New Arguments for God Tier List w/ Joe Schmid

¶1Have we already started? >> Have we started? I don't know. >> I don't know. >> Yeah.

¶2Well, what are we doing today? >> Uh today. [laughter] >> This is going to be good. Okay, let's let let me give like a real introduction. I think it would be funny to just like start the video just randomly, but uh it might it might be >> or you can include that as like bloopers at the end or it's like >> it's up to you.

¶3>> Yeah. Okay. Today we are discussing a tier list of the arguments for God for theism. [laughter] That was so bad. The arguments for God for theism.

¶4[laughter] Indeed, we are. We're doing a tier ranking list where we tyrank things. [laughter] >> All right. For real this time. For real this time.

¶5>> Third. Third drives. Third tries a charm. >> All right, welcome to Capturing Christianity. I'm here with Joe Smid and today we're doing a tear.

¶6[laughter] >> A tear is for what? >> Why did that make you laugh? >> I can refrain from looking at you when you do the intro if you want. >> No, it's okay. It's okay.

¶7We'll we'll roll with this one. We'll keep this one going. So, we're doing a tier list of arguments for God's existence, >> right? >> That's what we're doing, too. >> I heard that that's what we're going to be doing.

¶8and it's going to be a lot of fun. We've got a lot of arguments to cover, but it's so it's going to be informative, but we're also going to talk about some of the arguments that you you may not have heard of, but then you're going to hear some arguments that you have heard of maybe, and we're going to rank them, right, in a standard sort of tier list. We'll try to keep it as accessible as possible. Uh, but this is actually I should have mentioned this earlier. This is going to be Joe's new tier list because >> because I'm Catholic.

¶9You're Catholic beast, >> a theist. Yes. You're you embrace God's existence. You embrace everything that the Catholic Church teaches. >> And so now you've got a new ranking of the arguments for God's existence that you find compelling.

¶10It's part of your story, in fact. >> Mhm. Yep. And people, if they want, they can watch my I don't even know how long it is at this point. I haven't actually recorded it, but maybe it's like 7 hours long or something where I just go through all the arguments for God and then Catholicism.

¶11So if people want, they can look at that. But this will be a little more informal and we'll cover some arguments that I don't cover in there. So this will be fun. >> Yes. Yes, it'll be fun.

¶12So jumping right in, our first argument is the banana argument. Now this is a very powerful argument for the existence of God. And we're going to watch a video apparent like we've got a video ready to watch. We'll put it on the screen for you guys to follow along. >> The banana argument.

¶13>> Okay, >> pull it up. Let's go. >> Sweet. Let's go. Mr.

¶14Ray Comfort. >> Behold the atheist's nightmare. Now, if you study a well-made banana, you'll find on the far side there are three ridges. On the close side, two ridges. If you get your hand ready to grip a banana, you'll find on the far side there are three grooves.

¶15On the close side, two grooves. The banana and the hand are perfectly made, one for the other. You'll find the maker of the banana, Almighty God, has made it with a non-slip surface. It has outward indicators of inward contents. Green too early, yellow just right, black too late.

¶16Now, if you go to the top of the banana, you'll find, as with the soda can makers, they placed a tab at the top. So, God has placed a tab at the top. When you pull the tab, the contents don't squirt in your face. You'll find the wrapper, which is biodegradable, has perforations. Notice how gracefully it sits over the human hand.

¶17Notice has a point at the top for ease of entry. It's just the right shape for the human mouth. It's chewy, easy to digest. It's even curved toward the face to make the whole process so much easier. Seriously, Kurt, the whole of creation testifies to the genius of God's creative.

¶18>> It absolutely does. >> Wow. This is a very powerful argument. I wasn't expecting it to be. I I would have preferred him to take a bite, though.

¶19Part of the reason why is because I actually hate bananas. >> You hate bananas? >> I hate bananas. >> Why is that? Was there some sort of traumatic childhood event involving bananas?

¶20No. Um, no. Nothing like that, Joe. It was It's just the flavor. Like, I'm not I feel like it's overpower.

¶21It's like it overpowers anything. Like if you put it in a smoothie, it just overpowers it. >> Interesting. >> Everything tastes like banana after that. [laughter] >> You could do like half the banana.

¶22>> Yeah, it's still like just a little bit. >> Just like a microgram of a banana. >> Yes. Yes. It's too much.

¶23But no, I'm I'm not a fan of bananas. But let's get to the ranking of this argument. I mean, you guys already heard the argument. So, how are we going to rank this one? >> Well, it seems to be broadly a design argument, right?

¶24So, there's some like suspiciously fortunate or coincidental features of bananas that maybe cry out for explanation. They seem kind of well suited for us in some kind of way. And maybe uh the atheist doesn't have a particularly good explanation for why the bananas are so wonderfully made. Um, >> three ridges on the outside, two ridges on the inside. >> I know.

¶25And it's like perfectly fits. got a tab on top and it doesn't splash in your face. >> No. No. Ease of entry fits right into the mouth.

¶26I mean, it it's it's got some great design features. Um, so the question then is uh where are we to rank this and does it succeed? I guess we should take the latter one first. Does this argument succeed? Unfortunately for Dr.

¶27Professor Comfort, PhD, uh, I'm quite skeptical of this argument. Uh, you know, bananas were actually artificially bred as far as I can tell. As far as I'm aware, bananas were actually artificially bred so that they could have all these great features for us and they'd be so tasty and they'd be easily handled and whatnot. Uh, so they're >> Don't we have like images of like older bananas that are like really contemptable? >> Yeah.

¶28>> Yeah, >> they probably tasted better. [laughter] >> Maybe according to you. I mean, they're probably these bitter disgusting things. But you do like bitter disgusting things. So >> yeah, I am friends with you.

¶29>> This is Wow, that was like a dagger dagger to the heart. >> Got him. Got him. Got him. Got him.

¶30Okay. So, there does seem to be a perfectly adequate naturalistic explanation of the data here and that leads me to think that this is a quite a poor argument unfortunately. >> Well, so what I was thinking like in in an attempt to steal man Ry, right? So maybe what he's doing I I don't think it's limited to just the banana. I think he's trying to say and at the end of the video he says that this is like God has made this world so you know perfect for us basically.

¶31So maybe this is just one instance of like a much broader category of phenomena that can you know provide some evidence for the existence of God. Maybe maybe to steal man him further in a beaian type of zen. you know, we've got these these uh various instances and together when you take them together, it does kind of like make it seem like there's Yeah. Well, yeah, that does kind of raise the probability even if it's just a little bit >> perhaps. I mean, I have to look at the what what exactly is the general phenomenon here?

¶32Uh and then would that constitute a separate argument from like the features of a banana? Yeah, if you're just pinpointing lots of things like humans themselves made, like you're looking at cars and you're like, "Oh, you know, like the handles, you know, on the steering wheel like fit my hand so well and it's like there, you know, the chair is so comfy, dude. Like, come on. Like, there has to be a god." It's like, dude, like you expect that to convince an atheist, like this is not a good argument. So, if you're pinpointing lots of things that were like artificially selected or artificially made, not plausible.

¶33But if you're like actually focusing on like deep structural features of the natural world itself that like the naturalist takes to be brute or fundamental or doesn't really have a good explanation of then the argument will be a lot better. But um >> so in terms of the banana argument after all that's what it's called. I'm inclined unfortunately to put it F tier. >> F tier. >> Okay.

¶34All right. We'll put it F tier. All right. What is our next argument? Our next argument after the banana agamant is look at the trees.

¶35>> Look at the trees. >> Do you want to do this one? >> Yeah. So the look at the trees argument from from what I understand is supposed to be like an intuitive grasp of God's existence just by looking out and peering out at the world. We see some feature of the world like a tree, like a beautiful tree, and we're like, "Yeah, there just has to be a god." And I like this actually I think works in my situ my context.

¶36I I've had experiences looking at not not necessarily trees but sunsets. And I'll look at a sunset. I'll look at a beautiful sunset. I'm just like yes, God has to exist. This like none of this is possible without some sort of higher power, right?

¶37And it may not get me to like all of the omni attributes in particular of like, okay, this being has to be omnipotent, omnisient, and perfectly loving and all the like it doesn't necessarily get me all the way there, but I nevertheless look out at a beautiful sunset. Maybe I'll put one one up on the screen. And I just find myself in a situation where I'm like, "Yeah, God exists." So, is that is that the is that a good >> I think summary of the >> I think that's a good rendition of the argument. I mean, and it doesn't just have to be the trees. I mean, it's just like general facts about like nature and just I don't know, you just look at them and it's just like intuitive, you know, you almost just intuit it that God exists or that these have some sort of maker.

¶38Um, and it just instills some kind of awe and reverence or something like that. I mean, I I think I may have had these sorts of experiences when studying um like microbiology for instance, just like the intricacies of like cellular machinery and whatnot. It's just like >> So would you say that maybe that's sort of related to like an intelligent design type argument? >> Um maybe I it's more so just like a more just like an intuitive thing. It's like you just >> you just look at the trees and then it's like oh come on like there's got to be a god.

¶39Like it's just almost like an intuitive kind of thing or I look at the the >> you know the microchemical going on within the the cell or something like that and I'm like >> it's almost like an intuitive like there's no way this is chance. You know there's no way this is chance is the only explanation. you know, you look at the trees or the sunset or like pictures of beautiful nebula or whatever um galaxies and stars and whatnot and you're just like there's no way this is chance. You're like there's no way that like just random collocation collocations of atoms or whatever resulted in this according you know as Bertrand Russell kind of described naturalism. Um, so I don't know.

¶40It's like we're kind of bleeding into arguments from beauty and other right. >> So just we should probably restrict it to the just the intuitive thing. >> Right. That's that's a good point, but it is related to other arguments. >> So and and we're going to get to all those in just a little bit, so stay tuned.

¶41But yeah, where would you put this one on your ranking now? >> Yeah. [snorts] So on the one hand, I would like an argument with a little bit more formal rigor. Uh maybe one that's more like dialectically effective because it maybe some people don't have these experiences. Maybe uh some people have opposite experiences where they look at uh instances of gratuitous suffering and they just kind of like according to them they just sort of intuitit immediately that God doesn't exist.

¶42Um, so it's not super dialectically effective for people who either don't have the experiences or have contrary experiences. I mean to be honest like I do have this kind of intuitive reaction as I as I said with lots of things where I just I look at beauty and nature and I'm just like oh there's no way this is chance or something like that. Um, so on the one hand I kind of like share the intuition and I do think intuitions like justify you in the absence of like reasons to doubt them in the absence of defeaters as philosophers call them. But on the other hand, I want an argument with more formal rigor and that's more like dialectically effective. So like there are these competing considerations and like I do think you know thinking that God exists like actually he probably has given us some kind of just like natural faculty by which we can just detect design in nature.

¶43So I actually think that like if people's faculties are properly functioning and they just kind of form a belief in God on the basis of this kind of immediate intuition or maybe some kind of properly functioning cognitive faculty then I think they can come to know that God exists on this basis. Um I don't think it's there's particularly stringent criteria on knowing that God exists. Um >> but that's separate from like is this an a good argument >> right like yeah a good because goodness of arguments that comes down to like persuasive power and um like how formally rigorous is it and you know all all various other criteria and also this is my own tier list ranking so like there are considerations pulling me to rank it highly given that like I do kind of share the intuition I think that this is a good way for people to come to know that God exists honestly um but there are also considerations that pull it down and so maybe I'll just like average it out and put it Ctier >> Ctier >> I know it's pretty I but like >> I mean C or D but probably C. >> Okay, we'll we'll put it at C. >> Okay, sweet.

¶44>> All right, let's move to our next argument which is the argument from beauty. This one has a special place in my heart. You know, my background as a photographer and stuff like I just and the argument that we've sort of already discussed the the look at the trees argument. I think it's maybe not parasitic, but I think it is very closely related to the argument from beauty. And so, uh, yeah.

¶45Let Well, [snorts] [laughter] you should probably just keep that in. Okay, [laughter] we're good. Got to sneeze out. >> Okay. Got to sneeze out.

¶46>> I just sneeze at Will and I like to do that sometimes. >> Yeah. [laughter] Uh, he's actually got some allergies, my dogs, and stuff. Uh, so anyways, the the argument from beauty, there are a couple ways that this one could be formulated. the the one that I like relies on this step of the argument where you have to establish that there is objective beauty.

¶47And so if you can establish that, that's actually a pretty hard premise to to establish nowadays because there's this line, you know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And so many people just think that and agree with it, you know, at a sort of intuitive level level. So that's I think a a barrier to this argument being really high up on on the scale. But suppose that we could get past that and argue that there is objective beauty in the world. Um what do you think like where would you where would you put this argument or or should we make any other clarifications?

¶48>> Yeah. I mean I think we can like flush it out a little bit. I mean there are a few ways you could take it, right? I mean, one way is maybe a more like Craig style direction where like if there is an objective standard of beauty, then you need some kind of like I don't know, you need some kind of ground of that which has to be has to do with like the divine nature or something like that. That's one way to take it.

¶49Presumably that's not where you are going to go. >> Um I mean another way to take it is like we have as a datim that there are lots of things out there that are like objectively beautiful. >> Yeah. >> Um like the world is just saturated with objective beauty. I mean down to like the beautiful elegant mathematical formalisms that govern like physical structures and physical phenomena and atoms and whatnot.

¶50Um up through you know beautiful ways in which you know chemistry arises and just like these really cool I mean I don't know I love chemistry. I love science. I I love all this stuff. Just like looking at I remember going through in my like chemistry classes and my organic chemistry classes like constructing all the different like chemical diagrams and like literally building these things and seeing all the beautiful ways in which they like interact and whatnot. And then you go up through biological structures and the biological world is just saturated with so much beauty.

¶51Like birds of paradise. Are you kidding me? Like it's just like gratuitous beauty almost. It's like it's like an undeserved gift. That's almost how it feels to be honest.

¶52>> Um >> Joe Joe Schmid is beautiful. >> No, of course. Like fantastically beautiful. Like look at this like fantasmagoric display like um Yeah. And then uh also just like cosmic structures, right?

¶53As I said, like the nebula, the galaxies. >> Yeah. So, from the smallest to the largest. >> Yeah. The smallest to the largest.

¶54The world seems just saturated with beauty. Um, and like you might just think that just seems really surprising under so this is like a more basian approach. Um, this seems perhaps really surprising under naturalism. Like there are so many ways the natural world could have developed uh such that it is far such that there is far far less beauty. Um but we instead just almost hit like this this like jackpot zone where there's like tons of beauty and we can appreciate it in fact.

¶55Um so that's one kind of basian way of formulating it. And then I guess a still further way is like we don't even need to say that there is such a thing as subjective beauty but instead like the datim is that like there's aesthetic experience. >> Everyone grants that there's aesthetic experience and we might just think that's valuable or that's good in some way. Um and it seems like a gratuitous good that uh >> certainly didn't have to exist. seems kind of like a fortuitous result, a byproduct perhaps of evolution.

¶56Even if you can give some kind of like just so evolutionary accounts, um it might just be like anticedently implausible that that's the way that evolution would develop like it would just give us these like aesthetic senses that are like on overdrive like about the world. Um so I think those there are three formulations of that argument. I don't think we should talk about the first one where like it just requires some kind of like objective standard or something like that. But the basian arguments are pretty similar. Now, if we are requiring as a condition on the argument the objective beauty, I just feel like dialectically that's going to be hard to establish.

¶57>> Yeah. >> I mean, like I grant it. I accept it. Um I'm an objectivist across like the value domain. Um but I don't know like so many naturalists are not going to grant that.

¶58So many atheists are not going to grant that >> and so many normal people just in the the the you know daily experience like >> Yeah. >> It's it's going to be hard to compel people. >> Yeah. Whereas like you know ordinary people would be like yeah you know you can't >> torture children just for fun and even if we all thought that that was okay and we like to do it on Saturdays like it would still be wrong. So that's kind of independent of our preferences at least a lot of people think.

¶59>> Um but like yeah even like a lot of ordinary hund people you're going to go up to them and they're going to be like oh you know like you find the person beautiful I don't find him beautiful it's just you know everything goes subjectivism. Um >> so I don't know that version of the argument I would rank actually quite lowly. Um, I like the version for aesthetic experience. >> I like the basian version of aesthetic experience. >> Like >> we do like it just does seem to be a kind of pretty fortunate coincidence that we have under at least under naturalism that we have just these like aesthetic experiences on overdrive at least a lot of us.

¶60Um, so whereas like under theism like I don't know that's like a really good thing. It's like a way that we can have like a touch point to the divine. Um that we can kind of access the divine and that like the divine can sort of erupt into the profane reality, you know, like the sacred can erupt into the profane. Um so I don't know. I I think it's a pretty good argument in terms of like aesthetic experience.

¶61And so there maybe I'd rank it like Btier actually. >> Um like and you know because I'm inclined to think that there is objective beauty like maybe for me that argument would be Btier, but like I don't know in terms of dialectical force I might down to like D tier or something, >> right? Um but let's let's go with the aesthetic version. Um and like again there's also just like we can sort of combine these and not even say that beauty is objective. We can just say listen there are beautiful things.

¶62Okay maybe you disagree about which which things are beautiful and maybe like that's a subjective matter but like somehow you know we all have to explain the fact that reality is like saturated with beauty and even if that's grounded in our aesthetic experiences it still seems to be be very surprising under naturalism you might think. >> Um and much less surprising under theism. >> So B tier. Yeah, I think I'll put a B tier. >> Solid B tier.

¶63Yeah. One one thing I wanted to just note for the audience is because I've I've been having this experience as we've been going through this is that I there's sort of corlar corlaries that you can draw between something like beauty and like these other negative experiences. I mean there's negative experiences of the same realm. So there's ugly things and ugly things you might think cry out for some explanation as well. And so this though is focused on the arguments for God's existence.

¶64We're not going to necessarily slow down and contrast it with any type of argument or experience that you could put on the other scale, the other side of the scale. So that may be for another time, another stream. But um if if those thoughts come into your mind, just remember that this we're looking at the phenomena, the experiences in the world that count in favor of God's existence. Right. >> So it would be a totally different show if we were going to go through problem of evil and all that stuff, >> right?

¶65Like evil, ugliness, those are just like separate pieces of data. >> Yes. You want to talk about that, but like we're talking about beauty right now, so like can we focus on the hand? >> Yeah, exactly. So, all right, let's move on to our next one, which is the new colom.

¶66Now, the old colum is what we're using to refer to the argument that William Lane Craig has developed and made popular back in what the the late 2000s, the 2010s and stuff, all his >> late 1970s, in fact. >> Yeah. Um, so he's he's popularized this argument. And everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist.

¶67Therefore, the universe has a cause. And then beyond that, he also says that and argues that this cause must be timeless, spaceless, uh immensely powerful, and personal, right? And maybe some other properties. And so he this is what we're referring to as the old column. The reason why we're calling it the old column is because there have been developments in the literature since then.

¶68Grim Reaper paradox, the is it the messenger paradox? What's the What's the one from >> Grim Messenger? >> Grim Messenger paradox. There have been some updates causal finitism and stuff like there's been some really interesting moves that have been made, but you have some push back on those arguments, right? The new column.

¶69So we we are setting aside the old column and it's old because like you know he sort of motivates the the second premise that the universe began to exist by appeal to some a little more more like traditional kind of paradoxes and arguments from like successive addition like oh you can't complete or form an infinite collection by successively adding members to it. That's like the basic gist of one of his arguments. The other one is like oh you can't have an actually infinite collection cuz apparently it leads to certain implausible results or something like that. Um [clears throat] and yeah we're sort of setting that aside. I don't really find that plausible.

¶70Um I think the new column is um more plausible as like an argument for God's existence. And [clears throat] yeah, like it's new because like the the sorts of paradoxes that motivate some of its premises are like new and interesting innovations in the literature as you said. So like grim reaper paradoxes paradoxes involving like rationality. So there are like interesting like infinite fair lottery paradoxes that Alexander Puce goes through in his book infinity causation and paradox. Um there's also this one interesting paradox that maybe we'll just like flesh out because this is one that like I still need to think further about.

¶71Um it's sort of on the edge of my thinking. So um imagine that there's uh an infinite string of dominoes stretching back into the infinite past. Okay? >> And they alternate in color. So it's like black domino and then the day whatever the domino that came before it is like white and then black and then white and then black and then white.

¶72So that's like that all the way throughout the past throughout an infinite past in fact. So, we got this infinite regress of dominoes and you know they're hitting each other and then the last one falls over. >> We might ask, well, what explains the fact that the black dominoes fell? You might wonder what explains the fact that the black dominoes fell. Well, I what would you say?

¶73>> Uh, it was a white domino. >> Yeah. Or like the white dominoes knocked them over, right? So like what explains this like the fact that uh >> we could put it in terms of the fact that any white black sorry the fact that any black domino's tell or we could say >> I can see where it's going because there there was no first white domino that started the chain of the black ones falling >> but also okay so like we might think it's intuitively plausible that what explains why the black dominoes fell? Well because >> uh the white dominoes fell and knocked them over, right?

¶74You might just find that as like a really plausible claim about explanation. Okay. What explains the fact that the white dominoes fell? Yeah, it would have the fact that the black dominoes fell. So it's like a circular explanation.

¶75Notice we cited as at least part of our explanation of why the black dominoes fell that the white dominus fell. And then we site as part of the explanation for why the white domino fell that the black dominus fell. So we have some fact which explains another fact which in turn explains that first fact. So it's almost like an explanatory circularity. Lots of philosophers think that >> that's like a vicious explanatory circularity there.

¶76There can't be such explanatory circles. >> Um so it's like an interesting argument. It does assume like some sort of principle along the lines of if you have like um like a plurality of things uh each of which is explained by you know some member of a distinct plurality then the first plurality is explained by uh the second plurality and you might think that that that principle at least fails in infinite contexts. So there are like ways to push back against the argument. Um but like I don't know it's like interesting you know and it's not it's not as implausible to me at least as like appealing to Hilbert's hotel to motivate the impossibility of actual infinence say so um and you know there are other paradoxes like groom paradoxes whatnot I actually don't find those particularly plausible I think there are other >> well connect this for the audience how would this lead to like an argument for the existence of >> right okay so then >> from dominoes >> let's from the dom so like okay the thought is if there could be infinite causal regresses then there could be infinite like dominoes knocking each other M >> if there could be infinite dominators knocking each other then there could be circular explanations where uh patchwork principle >> yeah well maybe perhaps it relies on that but also it just seems really plausible I mean you don't even need the Patrick principle like if you have an infinite past you could just label the states of the universe like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 what explains why the even numbers exist well because the odd numbers cause them what explains why the odd numbers exist because so you actually don't need a Patrick principle for this one cuz I also have reservations for some Patrick principles >> um >> uh I know we're like appealing to all these concepts that maybe the audience uh doesn't know, but that's okay.

¶77Um >> that's okay. They'll they'll they'll uh just be lost and [laughter] click click off the video. >> They'll be lost in the sauce. No, but okay. This is what Let's get back to the argument, right?

¶78Um the argument is that, you know, if there could be an infinite past, then there could be infinitely many dominoes knocking each other like this. M um but there can't be infinitely many dominoes that knock each other like this because that would lead to explanatory circularity and there can't be explanatory circles where one fact explains another fact which explains the first fact. >> It's almost like trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps or it's almost kind of like self-causation, right? >> Um so because there can't be such uh infinite regresses like the dominoes because they lead to a vicious explanatory circularity, there can't be an infinite past. So the past must be finite.

¶79the past is finite. Well, then there needs to be some sort of like causal explanation for why the past came into existence. So, you need to maybe appeal to some kind of timeless cause which is responsible for the universe or something like that. >> So, that's the basic thought uh behind the new column. Uh >> and we're just trying to rule out yeah like infinite causal regresses, infinite causal chains and things like that.

¶80>> Yeah. >> Um >> so, all right, we've we've talked about this one I think a good amount and we could talk about it more, but let's get a ranking now. Where where would you put this new colom at? Where where would you put it? Well, >> I'm also curious where you would put the old column.

¶81[laughter] >> Like we we we didn't talk about like where you would actually put that >> I mean I can give you a number or I can give you one. I mean it would probably be like Yeah. E or D or something. >> E or D. Oh, okay.

¶82It's not as low as it could be. >> Well, it's not banana level. Certainly not. >> But E or D. It's one of the two.

¶83>> Yeah. >> Maybe on like a good day I'll give you D. >> But on a bad day, I'd give you E. So, it just depends on my mood. Um, but I find the nucleon more plausible and like you know >> although I favor I tend to favor I should say like different solutions to these various paradoxes that proofs and Rasmuson and Coons and whatnot try to motivate the claim that there can't be infinite causal regresses.

¶84I do tend to favor alternative solutions to those on philosophical grounds. Um, but you know metaphysics is hard. I could be wrong about that and causalism does offer like a unifying solution to lots of different paradoxes. Um, so it's not like a silly argument and like you know I still need to figure out what exactly I want to say about like the infinite fair lottery paradoxes and the decision theoretic paradoxes and whatnot. So those are really interesting.

¶85Lots of cool and interesting work here and causal fitism is like non it's definitely a non silly hypothesis. It's definitely respectable um and it like may very well be true. So, >> so >> for that reason, um, you know, maybe I would still put this around mid-tier cuz like [laughter] it's respectable and I can, you know, I can see some of the argu So maybe C >> C tier. Okay. One one thing I was going to mention as well is that these like in a tier list, you're comparing this argument to other arguments, right?

¶86>> Right. So that doesn't mean that this argument fails ultimately. It just means that compared to other arguments in this list, >> it's not as high as the others. Right. It's not as convincing.

¶87>> Yeah. And again, to me, you know, like this is just by my own plausibility structures, by my own research and whatnot. Um, you know, different things work for different people. So, um, but yeah, that's good. >> Ctier.

¶88>> Ctier it is. >> Ctier it is. The new column. >> I got to blow my nose. [laughter] >> Keep that in if you want.

¶89[snorts] >> Got to blow my nose. >> A substance. A substance has properties. That is to say, >> that is to say, we're moving on to our next argument, which is the moral argument. There's two types of moral arguments really uh in the literature.

¶90There is the sort of standard moral argument that most people are familiar with and then >> bo standard >> bold standard >> bog standard argument >> and then there's the [laughter] uh the moral knowledge argument which a lot of philosophers take a lot more seriously. But let's discuss the first one first, which is just the standard moral argument. I'll let you give us a summary of this one. >> Well, it's two premises and a conclusion championed by William Lane Craig. First premise is that there are >> Is he the first person to to like formalize this?

¶91>> I don't I don't think so. >> Okay. >> I doubt that. I mean, maybe it goes back to something like Robert, >> but all you said was that he's championed it. >> He's championed it.

¶92So, he's like he's a big proponent of it, you know? He's like a champion of it. >> He's the champion. >> Yeah. That doesn't mean he's the originator.

¶93So, yeah. I mean, I'd go with um well, anyway, it's two premises and a conclusion. The first premise is that there are objective moral values and duties. The second premise is that if God does not exist, then there are no objective moral values and duties. And the conclusion of course by modus tolins is that God exists.

¶94Okay, so that's the argument. So, >> well, my objection is that the conditional premise is supposed to be the first premise >> and so the argument is invalid. [snorts and clears throat] [laughter] >> That's definitely how reasoning works. That that was a [laughter] >> that's literally an objection I've received. >> Oh man.

¶95>> In the past when I've like developed our >> It's very sad. We were in a sad state of affairs. >> So we can actually put it in different orders. >> A conditional can go either in one or two, >> right? Yeah.

¶96And you don't even have to number the premises. It can just be like they could be next to each other and >> Yeah. >> point to the [laughter] um so yeah, that that's that's one objection. Certainly. Certainly.

¶97Okay, let's look at that first premise that there are objective moral values and duties. like, you know, there are certain truths about what's good and bad and right and wrong and virtu virtuous and vicious and whatnot that are true independently of our preferences or our desires or stances. You know, the what we want to be true or what we think is true. And yeah, I mean that premise seems really plausible to me. Like as I said earlier, like it would be wrong, >> but it hasn't always.

¶98>> Um, [snorts] that's true. >> I mean, you were an atheist. Yeah, but I was I was I was okay. So, actually going way back in high school to when I was an atheist, I was actually a moral skeptic very briefly >> for a brief period cuz I had very bad epistemology. >> So, my intuition was right, >> I suppose.

¶99Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Um I was a moral skeptic in the sense that I thought that like I didn't actively deny that there were >> Were you an emotivist? >> No, I was never an emotivist. >> Okay.

¶100So, you haven't >> I was just skeptical of our our ability to access moral facts if there are such things I thought at the time. um just because I thought it's it's funny. I was like, "Oh, you know, the only reason why we accept them is because like they seem really plausible." I mean, there are other reasons as well. There are other arguments for like objective moral facts um that I was just unaware of at the time. But I was like, "Hey, it seems like that kind of seeming intuitive plausibility, that kind of felt sense of obviousness is the only like grounds that I had at the time for thinking that they're true." And I was like, "Ah, but like why would I accept that?" You know, like my intuitions are can be mistaken, so why should I accept that?

¶101I just didn't even recognize it. like, oh, maybe the fact that something seems really plausible is actually like grounds to accept it. It's actually like a reason to think it, you know, like that's why I accept that 1 plus 1 equals two [laughter] or that nothing can be red all over and green all over at the same time or that, you know, insert various other claims that we can open the armchair. >> Um, >> so I did have a brief stint of uh moral skepticism, but that didn't last very long. And uh, >> you know, pretty soon I was a moral realist and just have been a moral realist ever since, someone who thinks that there are objective moral facts and duties and whatnot.

¶102Um >> but so coming speeding back up to now. So you do think that this premise is plausible. >> Oh yeah. I mean of course. Yeah.

¶103>> But how plausible like what's the dialectical force that it has >> of the premise that there are objective moral values? >> Yes. Yes. Are you do you think >> I think there are lots of good arguments for realism? I mean like read like Russ Schaefer Landau or read like Yeah.

¶104Terrence Cunio or read like John Benson or read like Michael Huer or read like >> Do you know that there are some theists in the space some Christians who deny this premise? >> I think I've heard of such individuals. Yes. And it's very unfortunate. >> Yes.

¶105>> Uh I think it's very difficult to get like a very plausible and coherent model of God uh under which that's true. Yes. >> Like isn't isn't God like perfect? And that's not a matter of like our stances. Doesn't seem like it's a matter of God's stances either.

¶106Like he somehow like makes himself perfect by his what he desires or believes. Anyway, we're not going to get into it, but um yeah, I don't find that plausible. >> Yes. But anyways, you >> I mean I think Yeah, I think there are lots of arguments for moral realism and they're very extremely plausible. >> The premise though that you do take issue with in this one.

¶107>> Yeah. I mean the the premise that I think is uh I mean like you know maybe maybe now I sort of like in in some like trivial sense committed to it. But like in terms of like dialectical efficacy, I don't think it's at all plausible. And in fact like it turns out to be like a counter-possible conditional. So actually maybe I'm not trivially committed to it.

¶108But anyway, we don't need to get into that. It's the premise that you know if God does not exist then objective moral values and duties do not exist and >> insert a picture of Eric Wenberg >> right or lots of you know Russ Schaefer Landau as I was mentioning or like John Benson and various other people who just have developed like non-theistic accounts of objective morality. Um, and yeah, I mean, maybe you can try to argue that like certain theistic accounts have certain like theoretical virtues in relation to these non-theistic accounts, but I just think it's it's going to be hard to like roll up your sleeves and like systematically rule out every single one of these non-theistic accounts of objective morality because there are a lot out there in the literature. Um, and uh, it's just not really clear to me that anyone has succeeded in systematically ruling them out, at least on purely philosophical grounds. >> So, I think that's enough to move on to the next argument just to give a ranking for this one.

¶109>> Right. So actually [laughter] because I think that like that premise is so dialectically implausible. Uh just like I just think like if God does not exist, well of course like torturing babies would still be wrong cuz that has to do with like the very nature of like torturing babies and whatnot. Like um so as a result of that I actually would rank this very low. It would probably be even like E tier.

¶110>> I know [laughter] it's just not it's just not a plausible argument to me. >> Yeah. Okay. Now let's move on to the moral knowledge argument. >> Oh okay.

¶111Yeah, let's uh and and I'll I'll let you lead this one as well. Give us a quick rundown of that one. How does it differ from the sort of standard moral argument? >> So, the standard moral argument talks about like what accounts for why there are any objective moral facts out there in the world. This moral knowledge argument focuses on a different datim.

¶112Why or how do we know the moral facts in question? So, like we sort of assume that there are moral facts for the purposes of running this argument. I think that's really plausible as I was saying earlier. And then we just ask what explains uh why we have this knowledge. Okay?

¶113And you might think that like naturalism has a very poor explanation. And in fact, maybe even uh under naturalism, we can't have any moral knowledge. And why might you think that? Well, let me give you an analogy. So Cameron, imagine that like I pull off on the shelf here a book and it says like Madagascar birds.

¶114And I hand it to you and you're like, "Oh, cool. Madagascar birds." And you know, you're flipping through and you see all these like seemingly realistic pictures of like birds of paradise kind of and it's got like all these descriptions about it. It's got like these Latin sounding names that are like the species names for them and it's talking about their like mating behavior. It's talking about their, you know, forging behavior and all that stuff. You're like, "Okay, cool." And you think you've come to, you know, you form all these beliefs about Madagascar birds from reading the book.

¶115Okay. And then I come up to you and I'm like, Cameron, unbeknownst to you, I put that book on the shelf before I came in here and everything in that book is a chat GPT hallucination that is not in any way connected up with the moral facts in question. So like it wasn't actually explained by the moral facts. It doesn't trace back to them. Uh would you still go on trusting the things in the book or do you think you you just sort of gotten a defeater?

¶116>> It doesn't trace to the birds of parrot. It doesn't >> No, it doesn't trace. It doesn't >> because you said moral facts. Oh, sorry. Yeah, [laughter] >> it doesn't trace back to any facts about birds in Madagascar.

¶117Do you think you would trust the book in that case? >> No. No. If I had this new information, I would not. >> Right.

¶118So, it seems to like serve as a defeater if you learn that like >> Yes. >> Uh your basis for a belief is not in any way connected up with the fact uh that your belief is purportedly about or that is purportedly in. Well, it seems like the naturalist is in that position with respect to morality because our basic moral intuitions, our basic evaluative dispositions, so the way that we're disposed to evaluate things as good or bad or right or wrong and whatnot, those were shaped by evolutionary forces. Evolution instilled these kind of like intuitions and um you know dispositions within us. But evolution is blind to the moral facts.

¶119Evolution doesn't care about the moral facts. It cares about survival and reproduction. It's not like the objective moral facts are out there and they're like guiding evolution to bring our like moral intuitions in conformity with them under naturalism. No, that's not how it works. That's not how any of this works under naturalism.

¶120>> Yeah. So, >> but on the theistic picture, >> but on the theistic picture, God's aware of the moral facts and he, you know, he creates us in view of them. And in fact, like God's like sensitive to goodness. um he's sensitive to reasons and like he uh could easily guide us guide evolution in the direction of giving us at least like minimally reliable moral faculties so that we can have like so that we know how to relate to one another and to God. Um, so it seems like under theism we have like a pretty reasonable explanation for how we could have moral knowledge, whereas naturalism seems to just like totally even remove the possibility of moral knowledge, but we do have moral knowledge.

¶121And so it seems like naturalism >> because it's too accidental. >> Well, it's tooal that even even if so the argument is is even if we happened like evolution happened to produce the correct moral intuitions like it was just too accidental. >> Oh yeah. I mean so there are two ways to actually take the argument. is just like listen under naturalism our belie like the basis of our beliefs aren't in any way explanatory connected up with the facts and that seems to be you might think just like a requirement on knowledge and so under naturalism we just don't have moral knowledge you might think that's one way to run the argument but another way is like a more probability thing or like a more basian thing like under naturalism it just seems like super unlikely that we would just happen to hit on the moral jackpot where like we have minimally reliable moral faculties where like easily we could have gone astray you like if we had evolved like the hive bees for instance we would have thought it a sacred duty to sacrifice our brethren for the sake we would just be like these like mindless collectivist robots who were just like sacrificing for the sake of like the queen or something.

¶122Yeah. Um so we easily could have gone astray and we seem to like >> have kind of hit the jackpot as it were. Um and it seems so coincidental and accidental that like theism has a much better explanation. So it's a lot of evidence for theism. Those are two ways of taking it and I'm like sympathetic to both versions.

¶123So I actually think this is like a pretty good argument. >> Yeah. Where where would you put it? Honestly, I would probably rank it A tier because I think it's like a good argument. Um, this is one of the arguments that started like causing me to shift in my seat when I was at Agnostic.

¶124I was like, "Oh man, there really is a lot of plausibility to this." And like the thing is like even lots of like naturalist philosophers run these arguments against their fellow naturalists and they're like, "What are you guys doing? You can't believe in like objective morality. We've got these like debunking arguments." So like lots of naturalist philosophers are themselves using these arguments to try to convince their fellow naturalist philosophers to abandon their belief in objective morality. So like I do think and it's a plausible argument. So I would probably rank it a tier.

¶125>> All right, let's move on to my favorite argument for the existence of God which has changed. It used to be the contingency argument, but then as a result of uh you know absolutely demolishing you in that back and forth that we had. Um, I came to believe that the fine-tuning argument is the strongest argument for the existence of God. For the the the main reason is just the the probabilities involved are just so astronomical that like even if you've got a good contingency argument, it just pales in comparison to the types of probabilities that you can can get from running a a really rigorous fine-tuning argument. You know, I was I was working with Luke Barnes and and trying to get like wrap my mind around because I think he uses like eight to 10 examples.

¶126You know, he doesn't like some some people use a lot more, but he thinks it really sort of condenses down to eight or 10 >> and just on those alone, the numbers involved are like you can't even wrap your mind around it. Like how improbable this universe, a life permitting universe actually is. And so when I came to that realization, I was like, "All right, I got to put this one like it's it's got to be my, you know, it's got to be at the top for me." But having said all that, let's now just unpack like give me give me your rundown of what the fine-tuning argument. You've done a lot of recent work on this. >> Yeah.

¶127Yeah. No, I I very much love the fine-tuning argument. And in fact, like I spend so long in my conversion video on the finetuning argument cuz I'm like this is one of the things that started to unravel my agnosticism. Like I thought I had some like pretty plausible responses to the finetuning argument. But then like when I found >> we should let the audience know that that if they want more of the fine tuning argument like go watch >> Yeah.

¶128That video there's like a huge segment in there on the fine tuning argument where I respond to all these objections to >> so we can only get like an overview. >> Yeah. No, exactly. Um but this was one of the first things started to unravel it. It's like just losing some of my objections to the fine tuning argument.

¶129I'm like this argument might work. What am I to do? What am I to do? Um so yeah, let's see how the argument goes. Well, there are different ways.

¶130There are different again different formulations of it and there's each of them is just like so so powerful. So um >> especially William Lane Craig's right the >> oh the syllogism that's the one formulation that I don't like actually [laughter] with all you know William Craig has done so much work for the kingdom and I absolutely love you Dr. Craig um so I'm I'm very grateful for all of his work but like you know we each have different sensibilities and I I just don't find that argument particularly compelling. >> Yeah. um >> chance, necessity, or design.

¶131It's not due to chance or necessity. >> The best versions of this are going to be basian, right? They're going to use the basian machinery. Um so like the main versions that that's talked about in the literature and then I'll talk about like a cool secret one that I really like. Um >> but the main one that's talked about in the literature is like the finetuning of the constants.

¶132So you know >> we have various laws of physics. They take a certain form. So just to give like a toy example, there's Newton's gravitational law. Now maybe this isn't like a fundamental law or anything. It's just an approximation.

¶133But you know, force equals g gravitational constant times the mass of one of the gravitational bodies times the mass of the other gravitational body divided by the radius between them squared. Okay, that's like the form of the law. And there's a constant in there. It's just like a quantity with a fixed value. Uh and the constants take on certain values in these and they can they also can take on a certain range of values within like a range of physically meaningful values that we can kind of get like a really good purchase on how the world would develop if they fell in different areas of that range.

¶134Uh and so if you look at the fundamental laws of physics and you look at their constant values, it turns out that only within an exceedingly narrow range of the total range of conceivable values that these constants could have taken on would you actually be able to permit life or really anything interesting happening. So like to take one example the cosmological constant. This is a constant that governs the rate of the expansion of the universe. So if it had had been if it had been slightly larger by a factor of like one part in 10 the^ of 120 then the universe would have just like >> shot apart so rapidly that you couldn't get any interesting organized complexity. >> There would be one particle trillions of light years away then there's another particle.

¶135You're not going to get life or anything interesting to happen. It's just a barren pathetic contemptable universe. >> Yeah. I mean, it's almost as pathetic as your >> like that [laughter] [gasps] >> things shooting apart like that quick >> like it's it would be impossible for them to interact and like coalesce and create anything. >> And if the cosmological constant had been slightly weaker by a factor of like by one part and 10 the^ of 120, then the universe would have like collapsed within on itself almost immediately.

¶136It would have just imploded and you wouldn't have gotten any interesting stable organized complexity at all. So like and like these numbers like dude like the estimate >> in 10 >> dude like the estimate for the number of atoms in the observable universe is like 1 * 10 80. >> Yeah. >> So like you're more likely to pick like a random atom and like successfully choose it in like a lottery of atoms than you are to get the cosmological concept to fall within the narrow life range. So like [snorts] we're talking like exceedingly overwhelmingly pathetically grotesqually implausible that oh it's just like a brute fact that that just happened to fall within the stiff range or like yeah just basically by chance there's no deeper explanation for why it fell within the life bidding range.

¶137By contrast, under theism, it seems far less surprising that well, I don't know, maybe God might be interested in like producing beings which have significant knowledge and can love each other and can have conversations like this and can have like, you know, develop and cultivate and manifest virtue and grow in relationships with each other and God and and like experience joy and you know, excitement and all that stuff. Uh, and just, you know, vast cosmic structures that are super beautiful. Like, we can see why God might be interested in that sort of thing given that they're super valuable. God's perfectly good. he'd be motivated by and sensitive to facts about value.

¶138And so it seems far far far less surprising under theism than naturalism that we'd get constants that fall within the exceedingly narrow life mering range. And so this is just like extremely powerful evidence for theism. >> Before we get to ranking this one, maybe instead of like talking about all of the different responses to fine-tuning, let's pick like maybe one and focus on that one and then point people to your video. >> Yeah. I mean, the best objection by far in the literature is the multiverse response.

¶139And um so the thought is that like and again we I want to get to the secret sauce like the secret like other kind of fine-tuning argument. >> Um but yeah I mean the multiverse response basically is like listen if we were to posit a vast ensemble of universes each of which varies randomly in its initial conditions and constant values then it's just going to be totally unsurprising that somewhere or other you're going to get the constants falling within the narrow lifeing range. Um and of course where where could we find ourselves? we could only find ourselves in a lifeing universe. So it's not very surprising that you know our our universe is fine-tuned.

¶140So you know I go through in my video why I don't think this is a particularly plausible um response. I mean like one problem is like the boltman brain problem for instance you know like take just like let's take a separate analogy suppose that like we come across a typed up version of an entire work of Shakespeare. >> Okay. And now, you know, I'm saying like, okay, seems like there's like a designer of this, you know, like this is intentionally produced. But, you know, the naturalist comes along, he's like, whoa, wait, if I posit like basically like gazillions upon gazillions of monkeys that are just randomly typing in typewriters, you know, some somewhere or other they're basically guaranteed to like type up an entire work of Shakespeare.

¶141And maybe they'll posit some mechanism by which like, oh, I could only I could only observe, you know, um, uh, like a full written work of Shakespeare. Maybe there's some sort of selection process to get the observation selection effect. Um, it's like, okay, may maybe that explains why, you know, I observe like a full work of Shakespeare. But hold on a second. Far more often than typing up an entire work of Shakespeare, the monkeys are going to type up like a paragraph of Shakespeare or like a sentence of Shakespeare.

¶142And so like actually among the total range of like coherent, orderly kind of intelligible sequences of symbols, the vast vast vast vast vast vast vast vast vast majority of them are not going to be entire works of Shakespeare. they're going to be like single sentences or paragraphs. >> Mhm. Um and the analog to that in the case of the multiverse hypothesis is that uh actually it's going to turn out that the vast vast vast vast vast majority of observers are just these like boltzman brains that like spontaneously fluctuate into existence from like the quantum void and then they you know duplicate and down to every microysical detail the workings of a properly functioning human brain and then soon just dissipate out of existence cuz that only requires a localized pocket of order or low entropy. Whereas, you know, organisms like us situated in this huge gargantuan pocket of order, low entropy is just gargantuan.

¶143Yes, indeed. It's it's it's far far far going to it's going to be way rare that we get this like gargantuan pocket of order or low entropy compared to those like localized pockets of order, low entropy. So then like we would actually expect that like the vast majority of beings which share my current experiences with with whom I'm experientially indistinguishable right now are just going to be these Boltzman brains who are in radical skeptical scenarios which I just think like defeats my knowledge of of the world. Yeah. Um cuz like Okay.

¶144>> So the Boltzman brain objection you you think is just like >> QED against I wouldn't I don't I wouldn't say QED. It's just like one like serious problem for the proposal. Okay. Um, and then there are just like other serious problems which I think like together mount a pretty forceful case against the objection. >> Okay.

¶145>> Um, I mean listen this is philosophy. It's difficult. So um I don't know if I'd want to say QED but I just like I think that there are ways to respond to the multiverse objection. >> So let's now because we are just sort of limited on time. Let's give this one a rating.

¶146>> The secret sauce. I need to get to the secret sauce. >> Oh my goodness. I keep forgetting. Okay.

¶147[laughter] >> Okay. >> Secret sauce. >> It's it's kind of like just like an opriori fine tuning argument. >> Okay. So um >> operary for the audience means >> means basically uh something that we can like reason about from the armchair without having to go outside and like >> we are in some pretty nice >> armchair.

¶148I know very fancy indeed. >> Very fancy. >> We could get even fancier ones if people like you know increase their patron patronage. It's like come on get on that people. [laughter] [gasps] So um and of course you know you got to go to Majesty of Reason and you got to do that but no um yes.

¶149Okay, [laughter] >> go donate. >> The operatory fine tuning argument. So basically, I just think like we can just basically discern from the armchair that like our existence requires a massive degree of fine-tuning and just like significant like fortuitous lucky results need to happen for us to exist. Cuz just like dude, you know, when we run the argument from the constants of the laws of nature, we hold fixed the form of the laws. So we hold fix the form of the structure of the laws and we just look at the constants and we see varying them um what would result and we find that they're like super fine-tuned um in the sense that you know the constants need to fall within a very narrow life burning range.

¶150Um, but like the form of the laws themselves, we can imagine varying those. And just as it turns out, if you just think conceptually about the total space of like ways that reality conceivably might have gone, like ways that there might have been like fundamental laws of nature, it just seems like the vast vast vast majority of them are going to result in either total chaos or just like a contemptably simple pathetic world. So it could have just been a law. And notice that this law is far simpler than laws that we got. So under naturalism, we'd actually expect to get like a really simple law like this.

¶151It could have just been a law that all that all that exists is like a single point particle and it just moves in a a straight line for all of eternity. That world is so compactly describable and there are like infinitely many worlds like that. Oh, and maybe there were two particles and they just circle one another for all of eternity. >> Very simple equations that you can use to describe that far simpler than our universe in terms of its fundamental denisonins and the rules by which it operates. >> And just like when you think about it, all the conceptual possibilities, they just start to open up like oh it could have been like a a triangle.

¶152It could have been like a square. It could have been like an octagon. It could it could you know it could have just been like a fundamental particle. It could have been like a two-dimensional grid where it could have been like a kind of Conway's game of life which is also very rare would you get like um this is like a two dimensional grid where like it evolves according to certain simple patterns and like very rarely are you going to get like stable complexity and those sorts of things. So the broader point is just that like even from the armchair we can see that it's like really striking that like somehow the world like jumped over this like infinite horde of extremely simple, elegant, compactly stable laws that wouldn't have resulted in anything interesting or valuable.

¶153Somehow reality like skipped all of those to go to like a more complex law structure which has like the and not too complex so as to lead to like complete chaos, right? It's like somehow we we skipped that infinite horde of simple laws and landed on ones that like lead to this like interesting cosmic structures like valuable conscious creatures like come on come on this isn't chance dude >> so I I think that's like a plausible argument like a really plausible argument and also like multiverse doesn't get around that cuz like there are lots of even way simpler views than the multiverse which just totally wouldn't lead to anything interesting. So >> um >> well let's let's combine them. >> Yeah. Yeah.

¶154No, that's good cuz they're both super plausible and when we combine them it's like clearly S tier. It's [laughter] like S+ plus tier. Um, so yeah, this is an S tier argument. >> Fine-tuning S tier. >> S tier.

¶155>> Sier Priori. >> Yeah, >> the Oprior version like you know. Yes. >> Got to give some love to the science homies. >> Yes.

¶156Yes. Robin Collins. >> Yeah, >> dude. The OG. >> Yeah, dude.

¶157Robin Collins >> with his uh >> Luke Barnes, Yav Isaacs, John Hawthorne. Like check out all this. It's really good. >> Yeah. But uh a freaking [laughter] Robin Collins with his >> Dude, he's like still rocking >> like a juke box or something.

¶158>> He's like still rocking the uh the little wraparound microphone like the the the gamer headset. >> Yeah, the gamer [laughter] >> gamer heads. >> We should we should see if he's a gamer like invite him to a game, >> dude. That would stream stream live. We're just talking about fine tuning.

¶159>> That would be sick. >> Calling hit us up. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> All right, let's now move to is it harmony arguments? >> I think Harmony Arguments are up next.

¶160>> Okay, >> I should probably just double check that. Yeah, double check. >> No, [laughter] it's religious experience. >> Okay. Yeah, we were trying to like go hard and into like this really fancy argument and then maybe bring it back down so that we can >> slow down and the hell.

¶161>> Yes. All right. Religious experience. Yes, I've had some religious experiences. How about you?

¶162>> Wait, you seriously have had cool. I I I think I've had Yeah, like religious experiences, maybe quasi religious experiences, especially involved in the in the conversion. And I talked about these with Trent Horn, which everyone should watch that video with Trent. >> Yes, it well it depends on exactly how we cash out what a religious experience is. But it I I think it's sort of related in my case to the look at the trees stuff, >> which is just this intuitive grasp of the existence of God or some truth about God through some experience.

¶163And so in my case, and this is obviously autobiographical, but so take it for what it is, but when I go to mass, I have an experience every single time that I go where during the Eucharist, the procession of the Eucharist, I think Jesus is really here. Jesus is really here. He's on that altar. And uh it's it's the most beautiful thing in the world. I never want mass to end.

¶164>> Is there some sort of like distinctive like feeling associated with that or phenomenology or is it just like an intellectual thing? It's not just intellectual. There's a when when we transition from the the homaly to >> basically from the liturgy of the word to the liturgy of the Eucharist. >> Yes. Yes.

¶165That transition period I I start to feel like butterflies. >> Mhm. >> And [clears throat] then I'm like, "Oh, here it is. It's coming." And so there there is a sensation of feeling that's involved. I just can't like put words on it.

¶166So it it it kind of feels like, you know, bubble guts, so to speak. [laughter] >> Bubble guts. >> Bubble. [laughter] >> It feels like bubble guts. >> Bubble guts is probably the wrong term.

¶167>> Bubble [laughter] guts. >> It It feels like butterflies in your stomach, I think. So it's it's like an excitement. It's Yeah. It's an excitement and like >> over like a It's It feels like a warm hug, like a love loving experience, but Jesus is here.

¶168Jesus is here. Like this is happening. This is real. This is awesome. >> Yeah.

¶169[snorts] No, I' I've definitely had like at the very least like during my conversion [laughter] during my during my kind of conversion process, I had certain like religious experiences where I just like would just it's hard to describe, but I described this on Trent Horn's podcast, but like I just felt it in waves like you could be a saint. And it wasn't actually verbal, but it was just like this palpable call to saintthood that's really hard to put in words. And it was like it was there was like a like seemingly some sort of like distinctive phenomenology to it was like oh man. and also just like being convicted of my sin at the same time. Um, so >> when was this period?

¶170>> This was happening like I guess in the months leading up to the conversion. >> Okay. So you were still technically agnostic. >> Well, yeah. Like agnosticle leaning theist when this was happening and I was like examining the miraculous case.

¶171>> Okay. >> Um, >> and then like since then I just >> And then God is just whispering in your ears, you could be a saint. [laughter] >> I didn't didn't quite hear it but like somehow I just understood that that was the call, right? um just on like a weird kind of intuitive level. Um and it's just it's like ineffable, right?

¶172These sorts of things just very they're basically impossible to describe. You just have to kind of feel it. >> Yeah. >> Um >> so that was, you know, a gift definitely a grace. >> Um which I'm profoundly grateful.

¶173>> And um and I guess since then it's you know I felt like uh I think what's what is it called like transverberations of the heart or whatever um that some of the mystics talk about. It's not mystical experiences as such, but it's more so just like a swelling of just like >> profound love directed towards God or something like that, you know. Um or just like, you know, I've been saved from like a catastrophe, you know, or just uh it's hard to explain. There's like a cool podcast called um >> what is it? St.

¶174Anony's tongue, [laughter] which is also another cool story. It's like a relic where it's like a I think it was like an incorrupt relic of just like cuz he was a really good preacher and we still have like his oral like uh >> cavity or whatever and like his tongue there. So like we we have St. Anony's tongue like get on this level Protestants like like this like you have objections to relics but like we have St. Anony's tongue like your your your objection is nullified like this is so based like [laughter] [gasps] um so and of course you know all the all the healing miracles that God is like going out of his way to perform in confirmation of saintly uh intercession but we don't need to get into that.

¶175Um, [laughter] you can see I'm passionate. You can see I'm passionate about that. No, we'll talk about to the topic. I've had these sort of trans reverberations of the heart where you just have this like >> almost overwhelming sense of love. Um, >> but um yeah, how to okay, how to rank this argument?

¶176Well, you know, I guess the argument you could put again put it in different ways. There's like a basian version. There's almost a more just like intuitive version where it's like listen uh at least for the people having these experiences, they're presentational. They have a presentational phenomenology or character. They present the world as being a certain way much like sensory experience presents the world as being a certain way or intuitions do that.

¶177So it's kind of like a seeming right the world seems to be a certain way and it's a good methodological and epistemological principle that we're justified in taking the world to be the way it appears in the absence of reasons to doubt that. So um I think like these experiences at least on the people who have them do confer justification. It's a defeasible justification but they do confer justification in that sense. They just are like good grounds for belief at least for the people who have them. Now, of course, there's a question of like whether or not there are defeaters, and you know, we can get into that if we want, but like there's also a basian version where it's like, listen, dude, like news, news flash, like hundreds of millions of people, probably billions of people throughout history have claimed to have experienced the divine in some way, to have like a sensed presence of God or some kind of supernatural reality.

¶178And like just in general, if like billions of people have reported seemingly honestly experiencing someone, we should think that that person exists. It's like if billions of people say that they've seen Fred, right? Like probably Fred exists. So it's like seems like it's like good maybe basian evidence or something like that. Um yeah, I think this is a totally reasonable argument to be honest.

¶179I mean again there are like certain potential defeaters like oh what about like divergent religious experiences and then you can get like well maybe there's actually like a shared kind of core content and people kind of impose different interpretations on their background beliefs or um or maybe like some of them really are like just chocked up to like naturalistic explanations like involving um brain chemistry or other things like that and maybe others aren't um but so we but maybe let's not get into the technical details. I just think it's like a reasonable argument so maybe B tier >> B tier. >> Yeah. I mean like like I said it just it justifies people who have that >> you said that it was really good and then you're putting it in B. Well, it could be A.

¶180Like it's it's like B teetering on A. But like as I said, there are some potential diffusers like you know, naturalists try to offer a certain naturalistic explanations to these private um experiences and you know maybe they give some like handwavy just so story about like oh hyperactive agency detection device or something like um so that like maybe tempers the force to some extent but um I don't know. I do think there's force here. Um, so B maybe, you know, it's like teetering up to A, but you know, I'll keep it in B right now. >> All right.

¶181B tier is >> B tier. It is. Let's break it down. That was a little weird. I can break it down.

¶182[laughter] >> Wow. Did you practice that or? >> Well, I don't know. I've just been able to do this from a young age. So, >> okay.

¶183You were pathetic from that young. Yeah, a pathetic child. In fact, I was indeed a pathetic child. >> All right, let's move on to our next category, which is harmony arguments. Now, this is a really cool category because we're lumping three arguments in together, but it's a really cool category because it's brand new.

¶184>> These are brand new arguments for the existence of God. You're hearing it first on capturing Christianity, >> right? Cutting edge work. It's also the topic of my dissertation. So, I'm very excited to get into these.

¶185Yeah. So, maybe we'll start with psychophysical harmony. So you know listen there are various physical facts about us our size our shape like the rate at which our neurons fire etc right there also lots of facts about our conscious states right so we have this like rich inner life where like we it can taste the sorry I was we can taste chocolate [laughter] I'm just going to restart that I'm keeping this in okay I different things were going through my mind about what you can taste and I was like I don't want to say that um you I could just go with bananas. So, we'll go with bananas. We can we can take the taste of bananas, you know, like the smell of lilacs and like the way that this couch like feels from the inside.

¶186Yeah. The chair, not a couch. >> It's a chair. [laughter] [gasps] [sighs] >> Okay. So, listen, there are various facts about our conscious life.

¶187Now, I claim that it's at least conceivable. It's like we can make coherent sense of the thought that uh there could have been a world which is just like ours down to every last physical detail. So all the particles are arranged in exactly the same way. They move in the same way. Our brains are structured in the same way and the neurons fire in the same way.

¶188But it's dark up here. It's dark inside. There is no conscious experience. There's nothing it's like to be these beings. Instead, they're kind of just like meat robots, right?

¶189They go around and they like again because it's physically indistinguishable from our world. There are like two individuals here and like their mouths are moving and they're like blinking and they're like smiling and whatnot. Uh but there's no actually conscious experience associated with those physical states. That seems at least like a conceivable world. Like I wasn't just talking like nonsense there.

¶190Of course that's that's not true but it's not like we can derive like a contradiction from this world or like it at least makes conceptual sense. Like you understood the string of words that I just gave you. Um, and I claim that we can sort of imagine this world. We can kind of coherently think of it or conceive of it. This world is actually called a Pz zombie world because these beings that are physically indistinguishable from us, but which lack conscious experience, they're called P zombies or philosophical zombies.

¶191So, I claim that a zombie world is at least conceivable. Now, from the get-go, it's already kind of surprising that oh man, like in addition to all the physical facts about us, like man, we we got conscious facts. Like, we got consciousness. Like, wo, that's really striking cuz consciousness seems to enable lots of significant goods like joy and like significant rational agency and meaningful relationships and love and experiences of beauty and whatnot. Okay, but not only can we conceive of a world devoid of consciousness that's physically like ours, but I also think we can make coherent conceptual sense of a world which is physically like ours, but where conscious states are just paired up with the physical world in just radically different ways than than they in fact are.

¶192So we can imagine that you know instead of uh you know this richly structured and orderly conscious experience that I have with like these shapes you know these perceptions of you and whatnot we can imagine a world where beings are physically like us but instead they just experience like chaotic TV static like that's all that's going on here. There's no like meaningful agency that they could develop. there's no like significant knowledge that they have about the world or instead of like a chaotic TV static maybe they could have just their mental lives could have been constituted by let's just say all it is is just like the visual sensation of gray that's literally all they experience or like the t the sensation of tepid bath water or like just go on and on for hordes upon hordes of different conscious states that could have been paired up with the physical states of these beings and so long as these uh alternative psychophysical mappings, these alternative ways of pairing conscious states with physical states are conceivable. Well, it's just really striking that we almost hit the psychophysical jackpot that basically our mental lives are strikingly orderly, coherent, intelligible. They give us a significant degree of knowledge about the world.

¶193They enable rational agency when like it seems like the vast vast vast majority of psychophysical mappings are not like that. Uh and in fact like lots of those psychophysical mappings those pairings are far simpler than the ones we got in the actual world. >> Uh because like you know here's a very simple psychophysical mapping. Um >> every every physical state is just associated with a conscious state of gray you know like a visual sensation of gray >> extremely simple to specify and you know it's not like the the psychophysical mappings or laws which you know describe which conscious states are paired with which physical states. It's not like the psychophysical laws have to take into as input in that kind of world.

¶194They don't have to take into as input like these super complicated like brain structures which are like really difficult to specify in fundamental terms. They're like hugely complex and they give us these like richly structured phenomenal lives conscious lives. Um so like actually under naturalism we would way more expect to get like these far simpler psychophysical mappings or simpler psychophysical laws. So like the fact that our conscious lives are so orderly and coherent and intelligible and they give us they enable knowledge about the world and all these different goods is like really striking and actually really surprising. Um cuz conceivably those conscious states could have been paired with physical states in tons of different ways and very few of those only a tiny sliver of them lead to these coherent orderly intelligible eyes.

¶195I mean, think of it though, the analogy that I like to give is like, you know, if you just come across like a computer screen with a bunch of different pixels, uh, like if it was just like a random chance, uh, what colors the pixels would take on, how often would you get like a coherent, orderly, intelligible image? Almost never, right? So if it was just like a matter of chance which is like a brute fact like basically like which pixels and what kind of phenomenal state or conscious state is associated with which pixels in my kind of my my visual field my mental life almost certainly it would just be like this chaotic jumbled mess. >> Yeah. >> But no we got this rich coherent structured orderly intelligible mental life at least in general and by and large.

¶196>> Mhm. >> And that is insanely surprising under naturalism but nowhere near as surprising under theism. So very strong evidence for theism. I was going to say it might be good to introduce like the concept of normativity because it it really is important for I think that argument it might help the audience sort of understand. >> I actually don't tend to talk about when I'm talking about this with popular uh audiences I don't tend to talk about normative harmony because it's like really difficult to I found that it's really difficult to get people's minds around it where like well you know we could imagine that like an alternative world where you know we experience I can explain it if you want but like it's hard for people to understand.

¶197I I'll talk about it cuz you brought it up. Um we can imagine a world where you know in the actual world we tend to experience pain in response to tissue damage >> and pain tends to lead us to engage in avoidance behavior. >> Yes. >> And we tend to experience pleasure in response to fitness enhancing stimuli. And that pleasure leads us to engage in pursuance behavior.

¶198We tend to pursue things that give us pleasure, you know, like food and sex and whatnot. But conceivably we could have had those hedonic states invert. So conceivably there's like a conceptually possible world in which beings are just like us physically. But whenever we experience pain in the actual world they experience pleasure and whenever we experience pleasure in the actual world they experience pain. So basically in their world pain is actually associated with fitness enhancing stimuli.

¶199the conscious state of pain is associated with fitness-enhancing stimuli and and the conscious state of pain actually leads them um to pursue the relevant like fitness-enhancing things. Uh and in this world the feeling of pleasure is associated with tissue damage and pleasure leads to avoidance behavior. So actually in this world the being still would have been avoiding tissue damage like they they they like you know they bump their toe and then they feel pleasure and that actually leads them to like avoid bumping toes in the future or you know when they put their hand in a flame they feel intense pleasure but just the psychophysical laws are such that pleasure leads them to take away their hand you know uh and you know when they're having sex they're in like excruciating agony but they just keep on going after it. That's cuz that's how the psychophysical laws are are in their world. Um and you know when they eat like a burger they're in excruciating agony.

¶200Um, and just uh this world seems at least conceivable. But there's like notice that this is like a deeply wacky world because like these beings are systematically pursuing states that they have reason to avoid. Not just states that they have reason to avoid cuz you have pain is bad. You have reason to avoid pain, but they're systematically pursuing it. >> And pleasure is good.

¶201We have reason to pursue pleasure. But these beings are systematically avoiding the thing that they've reasoned to pursue. So there's like this deep like irrationality in their behavior. It's like not a normatively appropriate way to behave in response to the conscious state cuz pain gives you a reason to avoid it but they just systematically pursue it. Whereas in the actual world the the physical states and functioning and behavior with which pain is paired are actually the physical states and behavior that pain rationalizes that pain gives us reason to engage in.

¶202So there's a kind of harmony between like the normative facts here and like the descriptive facts of what pain is actually associated with. >> See that version of the argument I think is is just to use the term QED, >> right? And and again like we could have had hedonic inversion like other things could have played that state that wouldn't have resulted in this normatively appropriate match. It could have been like again the sensation of tepid bath water or like a visual presentation of a patch of fuchsia or gray or like any of the infinitely many different shades of gray or like it could have been like a you know the the smell of plastic or the taste of plastic or like any of like the hordes of different conceivable conscious states uh could have played these roles but no we landed again on the psychophysical jackpot. The ones that actually make like normative sense the ones that are actually rational.

¶203Yes. And so >> yes, >> I really do think that it's a pretty like it's a very powerful argument. This argument from psychophysical harmony. So it's basically also you can think of it like a psychophysical fine-tuning argument because like among all the different conceivable ways that you could associate conscious states with physical states only the tiniest sliver actually lead to coherent, orderly, intelligible, normatively appropriate mental life in relation to the physical facts and behavior. Um and in fact again like the simplest psychophysical laws seem to be disharmonious.

¶204they seem to lead to like this uh the contemptably simple mental lives that don't have any of the profound goods that we have. >> So I think this is like an extremely powerful argument and I think the other harmony arguments are super powerful as well. So I can just briefly mention them if you want. >> Yeah, let's do that. >> Um so there is this uh other harmony argument from nomological harmony.

¶205>> Fancy word for just what laws of nature. >> Yeah. Well nomogical just like nomos or nomoi means like laws I think. Um so um but like let me step back. Harmony problems in general like the the phenomenon here is just that there seem to be like at least conceptually distinct facts uh or assets of like facets of reality which kind of >> coincidentally align in really fortunate ways that call out for explanation.

¶206>> Yeah. >> So that's like the general like kind of harmony gist kind of problem. Um, and theism naturally explains them because like theism naturally explains things that are like super striking and fortunate and coincidental and which enable lots of profound goods. Um, and it's like you know you're very likely to be sniped by these arguments if you think that like theism can kind of explain those sorts of data. Uh, so and of course I was sniped by the arguments unfortunately.

¶207Fortunately actually sorry I said unfortunately but at the time I thought it was unfortunate when I was like oh no maybe theism is true, maybe Catholicism is true but now it's beautiful. So um, no but anyway let's get back to nomological harmony. So nomological harmony the fact of nomological harmony is the fact that the fundamental laws of nature actually match or apply to the contents of the universe so as to result in you know the universe evolving forward in time. So we have these initial conditions maybe they feature like mass and charge and the laws actually talk about mass and charge. They say how mass and charge are to behave.

¶208Conceivably though, the laws of nature might have only said like schmass and schmarge behave in certain ways where schmass and schmarge are just like distinct physical properties that are nowhere to be found in the initial conditions. And if so, if the laws of nature had talked about schmass and smarge instead of mass and charge, well then there would have been like a mismatch between the laws of nature and the contents of the universe and the universe just wouldn't have evolved forward through time. The initial conditions just would have existed still born. They wouldn't have evolved forward and thereby enabled lots of profound goods. Um, so actually when you think of it, there are like infinitely many different conceivable like fundamental physical properties.

¶209So it's just kind of like crazy that the ones that the laws of nature talk about actually feature in the initial conditions. You might think it's kind of like, you know, think about all the possible like rule books for like games and like um game pieces, right? Like if you just like took a rule book at random and you took game pieces at random, what's the probability that the rule book would actually talk about those precise game pieces? Really unlikely, right? Like it'd be really unlikely if just randomized which rule book you have like uh you got like the rule book for go and monopoly and like all these different sorts of games.

¶210Uh and you got like the board pieces for like Sorry and Monopoly and checkers and chess and all this stuff. Yeah. And risk and like all these different games. If you just picked a rulebook and a game board at random, it'd be pretty striking that like the rulebook actually matches the game pieces and tells them how to behave. Yeah.

¶211You could have had a mismatch there. And so just as like we would infer like design if like there's a rule book and it actually matches the game pieces given all the if you had uh if you considered all the different possible combinations um so too we should infer the same thing in the case of the universe. So the thought goes >> harmony. >> No loical harmony. >> So much harmony.

¶212>> I know indeed it's a harmonious world. Harmony and me really good company. Have you heard that song? >> No, I don't I don't want to hear any more of it from you. >> Okay.

¶213I'm not the best singer. So >> I uh that was really mean. [laughter] It sounded It sounded like funny in my head and then I said it out loud and I was like >> as I was saying it I was like this mean [laughter] >> it's funny because it's true. Um okay. Then the final kind of harmony is like the secret sauce harmony again that um I've got in the works um that'll that will be part of my dissertation.

¶214I did a video with the analytic Christian, Jordan Hampton. Excellent channel. Uh, highly recommend. The best channel, believe me, folks. Um, [laughter and gasps] no, I don't quite like that Jordan character.

¶215Um, so I, uh, I talked with him about this argument and like it's basically if nomical harmony and psychophysical harmony got together and had a baby, that's psychonomic harmony. So like why do these psychophysical laws actually match the contents of the universe? Cuz like the psychophysical laws might have specified that like conscious states are associated with schmass and schmarge and or they might have specified that you need a certain degree of like integrated information or like complex uh brain structures which are just like more complex than any brain structures that ever actually come to exist. Right? So maybe you need like a galaxy sized brain.

¶216Now as much as you'd like to think you have one of those Cameron like unfortunately you don't. [laughter] But like in the psychized >> psychophysical law they easily could have specified that like that's the sort of complexity that you need to harbor consciousness. So it's and and if you actually again you start to think about it, you start to think of all the ways in which you could have had mismatches between the psychophysical laws and like the contents of the universe. And it's just crazy. So that's the other harmony problem.

¶217It's called psychonomic harmony. >> Harmony. Psychonomic. >> Yes. >> All right.

¶218Where are we placing these harmony arguments on our tier list? On your tier list? >> My tier list. I think these are incredibly powerful arguments. So harmony arguments are going to go S tier, baby.

¶219>> S tier. >> S tier indeed. Yes. >> Yes. What do we have in S tier?

¶220>> We have got fine-tuning right now and psycho. Oh, sorry. Fine-tuning and harmony problems. >> Harmony problems. Okay.

¶221S tier. All right. What's our next one? Is it the argument from desire? >> Indeed.

¶222It is the argument from desire. Well, okay. So, there are like a few ways that you could go with articulating the argument from desire. One is well, hey, like look around. Most of our desires seem like their objects are satisfied.

¶223Like, you know, I desire food. There is such a thing as food. You know, I desire sex. There is such a thing as sex. I desire water.

¶224There is such a thing as water. I desire a family. I desire puppies. You know, generally speaking, our desires have their objects. Oh, and here's another thing.

¶225I desire like, you know, like to live forever. I desire lots of us want like a relation like a deeply loving relationship with like a perfect being like God, you know? Um, and so if and like I think maybe perhaps more widespread is like that desire to live forever, you know, like the fear of death and whatnot. Um, >> and so like at least if in general our desires, their objects are satisfied, then maybe we can just like inductively generalize and think that okay, probably this desire for eternal life is also satisfied. And of course, you know, that's not really possible under naturalism, you might think.

¶226Uh, and so maybe only theism provides the kind of best account of how you could have a, you know, an eternal afterlife or something. >> Um, so that's like an inductive version. There's also another version where it's like you might think that like I don't know, a lot of people have this experience where just like we're just like deeply unsatisfied without God. You know, there's like a God-shaped hole in us. >> Um, >> like you know, I was watching this one recent interview on Matt Frad's channel, like really good interview with like the founder of um, >> ELF.

¶227>> ELF. Yeah, really good. Uh, and he's like this multi-millionaire and he's got like he's just got it all, you know? He's got tons of like c he's in Hollywood. He's got tons of celebrities at his house.

¶228He's got this gigantic house. He has these like cars that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, like multiple of them. He's got Yeah. like a huge estate. He's got he's like a multi-millionaire at the at least multi-millionaire.

¶229And like he just describes like just, you know, at one of these parties he's just like, "I've got everything, but I'm so empty. like these temporal goods, they just don't do it. They just don't cut it. Like there's some deeper kind of craving in here, you know? I I think a lot of people experience that.

¶230Yeah. >> Um >> and at least if a lot of people experience that, you might just think like, >> okay, that's a datim. What explains that datim? Why are we just like so fundamentally unsatisfied? Even when we've got everything going for us, like health, a good like family, say, like friends all around us, we've got all the money in the world, we got all the comforts that we could possibly want.

¶231Why are we still oftentimes so deeply unsatisfied in that case? And well, one one potential explanation you might think is plausible is like, well, if God exists, maybe it wouldn't be so surprising that like he created us for union with him. So that we really would be like at at our core kind of fundamentally dissatisfied even if we don't notice it. >> Um, but you know, maybe we'll have some certain moments where it's just brought out that like fundamentally we're not fulfilled without God. Um, and if if there are lots of experiences like that, as seems to be the case, there are lots of testimonies to that.

¶232Um, maybe theism best explains that. Uh, you know, you might think that's like a a very weird sort of desire for like evolution to like throw up um to like burp out or like for like just like a coincidental naturalistic process to lead to. Um, but you know, maybe you can try to profer certain naturalistic explanations, you know, like, oh, you know, that's just meant to get us not to end our lives, for instance, you know, like you got to have some kind of hope or something, you know, or you got to like we got to keep on that kind of like hedonic treadmill where we're just constantly unsatisfied so that we keep going and we don't just like stop and just like stop having sex and whatnot and eating food. Um, but I don't know, maybe when you when you like when you really experience this dissatisfaction, you like it's almost like a these explanations you might just think are like shallow. You might you might think [clears throat] um Yeah.

¶233I don't know if you have anything to say about this argument. >> No, I was I was laughing at something you said and did earlier. >> Um, no, [clears throat] I think I think the second way that you formulated it is I think pretty strong. >> Yeah, I think the first way is really weak. So I my only thought is like the the second way that you formulated it makes me want to put it, you know, in my in my if if this were my tier list, I would probably put it in maybe B tier.

¶234>> Oh wow. Okay, that's pretty high. >> Where do you put it? >> Well, okay. Like the inductive version is probably like I don't know, maybe like E tier or something.

¶235>> Yeah. Uh just cuz like you know we have lots of desires that are satisfied but like also we have lots of desires like that are maximalized desires where it's like yeah I not only desire sex but like perfect sex or like the best sex and I don't I not only desire like a wife but like the best wife and I don't not only desire kids but like the best kids. I not only desire food but like the best food or like perfect food. But like it seems like those are like kind of systematically dissatisfied, right? So like these sort of maximalized desires you might think are just like there's like a further fact about the kind of desire that we're talking about like endless life as opposed to just life.

¶236Um there's a certain fact about that kind of desire that makes it relevantly different from other sorts of desires and which like the evidence like the inductive evidence base is much weaker. So I would actually probably put that like inductive version far lower like it probably be e but I don't know maybe there's more basian version maybe it depends on how widespread these experiences are. Maybe it depends on like how I haven't actually sat down to look at the naturalistic explanations and how good they are. So there's a little bit of like a cloud of unknowing around this argument for me. Um some plausibility, but I don't know C D something like that.

¶237It's just like not among the most forceful to my mind. >> We got to put it somewhere. We got to put harmony arguments like religious experience. I think religious experience is probably more powerful than this just cuz it see maybe it's more widespread and it's also like much more like >> some people really have just like detailed like religious experiences of like Christ coming and visiting them and like saying like really fortunate like things that like would be like really hard for like a brain process to just burp up and get right you know um and then sometimes they're associated with like objective phenomena which we'll get to later u but so I I think this is less powerful than religious experience I'm I'm still going to go with maybe D. I'm going to probably put it in D.

¶238Uh C or D. D plus C minus or D plus D plus. It's D. It's D. It's D.

¶239>> Okay. D. All right. D it. Our next argument is contingency.

¶240And this one has a very special place in my heart because it was when I first encountered the work of none other than one Josh Rasmusen. Josh, we love you. We love you. I'm not doing a heart right. He was like >> I'm like, [laughter] "Yeah." No, Josh.

¶241Josh is like just a beautiful person. And his work on the contingency argument is beautiful. He's developed it. He's developed this really cool argument from dependency and stuff and it's just it's super cool. And so I, as much as personally I would love to put this one in S tier, I think I I don't know that I can anymore, we'll talk about yours.

¶242Uh but but yeah, give give us a a quick rundown of this argument and then maybe any updates that you're aware of that have been made to it recently. >> Yeah. So there are so many different versions of the contingency argument. They're like modal contingency arguments and they're different formulations of the contingency argument itself. So, but like a plain vanilla version is like, hey, there are contingent things.

¶243Things that could have failed to exist. Things that exist, but they don't have to exist. Like, you know, you or me. Like, I didn't have to exist. My parents had never met, I wouldn't be around.

¶244So, there are lots of things that like don't have to exist. Um, in the way that like 1 plus 1 has to equal two. That's like a necessary fact. Um, now contingent things both individually and plurally seem like they have explanations. It's like everywhere in our experience when we look we find when there's a contingent thing it has an explanation.

¶245Like basically everything in this room is contingent. Everything in this room has an explanation. And there's not only an explanation of like any particular individual contingent thing but also like collections of contingent things. Like if you just came across uh just like a collection of I don't know like shiny orbs in the forest. Like you wouldn't take seriously that like oh those either just came into existence with no explanation or they just sort of you know existed eternally for no explanation whatsoever.

¶246like no like there's some sort of deeper account for why there is this collection of orbs there. Um so like you might find it intuitively plausible that contingent things individually and plurally have explanations. It's abundantly confirmed in our everyday experience. You might think if you deny that principle then you might get into some implausibly skeptical results that like Rob Coons and and you know Alexander Puce have published on. Um so like we might think that like you know it seems pretty plausible that contingent things have explanations.

¶247We now consider the you know collection of all contingent things uh per our principle that we just gave that explanatory principle that has an explanation. But of course the explanation can't be in terms of anything contingent because contingent things are parts of the very explanation that we're seeking is part of the very thing that we're seeking an explanation of. Right? We're trying to we're trying to ask why there are any of those contingent things at all in the first place. So you can't appeal to one of those contingent things.

¶248That would be a circular explanation. And so the thought is because contingent things have explanations and no contingent thing can explain the fact that there are any contingent things at all. um you know the collection of all condition things uh we have to appeal to some necessary thing. So and then that's like the first stage of the argument and then there comes a second stage where we try to at least identify certain you know religiously [clears throat] significant attributes that this necessary thing would have. Um so maybe you know seems like far simpler to posit one of them like why posit like 17 that seems kind of like arbitrary and we don't need 17 to explain the data.

¶249You might think we only need one. >> So it's far simpler to posit just one. Seems like we could explain the data with just one. Um you might think that like you know maybe there's some at least some pressure to think that this uh thing is like unlimited because you might think that like limits like arbitrary precise degreed values of various properties like maybe call out for some deeper explanation. But here we're talking about like the ultimate fundamental nature of reality.

¶250Um so it couldn't have some deeper explanation and if limits call out for some deeper explanation then this thing would have to be unlimited you might think. Um >> so there are you know lots of moves that people try to make here. >> Yeah. [clears throat] What do you think about the move? And this this move probably already exists, but it just occurred to me.

¶251So, just point out if I'm if if this is not a new thought, but the thought is if this necessary thing exists, it exists in every possible world. And that necessary thing would therefore be an explanation for all contingent reality in each possible world that you're looking at. And that just [clears throat] seems to to be pretty close to omnipotence because the thing is is supposed to explain all the contingent things in that universe or in that world. >> If we first establish there's only one of them, right? Cuz if there are like if there are seven of them, then one this guy might explain it in this world and then number two might explain it in the other world.

¶252So if if we have in the background, >> the collection would be omnipotent. >> Okay. Yeah. You >> the collection of of >> Yeah. They like plurally instantiate.

¶253Yes. >> Uh omnipotent. That's interesting. Um, you would also have to necessitate the explanatory version, the explanatory principle that I gave. So earlier I just gave it into like in the actual world, you know, contig things have explanations.

¶254You'd have to say necessarily contig things have explanations. That's a little bit less modest, but still I think very plausible. Um, but yeah, if you have that necessitated version of the explanatory principle um, and at the very least, if we're agnostic on the number of necessary foundation like foundational things, then yeah, plurally they would they could directly or indirectly realize any possible state of affairs. And you might think like okay that's not quite the definition of omnipotence but like it's significant evidence for omnipotence if something can like actualize any possible state of affairs >> right. >> Uh so like I do think >> possible contingent state of affairs I suppose.

¶255>> Well yeah I mean they would just by by virtue of just like existing would actualize any necessary state of affairs like them existing. >> Yes. So like yeah basically any possible reality that could be brought about they together could bring it about. >> Mhm. And that that's at least really good evidence for omnipotence.

¶256>> Yeah, I think if we precisely analyze omnipotence that's not going to be sufficient, but like it's certainly necessary, you might think. And like it's going to go a lot of the way there. So like we have just gotten significant evidential confirmation that there is like a necessary ultimate ground or explanation of contingency which is omnipotent. Like we have a lot of evidence that >> extremely powerful, >> right? Exactly.

¶257[laughter] So yeah, I mean I think that's like a reasonable approach. Um and there are other reasonable approaches to stage two. uh this kind of stage where we try to identify this necessary foundation with God. >> Um so yeah, I think it's like a it's like a reasonably forceful argument. >> Yeah.

¶258Yeah. Where would you put the contingency in your thinking? >> Yeah. So I mean like my more recent thinking is like you know okay it's not it's not like harmony level um kind of argument. Um cuz like you know metaphysics is difficult people or fine-tuning you know like um >> so I think those are more powerful than the argument but it's still a pretty good argument.

¶259So, I'm going A tier. >> A tier. >> A tier it is. I think it's a good argument. >> Yeah.

¶260Yeah. I think that's where I would put it, too. I'd put it in a tier. >> And fine-tuning would would definitely be above >> Yeah. >> contingency, even though >> they're they're both good arguments.

¶261>> Absolutely. >> Sorry, I just burped. >> And they're both I mean, as as I was as we were alluding to, they're both even like collections of arguments, right? Cuz finetuning there's like Robin Collins's stuff on fine tuning for discoverability. And then I gave the one about like opiori finetuning and then there's like the constants and then the contingency.

¶262There's like modal contingency arguments and like the contingency argument that I gave and like various others. So lots [snorts] of arguments. [laughter] >> We got lots of arguments. Lots >> got the best arguments. [laughter] >> They're send >> everybody tells me I've got the best arguments.

¶263>> The atheists they're sending us their worst. [laughter] >> Okay. Toistic cause arguments. these roughly I mean they all share a kind of similar structure there are so many different arguments here so it's kind of unfair to kind of group them into one category but you know the general structure is like hey there's some kind of category or class of entities out there either you know changeable things or contingent things sometimes those are loop looped in uh composite things things whose essence what they are is distinct from their existence um you know the fact that they exist um so like there's this class of things which require sustaining causes, something that sort of like keeps them in existence at any moment at which they exist. Uh so like you know changeable things, composite things, things in which essence and existence are distinct.

¶264They require some kind of outside explanation for why they exist at all. And moreover, they require some kind of like outside sustaining cause for why they exist at any given moment. And so then we have this further premise that there can't be like infinitely descending chains of ever more fundamental things which like sustain something in existence cuz you're sort of like >> sustaining causation is like where you're sort of like purely deriving your existence from without. And you know a lot of people think like you can't just have like an infinite chain of derivatively existing things. Like there's like nowhere from which you can derive it, right?

¶265So like none of these guys even have any power to impart existence to this guy without something like that has kind of builtin existence that kind of exists of itself, right? Like it's almost as if you had like if I gave you an IOU that for $20 that doesn't have any value in itself, right? That derives its value from without. It's like just like a message. Well, you come to me like, "Okay, Joe, I want I want to, you know, cash this in for 20 bucks." I'm like, "Okay, yeah, but like that was itself based on a further IOU." So, I consulted that other I go to another dude.

¶266He's like, "Okay, that itself was based on another IOU." And then if that just goes on infinitely without someone actually having like 20 bucks, you're not you don't actually have 20 bucks, right? >> Yeah. >> So you actually got a kind of explanatory collapse. Um and similarly, if someone like if one thing's existence is like purely derivative from without in much the way that an IOU's value is purely derivative from without um then it seems like you can't have a an infinite chain of um just like things which purely derive the relevant feature from without. I you need some kind of source uh outside of the chain, some kind of primary member which sustains them all and sort of accounts for them having the relevant feature.

¶267>> Now you're you're not the biggest fan of timistic style arguments. >> Yeah. I mean let me just complete it. So >> okay. Okay.

¶268Okay. >> Um so like you know changeable things, contingent things, composite things, things in which essence and existence are distinct. They require sustaining causes. Sustaining causes can't proceed at infinite item. You need to get to some primary member.

¶269Well, since that thing is uncaused um because it's first in the chain um it can't be a contingent thing or a composite thing or a changeable thing or a thing in which essence and existence are distinct because again those require causes um and so this thing we get something which is so the thought goes you know like unchangeable uh absolutely simple something in which essence and existence are identical necessary etc etc right I just spit on your microphone [laughter] it's like literally see the spit So, >> okay. Thanks, Joe. [laughter] I'm going to have to sanitize that. >> Yes. [sighs] >> Oh.

¶270Uh, is it my turn? You [laughter] >> Well, listen. In the past, I've been a critic of these arguments. I mean, listen, now I have lots of like higher order evidence that like maybe I've just gone wrong somewhere because like, you know, I thought like Aquinus was wrong about a lot of things, but no, it turns out he was right about a lot of the things I thought he was dead wrong about. Uh, and he's just like a towering intellect.

¶271He could utterly mog me in into a dispute, right? um probably has like 200 IQ or something. So um and that completely like dwarfs our you know meager IQs compared to his. So like [laughter] um so I got like actually higher order evidence that these arguments succeed. And there are actually like new and interesting like renovations of these arguments that people like um Rob Coons and Daniel Bonav are working on right now.

¶272They actually have a book that's coming out sometime really soon with Word on Fire Academic. It's like 600 pages on like just like renovated versions of the five ways using like contemporary metaphysics and like um you know modality and S5 logic and various other things like really cool stuff. I gave them some comments on like half of an earlier draft of their book and um I'm actually going to be at like a conference coming up where I I commentate on um or at least this is tentatively planned where I commentate on one of the chapters. So um you know there may very well be some interesting things here in the vicinity. Uh, I mean, I'm probably going to rank it lowly just because like I haven't been convinced yet and I think that there are some like at the very least like dialectical issues with convincing non-theists with these arguments.

¶273Um, which again it's not a matter of like these arguments fail necessarily. It's just that compared to the the other arguments that we've already discussed, the other ones are just a bit stronger. >> Right. And and that's also the thing which is like a lot of these arguments like you just need like a dozen premises or sometimes like 50 um where like you know you basically almost need to like solve metaphysics before getting into the arguments like you know it's like oh man but this premise is like okay like things are like a hyamorphic compound and then where we're positing like we're just like settling all these like really controversial first order disputes in metaphysics like okay existence is like a first order property which serves a particular theoretical role. Um, so we have to like rule out all the other views of existence and there are like maybe even like dozens of those and then you got to talk about like essence and then you got to talk about like all the other views of essence and then you got to get on to like like there is a like hefty metaphysical backdrop and I'm not saying here that that metaphysical backdrop is false just in terms of like the dialectical efficacy of the arguments.

¶274It's like there's a lot that you got to kind of solve first and get on board with before you're sort of in a position to accept the argument. And you know >> props to the defenders of the these arguments they roll up their sleeves and they try to motivate the metaphysics, right? Um, but I do think that just like hampers their dialectical efficacy. Um, and if you're not sort of convinced on independent philosophical grounds, as I wasn't for at least a very long time, um, you're going to be apt to rank them relatively lowly. So, for that reason, like I especially in comparison to the other arguments, like I'd be inclined to rank these pretty lowly.

¶275So maybe something like, you know, D or something like that, >> right? There's not as many commitments for some of these other arguments that you've got to run through. And I mean, similar to the argument from beauty, like if you're going to go the objective beauty route, you got to establish that first. >> And like again, there's objective Yeah. And I said that there's objective beauty, but like in terms of like the persuasive force of the argument, it's like it's like another commitment.

¶276It's just going to it's it's not >> it makes it more complex to to convince somebody. >> Right. Exactly. >> So where where do you put this one? >> D probably >> D.

¶277Okay. and you know the higher order evidence that I have together with the fact that there are some renovated versions which might work would maybe want me to push it up but just like currently it's in relation to the other arguments that we've considered maybe D um >> but you know like I haven't actually read the the like the finished draft and like actually like so firstly I only commented on like half of the Coons and Bonavac book um and that was like a an earlier rough draft so like they've they take probably taken into account my comments and there's also this other half of the book that I haven't read. So like who knows maybe after I read this I'll be like whoa there's actually a lot more to these arguments and like when I was commentating on it like sure I had criticisms but I'm like huh I've never thought of Aquinus's ways in that in that light and they seem like you know more plausible than the arguments that I had published on and criticized. So I'm like hm so you know maybe that would lead me to put this in CT or something but you know >> I said D first we'll just put in D. >> Okay fair enough.

¶278>> And again we're just putting talking about the whole category of these things. So like there are arguments for motion and like various other things in this list. >> Right. Right. We just don't have time to go into all the details on everything.

¶279>> Oh, is it? >> So next one is intelligent design if I remember correctly. Intelligent design. We'll talk about and I think we've got two more categories after >> intelligent design ontological arguments. Zen miracles >> zento miracles.

¶280Uh intelligent design is an argument from we're we're sticking to biology in this one, right? >> I think so. Yeah. Yeah. So, biology the the complexity.

¶281Look at your hand. Look at the eyeball. The eyeball couldn't have been developed. Uh you like what would what [laughter] would have had to happen at first, right? I mean, you you get like this what a sensation on the top of a the head of some creature that can like sense light and darkness.

¶282And then what happens next? Like what's the next step? And how does this evolve over over the course of millions of years to the point where we have these like super crazy, >> you know, >> intricate eyes. >> Yeah. Intricate eyes that that have retina and uh >> parts sort of coordinating to serve some kind of like integrated function and >> Yeah.

¶283>> Right. You get the point. >> Yeah. Um, >> so yeah, I mean, and I know that there are there are more sophisticated versions of this from people like Steven Meyer and >> what's what's the other guy's name? I can't think of his name.

¶284>> Well, there's Jonathan Mlache. >> Jonathan Mlache is is a really big one. >> I mean, there's like Michael Beehe if you're thinking >> Beehe Beehey is who I'm thinking. Demky. >> Yeah.

¶285So, and they have, you know, the fleellum and and how it never could have evolved on its own. And so, yeah, but where where do you rank? I mean, we don't need to spend a ton of time on this. >> Yeah, because I I haven't studied this in significant depth. I just sort of have to go on some like I don't know like some higher order evidence.

¶286It seems to me that like uh these are like relatively minority views that the like the intelligent design type things among like biologists and like professionals on the topic. So, as a kind of outsider to the disputes, I sort of just have like a defeasible presumption in favor of like what like the majority of the scholars say. Um, and it's very defeasible, right? Like if I looked into the first order evidence and maybe I could be convinced otherwise but um not being >> just like atheist scholars right it's like Christians who are also pushing against >> Catholics yeah who are criticizing the intelligent design movement um so as an outsider I sort of look at the field and it like seems like at least in general the field is against the intelligent design peeps um uh and but having said that like I've I've watched some lectures and stuff from Steven Meyer and I'm like this sounds kind interesting. You know, you're talking about the the the information and DNA and stuff like it's >> pretty interesting.

¶287>> Yeah. And I mean like I have friends whose intellects I respect like immensely and who actually have like seriously delved into this and they're like no Joe there is a lot more to what they're saying than you think. >> Yeah. >> I don't know. When I was younger and I was really interested in evolutionary biology, I did kind of look into at least like I fored into some of the disputes and I kind of landed on the non-intelligent design side and I just haven't really consulted it since.

¶288So like I haven't really researched this much and maybe I'm not really even thereby positioned. I again like my my my my view here is I sort of just like very defeasibly kind of go kind I lean towards what like the majority of the scholars seem to be saying. Um and that's at least they seem to be inclining against intelligent design and >> but it does still seem like there's there's quite a barrier for the the sort of dialectical force of this one to the average person and like understanding how supposed to work. >> Yeah. Yeah.

¶289and all the all the numbers. So like the dialectical efficacy and then also like for the the the the non-professionals, the lay people who in in relation to this field, I'm one of those like again like I just got to kind of go on these higher order considerations like what the majority of scholars are kind of saying. So it just limits the dialectical efficacy and I'm not really in a position to examine the first order disputes um with my own puny intellect right now. Um, so that all just like inclines me to to rank it kind of lowly and it really hasn't influenced me at all and it's not really dialectically effective and well for the reasons that we gave. >> There might just be better arguments like even just the argument from contingency >> might just be a much better way to to go about arguing for the existence of God.

¶290Yeah. I mean it science and stuff is fun and cool and biology is cool and chemistry is cool and stuff but like yeah at the end of the day if you can just run an argument from look at the stuff that's in in the world that is contingent put it all together what it's got to have some explanation that thing has to be non-conting it's got to be necessary and it's like it's it's a very simple way >> and this also contrasts with fine tuning where like actually that's like really standard science that like no really like things are balanced on a knife's edge like in general. Uh it's not like it's not like absolutely every single cuz like you know you're never going to find like well you're very rarely going to find unanimous consensus but like this is actually like a pretty respectable findings that we're talking about in the case of fine-tuning. Um whereas uh the the kind of scholarly kind of distribution of expert opinion uh is different as I understand it in the case of intelligent design. So for that reason like I'm inclined to rank it lowly uh like B well probably E tier actually um Okay.

¶291>> Yeah. I mean, it's just >> your non-informed take on [laughter] on the intelligence >> and you know, you bring in maybe you know, you bring in Jonathan Mlache and he'll just like hear all these facts and I'll just be like, I don't know, dude. I don't know how to respond to them, but like I'm not really in a position and you know, I can bring in another scholar and he'd be like back at you and I'd be like, I don't know, it's versus. And I'm like, [laughter] it doesn't compute in his taint puny brain. So, I'm just [gasps] >> that's kind of how I feel.

¶292>> Okay. All right. Let's move on to let's move on to ontological. So this this category of argument is one that you have a a lovehate relationship with [laughter] to put it to put it lightly. >> Yes.

¶293I mean these are fascinating arguments >> and that's why you love them. >> Yeah. Cuz because you can learn so much just by examining the philosophy. Like you genuinely just learn how to do philosophy. You cut your critical teeth by examining the arguments.

¶294Uh and for that reason I think >> they're just so fun and like there's a brilliance and a genius to them kind of. In my experience, like I went from thinking like it's a it's a toy argument, doesn't do anything to thinking, oh, it's a terrible argument, there there's like really good objections, then back to thinking that it was a good argument, then back to thinking it's not a very good argument. So, like in my own journey, I've had like this roller coaster experience of like, yeah, this is an amazing argument. No, it's terrible. Uh actually it's there's something to it.

¶295It's like I don't know if you've had that experience too, but there there's something interesting about this >> the fact sit from the armchair >> and just like think about possibility or necessity or God's nature or something and then like just like derive that God exists. >> I like that prospect. It sounds pretty cool. >> Well, so let's let's get a basic form of the argument. >> Yeah, two versions maybe that we could just put on the table.

¶296One is just Anselms and then the other is just like a modal ontological argument. >> Yeah, >> I can be relatively brief with these. So, um, Anselms ontological argument, Anselm basically just says, hey, like what is God? God is a being than which none greater can be conceived. Okay, suppose for reductio that God does not exist.

¶297Well, then I can conceive of a being greater than God, namely one just like God, but which exists. That seems better. You know, you can actually make a difference to the world and like you actually have the features in reality. You're like actually omnipotent in the real world. Um, that seems better.

¶298But hold on a second. That just means I conceived of a being greater than a being which none greater can be conceived. And of course, you can't conceive of a being greater than a being than which none greater can be conceived. Right. So we reach a kind of contradiction from the initial assumption that that God doesn't exist.

¶299So God must exist. That's the argument. >> QD I suppose. [laughter] >> Yeah. So so Anelm developed that one.

¶300And then there have been you know perfect islands and there's there's various objections that have been posed >> objection and like you know it seems to treat existence as a predicate and some people disagree with that and then you know some people think that he's uh like that that value comparison might be mistaken because like when we're comparing the value of beings it seems like we have to compare the value of the beings that they would have if they were to exist because there are no non-existent beings. So like a lot of people think that um >> either his premise there is false or he's relying on some kind of like weird minutongian view or like quasi my nongian view. So my nong was a philosopher who thought that like there are some like non-existent entities that like they have being in some sense but they don't really exist. Um but there are such things but they don't exist. Kind of like a weird odd an odd view.

¶301Um, and so some people think that like Ansom is committed to that with this sort of argument and you know controversial metaphysics kind of weird you know some parody objections make people think that maybe this goes wrong somewhere. Um, and then yeah for for lots of these reasons like there's been new developments on the ontological argument. Though there are other versions that we're not going to mention, but one version that we will mention is the modal ontological argument, which basically just says, well, hey, it's metaphysically possible that God exists. There's some comprehensive way that reality really could be such that God exists. The second premise is that, well, listen, like because God, if he were to exist, would be a necessary being.

¶302Um, he'd either exist in all possible worlds or none. Uh, well, if he's possible, then he exists in some possible world. So, he doesn't exist in none. And so he exists in all possible worlds for that second premise, >> including the actual. >> Including the actual indeed.

¶303>> It would have to be actual >> because the actual is a possible world. >> Exactly. That the someone someone made that uh error recently and I was like so ready to correct him and I was like ah it's just not the right time [laughter] cuz they're like if it's possible it's you know I don't know. Anyways, uh >> yeah, and I guess like you know, of course, everyone knows that well apparently everyone not everyone knows. Uh the biggest objection to this argument is like you could just get like a symmetrical argument.

¶304>> Yes. Which is the reverse it's metaphysically possible that God doesn't exist. >> Uh you might think um like at the very least that claim doesn't seem like less justified than the initial claim that it's metaphysically possible that God does exist. So there's a kind of like episcy here. Uh and then if it's metaphysically possible that God doesn't exist, then he doesn't exist in all possible worlds.

¶305And so he has to exist in none by the original argument. Um so you just get this like seemingly parallel symmetric argument which gets an incompatible conclusion. And I actually think that like listen just in terms of these arguments themselves without trying to give like a symmetry breaker which like motivates one of these possibility premises over and against the other. Like the argument is just dead. It's QED.

¶306Like this has just been decisively refuted. goes like the argument itself possibly God exists that doesn't give you any reason to accept that premise over and against possibly God doesn't exist that argument itself is just it's utterly impotent to like to motivate its conclusion in the face of the symmetry problem you need to get some kind of symmetry breaker but then like I don't know >> but then why not just use that other symmetry breaker as your argument for the existence of God >> right and then just like yeah just like add another premise well okay god possibly exists so therefore he actually exists with for like S5 reasons or whatever >> um >> so like the the modal onlogical argument in and of itself that argument that like possibly God exists and uh and I've given a simplified version, but I just think that's like completely dead and there's no like there's no hope. Like it's it's just a QED like it's gone. >> Do you do you think that it's like F tier then? >> Oh, um >> is it as bad as a banana argument?

¶307>> I mean, yeah, kind of. But I mean, but like okay, there are like certain classificatory issues here where it's like, well, maybe you could say that it's like, listen, it's part of the modal ontological argument that like maybe you could just find it more plausible intuitively that possibly God exists than not or like maybe you could just like somehow classify as part of the modal ontological argument a particular symmetry breaker like the the kind that I was talking about earlier. >> Yeah. >> So, if you allow that classificatory move, then of course it's not going to be F tier. But like if you don't include that, then yeah, it's Ftier for me.

¶308>> F tier. total argument. I mean, Anel is >> right. >> I don't know. I mean, you know, I think Brian left was doing some really interesting work like renovating like a version of Anselm's argument.

¶309Um, and like trying to say like, yeah, like at the very least if you spot some like actually like reasonable metaphysics, then the argument can get up and running. >> Um, so he's got this book like Anselm's argument and I think he's got another one. Um, [snorts] >> to me, I'm just kind of like why would you want to do that? Like there's so many good arguments for the existence of God. >> Like why are you trying to resurrect this?

¶310>> I don't know. It'd be pretty cool if we had an operate demonstration of God's existence cuz then like you might think that like that could afford some kind of like explanation for why God exists. >> But would it be a demonstration? Like it depends on what what's meant by demonstration. >> That's true.

¶311That's true. But anyway, I I also don't think Anselm's argument succeeds. So yeah, >> but I don't think it's like as bad as >> uh the modal ontological argument cuz that one's just like totally QED whereas maybe with like anelome like maybe you can pinpoint some like relevant disalogy that people tried to pinpoint with like the perfect island and perfect test score and like parody arguments and then maybe you can actually like motivate minongianism. There are minongians and people motivate it. Um and maybe you can like you know you can finesse things.

¶312I mean again I don't think it's a particularly possible argument so like I'd probably put it E tier but it's not F. >> Yeah. So, Anselm is E and then modal is F. >> Okay, we've come to our last category, which is in my opinion the most exciting category, miracles. And another thing that's kind of like wonky about this one is that there's just so many.

¶313Like we talked about the harmony arguments. We we listed out three. Uh this one there's like what millions of of miracles for the truth of Christianity and then we just got to focus on like the big ones and like which ones do we cover in this section? So it's kind of difficult to like nail it down but in attempting to tackle this category where where would you begin? Like what's the one that maybe sticks out the most to you?

¶314Well, the one that sticks out most probably is um Padre Peio probably just like all the mystical charrorisms with him. I mean, it's almost like cheating because like it's like a bazillion miracles wrapped up into one. >> Yeah. >> But like dude, we have like doctors writing reports immediately after seeing him where they're like, "Yeah, I palpated both of his hands and his feet and here's my like extensive description of what exactly I saw." It's like, okay, >> in like really crazy medical terms. >> Yeah.

¶315Yeah. No, exactly. And then, you know, we get like what, like seven different doctors to [snorts] do that. And then, like, you know, like dozens of people are like taking his temperature and sometimes using in sequence and they're like using like a mercury thermometer. They put it in there.

¶316The mercury goes so high up it literally shatters. So then they get a professional bath thermometer. They take it, they put it in there like, "Oh, okay." 125°. Yeah. That cuz that happens.

¶317And he's [laughter] just like up and running. Yeah. To normal people. No. Naturalistically inexplicable for all different sorts of reasons.

¶318And again, like he just happened to do this like dozens of times in addition to >> no like your body literally can't produce that amount of heat. >> No. And like you know killing yourself >> losing supernatural like amounts of blood without somehow getting like anemia or anything like that. Um he's literally like regenerating people's eyes for which we have medical documentation. This is in you know Ethan's motivati article.

¶319Um he's got like this like odor of sanctity which is like filling rooms. It's like sticking with his relics sometimes for like years on end. Um, so like the sorts of >> but also like selectively. >> Yeah. >> Some people smell it, some people don't.

¶320>> And so like the the conspiracy that you would have to posit to explain away all the data with um Padre Pio is just like enormous and just absurd I think. >> Um and like okay that's just like one dude >> and like you know I'm just getting started. Like I've got like Zetun, Fatima, Lords, Guadalupe, like Lanchiano Eucharistic Miracle, Buenosy, Sakatik, Laen, Lita. We've got like all these canonization healing miracles. Got like St.

¶321Charbell, we've got like all these different sorts of things. >> And St. Charbell has what now it's like 34 33,000 >> something like that [laughter] >> miracles attributed to his intercession. >> And you know, they like submit the medical documentation to the people and whatnot. And it's like, >> yeah, like we we we have these like we got the goods.

¶322We've got like blinded laboratory analyses. We've got like X-ray like before after. So like and you know like Matthew Peliser I I didn't actually talk about this one with anyone. Um so like he was uh seeking the intercession of he and his family were okay let me step back. He was born in 1951 in Kerala India um with severe bilateral congenital club foot.

¶323So his feet basically just like curve in on themselves like this. Oh, >> so like basically imagine if my feet were like inwards and it just completely messes up all the tendons and ligaments and bone structures and whatnot. And so like he's having to we have like a signed notorized copy of the person who gave birth to him certifying that he had congenital club foot. We have photos of him in childhood with the congenital club foot. We like we collected like the testimonies to like tons of different people saying yeah he literally walked around on the sides of his feet and he had calluses all the time.

¶324>> Um >> so it's just an indisputable fact that he had severe bilateral congenital club foot. Okay. Then in 1970 um his dad there's like a you know there's a particularly saintly individual um who people want to have a kind of cause for canonization of and when Catholics want a particularly saintly individual to be canonized um they'll like uh print out like prayer cards and they'll like do novenas to this individual and they'll like basically ask for the intercession of this individual in the hopes of maybe getting a a medical miracle that they can submit to um you know like the Vatican for for approval. So like they were doing this for like um St. Miriam Teresia Caramel.

¶325I think that's her name. >> And uh so this is in 1970. Uh they the dad and the family I think begin like a 40-day novena and like some kind of like vow. >> That's hardcore. 40 days.

¶326>> Yeah, I know. 40 days. Uh and on like the 33rd day, uh Matthew Peliseri has a vivid vision of two nuns, one of whom actually afterwards was confirmed to like match the image of St. uh Mariam or whatever it was, Miriam Teresa Caramel. Um so he has this vivid image and they're coming, they come to him and they say they like touch his his leg.

¶327Um one of which had the the club foot and they're like get up. So then when he wakes up, he gets up and literally that foot is straightened. The other one isn't straightened, but that one is straightened instantaneously. A year later, they do the same 40-day vow, and on the 39th day, the mom has a vision of St. Maria Teresa Caramel, and she says, "Go check up on little Matthew Peliseri." She goes and it has been instantaneously corrected.

¶328And we have like testimonies from people afterwards, like from his his teachers and what like, "Yeah, afterwards." We have like an X-ray from like 1971 or 72 like showing that he has now has two feet laying down. We have pictures of him afterwards. We have pictures of this stuff. We have x-rays. We have pictures of him beforehand.

¶329We have testimonies from people in his his like around like again this is a complete instantaneous rewiring of all the tendons and ligaments and bones in his leg. Like come on. >> Come on. >> Yeah. >> Come on.

¶330So like okay you know process you don't believe in saintly intercession. You've been refuted by God. [laughter] Like just just you know conform your intellect to the facts. Like the facts are like this is this is good. This is salutary.

¶331God is going out of his way to manifestly vindicate this practice. It's like I don't I don't care about your biblical like I don't care about your historical like oh this is an accretion. Like you've been refuted like sorry um like just deal with it. So yeah like then that's just like saintly intercession. You go through it all the other things.

¶332It's like Mary's appearing to people like oh that's interesting and like we also have medical documentation for those sorts of healing groups and we got like photos like photogometric analyses and like you can see like the patterns of rapid drawing on the clothes even the so yeah like we got blinded laboratory reports and analyses and x-rays and pictures and like dozens thousands hundreds of thousands of testimonies like what am I going to do you know I got to become Catholic. So um this is I mean if you want me to rank it it's clearly S tier and it's like the S of the S tier. It's like I think it's more powerful in my view than um fine-tuning than um harmony problems. Just think like >> like well pictures before and after. >> Yeah.

¶333Something cool about this category [snorts] is that it's functions I think almost similar to the moral argument where the moral argument is sort of visceral where like everyone has a moral sense and you got to figure out what to do with it. And in this case, it's like this is a really interesting story that I'm being told by this person, whoever it is that's that's giving the miracle case. And then you have to like make some decision about it, you know, if if the facts obtain in in whatever particular case you happen to be looking at, Lords or Fatima or Zetune, uh what do you do with it? Like what do you do with the fact that our lady was seen on the top of a building for 3 years? >> Sometimes for hours on end.

¶334>> Sometimes for hours on end with doves behind her with incense rising up >> billowing massive clouds of incense that you need like thousands of sensors which no one ever saw detected where they're shutting off like all the electricity to the neighborhood and where like there are all these medically documented healing miracles associated with it. And [laughter] like these dogs are seemed to like spontaneously like form out of thin air and then spontaneously dissipate and where there's like cool independent like crossroberation like undesigned coincidences from people on other opposite sides of the church to like exactly how the apparition started as like a thin slit of light and then turning into a ball and then taking a distinctive female shape. Like come on. >> Yeah. And so I guess the the point is though that this type of argument has such dialectical force for the average person.

¶335[clears throat] Whereas like something something like psychophysical harmony like yes it's it's very very strong. It's like a very intellectually strong argument. But this one like everybody can understand and and it's super powerful. You know it's like how do you get around this stuff? There really is no way.

¶336I mean, >> well, you submit to Rome. I mean, that's >> I mean, one way around it is uh demonic, you know, the demonic hypothesis is a very serious contender. Uh [laughter] >> oh, indeed. Quite serious. Yeah.

¶337>> Yeah. Yeah. I just don't understand like the the draw to like say that this thing by God was demonic >> because it conflicts with your prior abstract highulutin theoretical theology which is of course what the Pharisees said but >> yes yes but it's just so strange it's so strange to me I've never I mean I'm I'm already like when we want to attribute like demonic activity in in some situation like to me it needs to be sort of an obvious [snorts] contender >> evidence signs of deception like the dude is like sacrificing like a sheep to a demon and he's like reading like a sear stone and he's like translating the Book of Mormon when when he's looking at the occult practice while he's doing it and then he's got like you know 33 wives and he's like lying publicly about them and he's like [laughter] >> like that if if your if your found if your prophet looks like that okay yeah that's like a plausible hypothesis but if your prophet is like you know going into seclusion afterwards and extremely humble and like giving up all like basically like their lunch money to the poor and they're like doing all these penences for them and whatnot and like they're super devout and whatnot, >> right? >> And then you know God's basically allowing like Padre Peio to be put in like the Truman Show where he's like radically deceived about like what his like ordinary daily interactions as like and you know like the these demons seem to like be really addicted to like to Christ and like getting people out of hell and the sacments. >> Yeah.

¶338[laughter] >> Yeah. And God's not like going out of his way to like try to make the religious truth accessible like that the global pattern is just like manifestly vindicating like one church. But even though like in the Old Testament like when the when the the Pharaoh's magicians try to perform their signs, God makes it evident in context like that he gives a superior demonstration of the efficacy of his power by having Moses's like rod swallow them up, right? But yet that's not what happens. Instead, God's going out of his way, it seems, to like vindicate the Catholic teachings, distinctive Catholic teachings.

¶339And you know, like our prophets pass the actual scriptural tests which aren't looking at previous theology. It's instead the fruits test and the Deuteronomy 13:18 whether they're claiming to speak on behalf of God. And if they are, do the signs come to pass? And they do. They do.

¶340>> They do. We have the goods. You don't. [laughter] >> This was supposed to be just talking about the arguments for God. We've like developed it into this like super base [laughter] >> argument for a Catholicism.

¶341>> Yeah. Well, because that's the natural end point, right? >> Yes. >> I mean, we got the miracles, but like ultimately I'm trying to get you guys onto the truth, right? Cuz the truth is what matters.

¶342>> Yes. Yes, it does indeed. Well, Joe, this has been super fun and I'm sure the audience had a lot of fun understanding maybe 5% of this conversation. Uh, no. I thought we I thought we kept it pretty accessible.

¶343>> Reasonably enough. >> Yeah. Yeah. Reasonably enough. But it's been a lot of fun.

¶344>> Thanks for having me. >> Cool. All right. See you later. [laughter] >> See you later.

¶345>> And also like get a load of these shirts. I don't know if people are still watching. >> Well, uh, I can at least put it on that one. >> Mine's Mine's subtle, but it's also very beautiful. >> Mine is not subtle.

¶346>> Yeah. >> And it is beautiful. >> It is beautiful. Yes. St.

¶347St. Maxim and Kobe pray for us.