of course, slavery should be regulated. Uh, and >> talking and then ran away. I'm pretty sure he wasn't serious, but it's only the second time that guy's called. Or maybe the first time. So, we'll we'll have to see another time.
Whoops. I got a message that my internet connection is unstable.
>> A little blip there for a second.
>> Let's hope it doesn't get worse. All right, here we go. We have other callers calling in right now. So, Moren is calling from Ontario. Proner she, her had a question about a perfect God. Hey, Meen. How are you?
>> Fine. How are you guys?
How do pretty decent?
>> Yeah, this question about being made in God's image. Um, as I understand it, we're supposed to look like him like, and that us being such imperfect beings, wouldn't that make God imperfect? And how do religious people argue for a perfect God?
Does that make any sense?
I mean, if if that's accurate, then for me, God's a short king, I guess. So, that's cool.
>> I think these are like what?
>> Oh, just, you know, it just means that God's 5'5 if he if I look like God. Um, so perfection is a difficult thing because it's possible for someone with a really high IQ to intentionally score poorly on a test.
And so it's impos it's possible for there to be a god that's really really smart and awesome to intentionally do things that are not particularly smart and not particularly awesome either because he wants to or who knows what the reason is. But as soon as there's this notion of perfection >> weird all discussion has to go out the window because I'm not perfect and you're not perfect as far as I know. You might be really close, Moren, but I'm not.
>> And because of that, any attempt that I make to understand what it means to be perfect is already flawed.
And so if there's a perfect being and me as an imperfect being says, I don't see how a perfect being could do that. Um, if in fact there's a perfect being whose view is that it can happen, then that perfect being is necessarily right and I'm wrong.
the um there's also I think some really good arguments on the Buddhist Hindu side of things on this topic that don't come up enough I feel like um but you know long before the Christians were arguing about perfection the Indian philosophers were going back and forth about how you could have a perfect Brahman or you know like a a godhead that was perfect in this way and the Buddhists make some really good arguments that for example if God is perfect it shouldn't be able to interact with our world because a perfect being interacting with an imperfect thing is necessarily going to corrupt the perfect thing. So it wouldn't interact with us in any way. Um not only that >> perfectly incorruptible >> but they also make the argument that a perfect being can't act at all because if it's already perfect any action would be a movement away from perfection.
So a perfect being this is this is where I think what you see is Christianity's you know theological roots are actually not Christian. They're they're plonists.
They're they're of a Greek persuasion.
And the god of uh Christianity is a kind of weird corruption of Plato's forms.
The forms themselves don't act. They are unchanging crystalline structures existing in some non-temporal world that we all experience flawed versions of in our reality. But when you turn that, you know, when you take that idea and try to shove it together with a personal god, you get all these weird contradictions that don't make any sense.
So, so the the short qu short answer to the question is how can God be perfect if he made imperfect beings? And the answer is um it may never make sense to us. It may be a reasonable objection. It may not be. But as we are imperfect, we could be wrong about however we perceive it. And so if there is a perfect being, evidently the most perfect thing that it can do is not clear up this confusion for any of us >> yet.
>> So is that where like I'm cath I was Catholic so I know about Christianity a little. Is that where they they get the um when they try to argue for God and they say that well well we really can't understand him.
So you know because he's so above us in that and we're so imperfect in that.
That's their excuse then >> that a perfect being could make >> Oh gohead. It serves it serves as a really good excuse because if there is a perfect being and you're not perfect, how could you possibly ever assess whether that being is perfect or not?
>> The other argument would be the argument from free will, which is God did create us perfectly, but being perfect involves having free will and we used that free will to do bad things and caused the fall and that resulted in imperfection in the world. There was no imperfection in the world until we introduced it via our free actions. And it is better to allow us >> right that this is this is you know a later argument but it's one that you know people use to argue to explain how like for example human free will can be the explanation for hurricanes. Like when you try to explain natural evils via human free will it goes via the argument from the fall.
>> You're responsible for the weather.
Moren, please stop it.
>> Yes, >> I'm sorry.
>> You get hurricanes where people touch themselves.
>> That's pretty.
>> There are people dying from floods and it's all cuz you touched yourself once.
>> The symbolism.
>> Is that what happened? Oh, well, I'm sorry for that. I apologize.
>> That's all right. It's got to happen sometime. Anyway, thanks a lot for the call, Marine. I appreciate it. Take care.
>> Okay. Thank you. Bye.
You know, we've got um a couple other callers and one of them is a theist. So, I'm I'm going to kind of jump toward the theist call. I do want to say this, and that is, hey, if you're a theist, um yeah, there's a little bit of a delay. Um, but by and large, all we're trying to do is get to understand. If you're calling in to preach and you think you're going to get mad because we interrupted, we stopped your your gish gallop in order to seek some clarity.
Um, sorry, we're we're not here to be preached to you. But if you want to actually make your case and and have, you know, present arguments, cool. that that I'm interested in and that I do regularly.
We had some really great conversations just in the last week. But if if Brian calls back in, um the no deism discussion uh deal is off because it's already clear that you're not capable of having the conversation you wanted to. So, um, I'd like for you to go ahead and be ready for this because a deist god is a god that by definition does not interact with reality in any detectable way. And so, either you are claiming that you have detected the undetectable by advocating for a deistic god or you are advocating for an admittedly irrational position. And I'd like to know which one it is.
Oh, we just had the call drop. Well, hopefully that person calls back. There was somebody that wanted to talk to you about objective morality. But >> here we got >> Brady is a theist uh from Utah pron uh wants to talk about God and natural law.
Hey Brady, how are you?
>> Hi. How's it going?
>> Not bad.
Uh, so I was just listening to your um your opening um not your opening monologue, but just your your opening conversation um and uh just about God as being the creator and um and whether he created physics, right? Um I I just was wondering if you have ever heard the position that if God was subject to natural law.
>> I don't remember mention anything at all about whether God created physics. Did I?
>> So the question is God subject to natural moral laws?
>> Are you using natural law in the moral sense or in the uh scientific sense?
Just yeah in the scientific sense.
>> Okay.
Mishard. So like chemistry.
>> So like chem chemistry you get a couple of hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom and you combine them in the right way and you get water. You get H2O. Uh, and so you're saying is God, could God take that H2O and just I don't know, turn it into Kool-Aid and leave it H2O.
I don't know. I don't know what you're saying.
So generally speaking, the various gods that have been proposed that are sufficiently powerful to be a creator god, the presumption is if you can create the universe, you should be able to manipulate everything, which means God could just, you know, say, "Hey, I want a water molecule right there and it just exists." which would be a violation of physics for me to do it but not a violation of physics for God to do it or not. I guess God can violate physics is the is the presumption. Is that what you're asking?
So what I'm not necessarily what I'm saying is that um there's a position that exists that that that God does not even control that that he that he doesn't even control those laws of physics and of chemistry.
Okay.
What god do you believe in?
>> I I So, what I wanted to know if you've ever heard that perspective, >> I've heard I've heard almost everything in the 20 some odd years I've done this.
I don't believe in a god. And so, if you believe in a god, all you got to do is tell me what god you believe in and why.
If you believe in a god that can't, you know, doesn't have any exceptional powers of manipulating physics. Okay.
Um, I just all I need to know is what can this god do? And how do you know?
>> It starts to become weird to have a god if it if it doesn't do miracles or in some way act beyond act differently than everything else in the universe, >> right?
Um well um I guess this is more of an inquiry for you guys but um so and I was just more curious to know if you if you had heard that perspective but you heard it before. I was just wanted to know what your >> um >> I guess yeah example that comes to mind was on that and your critique and Do you guys know Deep Space 9?
>> I do.
>> Yeah. So, in Deep Space 9, the uh uh atmporal, you know, uh godlike prophets that live in the the wormhole are essentially naturalist gods. They're, you know, they seem to follow some degree the natural law. They're just atmporal and under, you know, see time all time as one kind of thing. Um, I think it's quite possible that there might be beings that exist that don't perceive time the way that we do and perceive it non-temporally.
Um, and maybe even they have weird causal abilities or, you know, multi-directional causal influence or something like that. Um, I don't know why I would want to call them God and not just another species though, >> right?
Um, I uh do you think a god like that is easier to accept from a scientific standpoint?
>> Well, I think it's easier but less reason to do so.
>> Yeah, it's like >> right.
>> So, for example, I can't run very fast at all.
Um, my dog can run really fast.
Cheetahs can run really fast.
I can imagine that the Flash I I can imagine that the Flash in a f in a fictional sense running. I have difficulty imagining the that the Flash as he's portrayed in the comics could ever actually exist. You know, like speeding up to the point of the speed force and turning back time or traveling through time or breaking realities. I have difficulty thinking that. But let's just go with like really really really like travel around the world in a second.
I can at least imagine that. I don't see how that could be physically possible given what I currently know. But I would certainly say that I would find that to be more plausible than the notion that you could travel around the world 500 times in a second.
And so the more complex you make something and the more you make it, the more features you give it to violate more aspects of reality, the more work you've got to do to demonstrate that this is plausible. So yeah, for me, a god that can create universes and manipulate them is automatically less probable than a god that can manipulate universes but can't create them. Does that make sense?
>> Yeah. If I can um tie this back to the book actually amongst the you know cheap moves that I think the book makes is it does your usual AAM's razor argument done badly uh where this again where it's comparing the existence of a god to the multiverse and it says look and you know positing the existence of a million billion infinite universes is way more implausible or complex than one single creator god with a purpose. Um therefore, Aam's razor favors the one single creator god. Um now the counterargument there would be but the god is a is a thing unlike anything else we have ever experienced. You are positing the existence of a unmoved mover where nothing else like by your own arguments nothing else in the universe is an unmoved mover except God.
Bringing in just one God is less plausible than an infinite number of universes that act the same as our universe because you're not adding anything to what what we philosophers call the ontology when you say there's more universes. You're not adding a whole new class of weird creatures to the universe. Um so in that sense, yeah, a perfectly natural god is like the multiverse. It's more in keeping with science and so more plausible, but it doesn't do a lot of the things that these folks want their God arguments to do, >> right? That's um that's very helpful. Um and I I appreciate both of your takes on that. Um so um I might call back another day with some more questions. Yes, sir.
>> Yeah. No, no, I'm happy to do that. And and I get the sense that, you know, you're you're exploring and asking questions. I'm not necessarily going to put you on on the spot to defend the God you believe. But >> Mhm. I am going to say that that since you're a theist, the type of god that you're at least currently convinced exists, is it, you know, one of like one of the omnimax gods traditional to Christianity, Judaism, etc. that can do those or is is yours maybe closer to the vague higher power that you don't really understand yet? I don't I don't know what bucket we would put your god in.
>> Um well, I'm a Latter Day Saint.
>> Ah.
>> Or >> it's a rather complex pantheon from what I understand.
>> Yeah.
Well, if you call back another time and you feel like defending >> um the LDS stuff and am I correct?
You're LDS and not FldDS.
>> Yeah, I'm I'm LDS. I'm not FLDS.
>> Okay. Yeah. So, I'm not going to be expecting you to defend, you know, mult polygamy and and all those other things else. Um, but if we do get into LDS, and I, you know, Jimmy's probably the best one to talk about, I am going to need you to explain to me what reformed Egyptian is and why you think it's real.
If you do, uh, because the rest of the world outside of Mormonism doesn't, >> yeah, and I only mention that because without it, I don't even know how you can get started, but I am at least interested. So, I appreciate the call and and when you want it when you want to dig in on that stuff, call us back.
>> Yeah, that'd be great. Can I I would like to say one more thing u in response to that. Um there's um there's this great uh series or um not just kind of a walk through um of the scripture and he talks about that perspective a little bit and um makes more sense out of it. So I I don't know um >> who talks about it >> if I should refer you to that some at some point.
Well, if you have somebody I mean because >> literally there there are no scholars that think reformed Egyptian is remotely a real thing.
>> And so if you've got a a a scholarly reference that suggests it is, I' I'd love to know about it.
>> Yeah. Um I I he not necessarily um a scholar but but he does follow a lot of the scholarly work um from and and that ranges from Jewish scholars to our LDS scholars. But um but I I don't know if you would want me to send you anything something like that or if you just want me to give you his name.
You can I mean you could start just by giving me the name. I can I can Google from there.
>> Yeah. So it's uh it's I think it was Greg Matson.
>> Okay.
uh Quick Media and it's just his um come follow me series on the Book of Mormon and he he does every he does a series on all the uh all of our standard works um the Bible and Old Testament, New Testament and Doctrine of Covenants. But but that's where you would find it is in the Book of Mormon. Um >> okay.
So yeah.
>> All right. Thank you so much, Brady. We look forward to talking to you again.
>> Yep.
>> If you're curious, >> byebye.
>> Go ahead. My my view, Matt, if you're like, if I have to give rankings of the plausibility of different religions, like we're just setting aside atheism for a second. I think I start with like a Lovecraftian mythos as being the most plausible universe that contains things that we might want to call gods. And then it's probably Buddhist Mara. And then it's third is probably tied Norse and Greek mythology because pantheons of superpowered [ __ ] seems very plausible to me, very likely to exist relative to other things. And then everything else is far down the list from there.
Yeah, it's I I kind of I mean it's it's a half joke thing on occasion where I'm like the only the only religion that is followed by a considerable number of people that I find more ridiculous than Mormonism is Scientology.
I mean it it's in these in these two religions in particular.
I mean, they were invented um by known liars and con artists within not quite living memory cuz well, we're all getting older, but in in the not tooistant past. And so one of them was actively trying to create a uh a religion and did so in what's got to be about the dumbest way possible which is invented a story about thetatons and blowing up people in volcanoes and flying them in in craft that look like JC9s or 10s or whatever else like he didn't even reach out to tech technology beyond what he could see just by casually looking up and then sells it for big money and some people get really excited about it. And then the other >> I don't think we should totally get down on on like people starting cults involving groups of people who are interested in science fiction as someone who's done exactly that as well. I'm just, you know, there are better and worse versions of it is all I'm saying.
As long as you don't, you know, do weird horrible things to them, it's fine, right?
>> Well, yeah. I'm just not aware of. So, for example, the the deaths and other things involved with the Seaorg and stuff like that. Yeah. Uh oh, man. All right.
Yeah, we got calls.
So, let me see if we can do this. Uh Flor is calling from Brazil pronouns to she her.
Fur is a theist who says, "You can't prove God exists or does not exist. Is there a way to truly disprove God?" Hey F, welcome to the show. How are you?
>> Hello. I'm doing good. Um, honestly, I simply saw the title and I've se I've uh followed I followed you guys for a little while and uh I saw that one video where uh you got a guy who believed in gender critical theory and uh made him see that trans people, LGBT people aren't uh you know people and I felt very happy about it. But seeing more and more of these titles uh about proving or disproving God, I really wanted to know your positions. Uh you guys are agnostic atheists, right?
>> It depends on the god.
I'm just a hard atheist.
>> If it's an agnostic atheist, then I I would think you're uh your uh base position, even though it's agnosticism, uh your base position is no god exists, right?
>> I I have reason to not believe in God.
>> Yeah. I do not believe that any god exists and nobody has met the burden of proof for a god as far as I'm aware.
>> Great. Uh is there a need for a burden of proof?
>> If there's a claim there's a burden of proof. If you say X is true, you have adopted a burden of proof.
Well, several people have said several things uh in in life and I don't think all of them can >> several people have have said you here you just said several people have have said several things in life. Can we get away from vagatry vagaries and and things like that and just make some kind of specific claim and address it because because it's because because I'm sorry I can't hear you when you're trying to talk at the same time I'm talking.
>> So when when you say something like several people have said several things in life that that's that doesn't tell me anything. So let's get to what what we can discuss.
>> Okay then let's get down to it.
I am not here to prove that God exists.
I simply want to know why you think he doesn't.
That's okay. So, here's the problem. Um, I'm not convinced that a god exists because nobody's met its burden of proof. And it's partially because people like you don't understand what the burden of proof is. So, you want me to come in and tell you why I don't think God or why I think God doesn't exist.
But I can't say I think God doesn't exist until you define a god for me to evaluate. There are some gods when >> there are some gods when people define them, I can say, "Yep, I'm completely convinced that that god does not exist."
And there are other gods that are unfalsifiable, which I cannot be completely convinced don't exist, but I have no reason to think they do exist.
If somebody says a god is real, they have adopted a burden of proof. All I'm saying is nobody's met it yet.
>> In an interesting way, I also agree with you that nobody has met the burden of proof. Uh but I went the opposite route.
>> Uh simply >> nobody has met the burden of proof. So like technically by saying it all gods are real not just one or a pantheon specifically.
>> Flur can you prove that you're not a thief?
>> Uh no mainly because I have uh done thievery in the past.
>> Okay. Can you prove you're not a murderer?
Uh, I have >> him on air here.
>> Well, how do I prove that?
>> That's not my problem. Can you prove that you're not a murderer?
>> Uh, sure.
>> How?
>> Uh, find me a body.
>> Okay. You you you fundamentally don't understand what the burden of proof is.
Is it possible for someone to be a murderer >> and for there to be no body for someone to to >> show up with?
>> No.
>> How? So, so you you're saying that it's not possible for someone to kill someone and for it to be absolutely impossible to ever recover a body. Is that your position?
>> No. Um I'm Okay, give me a second.
I would also I want to mention I would go farther than what Matt's saying in terms of there's no no one has met the burden of proof. I would argue that people have actively failed to meet the burden of proof and that the the flaws and the weaknesses of their arguments are part of the evidence that their view is probably false.
>> Like I think we have good reason to believe that God is not real. One of which is all of the arguments that have been mustered in favor of God are very bad.
Okay. Uh then I'm just going to ask a very simple uh question here, a very scientific one.
Can you prove to me that blue exists?
>> What exist?
>> Blue. What?
>> Can you prove to me that the color blue is real?
>> Yes.
>> You're asking a philosopher about the color blue. I I could go on for hours.
like it's real in the sense that you experience it. It's not real in the sense that it doesn't exist out there in the world. It's a interconnected experience of something, but I don't think that God is anything like the color blue. So, I'm not sure how it relates.
>> Yeah. So when we're talking about when we're talking about when we're talking about colors >> um we can then define and if you were to say by the color blue I mean this p specific um wavelength of visible light >> and we can in fact detect that wavelength and show that that wavelength is real and exists. If you're talking about and and you know first of all I reject the idea of qualia so I don't care about this notion about the experience of blue but blue is a concept >> and what the what the label blue points to whether it's blue assul whatever does the language doesn't matter whatever that concept points to is a real thing that we can measure and test >> okay we can measure the wavelength Hang on.
>> Hang on. I answered I answered yours.
>> I answered yours.
>> Now I'd like you to answer.
>> I'm answer I'm trying to answer back.
And as you said before, you don't like to be interrupted. I would like to not be interrupted.
>> Okay. You're not I'm not the one interrupting you. You asked a question and I answered it. I would like you to answer the question I asked before that you didn't.
>> And then you stopped and then I'm trying to uh to follow.
>> I'm sorry. I would like you to answer the question that I asked before that you haven't answered yet.
>> Okay. What?
>> It's the one about the the body, right?
The can you >> can you prove someone can prove a murder body and can you prove? If you just let me ask it, this would be so much [ __ ] easier and much less [ __ ] annoying.
Can you prove that you have not murdered someone?
>> No.
>> Okay.
I asked that question because that's what it means to shift the burden of proof. Should you ever have to prove that you did not murder someone? Should the default assumption be that you're a murderer until you prove it wrong?
>> No.
>> Right. So, we want to set up a default position, which is that we presume you are innocent until somebody can demonstrate you're guilty. Right.
>> Okay.
>> That's that's it. So when it comes to some god exists, the default assumption is that no god exists until somebody demonstrates that one does. Right?
>> This is just Russell's teapot.
>> I'm just going to ask why is that a default position?
>> Because the alternative is to assume that all gods exist until they're proven to not exist. And some of those gods have conflicting contradictory um characteristics. So a god that makes the entire reality pink must exist until you prove it doesn't. And a god that makes the entire reality not pink must exist. A god that's going to reward you for worshiping it must exist. And a god that's going to punish you for worshiping that god must exist. you would end up having to hold the position that both right is left and right is right because you have a contradiction.
So the default position is not to accept any of them until they've met their burden of proof.
>> The same reason that we don't >> I mean it's the same reason to default to believing that there is not a teapot between here and Jupiter.
It's that's the Russell's teapot argument that like you you have no reason to assume that there would be a teapot out there and just because you can't prove that there isn't a teapot out there doesn't mean you have good reason to then infer that there might even be one there.
>> Right. Okay. So now I see the position.
Cool.
>> That is basically all I wanted to know.
I'm not going to dispute or try to say your position is wrong because I am not trying to be combative.
>> Okay. I don't care if you're trying to be combative. The purpose here is for people to defend their positions. So, are you saying that you don't agree with us on the burden of proof, but you're just not going to argue it?
>> Basically, it sounds like >> Okay.
So in that case in that no in that case four I have no interest in speaking to you.
>> Cool.
>> Uh you may move on.
>> Oh thank you for that permission to to move on from someone who's just going to waste time and not actually engage. Uh, I hope that you are very comfortable in your self- constructed shield that prevents your positions from critic from criticism or defense. Um, thanks for calling.
How wild.
I think you're wrong, but I'm not going to try. I I don't want to engage on it.
>> I get that a lot from the manifestation folks. Um, anyone who's going to bring up quantum woo at some point is also probably going to make the argument that I have a different reality than they do and so there's no point in arguing about it.
It's bizarre to me though because in this case we all we were talking about is how to properly apply the burden of proof. And as long as the burd proof were made personal as to whether or not floor should be considered a murderer until they're able to demonstrate they're not or that they should be considered not a murderer until somebody demonstrates they are they understand it absolutely fine and are fine with it.
And then as soon as it comes down to demonstrating the truth of their God position or the truth about their confused position on the rest of the burden of proof as if it's different under some other circumstance all of a sudden I just disagree with that but I don't have any interest in engaging.
That's got to be a terrible defense mechanism to live with because all it does is lead to cognitive dissonance.
you're just protecting your cherished beliefs um in a kind of a leave Britney alone sense without while while also recognizing the reality of logic when it suit when it suits you.
Hey, we got the caller back.
John is calling from Illinois. John's an atheist who wants to talk to Aaron about object object morality. Sorry. Uh, I could be wrong.
>> Probably objective. Let's find out.
>> No, that's correct.
>> Hang on just a second. Hang on just a second. Hang on just a second.
>> Somebody in chat is saying, "Please use correct pronouns." Flur is she, her. I think I just used they.
>> So, let me ask this person and I'm going to ask this person in chat. You go ahead and have a conversation. My bad.
>> Hello.
>> Yeah. What's up?
Oh, yeah. Okay. Hey, it's it's uh it's good to see uh Dr. Ravenowitz on the line. How about that?
>> I'm gone.
>> Yeah, there was a caller like a week ago who was butt hurt about being muted or something and he he threatened to report the line to the Creator Accountability Network. And Jimmy said he didn't know what the Creator Accountability Network is. And now Darren Benovich is on the line. Imagine that.
>> Yeah, feel free to report away. Um Matt and then we have to get credentials first before we could process the report. But uh >> yeah, we're not here for Accountability Network. What's >> I know I'm not I I just I just thought that was kind of kind of interesting interesting turn of events. But anyway, so um Erin, we I don't know if you remember this, probably not, but like maybe a year ago or something, we had a little back and forth on social media about objective morality. And you were saying that you're a moral realist. And I'm just wondering like how do you in what sense do you think object a morality is objective?
>> Sure. Yeah. I I think it's objective in a kind of virtue ethic sense. I think it's objective in the sense that there are truths about morality that are independent of our beliefs about them.
So for example, uh all things being equal, you ought not to cause unnecessary suffering. That's a claim. I think it's a true claim. I think it's an objectively true claim. It's a claim about the universe in a complicated kind of way. Uh another example would be the Nazis were immoral. Like I just think it's objectively true that what the Nazis did was very bad and any argument that ends with the conclusion that what the Nazis did was wrong or not wrong would be that would be a reductio out of absurdum of that particular ethical theory whatever it was. Um now you know you can explain >> yeah but that's still it's still still coming from your opinion right? No, I disagree. I totally agree. I I completely agree with you, of course, that what the Nazis did was abominable, but >> it's still coming from your mind. It's not objective. It's not coming from outside of all minds of the universe.
It's not written in the >> I would argue it is.
>> Yeah. So, if you get into a debate in moral meta ethics about like whether morality is invented or discovered, that's the kind of argument we're having here, right? You're saying we invent morality. I'm saying we discover morality.
>> I think it's a little it's a little of both. I think like okay so we morality comes from >> if it's both then I win the argument because if as long as as long as discovered is one of the things on the table then then morality is objective.
Well, we discover we discover things about ourselves, about other people, about like, you know, the human >> condition and we un we come to understandings about maybe people that we don't, you know, other cultures or whatnot.
>> Um, and that informs our decisions. It's like, you know, like um I kind of like I'm not um I'm not a big fan of Sam Harris, but I think that his take on >> Me neither. And his meta ethics is terrible, so let's not bother.
>> Well, he's a terrible person, but like >> but he also like in his book says meta ethics is pointless and you shouldn't do it. So >> he's not a good source for meta ethics.
In his book, The Moral Landscape, he says meta ethics is boring and you shouldn't read it. So, he's not a really good source for metaethical arguments would be my view.
>> So, like here's here's the idea basically, right? Been a while since could you let me ask you this, right? If everyone in the world got together and voted that it was okay that it was moral to torture puppies or Matt Dillah Hunty or any >> it doesn't matter how many people that's that's irrelevant. It's the fact that it's it originates from from from mind >> is what this is a good this is a good test about objectivity. Um >> so it's not that it originates from the mind. It's that we use our minds to gain access to the truth the same way we do physical laws.
>> Yeah.
laws are technically from the mind >> because there's there are always going to be people who don't agree with it and you can't really prove conclusively that one thing is >> but that's a separate question right it could be the case hold here I just I want to distinguish some things here because we don't want to we don't want to conflate things okay so it could be the case for example that objective morality is true right there are objective moral truths in the world but it is impossible to convince everyone of moral agreement.
>> Right? This is called the argument for moral disagreement.
>> I mean I don't I don't think it matters how many people I don't know why the number of people has anything to do with it >> because if your view is that morality is subjective then it has to be the case that it is coming from either the beliefs of one individual or multiple individuals.
>> Sure. regardless of how >> and what I'm saying is >> well that makes it subjective >> but that that's the only alternative to it being objective.
So like for example, slavery >> demonstration that it's objective.
>> Okay. So I mean there are a bunch of ways that you can make the case that it is objective that show that it is that it is stance independent, right? That it is not dependent on our beliefs about it. One of them is the kind of hypothetical that I just put forward the everyone comes together and votes hypothetical. Another one would be imag think something like slavery. Let's say there was a time in human history where everyone in the world thought slavery was moral. Everyone thought that it was God's divine plan. Okay.
>> Even the slaves, right?
>> Even the slaves. Yeah.
>> Even the slaves was moral.
>> That's how legitimizing myths work, right? Um would it still be immoral?
>> It doesn't make it objectively moral.
No, >> it doesn't make it doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it good.
>> Right. I think we can still say it still doesn't make it doesn't make it objective. And I don't think there was ever a time where slaves >> I don't think there was I'm just I'm giving another hypothetical. Um, so like the the point of this is like a when you make an argument for why something is immoral, it's not because I personally feel that it's immoral. I can point to the features of the thing itself and say those are the things that make it immoral.
>> No, I can I can person, right? Like you if we can agree that this causes harm and causing harm is bad, then we can agree that it's immoral. But I mean I don't there there are sadistic evil uh >> you know misanthropic people out there who believe that humanity is a scourge on the earth and that we should all be destroyed because we're ruining the envir whatever whatever the argument might be. Okay.
>> That person will may not agree that killing other that killing everybody in the world would be wrong even though you and I and most reasonable people I obviously would.
>> Yeah. So this is called the argument from disagreement. This is one of so in the philosophical literature, one of the big arguments people who object to moral realism is a guy named Mackey. And he makes two two main arguments. The argument from moral disagreement and the argument from queerness, which just means that moral truths seem like they would be kind of weird.
>> Argument from what?
>> From queerness, which is just moral facts or moral truths are not like non-moral facts or non-moral truths, and so they are weird and so they shouldn't exist in the world.
>> Yeah. See, that's >> what you're doing is the art.
>> That doesn't appeal to me at all because I don't think that something being >> you that that's that's another person.
>> Can you stop talking?
>> Can you stop talking? Can you stop talking and let Aaron finish please?
Thanks.
>> I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
>> That's okay. The argument from disagreement is in my opinion the weaker of the two arguments because you can just point out look is there fundamental scientific disagreement? Are there people in the world that we are never going to convince that the earth is round? for example.
That's my question.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, for sure there are. Right. Does it follow from that fact that this that the nature of the earth is subjective as opposed to objective?
>> No, because there's objective evidence of the earth being round. It doesn't it's not dependent on whether people agree. But morality is not like that.
Well, what I would say is morality is like that. Morality is very similar in that it does not depend on whether people actually disagree and the argument from disagreement in both cases. It doesn't follow from there being disagreement that there that you can't have an objective truth there. So, it's not a piece of evidence against objective truth.
>> You you've just eliminated the entire is distinction.
>> Yes, Matt, that's a whole separate question. I think the is distinction is misunderstood.
Are you saying that morality comes out of a consensus of the people?
>> No, I'm saying morality is a are objective statements about the nature of the universe properly understood that we discover through our moral reasoning and judgment.
I still would need a demonstration of that. I can't I just can't get there. I mean, this is one of the situations where I just can't I I it's it's Can you define Can you define what you mean by a demonstration in this context?
>> Agree very strongly on, you know, like the Nazis. That's a real easy one, you know, but like when you get down to like very fine details, it all falls apart because everybody has different opinions about all these different things. And no, >> do you think that people can be wrong about morality? Let me ask you this. Do you think that people can be wrong about morality?
For my opinion, I think they can. Yeah, in my opinion, they can disagree.
>> I don't understand what you're I don't understand what the in my opinion is doing there. Like when when I say the Nazis were wrong about morality, adding in my opinion seemed like a really weird hedge, right? Like I think you should have the courage of your convictions and just say no. They were wrong about morality full stop because morality is objective and people can be wrong about it. They're they're so they're they were wrong. Okay, let's if we really want to we really want to break this down to objective in to an objective way of looking at I'm going to try to steal man this. The Nazis had an idea that certain types of people were less than human and they were a scourge on humanity. So they had to be destroyed. That was like their moral principle. I believe that that's incorrect. Objectively incorrect. And you can scientifically prove that it's to some extent objectively incorrect.
Right.
>> But that's not the big issue. The big issue is that they shoved a bunch of people into ovens. It's the shoving the people into ovens that's the the moral concern here. And it's a moral concern because of the suffering that it causes.
>> They justified it by having this [ __ ] up idea.
>> Sure. But my point is it's just a brute fact of reality that doing the Holocaust is immoral.
>> And like there's no reducing morality further there. It's just a fact of the matter that it's wrong to do that.
I mean, I agree, but I can't say that everybody agrees. Obviously, >> you don't have to. You don't need to.
There are Nazis in the world. They're just wrong. What I would encourage you, like, this is the joke that I do with people sometimes when I give talks about this for atheists. I'm like, what you're running up against is more of a psychological block than an argumentative block. There's no argument here. It's just it feels weird to you to say morality is objective, maybe. And what you might want to do is just repeat to yourself over and over again, the Nazis were wrong. they were objectively wrong until it feels less weird.
>> I already believe it. I don't think that's going to help. I mean, I I what I would need is some type of a a proof that I mean, I I understand what kind of proof. Here's my question. You keep talking about proof and demonstrations for what they did, but I think that what >> Can you give me an idea of what you mean by a proof or a demonstration?
>> I'm sorry. I need I like I'm just going to be chasing shadows if you can't give me an explanation of what you mean by a demonstration or a proof.
>> Okay, we the previous scholar is talking about the color blue, right?
>> Sure. Can you prove the color blue?
Well, we can define the color blue like different world organizations like ANIE and uh have have actually definitions on what range of wavelengths of light of visible light are the color blue. And that's an that's objective because it's written down. It's you know there's you can't argue with it. Even if I see the color, >> I mean, except for the fact that there's no objective true color blue and people don't see the same color. You're >> talking about something else now.
>> That's not blue. You know what I'm saying?
>> A goth, you know, like moral morality is not the same as color. And B, there is no objective blue, >> right? Well, no, there is it's objective. If it's if it's been determined and it's if you go by that framework, then that is the definition of blue. this rainbow >> that would be that would be a constructive >> definition of the color blue >> does it it's still objective it it it's just not there's no intrinsic blue >> right that's that's a construct >> the rules of chess were the rules of chess were arbitrary and invented and so was saying this is the particular frequency of light that we're going to label as blue under this ane standard or whatever else but once you have that you can then evaluate things object objectively to that standard. The issue here is what is the objective standard?
We got one for blue. What's the objective standard for morality?
>> So, there are several moral truths that I think are objective that are that sit in tension. So, you know, the difference between morality and chess is it doesn't actually like there's no better or worse rules for chess >> in the real sense. I I mean you can choose to prefer some rules or other rules.
>> No, what I what I mean is like you can choose to prefer the standard rules or you can choose to prefer some house rules that you make up. It doesn't matter ultimately. There's no >> It doesn't matter though.
>> Okay. Because if the goal if the goal is to determine >> um a good game and a good game is one that doesn't for example result in white winning every time with perfect play then the the rules in the game are going to impact that.
>> If if you if you set a goal then you can then you can measure the which rules are better based on that particular goal.
>> My point my point is um the rules of morality are not like that. There are better and worse rules for morality.
They are, you know, they have various features that make them better than other approaches to morality such as consistency, but also they produce better outcomes. Um, >> better outcomes for who?
>> I get ideally better outcomes for everyone. That would be >> why why is a better outcome >> for everyone the correct moral position? Yeah, because I think if you look at moral foundations, >> why is a better moral out why is a better outcome for everybody the correct moral position?
>> Yeah. What I was going to say is because I think if you reason your way towards the moral foundations, the best moral foundations are ones that will lead to egalitarian approaches to ethics, for example.
>> Okay. But you haven't given me a foundation. You've just told me what you think. So a foundation for example would be all things being equal, you ought not to cause unnecessary suffering or all things being equal, you ought not to flourish either.
>> Why do you say >> why? So you you you want to declare X is good.
>> Yeah.
>> Why should I care about X at all?
>> Okay. So that would be a separate question rather than a grounding question. And that would be why should psychologically why should you be motivated to care about the thing?
>> No, I'm saying I don't consider that.
You might say X is good and I say I don't think that's good and you're like well it is. And I'm like okay.
>> So for example, >> yeah, >> the propagation of the human species.
What if I don't think that's a good thing?
>> Then we would debate sort of the costs and benefits of the propagation of the human species.
>> Yeah. But if my foundational thing is that we should go extinct, >> I mean, do you want us to go extinct because you you have some other goal in mind or do you just intrinsically value us going extinct?
>> I I don't think there is any intrinsic truth to our continuation being by definition good. I think that it's all contingent. By the way, I I also buy into uh a version of objective morality, but not the way you're describing it.
And >> sure, I guess you're probably more of a constructivist.
>> How about this? Would it be moral to wipe out the mosquito that carries malaria?
>> So, that's an applied ethics question, and you'd have to look at the cost benefits for wiping it out along with other ethical considerations like >> perspective, right? But what about a perspective of another animal that might eat that mosquito for food or or who you who knows what some >> that would be part of the cost analysis that mosqu mosquito.
>> Yeah, that would be part of the cost benefit analysive and that's what makes it subjective.
>> No, there can be different disagreements about what the right answer is without there while there also being wrong answers.
Does that make sense?
I I just can't I can't I can't get with that. I can't get I can't get there.
>> I mean, if you don't believe that, then you can't then you can't have moral disagreements a a point of view. It's always dependent on a on a a thinking.
>> What's the point what's the point of arguing about morality if it's just opinions? Then >> it's not just opinion. So if we can agree that what we're looking for is that which uh best aids human beings now we have an agreed upon foundation that we can then make objective assessments about it.
There is no there is no universal imperative that that be the foundation though. And I think that in in Aaron's case, Aeron's just saying in order for it to make any sense at all, it has to be about us and our well-being and, you know, our propagation. And so that's the bare minimum. And my the version I'm I'm advocating for is very similar. Ian and I were talking about it basically where it starts with freedom because if you do not allow freedom as the foundation of morality, you can't get to any morality.
You have you don't have the freedom to even oppose freedom.
But there's nothing >> you're discovering that that autonomy is an important constituent of flourishing there.
>> Well, it it doesn't matter if autonomy is about flourishing or not. You can't you can't you can't ena enable you can't permit or deny >> make the choice, right?
>> I'm sorry, John. You cannot permit or deny autonomy without beginning by granting the autonomy to grant that.
>> Thank you. So, so let me let me let me ask you this, Matt. Your your view is morality is objective as long as we can agree on sort of starting principles or something. Is that right?
So my my view is that you can make non-subjective moral assessments comparing the consequences of actions to a goal. You can have a goal which seems universal but is not an in is not a an imperative. Like there's no there's nothing about the facts of the universe that suggests that caring about the survival of human beings or the flourishing of human beings or the freedom of human beings is in any way an imperative.
But we care about it.
>> Okay. So it seems like you and I would have a disagreement.
>> Isought problem. That's what it is. It's an is ought problem.
>> Well, so people often bring up the is ought argument from Hume and it's very misunderstood. I think if you look at what Hume actually writes, he is not making the argument you think he's making. What he actually says is often what happens in arguments is somebody moves from a factual claim to a normative claim without exposing their hidden normative premises.
>> Right? And what you have to do is push someone to expose their hidden normative.
>> Did you break that down? I I didn't quite track that without losing.
>> So basically they're hidden moral claims essentially.
>> Right. If I say you know that counts as slavery and therefore it's wrong.
>> There's an implicit premise in there that slavery is wrong. Right.
>> Right.
>> So that is the problem that he is raising there. I don't think you actually can read Hume. I I would say that the my opinion the best reading of Hume is that he's actually also a moral realist. He also thinks that there are better and worse objects of moral sentiment.
He just wants people to be explicit about their moral commitments.
>> So to bring it back the fact argue that because these are the facts then they're therefore correct or right morally right or or you can't get things are the way they are that doesn't mean that's the way they ought to be the core just to come back to the core claim of moral realism here all I'm saying is it is wrong or right to do certain things no matter how much you personally or any individual personally God or otherwise believes differently I I don't know.
>> I mean, I could take you >> I think that everything got poison I think that everything got poisoned the second you said personally and made it about an individual thing. Um something could be subjective from the standpoint of us and not necessarily merely from me. Right.
>> Yes. Like cultural relativism is another kind of subjectivism. My point is just morality isn't determined by our preferences about the moral truths. If we desired the moral truths to be different, it would not change them. So if every living human, for example, desired to end humanity's existence and considered that to be a moral good, you're saying that wouldn't make it good.
>> Correct.
under what what's the possible objection?
>> The objection is that's not how morality works. If I if if I give you an explan let me ask you this, Matt. Why was the why was the Holocaust bad?
>> The Holocaust was bad because it violates foundational principles of moral freedom that we agree to that we value.
>> Okay. So, it's not because I would argue that yes, it violates freedom. it causes suffering. Those kind of things, right?
And those are things we object to.
>> That that is bad whether or not >> in conflict with the things we value like human feroc and autonomy.
>> And I would say the things we should >> amount of harm for I'm sorry.
>> I'm sorry. Yeah.
>> So you're saying that's what we should value.
>> Yeah.
>> Where is the demonstration that we should value X is the the objection.
This this comes up every time we have a discussion about >> and this is where this is where Nagel I think has the right answer which is I can point you to examples and try to show you directly that this thing is right or wrong but beyond a certain point there's no more disagreement to be had. So going back to your your your your constructivist idea Matt right like on your view if we agree on the original principles we can construct an objective morality out of them. I'm arguing that certain principles we should agree on are better than other principles that we might agree on. And I think that ultimately you'd have to also agree and that I think we'd say we are lucky that we value freedom for example because freedom is something that should be valued.
>> No. So freedom so so the only one that I can go with so far is that there must be the freedom otherwise there's no freedom to decide whether or not you're going to allow freedom. Here's here's one for you, Matt. You know, you know the Uifer dilemma, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Right. So, the euthifer dilemma could be generalized out from belief in God to a question of metaeththics.
>> Piety, not Yeah.
>> Right. Right. But you can you can generalize it out from piety in God to morality and our beliefs about things.
Is something good because we believe it is good or do we believe it is good because it is in fact good?
So, >> it's an ass each individual make, right?
>> John, I'm gonna let you go.
>> I'm sorry. I'm just Okay. All right. Thanks for you guys for uh entertaining my question.
>> Thanks for bringing up some met ethics.
So the dilemma being is something good because we say so or do we say so because it's good and I would say um something is good because we say so because the notion of good the notion of ought the notion of should um does not exist in reality apart from a concept. It requires a value. You have to value something and value is an act of a mind.
If nobody valued anything, there could be no morality because there's no comparative to it to >> I would argue that there'd still be morality. We just wouldn't know about it. So, we wouldn't have access to it.
So, here here's where I would say here, >> how could there be a morality if there's not a mind to know it? If it's a concept >> because if it's a truth then there are truths that can exist even when there are no minds to recognize them. The speed of light exists before there is any mind to cognize.
>> The speed of light is a physical fact of the universe. It's not a concept.
>> It's a concept in that it's a description of the universe.
>> No, it is it is a physical fact that we concept about it doesn't make it a concept.
>> Right. What I would say is the moral truths exist and then we have we have what I say is we have concepts of them.
So so to go back to the youth of dilemma, right, Matt, you said it's good because we believe it's good.
>> Does that mean that we could choose to believe that it's in fact bad?
>> I don't think we choose to believe anything. So that phrasing already kills everything. Uh I don't think anyone ever chooses to believe anything.
>> No. Doxastic volunteerism I reject hard.
Full stop.
>> Okay. I mean I think people like in so far as I believe that anyone chooses anything in our world. I do think people choose their beliefs to some extent.
>> I don't think anybody chooses their beliefs. As a matter of fact, I think it's absolutely impossible. A belief is the state of being convinced of something and you're not in control. You can't just Hey, I'm going to decide right now that I believe I can flap my arms and fly. Nope. I can act as if I believe it, but you're either convinced of it or you're not. And you could be convinced for good reasons or bad reasons.
>> I didn't want to I didn't mean to sidetrack into to doxastic volunteerism.
I just wanted to point out that if you believe that it's good because we believe it's good, then it follows that if we didn't believe it was good, it wouldn't be good.
>> Good is a value judgment by definition.
Good and bad.
>> What I'm saying is if what I'm saying is it follows from your view that if we didn't believe that the thing was good, it wouldn't be good. Correct.
>> Correct.
>> Okay. So if we didn't believe that the Holocaust was bad, it wouldn't be bad.
>> Correct.
>> Okay. That's a reductio absurdum to me.
>> Where's the where's the absurdum?
>> I mean, I think the absurdum is the morality of the Holocaust is independent of our beliefs about it. And we know that because it's bad because it involves suffering. So if we lack the >> entirely circular argument there that is all tied up in how you feel about it and I agree with >> I think it's circular. I I think >> absolutely circular. What is the foundation beyond you don't like it?
>> The foundation is that you can have these moral truths that are defensible that are coherent.
>> You're just asserting that it's a moral truth. You're not demonstrating it's a moral truth.
>> What if what if somebody thought it was a moral claims that I believe are that like I think you can show are true. that you can show there are no arguments against them and there are good arguments for them which is the best you can do for an argument like this.
Like what other demonstration could there be for a conceptual argument besides here are the arguments for why this is true. Here are the arguments for why it's false and those are not good because XYZ. That's all there is.
>> Yeah, that's all there is. That's us valuing things and discussing what we value and why we feel that we should value it. But there's nothing intrinsic to the universe that says whether or not you exterminate an entire group of people at some point in history is necessarily a bad thing.
>> Okay. So I mean there I think we we just fundamentally would disagree because I think >> the the nature of conscious beings you know is such that if you exterminate them in that kind of way you're doing something objectively wrong.
>> How is it objectively wrong? Are you saying that if if so, for example, I have a friend of mine that wanted to die and died. Was it objectively wrong for them to die?
>> No.
>> Okay.
>> It's a different context. Like that's that's a very naive kind of like absolutist view of how to do the morality though, right? Like there's a huge difference between euthanasia and the heart.
>> Your argument was that it's wrong for conscious beings to die and yet they die all the time and they often die for good reason.
My argument is the foundation to call it unnecessary suffering. of a pre outside of a preference. What's what's the the argument for that it's bad for for conscious things to die?
>> I think it's just a fact of the matter that to cause unnecessary suffering to deprive an individual of flourishing is bad. Like when you understand the concept, >> as soon as you say that you think it's just a fact of the matter, you've given up the argument. You're not presenting any case. You're just saying it's so it's literally circular.
>> You are asserting it. you are asserting it and then asserting that you're asserting it. So the problem I think we have is I can tell you what the claims are and then you tell me what's the arguments for them and then I give you arguments for them and then you tell me what are the claims and then I go back to the it creates a circle >> because you you know there's nothing else to be said besides that wrong your claim is that it's wrong for a conscious being to die and my >> that is not what I said all things being equal it is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering that's why >> actually that's not what you said But okay.
>> Sure. Or I said, for example, the Holocaust is wrong. And the Holocaust is wrong because it causes a bunch of suffering by killing a bunch of conscious people. Right.
>> I agree that the Holocaust is wrong. And I agree it's wrong because it causes a bunch of suffering. But I do not agree that it's a universal imperative that this is the fact of the matter is this is still about our value.
>> I mean, look, at the end of the day, I I am more concerned about people's normative and applied ethics. If you want to like there are lots of >> there are lots of atheists who disagree with me about moral realism and like >> Shelley Kagan's a really smart individual who write has a really good argument against William Lane Craig in their debates where he he takes the the view that you are arguing for and that's totally fine. I think that there is good reason to believe in objective morality and to say that you can have objective morality without belief in God. I don't think it's circular, but I also I'm not necessarily believing that I can convince everyone else of that view. I I think this is the kind of thing where there are arguments, but they are not going to convince everybody, and that's okay. Okay, sorry. We're going to move on to super chats in a second, but that's just silly. Nobody's Nobody thinks that everybody can be convinced, and even if everybody can becomes convinced, that doesn't make something objective.
I >> I agree.
I don't think that it's that that is the whole point of so if people want to read a book about this the book is called uh moral moral realism a defense by Russ Schaefer Landau that's the formal philosophical argument right okay >> I think that he makes a strong case for why we should call morality objective >> I I don't but also I Ian and I were talking about it and I think what Ian was advocating for is is something that I'm fine and that is that as a pragmatic as a practical sense If you're going to have any sort of morality at it must include the freedom to act as a moral agent because if that freedom isn't there then it doesn't matter whether your moral foundation is the extermination of everybody or not you know the >> I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. So, so like I could let's take for example if I was a radical, you know, nihilist about morality, right? I was a gorgius and I was going to say >> might makes right. You know, there is no real morality. It's just rule by the boot, do whatever you want kind of thing. I don't have to defend freedom in any way in order to have that particular morality.
>> Yes, you do.
>> Why?
>> Because you don't have freedom to enact your morality until you defend that freedom first. Like >> I don't have to defend it for anybody else besides myself though, right?
>> No, no, no, no, no. It is for yourself.
This is This is not Nobody's saying >> But I'm not saying I'm not saying it's good is good.
>> I Nobody's We're not saying that you have to defend freedom for Aaron's view.
It is. You must begin with the freedom to be a moral actor, to act on behalf of your moral intentions. If you don't grant that freedom, you're done. There's so that is the minimum the base minimum that you must grant.
>> Can you so I want to just I want to clarify what you're trying to say here.
Are you saying you have to value that freedom as a kind of moral foundation?
Are you saying you have to acknowledge the ability to act according to moral principles or or or ideas? I'm not sure what you mean even.
>> Which one?
>> To act as a moral agent. You cannot act as a moral agent unless you first grant yourself the right or grant everyone the right to act as a moral agent.
>> So that that second part was much a much stronger claim that seems like it would not be true. I don't have to grant that everyone is a moral agent to assign myself the freedom to enact my own preferences.
>> Okay.
>> Right.
um what guarantees your freedom to act?
That is the cooperative aspect of this.
So >> So then, so then you're bringing in additional claims, right, about life.
>> You you want to destroy every living thing in the world and I want to help everything in the world flourish. We have two directly opposite goals, but both of us require the freedom to act towards those goals. And that is the freedom that must be granted for any moral system to be possible >> only in the sense of it wouldn't make sense to talk about morality if people couldn't act based on their moral beliefs.
>> That's exactly that's the >> same as valuing the freedom. That's just saying you have to treat this as a a a premise in your understanding of how people act.
>> Okay. Well, see, now now it's kind of nitpicky because how what how could it possibly make sense to say we're going to grant ourselves the the the ability to act, but we don't value that?
>> I mean, you could just like I'm trying to think about what you're trying to argue for here. So you could grant it while being a nihilist just because like you could just reject the whole conversation and just say I'm a nihilist. I'm going to act. You can call it whatever you want but I'm just going to act.
Like I guess I guess what I'm saying is if you think that okay let's let's go a different way about this, right? You're saying, "Look, it isn't rational to believe in morality without believing in moral freedom or moral autonomy in this kind of sense."
>> The second you grant yourself the right to act, you're acknowledging the point.
>> In which case, it still seems like you're a moral realist because you're just saying there's an objective fact that we recognize that we have to grant our own moral freedom in order to begin to have a conversation about morality.
>> Yes. which is why I said that at the beginning >> and you and I think are on the same page that like >> no because you are going a step beyond the minimal granting of the freedom to act to making declaratives that X is in fact immoral and it goes beyond the freedom to act.
>> Yeah, I think it follows from it in various ways.
>> Well, you have to make a case for it for something other than >> Sure. If we unpack the Right. So here's the thing. If we grant that the base freedom to act is a freedom to act towards annihilation and an act towards flourishing.
If that is the base, you cannot make a case for one over the other. If the base freedom allows without preference annihilation or flourishing, you can't say flourishing sure is naturally derived from that because they're both naturally derived from that.
>> So what I would argue then is if you are going to argue that freedom is valuable in this way, you have to unpack what we mean by freedom and you'd have to also value the necessary constituents of freedom.
>> I only need the freedom to act to exterminate everything. What my my point is you're saying morality only makes sense if I have the freedom to act on moral principles. Right.
>> Correct.
>> Okay. If for example I am being constantly violently coerced into slavery, my freedom to act on moral principles is severely constrained if not eliminated.
Right?
>> Not relevant.
>> Why not?
>> Because we're talking about the foundations of morality, not some specific situation. My my point is I was giving an example of how if you actually unpack the idea of freedom, it's going to be thicker than just a volitional will.
>> You have injected you have injected your preferences about freedom >> on top of. So we begin with the freedom to act and that freedom to act could be towards destruction or could be towards flourishing. You would like it to go toward flourishing and so would I. The difference between us is you think there's some kind of moral truth that leads to that and I don't because the baseline just allows you to either go towards destruction or flourishing.
>> Neither is preferable from a universal sense or from an intrinsic sense. They are preferable to us like flourishing. I think that I I would I would want to make the contean move then and say if you value freedom in the way that you do it necessarily entails valuing other things.
>> Okay. You smuggled it in again.
>> I mean I think it's entailment but that's okay.
>> You you smuggled it in again when you say value freedom in the way that you do. Yes. You and I value freedom in in that leads to more because we're adding our own preferences to it. I thought I solved the ISO problem ages ago.
>> I think Kant's argument would would run that even if you want to buy your account of freedom, it necessarily requires valuing certain other things that would make it irrational. So, so here's here's one way that can't run the argument, right? If you value freedom, you can't also value annihilation of everything as an end in itself because you are contradicting yourself. No, I'm not.
>> If you annihilate everything, you've undermined your own freedom.
>> No, I only valued the freedom to act towards destruction.
>> Okay, then that seems different than what you're describing. What you seem to be describing is valuing freedom itself.
>> It's the freedom to act the direction.
It it's like it's like handing someone a gun and saying you're free to aim this gun in any direction you want and I want to aim it over there at that billy goat and you want to aim it at the soft target and you think that that is a better world and Matt would agree with you but other people don't have to agree with that and other people can turn the gun back on themselves as a course of freedom ending their own freedom as This is just the baseline of you have to have the freedom to act. That doesn't tell you there there's no imperative from the universe that you must act towards this goal. That's what we inject into it.
Unfortunately, we tend to inject the same or similar things because I'd like to keep living.
>> Yeah. I just I I think that the existence of other conscious beings, for example, instills in me an obligation.
I'm fine with that. But that's not an intrinsic aspect of the of the universe that declares what is good. That's that's the reality of who we are and what we prefer.
>> As long as >> how do you how do you value things without independent? I'm happy. As long as we can agree stance independent, I'm happy.
>> Well, now somebody in chat saying I slipped into theist mode and I'm like not at no point have I done that. But hey, let's uh we've got super chats that we can actually get to. And before we do that, uh, huge thank you to everybody for calling and everybody else and for for to Aaron for having a conversation I don't get to have often enough. Um, >> this book has the worst forward of any book that you're likely to read. I know cuz I wrote it. But in reality, um, Promise has written a great book here called Gospel Lies: >> Surviving and Resisting Evangelical Extremism. I'm hearing myself echoed back at some point, but uh, I want to make sure you guys were >> What's that?
>> Check Discord, please.
Okay, before we finish, before we get the super chats, we got one more call. But um go by the book.
Here we go.
Leo is calling from Mexico. Pronouncer hem. Leo is an atheist who wants to talk about how to deal with religious like outcasting from family. Hey Leo, how are you?
>> Hey Matt and Aaron. Uh really relevant.
Um well I'm a longtime listener. A great debate by the way. Um yeah I'm not a te scholar but but I do find some parallels to this thinking and coercion is what I'm going through. Uh so my father grew up in a very conservative city and he has very conservative set of values which is fine. I mean, we can disagree or agree to disagree or just plain disagree, right? Uh, now on to the topic. I almost don't drink, but I do enjoy cannabis. It's legal in my country. Uh, and my father sees that as completely wrong because of the values he was raised with and his opinion of the few friends he has that openly smoke. And I'm noticing a parallel here to religion in the way he tries to exercise control over me with the threat of outcasting me or cutting down support. Uh I do value him a lot and would prefer not to lose his support.
But I also value I also see that as a threat. I see that as a dishonest threat and I value thinking and acting freely and free of coercion over any family support or inheritance. So I I I know he's doing it out of uh no loyal intent and he has my best in mind and I do respect him intellectually. I believe he's capable of hearing some anguments and changing his mind his mind. He used to be a teist and actually he saw me he showed me your videos years ago but trying to have like a discussion with him about the pros and cons of legal kamavis versus alcohol or nothing at all. Uh it's kind of where values uh it feels more like arguing with a Christian about religion than with the with the skeptics about things based on on evidence and that outcasting and cutting off aspect is a pattern I know is prevalent in religious families and communities. So Matt and Aaron, what advice would you give to someone facing such a challenge? Like is it worth it to try to show my point of view to him?
Sure. I just I knew it would be easier to just bend the knee and say I agree with with him even though I don't.
Luckily, I'm able to be independent and not rely on his support, but it's still hard, you know, to have a family member that I know is capable of changing his mind, having this disagreement, and him instead of engaging in like in actual arguments, he's uh using like religious like strategies. And when I call him out on it out on it, he's like uh just denying it. So until what point is it worth it to try to continue engaging with someone that's trying to coers you with outcasting and and things like that?
>> What's the primary point of disagreement?
>> So we disagree in a lot of things. Uh but in this particular case uh he sees uh legal canabis use as you describe it as sinful in the sense that uh we disagree on it. He thinks it's not >> Hey Leo.
>> Yeah.
>> You're like almost 30, right?
>> Yeah. Basically.
>> And you're arguing with your dad about weed?
>> Yeah. And I mean Yeah. That's pretty much I mean it's a like a problem from someone in a privileged position. It's more like that argument is leading to him like outcasting me from the family and cutting support off and I just didn't think he would be capable of like on an intellectual or >> like civil liberties argument to do what religious people will do when someone stops believing. Right? I know people I know families and communities can cut people off.
>> Go ahead.
>> Differences. Sorry.
>> Yeah. I mean, I think these this is a really hard situation. So, like applied ethics, unlike our conversation moments ago. I'm going to give the answer. It's complicated a lot of times because I don't think it's I can't give you a prescription. There's no like one-sizefits-all answer to the question of how to navigate masking and passing and engaging with loved ones who have any kind of differing views that are going that they're going to sort of use as a basis for cutting you off. Because like it would be nice to be able to give you, you know, a [ __ ] them all kind of answer and just be like, you know, if they're going to act that way then don't worry about them. Like like find some people who aren't going to treat you that way. But the reality is, you know, our loved ones are important to us in various ways and we care about our families and we might try to find a balance where we can have some sort of don't ask don't tell approach. It sounds like in this case you're being pretty heavily pushed to like, you know, not have that in which case I think you do have to kind of decide, do I really want to have my life be affected by people who manipulate me in these kinds of ways?
But I don't I don't think there's an easy answer. I wish I you know like I've cut family members out of my life for various reasons but it's not it's never something to be done lightly. I don't think >> I I know and I think that's uh I think that's the center of it because I just didn't think I would have to be in that position and uh I don't really have uh much experience with uh or secondhand experience of other people cutting family off or or so on like um if Yeah. And I know there's no uh single like whack-a-ole. Here's the the kind of solution. Uh it's more like what would you take into account to decide if uh like maintaining a relationship is worth putting up with them trying to exercise control in that way.
>> Yeah. My answer is going to be different from your answer. I wouldn't put up with it at all. But I'm not saying my answer is the right one or the preferred one.
like you know I I that's why I wanted Erin to go first to so we could hear what Erin's answer is because I'm the guy that my answer is really simple. If somebody is an unhealthy stresscreating toxic influence in my life, especially over stupid [ __ ] I don't care if they're my mom or my dad or my, you know, anything. They got to go.
>> And I think that's ultimately the better answer. I mean, I don't mean to cut them off necessarily and be a dick about it.
It's okay. Here's what's happening. I'm no longer fine with this. I'm done having you lecture me on this.
>> I'm living my life. If if you can't appreciate me living my life and being me. Um, then I I don't need your approval. I don't need your participation. I'd like to still be able to hang out with you. I'd like to engage, but you're making it to where I don't even want to do that. But everything I just said is me. I have friends and family members and people I love who would never say anything like that and who genuinely probably would end up with a worse life if they did because they have um they have a different need for certain connections than I do. I I I don't and and I'm the weird one for sure. like I I'm saying I am >> atypical in what I need in some relationships and so I have no problem at all >> like saying nope here's the line in the sand this far and no further. Um I have cut friends out of my life and and and everything else. But like I'm saying, Leo, this is why I'm reluctant to give advice because what would make my what makes me happy and what make might make my life better, what make what might make my interactions with people less harmful to me might do the exact opposite to you. I mean, you could be sitting there heartbroken about not seeing your dad every single day for the rest of your life and be pissed that that some, you know, hard-hearted jackass like me dared suggest, you know, that. So, really, you're going to have to um you're going to have to decide how much are you going to cry about it.
And I don't mean cry, and I'm not trying to be snarky. I mean genuinely. If you're if if this is causing you stress to the point where you're crying uh figuratively or literally, you have to engage with your the people that are causing the problem and say, "Here's what's going on. Here's how I feel.
Here's what I'm frustrated by. I'm I'm starting to think I have to draw lines here, but I don't want to cut you off and I don't want to lose you, but I can't keep going like this. You're going to It is manipulative. it is. You are doing harm to me and you don't even realize it. I get that you're trying to do what you think is best, but you're not listening to me. You're not evaluating evidence. You're just preaching and you're just being controlling and it feels like you're, you know, you you can't realize that while you will always be the parent, that doesn't mean that you're, you know, governing my life or responsible for it.
You got to let go.
Yeah, that's that sounds really like a very mature approach. Um I luckily I don't depend on those connections just to get by like I'm uh I'm able to make my own life. So uh on that aspect I guess I'll be fine. It's uh know that that's like a sensible sensible approach. Um, so yeah, >> don't blame me when you [ __ ] it all up, though.
>> Yeah. No, um, yeah.
>> Yeah, it it's hard enough to find the Hang on. I'm a little overwhelmed at the moment. I'm sorry.
It's hard enough with everything that's going on to find the things that that make you happy.
And it feels like for most of us, for some people they don't suffer from this at all, but for most of us it feels like godamn my family ought to at a minimum be the people that make me happy. And when it turns out that the your your family is no longer making you happy, but is more a burden and a conflict and a source of constant stress.
At some point, a conversation is either going to have to happen or it's going to wear you down until you are a shadow of anybody that you want to be and where happiness is so far removed from what you can experience that you've just given up. And it's one of the reasons why, you know, we support recovering from religion, but also the psychotherapy project and science-based um therapy. Uh because we're prone to allowing ourselves to be used, manipulated, controlled, all because we don't want to hurt somebody's feelings. All because we value somebody in our life. And we all do it to varying degrees.
You've got to you got to you got to pick the family that you're going to care about the most. Um I already did.
If if people I'm related to um are not respectful and loving to my partner, those people who are related to me can [ __ ] right off. Um I will I will opt for my partner and her dignity and that respect. And the same thing is true not just for her but for a lot of other people and a lot of other communities even um you know there's plenty of atheists who are absolutely shitty and have taken a massive dump on the broader atheist community for their own profit or benefit or whatever else and I'll call them out every [ __ ] time. Uh I got I got nothing left to lose. I'm a domestic terrorist evidently.
Yeah. No, that makes sense. Uh, thank you, Matt, and thank you, Aaron. I again, I'm pretty fortunate in that I don't depend on that relationship, and I've found what makes me happy in terms of the sports I like to do, the people I enjoy hanging out with. So, I'll I'll be all right. Um, it's just I mean, it's such a stupid thing to have a difference over uh for it then lead to having to cut each other off. But if that's where he's wanting to draw the line and that's where the impact of that relationship is hitting, then yeah, I guess that's the the rational things thing to do. Thanks for pointing out the secular uh therapy project as well. I'll definitely look at that. And well, yeah, >> only advice I'm going to give >> is try to have open honest conversations and draw boundaries.
be be you don't have to you don't have to cut somebody off, but you can cut the conversation off and say, you know, it's like I I don't mean I'm not trying to diminish your relationship with your dad. Aaron and I just had a public disagreement about a subject. Uh >> Aaron's not a big piece of [ __ ] that I'm kicking off and cutting out of my life.
We're we're almost on exactly the same page. But that same type of thing can happen even if you are seriously close to somebody. if there, you know, if if Aaron and I were, you know, >> give me another hour, I can get you there. I I'm pretty sure I can get you there in another hour.
>> I can fix you. We'll fix it another time.
>> I mean, I can get you to the point where you cut me out of your life, not to the point where you're a moral realist, just to be clear.
>> But anyway, yeah, Leo, go ahead. go ahead and um I interrupted just to go ahead and finish that up, but I just want to make sure you need to draw some boundaries and you need to get better at communication and but that comes from knowing what you what limits you're comfortable with.
>> Yeah, that um that that all makes sense really. It's uh I'm fine with holding limit with placing limits and if they're not willing to respect that then I'll get more distance. Again, it's uh I wasn't expecting expecting to have to do that because I saw him as like a rational person that will listen to sound arguments. Uh like he recovered from religion. He may be able to change the way he thinks but I'm also not responsible for that. And at some point I had to say enough said is enough.
Right? So uh I know he cares about me and that's why I've been more motivated uh at trying to change his mind than with other people. But at some point you have to realize you're not responsible for changing other people's minds. So yeah >> again thank for the words and yeah have a good one.
>> Thanks Leo. Appreciate it.
I um so for example, I cuss a lot. I love it. I'm incredibly fond of it. Not just cuz I don't cuss like a sailor just because I was a sailor, but because I like [ __ ] with language and I like the reactions that it gets from people. I I it's it reminds me of Tim mentions the Pope song where after saying all that stuff and he gets down to it and he he kind of wraps it up with like if you're more offended >> that I cussed a bunch and [ __ ] talked the Pope than you are about what those [ __ ] are doing, that's the problem.
But I can also be professional. I could go to work and not be throwing around obscenities and profanities and and all that stuff. And I don't think my mom I don't think I've I don't think I've ever dropped an Fbomb in my mom's presence. I have in my dad's present. Literally, I talked to my dad this morning and and threw one out on the phone. And I know I did because my relationship with my parents is is different. And I know I'm 57 and when I say something, you know, we were we were just talking about a reptile expo and I was like, there's no way I'd take my [ __ ] snakes to that expo given what I saw.
And I and I know what I said because immediately it's like, oh, you just uh you just dropped the fbomb in front of your dad. And I'm not that bothered around, you know, my dad. I I've never heard my dad drop an Fbomb, but my brother has. And so it's be we have these conver Oh, I heard dad say this.
Whereas you know if I'm hanging out with my friends, nobody notices. And if you're watching like what was it? Gen V. Gen V seems like it was written by someone who just got out from underneath mommy's thumb and wants to drop as many fbombs as possible. Like putting them in syllableizing them and look I'm a big kid now and can say whatever. And so you just got to figure out what the boundaries of those relationships are because they're going to be different. Trust me, my mom calls into the show. She's never calling into the show, but she's going to get whatever she deserves as a defender of whatever her views are. But outside of there, you're not going to get me to talk [ __ ] at my mom about believing in Jesus. We've had those conversations.
Anyway, Erin, before we get to supers, uh, anything else you want to be wrong about? I'm kidding.
>> Uh, no, I mean, like I hope people understand that like this, especially from a philosopher side, this is a normal conversation. This is not a heated debate. This is this barely even rises to the level of an argument. Like, >> this is just what we do. And it's like, it's totally fine. Um, and like you said, we're probably on the same page on 95% of things like, you know, if if objective morality is real, God wouldn't make it more real or doesn't need God or things like that. Like all those kind of, you know, we just have a different perspective about sort of moral foundations and >> like lots of very, you know, smart people disagree with me about this. And this is something that >> I would have been further away. I would have been further away two and a half weeks ago if it weren't for the fact that Ian and I had a talk.
>> Um, and the only reason I think, >> right, the only reason that like >> I think I mean like I think it matters because I think it's true. But separate from that, the reason I still talk about this around atheists is because I at least want to disabuse them of the notion that they can't have objective morality if they abandon belief in God because that to me is part of that immoral non-believer stereotype kind of argument. And I think it does convince some people unfortunately that they should act. They can act in ways that they shouldn't because they, you know, are free from morality now. And it's, you know, do what thou will and let that be the only law kind of mindset. Um, you know, you can you can you can solve that problem in different ways, right? You're you're addressing it by saying, "I'm okay with constructed morality. That's perfectly sufficient for me. I have a different view." and and like that's those are just two different ways to deal with the problem. I just don't want people to slip into a place of like radical nihilism about morality because they've abandoned belief in God.
>> It's wild the the the the trappings of certain aspects of nihilism um probably worse than any conversation about morality. Uh, and it's one of the reasons why I love my buddy Chris Johnson who did uh the atheist book and the documentary on uh let's like 100 atheists give their thoughts on meaning and purpose in a life without a god. Um cuz there is I there's no intrinsic meaning in the universe and it doesn't change the fact that I find all kinds of meaning. I make me we're we're meaning uh creators not meaning discoverers. I think I said that in a in a back and forth with Brit a couple weeks ago, but all right, we had super chats and uh huge thank you to everybody who tuned in and who donated and who called. Um oh, and I think well, we'll do we'll do one more thing about Promises Book at the end, but here we go. If you can see these, well, I guess we'll just alternate and I'll start with Greg Marcowski. You got in first. Good to see you, buddy. Promises book arrived in my mailbox a few days ago. Can't wait to read it. Yep. It arrived yesterday. Uh I had already read it. I read it before I wrote wrote the forward. But uh yeah, I can't wait for more people to read it and and get in there.
Can you see these?
>> Mhm. Oh yeah. Do you mean to read one?
>> Yeah. We're just going to alternate.
>> Oh yeah, absolutely. Um so this is from the atheist mechanic. Hey Matt, enjoyed the book so far. been having a bit of a rough week. My mom saw the book laying on a table, shook her head, and said that God was punishing me for my atheism and buying the book.
>> What was the punishment >> in this timeline? I guess >> the pun I The punishment was you having to read the forward. Um, no, it's a it's one of those things. Um, I by the way, thanks. I'm uh watching people react to the mere presence of a book. And it's this is why I'm glad we had Aaron on tonight talk about what we talked about at the beginning, which is Aaron was reviewing a book written by a couple of or a bunch of apologists.
And I don't think it would have bugged your mom, but I also don't think it would have bugged me. It's like this book. Oh, it says gospel of lies.
What does promise mean? Does how how do you even know she's maybe this this book with this title and this thing and the graphic and everything could have been written by an active believing Christian who's opposing some other type of Christian doctrine. It says surviving and resisting evangelical extremism.
Maybe this could have been written by a a queer friendly Christian church that decided like many of the others to throw out more and more parts of the Bible and are saying we object to these aspects of the Bible. It's not like anybody can say, "Oh, no, no, no. Matthew 5:17 and really needs to stay. But Matthew 5:22, that one is an abomination. It could have been written that way, but your mom knows you're a godless heathen.
And so they go with the assumptions. And that tells you a lot about how people are going to process this stuff. It's not like they're they're open at any given point to consider what Promise is saying in there, but the hope is somebody somewhere someday will pick up that book at the right time to be open to hearing what Promise went through. Um, and that's why we share.
10 bucks from Joshua Everett. I'm manifesting great callers for the show tonight. You [ __ ] failed. No, I'm just kidding. Uh, let me know if it worked it in. RIP Jimmy Snow never melts Gary the frame.
Okay, you got me. I don't know the Gary the frame thing.
>> Yeah, got nothing.
You got an easy one.
>> Oh, $10 from Josh Beavenon. Thanks.
>> Thanks, Josh. Five bucks from Absuse Glitch. Highly recommend folding ideas video on how tradicists into being in in a geocentrist documentary for a breakdown of how this happens. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Um I think I know who you're talking about.
I I think I know this. Um I will look into that. Thank you.
>> All right. has $20 from Gregisk9408.
Instead of this messy, unjust world of cancer, disease, and natural disaster, a just god would have simply put each immaterial soul into a simulator that tested their free choices fairly and equally. Yep. But we just basilisk be fine.
>> Although an all knowing god wouldn't have need to run it through anything. He known before I ever made him.
>> Yeah. when you were listing like the silliest religions out there, I would have I still put Calvinism at the top of the list. By the way, >> it's it's funny. There was a there was a pastor who reached out to me because of a prank caller to the atheist experience who claimed to be calling in from Austin Stone Church. And he was it was a fraud, but an actual pastor from Austin Stone Church reached out to me privately. We went out to lunch and we had a couple lunches and we had great conversations and he was a Calvinist and um it was fun listening to him how he explains his duty to evangelize and how he doesn't have any choice because he he doesn't accept free will.
And I'm you know my my views on free will changed in different ways but to hear him say it was just absolutely wild. And it will piss me off forever.
And it will act as confirmation that there is not a God out there that gives the slightest [ __ ] about what I think because he and I were having good conversations on behalf of his religion and he left for a mission trip and got killed by an IED and I never got to see him again or have a conversation. If there was a God that was in any way trying to use him to teach me something, [ __ ] you.
Yeah. That's why I like the problem of evil is because the like the conclusion of the problem of evil is not God doesn't exist. It's either God doesn't exist or if he exists, it's a monster and you shouldn't bend the knee of tyrants. Yeah. This is This was a young guy, a young pastor with a brand new kid dead.
I I I will be pissed about that for ages. We didn't even know each other that long or that well, and I will be more pissed about that. Uh there's plenty of obituaries I won't mind reading in the near future. That one broke me. So, [ __ ] that. God 20 $20 Canadian from Greg Lisk.
Christian missionaries must either believe that millions of people are burning in hell because they didn't hear about Jesus or they're dooming millions to hell by presenting the choice. Yeah, that is a >> weird is a scary thing.
Were you better off never being told, >> right? All right. Um $10 from Josh uh Joshua Everett 9887. The only thing that is perfect is the hair of the werewolf drinking a pinina cola at Trader Vicks.
>> Yep. And his hair was perfect. All right.
10 bucks from Space Barbarian 3484. What does perfect even mean? It sounds like an obtuse version of optimal where the conditions for optimality are undefined.
It's there's a conceptual perfect and we generally recognize at least in I don't know most philosophical circles that these are abstractions that cannot be.
So a perfect circle isn't something that exists and the platonic solids and forms are things that cannot exist. they are the ideal that is uh unapproachable that we then use as the reference point to tell how close of an approximation we can get to these. And the question then becomes when people talk about God being perfect. Is God perfect in the way in that way in that he doesn't exist but he's a he's an abstract reference or is God just the closest thing to that abstract reference? I don't know.
Anselum's asmtote.
>> All right.
>> Thank you, Space Barbarian.
>> Yeah, this one. Me or you? I lost track.
>> I did this one.
>> Okay.
All right. Uh, god frag good. Aloha.
Please help other out. If belief isn't a choice, but one can withhold belief until there is sufficient evidence, doesn't that imply there's some measure of choice in belief? Oh, I don't want I don't want to drag us back to dust docism.
>> Um, you know, I will say, Matt, I am sympathetic to your view about a lot of beliefs. I do think we overestimate the degree to which we have any control over our actual beliefs. Um, I just think that probably there is technically situations in which some people do, you know, choose when there is insufficient evidence to go one way or to force them one way or the other.
Well, you can live in denial and you can act as if you're not convinced when you are and you can act as if you're convinced when you're not. And and that's why a lot of these discussions about docastic volunteerism, you know, do you choose your beliefs? Are are you are you withholding belief? A lot of it doesn't matter because at the end of the day um well my other my other contention is that people always every single time act in accordance with their beliefs always. However, you can believe a number of different things and when you can when they potentially overlap, you may be acting on behalf like I believe it's wrong to steal except when this circumstance. And so if you see somebody stealing, they are acting with a belief that they have prioritized over that other one. They still mean what they say that generally this is wrong. Um or they may even engage in hyperbole and be like this is always wrong. Well, you know, except for this one little thing here. But when you say uh if they're withholding their belief doesn't mean that it's a choice.
No. Withholding belief is what we is the way we describe the state of actively evaluating claims under the best standards and remaining unconvinced that it hasn't it hasn't met the burden. Um you could become convinced for very poor standards of evidence and we we call it gullibility. Uh and I don't think that makes it any more of a choice. I just the thing you might be able to choose to do is train yourself to seek out better evidence and better standards of evidence, but that's not about the individual propositions.
That's about the methodology.
>> Can I ask you can I ask you a question, Matt, without possibly opening a huge can of worms? Is your view different between beliefs and actions on this front?
Do you think we have more volunteerism about our actual behaviors than our beliefs? Or are you similarly going to >> the extent that we can be said to have any volunteerism at all? Yeah, I think it applies to actions and I'm not sure how much.
>> Okay. Just curious.
>> I think we always act in accordance with our beliefs, but I don't think we're always aware which beliefs we're acting in accordance with.
>> Sure.
>> Uh I don't think that we have I obviously don't think we have like libertarian free will. Um, and I don't know that we have any recognizable free will.
I don't know how free it is. We have will >> where that will comes from.
>> Yeah. I'm not sure. I think there's a substantial difference between beliefs and actions on this front at this point.
>> Just at least we're then you would have to agree that people always act in accordance with their beliefs. So whether there's a difference between them, we're at least on the same page there, >> right? Yeah. I'm a no free will guy as well. So So we had no choice but to fight like cats and dogs.
>> That's right. I have no choice but to argue about most of the things I argue about.
>> 10 bucks from Joshua Ever. Imagine two opposite sapient moral species that are always antithetical to the other's existence. What's good for one is bad for the other. In the face of of that, there can be no moral facts. Sure.
different moral facts about the different species that derive from more general moral truths that apply to all of them. Obviously, you're going to find your own way to that answer. But >> yeah, >> but if there's different moral facts for group A and group B, then how do you resolve the issues where they overlap?
>> So, I mean, think about it like if you think that causing suffering is bad, let's say, right? Unnecessary suffering is bad. You shouldn't cause it.
What causes suffering to humans might be different than what causes suffering to a whale, for example.
>> All right, we'll have to we'll have to pause here and stick a fork in because we're gonna we're going to go back down there and Ardan will kill me.
>> Um, >> that's fair. That's fair.
>> All right, this one's me, right? Uh, Braxton, uh, Ucha. Uh, which the funny thing is I have a running gag on my show where I'm terrible at names and I didn't know that I was going to be tricked into giving into reading names, which is just my Achilles heel entirely. Um, Braxtona the trans um otaku. Uh, already got my book, Matt. Can't wait to read it.
Awesome. Thank you, Braxton. Five bucks from oneeyed weirdo. I'm still uncomfortable without gods, but I'm more comfortable than I used to be. My favorite atheist meme is smile. There's no hell. All right, $49.99 from Billy Cypus. There was a caller previously who brought up the idea of coming to God when someone gets older or close end of life. I'd like to call in sometime and discuss that. Is there a show where it would be appropriate?
That's a you question. Yeah, I'm thinking um let's let's see if we can do it like um let's see if we can do it on one of my shows when like Shannon's on um when maybe there's uh a representative from the secular therapy project. something that gets in to more expertise in the psychology of dealing with uh end of life stuff. And for all I know, I'm about to lose my mind and I've already lost a portion of it. Um, but I have no expertise in that. So, I'm just telling you what I think. And so, a week when I try to get people on who know more than I do about something every time. And I've been successful. I I I can't wait till I'm always the dumbest [ __ ] on here so that people can be like, "Why do I still watch that Matt?" Oh, it's because he gets people on who are actually worth listening to. And so, if we get people in who know more about uh end of life stuff from from a a psychological standpoint and from, you know, a mental health thing, uh I will I will look for somebody there. That's the deal I made. Thank you.
That was you.
>> That was me. Okay. Uh 499 from Trevor Herald G uh G6P. Thank you, Matt, for your wisdom over these many years.
You've changed my life. Have a great evening, gentlemen. That's nice.
>> Thank you. You changed your life. I just talk a lot. 200 bucks from Mexico.
Leonard Salt. Thanks for the call and super thanks for the call screener, too, for getting that last call in. Yeah. And by the way, uh that was Ardan. Um because on my screen what I saw in call in studio was a disconnected call. Uh and and it didn't actually appear that way. That was my brain misunderstanding what was actually on the screen and her scrambling to be like, "Hey dumbass, you aren't done the way you thought you were." Uh so kudos to Ardan. Kudos to our moderators and to our call screeners as well. You guys, y'all wind up making my show work better than I ever could. and I'm couldn't be happier. Five bucks from Melaton Alle. I started reading Gospel of Lies yesterday. First book that I actually read the forward 10 out of 10. Wow.
Nice.
>> All right. $5 from Master Builder 3232.
The God of the Old Testament rather forces Ezekiel to eat cow [ __ ] rather than stop all evil. He must be the real devil. It's weird.
>> That's fair. I tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to open this I'm going to open promises book to a random page and I'm just going to read a couple paragraphs out of here as it's not going to be from the forward. You don't have to worry. I'm not going to do that. But we'll just go to right there. Don't fall for the fallacies. This is page 145. To have a productive conversation when it comes to things as universal yet as personal as politics, philosophy, and religion, I believe certain values must be maintained throughout. These include one the value of what is true, two, the value of communicating clearly and honestly and three the value of attempting to understand what the other person wants to communicate. One of the biggest stumbling blocks to any of these any of those three values is logical fallacies. Failures in reasoning. You may be well-versed in what logical fallacies are and how to spot them while others may be learning about them for the first time. Regardless, I find it helpful to refresh yourself on different logical fallacies often in order to train yourself to recognize them when they come up, whether in your own argument or in an argument being made against you. And then she goes through and lists some of them. This isn't just a how I found my way out. This isn't just a here's a bunch of arguments. This is someone who made their way out of some terrible views.
someone who was raised from birth to think they were wrong, they were bad, and that it was a good thing they were bad. That's kind of how she starts off and she goes through and bravely gives you the tools that helped her. Uh, and I can't wait till we get to do more shows together. I'm excited my copy of the books here. Erin, thanks to Metric Fuckon for coming and hanging out with me tonight. We'll have to do it again and uh dig in on some moral stuff. Where can people find you?
>> Yeah, I mean, thanks so much for coming having me on. I love, you know, chatting about all sorts of topics. Um, folks can find me over on my podcasts, Embrace the Void and Philosophers in Space, um, over on Blue Sky, ETV Pod. Um, and I also I'll mention I have a book coming out, um, next year. Um, thanks it thankfully it's not about moral realism, so you might actually enjoy it, Matt. Um it's about uh how everything is luck and how to understand the nature of luck in a way that breeds compassion and humility and empathy and why you know tangentially things like why belief in God is harmful. It comes up in there. So yeah well best of luck with the book.
Thank you to everybody for tuning in.
Don't forget patreon.com/callthelinemerchs.com and there's other shows coming up all throughout the week in including transplanted call-in show tomorrow and they will have a schedule update for you on all the other shows. So you have to tune in. You can't miss it.
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